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While Elon Musk claims to be departing from DOGE, the people he tapped to execute his vision for the federal government largely remain in place. Much of DOGE’s remaining staff and leadership, such as figures like Antonio Gracias, maintain extensive ties to Musk’s corporate empire, with many of them having come to DOGE directly from one of Musk’s companies. Research by the Revolving Door Project has found that at least 46 former or current DOGE members have substantial and direct ties to Elon Musk.

DOGE isn’t going anywhere, according to the Trump administration’s own officials. Russell Vought seems to be the new boss in town, but he and Musk’s visions have been aligned from the start. Musk endorsed Vought’s view of the unconstitutionality of the Impoundment Control Act and said that DOGE would work “closely with the White House Office of Management and Budget” in a Wall Street Journal op-ed all the way back in November.

In response to Musk’s departure from DOGE, Revolving Door Project Executive Director Jeff Hauser released the following statement: “There is no daylight between Elon Musk and Russ Vought on the aim of greenlighting corporate abuse, as anyone can see from their joint destruction of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. DOGE’s Musk-tied staffers have already burrowed into the government, and having a new boss who has coordinated extensively with Musk isn’t likely to change their actual actions much at all. Musk’s departure obscures but does not actually change the continuity of DOGE’s staff and mission to destroy everything that protects the public from the depredations of the most rapacious oligarchs.”

The Trump administration announced Wednesday, May 28, that it plans to overturn a Department of Labor rule allowing managers of private retirement plans to consider environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) factors when making investment decisions and voting on shareholder proposals. Lawyers with the Department of Labor informed the US Court of Appeals that it would engage in new rulemaking this spring in order to rescind the rule.

In response to the news, Ben Cushing, director of the Sustainable Finance campaign at the Sierra Club, issued the following statement:

“Climate change is a growing threat to workers’ retirement security. Dismantling safeguards for responsible investing is a dangerous disservice to the millions of Americans saving for the future. Retirement plan managers should be empowered to consider all relevant financial risks — including those stemming from the climate crisis — not be forced to ignore them. This is yet another example of political interference by Republicans that puts ideology and special interests ahead of evidence, weakening investor protections at a time when stronger guardrails are urgently needed. As federal officials roll back protections for private retirement plans, state and local leaders must affirm that public pension funds should proactively address climate and sustainability risks.”

BACKGROUND

In March 2023, the Sierra Club applauded former President Biden for issuing his first presidential veto to reject an attempt by House and Senate Republicans to use the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to undo the rule.

In February 2023, the Sierra Club joined dozens of investors, workers, and advocacy groups in sending a series of letters to House and Senate lawmakers opposing Republican attempts to circumvent the DOL rule.

In November 2022, the Sierra Club applauded the DOL for restoring the rule, saying the decision “lays the groundwork for future rulemakings that establish affirmative duties of retirement fund fiduciaries to manage climate and other systemic risks.”

In December 2021, during the DOL public comment period, the Sierra Club joined the Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund and a dozen advocacy groups in showcasing support for the proposed rule.

Lawyers for Mahmoud Khalil today submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking records of the Trump administration’s communications with the anti-Palestinian organizations that targeted him prior to his arrest. Mr. Khalil remains detained in Louisiana more than two months after federal agents abducted him, acting on information and misinformation that appears to have originated in the network of shady pro-Israel propaganda websites, think tanks, and front groups.

These outfits – which have long worked together to dox, smear, and harrass their political opponents – have recently gained unprecedented influence and access as the Trump administration wages a campaign to deport students and academics in retaliation for speaking out against Israel’s genocide in Gaza. All of the known cases of students and scholars persecuted by ICE because of their political views on Palestine – Mr. Khalil, Dr. Badar Khan Suri, Rümeysa Öztürk, Mohsen Mahdawi, Momodou Taal, and Efe Ercelik – were first targeted by the anti-Palestinian groups.

“For years, these anti-Palestinian doxxing groups have served as agents of repression, weaponizing inflammatory rhetoric and conflating criticism of Israel with hate speech in order to chill activism for Palestinian rights,” said Ayla Kadah, an attorney and Justice Fellow at the Center for Constitutional Rights. “Now, evidence seems to point to the Trump administration colluding with them as they escalate their crusade to target noncitizens for detention and deportation, with Mahmoud Khalil serving as their latest target. Mahmoud deserves answers, and so does the public.”

Canary Mission, an anonymous, secretly funded doxxing site, posted a profile of Khalil in January, and later that month, Betar USA – an affiliate of Betar, an openly racist ultrazionist movement – included him on its now-removed “deport list” and posted on X that ICE was “aware of his home address and whereabouts.” Betar said it had shared names and information with Trump administration officials, including Secretary of State Rubio. On March 7th, the day before Khalil’s arrest, Documenting Jew Hatred on Campus – whose advisory board includes Shai Davidai, a Columbia professor suspended last year for harassing staff – called for his deportation in a post on X and tagged Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

These groups claimed Mr. Khalil was in the country on a student visa, when, in fact, he is a legal permanent resident and green card holder married to a U.S. citizen. Tellingly, federal agents had the same misinformation when they arrested him, wrongly stating that his student visa had been revoked.

The FOIA request seeks all records of communications between ICE, the DOJ, the DOS, and DHS and the anti-Palestinian groups: Canary Mission, Betar, Documenting Jew Hatred On Campus, Columbia Alumni for Israel, Middle East Forum, Shirion Collective, Capital Research Center, and CAMERA. The FOIA also seeks any communications that the agencies have had with individuals that are reported to have targeted, doxxed, and called for or sought to facilitate the deportation of Khalil and other pro-Palestinian students.

The request was submitted by the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is part of the legal team representing Mr. Khalil in his case challenging the constitutionality of his arrest. In that case, he is also represented by Dratel & Lewis, CLEAR, Van Der Hout LLP, Washington Square Legal Services, the ACLU, the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), the ACLU of Louisiana, and the ACLU of New Jersey.

For more information, please see the case page.

The daughter of a Seattle woman, Juliana Leon, who died during the 2021 Pacific Northwest heat wave, today brought a wrongful death suit alleging that Big Oil companies negligently caused her mother’s death. Aaron Regunberg, accountability project director for Public Citizen’s Climate Program, issued the following statement:

“Lethal climate disasters are the foreseeable, and foreseen, consequences of specific actions by fossil fuel corporations, CEOs, and boards of directors. They caused the climate crisis and deceived the public about the dangerousness of their products in order to block and delay solutions that could prevent heat deaths like Juliana’s. These fossil fuel actors should be held accountable to the victims of their lethal conduct, and this wrongful death suit provides a compelling new approach for climate victims moving forward.

“Wrongful death suits provide private remedies. But Big Oil companies have wronged the public, too, which is why this suit may also help lay the groundwork for another approach to climate accountability: criminal homicide prosecutions. The purpose of criminal law enforcement is to deter future crimes, promote public safety, punish wrongdoers, and encourage the convicted to pursue less harmful practices. All of these public safety goals apply to Big Oil’s continuing contributions to climate change, and prosecutors across the country should take note of this new wrongful death suit and carefully consider how the climate effects their constituents are experiencing fit the criminal laws they are charged with enforcing.”

The Supreme Court today severely limited the scope of the nation’s landmark environmental law in a case that could give new life to a Utah oil train project.

For nearly 50 years the National Environmental Policy Act has required federal agencies to analyze the potential environmental harms of a proposed project, engage with communities that could be affected and disclose those potential harms to the public before approval. It also gave the public legal recourse to sue federal agencies if they overlooked important environmental harms.

Today's ruling relieves federal agencies of the obligation to review all foreseeable environmental harms and grants them more leeway to decide what potential environmental harms to analyze, despite what communities may think is important. It tells agencies that they can ignore certain foreseeable impacts just because they are too remote in time or space. And even if the agency makes the wrong call about how to draw that line, the court has now said that the agency gets deference.

“Today’s decision undermines decades of legal precedent that told federal agencies to look before they leap when approving projects that could harm communities and the environment,” said Earthjustice Senior Vice President of Program Sam Sankar. “The Trump administration will treat this decision as an invitation to ignore environmental concerns as it tries to promote fossil fuels, kill off renewable energy, and destroy sensible pollution regulations.”

The case concerned a Utah industry coalition and a Utah railway company that asked the Supreme Court to overturn a federal appeals court decision tossing out the approval of an 88-mile oil railway. The railway’s purpose is to transport waxy crude oil from the Uinta Basin in northeastern Utah through the Colorado Rockies to Gulf Coast refineries.

