‘Organized People Won’: Aisha Wahab Defeats Millions in AIPAC Spending to Win US House Race
“This victory belongs to the voters who made clear that our district cannot be bought,” said Wahab, who will serve out the remainder of former Rep. Eric Swalwell’s term.
California state Sen. Aisha Wahab speaks to the media during an election-night watch party at Firefighters Local 1909 on August 18, 2026 in Hayward, California.
(Photo by Heather Diehl/Getty Images)
Jake Johnson
Aug 21, 2026
COMMON DREAMS
Progressive California state Sen. Aisha Wahab has won a special election to serve the remainder of disgraced former Rep. Eric Swalwell’s term in the US Congress, defeating a centrist Democrat backed by millions of dollars in AIPAC spending.
“This victory belongs to the voters who made clear that our district cannot be bought,” Wahab said in response to news of her victory, which came some 48 hours after election day. “Through one of the ugliest, most expensive elections we’ve ever seen, we never took the bait or went negative. We stayed focused on the people, and I will fight for this district that raised me.”
Wahab, who ran on slashing prescription drug costs and ending forever wars, will represent California’s 14th Congressional District until at least January. In November, Wahab will face Bay Area Rapid Transit board member Melissa Hernandez again in a race for a full two-year term in the US House. Tuesday’s special election was significantly closer than earlier primary contests, signaling a highly competitive race later this year.
Our Revolution, a progressive advocacy organization that backed Wahab, called her win “a national model for how progressives can defeat big-money outside groups and build a Democratic Party rooted in working people.” The United Democracy Project, AIPAC’s super PAC, spent $2.5 million on the contest in an effort to boost Hernandez.
BOLD America, a separate super PAC that has received funding from AIPAC, also threw millions of dollars behind Hernandez. By contrast, The American Prospect reported that Wahab’s outside support came “from the state’s leading labor organization, from the leadership PAC of Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), and from the PAC for the Congressional Progressive Caucus.”
“Aisha Wahab’s victory should be studied by every progressive running for office in America,” Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of Our Revolution, said in a statement late Thursday. “They had millions of dollars. We had organized people. And organized people won.”
“The lesson from CA-14 is simple: Democrats do not have to surrender to the biggest checkbook in the race,” said Geevarghese. “Big money can buy television ads, mailboxes and endless attacks. It cannot buy the trust built through thousands of conversations between neighbors. That is the model: unite the movement, organize everywhere, and make billionaire money fight us on our terrain.”
California Voters Prefer ‘Progressives’ and ‘Democratic Socialists’ to ‘Mainstream Democrats’: Poll
As progressives nationwide seek to prove their politics can beat Republicans, California is still a battleground between the left-wing and centrist factions within the Democratic Party.
US House candidate, California state Sen. Aisha Wahab speaks to the media during an election-night watch party at Firefighters Local 1909 on August 18, 2026 in Hayward, California.
(Photo by Heather Diehl/Getty Images)
Stephen Prager
Aug 20, 2026
COMMON DREAMS
A new poll in California may offer a window into the national struggle to define the Democratic Party. In a state that’s often thought of as the capital of blue America, voters are now more likely to say they’re turned off by candidates who align themselves with the Democratic Party.
But that’s not because they’re moving right. The survey, published Wednesday by the Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, found that voters are “more inclined” to vote for a candidate who identifies as a “progressive” or a “democratic socialist,” compared with those who call themselves “mainstream Democrats.”
‘This Man Is So Out of Touch’: Hakeem Jeffries Slammed for Opposition to Medicare for All
Identifying as any sort of Republican, “MAGA” or otherwise, made voters say they were overwhelmingly “less inclined” to give their support.
(Poll by the Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies)
That California voters lean left of the country at large is hardly shocking news, but the poll does provide yet another striking data point in the broader trend of Democratic voters revolting against the establishment of their own party, which has culminated in a surge of left victories nationwide.
Among self-identified Democratic voters in the state, just 48% said they would be “more inclined” to vote for someone who self-identifies with the mainstream of the party, compared with 58% who said they were inclined to vote for a “democratic socialist” and 60% who said they were inclined to vote for a “progressive.”
What precisely these terms mean is not defined by the pollster, and in mainstream discourse, “progressives” like Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed and “democratic socialists” like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani are often spoken of in the same breath, largely because their platforms overlap significantly and both defeated better-funded Democratic opponents with greater institutional backing.
Whatever term is used to describe such candidates, pundits in establishment-friendly media have struggled to make sense of their recent wins.
But Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—a long-time critic of corporate influence over the US political system who ran for president in 2016 and 2020 and is arguably more responsible than any other single figure for kicking off this shift in the Democratic electorate—wrote in an op-ed for The Guardian on Wednesday that the reason behind it “is not complicated.”
“We now have more income and wealth inequality than at any time in American history. The top 1% now own more wealth than the bottom 93%, and one man, Elon Musk, owns more wealth than the bottom 50% of US households,” he wrote. “Not surprisingly, working families are tired of status quo politics and the same old, same old establishment policies that have failed them for years. They want change, real change—and are supporting progressive candidates who are fighting for that change.”
That is why, he argues, candidates who have run on campaign finance reform, establishing a single-payer healthcare system, stronger union protections, higher taxes on the rich, and an end to aggressive foreign interventions in countries like Iran and military support for Israel are seeing success.
