Comments by Brian Shilhavy
“Blueapples” writing on X and also on his Substack page, Ashes for Acacia, reported how Trump’s second wife, Marla Maples, states that Trump followed Kabbalistic teachings, and even kept an Aramaic copy of the Book of Pinchas under his clothing.
If you want to understand the true reasons behind why the U.S. started a war with Iran, you need to understand the influence of the Jewish Kabbalah cult, and its influence over President Trump and many Zionists.
I covered the Kabbalah last year, with Ben Born Again’s documentary about it. It has since been removed from YouTube, but I had a backup copy and restored it in last year’s article, which you can watch here:
by BLUEAPPLES
Although President Donald J. Trump declared his longstanding affinity for the Jewish people and State of Israel far before he entered into the political arena, his entrenchment with Zionism has become the defining feature of his second term in the Oval Office.
That position has also become the focal point for criticism of the second Trump administration, as critics — many of whom were once his most loyal supporters — have come to question whether the president is intent on putting America or Israel first.
That doubt has raised questions that transcend far beyond political concerns into deeper, more philosophical and spiritual realms.
One glaring red flag that perfectly distills those questions was observed on the date of Trump’s second inauguration, when he elected not to place his hand upon the Bible when he was sworn in as president.
Donald Trump takes the oath for the President of the United States on January 20, 2025, without placing his hand on either of the two Bibles that Melania Trump was holding.
According to an interview with Israeli media, Trump’s former mistress turned ex-wife revealed that decision may have been made because the president keeps another holy book closer to his heart.
Marla Maples, Trump’s second wife, told Israeli Channel 12 news that the president keeps an Aramaic copy of the Book of Pinchas under his clothing close to his heart for “healing and protection.”
The portion of the Book of Numbers (specifically, Numbers 25:10-30:1) is distributed among Kabbalistic sects in the Aramaic text Maples referred to Trump’s copy being as an apotropaic talisman. Centered on the biblical figure Pinchas, the son of Eleazar and grandson of the High Priest Aaron, the book is a highly revered section from the Zohar, the foundational text of the preeminent branch of Jewish mysticism known as Kabbalah.
In her interview with Channel 12, Maples described her own deep affinity for Judaism, its mystical elements such as Kabbalah, and the State of Israel, despite maintaining the outward appearance of a Christian identity. The experiences and practices that Maples detailed from her own life drew stark parallels with that of Trump and his family’s, including maintaining a kosher diet, reciting the Shema as a declaration of the Jewish faith, visiting the graves of exalted Jewish religious figures, observing the Sabbath, and frequently visiting Israel.
When recounting the ties to Judaism she has maintained for decades, Maples made note of visiting the city of Safed in northern Israel. In addition to being one of Judaism’s Four Holy Cities — alongside Jerusalem, Hebron, and Tiberias — Safed is the historical center of Kabbalah. Its status as the epicenter of Kabbalah arose during the 16th century, when it became home to central figures of the branch of Jewish mysticism like Moses Cordovero and, most notably, Isaac Luria, the father of its contemporary practice, which has become known as Lurianic Kabbalah. Luria’s influence on Kabbalah was so profound that he became known as “Arizal,” which in Hebrew translates to “Lion of God,” based on the Hebrew words “El” (meaning God) and “Ari” (meaning lion).
Following his death in 1572, Luria was buried in the Safed Old Jewish Cemetery on the lower hillside of the city. His grave has since become a major pilgrimage site for Kabbalists.
Trump’s ex-wife is not the only figure in his life who maintains reverence for Kabbalah.
Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, who has held various high-ranking advisory roles in each of his presidential administrations, is a member of the Haredi sect of Judaism known as Chabad-Lubavitch.
Chabad arose as a Hasidic dynasty in 1775 by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi in Liozno, then part of the Russian Empire. The sect is inherently Kabbalistic, taking its name from an acronym representing the first three Sephirot of the Tree of Life: Chokmah, Binah, and Da’at.
Ivanka Trump, the president’s oldest daughter, converted to Judaism in order to marry Kushner and regularly attends Chabad-run congregations as a practicing Jew. She has also regularly been seen adorned with a red string bracelet on her wrist, another popular apotropaic talisman worn by Kabbalists.
Maples detailed how Ivanka Trump’s conversion was a monumental force in further immersing the president into world Jewry, which she expressed has helped shape her ex-husband’s spiritual and consequently political identity. The influence of that immersion into Judaism has been echoed by fervent ultra-Zionist supporters of Trump, such as political commentator Mark Levin, who has referred to Trump as the U.S. “first Jewish president” on multiple occasions.
Trump himself reinforced that image by making his undying commitment to Israel and the Jewish people explicit, wasting no opportunity to reiterate it during his second term as president.
That commitment has come to undermine Trump’s second term, which continues to be mired by its war with Iran, which senior officials in his administration have consistently justified as necessary to defending Israel and maintaining the U.S. allegiance with the Jewish state.
Prioritizing that relationship has led to upheaval among Trump’s supporters, who have come to mock his presidency as being Israel First instead of following through on the America First platform it built itself upon.
That growing disdain has become amplified by the continued presence of Kushner within his administration, whose overt identity as a member of Chabad and an unflinching ally of Israel has raised further questions behind the motives driving the work in his role as an informal special envoy in deliberations between the U.S. and Iran.
This article was written by Human Superior Intelligence (HSI)
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The post Trump’s Ex-Wife Reveals President Kept Kabbalistic Text Close To His Heart For “Protection And Healing” first appeared on Health Impact News.
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Aug. 19, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
The Teen Pregnancy Prevention program, first authorized through bipartisan legislation in 2009, has been credited with helping to dramatically reduce the number of American teenagers who have experienced unwanted pregnancies in the past decade and a half, dropping by more than 65% over 16 years, according to one congressional report.
