As We Choke and Sweat, Big Oil Is Trying to Buy Its Way Out of Accountability

Fossil fuel-funded lawmakers have introduced legislation that would dismiss ongoing climate damages lawsuits, shield the industry from similar future cases, pre-empt state Climate Superfund laws, and block any state level regulation of greenhouse gases.


Activists hold signs reading, “Make Polluters Pay” as they cross the Brooklyn Bridge calling for leaders to “Tear down the pillars of fossil fuels” during a Youth Global Climate demonstration ahead of the United Nations Climate week and General Assembly in New York City on September 20, 2024.
(Photo by Alex Kent / AFP via Getty Images)

Basav Sen
Jul 25, 2026

OtherWords

The 2026 heatwave is a global phenomenon, inflicting extreme temperatures on billions of people from the United States to Europe and South Asia.

Extreme heat is deadly. In Europe, an estimated 10,000 people have died from heat this summer, and the official count of a few dozen deaths in India and Pakistan is likely to be too low by several orders of magnitude, according to a recent scientific study.

Dozens of Americans died from heat over the Fourth of July weekend alone—a toll that’s still unacceptably high.

Meanwhile, much of the country has been blanketed in smoke from wildfires in Canada and Minnesota, triggered by the hot and dry conditions arising from the heatwaves. Like heat, wildfire smoke is also deadly. A similar wildfire smoke event in 2023 led to an estimated 33,000 premature deaths in the US alone.

Effectively, these legislators—like too many others—were bought by a powerful industry to put their corporate interests over the health, and the very lives, of the broader public. This is naked corruption.

Scientists have found that all of these regional heatwaves were made likelier and more severe because of human-caused climate change, mainly attributable to burning fossil fuels.

Major oil and gas corporations have known for decades that their business model would cause disasters like these. Their response was to minimize or even hide their findings to keep the public in the dark about the risks—and pay front groups to deceive them.

This drive to preserve profits at the expense of humanity has understandably caused outrage. Eleven US states, two tribes, and dozens of local governments are suing fossil fuel corporations for damages for the harm they’ve suffered from climate disasters.

State legislators have also joined the fray. New York and Vermont have passed “Climate Superfund” bills that require fossil fuel corporations to pay for economic losses arising from extreme heat, wildfires, droughts, hurricanes, and flooding. Similar laws are being considered in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Rhode Island.

The US has experienced more than $200 billion in climate damages every year since 2016, and it’s only fair that fossil fuel corporations pay for some of the damage caused by their reckless greed.

But instead of trying to make Big Oil pay up, some lawmakers in Congress are trying to do the opposite. Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) have introduced House and Senate bills, respectively, that seek to dismiss ongoing climate damages lawsuits, shield Big Oil from similar future cases, pre-empt state Climate Superfund laws, and—most outrageously—block any state level regulation of greenhouse gases.

This is legislation expressly designed to protect a powerful, wealthy industry from having to face any accountability for harming the public. And when you follow the money, you can see why.

Rep. Hageman has received more than $23,000 in campaign money from the petroleum refining and marketing industry in this cycle, making it the second biggest industry (after sugar) backing her candidacy. She’s also received thousands more from other fossil fuel interests.

Also in this cycle alone, Sen. Cruz has gotten more than $129,000 in contributions from different segments of the oil and gas industry.

Effectively, these legislators—like too many others—were bought by a powerful industry to put their corporate interests over the health, and the very lives, of the broader public. This is naked corruption.

And if we want the kind of democracy we need and deserve, the rest of us shouldn’t tolerate it anymore.


This column was distributed by OtherWords.


Basav Sen
Basav Sen is the climate justice project director at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and writes on the intersections of climate change and social and economic justice. Prior to joining IPS, Basav worked for 11 years as a campaign researcher for the United Food and Commercial Workers.
Full Bio >

Picturing Armageddon: US Government Responses to Nuclear War Movies

A feature film based on Annie Jacobson’s terrifying non-fiction book, Nuclear War: A Scenario, is now in pre-production with Dune director Denis Villeneuve at the helm. Looking back at how previous films about nuclear Armageddon have been received may give us a glimpse of how the current administration will respond to it.


(L-R) Sumaiya Kaveh, Susanne Scheel, Paul N. J. Ottosson, Volker Bertelmann, Kirk Baxter, Jeremy Hindle, Greg Shapiro, Aminah Nieves, Kaitlyn Dever, Kyle Allen, Willa Fitzgerald, Brittany O’Grady, Brian Tee, Jonah Hauer-King, Gabriel Basso, and Tracy Letts attend a special Los Angeles screening of Netflix’s A House of Dynamite at The Egyptian Theatre Hollywood on October 9, 2025 in Los Angeles, California.
(Photo by Charley Gallay/Getty Images for Netflix)

Jeff Peck
Jul 25, 2026

Common Dreams


In the recent Netflix movie, A House of Dynamite, an intercontinental ballistic missile of unknown origin is detected streaking across the Pacific on a course that, in less than 20 minutes, will turn Chicago to ash. Efforts to shoot the missile down fail, as the ground-based interceptors, or GBIs, miss their target and, as the seconds count down, the president, played by Idris Elba, has only seven minutes to decide how to respond. The consequences of his decision, which the film leaves open, could mean the end of human civilization and even most life on Earth.