In November, progressives like El-Sayed, as well as Minnesota Senate candidate Peggy Flanagan, Florida Senate candidate Angie Nixon, Michigan House candidate William Lawrence, Pennsylvania House candidate Bob Brooks, and others, will try to prove that their politics can win in competitive races against Republicans. So will Randy Villegas, who is aiming to unseat Republican Rep. David Valadao in California’s 22nd district.
But California’s “jungle primary” system, which lets the top two candidates across all parties face off in the general election, will continue for the next several months to be a front in the Democratic Party’s internal war.
One closely watched race is in California’s 14th District, near Oakland, where a special election for the seat vacated by the disgraced former Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell has come down to the wire between the progressive state Sen. Aisha Wahab (D-10) and the centrist-leaning transportation official Melissa Hernandez (D).
The two are starkly divided on Israel; while Wahab has called its actions in Gaza“ genocide” and called for an end to weapons aid, Hernandez has been noncommittal.
Wahab has also taken stronger stances against corporate abuses and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and called for significant police reforms, while Hernandez has run on public safety and business-friendly policies.
After steamrolling her opponents in the June primary, with a 25-point lead over Hernandez, Wahab was hit with a $6.3 million spending blitz from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in the months leading up to this past Tuesday’s general election. As of Thursday, the race is too close to call, with Wahab ahead by just over 1,300 votes as 62% of ballots have been counted.
Whoever wins this race will hold the seat for the remainder of Swalwell’s term. But the two will face each other again in November with new district lines approved by voters last year as part of a Democratic redistricting effort.
In the 7th district, Sacramento City Council member Mai Vang (D), who was endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America, unexpectedly finished with more votes in the June primary than 11-term Democratic Rep. Doris Matsui.
The 40-year-old Vang outflanked Matsui, who is more than twice her age, on the left by aggressively championing the abolition of ICE, Medicare for All, and a wealth tax proposal by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.). The two will face off again one-on-one in November’s runoff.
The mayor’s race in Los Angeles, between incumbent Karen Bass and democratic socialist City Council member Nithya Raman, will be another test for the left.
Bass, a former member of Congress, has strong institutional support from the Democratic Party, including endorsements from former Vice President Kamala Harris and California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Raman is challenging her less on ideological grounds and more on the question of competent governance, seeking to overhaul the city’s homelessness bureaucracy and construct more affordable housing. She has also pushed back against Bass’ call to hire more police officers and advocated instead for investing in more unarmed civilian first responders.
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In Post-Primary Media Tour, Angie Nixon Refuses to Take Corporate Media’s Bait on Hasan Piker, DSA“I am actually focused on Florida and making sure that I’m talking to voters here, to uplift their needs and their concerns,” said the progressive Democrat. “And so that’s what my focus is going to be over the next 76 days.”
NBC News anchor Kristen Welker interviews Florida state Rep. Angie Nixon (D-13) on August 20, 2026. (Screenshot: NBC News)
Julia Conley
Aug 21, 2026
COMMON DREAMS
The corporate media has spent months helping to push the narrative that progressive Democratic candidates are anti-American and have radical foreign policy views that are out of step with a majority of voters—claims that are not backed up by polling—and news outlets were ready this week to pepper Florida state Rep. Angie Nixon with questions after her stunning Democratic primary victory in the US Senate race.
But Nixon (D-13) suggested Thursday night she prefers to discuss her desire to represent working Florida residents’ interests in the Senate over the topics that news anchors are eager to talk about, including various positions held by some members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the specific label she would apply to her political views, and the progressive political figures she does or does not plan to campaign with ahead of the November midterms.
‘The Fight Has Just Begun’: Angie Nixon Delivers Shocking Upset Win in Florida
On NBC News, correspondent Kristen Welker asked Nixon on Thursday why she recently joined the DSA “if you disagree with various parts of their platform.”
Nixon has expressed in interviews in recent days that she does not support the DSA’s platform positions of abolishing prisons—noting that she does support abolishing those that operate for profit—or defunding the police.
Welker asked if Nixon’s disagreement with some aspects of the DSA’s platform becomes “a distraction from your own campaign and your own agenda.”
The state lawmaker, who supports Medicare for All, universal childcare, and annual wealth tax on billionaires, replied, “You all are the only ones that are distracted.”
Nixon’s hint of exasperation at the question came after a number of interviews in which she was grilled about topics that, she suggested, had nothing to do with the priorities of Floridians whom she’s met on the campaign trail.
She quickly pivoted away from Welker’s DSA focus and toward the struggles a growing number of Americans are facing with affording healthcare, following the Republican Party’s termination of Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies and cuts to Medicaid.
“The fact remains that there are people who are dying because they don’t have access to quality healthcare,” said Nixon as she turned her attention to her GOP opponent, Sen. Ashley Moody. “Meanwhile, Ashley Moody voted to end the ACA subsidies. As I stated, nearly 300,000 people fell off the Affordable Care Act rolls.”
“The status quo is broken,” she added, “and the people at the top want to stoke division... At the end of the day I have always been about the people of Florida, which is why my campaign is Angie for Florida.”
Welker didn’t follow up with a question about Nixon’s plans to make healthcare more affordable for Florida voters, instead asking whether she views herself as “a capitalist.”
The interview was the latest in a slew of media appearances Nixon has made this week after she won the Democratic primary by 12 points despite being outraised by an estimated 13-to-1 average by former national security official Alex Vindman.