Despite the best efforts of President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a federal judge’s ruling on Wednesday sent the message that the push to reduce teen pregnancy in the US will continue, with the administration’s limits on the program’s federal grants paused.
Judge Christopher Cooper of the US District Court for the District of Columbia granted a preliminary injunction in the case of Hennepin County, Minnesota v. US Department of Health and Human Services, in which officials joined King County in Washington state, Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, and the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) in challenging HHS’s changes to the program’s grant policy. The plaintiffs were represented by Public Citizen and Democracy Forward.
The changes, said Cooper, were “likely arbitrary and capricious.”
LAWSUIT WIN: The court blocked the Trump admin’s attempt to turn the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program into an abstinence-only program.
— Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) August 19, 2026
The court said the plan would seem to defy social reality, common sense, & scientific evidence alike.
A win for young Americans' wellbeing.
The new policy, announced in June, canceled 53 of 66 active grants that had gone to public universities, health departments, and nonprofits for programming related to sex education, including information that was given to teens on contraception and communication with sexual partners.
In Trump’s 2027 budget, the grants are described as promoting “radical leftist ideology,” and officials claim there is no evidence that teen pregnancy prevention programs that go beyond educating young people about abstinence have “contributed to the historic decline in teen pregnancy, which is now at an all-time low.”
Under new guidance issued in June, Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) program grantees are required to focus lessons on abstinence, deemphasize contraception, and teach teens about fertility and “body literacy.”
“HHS is perfectly entitled to formulate its own views about how to stem teen pregnancy—or even whether it is worth preventing at all—and to pursue policy initiatives consistent with its viewpoint. But it is not at liberty, under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), to impose conditions on grant recipients that Congress did not intend or that are unreasonable or unexplained. The preliminary record suggests that HHS has done just that,” wrote Cooper in the ruling.
“Through the TPP, Congress sought to fund a range of evidence-based teen pregnancy prevention strategies, not just abstinence. According to unrebutted record evidence, programs that teach abstinence to the exclusion of all other approaches are ineffective in delaying sexual initiation and reducing adolescent pregnancy, at least as a general matter,” Cooper continued.
The judge took aim at the administration’s promotion of “body literacy,” which he called “a nebulous concept that appears to elevate fertility and marital procreation over well-tested forms of contraception and pregnancy prevention.”
Cooper also suggested that HHS had not bothered to find genuine evidence of its claims about “body literacy,” instead “remarkably” referencing “public health studies that appear either not to exist or not to support the propositions for which they are cited—a hallmark of AI-generated citations.”
The judge stopped short of reinstating the dozens of grants, amounting to about $67 million, that have been terminated, saying it was unclear whether he had the authority to do so.
The plaintiffs and other advocates of comprehensive sex education have called for a permanent injunction; Cooper called on both parties in the case to propose a schedule for next steps by September 1.
Callie Simon, executive director of SIECUS, said the group was “encouraged that the court has halted implementation of the new harmful policy” but emphasized that “the impacts of terminating existing grants remain.”
“Today’s decision sends a clear message that the Trump-Vance administration cannot replace the proven, bipartisan Teen Pregnancy Prevention program with an ideologically driven alternative that harms young people,” said Simon. “Communities across the country are still without the evidence-based programs they relied on, and we will continue fighting to ensure young people have access to the sex education they deserve.”
Sandra J. Valenciano, director and health officer for public health in Seattle and King counties, said local communities were facing a measurable loss due to HHS’ stripping of TPP grants
“This federal action threatened our ability to complete a study on a new science-based, community-informed sex education curriculum specifically for young men and boys,” said Valenciano. “This ruling gives us hope that we may still be able to get to the finish line with this study and ultimately empower more young people to build healthy families if, when, and how they choose.”
Ruth Richardson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood North Central States, said the ruling “reaffirms the value of trusted, evidence-based education programs that help youth make informed choices and plan for their futures.”
“Attacks on the Teen Pregnancy Prevention program not only put young people at risk, they also risk increasing costs for taxpayers,” said Richardson. “No one benefits from these politically motivated attacks. It’s time for them to end.”
In July 2025, a protester shot a cop outside an ICE detention facility in North Texas. The federal government alleged the incident was the result of an “antifa” terrorist plot involving a network of friends and acquaintances united in leftist beliefs. The case that ensued was chilling:
It didn’t matter that little evidence of a premeditated attack on law enforcement ever emerged. It didn’t matter that every defendant, except the actual shooter, was exonerated of the original attempted murder charges. It didn’t even matter that prosecutors struggled to show the defendants belonged to an “antifa cell.” In the end, they convinced the jury that Batten and most of her co-defendants were guilty of rioting, conspiracy, using explosives, and supporting terrorists.
In a Fort Worth courtroom in June, a right-wing judge sentenced Batten to 50 years behind bars—a stark warning to others who might challenge the president’s agenda.
The cover image shows Netanyahu and Trump on the list of those wanted for war crimes published by an Iranian newspaper.
by Carlo Domenico Cristofori
«On the 77th anniversary of the adoption of the Four Geneva Conventions, Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) has issued a statement denouncing the United States and the Zionist regime for committing some of the most severe violations of international humanitarian law in modern history through their ongoing military aggression against the Islamic Republic» Iranian Press TV has reported.
The statement, released on Thursday, August, 13, 2026, by recalls that on August 12, 1949, the four Geneva Conventions established binding principles for armed conflict, including the distinction between military and civilian targets, proportionality, military necessity, and the prohibition of unnecessary suffering.
Common Article 1 of the conventions obliges all states parties not only to respect these rules “in all circumstances” but also to ensure their respect by others. These principles now form an integral part of customary international humanitarian law binding on every nation.
«Yet the world continues to witness unprecedented breaches. The Zionist regime, the ministry declared, remains the single greatest violator of international humanitarian law. Over the past eight decades it has perpetrated the most serious international crimes — war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity — in occupied Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and across West Asia» Press TV wrote reporting Abbas Araghchi sentences..