“This disastrous decision to undermine our nation’s bedrock environmental law means our air and water will be more polluted, the climate and extinction crises will intensify, and people will be less healthy. It guarantees that bureaucrats can put their heads in the sand and ignore the harm federal projects will cause to ecosystems, wildlife and the climate,” said Wendy Park, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “What it doesn’t guarantee is the ill-conceived Uinta Basin Railway’s construction. The last thing we need is another climate bomb on wheels that the communities along its proposed route say they don't want. We’ve been fighting this project for years, and we’ll keep fighting to make sure this railway is never built.”

The ruling means the federal agency responsible for approving the railway can ignore the risks of increased oil extraction in the Basin and the potential harm from refining to Gulf communities in Texas and Louisiana. Even if these harms are inevitable, communities and courts have no power to compel the agency to consider them.

Today’s decision comes amid broader confusion surrounding how government agencies will assess future projects. In February the Trump administration rescinded NEPA regulations dating to the Carter era, setting the process for project approvals back half a century.

Additionally, the Trump administration — with help from Elon Musk’s so-called Department for Government Efficiency — has gutted the agencies responsible for analyzing the harm industry projects could cause to the environment and communities.

“The appeals court had ruled that the federal agency that approved the railway failed in its obligations to consider the regional consequences of massively increased oil extraction on the Uinta Basin, the increased air pollution for the communities in Texas and Louisiana where the oil would be refined, and the global climate consequences,” said Dr. Brian Moench, president of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment. “The Supreme Court’s ruling will allow all these consequences to unfold without meaningful restraint. This court has made a name for itself making rulings that mock science and common sense and fail to protect the common good. This unfortunate ruling fits that same pattern.”

“This decision is terrible news for the entire Colorado River Basin,” said John Weisheit, conservation director at Living Rivers. “To avoid the pending collapse of the Colorado River, we have to immediately reduce water consumption by 25% and cut carbon emissions by 50% by the end of this decade. Our federal decision-makers must deny any project that counters these objectives. The Uinta Basin Railway unquestionably falls into that category and should never see the light of day.”

“Regrettably, the Supreme Court has scored one for the oil companies who don’t want you to look too closely at the harm their product will do to Black and Brown communities in Cancer Alley,” said Nathaniel Shoaff, Sierra Club senior attorney. “Our bedrock environmental laws, like NEPA, are meant to ensure people are protected from corporate polluters. Fossil fuel infrastructure projects do not exist in a vacuum and have far-reaching impacts on communities, especially those on the frontlines of climate change or those who face serious health harms from increased pollution. Today’s decision will undoubtedly help the fossil fuel industry, but Sierra Club will not stop fighting projects that will have devastating consequences for people and the planet.”

“The government has an obligation to ‘look before it leaps’ when it comes to major federal actions. At heart, the law says we have to take a hard look at reasonably foreseeable consequences — and that law has recently been under increasing attack as business interests try to sacrifice our country’s irreplaceable natural treasures,” said Katherine Merlin, staff attorney for WildEarth Guardians. “Today’s decision is a devastating loss for our wild places, our wild rivers, and for all of the human and non-human communities that depend on a clean environment and stable climate. This is another step toward returning the U.S. legal system to the early 20th century, when the rampant and heedless destruction of entire ecosystems and species happened without much notice.”

Earthjustice and the Center of Biological Diversity represented Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, the Sierra Club, Living Rivers and WildEarth Guardians. Eagle County was represented by Kaplan Kirsch LLP and Willy Jay of Goodwin Procter LLP.

The Center for Biological Diversity has sued the U.S. Air Force and Fish and Wildlife Service for failing to release public records detailing the Trump administration’s plans to build landing pads for SpaceX rockets in sensitive marine habitat in the Pacific Ocean.

In March the Air Force announced plans to begin reviewing the potential environmental harms of landing dozens of commercial rockets in the Johnston Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, which lies within the protected Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument. This project is part of an Air Force program called Rocket Cargo Vanguard intended to experiment with the use of commercial rockets for military logistics and materiel transport.

“Landing massive rockets in one of the most isolated and valuable habitats for seabirds would be as destructive and irresponsible as it sounds. That’s exactly why the military and SpaceX are trying to keep this project’s details hidden from the public,” said Maxx Philips, Hawai‘i and Pacific Islands director at the Center. “This project threatens to destroy a site that millions of seabirds need for nesting and overwintering, all in the name of military logistics and Elon Musk’s profit.”

The Johnston Atoll National Wildlife Refuge and the surrounding Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument protect vital nesting habitat for seabirds, shallow coral reefs and marine habitat for endangered species like green sea turtles and Hawaiian monk seals.

This plan would allow SpaceX and the U.S. Space Force to land up to 10 rockets per year over the next four years on Johnston Atoll.

The military is preparing a shortened version of an environmental analysis required by the National Environmental Policy Act to assess potential harms from the project, including the harms that rocket landings could have on fish habitat and migratory birds. However, there is a history of inadequate environmental review and recurring harm to sensitive and ecologically critical habitat on national wildlife refuge lands from SpaceX’s activities, including several explosions.

On April 20, 2023, a SpaceX rocket exploded next to the Boca Chica Wildlife Refuge in south Texas. The accident ignited a 3.5 acre brush fire and hurled concrete and metal into tidal flats. All shorebird nests surveyed after the accident showed damage or missing eggs, consistent with being hit with debris.

The Center responded by suing the Federal Aviation Administration for allowing the expansion of such operations without more detailed environmental study.

In April the Center submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for public records documenting the Trump administration’s plans to construct and operate the two Johnston Atoll landing pads. The requested records would help the public understand the project’s scope and whether the government’s environmental study adequately examines the project’s risks.

Since the start of Trump’s second term, the Center has pursued numerous strategic Freedom of Information Act lawsuits seeking public records about the administration’s destructive anti-environment agenda. The records sought include emails and other documents detailing plans to accelerate logging in national forests, carry out mass firings and dismantle protections for the nation’s wetlands.

The lawsuit was filed late Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii. The Center expects to receive records from the suit in the next two to three months.

Today, the Supreme Court of the United States overturned a D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals decision to require further analysis before permitting a railroad line in Utah that would carry billions of gallons of oil because the Surface Transportation Board failed to analyze and disclose the pollution impacts of refining all that oil in Gulf Coast communities in Louisiana. The original suit was brought by environmental and community groups, including Sierra Club.

The decision by the Supreme Court will narrow the scope of federal environmental reviews of fossil fuel infrastructure projects under the National Environmental Policy Act.

In response, Sierra Club Senior Attorney Nathaniel Shoaff issued the following statement:

“Regrettably, the Supreme Court has scored one for the oil companies who don’t want you to look too closely at the harm their product will do to Black and Brown communities in Cancer Alley. Our bedrock environmental laws, like NEPA, are meant to ensure people are protected from corporate polluters. Fossil fuel infrastructure projects do not exist in a vacuum and have far-reaching impacts on communities, especially those on the frontlines of climate change or those who face serious health harms from increased pollution. Today’s decision will undoubtedly help the fossil fuel industry, but Sierra Club will not stop fighting projects that will have devastating consequences for people and the planet.”

Demand Progress commissioned a national poll of 1,200 registered voters to test the resonance of the “abundance agenda” being promoted as a potential policy and political refocus for the Democratic party. The objective of the poll was to compare support for abundance arguments to a prominent competing framework: populist arguments and policy objectives.

• Read relevant poll questions and results

The results of the poll clearly showed that, while there was some support for elements of the abundance arguments, a focus on populist economic concerns – corporate and monopoly power, money in politics, and corruption – consistently resonated significantly more broadly and deeply, while fomenting less opposition, than abundance arguments. This was particularly true of Democratic voters — and, crucially, was also true of self-identified moderate and independent voters.

“To get out of the political wilderness, and win over not just Democrats but also independent and moderate voters, policymakers need to loudly state their case for helping middle- and working-class Americans. What these voters want is clear: a populist agenda that takes on corporate power and corruption,” said Emily Peterson-Cassin, corporate power director at Demand Progress. “The stakes are too high for Democrats to fixate on a message that only appeals to a minority of independent and Democratic voters.”

In one tranche of questions respondents were presented with one argument labeled the “abundance” argument and one labeled the “populist” argument. Respondents could choose to indicate a favorable or unfavorable response to either, both, or neither of the arguments.

The poll showed that 55.6% of voters said they would be more (26.3% much more) likely to vote for a candidate for Congress or President who made the populist argument. Meanwhile 43.5% said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate (12.6% much more) who made the “abundance” argument.

Republicans were much more likely to react positively to a candidate making the abundance argument (58.8% more likely to vote for candidate), while Democrats and independents were less moved to support such an argument (32.6% and 40.6% respectively). Democrats and independents reacted more positively to a candidate making the populist argument (72.5% of 55.4% respectively) compared to 39.6% of Republicans.