The candidate’s suggestion that the corporate media is “distracted” when it comes to her campaign came a day after CBS News anchor Gayle King questioned Nixon about who she has campaigned with, incorrectly claiming that left-wing commentator and streamer Hasan Piker had joined her on the trail during the primary race, along with Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.).
Nixon politely but firmly replied that she has not campaigned with Piker before noting that Tlaib, who has joined her at rallies, “wants the same things that I want, to make sure that government is working for people and not against it.”
“So I’ll continue to do the same thing, but I have not campaigned with Mr. Piker at all,” she said. “Not sure where that came from.”
King then pressed her on whether she would be interested in campaigning with Piker—whose involvement in Michigan US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed was used by the centrist think tank Third Way as an attack line against the progressive earlier this year. The news anchor appeared incredulous when Nixon replied that she didn’t “really know who he is.”
“I am actually focused on Florida and making sure that I’m talking to voters here, to uplift their needs and their concerns,” said Nixon. “And so that’s what my focus is going to be over the next 76 days.”
Journalist Glenn Greenwald commented that King’s shocked reaction at the news that the progressive candidate didn’t know Piker was “so revealing of the insular media mindset.”
“It’s the only thing we in the media ever talk about,” he said sardonically. “You must be fixated on what we’re fixated on.”
Nixon also used questions from journalist Don Lemon and MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” about whether she supports abolishing prisons as a jumping-off point to discuss her opposition to for-profit prisons, which have secured hundreds of millions of dollars in federal contracts to run immigration detention centers after they donated millions to President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign.
“They exploit labor, and they usher many of our children into the school-to-prison pipeline,” said Nixon.
Screenwriter Dan Therriault said that “younger left candidates” like Nixon “are dealing with media in an assertive way that the old Democrats don’t have to do because they’re the status quo.”
“The push by media against young left Democrats, who are fighting for their voters,” he said, “is causing the media’s conservative corporate bias to be exposed day after day.”
‘Utterly Unsustainable’: US Employer-Sponsored Healthcare Costs Set to Keep SurgingWhile Democratic leadership continues to oppose a Medicare for All system overwhelmingly favored by their party’s voters, progressives point to studies showing that such a program will save lives and money.
Members of National Nurses United rally with lawmakers to show their support for the Medicare fyor All Act in Upper Senate Park on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC on April 29, 2025.
(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Brett Wilkins
Aug 20, 2026
COMMON DREAMS
US workers with employer-sponsored health insurance are expected to spend an average of $5,297 on healthcare this year, including premiums deducted from their paychecks, deductibles, and copayments, according to a new estimate from benefits consulting giant Aon reported Thursday by The Wall Street Journal.
That’s $388 more than last year, and the pain is expected to intensify in 2027. According to a survey conducted by WTW, another consultant, US employers anticipate their healthcare costs will soar 11.1% next year. That could be the steepest increase in more than two decades, and would mark the fifth consecutive year of rising employer healthcare costs.
As the Journal noted, expensive cancer treatments and widespread adoption of weight loss drugs are among the factors driving up spending—and costs. For workers, that means larger deductions from their paychecks, higher out-of-pocket costs, and, for some, abandoning insurance altogether.
“Employers are telling us that this is utterly unsustainable,” WTW population health leader Jeff Levin-Scherz told the Journal.
Jason Wilburn, co-owner of Paul Wissmach Glass Co. in Paden City, West Virginia—which employs 35 people—said that the company has endured double-digit premium increases every year since 2021, with healthcare costs now accounting for 5% of revenue. That’s a higher percentage than the company’s margin of profit.
To cope, Wissmach Glass Co. increased its biweekly payroll deduction from $40 to $50 per worker, even though the company is still paying about 90% of the total premium. The increase has resulted in some employees deciding to drop their coverage.
“It’s frustrating and sad,” Wilburn told the Journal. “Something’s got to change.”
Democrats cited the report in a statement Thursday, noting that President Donald Trump and Republicans “have spiked healthcare costs for millions of Americans.”
“First, they cut Medicaid by nearly $1 TRILLION—the largest cut to healthcare in history—to pay for tax cuts for the ultrarich,” the party said, referring to the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed by Trump last year. “Then, they refused to extend the enhanced Affordable Care Act premium tax credits, hiking premiums by an average of 58%.”
“Trump and Republicans’ cuts have already forced 3 million people to drop their coverage, with more expected to drop coverage in the coming months as premiums are expected to see another double-digit increase next year,” the Democrats’ statement continued. “More than half of Americans already could not reliably afford healthcare in 2025—a five-year low—and nearly 1 in 4 American workers report staying in unwanted jobs just to maintain consistent health insurance.”
“Donald Trump and Republicans’ endless cuts to healthcare have jacked up costs for millions of Americans,” Democratic National Committee spokesperson Jaelin O’Halloran said. “Everyday Americans are dipping even further into their savings and taking on record amounts of debt to afford a trip to the doctor’s office or lifesaving medicine—and Trump doesn’t care.”
“While Trump prioritizes his White House vanity projects and tax cuts for the rich, working families are pinching pennies to pay their medical bills or forgoing healthcare coverage because they can’t afford it—and they will hold Trump and Republicans accountable in November,” O’Halloran added, referring to the upcoming midterm elections.