The statement identifies the Zionist regime’s aggressive operations against Iran in 2025 and 2026, carried out with the full complicity and participation of the United States, as among the gravest violations of humanitarian law since the conventions were adopted.
And Gospa News previous investigations that we published and we recalled below can prove that this denounce is really true and founded so much so as to configure, as denounced by several nations of the world, brutal genocides in various countries of the Middle East.
We recall that in the latest days US president Donald Trump, never quoted in the statement as the Israeli prime minister Benjiamin Netanyahu by Iranian Minister Araghchi, said that after the completion of the military operation against Iran, he intends to declare the Strait of Hormuz the territory of the United States.
“I’ll never apologize. I did the right thing. What we’re doing is a great service for — not only for ourselves, for the world” Trump added on his war-crime spree in Iran where US-Israeli preventive attacks started on Febryuary, 28, killed around 7,000 people among wich the most part civilians and children.
“The war crimes committed by the terrorist US army and the genocidal Zionist regime during their military aggression against Iran over the past year and a half have pushed the boundaries of savagery and barbarity,”the ministry said one day before another massacre perpetrated by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in Southern Lebanon.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun condemned on Saturday the Israeli attacks on southern Lebanon, stressing that these violations constitute a “clear message to the negotiating process and to US efforts aimed at implementing the framework agreement”.
The Israeli escalation began with an Israeli airstrike on an inhabited home in Ansar, in the Nabatieh district, killing seven people, including three children and two women, while two others were wounded, according to the Health Ministry.
The Lebanese Parents of Child Martyrs Association on Saturday condemned a new Israeli massacre in the southern town of Ansar that killed a family of six, including four children, and called on Lebanese authorities to document the attack and pursue accountability through regional and international legal channels.
«In a statement, the association condemned the Israeli occupation army’s pre-dawn attack on a family in Ansar on August 15, 2026, which killed Ali Al-Hajj Hassan, his wife, Zeinab Nassereddine, and their children Zahraa, Hassan, Hussein, and Abbas» Al Manar Lebanese TV has reported (more details here in the Daily Updates on WARS in VIDEO)
It cited specific atrocities: the massacre of students and teachers in Minab with Tomahawk missiles; the attack on the Lamerd stadium with cluster munitions on February 28, 2026; and the bombing of residential homes in Qeshm with one-ton bombs on July 30, 2026. These, it stressed, represent only a fraction of the thousands of war crimes inflicted on the Iranian people.
«The US military used one of its most powerful non-nuclear bombs to strike a residential building on the Iranian island of Qeshm, killing three people on Thursday night, The New York Times reported, quoting satellite imagery and an expert opinion»
TASS Russian news agency has reported confirming the first report by Gospa News International on July, 30 (read below update “Two children rescued from the rubble of the Trump’s Evil Bombs – VIDEO”) which specified that bunker-busting explosives had been used to destroy two family homes.
It said that the diameter of the crater and fragments of ammunition indicate the use of a heavy MK-84 aerial bomb weighing 2,000 pounds (about 907 kg). The newspaper said that it was not possible to find any evidence of military installations nearby. The strike was carried out in a densely populated area, the newspaper adds.
Captain Tim Hawkins, a spokesman for the US Central Command (CENTCOM), told The New York Times that the US military leadership is aware of the strike and is looking into it. He also said the United States never targets civilians.
The ministry pointed to the open and systematic contempt shown by the US ruling establishment for the fundamental rules of international humanitarian law.
Explicit statements by high-ranking American officials — including the president, the secretary of war, and the secretary of state — together with a repeated pattern of strikes on civilians and civilian infrastructure, demonstrate a clear intent to commit grave, severe, and organized violations of the laws of armed conflict.
Attacks by the United States and the Zionist regime on hospitals, universities, schools, residential areas, bridges, airports, and fire stations, along with the deliberate killing of civilians, women, and children in places such as Minab, Lamerd, and Qeshm, fall squarely under the grave breaches listed in Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. These include willful killing, the infliction of great suffering, and the extensive destruction of property. Both the material and mental elements of these crimes have been fully established.
Repeated admissions by US officials of a policy of “no quarter, no mercy,” open threats to strike Iranian infrastructure, bridges, and power plants, and rhetoric about “returning Iran to the Stone Age” or “completely destroying Iranian civilization,” combined with the systematic targeting of civilian objects, provide irrefutable evidence of premeditated intent and a deliberate pattern of grave breaches under Article 147.
Once attribution, causation, and the other legal elements are confirmed in each case, criminal responsibility attaches to the perpetrators and those who ordered the acts under Article 146 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which requires states parties to search for and prosecute those responsible for such violations.
«The continued commission of these serious breaches by the United States and the Zionist regime, coupled with the inaction of the United Nations, the states parties to the Geneva Conventions, and Switzerland as depositary, has normalized violations of humanitarian law and fostered a culture of impunity for war crimes. This trend, the ministry warned, is not merely a threat to one nation but a catastrophic regression for the entire legal order that humanity constructed to civilize conflict and restrain violence» Press TV highlighted.
DEVIL NETANYAHU’s HOLOCAUST. Explosive UN findings: “Israel DELIBERATELY TARGETED Gaza CHILDREN”
At least 300 children have been killed in Gaza in the roughly 300 days since a so-called “ceasefire” was announced on October 10, 2025 – an average of one child a day, the United Nations children’s agency says.
Hundreds more have been wounded, many severely, UNICEF said in a statement on Thursday as it pressed parties to a proposed US-led peace plan to translate pledges into action.
“A ceasefire that leaves an average of one child dead each and every day is failing children,” said Edouard Beigbeder, UNICEF regional director for the Middle East and North Africa. “Children in Gaza are still waiting for the end to the violence they were promised.”
