Trump's trade threats spiral out of control as Canada slaps down 100 pages of tariffs

David Edwards
August 25, 2026 

RAW STORY


FILE PHOTO: Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks with the news media after he suspended trade negotiations with the United States, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada August 22, 2026. REUTERS/Chris Tanouye/File Photo

President Donald Trump spent Tuesday morning threatening Canada online while Ottawa put a nearly 100-page tariff schedule on the calendar he cannot stop.

Four Canadian cabinet ministers announced the retaliatory tariffs in Ottawa on Tuesday, according to the New York Times. The duties cover about 700 American products and take effect Sept. 8.

The rates range from 15 to 50 percent, matching the level Washington set for each product, according to CNBC. Prime Minister Mark Carney had promised a "dollar for dollar" response after talks collapsed Friday night, the Times reported.

The schedule runs nearly 100 pages, Global News senior journalist Mackenzie Gray reported on X. It taxes fish, stoves, carpets, men's suits and fishing rods.

"Our preference was to find a deal that benefits both countries," Canadian trade minister Dominic LeBlanc told CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Tuesday. "We still believe that's possible. But in the meantime, we're not waiting by the phone."

Trump answered on Truth Social, where he suggested halting business with Ontario and repeatedly floated renaming Lake Ontario to "Lake America," CNBC reported.

"I deal with many countries, and Canada is easily the most difficult and unreasonable," Trump wrote in one post.

Trump warned Monday that he would double tariffs on Canadian cars and auto parts to 50 percent, but not until Jan. 1, 2027, Global News reported. Canada's deadline is two weeks away.

Canada doubled its own tariffs on American steel and aluminum to 50 percent, the Times reported. Ottawa added $7.5 billion for businesses and workers harmed by the trade war, according to CNBC.

Senior Canadian officials said the list was not built to punish particular American businesses or states, but to help Canadian industry, Gray reported.

Trump has also complained that the United States runs a trade deficit with Canada. That gap exists largely because Americans buy Canadian crude oil, CNBC reported.

His tariffs have excluded oil, natural gas, potash and many minerals, according to the Times.

Polls taken before the tariffs took effect Saturday showed broad Canadian support for retaliation, the Times noted. Ontario Premier Doug Ford has pressed for it, while Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has urged restraint.

Canada's economy is about one-twelfth the size of the American economy, according to the Times, and economists say the resulting price increases will hurt Canadian companies, too.

‘Canada Must Respond’: Ottawa Slaps Retaliatory Tariffs on US Goods After Trump Trade War Escalation

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said his nation is not “going to accept” an “attitude at the negotiation table that Canada is a subsidiary of the United States.”


Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks about the trade dispute with the United States at the Davie Shipyard in Levis, Quebec, Canada on August 24, 2026.
(Photo by Andrej Ivanov/AFP via Getty Images)

Brett Wilkins
Aug 25, 2026
COMMON DREAMS


Canada announced Tuesday that it will impose roughly $20 billion in retaliatory tariffs on American imports in response to President Donald Trump’s 50% tariff on many of its goods after bilateral negotiations collapsed amid what Ottawa said were last-minute concessions that damaged the Canadian economy and intruded on its sovereignty.

The government of center-left Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said its countermeasures will cover roughly C$27.6 billion ($20 billion) worth of American products, with tariffs ranging from 15% to 50% on hundreds of categories including steel, aluminum, appliances, clothing, seafood, electronics, furniture, and dairy. The measures are scheduled to take effect September 8. Ottawa also unveiled billions of dollars in assistance for workers and businesses expected to be hurt by the conflict.


‘It’s War’: Trump’s 50% Tariffs Take Hold After US-Canada Trade Talks Collapse


“Canada must respond, and today we are, in a proportionate, targeted, and strategic way,” Canadian Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne said during a press conference in Ottawa. “Today I’m announcing that Canada will match the United States tariffs dollar for dollar, rate for rate.”

“Canada’s counter-tariffs are designed primarily to provide protection for Canadian industry impacted by US tariffs and allow them to compete against US products in the Canadian market,” he added. “It’s all about fairness, it’s all about a level playing field, it’s all about supporting Canadian workers and Canadian businesses.”

It’s also apparently about political calculation ahead of November’s midterm elections, in which the congressional balance of power—and therefore Trump’s ability to pursue his agenda—is at stake.

The administration’s trade war with Canada is hitting industries concentrated in states where Republicans are fighting to defend vulnerable US Senate seats, including Maine’s lobster industry and Michigan’s auto sector, while Ohio and other Midwestern states face exposure via cross-border manufacturing and supply chains.

On Monday, Trump told Canadian leaders to “fall in line” or face “far WORSE” consequences than the new tariffs.

Carney retorted that Canadians are not “going to accept” an “attitude at the negotiation table that Canada is a subsidiary of the United States.”

Canadian anger toward Trump has surged as the US president has repeatedly threatened Canada’s sovereignty, including his frequent talk of making Canada the “51st state.” Canadian political leaders and labor organizations have largely rallied behind a tougher response, while a growing grassroots boycott of US products has become a symbol of national resistance.

“Canadians understand that maintaining our sovereignty and independence will entail consequences and sacrifices,” Calgary-based commentator Jen Gerson wrote Tuesday in The Guardian. “We did not bring this trade war on ourselves; we have merely refused to comply in advance to the unreasonable demands of a bad-faith actor. We will be punished for it. We have accepted this.”

“If nothing else, let the [United States’] retaliation be a warning to the rest of the Western alliance,” Gerson added. “Run, run. Protect yourselves. Move faster.”

Trump—the self-proclaimed “peace president” who has attacked more countries than any other US leader in modern history—has menaced a string of allies. He’s threatened to retake the Panama Canal, launch armed attacks on Colombia and Mexico, “bomb the shit” out of Oman, and take over Greenland.

Longtime US allies have taken notice—and action. Just as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine spooked Sweden and Finland into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Trump’s erratic aggression has pushed other countries in directions once thought highly unlikely. European Union membership for Iceland, long a politically moribund proposition, is now politically plausible amid developments including Trump’s Arctic saber-rattling. US tariff pressure on India is even incentivizing India to seek closer economic ties with China, a traditional adversary.

Trump’s increasingly aggressive and condescending rhetoric has left many Canadians feeling like their relationship with their southern neighbor has irreparably changed.

“America has changed, and... we will not return to our old relationship,” Carney said after Trump announced the 50% tariffs over the weekend.

“You’re at war when you get attacked,” the prime minister also said. “We got attacked.”

Such rhetoric was once the realm of comedy, like the 1995 satirical film Canadian Bacon, directed by Michael Moore and starring John Candy and Dan Aykroyd, about a struggling US president who manufactures a shooting war with Canada, invasion and all, in hopes of rallying Americans around a foreign enemy.

The premise was absurd because the notion of Washington deliberately provoking its peaceful northern neighbor into war seemed preposterous. Many critics have noted that under Trump, absurdity has become the new normal.