While progressives have long argued that the solution lies in decoupling health insurance from employment, Democratic leaders remain loath to advocate Medicare for All or other universal healthcare options. Just this week, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) reaffirmed his opposition to Medicare for All, a position at odds with 90% of Democratic voters surveyed in a new CBS/YouGov poll.
As Common Dreams recently reported, a recent Yale University study found that Medicare for All—as proposed in legislation introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.)—would save over 114,000 lives annually and $1 trillion per year in US healthcare spending.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) cited that study in an interview on Sunday in which he refuted Jeffries’ stance.
“Medicare for All is arguably the most important priority,” Khanna said, calling for a vote on Sanders’ bill. “It would save money, and it would save lives.”
Man in Darth Vader Costume Praises Flock Cameras at City Council Meeting: ‘The Emperor Is a Fan’
“We must continue utilizing Flock technologies so that we can follow and surveil the rebel scum as they move from playground to playground, from playground to pool, from pool to gymnasium.”
A man dressed as Darth Vader speaks at a meeting of the San Diego City Council on August 19, 2026.
(Screenshot from a webcast by the City of San Diego)
Stephen Prager
Aug 20, 2026
COMMON DREAMS
Residents of San Diego are up in arms about Flock cameras. But for those seeking to keep tabs on “rebel scum,” the omnipotent surveillance technology has its uses.
That’s according to one Darth Vader, who took the podium during the public comment period at a Public Safety and Livable Neighborhoods Committee Meeting in the California city on Wednesday night to sing, or more accurately, bellow his praises for the company, whose automatic license-plate reading (ALPR) cameras are fast being installed around the nation.
“The emperor is a fan of Flock, and we must continue utilizing Flock technologies so that we can follow and surveil the rebel scum as they move from playground to playground, from playground to pool, from pool to gymnasium,” the person dressed as the infamous Star Wars villain said.
“Because we all know that the Flock cameras are not only following the license [plates]; they are following children. They are following children in parks and gymnasiums, and we need this,” the sith lord continued. “I need this so I can stalk my ex-girlfriend.”
There are more than 550 Flock cameras installed across the city of San Diego, according to a public database by the activist group DeFlock.
And while the person who embodied the dark lord has not yet been identified, the satirical performance gave voice to some of the well-documented ways that the technology has been used to create a nationwide panopticon that enables widespread warrantless spying.
One database published earlier this month by the Institute for Justice, a libertarian nonprofit law firm, found over 100 documented cases of police using the technology for “romantic stalking, wrongful stops and detentions, non-law enforcement use, and other types of misconduct.”
Vader was also not exaggerating about the use of Flock cameras to spy on children. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), an internet-focused civil liberties group, found, some school districts have enlisted cops to track families in order to root out “residency fraud” and prove that they live in the district.
“A search of ALPR data will show a lot more than whether a family lives within the right zone,” wrote Dave Maass, EFF’s director of investigations, and Rindala Alajaji, a legislative activist with the group. “Every time a plate is searched, it can reveal personal information about a family: when they go to the doctor, when they go to worship, when they go out at night, and where they travel on vacation. None of that is the school district’s business, and these searches are a huge invasion of privacy.”
Tlaib and Faith Leaders Decry Anti-Muslim ‘Crusade’ in Dearborn, Michigan Led by Capitol Insurrectionist“Our families do not deserve to be subjected to such hate and bigotry,” said Tlaib before thousands of self-described “Christian crusaders” descended upon the majority-Muslim city.
Police react as far-right provocateurJake Lang rips pages out of a Quran after addressing a meeting of the Dearborn City Council following an anti-Muslim demonstration he organized called the “Christian Crusade March” on August 18, 2026.
(Photo by Jeff Kowalsky/AFP via Getty Images)
Brett Wilkins
Aug 18, 2026
COMMON DREAMS
Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, clergy of various faiths, and state and local Democratic officials are among those condemning Tuesday’s far-right rally in Dearborn, Michigan as an intimidation campaign against the city’s Muslim community, and warning that the so-called “Christian Crusader March” is part of a broader resurgence of Islamophobic bigotry during President Donald Trump’s second term.
Thousands of anti-Muslim demonstrators, many of them traveling on motorcycles, descended upon Dearborn, a majority-Muslim suburb of Detroit, for the rally organized by racist provocateur Jake Lang and Detroit pastor Lorenzo Sewell. Video footage showed an overwhelmingly male crowd marching aggressively on Dearborn’s City Hall Complex.
Area residents also marched, with a large crowd chanting “Allahu akbar”—meaning “God is great” in Arabic—while chasing some of the outsiders down a street.
Tlaib (D-Mich.), whose district includes Dearborn and who is the only Palestinian American in Congress, warned Tuesday that the city of approximately 105,000 residents “is being targeted by Islamophobic white supremacists and Christian nationalists.”
“Islamophobic racists are yet again marching in Dearborn to terrorize a whole faith community,” Tlaib said in a statement. “Dearborn is a beautifully diverse place, home to a vibrant, loving Muslim community, and our families do not deserve to be subjected to such hate and bigotry.”
“Families are told to stay home for their own safety, unable to go back-to-school shopping, get groceries, or even walk outside,” she continued. “To all our Dearborn families and residents: I have your back. I wish I could take away this pain, but know that you are not alone.”
“To our interfaith community that’s standing in solidarity with their Muslim neighbors: Thank you for speaking out against this hatred. We need more of this love and compassion,” she said.
