Upcoming doc Elon Musk ‘doesn’t want you to see’ exposes him as a ‘fraud’: journalist

Alexander Willis
September 26, 2026

RAW STORY

Tesla CEO Elon Musk attends a state dinner hosted by US President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump for Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife, Peng Liyuan, at the White House in Washington, D.C., US, September 24, 2026. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

Journalist Molly Jong-Fast claimed to have gotten an early look at an upcoming documentary about Tesla CEO and Trump ally Elon Musk, and after watching the first two hours, said she realized why the billionaire “doesn’t want” Americans to watch it.

“I saw two hours of the documentary and I know why Elon doesn’t want you to see it,” Jong-Fast wrote Saturday in a social media post on X. “And it’s not all the babies, it’s that the movie explains that Elon is kind of a fraud.”

Titled “Musk,” the film is scheduled to be released theatrically in the United States on Oct. 16 and is written and directed by filmmaker Alex Gibney. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film could expose Musk as “among the most dangerous” men “on earth.”

With Musk said to have been “freaking out” over its impending release, the film reportedly ran into trouble after YouTube, TikTok and Meta all declined to run ads promoting the documentary, The Hollywood Reporter reported Friday.

Musk played an outsized role in the 2024 presidential election, contributing more than $259 million in support of President Donald Trump’s campaign. Musk also gained access to an unprecedented amount of data on American citizens while leading the short-lived Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

The documentary is also expected to reveal new details regarding Musk’s bizarre comments leading up to the 2024 election, including alleged remarks that he was aware of the election results “hours” before they were made public. Musk made the alleged remarks to Ashley St. Clair, who at 26 gave birth to a son fathered by Musk, then 53.

Melania Trump's multimillion-dollar side hustles draw scrutiny from major paper

David McAfee
September 26, 2026 

RAW ST0RY


First lady Melania Trump looks on next to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth as U.S. President Donald Trump holds a press briefing at the White House, following a shooting incident during the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 25, 2026 REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

First lady Melania Trump has made millions from Amazon, a memoir and a cryptocurrency that later collapsed, according to a scathing editorial from The Philadelphia Inquirer.

In an editorial Saturday about the Trump family's profits, the paper's editorial board wrote that Trump's "third and current wife, Melania, is also cashing in."

The biggest payday came from Amazon. The board said the first lady received an estimated $40 million for documentary projects during her husband's term, citing The Guardian. The New York Post reported this week that she announced a two-part docuseries that will come out later this year.

She also got an undisclosed amount for her memoir, "Melania." The editorial links to a Vanity Fair report that her publisher asked for $250,000 in exchange for an interview about the book.

Her crypto venture went worse, at least for the people who bought in. The board wrote that the $MELANIA memecoin launched with an initial market value of about $1.7 billion, according to the BBC, and then fell by about 95%.

"But not before some insiders reportedly made roughly $100 million," the board wrote, citing the Financial Times.

The board said a lawsuit later accused the coin's designers of running a "pump-and-dump" scheme, citing The Guardian.

Melania Trump's ventures are part of what the board called unprecedented profiteering across the family. Citing the FT, it said the family has reportedly made $1 billion in pretax profits from crypto since Trump returned to the White House.

"It is all part of Trump's shameless Art of the Steal," the board wrote.

Trump has dismissed criticism of his family's business deals. According to the editorial, he maintains that he always puts the nation's interests first.

US Energy Consumers Have Spent $121 Billion Extra Since Trump Launched Iran War: Moody’s

With that additional $930 per household spent on energy, the analysis says the total cost due to higher prices from the war is closer to $1760.


Gas prices are displayed at a Pilot gas station on September 17, 2026 in Newark, New Jersey.
(Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

Brad Reed
Sep 17, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

A recently published economic analysis estimates that President Donald Trump’s illegal war with Iran has cost US consumers an average of $1,760 per household—including a total of $121 billion in extra spending on energy alone—since the conflict began less than 8 months ago.

The war, which Trump launched without congressional authorization in February, has sent energy prices spiking across the world, as Iran responded to US attacks by shutting down commercial shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.

According to the estimate by Moody’s Analytics, US consumers have spent over $121 billion—or $930 per household—more on energy since the start of the war, accounting for more than half of the total added expenses imposed by the conflict.