On Tuesday, Trump said he’s considering changing the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America,” because, as one Bluesky account noted, “Trump likes to slap the name of America on everything.”



“Gulf of Mexico? Gulf of America. Strait of Hormuz? Strait of America. Lake Ontario? Lake America,” the account quipped, adding one more suggestion: “Epstein Island? America Island.”

Trump roasted as 'greatest idiot' in a lifetime after Lake Ontario threat: 'Out of ideas'

Alexander Willis
August 25, 2026 

RAW STORY

President Donald Trump floated the idea of changing the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America” on Tuesday amid his ongoing trade feud with Canada, a pitch that was met with collective sighs by critics who spoke to their exhaustion with the chaotic Trump administration.

In a post on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump claimed that his administration was “giving serious consideration” to the name change as he did not “expect to [be] doing much business with Ontario any longer.” The idea is similar to his executive order issued in early 2025 to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America,” a move that received intense scrutiny at the time.

Regarding Trump’s latest name-change idea — one that came amid Trump imposing 50% tariffs on some Canadian goods, and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney vowing to match said tariffs “dollar for dollar” — critics were quick to condemn it.

The Bulwark's Sam Stein quipped on X, "He's out of ideas."

Stephen Hayes, editor and CEO at The Dispatch, mocked, "It's still astonishing - ten years into the Trump era - that our president so often behaves like a 10 year-old. And that so much of our national policymaking is based on the juvenile emoting of an adult who functions like a preteen."

“We are living in the stupidest f------ times,” wrote Jason Willan, a prominent fantasy sports analyst, in a social media post on X.

Roland Ley, a former contributor for Euromaidan Press, called Trump the “greatest idiot” he had witnessed in his “lifetime.”

“Just as internationally 'Gulf of America' isn't recognised, this won't be either,” Ley wrote in a social media post on X. “Not even passed by the US Senate anyway.”

In response to Trump’s announcement, Canadian horse-racing photographer Julie Wright quipped, “Lunatic says what,” and prominent online influencer Mario Nawfal argued that Trump’s trade war was “getting silly” in a post on X to his more than 3.8 million followers.

“It would require a lot more than a President’s bad mood to change the name of a gulf or great lake!” Nawfal wrote. “Maybe a vote or something a bit more thought out.”

'Sounds like me': Trump confesses to CNN that he torpedoed trade talks with Canada

Robert Davis
August 25, 2026 

RAW STORY


U.S. President Donald Trump welcomes Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., October 7, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File Photo

President Donald Trump admitted on Tuesday that he caused the intensifying trade war between the U.S. and Canada after he added conditions to the talks at the 11th hour.

Trump spoke briefly with CNN's Jim Sciutto after Canada announced retaliatory tariffs on a bevy of U.S. goods. During the call, Sciutto asked about Canadian officials' assertion that late-stage demands were inserted into the negotiations, and the president's response was eerily surprising.

Sciutto shared a snippet of the conversation on X.

“That sounds like me,” Trump told the reporter.

“So you don't deny it?” Sciutto responded.

The president replied, “No, no, I don't deny anything. So no, they have to pay a fair amount. And if they don't pay a fair amount, we won't make a deal. That's fine.“

The exchange stunned some of the president's critics.

"At least he admitted it. LOL. Clown show operation," Dean Blundell, a Canadian comedian, posted on X.

"How Donald Trump is sending America's manufacturing economy to the brink of the abyss," Grant Stern, executive editor for Occupy Democrats, posted on X.

CNN's Daniel Dale smacks Trump with a stinging fact-check after latest Canada flop

Erik De La Garza
August 25, 2026
RAW STORY



U.S. President Donald Trump points a finger as he speaks during a roundtable on antifa, an anti-fascist movement he designated a domestic "terrorist organization" via executive order on September 22, at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., October 8, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

President Donald Trump repeated another series of false claims about Canada as his escalating trade war with the United States’ northern neighbor erupted again this week, according to a brutal CNN fact-check.

CNN’s Daniel Dale examined two social media posts Trump published Monday, beginning with the president’s claim that “Canada’s Unemployment Rate is now at 10%, and rapidly rising.”

“This is wrong on both counts,” Dale wrote Tuesday.

“Canada’s unemployment rate declined to 6.4% in July. That was the third consecutive month it had gone down,” Dale told readers. “It was also a two-year low.”

The rate would be approximately one percentage point lower if Canada calculated unemployment using the same methodology as the United States, Dale noted. The U.S. unemployment rate was 4.1% in July.

Trump’s claim that Canada conducts “95% of their business with the U.S” also came under the microscope.

“There’s no doubt that the Canadian economy is heavily reliant on the US, but there’s no apparent basis for Trump’s '95%' figure,” Dale found. According to his report, approximately 72% of Canadian merchandise exports went to the United States in 2025, down from roughly 76% the previous year and the lowest percentage since the early 1980s.

“And the figure fell below 70% in the first half of 2026,” Dale added.

While Dale acknowledged that the United States is less dependent on Canada than Canada is on the U.S., he stressed that Canada remains a critical trading partner, particularly for northern border states.

Trump just made toilet paper a lot more expensive

President Donald Trump meets with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Tuesday, May 6, 2025, in the Oval Office. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok/Flickr)

Alex Henderson 

August 26, 2026 

ALTERNET

After U.S. President Donald Trump threatened Canada with new 50 percent tariffs, Canada responded with retaliatory tariffs of their own on Tuesday. Tariffs on some Canadian goods imported into the United States, the Associated Press (AP) reports, could be as high as 50 percent. And according to The Guardian, Americans could face higher prices for paper products like toilet paper, facial tissues and paper towels as a result.

"Using the bathroom or having a cry is about to become more expensive for North Americans as the U.S. and Canada enter a full-fledged trade war that threatens to flush away decades of peaceful trading between the two nations," journalist Lauren Aratani reports in The Guardian. "After trade negotiations broke down between the two countries last weekend, Mark Carney, the Canadian prime minister, vowed to match U.S. tariffs 'dollar for dollar' and unveiled a list of nearly 900 American goods that will face 25 percent to 50 percent tariffs starting on 8 September."

Many economists, both liberal and conservative, have been warning that a trade war with Canada could cost U.S. homeowners a fortune — as many building and construction materials are imported into the U.S. from Canada. And according to a Canadian government website, "Canada's counter tariffs will apply to products covering $27.6 billion in imports from the U.S. and will focus on sectors such as steel, dairy, appliances, agricultural equipment, pulp and paper, and electronics, that are most impacted by U.S. tariffs."

Aratani emphasizes that "paper products are among the hardest-hit sectors, with Canada threatening to put tariffs of between 25 percent and 50 percent on 'toilet paper or face tissue stock' from 8 September in retaliation for a 50 percent hike from Washington DC."

