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Iran declares ‘historic victory’ over the U.S., says enemy forced to accept its proposal
(www.workers.org)
The following statement issued by Iran’s Supreme National Security Council in response to the MAGA president’s two-week “ceasefire” was published by Press TV on April 7. “Good news to the dear nation of Iran! Nearly all the objectives of the war have been achieved. * “The noble people of Iran . . .
From Workers World via This RSS Feed.
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In the first hours of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, up to 175 young children and school staff were blown to pieces at an elementary school. Others were maimed and burned, and will be suffering from their injuries for the rest of their lives. Even any comparatively fortunate ones with minimal injuries will surely experience permanent trauma from having witnessed something so horrific. Witnesses describe scenes of unfathomable horror, with limbs and blood strewn across classrooms. "People were pulling out children's arms and legs. People were pulling out severed heads," said a woman whose child was killed. The Guardian cites verified videos that show "children's bodies lying partly buried under the debris":
In one video, a very small child's severed arm is pulled from the rubble. Colourful backpacks covered with blood and concrete dust sit among the ruins. One girl wears a green dress with gingham patches on her pockets and the collar, her form partly obscured by a black body bag. Screams can be heard in the background.
Drop Site News spoke to the father of a six-year-old girl, Sara Shariatmadar, who was killed in the attack. "I cannot understand how a place where innocent children learn can be bombed like this," he said. "We are talking about small children who knew nothing of politics or wars. And yet they are the ones paying the highest price."
The United States and Israel have not denied responsibility for the attack, although it is still unclear which country fired the missile. The U.S. said that it does not "target" schools, which does not mean that it does not bomb them. ("We take these reports seriously," a spokesman said.) Israel's spokesperson said the government was not "aware" of such an attack, which does not mean its military did not carry one out. Photos supposedly showing that a misfired Iranian missile caused it were debunked, although they spread widely online among Americans and Israelis desperate to believe that only the Bad Guys do things like this.
Domestic coverage of this horrible crime against humanity has been muted. U.S. media has a policy of not showing gruesome images of violence---the Guardian explicitly stated that it was concealing the photos and videos it had "due to their graphic nature." As a result, war is always sanitized, so that Americans can read that 150+ schoolgirls were killed without having to confront the full horror of what it means for their country to drive a missile into a crowded school in the middle of the day. (Saturday is a school day in Iran, a fact that the U.S. government would easily have been able to know when deciding how to time its attacks, but Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has been open about the fact that he regards such niceties as rules of engagement and international law as meddlesome hindrances that can be ignored, lambasting those who "wring their hands and clutch their pearls, hemming and hawing about the use of force.")
I suspect that this attack is also difficult for U.S. media to cover because the basic facts of the situation are so twisted, so depraved, so evil, that they shatter the comforting narrative that the U.S. has the moral high ground over the Ayatollah. In fact, the U.S. government is on the moral level of the Sandy Hook school shooter, a fact that even president Trump's critics may have a hard time fully accepting.
And this was not the only massacre carried out by the U.S. and Israel in a war that has been going on just a few days. The Human Rights Activists News Agency reports that there have already been over 1,000 civilian deaths in Iran, including 181 children under the age of ten, with thousands more civilians injured. Drop Site reports on the nauseating scene in a middle-class Tehran neighborhood following a "double tap" strike (dropping one bomb first, and then dropping another on the survivors and emergency responders, a favorite war crime of the U.S. and Israel). Warning, the following description is extremely graphic and may undermine any love you may have for your country:
Videos of the immediate aftermath of the attack showed several individuals dead and wounded as well as massive destruction on the street outside. In Cafe Ahla, next to the square, blood and debris soaked the floors. Several patrons who had been sitting there when the attack struck could be seen dead on the floor or with their mutilated bodies still sprawled across their seats. "We were sitting here around 8:00-8:30 p.m. and suddenly there was the noise and explosion. We got up and a few people ran away. We turned around to get our belongings and we saw that blood was spraying everywhere. Someone's hand had fallen on the floor, a head had fallen on the floor," said Shahin, a witness who had been at the cafe and asked to be identified by first name only. "There were scalps torn off, hands severed, a few people were laying here all cut up and two people were martyred."
I will get to the many ways in which the Iran war is illegal, making us less safe, founded on lies, strategically insane, unbelievably costly, etc. But let us dwell for a moment on what we are doing to these people. The right-wing Telegraph newspaper reports that in Tehran, "millions of civilians are trapped under relentless bombardment as food and medical supplies dwindle and the death toll mounts," and the city is an "'apocalypse' of hospitals in flames and children buried beneath rubble." The paper records a total humanitarian disaster, with sick people lacking medicine, children going hungry, diabetics running out of insulin, and the repeated bombing of residential areas. While Americans pat themselves on the back for assassinating Iran's repressive head of state, everyday Iranians (even those with little love for their theocratic government) are facing the prospect of being killed at any moment, or watching their children be ripped to pieces. I realize that in the U.S., the devaluation of Middle Eastern lives means that little Iranian girls will receive a fraction of the compassion and concern that has arisen around, say, Nancy Guthrie. But if we apply our morality consistently, I cannot see how we can be anything other than completely revolted by the carnage our president is choosing to inflict (and will apparently soon be further escalating, according to Marco Rubio, who is promising an increased use of force to come, and Pete Hegseth, who is salivating about delivering "death and destruction all day long").
We are all complicit. If you are an American, you paid your government to murder those little girls and those Tehran cafe-goers. Money was withdrawn from your paycheck in the form of federal income taxes. If the attack was conducted with a Tomahawk missile (of which 400 were fired in 72 hours), that money would have been paid to the RTX Corporation (formerly Raytheon). Each missile fired costs somewhere between $1.3 million and $2.2 million, of which approximately $200,000 would be pure profit. Thus the killing of the Iranian schoolgirls, which left their bloody backpacks and tiny severed limbs scattered across classroom floors, transferred hundreds of thousands of dollars from us (the American taxpayers) into RTX's bank accounts. It also boosted the GDP. And the stock market.
Stock price of RTX (formerly Raytheon)
It is hard for me to write about this war, because I am so sickened every time I contemplate the full dark reality of the country I live in. I realize that not only are there people who will drop a bomb on a school without losing a wink of sleep, but there are people who get rich when we bomb schools, who have a direct financial stake in ensuring we keep dropping as many bombs as possible. (And that's just the weapons companies. Others are getting rich from betting on the atrocities on prediction markets.) The fact that many Congressional Democrats implicitly or explicitly supported this war (whether by outright goading Trump into it, as Chuck Schumer did, dragging their feet on opposing it, or raising meek procedural objections) further adds to my disgust. Many Democrats apparently declined to try to stop the war, reasoning that if it achieved U.S. foreign policy goals it would be embarrassing to have opposed it, but if it went south Trump would own it anyway. When I open the New York Times op-ed page, and I find resident foreign policy guru Thomas Friedman cautioning against adopting any "black and white narrative" about what goes on in "a complicated, kaleidoscopic region," I want to vomit. The moment calls for moral clarity: our country is engaged in a mass murder campaign. It must be stopped. It is depressing to see so many debates around strategic end-goals, congressional authorization, or the consistency of the justifications. They take us away from the basic fact that our president, with the blessing of his party and many members of the so-called opposition, is gruesomely murdering children by the dozen. Every day this continues, we are paying our government to commit some of the worst crimes humans are capable of.
Of course, the war is also based on a pack of lies. The Trump administration can't even get its story straight on why the war is being waged and has produced no justification beyond vague invocations of National Security. (Trump says Iran was a "bad seed.") Some Republicans won't even admit that this is a war. (Perhaps they might want to borrow a phrase from Vladimir Putin: "special military operation.") House Speaker Mike Johnson is trying to have it both ways, saying that while the Iranians "have declared war on us," we're "not at war right now." Others are tying themselves in pretzels trying to explain how this differs from the "regime change" wars that Trump has so vocally opposed. (Pete Hegseth: "This is not a so-called 'regime change war.' But the regime sure did change.") Sometimes there are direct self-contradictions within a single sentence, as with Tom Cotton declaring that "Iran has been an imminent threat to the United States for 47 years." This was too much for right-wing commentator Matt Walsh, who accused Republicans of "gaslighting" for suddenly discovering that Iran has been waging a half-century of war against the U.S. Even leading Iraq war hawk Bill Kristol is confused about the reasoning behind the war, saying there is "no coherent rationale." (Of course, Kristol's own favorite Middle East war was equally illegitimate, but that's an argument for another day.)