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s, told CNBC in an interview published Wednesday that the analysis reflects the fact that “consumers are under a lot of financial pressure.”

The analysis also finds that the average US household has spent an additional $425 due to higher interest rates caused by the war, as well as $405 for higher military spending, which Zandi explained to CNBC would come from footing the bill through either national debt expansion or increased taxes.

Karthik Sankaran, senior research fellow in geoeconomics at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, argued in an analysis published Thursday that relief for US energy consumers could be a long way off given recent developments in the Middle East, including Houthi fighters seizing a key port city along the Red Sea and a drone strike on a Saudi oil pipeline.

Sankaran warned that nations worldwide have far fewer options now to cushion against energy shocks than they did at the start of the war.

“Seaborne storage on tankers has been depleted,” Sankaran wrote, “the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve has released about 130 million barrels, and the world’s largest importer, China, is increasing imports to 7.2 million barrels per day, up from a low of 6 million barrels in June.”

Sankaran noted that, as uncomfortable as high energy prices are for Americans, the situation is even more dire in the Global South.

“The spike in diesel prices is likely to hit countries in the Global South especially hard,” Sankaran explained. “The higher energy density of diesel means that it is used to power trucks, buses, and agricultural equipment, making it the most important fuel in poorer countries where individual ownership of automobiles is much less widespread.”

A Tuesday report from CNN highlighted how high fuel prices have led to protests across the globe, including in Syria, Guatemala, France, Portugal, and the Philippines.

The protests in Syria have been particularly intense, CNN noted, as demonstrators on Sunday “blocked the Hasaka–Deir ez-Zor highway, where they burned tires and stopped oil tankers.”

Muaz Al Abdullah, Syria analyst at global conflict monitor Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), told CNN that “fuel availability, rising prices, falling purchasing power, and poor services are all reasons that have accumulated public resentment,” which have led to demands that the country oust its energy minister.

Omar Introduces Bill to ‘Make ICE Pay’ for Destruction to US Cities

“Our bill will force ICE to pay the price for the damage they’ve left in their wake and ensure that these devastating operations can never be repeated,” said the Minneapolis congresswoman.


Democratic Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Angie Craig of Minnesota arrive outside the regional headquarters of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Minneapolis on January 10, 2026.
(Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

Stephen Prager
Sep 17, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

On January 10, days after US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents fatally shot US citizen and mother of three Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, US Rep. Ilhan Omar stood in the bitter cold of her home city, surrounded by a crowd of angry residents who’d taken to the streets.

It was just over a month into the Trump administration’s “Operation Metro Surge”—a campaign that would come to be marked by the staggering scale of racial profiling that led to the arrests of US citizens, brazen defiance of court orders, and stunning displays of force, including two more shootings, one of them fatal.

Of the thousands of armed and masked agents who’d arrived to inflict terror upon the Twin Cities, Omar (D-Minn.) declared, “We are going to make sure that these people pay for what they have done to us.” A cheer erupted from the crowd.



On Thursday, Omar introduced a piece of legislation aimed at fulfilling that promise. Titled the Make ICE Pay Act, the bill would block the roughly $140 billion allocated to immigration enforcement in last year’s massive Republican budget law and redirect it to recovery efforts in communities reeling from ICE sieges.

“For over a year, ICE has been tearing through our nation, leading racist terror campaigns that have caused devastating damage to our cities, to our businesses, and to the lives of our constituents,” Omar said.

“In Minneapolis, Operation Metro Surge cost our community nearly $700 million,” she said, citing an estimate by the city of Minneapolis. “We have a moral responsibility to end this abuse of power. Our bill will force ICE to pay the price for the damage they’ve left in their wake and ensure that these devastating operations can never be repeated.”

The Trump administration has used this funding to construct an enormous network of detention camps that have often held people in squalid conditions without contact with their loved ones or lawyers and to launch a hiring blitz that has swelled the agency’s ranks with poorly vetted recruits, some of whom have gone on to commit deadly abuses of their newfound power.

It has also been used to supercharge ICE’s footprint nationwide. With 51,000 arrests, August was the third consecutive month in which the agency set detention records.