"Though American toilet paper and tissues are often made domestically," Aratani explains, "they heavily rely on lumber-rich Canada for raw materials. Procter & Gamble, the owner of Charmin toilet paper, said last year that it would have to increase prices amid tariffs that were in place at the time. The U.S. imported $328m worth of toilet paper from Canada in 2024, according to the World Bank, making it by far the largest exporter of the product to the U.S. Retailers including Costco source much of their paper products from the country."

The Guardian reporter continues, "The U.S. accounts for more than 20 percent of global tissue consumption despite having only 4 percent of the world's population. The average American uses 141 rolls of toilet paper per year, making them No. 1 for No. 2s globally, just ahead of Germans, each using an average of 134 rolls annually."

‘The Red States, We’re Going to Hit Hard’: Canadian Politicians Vow to Make MAGA Pay for Trump’s Trade War

“We can put massive pain on the US,” said Ontario Premier Doug Ford.


Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks about the trade dispute with the United States at the Davie Shipyard in Levis, Quebec, Canada on August 24, 2026.
(Photo by Andrej Ivanov/AFP via Getty Images)

Brad Reed
Aug 24, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Politicians from Canada’s two biggest political parties vowed on Monday to hit back hard against US President Donald Trump’s trade war against their country.

Trade negotiations between the two countries collapsed last week after Trump reportedly sought to restrict Canada from striking trade deals with other nations, while also pressuring the country to scrap requirements aimed at preserving the use of the French language.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney warned that Trump’s aggression would come back to hurt US workers.

“It’s not a surprise that the US would take some form of reprisal to our response to their unjustified tariffs,” said Carney, a member of the center-left Liberal Party. “But what message does that send to the workers in Michigan and Ohio and Kentucky and Alabama who rely on Canadian demand? We’re their largest customer for automobiles, more than the European Union, Japan, Korea.”



Carney also said there was an “attitude at the negotiating table” from US officials that “Canada is a subsidiary of the United States,” which is “not something we’re going to accept.”

Ontario Premier Doug Ford, a member of the rival center-right Progressive Conservative Party, delivered a more strident rebuke to Trump, vowing that Canada’s response would deliver a hit to the president’s voters.

“The red states, we’re going to hit hard,” said Ford.

The Ontario premier then outlined all the ways his country can make life more painful for US consumers so long as Trump keeps trying to undermine Canadian sovereignty.

“If it gets really, really bad, I say everything’s on the table,” Ford said. “We need everyone to be on Team Canada and throw everything and the kitchen sink at them, no matter if it’s electricity, if it’s fuel, again, if it’s potash, if it’s uranium. We need to have everything on the table... we can put massive pain on the US. President Trump underestimates us. And that’s the biggest mistake.”



Trump lashed out at both Carney and Ford in a Monday morning Truth Social post.

“The USA will always be far bigger, richer, and stronger than Canada,” Trump wrote. “Without the United States, Canada couldn’t survive—it’s where they get all of their money and, because of their current bad leadership, primarily Governor Carney, and his Flunky, Ford, they will not be allowed to keep taking advantage of the United States—their key to survival.”

Trump EPA Urged to Withdraw Rule to Let Data Centers Obtain Pollution Permits in Secret

“The result will be some of the dirtiest power sources rushed into neighborhoods without giving communities any opportunity to weigh in,” said one critic.


An aerial view of a 33 megawatt data center with closed-loop cooling system on October 20, 2025 in Vernon, California.
(Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Brad Reed
Aug 25, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Critics are warning that President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency is pushing through a rule that would let artificial intelligence data center builders off the hook for making public disclosures ahead of construction.

The rule, which first came to light during an EPA meeting last month, would delegate power to states over public participation in the permitting process for specific sources of air pollution, such as diesel generators that are frequently used by data centers.

According to a July report in Mother Jones, the proposed rule “could have major consequences for how ordinary people are given notice about new or expanded polluting facilities coming into their neighborhoods.”

Late last week, a coalition of more than 200 environmental groups filed objections to the rule change, which they warned would make public notice for certain polluting projects entirely optional, depending on the whims of state and local governments.

Dori Jaffe, managing attorney at Sierra Club, said on Monday that the rule change would “help data center developers evade more health standards and do so secretly.”

“We demand that the EPA rescind this attempt to further cut the public out of decisions made in their own backyards,” said Jaffe. “We deserve to have a say about developments in our community that would impact our air quality and the health of our families.”

Sheena Patel, attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, noted that the administration was attempting to limit public input into polluting projects at a time when opposition to AI data center construction has hit a record high among US voters.

If the rule change goes through, Patel added, “the result will be some of the dirtiest power sources rushed into neighborhoods without giving communities any opportunity to weigh in.”

Brandon Jones-Cobb, senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, said it was “beyond cruel” that the EPA seems determined to “silence front-line communities who bear the brunt of unhealthy air” generated by polluting industries.

“The agency has already turned its back on science, cut enforcement against industrial polluters and eliminated life-saving air pollution measures,” said Jones-Cobb. “Now it wants to shut the public out of decisions to build or expand facilities that expose communities to dangerous air pollution, including data centers. This EPA is so out of touch with Americans and only focuses on making polluters happy.”

In an interview with The Guardian published Tuesday, Joe Goffman, former assistant administrator for the EPA’s office of air and radiation, said the rule change would dismantle what he described as an “ironclad promise” made in the 1963 Clean Air Act to give ordinary citizens voices in where, how, and whether potential centers of air pollution are built.

“The administration is basically saying: ‘You all may have thought this was an ironclad promise, but it no longer is,’” Goffman emphasized.

Trump Regulators Issue Key Permit for Proposed $100 Million Underwater Data Center Off Maine Coast

“No one really wants it here,” said one local resident who helped gather signatures in support of blocking the data center.

Skip Johnson and his grandson, Parker Jarrett, fish for mackerel on September 15, 2023 in Eastport, Maine, which is being considered as the site of an underwater data center—alarming locals and the fishing industry.
(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Julia Conley
Aug 24, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Residents of Eastport, Maine are set to attend a public hearing Monday evening on two proposed ordinances to halt the construction of large artificial intelligence data centers, with proponents of the proposals hoping the coastal city’s planning board will be able to prevent the build-out of a 27-acre, $100 million facility that a Massachusetts-based developer aims to build underwater—right near Eastport’s working waterfront.

The public hearing is being held days after President Donald Trump’s Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) accepted a preliminary permit for DeepGreen Holdings, LLC, the firm managed by luxury real estate development Louis Wolfson, which aims to build the facility that would be powered by tidal energy.

The 48-month permit does not allow DeepGreen to start construction, but gives approval for engineering and environmental studies needed to secure funding and officially begin the project.

DeepGreen would use ocean water to cool the heat created by the facility’s massive computer servers. The company has also proposed using ocean tides to power turbines that would generate up to 5 megawatts of electricity.

The approval came weeks after FERC asked DeepGreen to amend its application, lowering its energy output from 51 megawatts to 15 megawatts and creating scalable project phases.