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. attacked because it knew Israel was going to attack, and needed to defend itself against the inevitable Iranian retaliation for Israel's attack---perhaps the most tortured and unpersuasive case for self-defense ever made. Perhaps because this seemed like an admission that Israeli choices dictate U.S. policy, Trump subsequently denied that Israeli decision-making had anything to do with the attack, although it's clear that Benjamin Netanyahu lobbied heavily for this, as he has been salivating at the prospect of a major war with Iran for decades, and has been scheming for a way to get the U.S. involved.
The idea that Iran was a threat to the United States was always laughable. U.S. intelligence has consistently assessed that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon. The Trump administration itself declared that it had destroyed Iran's nuclear program with last year's bombings. Iran has in fact consistently shown itself very reluctant to engage in military confrontation with the U.S., often carefully limiting its retaliation after U.S. provocations. To the extent that Iran did want to become a nuclear threshold state, with at least the capacity to pursue a weapons program if it wanted to, credible analysts believe that Iran mainly wanted an insurance policy against potential U.S. and Israeli attacks. North Korea has shown that the possession of nuclear weapons is enough to make the U.S. think twice about forcible regime change, and there is a good argument that it would have been rational for Iran to pursue nuclear weapons for the sake of its own self-protection. As Israeli military historian Martin Van Creveld observed, the world "witnessed how the United States attacked Iraq for, as it turned out, no reason at all. Had the Iranians not tried to build nuclear weapons, they would be crazy." (Van Creveld is wrong that Iraq was attacked for "no reason," however. It was attacked for the same reason Iran is being attacked: the establishment of U.S.-Israeli dominance over the Middle East.) While U.S. commentators often talk as if Iran would pursue nuclear weapons mainly in order to destroy the U.S. or Israel (which would, of course, be suicidal given both countries' superior nuclear forces), there's no evidence that Iran would want nuclear weapons for any reason beyond deterring potential external attacks. (A fear that recent events have proven to be well-founded.)
In fact, the entire prevailing narrative about Iran is completely backwards. It's the U.S. that has been a threat to Iran, not the other way around. It was the United States and Britain that overthrew Iran's legitimately elected leader, Mohammad Mosaddegh, in 1953. (The New York Times was elated by the coup, commenting that "underdeveloped countries with rich resources now have an object lesson in the heavy cost that must be paid by one of their number which goes berserk with fanatical nationalism.") Since 1979, when the Iranians ousted the dictator (the Shah) that the U.S. had helped install and maintain in power, the U.S. has had a virtually unremittingly hostile attitude toward Iran. This is not because of the government's (very real) human rights abuses, since the U.S. is happy to support human rights abusing states that are pliant and servile (see, e.g., Saudi Arabia and Egypt). But Iran is viewed as a threat to U.S. dominance in the Middle East. Thus, in the 1980s, the U.S. supported Saddam Hussein as he waged a ruthless war of aggression against Iran, killing hundreds of thousands of Iranians including with chemical weapons. (The U.S. concealed evidence of Hussein's chemical weapon use from the UN, because it wanted him to go on killing Iranians.) More recently, the U.S. and Israel have tried to destabilize the country through devastating cyberattacks, economy-wrecking sanctions, and assassinations. The sanctions have been explicitly aimed at harming civilians, with Mike Pompeo boasting in 2019 that "things are much worse for the Iranian people" thanks to sanctions and hoping that their suffering would lead them to overthrow their government.
Importantly, while U.S. policymakers in both the Republican and Democratic parties constantly affirm that "Iran must not be allowed to have nuclear weapons," they rarely state their implicit corollary to this proposition, which is that Israel must be allowed to have nuclear weapons. As it happens, Iran actually agrees that it shouldn't be allowed to have nukes, and has long supported turning the entire Middle East into an official nuclear weapons free zone, much as Africa and Latin America have done. The problem is that the U.S. and Israel demand a double standard, with Israel refusing to contemplate giving up its nuclear weapons. The entire nuclear disagreement, then, is not about whether Iran should have nuclear weapons, but about whether Iran should hold itself to a different standard to Israel. (Amusingly, Chuck Schumer recently accidentally declared that "no one wants a nuclear Israel," and had to correct himself, because he does want a nuclear Israel.)
Anyone who values human life should treat war as an absolute last resort, to be engaged in only once every diplomatic option has been exhausted. In this case, it was the Trump administration that sabotaged diplomacy. First, even though asking Iran not to pursue nuclear weapons means imposing an unfair double standard that imperils Iran's national security, Iran had agreed under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action to severely constrain its development of nuclear technology, and agreed to a detailed monitoring and compliance regime. It was confirmed to be adhering to that agreement until Donald Trump ripped it up in 2018, subsequently criticizing Iran for failing to adhere to the agreement that he himself had destroyed. Joe Biden declined to pursue the revival of that agreement, even though Iran signaled that it was open to it. But to this day, Iran has shown that it is willing to consider even highly unfavorable agreements in order to avoid war---it has never shown any sign of launching an unprovoked strike, only deploying military action in response to violence by others, such as an Israeli attack on its embassy or the assassination of its allies' leaders.
Iran has long wanted to keep a war with the U.S. from breaking out, which is why its responses to U.S. and Israeli attacks have previously been notably measured and cautious. (This time around, Iran reasons that unless it inflicts major damage, it will be perceived as weak and attacked further, since previous restraint only encouraged the U.S. and Israel to press their advantage.) Diplomatic talks between the U.S. and Iran were ongoing, and Oman, mediating talks, saw "the most promising diplomatic opening in years" and thought "diplomacy was producing tangible results and that a negotiated settlement was imminent." The U.S. and Israel decided to sabotage diplomacy and assassinate the Iranian head of state, possibly because they felt they just couldn't forgo the opportunity to kill as many high-ranking Iranians as possible in one fell swoop. (They killed so many Iranian government officials that Donald Trump admitted the U.S. had killed all of the people who had been considered likely candidates to take Khamenei's place.) Iran professed itself baffled as to why the U.S. attacked. "I do not know why the U.S. administration insists on beginning a negotiation with Iran and then attacking Iran in the middle of talks," said the country's foreign minister. He told NBC: "We were able to address serious questions related to Iran's nuclear program. We obviously have differences, but we resolved some of those differences, and we decided to continue in order to resolve the rest of [the] questions."
Because mass civilian casualties are a predictable consequence of intense airstrikes, to choose to unnecessarily end diplomatic engagement and start bombing is unconscionable depravity. But it's clear that the Trump administration didn't really care whether Iran was genuinely willing to engage in diplomacy, because Trump's position is that Iran should simply do what we say, period. There is nothing to negotiate, because for Trump, the only choice is whether a country is willing to comply with U.S. demands, or whether we will have to use force to ensure their compliance.
I haven't even gotten to the illegality of the war. Leaving aside the ridiculous Republican denials that this is a war (if a country assassinated our head of state and bombed our cities, would anyone doubt that they were waging war?), it's plain that all of this is unconstitutional. The Constitution vests the power to declare war in Congress, not the president. Congress didn't declare war, therefore the war is illegal. Case closed. I know presidents have stretched their powers as far as possible (Obama's drone strikes, etc.) but if a president has the power to wage a relentless bombing and assassination campaign without Congressional approval, the Constitution simply ceases to mean anything. Congress has plainly failed in its responsibility to ensure that Trump complies with the Constitution, but the failure of our politicians to enforce the law doesn't change what it says.