And more than ever, the agency has gone after immigrants without criminal records, as well as asylum seekers, green card and visa holders, and Haitian and Syrian immigrants the administration abruptly stripped of Temporary Protected Status.

Through the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, Omar’s bill would redirect this funding to states and cities on the receiving end of ICE abuses.

It would be used to provide them with economic relief, reimburse them for extra costs and lost economic activity resulting from raids, support schools and colleges that were disrupted, and provide mental health and social support to those affected.

Funds could also be allocated to support record-keeping and investigations into immigration agencies’ conduct and to commissions that allow members of the public to testify about their experiences.



In addition to Minnesota, Omar’s bill identifies several other localities that would be eligible for funding after being besieged by ICE, including California, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, North Carolina, and Oregon, where numerous incidents of misconduct have also been documented.

The legislation is co-sponsored by Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García (D-Ill.), Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Calif.), Rep. Janelle Bynum (D-Ore.), and Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.).

Trump Admin Jailing ‘Random Somali Immigrants With No Criminal Record’ at Guantánamo

“Nobody tell us that we’re going to Guantánamo Bay,” said one victim. “Just like kidnapping.”


Legal immigrant Adam Abdullah of St. Paul, Minnesota was arrested during the Trump administration’s deadly Operation Metro Surge crackdown and is now being held at the notorious Guantánamo Bay prison.
(Photo by handout/Sahan Journal)

Brett Wilkins
Sep 17, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Anger is growing this week as more details emerge about the Trump administration’s detention of Somali immigrants at Guantánamo Bay, including people with no criminal records and, in at least one case, a legal US resident.

At least eight Somali men are being held at the notorious US military base in Cuba, while as many as 12 Somali deportees have passed through the facility in recent weeks, according to Sahan Journal. Seven of those still there are being held at Camp 6, which was originally opened under the George W. Bush administration during the so-called War on Terror to imprison men and at least one child in a facility rife with torture and other abuse.

“I never expected to be arrested in a prison established for the terrorists who I fled from,” 31-year-old Hassan Abdi Abtidoon told Sahan Journal’s Mohamud Farah on Tuesday.

Among the other Somalis held at Guantánamo is 31-year-old Adam Abdullah, a St. Paul, Minnesota, resident who came to the United States as a legal asylum seeker in 2023. Abdullah had a work permit and Social Security number, operated an auto repair business, and had no criminal record, according to Minnesota court records. His past involvement with law enforcement appeared to include nothing more than two parking tickets.

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested Abdullah in December during the Trump administration’s deadly Operation Metro Surge campaign, which targeted Minnesota’s large Somali community amid widespread racist demonization and dehumanization by Republicans, including President Donald Trump.

After months of detention in Minnesota, Kentucky, and Louisiana, Abdullah said officials told him he was being deported to Somalia.

“From Miami, they say, ‘OK, now we go to Somalia. Then, first we go to Cuba for refueling, and then we go to some other countries to Somalia,’” Abdullah told Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) earlier this month.

The flight never left Cuba. Abdullah was taken to Camp 6, where he has remained.

Another Somali detainee, Sakariye Abdi Mohamed, described Camp 6 as “the worst place ever I’ve been in my life.”

Mother Jones reported Wednesday that Mohamed was one of 12 Somali men forced onto a plane last month by ICE agents, who told them they were being deported to Somalia.

“Nobody tell us that we’re going to Guantánamo Bay,” Mohamed said. “Just like kidnapping.”



Seven or eight of the men reportedly remain at Guantánamo, where some of them have described being shackled and subjected to frigid temperatures. Detainees also said they are subjected to constant surveillance, including cameras inside bathrooms.

The US Department of Homeland Security claimed the flight included “some of the worst of the worst” with criminal histories including assault, weapons offenses, robbery, theft, drug charges, and drunken driving.

However, Sahan Journal reported that the attorney for six of the eight detainees had found that all had final deportation orders but no additional criminal charges. Four were recent asylum seekers, and two had lived in the United States for decades.

“The administration says we send the worst of the worst to Guantánamo,” US Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) told MPR Wednesday. “Yet in the case of Mr. Abdullah, there has been no evidence presented about what he has done, no explanation for why he has been detained. I mean, there is really has been no due process.”