What was the official response to the film? A week before it streamed, the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency (MDA) produced a memo attacking the film’s credibility. America’s GBIs, they said, are much more accurate than portrayed in the movie, with a 100% success rate. (The Center for Arms control puts that figure at 55% in carefully controlled tests.) And an article published by the West Point-based Modern War Institute argues that the film’s premise is flawed since no adversary would launch just a single missile at the United States.

It was also judged illogical that the president’s choices were limited to “surrender” or “suicide”—the latter meaning all-out nuclear war. The country could absorb the loss (meaning the 10 million inhabitants of Chicago) and respond only after the missile’s source had been determined. Finally, as the MDA memo helpfully pointed out, the plot of A House of Dynamite is “fictional” and “intended for the entertainment of the audience.” In other words, it’s just another disaster movie.

These themes are not new to governmental pronouncements on films about nuclear war. In the 1959 feature On the Beach, Gregory Peck plays the captain of a submarine that is America’s last surviving naval vessel as it docks in Melbourne, Australia after the entire Northern Hemisphere has been wiped out in a nuclear war—and a cloud of deadly radioactive fallout is inexorably making its way south. After a brief stay and with the inevitability of death by radiation poisoning, the crew votes to return to the US and die at home.

Which way will the Trump administration go in response to Nuclear War: A Scenario the movie? If the film is faithful to the book, it should have an even more devastating impact than The Day After.

Two weeks before the film’s worldwide release, the United States Information Agency produced an “Infoguide” stating that the film was “highly fictionalized and contains scientific inaccuracies.” It argued that, because fallout diminishes rapidly, it would only affect countries directly attacked or those nearby. Moreover, shelters and decontamination measures were effective against fallout and, as far away as the Southern Hemisphere, “if any protection at all were needed, an ordinary basement would suffice.” A later Infoguide reporting on the premier noted: “Most critics review [the] film as pure drama and there has been little emphasis on social and political significance.” In other words, no big deal.

Five years later, in 1964, Doctor Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, starring Peters Sellers in three different roles, was released. In this dark comedy, a psychotic Air Force General orders the B-52 bombers under his command to attack the Soviet Union, sparking a concerted but unsuccessful effort by the president and his advisers to recall the planes. As a single B-52 gets through and the plane’s pilot rides a nuclear bomb down to its target, it is revealed that the Soviets have a yet-to-be announced “Doomsday Machine” that, upon the country being struck by a nuclear weapon, will automatically trigger the detonation of a massive array of cobalt bombs whose radiation will render the Earth uninhabitable for a century.

Although obviously a farce, the film was panned as “juvenile, offensive, and inaccurate.” As reported in The New Yorker: “An expert at the Institute for Strategic Studies called the events in the film ‘impossible on a dozen counts.’ A former Deputy Secretary of Defense dismissed the idea that someone could authorize the use of a nuclear weapon without the President’s approval: ‘Nothing, in fact, could be further from the truth.’” (These assertions are in doubt following the disclosure of the policy of “pre-delegation,” in force at the time, which gave authority to commanders to deploy nuclear weapons in circumstances where the president could not be reached.)

Two decades later, in the feature film Wargames, Matthew Broderick plays a teenager who successfully hacks into the Pentagon’s supercomputer. Unwittingly, he mistakes its nuclear war command and control function for a computer game—and nearly triggers global thermonuclear war.

This time, the government response was quite different. After viewing the film, President Ronald Reagan asked his chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff if something like that could really happen. After a review, the president was told that, not only was the premise of the film realistic, “the problem is much worse than you think.” Fifteen months later, National Security Directive NSD-145 was issued, launching a sweeping governmental effort to improve cybersecurity.

Later in 1983, the television movie The Day After, which reached a record-breaking 100 million viewers, was the first American film to attempt a realistic depiction of the aftermath of a nuclear attack on an American city. The story revolves around a doctor, played by Jason Robards, as he tries to deal with the horrific effects of blast, fire, and radiation on the citizens of Lawrence, Kansas—targeted because of its nearby nuclear missile silos.

In this case, the response was mixed. The White House initially discouraged the making of the film. The Pentagon urged—unsuccessfully—to have the script make clear that the Soviets fired first and later refused to allow the filmmakers to use stock footage of real nuclear detonations. Henry Kissinger criticized the film as “simple minded” and in danger of leading the country to “make policy by scaring ourselves to death.” But the film’s graphic portrayal of the effects on the population of an American city could not be dismissed as easily as some of its predecessors, and Reagan wrote in his diary, “It’s very effective & left me greatly depressed.” It has been argued that the film influenced him to soften his Cold War rhetoric and to meet with Mikhael Gorbachev in Iceland in 1986, where the complete abolition of nuclear weapons was discussed. Unfortunately, that meeting ended without agreement; however, a year later, subsequent negotiations led to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which resulted in the elimination of a whole class of nuclear weapons.