Of course, it virtually goes without saying that the war violates international law. The UN Charter prohibits the use of force (or even the threat of force) except in response to an armed attack. Iran had not attacked the U.S., nor was there any evidence Iran was going to attack the U.S. Propagandists assert that Iran (and its "proxies") have killed "hundreds" of Americans over the years, but they decline to specify who these Americans are or discuss the Iranians killed by the U.S. and our own "proxies." There's no real point discussing international law, because Trump has made it clear he simply doesn't care about it, saying he doesn't need it and is unconstrained by it. Unfortunately, other countries have been just as pathetically weak as members of the U.S. Congress, with countries like Britain and France issuing statements that were de facto supportive of the assassination of a foreign head of state. (Canada issued a supportive statement and then appeared to regret it after noticing that letting the U.S. and Israel tear up the last vestiges of international law might be unwise.) Germany's chancellor has even made the stunning statement that Iran shouldn't be protected by international law, waving away the obvious illegality of the attacks by saying that "now is not the time to lecture our partners and allies." The killing of a head of state is a major crime, the normalization of which would open a horrible Pandora's box of lawless state action, and the world should be unified in condemning U.S.-Israeli lawlessness, but even among the Arab states there is a reluctance to antagonize the U.S.
None of the long-term consequences of this war will be good. The Trump administration does not appear to have any kind of strategic plan for what will happen next in Iran. (Lindsey Graham says it's "not [Trump's] job" to have a plan for what happens to the country's government next.) We could see the country's collapse into civil war, Libya-style. (Obama adviser Ben Rhodes recently admitted that Obama's decision to topple Libya's dictator without a plan for the country was a major error.) We could simply see the hard-line theocrats be replaced by more hard-line theocrats who are more convinced than ever that there can be no negotiating with the U.S., that the only language this country understands is force, and that the best thing for Iran's safety would be for it to obtain a nuclear weapon as quickly as possible. What we are unlikely to see is a pro-American government emerging, and this war puts Americans everywhere in considerable danger. (Ask yourself: if what happened to Sara Shariatmadar happened to someone you love, would you see the country that carried out the bombing as a liberator? Or would you want revenge?) Although plenty of Iranians are justly celebrating the end of the Ayatollah's rule, like the Iraqis who celebrated in 2003, they will soon find out that the U.S. has no interest in their well-being, and will happily watch their country slide into civil war if this serves America's perceived "national security" interest.
Six Americans have already died in addition to the 1,000 Iranians. Because this is a war of choice, totally unnecessary and unjustifiable, their blood is on Donald Trump's hands, and he (as well as Congress) should be treated no differently than we would treat someone who murdered these Americans with their bare hands. But the costs to this country are only just beginning. Of course, if you're an RTX shareholder this may be a bonanza, but the rest of us are likely to see major economic disruption, in addition to all the resources that are put into the production of weapons. Eisenhower famously tried to warn Americans that war spending is an act of "theft" from the public, because it's money not spent on schools and hospitals, and the "opportunity cost" is therefore enormous. But Eisenhower's warning has largely been ignored.
Worse, as Abby Martin notes in the terrifying and important new film Earth's Greatest Enemy, military action has catastrophic climate consequences, since the U.S. war machine is the world's biggest polluter and the carbon emissions of our vast, brutal empire are driving us toward ever-worsening climate catastrophe. Unfortunately, that's just fine with some in the administration and the military---terrifying recent reporting suggests that some evangelical Christian officers are celebrating the war as hastening the apocalypse, claiming Trump was "anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth." These people would sacrifice the rest of us to the inferno to fulfill their delusional prophecies.
Of course, the war reveals that Trump and his coterie were complete frauds when they pledged to keep the U.S. out of senseless Middle East wars. Trump fooled a lot of people with this stuff, although hopefully their illusions will now be hard to maintain. (Former hardcore MAGA types like Alex Jones and Nick Fuentes are now admitting they were duped.) If there is one silver lining here, amid all of the horror, it is that because this war is deeply unpopular and Trump has no idea how to deal with its consequences, perhaps we will finally see the MAGA movement collapse politically. Trump's approval rating was already in the toilet, and while I sadly have no illusions that public opinion will be especially moved by the bombing of a school, when the fallout in cost, lives, and global chaos begins to come home, perhaps Americans will turn once and for good against their warmongering president.
But it is hard for me to think hopefully right now, as I see pictures of the remnants of former schoolchildren, schoolchildren whose lives were brutally extinguished with the help of my tax dollars. All I can feel is horror and rage at the sociopaths willing to do such things, who claim to want peace while ensuring that humanity will be consigned to a future of endless, senseless conflict.
PHOTO: Graves being dug for the elementary school girls killed in the bombing of the Minab school. Iran Foreign Ministry.
From blog via This RSS Feed.
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New Federal Data Confirms: Trump's War of Choice in Iran Is a 'Disaster' for US Economy
(www.commondreams.org)
Federal data released Thursday provided further confirmation that US President Donald Trump's war of choice in Iran is harming the nation's economy and working class, with prices continuing to rise as paychecks fail to keep pace.
"The data is clear: Trump’s illegal war in Iran is a disaster for Americans’ budgets at home," Alex Jacquez, chief of policy and advocacy at Groundwork Collaborative, said in a statement after the US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) announced that the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index rose to 3.5% year-over-year in March—the highest rate since May 2023.
The BEA estimates that US consumer spending increased by $195.4 billion in March—with "gasoline and other energy goods" making up $81.3 billion of that total. Trump's war on Iran has hurled the global energy market into chaos, pushing US gas prices above $4 per gallon on average.
BEA also released data showing that US gross domestic product rose at at an annual rate of 2% during the first three months of 2026—a smaller rebound than expected after the final quarter of 2025, when GDP rose by just 0.5%.
Additionally, the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Thursday released its Employment Cost Index for the first quarter of 2026. The index, which measures wages and benefits paid to workers, increased 0.9%—well behind PCE inflation.
"Paychecks are lagging behind prices, and economic growth remains sluggish thanks to the president’s gross mismanagement," said Jacquez. "Working families looking for relief certainly won’t find it under this administration. It’s no wonder Trump’s economic disapproval ratings are at an all-time high."
Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said in a statement Thursday that "Trump promised to lower costs on day one, but today’s report is more proof that was just a lie."
"His so-called ‘Big Beautiful Bill,’ his reckless tariffs, and his war of choice in Iran are driving up costs on everything from groceries to gas to healthcare," said Boyle. "Republicans control the White House, the House, and the Senate, and they only have themselves to blame for this cost-of-living crisis. The American people deserve better than their chaos, corruption, and total economic incompetence.”
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
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ACLU And Lambda Legal Launch Court Challenge Of Idaho’s Extreme Bathroom Ban
(www.erininthemorning.com)
Idaho Capital Sun
Erin In The Morning is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a subscriber.
Six Idahoans have filed a class action lawsuit against the state over what amounts to the most extreme anti-trans bathroom ban in the country.
HB 752, signed into law last month, extends to restrooms both in public and private buildings, as well as single and multi-occupancy bathrooms. Trans people could face criminal penalties, including years in prison, for entering a restroom that differs from their sex assigned at birth.
The rule applies to government-owned buildings as well as private businesses that are open to the public, such as libraries, rest stops, airports, malls, gas stations, restaurants, entertainment venues, hospitals, and more.
Left unchallenged, HB 752 would go into effect on July 1st. But the ACLU, Lambda Legal, and several law firms are requesting an injunction for what’s been characterized as a brazenly unconstitutional and animus-driven bill.
Nearly half of all states have anti-trans bathroom restrictions, but Idaho’s are particularly pernicious. “What makes Idaho’s law really unique is its criminal punishments, which are incredibly severe, as well as the fact that it reaches so far into public life in Idaho by covering government-owned buildings and places of public accommodation,” said Barbara Schwabauer, senior staff attorney for the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Rights Project.
Kell Olson, counsel for Lambda Legal, also issued a scathing condemnation of the policy. “This law leaves transgender people in the impossible and exhausting position of trying to determine what is allowed on a daily basis almost anywhere in their public lives,” Olson said. “HB 752 applies even to single-user restrooms that are designated by sex, revealing that its purpose is not safety or privacy, but to subject transgender people to the humiliation that comes with a state-mandated disavowal of their identity.”
The complaint argues HB 752 violates the Fourteenth Amendment, and should be struck down for its vagueness; that it constitutes sex discrimination; that it violates the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses; and that the law is unconstitutional because the state has “no legitimate interest, let alone a compelling or important one” in functionally forcibly outing a trans person any time they use a public restroom.