“More leaders, including local elected officials, must speak out, especially against the local instigators participating in the spread of hatred under the guise of faith,” Tlaib continued. “Their silence is complacent and normalizes fearmongering and racism. We know that targeting any community doesn’t allow any of us to be safe.”
“People of all faiths and of all backgrounds belong,” she added, “and deserve to practice their religion and celebrate their cultures freely without fear.”
Christian leaders joined Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud and Police Chief Issa Shahin for a press conference earlier to denounce the rally, emphasizing that the Islamophobes’ “crusader” rhetoric does not represent Christianity.
“To my residents, keep being you,” Hammoud said on social media. “Pray how you’ve always prayed. Keep providing for your families and showing up for your neighbors. We won’t let hate unravel this beautiful tapestry forged throughout generations, with countless hands, in the most noble of American traditions.”
Rev. Bob McCabe, pastor of the Church of the Divine Child, said during the press conference that “Dearborn is a place where people can love and draw close to each other and to worship freely. I’ve experienced that as a Christian, as a Catholic.”
Pastor Nathan Hayes of Solid Rock Church told viewers that “I’m asking that our community would come together and say, you know what, ignore the outside voices and just pay attention to the person who lives next to you because they care about you way more than these people who are driving in from other places.”
The Dearborn rally comes amid mounting renewed anti-Muslim hostility nationwide. The Associated Press reported last week that anti-Muslim rhetoric has surged alongside the historic US Senate campaign of Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, the first Muslim nominated by a major party for one of the state’s upper chamber seats. Trump and other Republican figures have portrayed Muslim public officials as national security threats, while anti-mosque campaigns have intensified in communities across the country.
The consequences are not merely rhetorical.
In May, a pair of teenagers opened fire at an Islamic center in San Diego, killing three people and further traumatizing a Muslim community already facing heightened threats.
In July, federal prosecutors charged Utah man Peter Larsen with a hate crime after alleging that he went to a shopping mall seeking Muslims to attack. Prosecutors say he asked employees whether they were Muslim before stabbing a Muslim man multiple times, including in the neck. The victim required several surgeries.
Lang served four years behind bars awaiting trial for alleged crimes, including attacking police officers with a baseball bat during the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters seeking to overturn the 2020 presidential election. He was one of roughly 1,500 January 6 insurrectionists later pardoned by Trump.
He doesn’t only hate Muslims; despite being raised Jewish, Lang is rabidly antisemitic and also said that white people “will be replaced, and your children will be Black Muslims if you don’t stand up now”—and worse.
Lang was allowed to speak during Tuesday’s Dearborn City Council meeting.
“For three years straight, the number one name in the country of England for newborn babies is Muhammad,” he said, beginning a nearly four-minute tirade that was equal parts Muslim hate and pure fantasy.
“Tell me that white Christians are not being invaded,” he continued. “This is an invasion!”
“These people are trying to destroy us,” Lang argued without any evidence. The Muslims have not come here to assimilate. They have come here to steal the wealth of this land, to rape our women.“
“The Muslims are being used by the Democrats to instill socialism in America,” he asserted. “We know it.”
“You’re just using the Democrats, these woke liberal idiots, the women in New York, to gain power, and once the Muslims have power in this country, then they will start throwing the homosexuals off the roofs, just like they do in Palestine,” he falsely claimed.
“Our founding fathers gave this country to their posterity, white Christians, and they brought along with them their Black friends,” Lang said, apparently referring to the Africans they enslaved. “We will not allow these Third World mongrels to run roughshod over us without a fight. The body of Christ is one!”
“We have cruise ships, we have planes, we have trains, and we’re going to pack them out with all of the Arabs. You have to go home. We don’t want you here,” Lang continued.
“If you stand against Islam, you are my brother. If you are willing to stand up and take this country back, you are my brother. Join the crusades and extricate this filth from our country,” he concluded. “We will have our way! Come blood or sweat, we will have our way! This is a Christian land! Christ is king!”
Lang then began tearing up a Quran before being forcibly removed from the council chamber.
Some Democratic social media users—including many backing former Vice President Kamala Harris, whose complicity in Israel’s Gaza genocide is part of why she was narrowly defeated by Trump in Dearborn in the 2024 presidential election just four years after former President Joe Biden won the city by 20 points—said the city’s residents deserve what is happening to them.
However, elected Democrats—who have often been slow to condemn anti-Muslim bigotry—were quick to condemn the rally.
“The people of Dearborn are once again under attack from an out-of-state influencer looking for controversy,” US Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) said on social media. “[Mayor Hammoud], the police chief, and religious leaders of all faiths are again showing leadership and demonstrating that Michigan is united against hate and Islamophobia.”
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said in a statement that “Dearborn is home to one of the most vibrant communities in America.”
“Its residents are our friends and our neighbors,” the Democrat continued. “Today, a group of agitators is traveling to Dearborn for the sole purpose of intimidating that community and provoking a reaction. Their plan emboldens and contributes to dangerous behavior, and I am asking every person of goodwill to denounce it. Their hate has no place in Michigan.”
“My top priority is keeping Michiganders safe,” Whitmer added I’ve been in contact with Mayor Hammoud, and I echo Chief Shahin and local officials: Do not confront or engage with demonstrators. Together, we stand united against hate in all its forms.“
Book on Media Complicity in Gaza Genocide Pulled From ‘Lily-Livered Library’ in Australia
“Is the idea that nothing critical of Israel can ever stand?” asked one critic. “Because the lobby groups keep telling us there’s a difference between prejudice and criticism, but they keep acting like there’s not.”