Which way will the Trump administration go in response to Nuclear War: A Scenario the movie? If the film is faithful to the book, it should have an even more devastating impact than The Day After. With today’s sophisticated special effects, it will, no doubt, create hyperrealistic imagery and make the absolute absurdity of nuclear war manifest. But will the administration call it unrealistic, inaccurate, alarmist or just fiction, as with On the Beach, Doctor Strangelove, or A House of Dynamite? Or will they see it as a prompt to take this existential threat seriously and move to reduce or eliminate the world’s nuclear stockpiles?

Regardless of the response, the movie should motivate us all to work to build a constituency for change in order to end the madness and build a saner world.


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


Jeff Peck
Dr. Jeff Peck is a film and television writer and producer and has taught film history at universities in America and Australia.
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Measles, Salmonella, Explosive Diarrhea: Public Health Crises Erupt Under RFK Jr.’s Leadership

“When the Trump administration declares a crisis ‘under control’, it’s time to brace for the worst yet to come,” said one critic.


US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks during a news conference on June 23, 2026 in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Brad Reed
Jul 24, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

The United States under Trump-appointed Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is currently experiencing major public health crises, including record-high measles cases, an outbreak of a parasite that causes explosive diarrhea, and potential salmonella contamination that led to a recall of nearly two million egg cartons.

Numbers released by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Friday revealed that there have been 2,318 recorded cases of measles this year, the highest number of cases recorded since the virus was declared eliminated in the country more than two decades ago.

Some public health experts who spoke with The New York Times said that lower uptake of the measles vaccine was to blame for the outbreak.

Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health, told the Times that “this is just going to keep happening” in the US unless vaccination rates improve.

“It’s going to mean living in a perpetual state of vulnerability and risk until we get vaccination levels up,” Nuzzo emphasized.

Dr. Jonathan Temte, a former chairman of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee, placed blame for the outbreaks on the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under the leadership of Kennedy, who prior to becoming America’s top public health official was best known as an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist.

“We have seen virtually no national messaging,” said Temte. “We’ve seen no ad campaigns... I think that really tells us something about their priorities.”

Brad Woodhouse, president of Protect Our Care, also slammed Kennedy’s leadership at NHS, accusing him and President Donald Trump of being on “a suicide mission to scare America families away from vaccines without cause or evidence.”

“What they’ve accomplished is a huge dip in vaccination rates and the worst measles crisis in 35 years,” Woodhouse added. “While the nation’s measles elimination status is doomed, the Trump CDC apparently has not spent a dime on public service ads promoting the one thing that will get us out of the woods: the measles vaccine.”

Measles isn’t the only disease spreading throughout the country, as the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced on Friday that “four new states... are now considered part” of the outbreak of cyclosporiasis, a foodborne illness that causes explosive diarrhea.

The FDA has said that iceberg lettuce sourced from Taylor Farms de Mexico is likely the source of the outbreak, which so far has led to nearly 2,000 infections and almost 100 hospitalizations.

News about the continued spread of the outbreak came two days after the FDA revealed it was investigating another potential source of cyclospora, the parasitic bacteria that causes cyclosporiasis.

Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), who earlier this week demanded answers from Kennedy about his decision to terminate the CDC’s previously required surveillance of cyclospora, sent the HHS secretary a letter on Friday ripping his leadership of the department.

“Your silence amidst an ongoing outbreak of diarrheal disease,” Ossoff wrote, “is indicative of the reckless arrogance with which you demolished America’s public health defense.”

Woodhouse, in a statement released Thursday, noted that Kennedy had declared the outbreak “under control” this week even though federal data shows it growing.

“If history is any judge, when the Trump administration declares a crisis ‘under control’, it’s time to brace for the worst yet to come,” said Woodhouse.

The FDA also announced on Wednesday that Midwest Poultry Services was voluntarily recalling nearly 1.6 million cartons of eggs over potential contamination by the bacteria salmonella.

As the FDA noted, salmonella infections often result in a number of unpleasant conditions, including “fever, diarrhea (which may be bloody), nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain.”

Economist Dean Baker summed up the current situation in the US in a Friday social media post: “War, diarrhea, measles, and now salmonella, that’s pretty damn MAGA!”

Slamming Trump’s Cuba Report as ‘McCarthyite Attack’ on Free Speech, Dems Vow to Fight Back

“We stand firmly against this report and other efforts by the Trump administration to weaponize the federal government against dissent, which is a patriotic tradition.”

Julia Conley
Jul 24, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

President Donald Trump’s escalating claims that Cuba and its supporters poses a threat to US security have been denounced as “laughable” and “crazy,” but progressive lawmakers are warning that the State Department’s report alleging that the country of roughly 10 million people aims to “conquer” the United States and is backing “left-wing terrorism on American soil” represents a genuine attack on Trump’s perceived political enemies.