Families are now confined to about a third of the enclave, sheltering among destroyed buildings, rubble and uncleared waste, the agency said.
Children continue to face acute malnutrition, disease, unsafe water and damaged sanitation, while a shortage of incubators has left some premature newborns sharing machines.
Prof. John Mearsheimer: Between 1971 and 2021, the US murdered 38 million people.
John Joseph Mearsheimer born December 14, 1947) is an American political scientist and international relations scholar. He is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago.
Mearsheimer developed the neorealist (or structural realist) theory of offensive realism, which describes the interaction between great powers as being primarily driven by the rational desire to achieve regional hegemony in an anarchic international system.
In accordance with his theory, in the 2001 book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, Mearsheimer says that China’s growing power will likely bring it into conflict with the United States.
In his 2007 book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, Mearsheimer argues that the Israel lobby wields disproportionate influence over U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.
His more recent work focuses on criticism of the “liberal international order” (laid down in his 2018 book The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities) and why he believes that the West is to blame for the Russo-Ukrainian War.
Carlo Domenico Cristofori
by Brian Shilhavy
Health Impact News
The headlines in the corporate news the past couple of days regarding an Executive “Order” that Trump signed regarding the current vaccine schedule made it sound like the world was coming to an end, due to Trump’s vaccine “order” that they claimed would bring back childhood diseases that are believed to have been eradicated by vaccines.
Here are some sample headlines from the past couple of days:
If these headlines were actually publishing the truth, this would actually be great news for those who oppose vaccines.
But I have learned that anytime something is published in the corporate media about a presidential “Executive Order” (EO), the best thing to do first is to look up the actual EO to see what it actually says.
I knew right away, for example, that these headlines could NOT be true, because the office of the President of the United States cannot dictate vaccine policy, and, in fact, there are no alternatives to the 3-vaccine combo of the MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella) vaccine, and it is impossible to get them individually, EO or not, because the drug companies do not even make them.
You can read the EO for yourself here.
Some excerpts:
Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Delivers Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations for Americans
DELIVERING GOLD STANDARD CHILDHOOD VACCINE RECOMMENDATIONS: Today, President Donald J. Trump signed an Executive Order to recognize Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations that maximize parental choices over vaccinations for their children and align three categories of childhood immunizations with scientific evidence and best practices from peer, developed countries.
The Order provides recommendations that give parents more information and options when making immunization decisions for their children.
- The Order recommends all children get immunizations to provide protection for 11 diseases – a decrease from the 18 diseases recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2024. Immunizations no longer recommended for all children are now recommended for shared clinical decision-making, ensuring that parents have all options available to them.
- The Order recommends separating out the combined MMR vaccine into three single-disease shots and recommends administering all vaccines during separate medical visits to give parents more options regarding the timing and frequency of this vaccine administration.
- States that enact school vaccine requirements are advised to consider the Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations and consider updating their laws to reflect the recommendations.
- All Federal agencies are advised to advance the Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations based on their relevant authorities to ensure Americans have the best scientific information.
It is quite evident that this “order” orders NOTHING. It is simply a document with “recommendations.”
How can an Executive Order order recommendations??
I have no idea.
As I have repeatedly published over the past decade or so, the President of the United States has no authority over vaccine policies.
It is a State issue, and the enforcement of vaccine policy published by the CDC is by State and local health departments.
The only President that I am aware of who tried to mandate vaccine policy from the White House, was President Joe Biden, who tried to order OSHA to mandate the COVID vaccines at the national level to all federal government workers.
Of all of the vaccine mandates implemented during the COVID scam, this EO by Biden is the only COVID vaccine mandate that was shot down by the U.S. Supreme Court, as the Supreme Court upheld EVERY OTHER COVID VACCINE MANDATE implemented, such as for healthcare workers, university students, military members, etc.
But the U.S. Supreme Court was not willing to give that power to the President of the United States.
So there is no “order” implemented by Trump.
Many States were quick to reply that they were NOT taking Trump’s recommendations, and that the childhood vaccine schedule would remain unchanged.
As to “ordering” the pharmaceutical industry to provide three separate vaccines to replace Merck’s blockbuster MMR vaccine, that will never happen.
Trump wants to split the MMR vaccine. Experts say that’s unlikely
Excerpts:
President Donald Trump’s latest executive order calls for splitting the measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine into three separate shots – but doctors and other experts say that effort has no scientific basis and is unlikely to get off the ground.
Manufacturers of the MMR vaccine – Merck and GSK – seem to have little incentive to develop standalone shots, which would take significant time and resources away from their other crucial work toward treating and finding cures to other diseases. Those vaccines would likely reach the market long after Trump’s term ends.
“I don’t see any world in which vaccine manufacturers have any interest in developing and going through the rigorous regulatory process, getting FDA approval, doing the trials for monovalent measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines,” said Moss.
“It would be a foolish investment to make.”
AAP’s Racine also said that it would likely take more than a decade to develop those standalone shots.
This show at the White House earlier this week was probably just a campaign stunt heading into the midterm election cycle. I have already seen Republican ads targeting “liberals” by claiming “Trump kept his promises”.
That’s a hard sell, even among Republicans, many of whom are dropping out of the Republican party (like Marjorie Taylor Greene) due to Trump’s failed promise of not starting any new wars, which the current war in Iran proves is a broken promise.
The former Epstein associate and heroine drug addict, and life long liberal, pro-abortion Democrat, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was specifically recruited by Trump to bring in the “anti-vax” voters, whom they clearly fear losing support from heading into the midterm elections in November.
So now the Trump Republicans can claim that Trump “kept his promise” to change the CDC vaccine schedule and get rid of the MMR vaccine.
But, he actually did not.
He just hosted a campaign event at the White House to try and convince people that he kept his promise on changing CDC vaccine policy.