Statehouse testimonies from lawmakers characterized transgender people as criminal and violent. Meanwhile, in those same hearings, those same legislators openly fantasized about physically brutalizing transgender women, as seen in the complaint excerpt below—evidence that the bill is motivated by animus.
CAPTION: Excerpt from the complaint.
Moreover, the law is rife with “exceptions” carved out to make it as unobtrusive as possible for cisgender people. It undermines the rhetorical red herring that contends lawmakers simply wanted to reinforce barriers between men and women in bathrooms, and that it didn’t exceptionalize trans people.
Some of the law’s exceptions “have nothing to do with restrooms at all,” Schwabauer pointed out. “If you are an athletic trainer or a coach, you can go into the restroom of the opposite sex, and talk to your team during a team event.”
Of course, we know from experience that these discriminatory policies harm cisgender people, too. Those who are presumed to be trans often face violence due to the anti-trans bathroom panic.
Meanwhile, multiple law enforcement groups begged lawmakers not to pass the bill due to the burdensome and litigious risks thrust upon those called in to be the literal bathroom police. “Officers responding to a complaint would be placed in the difficult position of determining an individual’s biological sex in order to enforce the statute,” a letter from Idaho Fraternal Order of Police addressed to lawmakers reads. However, “there is no clear or reasonable way for officers to make that determination without engaging in questioning or investigative actions that could be viewed as invasive and inappropriate.” The law’s vagueness creates an “unenforceable standard.”
Plaintiffs emphasized the impacts are dire. One plaintiff, Diego Fable—a transgender man who has called Idaho home for a decade—said this would likely cause him to have to flee the state.
“Do I risk my personal safety and privacy by complying with the law and using the women’s restroom? Since I look like a man, using the women’s restroom would only invite suspicion, questions, harassment, and potentially violence,” Fable said. “Or, do I avoid going out altogether?”
Erin In The Morning is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a subscriber.
From Erin In The Morning via This RSS Feed.
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‘This is piracy:’ Outrage as Israel abducts aid flotilla crew in international waters
(morningstaronline.co.uk)
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'This Is Piracy': Israel Condemned for Seizure of Gaza-Bound Flotilla Near Greece
(www.commondreams.org)
Palestine defenders on Thursday condemned Israeli forces' raidb of the latest Global Sumud Flotilla—which was sailing off the Greek coast while attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza—and the arrest of more than 200 of its participants, with some prominent critics calling the seizure an act of piracy.
Greenpeace International—whose MY Arctic Sunrise is the flotilla's most prominent ship—said that the maritime convoy's 58 vessels were "boarded and harassed by Israeli forces in international waters 45 nautical miles west of the Greek island Kythira and 600 nautical miles from Gaza."
Flotilla organizers said on X: “Our boats were approached by military speedboats, self-identified as ‘Israel’, pointing lasers and semi-automatic weapons ordering participants to the front of the boats and to get on their hands and knees. The boat communications are being jammed and an SOS was issued."
The organizers said 211 flotilla participants were seized by Israeli forces. Flotilla activist Yasmine Scola said members were "kidnapped."
Global Sumud France spokesperson Helene Coron said that 10 French nationals, including communist Paris City Council Member Raphaelle Primet, were seized.
"We don't have the information for the other nationalities, but the boats were mixed in terms of nationality, so there were crew members from all 48 delegations," Coron added.
Israel's Foreign Ministry said that "approximately 175 activists from more than 20 boats... are now making their way peacefully to Israel."
Responding to Israel's interception, former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said on social media that his country's government "is either complicit or incapable of defending our seas from Israel."
"So much for freedom of navigation and international law," he added.
Independent British Member of Parliament Jeremy Corbyn said of the flotilla members: "They were not intercepted. They were abducted in international waters. This is piracy—and is a flagrant violation of international law."
Another British lawmaker, Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy, wrote on X that "last night, Israel's navy committed an act of armed piracy in international waters, threatening unarmed civilians aboard."
"Our government must condemn this attack, extend diplomatic protection to British participants, and work to ensure safe passage," she added.
The migrant search and rescue group SOS Mediterranee France said on X that "attacking or threatening" Global Sumud Flotilla vessels "in international waters constitutes a violation of maritime law."
"Furthermore, the Geneva Conventions are clear: Any person engaged in a humanitarian mission must be protected. Solidarity is not a crime, Preventing aid, however, is," the group added.
In the United States, Council on American-Islamic Relations executive director Nihad Awad said in a statement that “Congress must demand that the Israeli apartheid government immediately release the American citizens and other humanitarian activists it kidnapped in international waters in a blatant violation of international law."
"Our nation would not tolerate, much less fund, the kidnapping of American citizens in international waters off the coast of Greece by any other state," Awad added. "It is long past time for the out-of-control Netanyahu regime to face consequences of its crimes, including American citizens.”
The United States supports Israel with tens of billions of dollars in armed aid, and diplomatic cover including repeated vetoes of United Nations Security Council cease-fire resolutions for Gaza.
Last year, dozens of boats carrying hundreds of activists from over 40 nations took part in the last Global Sumud Flotilla—sumud means “perseverance” in Arabic—as it attempted to break Israel’s naval blockade and deliver desperately needed humanitarian aid including food, medicines, and baby formula to starving Gazans amid a growing famine.
Israeli forces intercepted and seized the flotilla vessels in international waters in early October, arresting all aboard the boats and temporarily jailing them in Israel.
In 2010, Israeli forces raided one of the first convoys carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza by sea. The attackers killed nine volunteers aboard the MV Mavi Marmara, including Turkish-American teenager Furkan Doğan.
Members of past Gaza flotillas have reported abuse at the hands of their Israeli captors, although they have urged the world to focus not on them, but rather the people of Gaza, who have endured nearly 31 months of genocidal war and siege.
More than 250,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded by Israeli forces since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023, including thousands who are still missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble. Most victims are civilians. Around 2 million other Gazans have been forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened.
Israel—whose prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza—is facing an ongoing genocide case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
The Israeli government continues to blockade Gaza by land and sea, strictly limiting the entry of humanitarian aid into the besieged coastal strip.
“We renew our call on world leaders to take concrete and immediate action in the face of the genocide being inflicted by Israel on the people of Gaza," Pujarini Sen, project lead aboard the Arctic Sunrise, said Thursday. "The international community’s ongoing failure to enforce international law leaves it culpable for Israel’s actions."
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
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Folks,
Tomorrow looks like it's going to be a historic day with May Day actions, strikes, walkouts, and protests around the country. Hundreds of actions are planned around the country. In North Carolina, more than 20 county school districts are closing for May Day.
(Check out my latest analysis of the growing strength of May Day)
Tomorrow, Payday Report and Migrant Insider's Pablo Manríquez are hosting a special May Day livestream from 2:30 - 3:30 EST. We're gonna be analyzing the historic walkouts and have folks call in from around the country.
If you are interested in calling in and giving an update on a May Day event that you attended, feel free to email me melk@paydayreport.com
You can watch the livestream here on our Youtube Channel at 2:30 EST.
[Donate to Help Track the May Day Strike Movement
Payday Report has tracked May Day strike in at least 85 cities & the list is growing!
Payday ReportMike Elk
](https://paydayreport.com/donate-to-help-track-the-may-day-strike-movement/)
T
From Payday Report via This RSS Feed.
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Democratic Leaders Wanted to Control the Maine Senate Race. Their Pick Just Dropped Out.
(theintercept.com)
The Democratic Party’s pick for Maine senator suspended her candidacy on Thursday. Democratic Gov. Janet Mills, who entered the race as the establishment pick and assumed favorite, announced her campaign did not have the financial resources to continue.
Mills’s exit less than six weeks before the June primary clears the path for populist candidate Graham Platner, now the presumed nominee, to face off against incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins in the November general election after the party worked to subdue Platner’s campaign. The Democratic Party’s decision to wade into the primary at all had reignited a criticism that the Democratic establishment would stop at nothing to keep progressives out of Congress.
“The Democratic establishment — and especially calcified Senate leadership — is learning in real time that they are wildly out of touch with what Democratic primary voters want,” said Amanda Litman, co-founder of Run for Something, which recruits young progressive candidates for office. “The establishment simply doesn’t have the juice (or the trust) anymore.”