“Trump appears hell-bent on taking America back 70 years to the height of Cold War McCarthyism, when hawkish foreign policy was paired with unsubstantiated accusations of communist subversion and political repression against dissidents at home,” said a group of Democrats led by progressive Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus Peace and Security Taskforce. “We condemn this report’s attack on Americans’ constitutional rights to free speech and assembly.”


US Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) speaks at the Mayo Civic Center in Rochester, Minnesota on May 30, 2026.
(Photo by Alex Kormann/The Minnesota Star Tribune via Getty Images)

Omar on Thursday was joined by 10 other lawmakers, including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), in speaking out days after the State Department released its report titled “Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism.”

The report, said the lawmakers, was a “McCarthyite attack on Americans’ free speech rights.”

The 100-page document claims that Cuba’s communist government “has waged a sustained campaign of subversion against the United States” and recruited “generations” of activists in the US, listing by name people who have participated in solidarity campaigns in support of Cuban people as the Trump administration has imposed a destructive oil blockade on the island nation.

“Trump appears hell-bent on taking America back 70 years to the height of Cold War McCarthyism.”

In January, Trump issued an executive order declaring that Cuba posed an “extraordinary threat” to US national security and threatened countries with tariffs should they provide oil to the Cuban government. The administration had already cut off Cuba’s top source of energy by taking control of Venezuela’s vast oil reserves. The blockade has left the Cuban healthcare and education systems and other daily public services struggling to operate.

US groups and citizens named in the report as having spoken out against the administration’s blockade and its threats of military action against Cuba include commentator Hasan Piker, Amazon Labor Union founder Christian Smalls, the National Lawyers Guild, and campus activist Isra Hirsi—Omar’s daughter.

“We denounce this administration’s irresponsible attacks against civil society organizations, activists, journalists, labor leaders, members of Congress, elected officials, and private individuals based on their advocacy for peaceful foreign policy and social justice at home,” said Omar and the Democrats who joined her in the statement.

The lawmakers said they would use their “full oversight power as members of Congress and elected officials to stop the persecution of Trump’s perceived political enemies,” including those who speak out publicly against the president’s policies in Cuba—activity that is protected by the First Amendment.

“We stand firmly against this report and other efforts by the Trump administration to weaponize the federal government against dissent, which is a patriotic tradition,” they said.

The report is the administration’s latest attack on the free speech rights that are integral to the US Constitution and American history. The White House has pushed to deport foreign students who protested the US-backed Israel war on Gaza, designated anti-fascist organizers as “terrorists,” and, nearly a year after issuing a presidential memo demanding a strategy to “disrupt” left-wing networks, recently convened a summit to launch a “global offensive against the transnational threat of Radical Left terrorism.”

Meanwhile, said Omar on Thursday, Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio—the son of Cuban immigrants and a long-time proponent of regime change on the island—“are intensifying decades of economic war” against the people of Cuba and deliberately depriving “the entire island’s population of adequate food, fuel, and medicine.”

Along with ending his attacks on those who oppose his policies, said Omar, “it is past time for Trump to obey the Constitution and end the dangerous, cruel, and illegal naval blockade causing collective punishment against Cuba.”

Smotrich Demands More West Bank Ethnic Cleansing After Deadly Palestinian Resistance

Six people were killed as a Palestinian man disarmed and shot Israeli settlers raiding his village in the illegally occupied West Bank.

Palestinians take to the streets to resist as Israeli settlers under the protection of Israel Defense Forces troops raid the town of Sarra in the illegally occupied West Bank of Palestine on July 24, 2026.
(Photo by Issam Rimawi/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Brett Wilkins
Jul 24, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday announced actions to tighten and accelerate the illegal occupation and colonization of the West Bank after a Palestinian defending his village from rampaging settlers fatally shot two Israelis—whose companions killed four Palestinians in response—while other members of Netanyahu’s government called for more ethnic cleansing in Palestine.

Residents of Tell—located 3 miles southwest of Nablus and less than 2 miles from the illegal Israeli settlement of Havat Gilad—said settlers attacked homes on the outskirts of the town at around 8:30 on Friday morning.

According to The Times of Israel, a group of several dozen settlers invaded the village under the pretense of going on a hike. However, as the newspaper noted, Tell is located in an area of the occupied West Bank that is off limits to Israelis unless they obtain permission from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which the military said they did not do.

Local Palestinian leader Essam Saifi told Reuters that settlers attacked the eastern ⁠part of Tell and tried to break into ⁠homes there. When residents emerged to confront the settlers, the intruders opened fire on them before leaving.



Backed by IDF troops, the settlers returned around half an hour later. Video recorded by one of the settlers shows an Israeli firing his gun in the air while his companions, who included minors, shout threats while other settlers stormed local residents’ land. A Palestinian man snatched a long gun from a member of the Havat Gilad local security squad and shot him and an IDF major, mortally wounding both men.

Israelis returned fire, killing four Palestinians, including the shooter, and wounding four others. IDF commandos later raided a hospital in Nablus and seized two of the wounded Palestinians.



The Palestinian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that “this massacre represents a renewed image of the ongoing Nakba to which our Palestinian people are subjected,” a reference to the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Arabs from Palestine by Zionist forces during the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948.