The poll went on to ask respondents to choose whether they agreed more with the populist argument or the abundance argument and found that a plurality of 42.8% said they agreed more with the populist argument while 29.2% chose the abundance argument. Once again, Democrats and independents particularly favored the populist argument (59.0% to 16.8% among Democrats and 44.3% to 28.4% among independents) while Republicans favored the abundance argument (43.7% to 25.0%).

Even more striking were the results to a separate tranche of questions wherein the poll asked how different ways of a candidate addressing how best to “make the government and economy do a better job serving working and middle-class Americans” would affect voting choices. (Unlike in the above set of questions, these arguments were not actively described to respondents as “populism” or “abundance.”)

A significant majority (81.6%) of respondents responded positively to a populism-aligned argument, “get money out of politics, break up corporate monopolies, and fight corruption,” while only 8.4% said it would make them less likely to vote for such a candidate. Among independents those numbers were even stronger with 84.8% responding positively and 8.5% reacting negatively. Even self-described moderates and conservatives had strong net positive responses to the populist-aligned argument (81.5%-8.3% for moderates and 74.3%-13.6% for conservatives).

When presented with a candidate offering an abundance-aligned argument, “reduce regulations that hold back the government and private sector from taking action,” only 47.3% of respondents said that would make them more likely to vote for such a candidate while 33.8% said they would be less likely. Even among Republicans, the abundance-aligned argument performs somewhat less favorably than the populist-aligned argument — while Democrats and independents respond much less favorably to the abundance argument than to the populist-aligned argument.

A synthesis of the two arguments had a level of support that fell between those of “populism” and “abundance” — with 72.2% reacting positively and 13.5% reacting negatively to a synthesis.

Longtime pollster Dan Cohen, an advisor on the project noted, “the voters are demonstrating that they understand the problem with quite a traditional view of American politics and economics: that there is too much power and influence in corporate hands and everyday Americans aren’t getting their fair share. Democrats would be wise to listen to the voters and respond directly to those views with their rhetoric and actions.”

The poll of 1,200 registered voters across the US, was conducted on the YouGov platform over the dates of May 8 and May 13, 2025. It has a margin of error of +/- 3.09%.

Amid new reports that public approval of the Democratic Party has reached an all-time low, two national organizations – Progressive Democrats of America and RootsAction – have sent a petition with more than 1,500 individual comments from across the country to Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin.

On Friday (May 30), the DNC’s powerful executive committee will convene. That meeting, in Little Rock, Ark., will be the executive committee’s first since mid-December.

The petition, with 7,000 signers, warns that “the Democratic Party has failed to confront the urgency of this perilous moment for the future of the United States.” The petition contends that the DNC, the governing body of the Democratic Party, “should convene an emergency meeting of all its members – fully open to the public – as soon as possible. Waiting until the next regular meeting in late summer would be irresponsible and unacceptable.”

The petition adds: “Business as usual must give way to truly bold action that mobilizes against the autocracy that Donald Trump, Elon Musk and their cronies are further entrenching every day. The predatory, extreme and dictatorial actions of the Trump administration call for an all-out commensurate response, which so far has been terribly lacking from the Democratic Party.”

The “Emergency Petition to the Democratic National Committee” with signers and their comments is posted here.

Click here to sign up for full livestream coverage of the DNC’s executive committee meeting on Friday, provided by RootsAction’s Progressive Hub.

As the slaughter in Gaza lurches on, Israel may have implausibly reached a "sadistic new phase of the genocide" when one of their relentless air strikes killed nine of the ten children - ages 6 months to 12 years old - of Palestinian pediatrician Dr. Alaa al-Najjar as she worked at Nasser Hospital to save other small victims of Israel's "doctrine of devastation." As the atrocities mount, so does the global consensus. Dr. Mads Gilbert: "Horror of all horrors. This is beyond everything."

The death toll in Gaza has now surpassed 54,000 Palestinians, including over 17,400 children. Untold thousands more remain missing and presumed dead beneath rubble, and Israel continues to kill at least 30 Gazan children a day, roughly one every 45 minutes, in the brutal ground and aerial onslaughts of Operation Gideon's Chariots. Since Israel shattered the ceasefire in March, nearly 616,000 people have been displaced, often multiple times, and increasingly in the last month or so as Israel has ceaselessly ramped up attacks on both the only shelters left and on allegedly "safe" zones. "They call places safe, then attack them," said one Gazan whose sibling had just died in a "safe" zone duly bombed. "I'd rather stay home with my family - at least we all die together."

In the first months after Oct. 7, Israel also adopted a policy of "non-operational" - ie no military rationale - systematic destruction of Gaza, a strategic move to “flatten the area" to lay the groundwork for ethnic cleansing and render impossible "the return of people to these spaces... We are here forever." Often, the IDF destroyed 90% of neighborhoods by bombing, bulldozing or burning - a well- documented "ritualized demolition" "to make Gaza unlivable for generations to come." "In the end, we're not fighting an army, we're fighting an idea," said one commander. "I want to make the idea unviable." At the same time, a report by Breaking the Silence found Israeli soldiers were told there are basically no civilians: "You’re shooting at anything that moves - and also at what isn’t moving."

Thus, when "no place is safe," the grim images and grisly headlines: "Flesh Everywhere," "Family Burned Alive," "Gaza Is the Slaughterhouse," the bombing of a shelter that "Leaves Children Charred." More than 700 Palestinians killed in one week, more than 200 in 48 hours. A 12-year-old shot and killed, a four-year-old decapitated, a 12-year-old in a wheelchair incinerated. A packed school-turned-shelter in Gaza City bombed, killing dozens of people, mostly children sleeping; one photo showed the body of a baby girl, pulled from the rubble in her pajamas. As usual, the Israeli army claimed the school was "used by the terrorists," but offered no evidence. And increasingly, their actions, and claims, are decried as "barbaric."

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz charges ongoing attacks on civilians "can no longer be justified as a fight against Hamas terrorism." The UN's Francesca Albanese calls the new aid plan "ridiculously inadequate, like a sadistic taunt"; 11 NGOs call it a "politicized sham” and “blueprint for ethnic cleansing.” Even Israeli leaders are finally speaking out. Retired general and opposition leader Yair Golan argued "a sane country" doesn't fight against civilians or "kill babies as a pastime," which the blood-soaked Netanyahu called "despicable anti-Semitic blood libel." Former Israeli P.M Ehud Olmert dismissed such claims of anti-Semitism by "a chorus of thugs" in the face of Israel's "war of extermination (with) indiscriminate, unrestrained, brutal, and criminal killing of civilians."

"How many dead Palestinian children is enough?" asks Gary Smith, of an "ethnic cleansing, pure and simple" that has been Israel's goal since 1948's Nakba. "As a Jew, I am well aware that Israel has been systematically killing children for 77 years," he writes. "What is new is the world watching children blown to literal pieces, and having limbs torn off by United States missiles." Echoing him, Action on Armed Violence notes death in Gaza "has become so routine that even its most obscene iterations barely make the news." But the airstrike that killed Dr. Alaa al-Najjar’s children "broke through the veil" because it makes the "moral vacancy" of Israel’s murderous failures - framed as a campaign to dismantle Hamas, excused by the logic of impunity, impossible to ignore: "This is not just poor strategy. It is moral self-immolation."

Early last Friday morning, Dr. Alaa al-Najjar, 35, said goodbye to her 10 children before leaving their house in Khan Younis to go to work at Nasser Medical Complex; her youngest, six-month-old Sayden, was still asleep. Like every day, she worried about leaving them home, but felt compelled to do what she could to help the ceaseless stream of victims; her husband Hamdi al-Najjar, also a doctor, dropped her off. He'd just returned home, and she was working in the emergency ward, as the strike hit their house. When she heard of the blast, she ran to the site to see rescue workers pulling the small charred bodies of her children from the flames and rubble. They found seven bodies: Rakan, Ruslan, Jubran, Eve, Revan, Luqman, Sidra. Two remained trapped: The oldest, 12-year-old Yahya, and the youngest, Sayden.

Her husband lay heavily bleeding on the road with chest and skull fractures; at the hospital, he remains on a ventilator in critical condition. Of her 10 children, only her 11-year-old son Adam survived; he went bloodied into surgery, one arm hanging by a thread. A distraught relative rushed to the hospital. "Enough!" she said. "Have mercy on us! We plead to all countries." An IDF statement said "an aircraft struck a number of suspects" and "the claim (of) harm to uninvolved civilians is under review." Dr. Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian physician who worked in Gaza and documented the losses - "dear colleagues" killed "in cold blood," newborns dead without oxygen, snipers shooting through windows, Al-Shifa Hospital become "a graveyard" of patients, staff, refugees - called the murder of Dr. al-Najjar's children "a complete moral collapse." "Do more," he said in a somber video. "Gaza is burning." This week, colleagues at Nasser Hospital said Dr. Alaa al-Najjar is back at work.