Trump is responsible for murdering more children and adults through toxic vaccines than anyone else in American history, with his Operation Warp Speed military campaign and the experimental COVID shots.
He should be tried for war crimes, and sedition, NOT passing out fake recommendations under the guise of an “Executive Order”, a full blown propaganda campaign that the corporate media was all too happy to comply with.
Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’
Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ (Matthew 7:21-23)
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The post Trump Signs Meaningless Executive “Order” on Childhood Vaccine Schedule – Midterm Election Campaign Stunt? first appeared on Health Impact News.
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Aug. 12, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
As Mainers continue to target Sen. Susan Collins’ office with protests following a recent killing by an immigration agent, new reporting shows how some of the $70 billion she and her GOP colleagues gave to President Donald Trump’s immigration agencies is being spent.
According to the Associated Press on Tuesday:
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers may soon be outfitted with gloves that can deliver painful electric shocks intended to gain compliance from combative individuals.
ICE plans to spend up to $20 million to purchase thousands of “conductive distraction and de-escalation devices” for officers and agents by March, according to a notice published Monday by the Department of Homeland Security.
The devices are known as the GLOVE, which stands for Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter, and are manufactured by Compliant Technologies LLC of Lexington, Kentucky. They have been used in recent years by some jails and police departments.
As the company’s website explains, “the discomfort associated with the stimulation is usually effective in bringing individuals into compliance in less than three seconds and leaves no burns, marks, or scars.” It describes them as a “humane, low-optics, de-escalation solution for many situations facing our men and women in uniform.”
As if ICE wasn’t sadistic enough, the agency plans to spend up to $20 million to give officers gloves that can deliver painful electric shockshttps://t.co/y5yMRYecLr
— Thomas Kennedy (@tomaskenn) August 12, 2026
John Peters, president of the Institute for the Prevention of In-Custody Deaths, told the AP that the sensation is “immediate and sharp,” comparing it to a “bee sting.”
While he said it could be an effective tool to prevent “resistance,” he warned that it should not be used as a form of punishment against those merely exhibiting “verbal defiance or belligerence” or on high-risk populations such as children, pregnant women, or elderly or disabled people.
But given the recent record of rampant civil rights abuses, extrajudicial killings, excessive use of force, and efforts to lie about misconduct, civil rights advocates are warning that these gloves are being placed into, or onto, the exact wrong hands.
“ICE spent the last year showing this country that they are willing to disregard the law and are too quick to use force, with devastating and at times fatal consequences for citizens and noncitizens alike,” Jenn Rolnick Borchetta, deputy director on policing at the American Civil Liberties Union, told Common Dreams. “Now they might be equipped with a device that allows them to deliver an electric shock with their hands by pushing a small button, in a move that might be imperceptible to those watching.”
Kica Matos, president of the National Immigration Law Center, concurred, telling Common Dreams that ICE is a “rogue agency with an $80 billion slush fund that allows them to concoct and fund new ways to visit cruelty upon our communities.”
“Arming poorly trained agents with electric shock gloves to inflict pain on our neighbors is disgusting and barbaric,” Matos added. “Congress must end the blank check to ICE, and ICE must get out of our communities.”
The shock gloves are just one way that immigration agencies are spending the $70 billion in additional funding they were given back in June, when Republicans in the Senate voted 52-47 to authorize the funding despite rampant lawlessness. Only one Republican, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), voted against supercharging the funding.
In a July 16 letter to Democratic Gov. Janet Mills, Collins defended her vote for the increased ICE funding by pointing to “reforms” passed in April as part of the Department of Homeland Security’s broader appropriations bill, which included $20 million for body cameras and $2 million for “de-escalation” training.
Collins’ office did not immediately respond when asked by Common Dreams whether she believes electric shock gloves were a good form of “de-escalation.”
A five-term senator in the midst of a fierce reelection bid against Democrat Troy Jackson has taken fierce criticism for her vote to support ICE on the campaign trail, which has only grown in intensity since July’s fatal shooting of 25-year-old Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Biddeford.
It was one of two fatal shootings of men without criminal records over the course of a week. ICE later acknowledged that the victims were not the target of their operations.
When asked after the shooting, Collins declined to say that she regretted her vote for increased ICE funding.
Protesters who gathered outside Collins’ Biddeford office on Tuesday said she should.
“$70 billion to fund the terror that left my family and community in fear,” Fernanda McLaughlin, a Maine resident and community organizer, said over the loudspeaker, according to NBC News Center Maine. “You know what that money can be really used for? To feed Mainers. To fund our schools. To fund our health system.”
“There were no guardrails included, and she still voted yes on it,” McLaughlin said. “Simple guardrails that exist in nearly every other law enforcement agency across our nation.”
A Levante questa sera, mercoledì 5 agosto 2026, live alle 18,30, Margherita Furlan dialoga con Antonio Mazzeo e Paolo Borgognone.
Washington annuncia di essere a poche ore da un’intesa provvisoria di sessanta giorni sulla riapertura dello Stretto di Hormuz. Nelle stesse ore un’inchiesta di Reuters rivela che cinque mesi di guerra hanno prosciugato quasi per intero le scorte americane di missili tattici a lungo raggio. E a Roma, dentro l’ambasciata degli Stati Uniti, si chiude il settimo round dei colloqui fra Israele e Libano.
Tre notizie che i telegiornali raccontano separate. Le leggiamo come un solo movimento: la potenza egemone consuma, l’Europa paga, l’Italia presta il territorio. Il magazzino è vuoto, e la diplomazia improvvisa di Washington somiglia molto a un inventario.