The ministry also condemned “the misleading narratives promoted by the Israeli occupation authorities... in a systematic attempt to turn the executioner into the victim, and to cover up the crimes of murder, field executions, massacres, and grave violations committed by the occupation forces and settler militias against the Palestinian people.”

IDF troops subsequently locked down Tell and Nablus while deploying five additional companies to the area and canceling soldiers’ weekend furloughs in preparation for imminent “extensive counterterrorism operational activity in the sector.”

Responding to the incident as well as two separate stabbings of Israelis in the West Bank on Thursday, Netanyahu convened a security consultation, which resulted in a joint statement with Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announcing a tightening of the occupation and acceleration of the colonization of Palestine—both already illegal under international law.

The statement said Israel will demolish the family home of the Palestinian who shot the two Israelis, confiscate arms and revoke work permits of Palestinians in “villages acting as terrorist hubs,” reinforce IDF units throughout the occupied territories, expedite the “legalization of farm outposts” and establish new ones, and increase apartheid checkpoints and road separations.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich responded to the incident by calling for the destruction and “evacuation”—a term widely viewed as a euphemism for ethnic cleansing—of local Palestinians “for their own protection.”

“This is our appropriate Zionist answer to terrorists and terrorism,” Smotrich said.



“We will not normalize the erosion of deterrence and the brazenness of our enemies in recent weeks against the pioneers of settlement and the farms,” Smotrich, who chairs the far-right Religious Zionism party, said on social media, “I demand that the IDF act with an iron fist against the village of the murderers and its surroundings and restore governance and deterrence.”

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who leads the far-right Jewish Power party, demanded the Palestinian shooter’s town be obliterated like Beit Hanoun in Gaza, where Israeli forces have been waging a war that United Nations officials, legal and academic experts, and around 20 national governments have called a genocide.

“For every Jew murdered, the enemy must suffer the loss of land and homes,” Ben-Gvir said. “This is the language spoken in the Middle East, and just as we spoke it in Gaza, it is time to speak it in [the West Bank] as well.”

Yair Golan, who heads the opposition Democrats, accused Netanyahu and Katz of “a clear intent to set the area ablaze.”

“Every escalation in the field endangers human lives—Israelis and Palestinians alike,” he added.

David Zini, the head of Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security and counterintelligence agency, urged the Israeli public “not to take the law into their own hands and to place their trust in the IDF and the Shin Bet, whose mission and duty this is.”

Many settlers rejected Zini’s call and instead carried out revenge attacks on West Bank towns and villages, reportedly including Madama, Urif, Burin, Far’ata, Jit, Qabalan, Sarra, and others, resulting in multiple injuries.



Meanwhile, settlers mourned the killing of the two slain Israelis, 32-year-old Havat Gilad civil defense squad member Benayahu Mellet and 27-year-old IDF Maj. Yuval Ezra.

Extremist settler Meir Ettinger eulogized Mellet on social media, saying that “he was never satisfied with recognized roads and fences, and strived continuously to conquer the region.”

“Benayahu always insisted on not making a distinction between areas C and B,” Ettinger added.

Under the moribund Oslo Accords, the West Bank is divided into Areas A, B, and C. Area A is under full Palestinian Authority control, while Area B is under mixed control and Area C is under full Israeli control.

Israeli efforts to expand West Bank settlement activity have accelerated dramatically since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023. Attacks on West Bank Palestinians, including pogroms carried out by mobs of settlers protected and sometimes joined by Israeli troops, have killed at least 1,111 Palestinians—at least 243 of them children—since October 2023, according to the latest report published by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Israeli officials say 47 Israelis—including IDF troops, security personnel, and civilians—have been killed by Palestinian attacks over the same period.

According to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, more than 620,000 Jews currently reside in over 130 settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. While Israel grants every Jew in the world the right to settle there, it has—against UN resolutions and international law—refused to allow the approximately 5 million Palestinian refugees alive today to return to their homeland.

B’Tselem is one of 20 Israeli human rights groups that on Friday issued an “urgent call to the international community to take immediate action to stop Israel’s violence and prevent pogroms by settler militias and the Israeli army across the West Bank.”

Settler Violence Escalates in West Bank

Aseel Saleh | 24 Jul 2026

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The past week saw the killing of three Palestinians, including a teenage footballer, at the hands of illegal Israeli settlers and the IOF. Understand why it is concentrated east of Ramallah.

Palestinian residents of Ras Ein al-Auja village, West Bank pack up their belongings and prepare to leave their homes after deciding to flee mounting settler violence. Photo: AP

For decades, Israel has employed settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank as part of its program of ethnic cleansing. However, such violence has sharply increased since the far-right ultra-nationalist government, led by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, came to power in 2022.

While settler violence has affected the entire occupied territory over the last couple of years, it has been heavily concentrated in villages east of Ramallah, including Al-Mughayyir, Turmus Ayya, Deir Dibwan, Deir Jarir, Kufr Malik, Mazraa Al-Sharqiyah, and Khirbet Abu Falah.