— (@)

Still held in a Louisiana detention center for the crime of denouncing the slaughter and starvation of Gazan children, Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil told a judge Thursday his deportation would likely mean death for him and his family. His testimony came hours after Khalil finally got to hold his one-month-old son Deen for the first time - in a surreal victory, without plexiglass - after a legal battle against "the calculated cruelty" of a malignant regime that had argued a father-son meeting would be "unsafe."

An Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent born in a refugee camp in Syria, Khalil became a legal permanent resident of the U.S. and earned his master's degree in international studies at Columbia last year before becoming the first Gaza protester arrested under a promised crackdown. Abducted in March by ICE and charged under an obscure provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act, he was alleged by Marco Rubio to pose "adverse foreign policy consequences" despite virtually no evidence and no charge of a crime. One of the few protesters still in detention - several others were released as their cases play out - he missed the April birth of his first child - request denied - and his graduation this week while his case winds its way through immigration and federal courts.

Kahlil's attorneys have persistently argued their client is the target of "egregious government misconduct," from his arrest without a warrant by masked, unnamed ICE agents who falsely claimed he was "a flight risk" to ongoing efforts by regime lawyers to slow down his habeas corpus case against deportation before an independent federal judge while fast-tracking court proceedings before government-beholden immigration judges to remove him. The entire so-called case against him, argues one of his lawyers, is simply "an unsuccessful attempt to silence people who speak up in defense of Palestinian human rights,” part of the vast and illegal overreach of a regime that's "presented no evidence in support of its baseless rhetoric.”

At Thursday's hearing, Judge Jamee Comans denied a motion by his attorneys to end deportation proceedings and sought to determined if he's entitled to relief from that threat, possibly through asylum. Testifying for two hours, Khalil described his early life, journey to Columbia and campus activism as a prominent pro-Palestinian voice at last year's protests. "I spent a good part of my life fleeing from harm and advocating for the marginalized," he said. "That is what I was protesting, that is what I will continue to protest. This is what everyone should protest.” He also said "having been falsely labelled a terrorist or Hamas supporter (has) put a target on my back wherever I go." His deportation, he fears, would lead to kidnapping, assassination, torture or targeting of his family.

His attorneys agreed Khalil's "life is at stake" if he was deported to "incredibly volatile" Syria or Algeria, where "Israel has a well-known history of assassinating pro-Palestinian intellectuals." They called experts on the Middle East and North Africa to verify the risks he'd face due to his visibility and false charges against him; they also had Columbia faculty and students, some Jewish, attest to Khalil's character as "an upstanding, principled and well-respected member of our community," "a diplomat in every sense," "a peacekeeper." Finally, they offered new video evidence contradicting claims Khalil was a "flight risk"; at his arrest, he made no attempt to flee or repel the thugs confronting him. Comans didn't issue a ruling but gave lawyers until June 2 to submit closing arguments.

Attending the hearing were Khalil's wife Dr. Noor Abdalla, a dentist and U.S. citizen, and Deen; both traveled nearly 1,500 miles so Deen could meet his father. In a grim microcosm embodying MAGA's hateful, stupid, knee-jerk sadism, for days the acting head of ICE in New Orleans had denied the request for a family visit, arguing it would be "unsafe" to allow them "into a secured part of the facility” because, you know, possible smuggled binkies. Wednesday night, Kahlil's lawyers had to take the inanely spiteful issue to Michael Farbiarz, a federal judge in New Jersey reviewing their appeal to Louisiana's approval for deportation; after Farbiarz ruled yes of course ICE goons must allow it, the goons tried to insist - sociopaths gonna sociopath - father and son be separated by a Plexiglass barrier.

His lawyers rightly blasted the move as "further evidence of the retaliatory motive behind Mr Khalil’s arrest and faraway detention.” They also noted his wife and son were "the farthest thing from a security risk," called Khalil's chance to "hold his newborn child for the first time (a) bittersweet moment," and asserted how sad and ridiculous it was "we had to go to court to get that." Ultimately, happily, they did; a few hours later, in the courtroom, every time the sleeping Keen gurgled or squawked, Khalil turned and smiled. Later, Abdalla called the obstruction "not just heartless (but) deliberate violence (by a) government that tears families apart without remorse," a painful echo of "the stories of Palestinian families torn apart by Israeli prisons and bombs, denied dignity, denied life.”

In an earlier letter to his son from detention - "Writing to you with all the love in my heart" - Mahmoud also viewed his plight as part of a larger, too-long "struggle for Palestinian liberation" he described as "not a burden (but) a duty and an honor we carry with pride." "I feel suffocated by my rage and the cruelty of a system that deprived your mother and me of sharing this experience," he wrote. "My heart aches that I could not hold you in my arms and hear your first cry...But my absence is not unique. Like other Palestinian fathers, this pain is part of daily life for fathers taken by war, by bombs, by prison cells and by the cold machinery of occupation. The grief your mother and I feel is but one drop in a sea of sorrow that Palestinian families have drowned in for generations."

At Columbia’s graduation this week, president Claire Shipman was booed when she conceded students were "mourning" Khalil's absence. The Sunday before, Abdalla spoke at an alternative People's Graduation for him and other students punished for protests. The 2018 commencement speaker at University of Michigan and the day's guest of honor, she pinned on one of dozens of fabric scraps with names of Palestinians killed in Gaza before going onstage. "I was not supposed to be standing here today. Mahmoud was,” she said with emotion. "To the students here, you spoke when silence was the easier choice." After Edward Said’s daughter Najla handed her a diploma on behalf of Mahmoud, she left early, holding Deen. He wore a tiny cap and gown inscribed with, "They tried to bury us but they did not know we are seeds.”

After Khalil's request for a family visit at the Louisiana hearing was first denied by regime miscreants, his lawyers filed an appeal. In response to their determination to do right by their client and democracy itself, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin sneered, "Mahmoud Kahlil should use the CBP Home app to self-deport." She added, "The United States is offering illegal aliens (he's a permanent resident) $1,000 apiece and free flights, which Kahlil can take advantage of." Retorted ACLU and Khalil attorney Brian Hauss, "McLaughlin and her boss Kristi Noem should try reading the Constitution." On the other side of the world, Pope Leo XIV earlier voiced his own revulsion at their cruelty. "Do you not see the suffering?" he asked. "Is your conscience not disturbed?"

Donald Trump’s Department of Justice has charged New Jersey congresswoman LaMonica McIver with assaulting federal agents over her contentious visit to an immigration detention center in her state.

In response, Public Citizen co-president Lisa Gilbert issued the following statement:

“The decision to charge Congresswoman McIver is outrageous. Her visit to Delaney Hall was for statutorily and constitutionally protected oversight. As a member of Congress, she has a duty to understand how ICE is treating detainees. Oversight by Congress is a key tool to hold the executive branch accountable and ensure it is following the law. Instead of facilitating her role, ICE impeded Mclver’s attempt to perform her responsibility.

“This prosecution is an attempt to shift the blame for ICE's odious behavior to Congresswoman McIver. All of Congress, regardless of party, should be reacting with indignation at this spectacular affront to their prerogatives.”

The indefatigable Bruce Springsteen just launched his aptly bittersweet Land of Hope & Dreams Tour in England, where he preceded three songs in turn with eloquent, furious critiques of the "weird, strange and dangerous shit going on in my home, the America I love" at the hands of "an unfit president and a rogue government." Unsurprisingly, the sick, vile man-child he cited then attacked and threatened him; stirringly, The Boss just said it all again the next night, darkly reiterating, "This is happening now."

Springsteen and his longtime E Street Band opened the tour last week with the first of three shows in Manchester at the massive Co-op Live; they plan to perform across the U.K., France, Spain, Germany and Italy through early July. At his first show, he appeared in the dark to "call upon the righteous power of art, of music, of rock and roll in dangerous times." Before kicking into Land of Hope and Dreams, he delivered an impassioned screed lamenting, "The America I love, the America I've written about (is) currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration." The crowd roared. "Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experiment to rise with us, raise your voices against authoritarianism, and let freedom ring."