By the time Mills, 78, ended her campaign on Thursday, party leaders had changed their tune on Platner. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who backed Mills early in the race, released a statement with New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, the chair of Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, saying that Collins “has never been more vulnerable” and that they would work with Platner to beat her. The DSCC had financially backed Mills’s campaign, forming a joint fundraising committee with her in October. And they stuck by Mills even as her campaign appeared to languish.
Platner, once considered a long-shot candidate marred by controversy, has surged this year in fundraising and polling. In a statement in January, Gillibrand said she was “very optimistic” about Mills’s race. In February, when polling numbers came out showing Platner beating Mills with 64 percent support to her 26, Schumer remained in her corner.
The upset marks “a massive embarrassment for Chuck Schumer and DSCC operatives,” a Democratic strategist told The Intercept, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of professional reprisal. “This was their star recruit and she couldn’t even make it to the election. No longer can they be the gatekeepers.”
Platner has faced a slew of controversies since launching his campaign last year, including revelations that he had a Nazi tattoo and had posted a series of regrettable comments on Reddit. Those pitfalls led many of Platner’s critics to compare him to another populist Democratic darling who took a hard turn to the right after entering Congress: Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa.
[
Related
The Left Put Its Faith in Graham Platner. Will He Break Its Heart?](https://theintercept.com/2025/10/25/graham-platner-tattoo-fetterman-democrats/)
On Thursday, Fetterman made clear that he would not welcome the comparison. While other members of his party prepared to embrace Platner, Fetterman told reporters: “Democrats really, really like Platner in Maine, but the Republicans fucking love him. If Maine wants an asshole with a Nazi tattoo on his chest, they get him.”
In a statement on Thursday, Platner said he looked forward to working with Mills to defeat Collins in November. “This race has never been about me or about any one person. It’s about a movement of working Mainers who are fed up with being robbed by billionaires and the politicians they own, and who are taking back their power.”
The day before she dropped out of the race, The Associated Press published an article about Mills campaigning as an underdog in the race despite having the resume for the job. On Thursday, Mills’s campaign was over.
The post Democratic Leaders Wanted to Control the Maine Senate Race. Their Pick Just Dropped Out. appeared first on The Intercept.
From The Intercept via This RSS Feed.
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Meta is allowing illegal Israeli settler groups to monetise content on its platforms, whilst banning Palestinian accounts, including journalists.
Meta is allowing sanctioned Israeli settler groups to monetise content while banning Palestinian accounts, including journalists.
Al Jazeera’s @Nour_Odeh reports. pic.twitter.com/AAQKb2lHIT
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) April 29, 2026
Areport by 7amleh, the Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media, reports that Meta has allowed settler-affiliated accounts and “extremist media outlets” to generate revenue on its platforms. This is despite the content clearly violating its own policies, and:
publishing violent, racist, and inciting content against Palestinians, and despite many being directly linked to promoting illegal settlement expansion, as well as widespread violence and attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank.
The report found that the tech giant:
not only tolerates violent and inciting speech but actively incentivizes its production and spread”, in violation of its own monetisation and content policies.
One rule for them
Certain content is supposed to be ineligible for monetisation on Meta platforms. This includes promoting illegal outposts, justifying settler violence, mocking Palestinians, calling for forced displacement, genocidal rhetoric and celebrating the destruction in Gaza.
Beyond internal policies, Meta is subject to internationally recognised human rights obligations. These apply to business enterprises, including in situations of armed conflict and military occupation.
These obligations are articulated in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which establish that companies have an “independent responsibility” to respect human rights irrespective of a state’s conduct or failure to comply with its own international obligations.
The report added that allowing such content:
undermines Meta’s responsibilities under UN principles, international humanitarian law and international human rights law.
In contrast, the report found that Palestinian voices:
remain structurally excluded from monetization tools solely because they are based in Palestine, regardless of the quality or legality of their content.
Of course, this produces a system where Meta is not only suppressing Palestinian economic and journalistic participation online, but actively incentivises the very actors contributing to the human rights violations against them.
The report added:
These findings reflect a governance model in which monetization decisions are shaped by political power and geography rather than by harm, legality, or policy compliance. By monetizing content linked to settlement illegal expansion, state violence, and incitement, Meta risks contributing to and benefiting from conduct that violates international humanitarian and human rights law.
Meta: complicit in genocide
Previously, Meta whistleblowers revealed that Israel was leading a global “censorship campaign” which targeted pro-Palestinian speech. But now, it appears that the company is helping to put money directly in the pockets of violent settlers.
They are all complicit in the genocide. https://t.co/xdFeia1CpB
— Maawèh ® (@Maaweh_mR) April 29, 2026
Additionally, the New Humanitarian reported that both Google and Meta have run over 100,000 advertisements for businesses that the UN says are facilitating illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Illegal Zionist settlers do not need any more help, whether that is promotional content or financial. But as long as Western governments, companies and tech giants continue enabling their war crimes, they will not stop.
The rules of social media sites should be the same for everyone. As if Israel’s system of apartheid was not bad enough, Meta is making that system digital.
Feature image via Al Jazeera English/YouTube
By HG
From Canary via This RSS Feed.
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After Mills Exit, Platner Vows to Defeat Collins With 'Movement of Working Mainers'
(www.commondreams.org)
Graham Platner, now the presumptive Democratic nominee for the US Senate in Maine, delivered a preview of his general election pitch to voters on Thursday hours after his top primary rival, Maine Gov. Janet Mills, suspended her campaign.
Speaking to supporters in Augusta, Platner characterized his Senate bid as part of a broader effort to restore power to working-class Americans who for decades have been beaten down by big money interests.
"The race has never really been about me or any one person," said Platner. "It's about a movement of working Mainers who are fed up with being robbed by billionaires and the politicians who own them. We are now taking back our power."
Platner vowed to defeat incumbent Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), but he said the ultimate goal is to "start tearing down the system that, for too long, has forgotten and written off the people who make Maine and this country what it is."
Platner was joined by several Maine Democrats who were on hand to endorse his Senate bid.
Maine state Sen. Mike Tipping (D-08) said Platner must be elected to the US Senate because Collins "betrayed the people she was elected to serve."
Tipping warned that defeating Collins won't be easy because "we're about to see an ungodly amount of money spent in Maine, hundreds of millions of dollars more than ever before, and we're going to be flooded with ads."
Rather than being intimidated by the flood of corporate cash in the race, Tipping said that "we should get angrier every time we see, during the nightly news, or during a baseball game, or in the middle of a YouTube video, one of those ads, because we should remember that they were paid for by selling out Maine people."
Maine state Rep. Nina Milliken (D-16) said that Platner is "the type of leader that we don't see often enough," in part because "he understands that the path forward isn't about dropping to our knees for powerful people."
"At a moment when our democracy is under considerable strain," continued Milliken, "we need leaders who are willing to be clear about what's at stake. The answer to rising authoritarianism is not moderate half-measures or Band-Aids on severed limbs. It's building a movement that actually delivers for the people, one that's grounded in fairness, dignity, and economic justice."
While powerful national Democrats had backed Mills' candidacy in the primary, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chair Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) endorsed Platner shortly after the Maine governor suspended her campaign.
“After years of allowing Trump’s abuses of power, Senator Collins has never been more vulnerable,” they said, “and we will work with the presumptive Democratic nominee Graham Platner to defeat her.”
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
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The Palestinian Football Association appeals to the Court of Arbitration for Sport against FIFA’s decision not to sanction Israel
(www.thecanary.co)
The Palestinian Football Association lodged a formal appeal with the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) on the 20th of this month, having exhausted all available legal avenues within FIFA.
This comes as an escalatory move against FIFA’s decision not to impose any sanctions on the Israeli Football Association or its affiliated clubs in the West Bank settlements.
Suzan Shalabi, vice-president of the Palestinian Football Association, told the Canary that the Palestinian Association adheres to international laws and regulations, but considers FIFA’s decision to be completely unfair.
She added that the decision to appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport came after exhausting all procedures within the international football system.
Shalabi explained that the issue centres on the participation of clubs operating in illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank in Israeli domestic competitions, at a time when Palestinians consider these territories part of a future state, emphasising that the Palestinian Football Association is demanding an end to this football representation in Israeli Football Association tournaments.