This undated photo shows an exterior view of the Waverley Library in Bondi Junction in New South Wales, Australia.
(Photo by Waverly Council)
Brett Wilkins
Aug 18, 2026
COMMON DREAMS
A public library in metropolitan Sydney, Australia confirmed Tuesday that it removed a book critically examining Western media coverage of Israel’s annihilation of Gaza from its shelves, reportedly after a complaint that its prominent display was distressing to a survivor of last year’s mass shooting targeting a Hanukkah celebration in Bondi Beach.
How to Sell a Genocide: The Media’s Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza, by US journalist and media critic Adam Johnson, was pulled from Waverley Library in Bondi Junction and placed under review. JWire reported last week that the Waverley Council removed the book after a Bondi massacre survivor saw it displayed on the library’s “New Release/Hot Item” shelf.
However, Johnson said Tuesday on X that “British-Australia media keep buying this line that my book was pulled from the library after a ‘complaint from a Bondi attack survivor.’ We have no evidence this is true. This is simply the story they’re telling. Has anyone independently verified this chain of events?”
Johnson also noted that the Bondi massacre, in which two gunmen fatally shot 15 victims, “had nothing to do with Palestinians or Gaza.”
“There is ZERO link between the two, and it’s false [to] keep implying there was,” he added.
Johnson’s book, published in April by Pluto Press, argues that US corporate media have helped enable Israel’s devastation of Gaza through sanitizing Israeli actions, obscuring US responsibility, and dehumanizing Palestinians as Israeli forces killed and wounded hundreds of thousands of them in what United Nations experts, human rights groups, a South Africa-led case currently before the International Court of Justice, and many others call a genocide.
Johnson told The Guardian that critics “seem to be objecting largely based on the title using the word ‘genocide.’”
“But ‘genocide’ is not my word, or my finding,” he stressed. “The fact of genocide in Gaza is the overwhelming consensus of the human rights world, and it is a wholly mainstream opinion among those tasked with studying and determining such matters.”
“That it makes some people upset is unfortunate, but reality is often upsetting,” he said. “This particular reality is especially upsetting... to the parents of the over 20,000 children killed by Israel in Gaza since October 2023.”
“Do Sydney officials plan on removing pro-Israel books from their libraries because it potentially upsets these community members?” Johnson added.
The Sydney dispute is hardly an isolated case of the silencing of pro-Palestine speech or criticism of Israel’s well-documented crimes against humanity and war crimes, for which alleged perpetrator Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
In March, Adelaide University canceled a venue booking for a literary event featuring Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories. Organizers accused the university of bowing to political pressure.
In the United States, college campuses were the epicenter of suppression. New York University withheld a graduating student’s diploma after he condemned Israel’s actions in Gaza during his commencement speech. New York authorities also violently cracked down on NYU’s anti-genocide protests, and the school adopted a definition of antisemitism conflating anti-Zionism and hatred of Jews.
Seven miles uptown, Columbia University suspended its chapters of the nonviolent groups Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace.
George Washington University in Washington, DC banned a graduate from campus after she criticized the university’s ties to Israel, while earlier this year the University of Southern Maine withdrew its support for a Palestine conference because it was slated to include remote participation by Albanese. USM officials cited the dubious sanctions imposed on Albanese and her family by the Trump administration.
There has also been widespread censorship and suppression of pro-Palestine speech in countries including Canada, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
These incidents are indicative of a wider pattern documented by Irene Khan, the UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression, who in 2024 reported that courses, lectures, and panels on Palestine have been canceled and that institutions in Western Europe and North America have restricted books, art, scholarship, and speech concerning Israel and Palestine.
While some Jewish leaders and groups welcomed the removal of Johnson’s book from Waverley Library, others decried the censorship.
“Public libraries belong to all of us, and should host a range of views and topics, be they books about queer families or Israel’s widely condemned war crimes,” Bart Shteinman, an executive member of the progressive Jewish Council of Australia, told The Guardian. He also called the decision to pull the book “deeply alarming.”
One Palestinian account on Bluesky posted: “Is the idea that nothing critical of Israel can ever stand? Because the lobby groups keep telling us there’s a difference between prejudice and criticism, but they keep acting like there’s not.”
Another social media user, this one on X, lambasted what she called the “lily-livered library” for “pandering to the vile zealots who protect Israel, despite the evidence before our eyes.”
Rhonda Garad, a researcher at Monash University in Melbourne, bluntly said on X that “we’ve reached the book-burning stage of the fascist takeover.”
94% of Palestinians in Gaza Need Shelter, Basic Aid to ‘Live Safely and With Dignity’
Gaza is suffering from “a shelter crisis which runs far deeper than just physical damage.”
Palestinians struggle with flooding after heavy rain hits the Bureij Refugee Camp in Gaza City, Gaza on December 16, 2025.
(Photo by Moiz Salhi/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Julia Conley
Aug 20, 2026
COMMON DREAMS
It’s been 10 months since a ceasefire agreement was reached between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, but in addition to continued attacks on the exclave—in which more than 1,250 Palestinians have been killed since last October—households across Gaza are being endangered on a constant basis by “a shelter crisis which runs far deeper than just physical damage” to residential buildings, as the Norwegian Refugee Council said Thursday.