His next spoken missive came before House of a Thousand Guitars. "The last check, the last check on power after the checks and balances of government have failed are the people, you and me," he proclaimed. "It’s in the union of people around a common set of values now that’s all that stands between a democracy and authoritarianism. At the end of the day, all we’ve got is each other." A few songs later, he stopped again before the somber, symbolic, post-9/11 My City of Ruins to detail some of what we're all seeing: "They are persecuting people for using their right to free speech...The richest men (are) abandoning the world’s poorest children to sickness and death...They're (inflicting) pain (on) American workers, rolling back historic civil rights legislation...siding with dictators, defunding universities, removing ...residents off American streets and without due process of law are deporting them to foreign detention centers." After each atrocity, he testified, "This is happening now."

Late that night, the nasty asshole and childish cretin at the helm of those horrors had an(other) online meltdown, whining "Highly Overrated Bruce Springsteen, not a talented guy" - who's won 20 Grammys, an Oscar, two Golden Globes, a Tony, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and is internationally beloved and respected as one of the greatest artists and humans of all time - had gone to "a Foreign Country to speak badly about the President of the United States (sic.)" "Never liked him, never liked his music, or his Radical Left Politics," he sneered of "just a pushy, obnoxious JERK...dumb as a rock" - massive pot/kettle moment here - who "ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT until he gets back into the Country...Then we’ll all see how it goes for him!”

Because we live in a surreal, too-awful-to-fathom timeline, he then added the deeply insane insult that Springsteen - who remains impossibly fit and handsome at 75, three years younger than the grotesquerie spewing this shit - is a "dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied!)." What the fuck, said the world. Sample with image: "Did I hear some really old dude accused Springsteen of looking like a prune?" Ever oblivious, MAGA nitwits piled on. "Springsteen is DONE!! Just Burned all his records tapes and everything else about him I had!!" railed one idiot who didn't seem to realize he'd already spent his money. A "Duane"who def deserves his name suggested attendees "consider taking legal action" for fraud cause they expected a concert and got a "political event." Boycotts were urged for Springsteen's "anti-American rhetoric and treasonous actions and hate speech." One response: "At first I thought this was brilliant satire, but it turns out you are just a moron." Also: "Sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up."

Many more patriotic fans of the Boss celebrated his rectitude. "This is what standing for America looks like," wrote one. "Thank you @springsteen." After the Turgid One also randomly slammed Taylor Swift - don't ask - the American Federation of Musicians wrote they stood in solidarity with both Bruce - Local 47 in L.A.- and Swift - Local 257 in Nashville - as "not just brilliant musicians (but) role models and inspirations to millions of people across the world." Neil Young chimed in as a dual Canada/U.S. citizen to thank Bruce "for speaking so eloquently and truthfully on behalf of the American people. We are with you my old friend. Your great songs of America ring true as you sing them to Europe and the world!”

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Alas, the madness wasn't done; these days, it never is. On Saturday, a couple of nights after the little whiner's ugly hissy fit, Springsteen held his second show in Manchester. To nobody's surprise - mensches gonna mensch - he again railed against the unending abuses of "an unfit president and a rogue government." "Things are happening right now that are altering the very nature of our country’s democracy," he asserted, "and they’re too important to ignore.” Again, he detailed, decried, denounced them: Shutting down free speech and dissent, abandoning the world's poor and sick, punishing workers, pressuring universities, rolling back civil rights, disappearances off the street without due process. Again, he emphasized, "This is happening now."

At 1:34 a.m., the mad child king started ranting online. "HOW MUCH DID KAMALA HARRIS PAY BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN FOR HIS POOR PERFORMANCE DURING HER CAMPAIGN FOR PRESIDENT?" he screeched. "ISN’T THAT A MAJOR AND ILLEGAL CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION? WHAT ABOUT BEYONCÉ? HOW MUCH WENT TO OPRAH, AND BONO??? I am going to call for a major investigation into this matter." Also, they tried to "build up her sparse crowds," "IT’S NOT LEGAL!," "these unpatriotic 'entertainers,'" and, "Thank you for your attention to this matter!!!” At 9:11 a.m. he was back at it, posting 33 times: Dems paid Beyoncé "millions of Dollars," "ILLEGAL ELECTION SCAM AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL!", "A LOT OF EXPLAINING TO DO!!!"

He veered, raved, reviled. He shared a call for Obama to face "PUBLIC MILITARY TRIBUNALS." He reposted a bunch of freakish, AI-generated, Trump-centric art - "Slayer of the Deep State" - and videos of him rocking out to Don't Stop Believin' that made people who saw them want to drink or at least inject bleach. Comments: "What the actual fuck," "God save us please," and from George Conway, "It’s still hard for me to believe that after so many years of deranged posts like this, we’ve still never had a serious national conversation about this man’s mental health." Meanwhile, over at Fox News, the loyal bobbleheads somehow still gushed and prattled about how "gifted" their dear leader is: "The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears."

But Springsteen kept talking; he even talked about hope. "We'll survive this moment," he said. "I have hope, because I believe in the truth of what great American writer James Baldwin said: 'In this world, there isn’t as much humanity as one would like, but there’s enough.' So let’s pray." Again, he ended the concert with Dylan's Chimes of Freedom. He summoned the chimes of freedom flashing "for the warriors whose strength is not to fight/for the refugees on the unarmed road of flight," for the rebel, the luckless, the abandoned and forsaked, the "searching ones on their speechless, seeking trail, each "unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail." Again, he closed with, "Take this home with you." Amidst so much grim lunacy, we're trying.

The American Civil Liberties Union and ACLU of Louisiana are raising urgent concerns following an investigation that shows the New Orleans Police Department has secretly used real-time face recognition technology to track and arrest residents without public oversight or City Council approval. This not only flouts local law, but endangers all of our civil liberties. This is the first known time an American police department has relied on live facial recognition technology cameras at scale, and is a radical and dangerous escalation of the power to surveil people as we go about our daily lives.

According to The Washington Post, since 2023 the city has relied on face recognition-enabled surveillance cameras through the “Project NOLA” private camera network. These cameras scan every face that passes by and send real-time alerts directly to officers’ phones when they detect a purported match to someone on a secretive, privately maintained watchlist.

The use of facial recognition technology by Project NOLA and New Orleans police raises serious concerns regarding misidentifications and the targeting of marginalized communities. Consider Randal Reid, for example. He was wrongfully arrested based on faulty Louisiana facial recognition technology, despite never having set foot in the state. The false match cost him his freedom, his dignity, and thousands of dollars in legal fees. That misidentification happened based on a still image run through a facial recognition search in an investigation; the Project NOLA real-time surveillance system supercharges the risks.

“We cannot ignore the real possibility of this tool being weaponized against marginalized communities, especially immigrants, activists, and others whose only crime is speaking out or challenging government policies. These individuals could be added to Project NOLA's watchlist without the public’s knowledge, and with no accountability or transparency on the part of the police departments,” said Alanah Odoms, Executive Director of the ACLU of Louisiana. "Facial recognition technology poses a direct threat to the fundamental rights of every individual and has no place in our cities. We call on the New Orleans Police Department and the City of New Orleans to halt this program indefinitely and terminate all use of live-feed facial recognition technology. The ACLU of Louisiana will continue to fight the expansion of facial recognition systems and remain vigilant in defending the privacy rights of all Louisiana residents.”

Key details revealed in the reporting include:

• Real-time tracking: More than 200 surveillance cameras across New Orleans, particularly around the French Quarter, are equipped with facial recognition software that automatically scans passersby and alerts police when someone on a “watch list” is detected.
• Privately run, publicly weaponized: The watch list is assembled by the head of Project NOLA and includes tens of thousands of faces scraped from police mugshot databases—without due process or any meaningful accuracy standards.
• Police use to justify stops and arrests: Alerts are sent directly to a phone app used by officers, enabling immediate stops and detentions based on unverified purported facial recognition matches.
• Searchable database: Project NOLA also has the capability to search stored video footage for a particular face or faces appearing in the past. So in other words, they could upload an image of someone’s face, and then search for all appearances of them across all the camera feeds over the last 30 days, thus retracing their movements, activities, and associations. Pervasive technological location tracking raises grave concerns under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.
• No retention, no oversight: NOPD reportedly does not retain records about the alerts it receives and officers rarely record their reliance on the Project NOLA FRT results in investigative reports, raising serious questions about compliance with constitutional requirements to preserve and turn over evidence to people accused of crimes and to courts, thus undermining accountability in criminal prosecutions.
• Violates city law: When the New Orleans City Council lifted the city’s ban on face recognition and imposed guardrails in 2022, it maintained a ban on use of facial recognition technology as a surveillance tool. This system baldly circumvents that ban. The system also circumvents transparency and reporting requirements imposed by City Council. Officials never disclosed the program in mandated public reports.