The Trump administration’s use of Guantánamo for immigration detention is not unprecedented. The facility—which experts have placed within the centuries-long story of American concentration camps—has a long history as an offshore immigration detention site that predates the post-9/11 military prison camp.

During the George H.W. Bush administration, thousands of Haitian refugees fleeing political violence were intercepted at sea and taken to Guantánamo. The Clinton administration continued the policy and, at its peak in 1994, roughly 14,300 Haitians were held there. Clinton officials subsequently used Guantánamo for Cuban migrants, more than 30,000 of whom were jailed at the base.

The treatment of Somali immigrants at Guantánamo has also drawn renewed criticism regarding who has and has not been targeted for deportation from the United States.

Human rights activist Suleiman Bolaleh, who has documented atrocities committed under former US-backed Somali President Mohamed Siad Barre, noted in a recent social media post that Somali immigrants with no criminal records are being rounded up and sent to Guantánamo, while members of the former dictatorship’s ruling family and senior figures have lived in the United States.

“Men once positioned at the heart of a regime accused of mass killings, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing continue to reside openly in American communities,” Bolaleh wrote. “The contrast is jarring: An immigrant [who] has no criminal record is detained at Guantánamo, while figures tied to that dictatorship’s violent apparatus remain unexamined and unaccountable.”

Multiple legal challenges to the Trump administration’s use of Guantánamo Bay for immigrant detention have been launched.

Meanwhile, the longstanding habeas litigation involving War on Terror detainees at Guantánamo continues. In May, Somali national Guled Hassan Duran—who has been held at Guantánamo since 2006 without being charged—asked a federal court to order his release after years of inaction on his habeas petition.

Duran was approved for release by senior US officials in 2021, but remains imprisoned at Guantánamo along with 14 other men—none of whom has ever been convicted of any terrorism-related crimes. Former Bush administration and US military officials have said that most of the men and boys who were ever imprisoned at Guantánamo were innocent, and that senior administration officials knew it but kept them locked up for political purposes.

Conservationists Call Trump’s Latest Endangered Species Policy ‘All-Out War on America’s Wildlife’

The new interpretation of the 1973 law “is not conservation,” warned one critic. “It is a license to destroy habitat, disrupt migration, pollute ecosystems, and drive endangered species toward extinction.”

Two American bald eagles are perched on a nesting stand at the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge  in Cambridge, Maryland.
(Photo by Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Jessica Corbett
Sep 17, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Wildlife defenders continued to call out President Donald Trump on Thursday after The New York Times exposed his administration’s latest attack on endangered species and the landmark law intended to protect them.

The Times reported late Wednesday that as the administration’s rule rescinding the regulatory definition of “harm” under the Endangered Species Act took effect earlier this week, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) internally circulated a memo interpreting the ESA to mean that only the intentional killing or wounding of a protected species is illegal.

“This memorandum—and other recent Endangered Species Act regulatory rollbacks such as the rescission of the long-standing interpretation of ‘harm’—make clear that the Trump administration has declared an all-out war on America’s wildlife,” said Andrew Bowman, president and CEO at Defenders of Wildlife.

“The administration’s absurdly narrow statutory reinterpretation hamstrings the ESA’s effectiveness and makes a mockery of our nation’s half-century commitment to saving and recovering America’s imperiled wildlife,” Bowman charged. “This reinterpretation flies in the face of the ESA’s plain language and common sense, as well as Congress’ intent more than 50 years ago in enacting the ESA to achieve the goal of protecting and fully recovering listed species.”

Oceana vice president Beth Lowell highlighted that “the proposed changes to the Endangered Species Act will remove the core safeguards that have prevented the extinction of 99% of species protected under the act.”

“Federally permitted activities that incidentally injure and kill endangered species currently need to take into account their unintended impacts on wildlife, including nesting beaches for sea turtles or North Atlantic mother and calf pairs as they swim to their feeding grounds,” Lowell noted. “These changes upend the Endangered Species Act’s balance of economic activity and needed protections, pushing species to the brink of extinction.”



The US Department of the Interior, which oversees FWS, told The Hill that the memo “accurately reflects the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s guidance for implementing the Endangered Species Act following the final rule rescinding the regulatory definition of ‘harm.’”