Ninety-four percent of the population—about 1.98 million people—are in need of shelter-related aid in order to “live safely and with dignity,” said the group, “including fuel, energy, and essential household items.”
The NRC and the International Organization for Migration lead the Palestine Shelter Cluster, which coordinates humanitarian aid focused on addressing shelter needs in Gaza and the West Bank. The organization’s new report, “Exposed on All Sides,” describes how funding shortfalls as well as Israel’s continued restrictions on shelter materials have left the vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza exposed to “serious health and safety risks.”
The Shelter Cluster assessed nearly 2,000 household interviews conducted between June 14-28 in accessible areas in northern Gaza, Gaza City, Deir al-Balah, and Khan Younis.
It categorized the households’ severity of needs on a scale of 1-5, with conditions assessed as minimal, stressed, crisis, critical, or catastrophic. More than 4 in 5 households were facing critical or catastrophic conditions, with the families struggling the most described as living in conditions “so poor they were considered a risk to life.” Just 12% of households were assessed as being in the least severe categories.
With Israel’s bombardment of Gaza damaging or destroying approximately 92% of residential buildings, nearly two-thirds of families interviewed by the Shelter Cluster were living in tents or other makeshift shelters that were meant to be temporary.
“Ten months after the October 2025 ceasefire, most families have lived more than a year in shelters that were never designed for long-term accommodation.”
More than half of those households had been living in the same tent for over a year, and more than half of the makeshift housing was in poor or very poor condition. More than 100,000 households are living in shelters with “major deterioration to flooring, walls, and frames,” said NRC.
With fuel both unaffordable and difficult to obtain, daily tasks were challenging for the families assessed by the Shelter Cluster. Eighty-four percent of households said their solutions for heating their homes were mostly or entirely ineffective. Nearly 50% of households said they had been burning plastic, tires, garbage, or cardboard in order to prepare food.
“Their use for meal preparation presents serious health risks from toxic smoke and food contamination,” reads the report.
Jehan Salim, national coordinator for the Shelter Cluster, emphasized that “a shelter is not adequate simply because it has four walls or a roof.”
“Families need to be able to sleep, cook, wash, and keep their children safe inside it,” said Salim. “Ten months after the October 2025 ceasefire, most families have lived more than a year in shelters that were never designed for long-term accommodation. The materials needed to repair homes, restore basic services, and provide improved shelters are still not entering Gaza at anything close to the scale required.”
Only 1 in 10 households received shelter materials or basic household assistance in the month prior to the survey, and the Shelter Cluster’s partners in Gaza reported “very limited in-country stocks of tents, blankets, or mattresses” in June.
“The entry of shelter materials and equipment also remains constrained by strict and frequently changing entry restrictions. Long advance-notification requirements, repackaging rules, repeated submission processes, and unpredictable approvals can delay or prevent supplies from reaching Gaza, keeping available stocks low and limiting the quality and scale of the response,” reads the report.
Israel’s “dual-use” restrictions—which claim that everyday items for basic household needs could also be used for violent purposes by Hamas—have contributed to the chronically low supply of “fuel, solar energy equipment, construction and repair materials, heavy machinery, and debris-clearance equipment,” said the Shelter Cluster.
“People remain in appalling conditions because Israeli restrictions are preventing even the most basic housing materials from entering Gaza,” said Jan Egeland, secretary general of the NRC. “Without a rapid procurement of and access for materials, the coming winter will be catastrophic. Israel must lift its restrictions and allow for predictable entry of shelter materials.”
The European Union, United Nations, and World Bank’s Gaza Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment (RDNA) report earlier this year found that $26.3 billion was required in the first 18 months following the ceasefire deal to restore essential services, rebuild infrastructure, and support Gaza’s economic recovery. An estimated $71 billion will be needed over the next decade.
In May, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that its 2026 flash appeal for $4 billion was only 12% funded.
“Funding levels must be increased,” said Egeland, “so that Palestinians families can get out of decaying temporary shelters and into something that provides more protection from the elements.”
IDF Condemned for Refusal to Probe Deadly Attacks on Doctors Without Borders, World Central Kitchen Staff
“This is not justice,” said the healthcare charity. “Two years of silence, followed by closures that raise more questions than they answer, is unacceptable.”
A building belonging to the medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) was targeted by Israeli tank fire in the al-Mawasi area, west of Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, on February 21, 2024.
(Photo by Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
The international healthcare charity Médecins Sans Frontières on Thursday joined the humanitarian group World Central Kitchen in demanding that an “impartial investigative body” examine deadly Israeli attacks on its staffers in Gaza, following the Israeli military’s announcement that it was closing the cases without opening a criminal investigation.
MSF, also known in English as Doctors Without Borders, noted that the decision by the Israeli military advocate general (MAG) did “not come as a surprise” and was “the predictable output of a military apparatus investigating itself.”
The Israel Defense Forces and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, said the France-based organization, have proven themselves “unwilling to respond to the extent of violations that may amount to war crimes emerging from Gaza,” with Israeli officials continuing to insist that the IDF has been targeting Hamas with its bombardment of Gaza—despite the fact that the death toll of more than 73,000 Palestinians includes at least 22,000 women and 20,000 children and that healthcare facilities, schools, and at least 92% of residential buildings have been destroyed or damaged in attacks.