In 2021, the ACLU of Louisiana sued the Louisiana State Police for information about secretly deploying facial recognition technology, despite years of officials assuring the public it wasn’t in use. Time and again, officials claim these tools are only used responsibly, but history proves otherwise. After the Washington Post began investigating this time around, city officials acknowledged the program and said they had “paused” it and that they “are in discussions with the city council” to change the city’s facial recognition technology law to permit this pervasive monitoring.

The ACLU is now urging the New Orleans City Council to launch a full investigation and reimpose a moratorium on facial recognition use until robust privacy protections, due process safeguards, and accountability measures are in place.

“Until now, no American police department has been willing to risk the massive public blowback from using such a brazen face recognition surveillance system,” said Nathan Freed Wessler, deputy director of ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “By adopting this system–in secret, without safeguards, and at tremendous threat to our privacy and security–the City of New Orleans has crossed a thick red line. This is the stuff of authoritarian surveillance states, and has no place in American policing.”

Five Republican members of the House Budget Committee voted against the House Reconciliation bill today on the grounds that the budget cuts it imposed were not severe enough. The move means House leadership will need to cobble together a new version of a bill that already cut critical federal programs too deeply, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). Like many House members, UCS also is concerned about the bill’s wholesale roll back of federal climate incentives that are driving a clean energy boom.

“This bill will raise costs for consumers and folks in need, while destroying American innovation and lowering taxes for the already super rich,” said David Watkins, director of government affairs for the Climate and Energy Program at UCS. “Not only is this bill shockingly cruel in the depth of cuts it would impose, it shows the majority and president are totally cut off from reality. In their fantasy world, people deserve to fall through the massive holes cut in the U.S. social safety net, consumers should pay more for energy and transportation to support the oil and gas industries, and billionaires deserve lower taxes. In addition, Congress went out of its way to create a loophole by which the administration can target nonprofits the president doesn't like without due process—stunning and shameful.”

Below is information about the sections of the bill UCS analysts are following.

Energy sections of the bill, including those that would:

o Undermining the clean electricity tax credits threatens to send electricity prices soaring, severely slowing the deployment of the lowest-cost sources of electricity generation right as demand is expected to surge.

o Shifting eligibility to “placed in service” would further accelerate the credit phaseout and threaten to fully derail future projects.

Clean transportation sections of the bill, including those that would:

o While drivers can save hundreds of dollars a year in reduced fuel and maintenance costs by switching to electric, the upfront cost of electric cars and trucks can be a hurdle, which is why the tax credits were targeted to increase everyone’s accessibility to EVs.

o Lack of access to charging stations is cited as one of the most common barriers for drivers interested in switching to electric. Repealing this credit would only benefits the oil industry, at the expense of suppliers manufacturing the charging infrastructure, union workers installing and maintaining the chargers, and drivers and fleet operators looking to save money and clean the air by switching to electric.

o Eliminating the global warming pollution rules would increase fuel and maintenance costs for new vehicles by $6,000 over the life of the vehicles; rolling back the commonsense CAFE standards would increase fuel costs by $23 billion through 2050.

o The vehicles, vessels, and equipment that move freight create hot spots of some of the worst air quality in the country and contribute significantly to climate change. There is no safe level of soot to breathe, and despite making up a small fraction of vehicles on the road, heavy duty vehicles are disproportionately responsible for global warming emissions, soot and smog-forming pollution.

SNAP and ag sections of the bill, including the plan to:

Defense sections of the bill that would:

Effectively repeal the clean electricity tax credits through nearly immediate phaseout, unworkable supply chain restrictions, and limited access to transferability, which would slow the vital buildout of new sources of electricity generation and undermine the market signal to increase domestic manufacturing.

Cut targeted investments in critical grid infrastructure, including transmission, intended to alleviate the challenges of rapidly rising electricity demand and increase the reliability and resilience of the electricity system.

Cut numerous programs intended to help people, communities and companies transition to cleaner and more efficient ways of using energy.

Repeal tax credits that help people make their homes more energy efficient, which would force people to pay more to heat and cool their homes.

Restrict access to, and shorten the timeframe of, the advanced manufacturing credits, which would slow the nation’s pivot to forward-looking investments in the clean economy.

Repeal the clean hydrogen production tax credit, which would functionally tip the scales in favor of fossil-based hydrogen production given the continuation of the 45Q carbon capture credit.

Create numerous attempted shortcuts and bailouts for fossil fuel interests, including pay-to-play provisions.

Defund and delay implementation of a program that incentivizes the cleanup of methane pollution from oil and gas systems.

Functionally repeal clean vehicle tax credits, which would make it harder for drivers and fleets to switch to electric vehicles (EVs).

Repeal clean vehicle infrastructure tax credits, which would make it harder for drivers and businesses to invest in electric vehicle charging infrastructure in the locations that need it the most: rural and underserved areas.

Cut fuel efficiency (CAFE) and pollution standards for cars and trucks, attacking one of the largest federal actions ever taken on climate change and directly impacting people’s wallets.

Claw back congressionally approved funds for the Clean Heavy Duty Program and Clean Ports Program (CPP), which would delay the replacement of heavy-duty vehicles, such as school buses and vocational vehicles, with zero-emission models and make it harder for U.S. ports to invest in zero-emission equipment.

Increase farm bill spending by roughly $60 billion by slashing the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which helps millions of low-income Americans, both rural and urban, to put food on their tables. In doing so, the bill abandons the systems approach we need to fix the nation’s food and farm system.

Spend $25 billion on the development of a hugely expensive, unrealistic, and counterproductive homeland missile defense system called Golden Dome, which includes a system of space-based weapons that would try to destroy nuclear-armed missiles as they launch. UCS analysis has shown that such systems are very expensive, technically challenging to build, and readily defeated as well as globally destabilizing and likely to lead to less security, not more.

Increase spending on the troubled, behind-schedule and very over-budget Sentinel land-based ballistic missile program, which UCS recommends cancelling, given it is expensive, dangerous and unnecessary.

An Accountable.US review of Q1 2025 SEC filings posted this week for Cantor Fitzgerald – billionaire Trump Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s family-run financial services firm – reveals that while Lutnick was playing a leading role in President Trump’s national Bitcoin reserve effort, Lutnick’s family business empire dramatically deepened its investment in Microstrategy (now called Strategy), the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin in the world. From Q4 2024 to Q1 2025, Lutnick’s family-run Cantor Fitzgerald increased its holding of regular Strategy stock by $304 million, to a total of $1.3 billion, even amid being publicly criticized for the egregious conflict of interest. Including puts and calls, Accountable.US found Cantor boosted its total investment by over $568 million to over $2.1 billion, representing 44.5% of the firm’s portfolio.

“President Trump’s billionaire Commerce Secretary has been playing the ultimate Washington insider game to pad his family’s riches,” said Accountable.US Executive Director. “From the White House, Howard Lutnick has played a leading role in orchestrating Trump’s Bitcoin reserve policy at the same time his family company was pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into the biggest corporate Bitcoin holder in the game – pushing up their stake by at least $300 million. While both the Lutnick and Trump families seem to be self enriching from positions of power with their massive crypto interests, their bumbling tariff policies and harsh budget plans stand to leave millions of working people with less health and financial security.”

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

• In early March 2025, President Trump held the first White House Crypto Summit, where industry leaders discussed “regulations, stablecoins, and Bitcoin’s potential role in the financial system.”
• Ahead of the summit, Trump’s billionaire Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick broke news by saying the summit would likely reveal a “unique status” for Bitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency, in an unprecedented national crypto strategic reserve Trump announced days earlier. Then, the day before the summit, Trump signed an executive order establishing a “Strategic Bitcoin Reserve,” plus a separate “U.S. Digital Asset Stockpile” for other types of cryptocurrencies. Ahead of the policy announcement, critics called Trump’s crypto plans a “gift to the industry,” “open corruption,” and possibly a “blatant insider trading scam.”
• Lutnick, who was CEO of “titan” financial firm Cantor Fitzgerald, helped lead Trump’s crypto reserve and sovereign wealth fund, which was expected to invest in crypto. After his confirmation, Lutnick gave control of the business to his two 20-something-year-old sons—though insiders said his “grip on his various businesses is bolted tight” ahead of his confirmation, and expressed skepticism about his ability to truly relinquish control.
• In a new filing for Q1 2025, Cantor Fitzgerald revealed holding up to $2.1 billion in Microstrategy Inc. (now called Strategy), which has “the largest corporate Bitcoin holding in the world” and was seen as “‘a big beneficiary’” of Trump’s crypto reserve announcement, also made in Q1 2025. Ahead of Trump’s official announcement, Lutnick notably said the reserve would give Bitcoin a “unique status” over other cryptocurrencies.
• From Q4 2024 to Q1 2025, Cantor Fitzgerald increased its total holding in Strategy by over 1.9 million shares valued at over $568 million, to a total of over 7.4 million shares valued at over $2.1 billion. Excluding puts and calls, Cantor still bought over 1 million more shares valued at $304 million in Q1 2025.
• In Q1 2025, Strategy continued to be Cantor Fitzgerald’s largest holding, according to Fintel, with the company representing 44.5% of Cantor’s portfolio, including puts and calls.
• CNN previously reported Accountable.US research revealing Cantor Fitzgerald’s total investment of $1.5 billion in Strategy in Q4 2024.
• On March 7, 2025, the day after he established the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, President Trump held a White House crypto summit—with Howard Lutnick and Strategy’s Executive Chairman Michael Saylor in attendance. Meanwhile, Cantor Fitzgerald’s holding in Strategy’s Class A shares soared by 20% from the day before Trump’s reserve announcement to the day Lutnick announced Bitcoin’s unique status in the fund.
• In Q1 2025, Cantor Fitzgerald also reported nearly $88 million in other Bitcoin-related investments, including over $86 million in iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF.
• In March 2025, after the Bitcoin strategic reserve announcement, Cantor Fitzgerald announced a new $2 billion Bitcoin financing partnership, with Cantor’s Head of Bitcoin Financing saying they “‘expect to substantially grow the operation over time.’” The move was seen as an expansion of Cantor’s bitcoin business “in the wake of Trump administration changes.”
  