AFFRONTIAMO INSIEME
L’accordo su Hormuz e chi tratta davvero con chi: Teheran ribadisce che il negoziato è con l’Oman e non con Washington
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Republicans in Congress are attempting to push policies in the District of Columbia that would charge 14-year-olds as adults, increase mandatory minimum sentences, repeal the Second Look Act, and re-institute cash bail, which was banned in 1992. In this week’s episode of Rattling the Bars, host Mansa Musa reports from U Street and sits down with Bethany Young and Darby Hickey from the DC Justice Lab to discuss how the GOP is using Washington, DC, as a laboratory to wage a national crusade against decades of criminal justice reforms.
This is part one of a two-part series. Subscribe to TRNN and stay tuned for Part 2 next week.
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The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.
Mansa Musa: Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. We’re here in the historical part of the District of Columbia, U Street, 14th and U, 13th and U, 11th and U, 12th and U, all historic. Lincoln Theater and Benz Chillibo. We’re here today to talk to two representatives from DC Justice Lab about current legislation that Congress is attempting to pass to minimize the DC City Council’s ability to pass laws to govern this District of Columbia. Stay tuned for this interview. The District of Columbia has become the testing ground for Congress in terms of reforming so-called reform of laws that the city council has passed. So let’s talk about cash bill, what’s going on with it and what this bill is trying to do. Because when we look at what’s going on in over DC jail and how overcrowded it is, what’s our position on HI5214?
Bethany Young: Yeah. Well, DC has had a pretrial system in place for the last 30 years or so that has worked well. People are kind of released or not based on kind of a demonstrated threat to public safety. It’s not necessarily about how much money they have or starting with the presumption that someone should be incarcerated. And that system has worked well. Most people come back without committing any other crime. Most people show up for their court date. So it’s not a system that’s broken. So this is kind of a solution in search of a problem, this congressional bill that you’re talking about.
Mansa Musa: Who profiting from? Because the intent is not to change, get safer streets because we already recognize that the streets are safe. So who profiting?
Darby Hickey: We haven’t had cash bail in over 30 years in DC. And you know what that means we haven’t had in this city? Our bail bondsmen or these companies that are very predatory to poor people that require these payments and that make money regardless of what the person does after they’ve been released. And they make billions of dollars a year and we haven’t had that exploitative system in DC during this time. And as we’ve all been discussing, we’ve been safer for it. So that’s who is going to profit off of this. So we know that this is not about safety. This is about harming poor people, exploiting them for money. And it’s also ideological because I think I’m glad you started with this one as an example of this rollback and of using DC as kind of a Petri dish of what they can force on places around the country.
Because you see them pushing also on the national level to roll back bail reforms. And it’s ideological. I call it dumb on crime approach rather than following the actual evidence that shows that reforming bail systems, getting rid of cash bail actually makes our community safer because we know even a short time in jail, that destabilizes your life and that leads to worse safety outcomes in the long run.
Mansa Musa: Let’s talk about another aspect of this is mandatory minimums. And DC has always been real equitable in terms of taking into account the social conditions, really with sentencing the way they’re supposed to make a determination before they sentence. It’s always been like that. Talk about this attack.
Darby Hickey: I do agree with you that many of our judges do a good job of taking into account the circumstances around an event when determining a sentence. We actually already have some of the worst mandatory minimum sentences on the books in the country. And under this new proposal in Congress, the minimum that someone will be sentenced that would be longer than what the maximum is in some other states for the same conduct. So it’s really singling out DC. And again, it’s furthering this ideological agenda of just lock people up. We know all the companies are going to make money off of that. And to disempower and harm our communities, including unfortunately disproportionately black communities in DC and across the country are disproportionately impacted by mandatory minimum sentences. Is
Bethany Young: That in DC, nine out of 10 people sentenced under mandatory minimums were black. And so kind of same kind of look at every statistic as it relates to the criminal legal system in DC, and you’re going to see mostly black people. I think it’s eight out of 10 arrests. Most of the people in the jail. Most of the kids that are detained are black, certainly most disproportionately impacting black people and poor people.
Darby Hickey: And then we got to look at, going back to your point earlier, that the interconnection between these different policies, you were speaking on the efforts to roll back voting rights. And how we know that some of the origins of some of these sentences and some of the restrictions on voting after being convicted came out of reconstruction, came out of the backlash to reconstruction and trying to disempower and disenfranchise black communities. And so we have to see this and connect this as part of that lineage as well.
Mansa Musa: And I think that when we look at the District of Columbia, how can you rule your house where somebody got the authority and ability to tell you what you can and cannot spend? Your own money, your own revenue that you generate. So in this regard, you’ve got Congress is interfering with the legislative process. The people that’s duly elected to determine what their constituents say they want, don’t have a voice. They can pretend like they do. They can vote on something. They can pass it. But if Congress don’t like it, the appropriation committee will just simply don’t fund it. And that’ll kill that, which brings me to, and this right here is one thing that I want y’all to dial down on heavily. This is about the youth because they got this push. They pushing this effort to criminalize the youth as young as 14. Talk about their attempt to push to make the laws change or create a law around dealing with our youth.
Bethany Young: A child, because we’re talking about children, could be charged as an adult. There are also some other laws that are for other young people, young adults would affect their ability to kind of have a second look at their sentences after they’ve served some time or that would impact their ability to have their records sealed after a certain amount of time and would affect the discretion that judges have in certain cases to sentence a young person in alignment with where they are developmentally. And what we know and what we’ve known for decades about laws like this is that they’re counterproductive. They’re as counterproductive as they are oxymoronic. If you think about treating a child as an adult, just because you say you’re an adult does not make a child an adult. And it actually ignores what science says about the developing brain. We know very well at this point that our brain, excuse me, as humans are developing well into our 20s, especially the part of the brain that deals with impulse control.