A convergence of geographic, political, and strategic factors has made this area one of the primary flashpoints for displacement and the takeover of land in the occupied West Bank.

Ramallah’s eastern countryside overlooks the Jordan Valley to the east and the central West Bank to the west, making it a critical visual and geographical crest.

A continuous chain of Israeli settlements and wildcat outposts were established on the hilltops around these villages in order to isolate Palestinian agricultural communities, cutting them off from their surrounding pasturelands, and connecting infrastructure. 

The local economy of villages east of Ramallah remains deeply rooted in traditional rain-fed agriculture, notably olive orchards and livestock grazing. This in turn made the area a target for systematic settler violence during harvest periods, severely undermining the long-term economic viability of the land for indigenous farmers.

The semi-nomadic Bedouin and Palestinian herding communities along the eastern Ramallah slopes have also been systematically targeted by aggressive settler groups, who destroy their crops, seize their animals, block their water supply and attack them physically.

Three Palestinians killed in villages east of Ramallah in one week

On Sunday, July 19, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) and illegal settlers launched a coordinated attack against Palestinians in Deir Jarir town, northeast of Ramallah in the central occupied West Bank.

Odah Abdul-Rahim Farakhna (53), and Ahmad Adul-Rashid Abu Mokho (26) were shot dead, while a third person was injured in the assault.

B’Tselem, an Israeli non-profit organization that documents human rights violations committed by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territories, slammed the offensive on Deir Jarir, accusing Israel of promoting ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.

“The killing in Deir Jarir is one example of how Israel promotes ethnic cleansing in the West Bank: settlers invade and steal, while the military and police accompany them and shoot Palestinians who try to protect their homes and property,” Yuli Novak, the executive director of B’Tselem noted.

The deadly attack on Deir Jarir was preceded by another tragic incident in Al-Mughayer village, northeast of Ramallah.

Palestinian footballer Fadi Hamdallah Al-Nasaan (17) died on Saturday, July 18, due to injuries he sustained after being shot by the IOF one week earlier during a raid on Al-Mughayer.

According to the Palestinian Football Association, Al-Nasaan is one of 1,013 Palestinian athletes, including 568 from the football community, who have been killed by Israel since October 7, 2023.

Meanwhile, the latest death toll published by Shireen Observatory indicates that at least 79 Palestinians have been killed due to Israeli violence in the occupied West Bank since the beginning of the year. This includes 21 children, five women, two elderly people, three prisoners, and one journalist.

Courtesy: Breakthrough News

‘Stunning Admission’: Trump Admin Targeted Democrats by Canceling Clean Energy Grants

“It is despicable that the administration is taking away funding from states that did not vote for Trump,” said US Sen. Dick Durbin.


Office of Management and Budget then-acting Director Russell Vought speaks while US President Donald Trump looks on at the White House in Washington, DC on October 9, 2019.
(Photo by Shealah Craighead/White House)

Brad Reed
Jul 24, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

President Donald Trump’s administration has admitted in court that it chose to cancel certain grants for clean energy projects because they were set to benefit Democratic-voting states.

The New York Times reported on Friday that attorneys representing the US Department of Energy (DOE) acknowledged in court documents filed earlier this month that decisions about canceling grants were based “solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state, i.e., whether the recipient’s location and/or place of performance was in a Blue State or a non-Blue State.”

The Times described this as a “stunning admission” that “offered an unvarnished glimpse into the way President Trump has weaponized the provision of federal education, energy, health, housing, and infrastructure aid in his second term.”

According to the Times, the DOE last year recommended canceling more than 600 grants awarded for energy projects under former President Joe Biden’s administration.

However, the White House Office of Management and Budget only made 284 of the recommended cuts while leaving the rest of the grants in place.

After a group of California researchers challenged the terminated grants in a lawsuit, the DOE acknowledged that “with one exception, the 284 terminated grants had a recipient location and/or at least one place of performance in a state that awarded its electoral votes to Kamala Harris in the 2024 election and has two Democratic-caucusing senators.”

The DOE also admitted that there was no “programmatic, statutory, cost-reduction, or performance-based factor” to justify the cuts.

In a social media post, New York Times reporter Tony Romm noted that the DOE made these admissions “as part of a process meant to avoid discovery” and “perhaps spare it from sharing more damaging records” in its possession.

The Times report drew a sharp reaction from Trump administration critics.

“This is corruption,” said Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Calif.). “It’s how this administration has acted since day one: punishing states, businesses, and ordinary Americans who push back on Trump. It’s a major betrayal of our nation that will lead to higher energy prices and should be condemned by people of all political parties. It’s un-American and despicable.”

Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) accused the administration of “the weaponization of government” with its selective grant cancellations.

“This administration shows us time and time again they only care about one person,” Kim added, “and that person only cares about himself.”

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) argued that the filings prove “what we have long known, that their grant cancellations were not based on ‘waste’ or sound policy but vindictiveness.”

“It is despicable,” Durbin emphasized, “that the administration is taking away funding from states that did not vote for Trump.”