Accountable.US has previously documented billions of dollars of interests Cantor Fitzgerald is involved in that could directly benefit from Lutnick’s role as Commerce Secretary – including urging a national television audience to “buy Tesla” stock in March while his family-run firm Cantor Fitzgerald reported holding nearly $840 million in Tesla Inc. in its most recent holdings report. Conveniently, Lutnick’s appeal to would-be average investors came on the same day Cantor Fitzgerald analysts upgraded Tesla to a “buy” rating.

The cost of living continues to rise under President Trump, and Americans are rightfully concerned. Today, the University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers released its Consumer Sentiment Index for May showing sentiment has plummeted nearly 30% since President Trump took office in January to its second-lowest level on record as a result of Trump’s trade policy. Inflation expectations rose to 7.3% – the highest since 1981.

Despite Trump backing down on his trade war with China earlier this week, the cost of essentials continues to increase for working families, with major retailers like Walmart announcing price hikes in response to tariff chaos and small businesses facing massive tariff bills and shipping costs. Members of Congress held a press conference this week to draw attention to the ‘baby tax’ the Trump Administration is placing on parents by pushing up the cost of strollers, car seats, and toys.

Instead of working to address rising costs, House Republicans are slashing basic needs programs to pay for Trump’s billionaire tax giveaway. The GOP bill cuts Medicaid, nutrition assistance, and energy programs at a time when working families are struggling to cover their grocery bills, health care costs, and utility bills. As the bill moved through the Energy & Commerce Committee this week, Republicans voted to allow big businesses to rip off working families by restricting state laws that crack down on predatory landlords, retailers hiking prices based on personalized data, and apps that drive down wages for workers.

Groundwork Collaborative’s Chief of Policy & Advocacy Alex Jacquez released the following statement:

“It’s clear that President Trump never had a plan or strategy to win the trade wars he started. While he blinked on China, it’s too late for working families who are feeling the pain of higher prices and for small businesses that are impacted by higher shipping prices and supply chain snarls.
“Instead of offering relief to families who are struggling to pay for groceries, rent, and other essentials, Republicans are slashing critical programs that make life more affordable to give another tax break to billionaires. This isn’t leadership. It’s economic sabotage. And Americans know it.”

This week in the Trump Slump, new polling and economic indicators continue to show that President Trump’s policies are tanking the economy.

Economic indicators:

• The University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers released its Consumer Sentiment Index showing sentiment declined for the fourth consecutive month to 50.8 for May, the second-lowest level on record. Inflation expectations also rose to 7.3%, the highest since 1981.
• This week, the April Consumer Price Index showed inflation at 2.3% year-over-year, with prices rising by 0.2% in April.
• The Small Business Optimism Index fell for the second consecutive month below the 51-year average from 98 to 95.8, and 34% of business owners reported job openings they could not fill.
• The Census Monthly New Residential Construction report for April showed slowing housing permits and starts compared to a year ago, particularly for single-family construction, indicating that housing continues to be a pain point for the economy.

Polling:

• New polling from Groundwork Collaborative and Data For Progress found that over two-thirds of voters blame President Trump for current issues in the economy, nearly two-thirds blame Trump for the current levels of inflation, and a vast majority (81%) are worried about rising grocery costs.
• KPMG’s American Perspectives survey reported that Americans are looking to save as the economy becomes more uncertain—43% of respondents said they’ll delay buying a car due to tariffs, and 70% said they are using or plan to use free ad-supported TV to save on streaming services.
• The inaugural Strength in Numbers/Verasight poll showed that Americans “broadly disapprove of the job Donald Trump is doing as president,” and a majority disagree with cutting programs—including Medicaid—to extend tax breaks.
• A report from the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity (LISEP) found that a “minimum quality of life” is out of reach for the bottom 60% of U.S. households.

Expert Commentary:

• As Trump’s trade war continues to raise prices for consumers, Walmart’s Chief Executive Doug McMillon confirmed the retailer will hike prices, “Even at the reduced levels, the higher tariffs will result in higher prices.”
• Joe Brusuelas, Chief Economist at RSM, said of Tuesday’s CPI report: “Those are tell-tale signs of consumer stress. This is the never-ending daily chaos exacting a cost on the economy.”
• Chris Meekins, an analyst at Raymond James, said Trump’s executive order on prescription drugs is “not a material event in our view” and “reminds us of how in President Trump’s first term he was all bark, no bite on drug pricing.”
• Groundwork Collaborative Executive Director Lindsay Owens called out House Republicans for voting to restrict state laws that crack down on surveillance pricing, automated insurance denials, automated management systems, and other uses of artificial intelligence that allow corporations to gouge consumers and exploit workers: “Not only are House Republicans giving their billionaire donors and large corporations a massive tax handout, they are giving RealPage and bad actors like them a free pass to rip off working families… The GOP tax bill tells you everything you need to know about the Republican party’s priorities and how unserious they are about lowering costs for working families.”
• Chief of Policy Programs at The Century Foundation Angela Hanks blasted President Trump for the baby tax he’s placed on parents: “Trump’s partial rollback of tariffs has not undone the harm to American families. From car seats and sippy cups to strollers and cribs, parents still face higher prices today than they did before his initial tariff announcement… Instead of taking action to lower costs for families with young children, President Trump and Republicans in Congress are dead set on passing a tax bill that benefits their wealthy friends while actually raising costs for working families.”

Following US Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s recent and repeated failure to clarify pressing life-and-death issues related to aviation safety—while criticizing his predecessor in the Biden administration—the American Economic Liberties Project released the following statement.

“No one denies the need to modernize air traffic control and strengthen the FAA. But you can’t fix the system by rewriting history and dodging responsibility,” said William J. McGee, Senior Fellow for Aviation & Travel at American Economic Liberties Project. “Secretary Sean Duffy has repeatedly failed to support the FAA and ATC modernization when it mattered. Ahead of a busy upcoming summer travel season, finger-pointing at the Biden Administration won’t make flying safer — and it’s especially rich given Secretary Buttigieg was among the few DOT Secretaries in decades to take meaningful steps to modernize our decades-old ATC system.”

“In back-to-back hearings on the FAA Reauthorization Act this week, Congress was blocked from getting straight answers on the health of our air traffic control system—because Secretary Duffy wasn’t there,” McGee added. “Whether he declined to attend or was never invited, the result was the same: lawmakers were left questioning deputies who were unable to answer basic questions about staffing or budgets. One even claimed to be unaware of the 332 FAA employees recently fired—despite widespread reporting on the matter.”

In the wake of repeated ATC failures at Newark Liberty International Airport, Duffy proposed a “big beautiful” modernization of ATC within four years, while the Government Accountability Office recently estimated modernization will take 10-13 years. In response to criticism of the FAA, Duffy has repeatedly stated that all ATC failures are due to former Secretary Pete Buttigieg, despite Buttigieg improving the controller pipeline and FAA’s own website documenting his hiring of 1,500 controllers in 2023.

Duffy’s words and actions have not aligned. As a member of Congress in 2019, he and 179 other Republicans voted against FAA funding. And just this month he warned DOT employees of further DOGE firings amidst worker buyouts. Duffy also ignores how the first Trump administration failed to address FAA staffing shortages and equipment failures and was best known for two crippling government shutdowns that left unpaid controllers “demoralized.”