The community has mobilized against the proposed data center since DeepGreen applied for the permit in February, with the Eastport City Council voting unanimously earlier this month in support of a 180-day moratorium halting all progress on the center.

The local policymakers said the moratorium would give the city time to consult with the planning board about the two citizen-led initiatives to pass new ordinances—one that would permanently ban data centers in Eastport, which the city’s legal counsel has said could be put to voters with a minor formatting change to the question, and another that would require voter approval for any new industrial or commercial development larger than 10,000 square feet in the ocean or 25,000 square feet on land.

The second ordinance was found by the legal counsel to be “unenforceable and unlawful,” as the town is not permitted to regulate elections via ordinance.

But residents, officials with the Sipayik Passamaquoddy community, and local groups like Eastport Coalition for Healthy Oceans are all pushing to stop DeepGreen and the development it incorporated a month before applying for the permit, DeepGreen Western Passage SPV, or special purpose vehicle.

DeepGreen has also applied for a permit to build an underwater data center in Cook Inlet, Alaska.

Opponents say thermal pollution from the project would be destructive to the habitat of lobsters off the coast of Eastport, which are crucial to the city’s fishing economy and working waterfront. They have also raised concerns that a data center off the coast would harm tourism as well as whales and other marine wildlife.

One local opponent, commercial fisherman and renewable energy developer Nathan Curtis, said DeepGreen carries “unmitigated risks of thermal pollution.”

The proposed data center would “require continuous ocean cooling, converting Western Passage into an unmetered industrial heat sink,” wrote Curtis in a letter to FERC before the commission issued the permit. “Continuous thermal discharge into the water column threatens local water temperatures, localized current dynamics, and critical benthic habitats that support Eastport’s commercial fisheries and working waterfront.”

Wolfson denied that the data center, which was approved for an energy output up to 15 megawatts, would harm the coastal region of Eastport.

“As a property manager and developer who has operated within coastal dynamics for 40 years, I have too much respect for working waterfronts to introduce a project that threatens them,” said Wolfson in a letter to Monitor Local.

But Eastport resident Suellen Hendrix, who was part of a local effort to gather signatures in support for the proposed ordinances, told Maine Public that locals appear unconvinced by any assurances from the data center developer.

“Everyone was behind ‘we don’t want this data center,’” Hendrix told Maine Public. “Nobody was questioning, ‘Well, we need the jobs.’ Nobody was questioning why it should be here because no one really wants it here.”



As Common Dreams reported last week, as the Trump administration and AI executives have aggressively pushed for the expansion of data centers, public support has collapsed, with 75% of respondents to a poll by Embold Research saying they would not support a data center near where they live.

“This has happened nationwide, folks, it’s nothing new,” Dwayne Tomah, a historian with the Sipayik Passamaquoddy community adjacent to Eastport, told a crowd of data center opponents at a recent rally on the town’s waterfront. “We’ve got to resist.”

If Big Tech Needs a New Power Plant, It Should Pay for the Whole Damn Thing

Pennsylvania’s new data-center rules get one principle exactly right: Innovation doesn’t include sending your infrastructure bill to everyone else.


An aerial view of a 33 megawatt data center with a closed-loop cooling system is shown on October 20, 2025 in Vernon, California.
(Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Joshua W.J. Brown
Aug 25, 2026

Common Dreams

There is a remarkably simple test for whether the AI boom is actually as economically transformative as its boosters say it is: Make the companies building it pay their own damn electricity bill.

Not just the meter at the server warehouse. The whole bill.

If a hyperscale data center requires a new power plant, transmission line, substation, distribution upgrade, water system, or grid-reliability backstop, put that cost on the project that caused it. If the economics still work, excellent. Build it. If they don’t, then the public has just learned something extremely important about the business model.

Pennsylvania moved sharply in that direction on August 18. Gov. Josh Shapiro’s new executive order requires data-center developers seeking state permits to meet Responsible Infrastructure Development standards. Among them: Developers must cover the cost of new generation, transmission, distribution, and related infrastructure needed for their projects without shifting those costs to households and businesses.

If the AI boom is real, it can survive a full-cost test.

The order also requires local approval, ends the use of nondisclosure agreements for data-center projects, demands energy and water reporting, and ties state tax benefits to compliance. Pennsylvania’s special counsel for energy affordability is also supposed to work with utility regulators so data centers, rather than ordinary customers, absorb the cost of reliability measures created by their demand.

This shouldn’t be treated as an anti-AI policy. It’s a pro-accounting policy.

The AI industry has been allowed to narrate electricity as though it were weather: Demand is “surging,” capacity is “tight,” the grid is “strained,” and somehow billions of dollars of wires, turbines, transformers, and land just need to appear around the technology.

But demand isn’t weather. Somebody made a decision.

And there is another reason to force the accounting now: A lot of the supposed demand isn’t load yet. It’s proposals. Pennsylvania says more than 100 data-center projects have approached the state, while the governor says only a handful currently look viable enough to have the necessary permits. Across the country, regulators have worried about speculative projects showing up in multiple interconnection queues and inflating forecasts before anybody has proved the customer, financing, or power plan is real.

That matters because utilities build decades-long assets against forecasts. If a speculative 500-megawatt project gets counted as inevitable, everybody can end up paying for infrastructure long after the spreadsheet that justified it has disappeared.

So add another rule: Prove you’re real before the public builds around you. Put down financial security. Identify the end user. Show the power source. Accept a minimum bill that covers infrastructure reserved for you. And if you walk away, you don’t get to leave a transformer-shaped hole in everybody else’s rates.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) reported in April that electricity consumption by data centers jumped 17% in 2025, while electricity use at AI-focused facilities rose even faster. Its 2026 outlook still sees total data-center consumption roughly doubling by 2030 and AI-focused consumption tripling.

In the United States, data centers accounted for roughly half of total electricity-demand growth in 2025, according to the IEA. The Department of Energy had already estimated that data centers consumed about 4.4% of US electricity in 2023 and could reach 6.7-12% by 2028.

There is nothing inherently illegitimate about using that much power. Aluminum smelters use enormous amounts of electricity. Steel mills use enormous amounts of electricity. Electrifying transportation and heating will use enormous amounts of electricity too. A serious industrial society needs to know how to build power.

The illegitimate part begins when one customer’s expansion becomes everyone else’s compulsory investment.

That risk isn’t theoretical. In Virginia, the world’s largest data-center market, Reuters reported this month that Dominion’s fuel costs have risen nearly 90% in five years as data-center growth leaves the utility more exposed to expensive wholesale electricity. Across PJM, which serves 67 million people, the grid operator is now proposing rules that would put some new data centers first in line for curtailment during shortages unless they bring adequate power with them.

Good.

If an AI company wants the upside of scale, it can own the downside of scale too.

That means at least five things.