Jennifer Victory, political scientist at George Mason University, described the administration’s scheme as “violations of the rule of law that would be sufficient for impeachment in any other American presidency but aren’t in this one because pathological partisan loyalty has rotted the constitutional order.”

Sam Stein, managing editor at The Bulwark, said that the DOE’s admission about targeting Democratic states was “something we all knew and saw at the time and yet still breathtaking to read... in print.”

‘Huge Win for Consumers’: Paramount Delays Warner Bros. Deal Over Court Fight

California’s attorney general called the development “great news for audiences, movie theaters, and the many people who write, build, and create the art, news, and entertainment so many of us enjoy.”

Free press advocates project messages opposing the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger on Jazz at Lincoln Center during the News and Documentary Emmy Awards on May 27, 2026 in New York City.
(Photo by Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images for Emmys Rapid Response Project)

Jessica Corbett
Jul 24, 2026
COMMON DREAM

Paramount Skydance on Friday officially delayed its attempted acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery after a federal judge in the Northern District of California temporarily blocked the $111 billion deal at the request of a dozen Democratic attorneys general.

US District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín granted the temporary restraining order on Monday after finding that the plaintiffs—led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta—provided “compelling evidence that the combined firm resulting from the transaction will possess substantial market share in the wide-release theatrical distribution market.” She extended the order on Thursday.

The companies have now agreed not to close the deal—also the target of a Writers Guild of America lawsuit—until five days after a trial is held or June 1, 2027, whichever is sooner. While the attorneys general and their supporters framed the development as a victory for their side, a Paramount spokesperson similarly said that “today’s agreement is a significant win because the result is exactly what we have sought from the outset: a direct path to a trial based on the evidence.”

“This is the fastest and clearest way to prove that this transaction is good for competition, good for consumers, and good for creators, a conclusion dozens of competition authorities around the world have already reached,” the spokesperson continued. “Plaintiffs’ market definitions bear no relationship to the realities of today’s marketplace and cannot withstand scrutiny. We look forward to proving our case at trial.”

Meanwhile, Bonta said in a statement that “our argument against this illegal merger is straightforward: When too few corporations have too much power in markets central to American life, it makes things more expensive, and it makes things worse.”

“Today’s agreement is great news for audiences, movie theaters, and the many people who write, build, and create the art, news, and entertainment so many of us enjoy,” he emphasized. “We are eager to continue to make our case in court and celebrate another tremendous win in our effort to ensure this unlawful merger never sees the light of day.”

Joining Bonta in battle are the attorneys general of Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, and Washington. They, too, celebrated on Friday.

“Stopping this merger while our case proceeds is a critical victory in our efforts to uphold the law and protect the film and television industries,” New York’s Letitia James stressed on social media. In a video, New Jersey’s Jennifer Davenport also called the companies’ decision “a huge win for consumers” and pledged to “continue to fight to block this merger for good.”



Responding to one of Davenport’s social media posts, actor and activist Mark Ruffalo declared: “Today’s news is a repudiation of Paramount’s strategy of currying favor with the Trump administration to grease the wheels on this illegal merger—from sham settlement payments to manipulating its own news coverage. Stay strong and #BlockTheMerger.”

Some opposition to the deal is rooted in the fact that it would give Paramount CEO David Ellison—the son of billionaire Larry Ellison, a major donor to President Donald Trump—control of CNN, as he already faces mounting criticism for his and Bari Weiss’ management of CBS News.

“The Ellisons believed their relationship with President Trump would help them push through a disastrous deal that threatened democracy, creative freedom, and independent journalism. We in the #BlocktheMerger campaign helped prove them wrong,” said Norm Eisen, co-founder and executive chair of Democracy Defenders Fund, in a statement.

“Paramount’s decision keeps two major studios competing instead of handing one company even more power over what Americans watch, what they pay, and where entertainment workers can earn a living,” he continued. “The merger would have eliminated one of Hollywood’s largest buyers of scripts and productions while placing Paramount+, HBO Max, CBS News, CNN, and dozens of local stations under the management of one company.”

“This victory in putting the merger on hold belongs to the people who refused to treat the merger as inevitable,” Eisen added. “Artists, journalists, filmmakers, and consumer advocates spoke out despite the risk of retaliation, more than 5,500 people signed our open letter, and Attorneys General Rob Bonta and Letitia James, along with 10 other attorneys general, acted. This collective resistance is turning the tide.”



Craig Aaron, co-CEO of the advocacy group Free Press, said that “Paramount tried to tell us this deal was a slam-dunk, but it just shot an airball. Late in the game, Paramount’s lawyers grasped what we’ve said all along: The states have a very solid case that this deal violates US antitrust law. For the broad and growing coalition against this corrupt and dangerous deal, this delay marks a significant victory.”

“Instead of fighting against an injunction and possibly losing now, Paramount’s lawyers have resigned themselves to waiting for a full antitrust trial in federal court,” Aaron added. “Paramount can pretend all it wants that it looks forward to that test, but that’s just more bluster from company mouthpieces trying to spin a major setback. Now this deal will face its day in court, and we are confident the evidence will show this mega-merger should be blocked.”