Economic Liberties and many others have long noted the need for overhauling ATC and strengthening the FAA. But gaslighting about the causes won’t provide a fix; the fact is that Republicans have not acted meaningfully to address these problems and playing the blame game ignores the historical record.

Learn more about Economic Liberties here.

The following is a statement from Alex Lawson, Executive Director of Social Security Works, on the Republican plan to slash $715 billion from Medicaid:

“Republicans are stealing health care from 13.7 million Americans to give trillions in tax handouts to billionaires.

House Budget Committee Republicans only voted against this plan because they want to make it even crueler. Make no mistake, Republicans still plan to bring it to the House floor next week.

Their plan will kill people. It will close hospitals, especially those in rural areas and inner cities, across the country. It will also close nursing homes, since Medicaid pays for over 60 percent of nursing home care.

The ripple effect of these cuts will hit every single person in this country. The hospital closest to you may close. If not, it will become more overburdened as uninsured people are forced to use the emergency room for care.

Unless you are a billionaire, your standard of living and your health care will get worse if this despicable plan becomes law.”

Further reading: Republicans Plan to Rip Medicaid Away from Millions of Seniors — All to Give Tax Cuts to Billionaires

In a dystopian appearance before the House Homeland Security Committee, robotic sycophant and Cosplay Barbie Kristi Noem - "Every day is Halloween!" - repeatedly dodged, lied and gaslighted her way through questions from enraged lawmakers about illegally disappearing migrants, defying court orders to return them, arresting mayors, deporting children with cancer, declining a basic proof of life request or even acknowledging a massive photo of fake tattoos put before her because, "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears."'

The absurdist, infuriating spectacle played out as Kilmar Abrego Garcia, along with many other Venezuelans, marked three months in El Salvador's hellhole of a prison, and as a spiteful regime that "knows no shame and has no bottom" released a Shepard-Fairey-like poster of the now-iconic Kilmar - "We call this one not a Maryland Dad" - with a giant "MS-13" replacing Obama's "Hope," evidently because, "'We accidentally sent a Maryland dad to a foreign torture prison and can’t be bothered to get him back' doesn’t poll well outside the extreme MAGA fringe." It was amidst their smears and turpitude that Homeland Security's deeply complicit ICE Barbie faced off against Dems repulsed by her so-called leadership - endless photo-ops in tactical gear and "cosplaying as every Fox News fever dream," flagrant sidestepping of court orders, the sickening, well-coiffed, carefully staged performance, complete with $50,000 Rolex, before the silent, shackled prisoners in El Salvador's CECOT.

All of this represents "a sad day for DHS." said Bennie Thompson, Democrats' longtime ranking member, though he added he was glad Noem "found time among your many photo-ops and costume changes" - cowgirl, sheriff, firefighter - to testify. Then he lit into her. "Even when, Madame Secretary, my Republican colleagues and I had strong disagreements, we still did our duty keep America safe," he said. "But that's not the case any longer. On your watch, the department is breaking the law, it's hurting people, and it's making America less safe. The Trump administration is outright lying to the courts and the American people." Promptly confirming his charges, Noem, "this vile, contemptuous, plastic creature" and "dead-eyed puppy murderer," then offered up enough twisted opinions - yes everyone ICE arrested has received due process, yes suspending habeas corpus is probably warranted - to explain the popularity of a South Dakota bumper sticker, "Kristi Noem Is A Monster."

She defended the arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka at a New Jersey ICE facility, where he joined three Dem lawmakers seeking to exercise Congressional oversight, claiming he tried to "storm" the site in “a political stunt that put the safety of law-enforcement officers, agents, staff, and detainees at risk," despite video showing burly ICE agents shoving the visitors. "They were cooperating with criminals to create criminal acts," she raved on Fox News. "This was committing felonies. This was attacking people who stand up for the rule of law." Baraka's response: "Bullshit." Noem also defended and lied about deporting a four-year-old child and U.S. citizen with Stage 4 cancer to Honduras with her mother, falsely claiming the mother had consented to the action. Rep. Seth Magaziner: "You have been sloppy. Your department has been sloppy. And instead of focusing on real criminals, you have allowed innocent children to be deported while you fly around the country playing dress-up for the cameras."

Noem went still lower in response to Rep. Robert Garcia's questions about Andry Hernández Romero, an openly gay make-up artist shipped to El Salvador and held incommunicado though he'd come to this country legally seeking asylum, passed a credible fear interview, and committed no crime; a journalist identified him crying “I’m innocent” and “I’m gay” as CECOT guards shaved his head. Grabbed for his tattoos - of his parents' names and crowns for a hometown festival - Romero worked at the Miss Venezuela pageant, his lawyer said: "His social media is full of beauty queens." "We are paying to lock this young gentleman up forever," said Garcia, who pleaded with Noem to do "a proof of life check on Andry just to see if he is alive." Nope, said Noem, not my problem. Also, "ask El Salvador," "how things should be implemented," "utilizing the tools Congress has given us," "jurisdiction." "He angrily persisted, citing "humanity"; she stonily refused, saying ask Bukele. Comment: "The souls of these people took flight."

Perhaps the day's most chilling, surreal, propaganda-at-its-finest, sociopathic-flunky-of-the-regime-will-not-defy-great-talking-yam moment came when Rep. Eric Swalwell challenged the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia by producing a large poster board of the Trump-touted, atrociously photo-shopped image of MS-13 tattoos on his knuckles and asked Noem to look at it, and say if she thought it was "doctored or not doctored." Famously, the image was first presented by Trump, who in a cringey interview with ABC News’ Terry Moran insisted the tattoos were real even though experts said and any imbecile except this one could see they were fake. Trump, exulted: "He has MS-13 on his knuckles, tattooed!" Moran, embarrassed: "That was photo-shopped." Trump, whining: "You're not being very nice...Why don't you just say, 'Yes he does.'" (He then also undid all his previous arguments by alternately saying he didn't have the power to return Abrego Garcia and "we have lawyers that don’t want to do this.”)

Because Noem is not an imbecile so much as a sick evil fuck, her stonewalling was more impressive. Ignoring Swalwell's request and unhelpful facts - Abrego Garcia had a protection order preventing his removal, regime lawyers admit he was deported through "administrative error," SCOTUS ruled 9-0 the regime must facilitate his return, evidence of him being a gang member is non-existent no matter how loudly Stephen Goebbels Miller rants he had “extensively documented membership" and was a “clear and present danger (to) the American people" - Noem simply, repeatedly refused to look at the photo. Instead, she reverted - "If you look round the back you'll find a ring pull and a bit of string" - to the robotic babbling of talking points: Abrego Garcia "is an El Salvador resident who has been treated appropriately,” "the mission of Homeland Security is to secure our nation," etc, thereby inadvertently proving, "The people claiming to protect our nation from terrorists are in fact terrorists themselves."

Swalwell stubbornly persisted: “It's a simple yes or no question. The letters M-S and the numbers 13 - are those doctored or not?” At one point he asked an aide to pick up the image and wield it right in her face before asking again; she yammered on in a Botoxed monotone, immersed in her political theater piece for a demented audience of one. Swalwell wasn't having it. "Madame Secretary, I have a 7-year-old, a six-year-old, and a three-year-old," he said wearily. "I have a built-in bullshit detector." And he went back to asking one of the country's chief law enforcement officials of a photo that's "been hanging out here for four weeks": Doctored or not? Finally, she landed on her last, improbable dodge: "I have no knowledge of that photo you're pointing to," thus rendering her the only person in America who hadn't yet seen it. "I'm a former prosecutor. I have put people away for life sentences," said a furious Swalwell. What makes me different from you (is) I did it with the weight of the law behind me.”

In contrast, amidst her motorized monologue, Noem slipped and revealed her own lawlessness by declaring - under oath, in defiance of SCOTUS and other court orders, "We will not be bringing (Abrego Garcia) back." "Pretty sure the credibility thing is off the table," was one comment. "Time for contempt or perjury charges." In normal times, yes. Instead, Noem, like her venal boss, may be getting a plane. In a last-minute budget change, the Coast Guard has requested a new $50 million Gulfstream jet to replace her old one. Yammered the acting Coast Guard Chief, “Meeting the needs of (our) men and women doing frontline operations is (a) top operational priority of the Secretary.” Presumably, with make-up studio and yuge closet for all the Barbie outfits. And - "You get a car, and you get a car! - she might get a reality TV show where immigrants compete for a chance to earn citizenship. Per the pitch, “We’ll join in the laughter, tears, frustration, and joy (as) we are reminded how amazing it is to be American.” Indeed.

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