Make large-load customers pay for the incremental grid infrastructure they cause. Require financial security so households aren’t stuck with stranded assets if a project disappears. Make large-load forecasts public enough to detect speculative projects being counted multiple times. Give communities access to energy, water, and ownership information before approvals. And establish emergency curtailment rules before the emergency arrives.

This is what mature industrial policy looks like. It doesn’t worship growth, and it doesn’t panic about growth. It prices the actual machine.

The alternative is a familiar political trick: Call the upside private innovation and the downside public infrastructure.

No.

If the AI boom is real, it can survive a full-cost test.

If a company needs a new power plant, let it pay for the whole damn thing.


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


Joshua W.J. Brown
Joshua W.J. Brown is a Canadian writer, filmmaker, and systems builder whose work examines infrastructure, AI, political economy, and culture.
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WAIT, WHAT?!

Bessent Suggests Economic Warfare Against Iran Could ‘Blow Up the Global Financial System’

“Operation Economic Outcast will not only fail,” warned one expert, “but the economic noose that actually tightens may end up being the one wrapped around our neck.”


US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent speaks during a press conference at the Cash Room of the Treasury Department in Washington, DC on August 24, 2026, as he announces a new set of sanctions against Iran.
(Photo by Mehmet Eser/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Brett Wilkins
Aug 24, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

With the United States unable to militarily defeat Iran in President Donald Trump’s illegal US-Israeli war of choice, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Monday escalated the administration’s economic attacks on Tehran, warning countries and companies around the world that continuing to do business with the nation could expose them to punitive sanctions.

“Let there be no ambiguity as to the position of the United States,” Bessent said during a news conference unveiling what the Trump administration is calling Operation Economic Outcast. “An economic engagement of any kind with this murderous regime will expose those responsible to the full reach of American power.”

The “economic D-Day” campaign targets five sectors—technology, gold, aviation, shipping, and digital assets—and is intended to choke off virtually every remaining source of hard currency for Iran.

Bessent warned that it is “no longer acceptable to operate in the gray spaces” of US policy. The secretary said he anticipates the announcement of sanctions against a major financial institution as soon as next week.



Asked if Chinese banks that do business with Iran would be sanctioned, Bessent replied that “no one is above the reach of US sanctions.”

While Bessent did not say which countries would likely be targeted, China, Türkiye, and the United Arab Emirates are Iran’s biggest trading partners.

The secretary was also asked why sanctions aren’t being imposed immediately.

“Well, we are giving everyone the opportunity to remedy bad behavior,” he replied. “Why would I want to blow up the global financial system?”

“We believe that it is important to level set and give people a cure period, but they should know that that will move very quickly and that we are serious,” Bessent added. “So we believe that a warning shot and a level set of expectations is appropriate, and if people do not want to meet our expectations, then we expect—and they should expect—that they will leave the dollar system.”

Iranian officials largely scoffed at Bessent’s “economic D-Day” threat. Deputy Iranian Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi asked on social media, “Is this a victory or an admission of America’s failure!?”

“You say Iran’s military capability has been ‘dismantled,’ 100% of its military factories ‘destroyed,’ and its nuclear program ‘buried’; but for this very Iran, the ‘largest financial assault in history’ and the mobilization of ‘all US institutions and authorities’ have been necessary!” he mocked.

While Trump has said the war is “over” or nearly over dozens of times, Iran currently appears to have the upper hand, as shipping has overwhelmingly avoided the US-supported route through the Strait of Hormuz, with most vessels using a course set by Tehran or avoiding the waterway altogether.

Trump’s war on Iran is proving costly not only in Iranian lives and US taxpayer dollars, but in the increasingly strained budgets of American families. Disruptions to oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz have pushed gasoline prices above $4 a gallon nationally—roughly a dollar more than a year ago. Trump has dismissed Americans’ concerns about high fuel prices, saying $4 is “not very high” and vowing to “never apologize” for the economic pain his actions are inflicting.

That pain doesn’t stop at the pump. More expensive gasoline and diesel ripple through the economy, raising the cost of transporting food and other goods while keeping inflation elevated.

The pain is far worse for the people of Iran. Trump administration’s escalation comes as Iran’s currency, the rial, has plunged to record lows amid an economic crisis largely caused by the war and years of preceding US-led sanctions.

However, the administration’s effort to force every country to choose between trading with Iran and maintaining access to the US-dominated financial system could have consequences far beyond Tehran.

At a Monday press conference in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said that sanctions “lead to escalation” that “serves no one’s interests.”

“China calls on parties to act rationally and with restraint and avoid taking any measures that may further escalate tensions or deal a blow to global economic growth and financial stability,” he continued.

The Chinese government “will closely watch relevant developments and do what is necessary to protect our legitimate rights and interests,” Lin added.

Operation Economic Outcast drew worldwide derision.

“President Trump, the ultimate gambler in geopolitics, is poised to double down on a bad hand on Iran yet again,” National Iranian American Council policy director Ryan Costello said in a statement.

“We’ve been down the maximum pressure road with Iran many times,” he noted. “What we’ve learned is that President Trump can impose extensive economic pain on Iran, but ordinary Iranians overwhelmingly bear the cost. The ruling elite in Iran remains largely insulated, while Tehran has repeatedly refused to capitulate to Washington’s demands.”

“Trump’s gamble is that this time, amid the destruction of war, and with the reinforcement of a blockade, time is on his side and ultimately Iran will be forced to concede defeat,” Costello added. “President Trump has proven unable and unwilling to stop his gambling on Iran that risks further undermining US and regional security and the global economy.”

Sina Toossi, a senior nonresident fellow at the Center for International Policy, said on social media that Operation Economic Outcast “is as much psychological warfare as economic warfare: Project Iran’s isolation as inevitable, convince markets Hormuz is being overcome, and amplify economic anxiety inside Iran.”

“But the bravado masks a basic problem,” he asserted. “The military option failed to compel Tehran, Iran still possesses substantial escalation dominance over the Arab Persian Gulf states, and ‘severing every economic lifeline’ requires countries like China to enforce a US strategy they openly reject.”

Washington “is effectively betting it can achieve through intensified economic strangulation what six months of war could not,” Toossi added. “And it is demanding unprecedented international compliance at a moment when US relations with much of the world are becoming much more coercive and transactional. The capacity to hurt Iran is clear. The path from pain to capitulation or collapse is not.”

Alan Eyre, a former State Department Iran specialist and current Middle East Institute distinguished fellow, argued that “the problem with Operation Economic Outcast is it continues the trend of making the US an economic outcast.”

Stockbroker and financial commentator Peter Schiff said on X that “because Trump failed to achieve his objective in Iran using military force, he has pivoted to using economic sanctions instead.”

“However, Operation Economic Outcast will not only fail,” he added, “but the economic noose that actually tightens may end up being the one wrapped around our neck.”

Al Green Files Impeachment Articles Over Trump Using CBP, ICE as ‘Unaccountable Paramilitary Police Forces’

“The framers anticipated this kind of abuse of executive power,” said one legal expert. “They gave Congress the remedy: impeachment.”