So there are certain things we take for granted with kids that they’re going to be impulsive, that they’re going to engage in risky behaviors. And we account for that. We know with the driving age, with drinking, with buying tobacco, with voting, with enlisting. We acknowledge in all of these different contexts that children are different and that we have to kind of help make decisions for them because their brains do not allow them to do this well. But in the context of crime and incarceration,
For some reason, we treat kids differently in that context and it doesn’t work. We know that for kids, contact with any part of the system. So even if they see someone getting pulled over by a police, they see their friends being encountered by police, that from that to being in a courtroom, to being arrested, to being incarcerated, that actually sets them back developmentally.
Mansa Musa: The fact that they’re saying in this cadence that youth are taking over the city and they’re using this as a pretext for getting tough on oil, as Bethany said.
Darby Hickey: What we’re seeing with these incidents with young people is, guess what? Young people are still recovering from the trauma of the COVID epidemic and of the shutdowns that happened and of the challenges with socialization they’ve had. We’re now learning so much more about the negative impacts of social media on them. And I’m a parent of a teen. Look, kids just want to get together. They want to not have to deal with adults. They want to be able to be with each other a little bit. And that’s what the vast majority of kids are doing in these situations. They’re just looking for a place to get together. And a lot of those places have disappeared. Yeah, we have our rec centers. Yeah, we have libraries. That’s really important. But think about the movie theaters, the malls. Union Station is largely blocked off to them at this
Point. So where else are they supposed to go is a question you keep hearing from them. I think it just goes back to a point that Bethany was making of like, these are children. Let’s give them the support that they need. Let’s invest in them. Let’s lift them up instead of continuing to tell them you are not welcome here. You can’t go there. This city and all the changing that has happened is not for you in these areas, which is putting a real distinct point on it, in my opinion, on top of the displacement and the gentrification that’s already happened in a city that has pushed so many people out of traditional neighborhoods like Southwest. You can even go back centuries, or decades rather, that was a very robust multi-ethnic community before it was destroyed by urban redevelopment back in the ’60s, I believe it was.
And then now has had this new wave happening as well. And you see it all over the city, unfortunately.
Mansa Musa: The attitude is we got to create a false narrative that in order for this place to be safe, we got to identify who’s making it unsafe, and that’s the youth. Which brings me to the point, the United States Attorney General for the District of Columbia recently said, “I know evil when I see it, no matter what their age.” How do y’all respond to that? They wearing hoodies. That’s evil. But he know evil respond to that.
Bethany Young: There is a really loud emotion that people respond to. And if you can make me afraid enough, I can support a lot of different things if you’re saying it’s in the name of safety. But what we know is that it’s not actually tied to safety, that the rest are down across the country, some of the trends that we’ve seen that we saw during COVID and immediately post, we’re turning the corner on those that the things that communities are doing to give young people other options to invest in them if given time are working.
Mansa Musa: When you create an environment where you have summer jobs, like me and my sister, we was first generation when they first started summer jobs and we did the projects in the District of Columbia. And when they created summer jobs, the whole city became vibrant because we had money. Young people had money and young people had Princeburg.
Darby Hickey: We know that giving people the right to determine their own future is what makes them great and what makes our democracy great.
Mansa Musa: So what’s y’all strategy now around what’s going on? Because when we went down to Congress, I was there. I forgot the congressman’s name out of Florida. They introduced the bill. His town don’t have problems. They reading articles that didn’t have nothing to do with the district. They reading the article from Arizona or New Mexico and just reading the facts of the article and making it seem like this is DC. Talk about where y’all at in terms of y’all advocacy and y’all strategy around changing this narrative or more importantly, mobilizing people to be effective in terms of advocating.
Bethany Young: So we’re continuing the work that we do locally on that in terms of shrinking policing, shrinking incarceration. We recently, along with about 30 other partners in the district, put together a 2026 public safety policy agenda that runs the gamut from community-based investments around non-police alternatives to safety like violence interrupters, credible messengers, investing and protecting in youth. So before a kid even gets into the system, what are the things that we can be doing to surround them to make sure that they’re thriving, that they have access to opportunities, that they’re building confidence and self-efficacy and skills all the way up until ways that our local officials can stand up and make a stronger statement
Mansa Musa: To the
Bethany Young: Federal government about the respect for DC laws. And we talked about this a little bit earlier. There’s only but so much they can do, but they can make their voices and their position known in a way that I don’t know that we’ve seen our elected officials locally do satisfactorily.
Mansa Musa: I like what you just said. Y’all got a document that y’all putting out. So this opened the doors up for insertion in terms of application, how to get people to stop. Okay. If we talking about incredible messages, fund that.
Darby Hickey: Although we do have these threats from the federal government right now, we also know, as we were just discussing with the curfew, that unfortunately our local elected officials are also making some bad choices around policies. And of course we want to defend their right to make that choice. We want to also convince them to make the right
Mansa Musa: Choice.
Darby Hickey: But that’s what this document lays out is this policy agenda is a number of recommendations that are not new, that we’ve been making, that people in the community have been making, that experts have studied and the evidence backs up. And so in addition to that, other things that we’re also doing are educating the council and staff, educating the mayor, educating the public about these proposals in Congress to roll back our laws or to impose bad nuance on us. The more of a united front and the more voice we have, the better chance we have of beating back these fundamentally undemocratic attacks that are trying to set us back years and years.
Mansa Musa: And we shouldn’t be handcuffed because someone is to your point, ideologically think that we should be back and change. So I want to commend y’all on y’all work.
Bethany Young: We can pick up a phone. We have resources that we can share around how to advocate in the legislative process, but keep learning about what’s happening. Make sure that you understand what it is because it can feel distant to some people. It can feel like that’s not happening to me. But rest assured that it’s going to get closer and closer. And before you know it, it’ll be. It’s kind of at all of our doorsteps at this moment. So continue to stay aware and engaged and ask people to do what they can to push back.
Mansa Musa: Okay.