FIFA — ‘unresolved legal status’
Last month, FIFA announced that it would not take any action against the Israeli Football Association or the clubs concerned, justifying this by what it described as the “unresolved legal status” of the West Bank under international law. This of course is not true. Israeli settlements’ legal status is ‘fully resolved.’ They are illegal under international law.
In a related context, Shalabi noted that Palestinian football faces a “dire situation”, particularly in the Gaza Strip, with the continued suspension of many domestic leagues, alongside growing organisational difficulties due to the fallout from the war in Gaza and the occupation’s violations in the West Bank.
In her remarks, Shalabi also noted that the visa issues faced by several sports delegations ahead of the FIFA Annual Congress in Canada had contributed to heightened tensions surrounding the international football scene in recent times.
This is the first time the Palestinian Football Association delegation has been barred from participating in the FIFA Congress simply because it was denied visas, reinforcing the theory that this is backed by Israel and with the approval of FIFA, which does not wish to be embarrassed once again before the international community regarding Israel’s flagrant violations against Palestinian sport.
Shalabi revealed that the Palestinian delegation had recently obtained Canadian visas to attend the FIFA Congress, and that the Federation’s President, Jibril Rajoub, would deliver a speech during the event in which he would outline all the aforementioned facts to the member associations.
Featured image via Amnesty
By Alaa Shamali
From Canary via This RSS Feed.
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The Met Police social media team cleverly decided to amplify a Tommy Robinson X post
(www.thecanary.co)
The famously smart and efficient Met Police took it on themselves to amplify a Tommy Robinson tweet for no reason anyone can discern. Far-right grifter Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) was waffling about the horrific Golders Green attack at the time.
The Met, in their infinite wisdom, decided to comment on 29 April. And in doing so they dignified Tiny Tel Aviv Tommy’s far-right rant.
The Met Police posted:
Our brave officers confronted a man they believed to be a terrorist, who refused to show his hands, who was violent, and who continued to pose a clear threat. Using only their training, courage and tasers, they detained him while he continued to try to attack and stab them. This took true courage.
Our brave officers confronted a man they believed to be a terrorist, who refused to show his hands, who was violent, and who continued to pose a clear threat. Using only their training, courage and tasers, they detained him while he continued to try to attack and stab them. This…
— Metropolitan Police (@metpoliceuk) April 29, 2026
Maybe it did “take courage”, as the Met said. But the question remains… why is an arm of the British state amplifying arguably the most prominent fascist in the land?
The move left many people stumped. Some people thought it was down to a similar far-right ideological lens:
The fact that @metpoliceuk is responding to a Nazi, racist, white supremacist Tommy Robinson shows how NAZI of an organization the Met Police actually is https://t.co/43MUisxwnw
— Tired Millennial (@_me_I_am_) April 30, 2026
Academic and campaigner Phil Proudfoot was similarly flabbergasted:
Sorry why is the Met replying to, and amplifying, Tommy Robinson!? https://t.co/zLqnIQAFjn
— Philip Proudfoot (@PhilipProudfoot) April 29, 2026
Other X users reported that the Met were replying to other far-right accounts — like @inevitablewest — which had been commenting on Golders Green:
The Met Police are now replying to every extreme hard right account on Twitter X to gain support for the questionable restraint tactics of their officers on the offender in the Golders Green stabbings
They’ve also responded to Tommy Robinson
I asked them directly – no reply https://t.co/7pfF2aByJW
— Stop The Bollocks with Mirabel (@MirabelTweets1) April 29, 2026
Another speculated that there might be a Tommy supporter on the comms team:
Sorry what the fuck is happening? Some social media manager is clearly a lover of the car right and wants to give em some attention https://t.co/qpz1sEdPn3
— solman (@ChatzSol) April 29, 2026
A ‘disturbing’ decision from the Met Police
Green Party candidate Jamie Strudwick called the move “disturbing”:
Why in the fuck is the Metropolitan Police amplifying a known criminal and far-right agitator? This is insanely disturbing and needs to be looked into. https://t.co/WiU20IoIRg
— Jamie Strudwick
(@JamieStrud) April 29, 2026
One X user pointed out Tommy’s thugs regularly fight the police. Usually at protests, when the fash can’t get hold of members of, for example, the marginalised groups they loathe:
@metpoliceuk why are you replying to a repeat offender whose ‘boys’ are regularly involved in violent attacks against the police? https://t.co/gYiDTtSCnC
— Greg Herriett (@greg_herriett) April 30, 2026
For the record, Tommy Robinson’s relationship to the police goes back a long way. He seems to spend half his time in a cell… As fact-checkers from Factually put it, he has a:
long, well-documented history of criminal convictions across violent, fraud, immigration and contempt-of-court offences, and his legal troubles have repeatedly intersected with his activism and media activities; these cases have produced both criminal sentences and political controversies at home and abroad.
All in all, not a bad day’s work for the Met. They’ve managed to alienate even more people than they usually do in the day-to-day grind of protecting property, harassing innocent people and generally hanging around the city like a bad smell.
Featured image via Novara
By Joe Glenton
From Canary via This RSS Feed.
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US Falls to Lowest-Ever Rank on Press Freedom Index as Trump Pours 'Gasoline on the Fire'
(www.commondreams.org)
Reporters Without Borders warned Thursday that the United States is facing a "press freedom crisis" as President Donald Trump and his subordinates wage an aggressive assault on the media that has included threats of treason charges and imprisonment against journalists.
The Trump administration's active disdain for press freedom has pushed the US to its lowest-ever rank on Reporters Without Borders' (RSF) World Press Freedom Index, which ranks countries based on numerous indicators including legal protections for journalists, reporter safety, and overall political hostility toward the press. The US landed at 64th out of 180 countries on the latest version of the index, falling seven spots compared to last year.
"The US has experienced a steady decline in the RSF Index over the past decade, but President Trump is pouring gasoline on the fire," said Clayton Weimers, executive director of RSF's North America section. "Trump and his administration have carried out a coordinated war on press freedom since the day he took office, and we will live with the consequences for years to come."
"The index shows that this decline is measurable and ongoing, but preventable," Weimers added. "Our message is clear: Protect legal rights, ensure accountability for attacks on media professionals, and support independent media to restore American press freedom."
RSF specifically cites Trump's efforts to dismantle public broadcasters, weaponization of government agencies to punish media outlets and figures critical of his administration, and lawsuits against "disfavored outlets" as factors contributing to the erosion of press freedom in the US.
The index also points to rising violence against journalists during Trump's second term in the White House. "According to the US Press Freedom Tracker," RSF notes, "there were more than 170 attacks on journalists in 2025, nearly double the previous year, driven by an increase in violence against journalists while covering protests and law enforcement activity."
The precipitous decline of press freedoms in the US comes in the context of growing attacks on and criminalization of journalism worldwide. For the first time in the 25-year history of RSF's index, more than half of the world's countries currently fall in the "difficult" or "very serious" categories for press freedoms.
The country that ranked last on the index for 2026 was Eritrea, a nation that is "sadly notorious for detaining journalists longer than any other country in the world," said RSF.
Norway ranked first on this year's index, with RSF praising the country's "robust" legal safeguards for press freedom, "vibrant" media market, and "extensive editorial independence" for publishing companies.
Anne Bocandé, RSF's editorial director, said that "current protection mechanisms" for journalism worldwide "are not strong enough" to withstand escalating attacks by "authoritarian states, complicit or incompetent political powers, predatory economic actors, and underregulated online platforms."
"How much longer will we tolerate the suffocation of journalism, the systematic obstruction of reporters and the continued erosion of press freedom?" Bocandé asked. "The ball is in the court of democracies and their citizens. It is up to them to stand in the way of those who seek to silence the press. The spread of authoritarianism isn’t inevitable."
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
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This article was originally published by Truthout on April 29, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license.
The CEO for the parent company of Politico reportedly told editorial staff at the outlet this week that they should wholly embrace the company’s corporate “values,” which include support for Israel, or find work elsewhere, new reporting reveals.
Jewish Insider reported on the meeting held this week between Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner and Politico staffers and executives.
He told staff on the call that “nobody should work for Axel Springer despite the essentials or in disagreement with one of the essentials.” Appearing to suggest that staff should find work elsewhere if they disagree, he went on to note that “there are many options where values do not play such a role — or where other values play a role.”