A protester holds a sign calling for the impeachment of President Donald Trump in Los Angeles, California.
(Photo by Sarah Morris/Getty Images)

Jessica Corbett
Aug 24, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Congressman Al Green on Monday filed articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump over the twice-impeached Republican’s violent campaign to round up and deport immigrants, which has killed citizens of various countries, including the United States.

Green, a Texas Democrat who has repeatedly pushed to impeach Trump for a range reasons during his two terms, argued in his new resolution that “our country and the lives of people within it are at risk as President Donald John Trump is a great threat to the United States democratic republic, its Constitution, and democracy.”

“He is abusing the powers of the presidency by operating United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) as his vicious, quota-driven, unaccountable paramilitary police forces,” Green’s resolution states, “transgressing with anonymity and secrecy, assaulting people, committing and covering up unjustified killings of civilians (including Renée Good, Alex Pretti, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, and Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero) with impunity (acting as judge, jury, prosecutor, and executioner), terrorizing communities, and brazenly and wantonly devolving the United States democratic republic into an authoritarian regime, where unjustified killings and coverups by ICE and CBP are normalized.”

Despite agents with ICE and CBP killing Good and Pretti, both US citizens, as part of Trump’s anti-immigrant operation in Minnesota’s Twin Cities in January, the Republican-controlled Congress passed and the president signed a $70 billion bill for the Department of Homeland Security agencies in June.

Roughly a month later, an ICE agent fatally shot Salgado Araujo, a Mexican man, in Houston, Texas. Less than a week after that, another agent similarly killed Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, of Colombia, in Biddeford, Maine. Deaths on US streets and in immigrant detention centers have fueled anger and calls for reform—or even abolishing ICE—from the public and some elected Democrats.

The resolution introduced Monday is the first from Trump’s second term to mention his anti-immigrant policies. Green—who has served in the House of Representatives for over two decades but is set to leave his seat at the end of this session after losing a May primary—has introduced articles of impeachment three other times since the president’s return to power last year. Reps. Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.) and John Larson (D-Conn.) have separately put forward resolutions during this term.

Green and other Democrats also introduced impeachment articles during Trump’s first term. The president was first impeached for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress in December 2019, then again after his supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. However, Trump—the only president to be impeached twice—was not convicted by the Senate either time.




Polling conducted in March by Lake Research Partners for Free Speech for People (FSFP)—a legal advocacy group behind a campaign to impeach Trump again—found that 52% of US voters support a third impeachment, including 84% of Democrats, 55% of Independents, and 14% of Republicans. Leaders at the organization welcomed Green’s new articles on Monday.

“The president of the United States has no authority to wield armed federal agents to intimidate communities, suppress constitutional rights, or consolidate political power on American soil,” said FSFP chairman and senior legal adviser. “The framers anticipated this kind of abuse of executive power. They gave Congress the remedy: impeachment.”

John Bonifaz, FSFP’s president and co-founder, declared that “this is an existential moment for our nation and our democracy. We either have a Constitution, or we don’t.”

“Donald Trump has already engaged in multiple abuses of power,” he stressed. “We call on our elected officials in Congress to carry out the mandate of their oath to protect the Constitution at this critical time by standing up and demanding impeachment proceedings against this lawless president.”

‘Vance Is a Dirtbag’: Troy Jackson Responds to VP Downplaying ICE Killing in Maine

“To come here and say, ‘Have some perspective’? You ought to have some damn perspective,” Jackson said in a video reply to the vice president.


Vice President JD Vance speaks at CompoTech headquarters on August 24, 2026 in Brewer, Maine.
(Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Jake Johnson
Aug 25, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Troy Jackson, the Democratic US Senate nominee for a critical seat in Maine, denounced Vice President JD Vance on Monday for downplaying the killing of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 25-year-old Colombian national who was killed by a federal immigration agent last month in Biddeford.

During a visit to Maine on Monday, Vance told residents who are “so worried about that situation” to “have a little bit of perspective.” Vance added that “we can absolutely investigate every shooting and we will, but we can also secure our border and ensure that that poison stops coming into our country.” (The legal representative for Durán Guerrero’s family said no federal agencies have reached out as part of any investigation into the killing.)

Jackson, the former president of Maine’s Senate who is running to unseat Republican US Sen. Susan Collins, responded to the vice president in a video message posted to social media.

“JD Vance is a dirtbag,” said Jackson. “There was a young man who had a Social Security number, he had a job, I mean, he had a life. He had a family. To come here and say, ‘Have some perspective’? You ought to have some damn perspective. I mean, you don’t even know what the hell’s goin’ on. You got a rogue agency that’s going around, pulling people out of homes.”

Jackson then turned his attention to Collins, who recently voted for legislation that included around $70 billion in funding for US immigration agencies, including nearly $40 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). After an ICE agent killed Durán Guerrero last month, Collins refused to say she regretted her vote to boost the agency’s funding.

“I want to know: What are you doing about it, Susan?” Jackson asked. “She gave them an additional $70 billion to pull this shit off. We lost a person that JD Vance seems to not give a shit about. And that should piss us all off. So I want to know: Do you agree with JD Vance dismissing the killing of this young man? Because I tell you what, ‘concerns’ and all that does nothing for all of us, does nothing for that family, and I’m sick of your ‘concerns.’”



During his remarks in Brewer, Maine on Monday, Vance said Collins is “doing an amazing job” and characterized her as “the most independent member of the United States Senate,” even though she votes with President Donald Trump around 96% of the time.

Misha Linnehan, a spokesperson for the Maine Democratic Party, said in response to the vice president’s remarks that “Susan Collins voted to give Donald Trump and JD Vance $70 billion to send armed ICE agents into Maine with no guardrails.”

“Now that a man has been killed,” said Linnehan, “JD Vance thinks Mainers need to ‘have a little bit of perspective’ about children losing their father and a wife losing her husband—does Susan Collins agree?”

‘What Did He Do to Deserve to Be Murdered?’ Alex Pretti’s Family Speaks Out Months After Fatal ICE Shooting

“I expect an apology. Why shouldn’t we get one?”


Hundreds of flowers and pieces of unique artwork are seen at the memorial site for Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Minnesota on February 14, 2026.
(Photo by Alex Kormann/The Minnesota Star Tribune via Getty Images)

Brad Reed
Aug 25, 2026
COMMON STORY


The family of slain Minneapolis intensive care nurse Alex Pretti spoke out on Tuesday, seven months since his killing at the hands of US Customs and Immigration Enforcement agents in January.

In an interview with ABC News, Pretti’s family—father Michael Pretti, mother Susan Pretti, and sister Micayla Pretti—expressed revulsion when asked about Trump administration officials falsely describing the late 37-year-old as an “assassin” or “domestic terrorist” after he was gunned down in the streets by ICE agents.