Lawsuit Challenges Trump’s Illegal Spying and Retaliation Targeting ICE Monitors

“The federal government cannot build secret dossiers on people because they exercise their First Amendment right to peacefully observe, document, or criticize its actions,” said the head of Democracy Forward.


Union del Barrio volunteer Lupe Carrasco Cardona drives while monitoring US Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles on September 24, 2025.
(Photo by Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images)

Brett Wilkins
Jul 24, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

A coalition of privacy and civil liberties advocates filed a federal lawsuit Friday accusing the Trump administration of secretly collecting and keeping personal information about people who monitor US Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations, arguing that the practice violates federal privacy law and threatens constitutionally protected speech and association.

The lawsuit—filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia—was brought by individuals and advocacy groups represented by Democracy Forward.

The plaintiffs—the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and legal observers Nicole Cleland, Jacquelyn Ivey, and Anna Walker—argued that the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and other federal agencies created and maintained databases of people who observed, documented, or protested immigration enforcement activities without providing notification or safeguards, as required under the Privacy Act of 1974.

That law was passed after the exposure of illegal government surveillance, including longtime former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director J. Edgar Hoover’s infamous COINTELPRO program, under which the FBI, in addition to conducting unlawful spying, funded and armed murderous far-right militants to terrorize anti-Vietnam War protesters, anti-nuclear weapons activists, civil rights leaders including Martin Luther King, Jr., and other leftists.

“The federal government cannot build secret dossiers on people because they exercise their First Amendment right to peacefully observe, document, or criticize its actions,” Democracy Forward president and CEO Skye Perryman said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “That is exactly the kind of government surveillance Congress sought to prevent when it enacted the Privacy Act after some of the darkest chapters in our nation’s history.”

The lawsuit accuses the Trump administration of collecting the names, photographs, vehicle information and license plate numbers, social media accounts, and other identifying information about legal observers, volunteers, journalists, clergy, and community members engaged in First Amendment-protected activities during the government’s deadly anti-immigrant crackdown.

“When the Department of Homeland Security dramatically ratcheted up its immigration enforcement, people across the country—of all ages and backgrounds—did what anyone is supposed to do when they disagree with government action: They exercised their First Amendment rights,” the suit states. “They peacefully protested. And, as matters here, they observed and recorded how law enforcement agents acted in public.”



“In response, DHS decided to record the Americans who were peacefully observing its agents, adopting a secret Protester Surveillance Policy enabling its agents to first collect records on Americans engaging in First Amendment exercise and then maintain them in DHS systems, where they can be used to retaliate against those Americans,” the complaint continues.

“Beginning sometime in 2025, DHS deployed a dragnet of drones, bodycams, face-scanning apps, license plate scanners, and camera phones to, as one memo instructed, ‘capture all images, license plates, identifications, and general information on hotels, agitators, protestors, etc., so we can capture it all in one consolidated form,’” the document notes.

“DHS agents have not been shy about gathering this information or its purpose,” the plaintiffs contended. “In Maine, DHS agents told multiple observers that they were being added to a database of ‘domestic terrorists.’ In Chicago, agents routinely used facial irecognition scans on members of the public.”

“In Minneapolis, observers simply watching agents on public streets have been led by those agents to their own houses, despite never having interacted with an agent—a practice so common that it has been named ‘being driven home by ICE,’” the suit says. “And across the country, DHS agents have approached observers and addressed them by their full names, even though those observers never identified themselves to the agents or showed them any form of identification.”

“As a result of its Protester Surveillance Policy, DHS has recorded and retaliated against each individual plaintiff,” the filing alleges. “It’s bad enough that DHS publicly collected information on Americans engaged in lawful First Amendment exercise. But worse, DHS also decided to maintain the information in one or more of its systems, enabling it to later retaliate against observers and protestors—including by canceling Trusted Traveler status,” which includes Transportation Security Administration Pre-Check and Global Entry.

The plaintiffs are asking the court to declare the DHS surveillance policy unlawful, end it, and ban the agency from continuing to collect and keep records of individuals’ protected First Amendment activities.

“Now more than ever, those of us who have the privilege to speak out have a responsibility to defend the rights of everyone in our communities,” Walker said in a statement. “When people are punished for exercising their First Amendment rights, we begin losing the democratic principles that protect all of us. Every American should be alarmed by retaliatory action against one’s free speech.”

Cleland said: “I believe government accountability starts with transparency. People should be free to peacefully observe and document what their government does in public without worrying they’ll be tracked or retaliated against. This case is about protecting that right for everyone.”

EPIC deputy director John Davisson warned, “When our government compiles secret dossiers on everyday people for exercising their constitutional rights, it sends a chilling message: If you speak up, watch your back.”

“If every protest, every recording, every act of dissent opens us up to surveillance and retribution, privacy and free speech are at risk of collapse,” he added. “But the laws of this nation don’t permit that, and we won’t either.”