The CEO is referring to a set of corporate values, which it calls the “Essentials,” written by German founder Axel Springer in 1967. According to the company’s website, the second of the company’s five values is: “We support the right of existence of the State of Israel and oppose all forms of antisemitism.” Other values include that the company works to “uphold the principles of a free market economy.”
The meeting came after Politico staffers sent a letter on Friday to their new editor-in-chief and former Politico executive, Jonathan Greenberger, expressing concerns over Döpfner’s “repeated use of POLITICO to promote his political agenda.”
The letter, per Semafor, referred to two recent op-eds by Döpfner for Politico Magazine. One, in March, cheered on the U.S. and Israel’s war on Iran and called for European states to take action against the “terrorist state,” which he claims aims for “the destruction of Israel and all Jews,” as well as the destruction of the Western “way of life.”
The other, published in October, proclaims that “Europe Failed Israel.” In this op-ed, the CEO of Axel Springer — a media giant which owns numerous outlets including Business Insider, Morning Brew, and The Telegraph Media Group — repeated gripes about supposed antisemitic sentiment in Europe in response to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
In the meeting, Döpfner doubled down on his op-eds, per Jewish Insider, vowing to “write more in the future, not less.” The part of the letter that “honestly irritated me most,” he said, was that staff took issue with his assertion that Iran is the aggressor in the war.
“The wording is more a euphemism. We should rather say they’re terrorists, or they are mass murderers. That would be more appropriate, given the kind of spread of terrorism with Iranian proxies from Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthi and other terrorist organizations. I think to position that as an aggressor is a mild version of what it is,” Döpfner said, according to the recording of the call obtained by Jewish Insider.
When asked by a reporter how they, as journalists, could provide evidence of Iran being an “aggressor” seeking nuclear weapons, he said that they don’t have to prove things that are “so obvious, so proven for many times,” though even U.S. intelligence sources have found no evidence that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon.
He also said that “we think Zionism is, and that is the official definition, Israel’s right of self-determination and of its right to exist as a safe haven for Jews.” Questioning that ideology, he suggested, is to question the “very fundamental principles of our values” and should lead to a decision about whether “somebody who has so fundamentally different beliefs is really a good fit.”
Even despite such coercive statements, Döpfner said that signing on to the “essentials” is a “symbolic act” — but said that it’s most important that employees of the company have a personal attachment to those values.
Axel Springer properties have previously come under fire for adhering to the company’s staunchly pro-Israel stance. Shortly after Israel’s genocide first began in October 2023, European news aggregator Upday reportedly instructed workers to suppress news about Palestinian death tolls or casualties. At the time, Axel Springer denied the allegations, but pointed journalists to the company’s “essentials” backing Israel’s right to exist.
From The Real News Network via This RSS Feed.
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Minneapolis, MN – On April 25 Women Against Military Madness (WAMM) and the Climate Justice Committee (CJC) hosted a panel on the environmental consequences of U.S. imperialism.
The panel, held on the plaza right outside of May Day Books, took place a week after the People’s Earth Day March, and was an effort to deepen community understanding on the role of U.S. militarism in exacerbating climate change. April 25 was also Independent Bookstore Day so, in addition to the 30 people who attended, there was a steady stream of people who stopped by on their way in and out of the bookstore.
Liz McLister, representing WAMM’s Families Against Military Madness committee, opened the panel, “The United States boasts the largest military in human history, which is also the world’s largest polluter, gobbling up more petroleum than any institution on earth and emitting more greenhouse gases than some countries.”
McLister continued, “According to Brown University's Costs of War, the U.S. military drives the climate crisis in at least four ways. First by burning enormous amounts of fossil fuels. Second, through emissions-intensive military operations and installations. Third, through the destruction of soil, wetlands, forests and other natural areas that would otherwise absorb carbon. And fourth, by decimating civilian infrastructure and thereby leading to carbon-heavy reconstruction.”
Trish Knous, a member of WAMM’s Palestine Solidarity Committee and the CJC, spoke next about how U.S. imperialism has destroyed the environment in Palestine. “Today it [Gaza] is an area of flat, hard packed land and crushed cement. It is one of many villages, towns, and cities that no longer can support people's lives. When buildings are destroyed, wiring, insulation and asbestos release toxins into the air, land and water. Some of the bombs used penetrate the ground before exploding and release heavy metals such as uranium, lead and arsenic. Some of these metals decay slowly and will affect the composition of the soil and water for decades.”
The panel was closed out by Rebecca Scott from the CJC, who spoke about the environmental devastation from the current U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, “There were 14 million tons of carbon dioxide released in just the first 14 days alone.” She addressed “black rain,” the 14,000 buildings that have been demolished, and the impact of the U.S. bombing Iran’s oil infrastructure.
Panelists encouraged the attendees to protest against U.S. wars and to get involved.
#MinneapolisMN #MN #AntiWarMovement #Environment #WAMM #CJC
From Fight Back! News via This RSS Feed.
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Waltham Forest Independent Socialists putting community first as they stand in Cathall
(www.thecanary.co)
Cathall, London — A week and a half until local elections on 7 May, and communities across the country are seeing the widest array of candidates from across the political spectrum. With protest votes, apathy and anger becoming the main opposition to getting engagement from local voters, independent groups are making it clear they stand ready and committed to fill this void of neglect in their local communities.
One of those groups is Waltham Forest Independent Socialists, borne from the Your Party movement, who have been hard at work trying to bring people together and heal local divisions.
The Canary spoke to Connor Rosoman and Susan Catten who are standing for Cathall Ward. They told us about how it has been on the doors and how local people are feeling in light of the area’s traditional Labour heritage.
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Cathall candidate Catten: ‘A woman said, ‘at last, a party I can vote for”
First, Susan Catten told us how local people are feeling about politics and how engaged they are ahead of the locals:
Well, actually, I have found it quite invigorating. We’ve had a lot of support. People resonate with the issues, for example, over housing, about stronger licensing laws for landlords, the issue about the lack of council tax support.
These things resonate with people on the doorstep so actually, although we are quite a new organisation and we have to explain ourselves. I think one of the turning points for me was when we knocked on a door and a woman said, ‘at last a party I can vote for’, because it represented all the things that she felt needed doing.
It’s been quite exciting.
Rosoman added:
Yeah, that’s right. The campaign has been really positive at this stage. So, I mean, the context of it really is that, you know, In Cathall, previously, Labour won 70 plus percent of the vote. It’s a very, very strong Labour ward. But the mood on the doors has been, as you’d expect, one where loads of people are really questioning who they want to vote for this time around.
A lot of people that have voted Labour and been very, very disappointed in the current government. And there’s a bit of soul searching going on. There’s a lot of apathy. I think, especially because, like Cathall, it’s worth kind of saying, it’s pretty much the poorest ward in Waltham Forest.
Waltham Forest is an area with some of the highest wage inequality in London, so it’s an area of extremes, and Cathall’s definitely on the poorer end and it has a lot of social housing. So, there’s a lot of people that are very disappointed, very angry and are either looking for something different or they’re just kind of like ‘oh well they’re all the same, it’s not going to change anything’.
Sometimes it’s hard to break through that a lot of the time. But then we’ve been able to come along and we’ve been able to say ‘we’re very different that’s the whole reason we’re here and we’re also trying to build something that’s rooted in ordinary people standing up for what we see that we need around here’.
That’s really broken through with people and it’s meant that we’ve been able to have some really good conversations and the response has been really positive so far.
Cathall candidate Rosoman: ‘Even if people haven’t heard of us, they’re open to us’
We asked both Rosoman and Catten whether Reform are a threat in Cathall. They then told us how people are feeling on the doors about the prospect of a Reform councillor getting elected, with Rosoman saying:
We’ve not had a lot of opposition, Reform want, I think, they want to think that a ward like this is the sort of place that they could stand and win, but they’ve not really got any ground. It’s a very diverse kind of community, lots of immigrants and so on who can see right through that so the response that we’ve had if it’s not being just like ‘oh well you know, I don’t care they’re all the same I don’t want to talk’
It’s been really positive I would say that if you know even if people haven’t heard of us, they’re open to us and they’re following what we’re saying.