“Disgusting is what that was,” said Michael Pretti.

“We still hear those words about our child,” added Susan Pretti. “A kid who is out observing something that should not be happening in this world today, in the United States. Why? What did he do to deserve to be murdered?”



ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos then asked the family members what they made of President Donald Trump labeling Pretti an “agitator” and a “possible insurrectionist.”

“It’s so unpresidential,” replied Michael Pretti. “I mean, it’s ridiculous that the ‘leader of the free world’ speaks that way about an American citizen.”

While the Trump administration tried to claim Pretti was behaving threatening toward ICE agents, video footage of the shooting showed a chaotic scene where ICE agents had shoved a woman to the ground on the side of a street.

As Pretti tried to help the woman to her feet, he was subsequently swarmed by agents who pinned him to the ground and fatally shot him.

“I was not shocked that he helped somebody,” Susan Pretti said of her late son. “My shock is that he was murdered, and no one has given us the complete truth, or anyone has been held accountable. And it’s been seven months.”



Stephanopoulos asked if the family would like to see Trump administration officials apologize for smearing Pretti.

“I expect an apology,” said Susan Pretti. “Why shouldn’t we get one?”

Days after Pretti was killed, Vice President JD Vance scoffed at the notion that he should apologize to the family for amplifying White House adviser Stephen Miller’s claim that Pretti was a “would-be assassin.” His refusal to apologize led one commentator to call Vance—widely seen as the presumptive successor to Trump—the “most repulsive person in politics.”

In the seven months since Pretti’s killing, no criminal charges against the agents who fatally shot him have been filed.

Fury at Stephen Miller as 'sick' ICE hospital video emerges that's 'impossible to watch'

Tom Boggioni
August 25, 2026
RAW STORY


Video of two crying and screaming Ecuadorian women being manhandled in a Florida hospital by ICE agents set off a furious response on MS NOW Tuesday morning.

“Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski shared the viral clip of Grace Stephanie Calero Cabanilla, 39, and her daughter, Giulianna Mía Carriel Calero, 19, being grabbed after they had been rushed to a hospital after a crash.

That prompted co-host Jonathan Lemire to chime in after Brzezinski called what she watched “Sick.”

“What are we doing here as a nation? What are we doing?” he exclaimed. “This is not the worst of the worst that President Trump promised that he would focus on during the campaign and his administration keeps saying. They're targeting a mother and daughter at a hospital in video that is impossible to watch.”

“In the case of that hospital scene, the sick thing, John, is that there are people, Stephen Miller comes to mind, who like what they see in that picture, because it sends a message to other people, don't come here unless you want to be this person,” Willie Geist stated.

As the clip ran again, Geist added, “This is the mother, and then later, the daughter, who had just been in a serious car accident was arrested in her hospital gown when she was discharged, awaiting deportation hearings. It sickens most Americans to watch this, but not enough people in the Trump administration.”

“This will continue,” Lemire interjected before repeating, “This will continue, the quotas are still in place. Stephen Miller still has calls multiple times a week with DHS officers saying, ‘We need to get our numbers up. We need more people.’”

‘How Many More People Need to Die?’ Calls for RFK Jr. to Resign Grow After Two Measles Deaths

“RFK Jr. must resign or be fired. Vaccines are safe and effective. Listen to your pediatrician,” said US Sen. Angela Alsobrooks.


Brad Reed
Aug 25, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

The Pennsylvania Department of Health on Tuesday announced that the state recently suffered its first two measles-related deaths in 35 years.

The two individuals who died were unvaccinated residents of Lancaster County, according to Pennsylvania DOH. The department has confirmed nearly 400 measles cases across the state so far in 2026.

Remarking on the two deaths, Pennsylvania Secretary of Health Dr. Debra Bogen noted that “measles was largely eliminated... for more than three decades,” which is why many residents “are not familiar with this disease and don’t fully understand the potential severity of the illness.”

“We want to ensure every Pennsylvanian has the information they need to protect themselves, their loved ones and their communities,” Bogen added. “As a physician, I want to make sure that people understand that the MMR vaccine is safe and provides the best protection we have against measles.”

Measles has made a major resurgence in the US in 2026, and in July the total number of documented cases of the virus surpassed the number recorded throughout all over 2025.

News of the measles-related deaths—the first recorded in the country this year—prompted some critics to point the finger at US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime vaccine conspiracy theorist who was appointed by President Donald Trump to be America’s top public health official.

Shaughnessy Naughton, president of 314 Action, declared that “measles is officially out of control,” while demanding that Kennedy step down from leading HHS.

“How many more people need to die before there is a nationwide call for RFK Jr. to resign?” Naughton asked. “His anti-science, anti-vaccine policies are killing people and infecting a generation of Americans with dangerous vaccine skepticism that will take years to recover from... It’s time for RFK Jr. to step aside before he inflicts more harm.”

Naughton’s call for Kennedy’s resignation was echoed by Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.), whose own state is experiencing a measles outbreak.

“RFK Jr.'s lies and conspiracy theories are making Marylanders sick,” Alsobrooks wrote in a Tuesday social media post. “RFK Jr. must resign or be fired. Vaccines are safe and effective. Listen to your pediatrician.”

Tara C. Smith, professor of epidemiology at the Kent State University College of Public Health, pointed out that the US has already experienced more measles deaths during Kennedy’s two years running HHS than it experienced throughout the prior 24 years combined.

“And outbreaks are still growing here in Ohio and in Pennsylvania,” Smith added. “Utter madness that our government is encouraging this.”

Biologist Lucky Tran, director of science communications and media relations at Columbia University, similarly observed that measles had been all but eliminated in the two decades before Kennedy took control of HHS.

“Measles was declared eliminated in the US in 2000, but will lose that status this year,” wrote Tran. “This is an abject failure of public health leadership.”

Kennedy has long used his influence to sow distrust of vaccines, including in Lancaster County, the location of the two most recent measles-related fatalities.

As The New York Times reported earlier this month, Kennedy in 2021 delivered a speech to an estimated 1,500 people in the county urging them to resist any government vaccine mandates.

“Those agencies are going to do everything in their power to make the Amish vaccinate,” Kennedy said. “Because they cannot stand the fact that you are healthy.”

The future HHS secretary also dismissed concerns about the danger of measles during the speech, recommending a mixture of “chicken soup and vitamin A” as a “cure” for the disease.

In First 6 Democratic Primary States for 2028, Overwhelming Majorities Demand Weapons Embargo on Israel

“Across the first six states set to vote in the 2028 Democratic presidential primaries, virtually no likely Democratic voters say Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza,” noted Drop Site News.

A protestor holds a placard saying, “End Israel’s war crimes” during the demonstration on May 16, 2021 in Reno, Nevada. Nevada will be the second state to vote in Democratic presidential primaries in 2028.
(Photo by Ty O’Neil/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Julia Conley
Aug 25, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

When the Democratic National Committee selected South Carolina this month as the “first in the nation” state for the 2028 presidential primaries, political journalists and commentators suggested the calendar could give the southern state’s moderate voter base a new level of influence in selecting the party’s candidate.