“Under the guidance, the ESA’s prohibition on ‘take’ continues to prohibit conduct including harassing, pursuing, hunting, shooting, wounding, killing, trapping, capturing or collecting protected wildlife,” the department said.

Susan Holmes, executive director of the Endangered Species Coalition—which includes 475 member organizations and over half a million activists—argued that the new interpretation of the law “is not conservation. It is a license to destroy habitat, disrupt migration, pollute ecosystems, and drive endangered species toward extinction.”

“The administration has already eliminated habitat protection for endangered species with its extreme ESA ‘harm’ rule. It is using the so-called ‘God Squad’ to exempt oil and gas drilling in the Gulf from the ESA, and is threatening to eliminate protections for wolves,” she pointed out. “This coordinated effort aims to strip the ESA of its power.”

“If the Trump administration has its way, piping plovers will lose the beaches where they nest,” Holmes warned. “Salmon will be pushed closer to extinction by dams, pollution, water diversions, and destroyed habitat. Grizzly bears will lose the connected landscapes they need to survive as roads, energy development, logging, and other activities fragment their habitat. Rice’s whale—the only whale to live only in American waters—will be lost forever.”

The coalition leader added that “the Endangered Species Act is our most popular and effective wildlife law, with support from 84% of Americans. We must not accept the destruction of a law that has protected our natural heritage for generations. The ESA must be defended, strengthened, and fully enforced—not gutted by political appointees acting on behalf of powerful industries.”



Humane World for Animals president and CEO Kitty Block and Sara Amundson, head of Humane World Action Fund, also cataloged the administration’s various attacks on protected species—and drew attention to a clear pattern regarding “who stands to benefit from these continued assaults on one of America’s most popular laws for animals.”

“It’s certainly not the average American,” they wrote in a Thursday blog post. “Instead, the beneficiaries are the massive industries that profit from destroying vital habitat and the animals who depend on it for survival. Oil and gas companies and other developers that have to (horror of horrors!) apply for a permit when their activities [pose] a risk of killing animals with federal endangered species protections—such as North Atlantic right whales, gray wolves, and black-footed ferrets, to name just a few—could be handed a pass.”

“If this reinterpretation takes effect, more endangered animals will surely die,” the pair declared. “And we will all be worse off for it.”

Advocates Call BS on Trump EPA Study of Imaginary Water Contamination From Abortion Pills

“Singling out medication abortion while ignoring the agricultural and industrial pollutants that are proven threats to our health makes clear that these efforts are about restricting access to abortion, not protecting our water.”

US Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin testifies before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Environment  in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Julia Conley
Sep 17, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

After a yearslong pressure campaign led by Students for Life, President Donald Trump’s top environmental agency is including pills used in medication abortions in a new study of drinking water pollutants—part of what one rights advocate called a ramped-up effort to weaponize “environmental protections to restrict abortion medication”—and potentially birth control, as well.

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the study last week, saying that the agency has “heard loud and clear that Americans are concerned about potential unknown pollutants lurking in their drinking water.”

But as Mother Jones pointed out, the Trump administration has shown little concern for drinking water safety as it has gutted the Clean Water Act as recently as this month, pushed for the expansion of artificial intelligence data centers despite evidence that they pollute water, and sought a reversal of rules to protect people from “forever chemicals” in drinking water.

In fact, the outlet noted, the announcement of the abortion pill study came days after Zeldin announced an elimination of pollution standards for power plants.

“The EPA’s unrelated but tandem announcements reveal an agency that has fundamentally overhauled its policies toward environmental and human health in pursuit of the Trump administration’s ‘energy dominance’ and ‘Make America Healthy Again’ agendas,” wrote Rachel Santasiero at Mother Jones.

The MAHA agenda at the EPA appears to mean a study that will test for mifepristone and misoprostol, the drugs used in medication abortions, as well as levonorgestrel, which is used in contraception, including emergency contraception pills such as Plan B.

“This is the latest tactic of trying to weaponize laws that are meant to protect our environment and protect our wastewater.”

Nathan Donley, director of environmental science at the Center for Biological Diversity, emphasized in an interview with The Cut that the EPA’s water-testing approach won’t determine how much of a chemical is in drinking water—just that it exists at all in a sample, even in trace amounts.