Catten agreed, telling us:
Some people might be looking at Reform, some people might be deadly afraid of them. Actually, some people have said they’ve had some Reform leaflets, and they’ve just torn them up or put them in the bin. I don’t think I’ve actually encountered anyone who admitted to saying they would vote reform.
I think, you know, when people open the door and you’re engaging with them, yeah, they might say they’re voting green, but they certainly are not saying they’re voting Reform.
That’s not to say they won’t get some votes. Of course they’ll pick up some votes. But, you know, I don’t get the feeling there’s a groundswell of support for them. So, I don’t see them as a real threat.
And to be quite honest, on the doorstep, I’d much rather concentrate on talking about what we can do in Cathall should we be elected.
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Catten: ‘People are tired of the same old, same old’
Discussing the appetite amongst voters for a different way of doing local politics, Catten told us:
It is a new way of doing politics because, you know, it’s not the same old, same old, is it? The thing is, people are tired of the same old, same old. And so our leaflets, our approach on the doorstep is about, look, give us a chance. You know, we’re a fresh organisation and we are committed.
And we’ve actually committed a policy of not taking the councillors’ allowances. That’s something no other party has done.
But actually, when we’ve had engagements with people, I think people are turning around. At the end of the day, we are a new organisation, but we are enthusiastic, we are committed, and I think that comes across well on the doorstep.
Going further, Rosoman also informed:
We’re registered as Waltham Forest Independent Socialists. What we’ve been saying is that we’re a new local political party. We’re rooted in these different community campaigns and local trade unionists and renters. And that does resonate with people.
I’ll use an example from yesterday that I was, like, so energised by. We were talking to this South Asian family who’d been clearly politicised over Palestine. We mentioned Starmer’s support for genocide as just an offhand thing. Their kids started chanting ‘free, free Palestine’. You could tell that they’d been out on the marches and stuff. And I think this is something that gets missed sometimes. Their politics didn’t end at Palestine. Even if Palestine was one of the things that was on their mind, they would be political people.
And I think that it’s hard not to, you know, look at what’s going on in the Middle East, in Gaza, and not draw, like, conclusions about everything else. And so, you know, they started then asking all these questions about, like, what would we do about, like, social behaviour and crime, homelessness, and housing and all of these sorts of things.
I think that people do join those dots. People see it from various starting points, don’t they? People are pissed off.
Rosoman then told us about how, like many across the country, local residents feel like they’ve been continually lied to and let down:
They build affordable housing which everyone knows is totally unaffordable, it’s only affordable to those with money, and the people that need affordable housing can’t get it. People really resonate on what we’ve said about the housing crisis, and it connects them to these issues of community as well. Like, people struggle to stay in the area, they struggle to stay around people they know, all of these things.
And we’ve connected that to two local community centres that have been closed in recent years. One of them just stands empty. There not being used for anything, and we’ve been talking about, well, why not reopen that, so that we can actually use it and it can be part of the community and it can keep people together and kind of re-establish some of that social life that’s just been kind of crushed and atomized over the last few years.
These sorts of points i think really resonate because we’re connected to the local area, we’re able to talk about these issues that directly connect to people’s lives, i think that has helped.
Rosoman: ‘They really bloody hate Kier Starmer’
Labour will undoubtedly face a kicking due to their cruel policies and continuation of Tory austerity across working class areas. Moreover, Rosoman has encountered considerable hostility towards Starmer specifically within the local community. This can only underscore how unhappy people in London are with the Westminster political elite:
A lot of people are going to vote against Labour not just because of the local council but because they really bloody hate Kier Starmer, and that is also perfectly valid and it’s important.
If we want to send a message to Labour you know on the national level well, seeing them lose all these seats in the council elections is one of the ways that we can do that. That’s been something that’s really connected with people, so I wouldn’t say that it’s like just the local thing, but I think that we’re very well placed being the ‘new kids on the block’, as independent socialists, that are able to really connect to that.
Speaking of Your Party and local engagement in active campaigning, Rosoman told us:
We’ve been a really strong proto-branch, I think, from the beginning. And our election launch campaign, even, you know, a few months ago, had, like, 65 people present. And then, since then, last weekend, just as a standard weekend canvassing session, we had 11 people come out. A couple of weeks before that we did this mega canvas and we had 30 plus people come out so you know we’ve had a real groundswell of people that are keen on doing this.
We’ve got like a real base of people on the ground that are really outstanding local activists and that want to build something and are seeing this election as a chance to kind of plant this flag you know and so it’s not just because of the hard work of a few I mean it’s been hard work I don’t want to understate that but it’s definitely been this huge collective effort and the fact that we’ve really had something like fireball on the ground that has allowed us to really get around.
You know, we’ve hit every door in the ward now going back over roads and trying to get people that didn’t answer last time and that sort of thing.
And locally, there’s like a really strong tradition of organising. Walthamstow in 2024 was, you know, the site of those like famous pictures, right, when the far right racist riots were happening. 10,000 people from the local community turned out on Walthamstow High Street to prevent them showing up and that was just an out of the woodwork, groundswell of people.
Those are the traditions that I think we have in this local area and so, people will show up and they will fight.
The left vote is at risk of a split due to the Green Party’s national pledge to stand in every ward. Subsequently, this led to backsliding on electoral agreements made with the local Green party in Cathall. However, Catten emphasised how local people seem to have had enough of political parties and are particularly resonating with independent politics:
There are a couple of Green Party candidates, but they’re only paper candidates. They’re not really standing with any policies.
I think when we’ve gone out, our leaflets have been very well received because they’re quite solid. They talk about what we want to do, what we’re aiming for and what we stand for, and that’s what I think is doing us favours on the doorstep. People are actually responding.
Yeah, there are some people who say, ‘oh, well, you know. you’re all the same’, or ‘I’m going to spoil my ballot paper’.
Nevertheless, Waltham Forest Independent Socialists continue to push forward, as Rosoman explains while describing his conversations with local voters:
The point that we’ve been making on the doors is that the Greens are basically letting us have this ward. They’re not doing a campaign. We’re knocking, you know, we’re doing this big campaign, knocking the doors. You know, the main place to put your vote, if you want to stick it to Labour, is with us. If you’re in Cathall, in many other places, even our supporters are going to be working for Greens.
But here in Cathall, the only place that we are standing in the borough, we’re the campaign on the ground, and that actually really do care.
‘I’m looking forward to having some tense conversations with Calvin Bailey, if I win’
If elected on May 7th, Rosoman outlined his first priorities and areas he intends to specifically focus on in Cathall:
Yeah, well, I mean… I think I’ve mentioned a couple of these things – community centres and the Queen Elizabeth Jubilee Centre. It’s one of the things we’ve really tried to point out. But also, as I say, this rent issue is hugely important. And we’ve got this specific issue in Walthamstow, where the council has announced a £30 million overspend – they’re looking to raise council tax and cut services. It’s the same picture you see everywhere, right?
I think that because we’ve been able to build a groundswell of support on the ground and so on, we’ll be in a good position, if we win, to come in and start speaking up about that immediately. That’s not something you can solve overnight, obviously, but the point we’ve been making is that every time you’re faced with a cut, you’re faced with a choice: do you just implement it, or do you try and fight it? And you can’t just fight it on your own – councils themselves have limited powers to do that – but we’re not coming at it as just me and Susan Catten and the other person standing in the ward. We’re coming at it with connections to local trade unions behind us.
Because we’ve got all of that behind us, I think we’re really in a position to speak against that, to connect with other people throughout London who are facing the same sorts of things, and to try and build a movement around it. And Starmer is going to be in such a weak position, if he even survives these local elections, so there’s a time to put demands on the national government for things like funding to councils. The government nationally will be in the weakest position they’ve been in yet coming out of these local elections, and that’s the time to keep up the fight, rather than say, ‘we’ve just been elected, so we can take a breather.’
Yeah, I’m looking forward to having some tough conversations with Calvin Bailey, if I win.
We at the Canary recognise that growing appetite for a new way of doing politics in our communities. After all, it is surely the only way to ensure that local people are truly at the heart of local policy.
We wish both Susan Catten and Connor Rosoman the best of luck for 7 May and urge local voters to choose candidates who actively show their commitment to really challenge the status quo.
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