In addition, said MSF, 15 staff members of the healthcare organization have been killed by Israeli forces since they began bombarding Gaza in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack in October 2023, including two who were killed in multiple attacks on an aid convoy in Gaza City in November 2023 and two who were killed in a strike on an MSF shelter in Khan Younis in February 2024.
“There is no military objective that justifies the wholesale sacrifice of civilians. And there is no internal military review that can substitute for genuine, independent, and impartial accountability.”
MSF submitted those cases to the MAG for review, but along with an attack that killed seven World Central Kitchen (WCK) aid workers in April 2024, the military said there was no suspicion of criminal conduct in the assaults on MSF workers.
“This is not justice,” said MSF. “Two years of silence, followed by closures that raise more questions than they answer, is unacceptable.”
“MSF staff and their family members are dead. Their names are known,” the group continued. “Their locations were shared. Their vehicles were identified. We have always maintained that all elements point to a clear responsibility of the Israeli army for the deadly attacks. And yet, those responsible for their deaths have declined to pursue any criminal investigation.”
The decision by the MAG makes clear, said the group, that “there is no prospect of accountability within the Israeli legal system for the killing of our staff, just as there has been no accountability for Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians.”
Following the MAG’s announcement on Wednesday, World Central Kitchen issued a statement condemning Israel’s “account of the deaths of our seven colleagues on April 1, 2024.”
“We fundamentally disagree with their decision about criminal investigations into the IDF airstrikes that killed our team,” said WCK. “There has never been any excuse or justification for the attacks, and there is nothing in this account that does so. The decision is inconsistent with the full truth and deeply offensive.”
Israeli authorities did not issue a warning to WCK before it attacked the aid organization’s convoy, which was traveling through what was supposed to be a deconflicted zone when it was struck.
“At the time of the lethal attacks, the IDF knew that our team in Gaza was unarmed and posing a threat to nobody. It had full visual clarity on our clearly marked humanitarian vehicles during the extended, multiple airstrikes. It knew our team’s movements, identities, and activities in advance,” said WCK. “We continue to demand truth and justice for our team and their families. We continue to demand an independent commission to investigate the airstrikes because the IDF cannot credibly investigate its own conduct. And we continue to grieve the loss of our friends.”
MSF stressed that Israel’s decision to “close” the cases of the attacks “must be understood in their proper context: In Gaza, tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed. Healthcare facilities have been destroyed. Humanitarian convoys have been struck. Journalists, medical personnel, UN personnel, and aid workers have been killed in numbers unprecedented in any recent conflict.”
“MSF reaffirms what we have stated since the beginning of this violence: There is no military objective that justifies the wholesale sacrifice of civilians,” said the group. “And there is no internal military review that can substitute for genuine, independent, and impartial accountability.”
“To our colleagues we have lost,” MSF added, “and to the countless civilians and humanitarian workers who have perished in Gaza: We will not let your deaths be filed away as procedural inevitabilities. You deserved protection. You deserve justice.”
Drone Attacks Drove Record-Breaking Violence Against Aid Workers in 2025: UN
A majority of aid workers who were killed last year died in attacks in Gaza, despite a ceasefire that was reached last October.
Eight civil defense and Palestinian Red Crescent members who were killed in an attack by the Israeli army on an ambulance and fire truck were brought to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza on March 30, 2025.
(Photo by Abdallah F.S. Alattar/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Julia Conley
Aug 19, 2026
COMMON DREAMS
“The technology may change, but the laws of war do not,” said the United Nations’ top humanitarian official on Wednesday as the international community marked World Humanitarian Day—and a record number of violent attacks against aid workers in 2025, with the expanded use of drones partially driving the increased threat to workers’ safety.
According to the Aid Worker Security Database and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 907 aid workers were killed, injured, or kidnapped last year.
Nearly 300 more were detained or arrested, said OCHA.
The number of humanitarians who were killed dropped slightly from the previous year, down to 350 from 387. But the death toll was the second highest ever recorded, and a majority of those killed—186—were attacked in Gaza, despite a “ceasefire” agreement that was reached last October.
More than two-thirds of those killed in Gaza were victims of aerial bombardment.
OCHA noted that “cheap and adaptable armed drones are putting lethal capabilities into more hands,” with armies now able to wage more explosive attacks from afar and reach “deeper into towns and cities.”
The prevalence of armed drones has been linked to 80% of civilian deaths in Sudan in the first four months of this year, while in Colombia, weaponized drone attacks quadrupled between 2024-25.
As the technology of war changes, said OCHA, “our humanity must not... Civilians, including humanitarians, must be protected.”
One aid worker was killed in March in the Democratic Republic of Congo when a drone struck a residential building, while four humanitarian convoys were attacked by drones in a single week in May in Ukraine.
“Weaponized drones have become the new face of an old danger: the deliberate or reckless destruction of civilian life,” said Tom Fletcher, the UN humanitarian chief.
“But just calling it out will not protect the next aid worker,” Fletcher added. “States must uphold international humanitarian law and use every tool to protect civilians and our colleagues. And for those who break the rules, there must be real consequences.”
So far in 2026, 82 aid workers have already been killed, while 322 have been injured and 235 have been kidnapped.
“On World Humanitarian Day, we honor humanitarian workers everywhere, and the courage and sacrifices they make every day to help others,” said the global humanitarian group Oxfam. “We stand in solidarity with our staff and partners on the frontlines, often working at immense personal risk, and urge governments to uphold their obligations to protect them.”