“That doesn’t matter much, though, in terms of the politics,” wrote Jessica Valenti, author of the blog Abortion, Every Day. “If the test finds any trace of abortion pills, conservatives will use it to legitimize their new legal front in the war on reproductive rights—one that includes weaponizing environmental protections to restrict abortion medication (and possibly contraception).”

Anna Bernstein, a federal policy adviser at the Guttmacher Institute, told The Cut that the study is part of an effort to convince Americans that medication abortions are unsafe, at a time when the number of abortions in the US has actually gone up since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Experts have attributed the increase to the expanded use of telehealth and the ability to mail medication abortion pill regimens to patients.

“The anti-abortion movement has become increasingly frustrated with that fact, so they really are throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks,” Bernstein told The Cut. “They are really ramping up disinformation campaigns about the safety of medication abortion. This is the latest tactic of trying to weaponize laws that are meant to protect our environment and protect our wastewater.”

She added that she is “concerned about the risk of added surveillance that testing for these chemicals could create in an environment where criminalization is already a factor.”

Valenti noted that Kristi Hamrick, the vice president of Students for Life, has acknowledged that attempting to crack down on medication abortion access via environmental protections is “all bullshit.”

“This is not because the environment was my first weapon of choice—it’s because it’s the one we have now,” Hamrick said last year of the group’s Clean Water campaign. “Environmental law has teeth. It already exists. And, frankly, I’m for using the devil’s own tools against them.”

The water study is part of an effort that also includes a push for legislation requiring women who have abortions and miscarriages to collect their pregnancy remains in “catch kits,” which has been proposed by state lawmakers in Wisconsin and at the federal level earlier this year.



The Food and Drug Administration already confirmed decades ago—before mifepristone was approved—that it was safe to use “without any expected adverse environmental effects.”

A study by Students for Life—published in a journal run by anti-abortion doctors—was called “misleading” by experts who told Politico earlier this year that the research “should not be considered in environmental or public health decision-making.”

Donley called the notion that a one-time dose of mifepristone—a drug that’s been taken by about 1% of the US population—could be contaminating water supplies “a joke.”

“If you think of most pharmaceutical drugs, you’re not just taking one pill. You’re taking a pill on a daily or semi-regular basis,” Donley told The Cut. What that means is that those drugs used by tens of thousands—sometimes millions—of Americans every day enter our wastewater system at a much larger scale than abortion pills.“

“I’ve seen no credible evidence that these drugs are causing widespread environmental harm. There’s just no data to support that whatsoever. Including mifepristone and misoprostol on this list is just stupid, but then again, we’re in a stupid administration,” he added. “It’s completely ideologically driven.”

Bernstein told Abortion, Every Day that “singling out medication abortion while ignoring the agricultural and industrial pollutants that are proven threats to our health makes clear that these efforts are about restricting access to abortion, not protecting our water.”

‘Time We Send Her Packing,’ Troy Jackson Says of Collins Voting to Confirm 2 Anti-Abortion Judges in a Week

“Does she think that people in Maine are stupid?” said Jackson of the Republican senator, who has long claimed to be a supporter of reproductive rights.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) arrives for a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee meeting in Washington, DC on June 17, 2026.
(Photo by Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images

Julia Conley
Sep 18, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

“Enough is enough,” Democratic US Senate candidate Troy Jackson declared on Thursday after Republican Sen. Susan Collins voted once again for an anti-abortion judge to join a federal court for a lifetime appointment—a frequent action taken by the five-term Maine lawmaker despite her persistent claims that she supports reproductive rights.

Collins’ vote on Thursday was for Kasdin Miller Mitchell, a litigator and former solicitor general of Alabama who also served as a clerk for far-right US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. She was confirmed in a 49-45 vote to serve on the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas.

But Mitchell wasn’t the only anti-choice judge Collins voted to confirm this week, Jackson noted with scorn.

On Tuesday, the former logger and Maine state Senate president recorded a video responding to her tie-breaking vote in support of Judge Matthew Byrne to join the US District Court for the Southern District of Ohio.

Byrne sits on the board of an anti-abortion crisis pregnancy center and said in 2020 that he opposed allowing pregnant patients to access abortion in nearly all cases, without any exceptions for rape or incest. He said he supported exceptions—which, in reality, often do little to protect access to care—for cases in which a pregnant patient’s life is at risk, but said that the term “life of the mother” should be “strictly defined so as to avoid creating loopholes.”