Darby Hickey: Yeah, I think we see unfortunately this playbook being tried out here, but we know where it’s going next. We know it’s already been being used in other places. People saw the violence that happened in Minneapolis and Los Angeles and Chicago. That’s the same stuff that we’ve been dealing with. And actually we’ve still got the National Guard in
Mansa Musa: DC
Darby Hickey: And all the rest of the places they pulled back. So we are really struggling and we need help from everyone that’s willing to help. All our residents need to speak out. We all got to be in this together. And we need help from friends and family all over the country who actually have a vote in Congress and should be reaching out and doing what they can. We can’t be satisfied, like you said, with our colonial status right now. Home rule is a bare minimum. So we need statehood and we need people to support statehood for DC.
A few weeks ago, we argued the Trump administration was seeking to invent new ways to punish Americans. The idea was that the authoritarian impulses of the MAGA-run government will need to dial up the cruelty in order to sow chaos and pave the way for a broader assault on democracy.
Well, this week a rule was issued by Medicare and Medicaid services that shows just how proficient the Trump administration is at inflicting pain. And the consequences for poor, seriously ill Americans could be devastating.
Before we explain the rule, it’s worth contemplating the often destructive role healthcare — both the lack of it and exorbitant costs associated with it — play in the lives of working-class Americans.
Poll after poll shows that working people rank anxiety over healthcare costs at the top of the list of high-priority concerns. Unpaid medical bills are the most likely cause of personal bankruptcy in the US. Unlike any other wealthy nation on earth, when Americans lose their jobs, they often lose access to a doctor as well.
The US healthcare system is already inherently extractive — making it even more prohibitively expensive means more people will suffer with diseases that can be cured and die from afflictions that would otherwise be treatable. All of this makes the working class vulnerable and likewise incapable of asserting their right to be healthy.
And that’s where the new rule comes in.
The government agency that administers Medicaid has created a new criterion, ‘medically frail,’ which must be met to qualify for the program without working — even if you only have weeks to live. It didn’t exist prior to the passage of the Big Beautiful Bill.
Before that landmark legislation was signed into law, Medicaid was primarily a means-tested program, accessible to those with low enough incomes to qualify. But the new rule means even if you have pancreatic cancer, HIV, or Parkinson’s, you will have to meet work requirements to maintain eligibility, or prove you are too sick to comply. Your doctor’s opinion won’t matter. It will be up to the bureaucrats.
Essentially, this amounts to navigating a process fashioned explicitly to kick people off the program. That means filling out forms and filing papers and hoping someone sitting at a desk determines you comply with a definition critics say is vaguely written and open to interpretation.
This is all part of a scheme hatched during the passage of the massively destructive Big Beautiful Bill last year. Trump and his MAGA cohorts wanted to give a trillion-dollar tax break to the top one percent. But the cuts were projected to add trillions to an already historically high federal debt.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects the additional work rules will lead to 11.8 million people dropping Medicaid over the next decade — 7 million of whom they project will not find insurance elsewhere.
So, to conjure a so-called “pay for,” Republicans turned to Medicaid, the critical program that provides healthcare to the poorest Americans.
Simply slashing funding was politically unpalatable, even for the party best known for trying to dismantle Obamacare multiple times without providing a viable alternative. So Republicans came up with a workaround: make it more difficult to qualify.
In practice, that translated into the aforementioned new work requirements.
The medical frailty rule shows, in part, how this overarching plan will lead to fewer beneficiaries: create a complicated bureaucracy difficult to navigate, then cut people who can’t comply.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects the additional work rules will lead to 11.8 million people dropping Medicaid over the next decade — 7 million of whom they project will not find insurance elsewhere.
And it won’t be millions of idle young men playing video games and refusing to work who are affected by the new rules, as House Speaker Mike Johnson suggested. Instead, as the CBO concludes, the burdensome paperwork and subjective standards will lead to most people simply dropping out, whether they qualify or not.
Democrats are pushing back hard against the regulation. In a letter to the Health and Human Services secretary, a group of Connecticut representatives argued that the rule exceeded the intent of the law.
“The overwhelming impact of this rule is that eligible citizens will be denied Medicaid coverage, states will expend unacceptable resources processing complex paperwork, safety-net providers will be further burdened, and population health will decline,” wrote Democratic Reps. John Larson, Joe Courtney, Rosa DeLauro, Jim Himes, and Jahana Hayes.
On the House floor, Courtney said vague standards and arbitrary rules would create confusion for critically ill people without care.
“The hope was that a medical diagnosis for cancer or HIV or other serious chronic conditions would qualify for protection. Instead the rule makes clear that a cancer diagnosis will not automatically qualify for an exception. Instead the patient will have to document that the disease actually impairs their ability to work,” he said.
“This rule will create chaos and dramatically increase the number of desperately ill people who will lose their coverage.”
We reached out to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the agency that administers both programs. They have yet to respond.
In the meantime, if you’re skeptical that work requirements are mostly aimed at reducing the number of people on Medicaid, consider what’s happening with the federal government’s primary program for distributing food aid to low-income families.
The bureaucratic demands for SNAP are so extreme that some beneficiaries have been asked to provide documentation of money obtained from panhandling.
Known as SNAP, or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, it’s been a frequent target for Republicans, who argue it’s rife with fraud and abuse. Those claims are exaggerated or unfounded — but, again, the Big Beautiful Bill imposed work requirements, and the consequences have been catastrophic.
A recent New York Times article reported that since the new paperwork requirements for SNAP were instituted in Arizona, nearly 440,000 recipients have lost assistance. The piece recounts how the bureaucratic demands are so extreme that some beneficiaries have been asked to provide documentation of money obtained from panhandling.
If this is what people receiving SNAP benefits have been subjected to, imagine what’s going to happen to people who will need to navigate the new Medicare requirements while struggling with a debilitating or terminal illness.
The point is that the same burdensome processes are combining to leave some of the poorest, sickest Americans facing death without care. That’s cruelty with a capital C. The frightening part is that it seems this administration is just getting started.
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