But new polling from the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) Policy Project and YouGov on Tuesday showed that on an issue the party and media establishment continue to dismiss as “extreme,” overwhelming majorities of voters in the first states that will hold primaries in 2028 agree: The party must elect a presidential candidate who supports ending military aid to Israel.

The IMEU Policy Project and YouGov surveyed 4,000 likely Democratic primary voters across the six states that will vote first in 2028—South Carolina, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Michigan, and Virginia—and found an undeniable trend.

“Democrats in the first six states to vote in the 2028 presidential primary overwhelmingly demand sanctions and a total weapons embargo against Israel,” said the IMEU Policy Project.

South Carolina and Virginia, which have typically favored more moderate candidates, showed somewhat less support for a weapons embargo on Israel, which, with US backing, has killed more than 73,000 Palestinians in Gaza over the past three years and continues to attack the largely decimated exclave despite a ceasefire deal.

But even the two southern states showed strong support for a dramatic shift in the United States’ relationship with Israel, which it provides with nearly $4 billion in military aid annually, in addition to at least $16.3 billion in direct military assistance since it began attacking Gaza in 2023.

Nearly two-thirds of Democratic voters in both South Carolina and Virginia said they would prefer a 2028 presidential candidate who supports cutting off weapons to Israel. Fifty-seven percent of respondents in the former state said they believed Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza, as well as 72% of Virginians.

Drop Site News noted that across the six states, regarding the genocide question, “the ‘no’ response never rises about 5%.”



Prem Thakker of Zeteo News emphasized that the polling was released as “the party was hoping South Carolina would be the moderate saving grace” in the 2028 presidential election, in which a large field of candidates is expected to run.

Potential contenders include Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), a progressive who’s committed to opposing all military aid for Israel; former Vice President Kamala Harris, who refused to commit to an arms embargo during her unsuccessful 2024 campaign; California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who said in May that the US should reconsider weapons aid to Israel; and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who said he would support a weapons embargo last year only after facing backlash over comments in which he called the issue “complicated.”

Buttigieg visited South Carolina over the weekend, as have several other possible candidates, including Newsom and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), a top recipient of donations from the pro-Israel lobby.

The other states polled by IMEU and YouGov also showed high levels of support for cutting off weapons to Israel and sanctioning its right-wing government, which faces elections in October.

Seventy-eight percent of Nevada voters said they view Israel’s US-backed bombardment of Gaza as a genocide, and 74% said the US should end weapons aid.

Three-quarters of voters in New Hampshire, Michigan, and New Mexico said the US should stop providing Israel with weapons. Michigan was home to the largest share of voters who viewed the attacks on Gaza as a genocide—80%—and in both New Hampshire and New Mexico, 70% of voters said the US should sanction Israel.

Left-wing commentator Hasan Piker, whom centrist Democrats, think tanks, and commentators have attacked in recent months for his past comments on September 11 and Hamas, and whom critics have said should be shunned by progressive political campaigns, said the new polling illustrated an inescapable reality for the Democratic Party.

“This is why I said the ‘28 Democratic nominee will not be pro-Israel,” said Piker of the new survey. “Even if I go away, this problem doesn’t.”

Dozens of US Lawmakers, Groups Demand Rubio Secure Release of Sama Safi From Israeli Detention

Members of Congress urged the US secretary of state “to act swiftly and use every tool at your disposal” to ensure the 20-year-old is freed.


Sama Safi is seen in a family photograph.
(Photo courtesy of Safi family)

Jessica Corbett
Aug 25, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Dozens of US lawmakers came together on Tuesday to demand the immediate release of Sama Safi, a 20-year-old American psychology student with “a severe complex chronic health condition” who was “arbitrarily and wrongfully detained” by the Israeli military nearly three months ago.

Safi was abducted by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on June 2 as “part of a series of raids targeting Birzeit University students that morning that wrongfully detained three other young women: Natalie Abu Diah, Leila Khalil, and Joulan Abu Awad,” the members of Congress wrote to President Donald Trump’s top diplomat. “This targeting of Palestinian students is not an isolated incident but part of what United Nations human rights experts have called a systematic policy to ‘undermine the right to education.’”

Since the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel, the US-armed IDF has engaged in a military campaign in the Gaza Strip widely decried as genocide—killing over 73,000 people and damaging most civilian infrastructure, including schools—while Israeli troops and settlers have also ramped up violence against Palestinians in the illegally occupied West Bank.

Safi has been charged with being a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which Israel labels a “terrorist organization.” Her lawyer, Leah Tsemel, told Agence France-Presse that she denies the allegation.

The young US citizen has familial Mediterranean fever, “which requires regular monitoring, daily medication, and recurring specialized biologic treatment abroad,” the only Palestinian American in Congress, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), and 40 of her colleagues from both chambers highlighted in their letter to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

“Sama’s medical condition has rapidly deteriorated after being subjected to abysmal detention conditions in the months since armed Israeli soldiers raided her family’s home in the occupied West Bank in the middle of the night and tore her from her family,” they wrote. “Her doctors have warned of irreversible and life-threatening damage to her internal organs if her detention continues. You have a duty to secure the safety and security of US citizens abroad, and we urge you to act quickly to prevent further irreparable harm to Sama by securing her immediate release.”



Over the past few months, Safi “has been transferred through multiple facilities,” the letter details. She has seen and endured “serious physical violence by guards against detainees, including frequent physical assault, shackling, and the throwing of gas and stun grenades into already overcrowded and poorly ventilated cells,” along with “repeated verbal abuse and being placed in painful stress positions, as well as the presence of rapidly spreading infectious skin disease, rats, and mattresses reeking of feces.”

“These inhumane conditions and violence towards detainees are not unique to one facility. They are systemic and well-documented throughout Israel’s vast military prison system, where thousands of Palestinians are held every day, many indefinitely and without charge,” the letter stresses. “In December, the United Nations Committee Against Torture denounced Israel’s application of ‘a de facto state policy of organized and widespread torture and ill-treatment’ in these prisons, including evidence of sexual violence, electrocution, waterboarding, systemic denial of medical care, denial of adequate nutrition and water, and deprivation of clothing, sleep, and access to hygiene facilities.”

The six senators and 35 members of the House of Representatives are backed by a diverse coalition of 85 organizations, and they pointed out that earlier this month, over 100 groups also called on Rubio to find a way to free Safi from Israeli detention.

“It is your responsibility to ensure the safety of all Americans abroad, with no exceptions,” the lawmakers reminded Rubio. “Her life
is at risk on your watch. We urge you to act swiftly and use every tool at your disposal to secure the immediate release of Sama Safi so that she can receive the medical care she urgently needs and return to her family, her studies, and the life and freedom that every 20-year-old deserves.”