Jackson asked in his video on Tuesday, “Does she think that people in Maine are stupid?”

“It’s time that Mainers had somebody that’s going to fight for their reproductive rights every damn time,” he added.



On Thursday, Jackson expressed disbelief that for the second time in four days, Collins had voted in favor of an anti-choice judge.

Mitchell helped defend the state of Alabama as it tried to terminate Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood, arguing in a brief that the state had “inherent sovereign authority to determine which providers qualified” for Medicaid, “based on their own unchecked assessment of an organization’s ethics,” according to Reproductive Freedom for All.

Mitchell also signed letters to the Senate Judiciary Committee in support of other anti-abortion judges and served as the counsel of record for the Independent Women’s Law Center, an anti-choice group that has opposed the Affordable Care Act’s contraception coverage, equal pay and family leave legislation, and the Violence Against Women Act.

Maine Democratic Party spokesperson Misha Linnehan said Collins’ votes this week “show she’s not going to stand up for Maine women any time soon.”

“Susan Collins confirmed justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, and said herself she still doesn’t regret it,” said Linnehan. “Now, she’s falling in line with Trump once again to put fanatical anti-abortion judicial nominees on the bench for life.”



The Maine Democratic Party highlighted more than a dozen federal judges Collins has backed in recent months, including Judge Whitney Hermandorfer of the US Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, who defended Tennessee’s total abortion ban; Judge Joshua Dunlap of the US Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit, which includes Maine, who advocated for a “fetal personhood” bill in the state; and Judge Maria Lanahan to the US District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, who defended Missouri’s near-total abortion ban and pushed for restrictions on medication abortion.

“For the second time this week, Susan Collins has voted to confirm ANOTHER anti-abortion, MAGA judge,” said Jackson on Thursday. “It’s time we send her packing.”

Star YouTube Educator Ms. Rachel Vows to Match Macklemore’s $1 Million Donation to Palestinian Aid Groups

“We have a moral obligation to use our privilege and platforms to protect children and human rights,” said Ms. Rachel.


Honoree Rachel Griffin Accurso speaks during Glamour Women of the

 Year at The Plaza on November 4, 2025 in New York City.
(Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for Glamour)

Brad Reed
Sep 18, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Rachel Griffin Accurso, the YouTube star and child educator known popularly as Ms. Rachel, is vowing to match the $1 million donation made by rapper Macklemore to Palestinian aid organizations.

In a Thursday social media post, Ms. Rachel said she was giving $1 million to groups dedicated to helping Palestinians who have been suffering for years under Israeli military assaults and occupation.

The YouTube star also encouraged “every wealthy white celebrity to match it and speak out against the genocide in Gaza.”

“Over 20,000 precious Palestinian children have been killed and children continue to be killed every day,” Ms. Rachel said. “We have a moral obligation to use our privilege and platforms to protect children and human rights.”

In the comments, Macklemore thanked Ms. Rachel, who has a long history of advocating for Palestinians and highlighting the horrors inflicted on Gaza by the Israeli military, for backing his campaign.

“Love you so much,” he wrote.

Macklemore first announced his $1 million donation shortly after he was removed as an opening act from fellow musician Ed Sheeran’s nationwide stadium tour because he said “Free Palestine” onstage earlier this month during a show at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.

On Wednesday, Macklemore revealed his donation campaign and invited New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft—who led the pressure campaign to remove the rapper from the tour—to join him.

“Whatever we disagree about, perhaps we can agree on this: Palestinian lives are worth protection,” Macklemore wrote in a social media post, addressing Kraft directly. “A Palestinian life is no less valuable than any life on this earth.”

The rapper said he was giving to six organizations who were aiding Palestinians: HEAL Palestine, Gaza Soup Kitchen, Medical Aid for Palestinians, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), and American Near East Refugee Aid.

Abbas Barred From US by Trump While Netanyahu, Wanted by ICC for War Crimes, Gets Welcome Mat

A director at Amnesty International said the US had made clear it was seeking to “punish the state of Palestine for pursuing international justice and accountability at international institutions.”


Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gives a news conference in Jerusalem 
(Photo by Ronen Zvulun/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

Stephen Prager
Sep 18, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

While the Trump administration bars Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his delegation from entering the US to attend the United Nations General Assembly for the second year in a row, it is welcoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza by the International Criminal Court.

In November 2024, the ICC found “reasonable grounds to believe” that Netanyahu bore criminal responsibility for the use of starvation as a method of warfare and the crimes of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts, including intentionally targeting civilians.

Since October 2023, Israel’s assault on Gaza has killed at least 73,000 Palestinians, including more than 21,000 children, while reducing much of the landscape to rubble and leaving most of the population displaced. Meanwhile, Israel’s restrictions on food, water, medicine, electricity, and other essentials have created conditions of severe hunger, dehydration, the collapse of medical care, and civilian deaths.

President Donald Trump has previously assured Netanyahu that he would not be arrested while visiting New York on the basis of the ICC warrant. The US and Israel are not parties to the Rome Statute, meaning that they are not obligated to enforce the ICC’s warrant.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani examined whether his administration had the legal authority to detain Netanyahu earlier this year. Officials determined they did not, but Mamdani called on the federal government to execute the ICC warrant and said, “Benjamin Netanyahu is not welcome in New York City, nor is any other war criminal at large.”

As The Jerusalem Post reported earlier this week, there has been “unusual involvement” from the US Secret Service with the prime minister’s visit next week, with more than 60 New York Police Department security officers and detectives expected to participate in his security detail.

Netanyahu is set to take the podium on Thursday, September 24, amid intense international scrutiny and condemnation of the aggressive US-Israeli war against Iran, the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements across the West Bank and the explosion of settler terrorism against Palestinians, and Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon.



The US State Department has emphasized that it barred Abbas and around 80 other Palestinian officials from attending—forcing Abbas to appear at the UNGA remotely via video call—partially in response to Palestinian leaders bringing evidence of Netanyahu’s crimes before international tribunals including the ICC and the International Court of Justice (ICJ), where Israel has been accused of violating the 1948 Genocide Convention in Gaza.

The State Department described the use by Palestinians of international legal bodies like the ICC and ICJ as part of an effort to “internationalize the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” Incidentally, around two-thirds of the weapons Israel has imported between 2021-25 have been from the US.

Erika Guevara Rosas, a senior director at Amnesty International, said on Thursday that “the State Department’s statement makes it obvious: This decision is designed to punish the state of Palestine for pursuing international justice and accountability at international institutions, including through the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ).”

“This measure is part of a relentless campaign of reprisals against the very notion of international justice,” Guevara Rosas continued.

The Trump administration has also sanctioned ICC personnel over its case against Netanyahu, as well as Palestinian human rights organizations that provided evidence that assisted in the prosecution of Israeli nationals.

In July, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the US was launching a “whole-of-government response” intended to “systematically disable” the ICC’s ability to operate and threatened to dismantle the institution “brick by brick, if necessary.”

Guevara Rosas argued that the ban on Abbas constituted a “clear violation” of the 1947 UN Headquarters Agreement, which states that the US cannot block individuals from entry simply because of poor relations with their home government.

The State Department acknowledged this explicitly on Thursday when it announced that it would allow the president and foreign minister of Iran—a nation with which the US has been at war for more than six months—into the country “consistent with our host country obligations,” though they have faced some shopping and travel restrictions.

Guevara Rosas said the Trump administration was “setting a dangerous precedent in which the US instrumentalizes its privilege as the host country of the UN to impose arbitrary restrictions on attending the UNGA, and other UN meetings.”



On Thursday, the General Assembly voted 152-3 calling on the US to reverse its decision to deny entry to the Palestinian delegation in person and allow them to participate via a pre-recorded message.

Itay Epshtain, an Israeli international humanitarian law expert who works with the Norwegian Refugee Council, argued that the UN could do much more, including voting to move part of the General Assembly to a location where the Palestinians would be allowed to participate.

“The [UNGA] decision to allow President Abbas to speak remotely is welcome,” he wrote on social media. “But precedent is more exacting: In 1988, when the US barred PLO chairperson [Yasser] Arafat, the assembly moved its Palestine debate to Geneva.”