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This week marks the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

The United States has experienced much political and social upheaval since then, but the subsequent “War on Terror” paved the way for our current moment, and there are booming echoes of the era all around us.

Once again, the United States is waging a disastrous war in the Middle East with no discernible end in sight. Islamophobic rallies targeting NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani conjure up memories of the “Ground Zero Mosque” controversy. The government designates activist and advocacy organizations as terrorists. The Guantánamo Bay detention camp remains open. In fact, a legal immigrant was just sent there.

CBS reveals that the Taliban seized roughly $7 billion worth of American-purchased military hardware after the United States officially lost that war 5 years ago.

“Taliban fighters patrol in armored vehicles once supplied to Afghan forces, wearing American tactical gear and carrying American weapons,” reads the report. “CBS News saw one Humvee in the Afghan capital still adorned with a faded Green Bay Packers decal — a remnant from its past operators.”

The small number of Americans who opposed that war were either dismissed or attacked. So too were those who warned that the Bush administration’s overreach would result in disaster.

“The civil libertarians were mostly ignored, and as one new threat followed another — Iraq, ISIS, ‘lone wolves’ — the president’s reach continued to grow. Across the Bush and Obama administrations, the commander in chief was given, or simply took, new powers to prosecute, shut down and seize the assets of alleged terrorist groups and their supporters,” writes Radley Balko in the New York Times. “With the arrival of armed drones, the president assumed the right to remotely assassinate anyone, anywhere outside U.S. borders, at any time, including American citizens.”

“If the ratcheting diminishment of our liberties came slowly and sometimes without much outcry under Presidents Bush, Obama and Joe Biden, the consequences of all those years of expanded presidential power are plainly visible now,” he continues. “Mr. Trump is using every authority we have given the president since Sept. 11, 2001, and some we haven’t, in ways the civil libertarians had tried to warn us about at the start.”

One of the major differences between the current war on Iran and Bush’s war on Iraq is that a sizable chunk of the population fell for the administration’s lies back then. The polling shows that’s not the case this time around, and, despite information from the region being consistently repressed, there seems to be a growing understanding that the United States military is losing quite badly.

They say Americans don’t vote based on foreign policy, but that isn’t exactly true. Many people voted for Obama over Hillary Clinton in the 2008 primary because he opposed the Iraq War. People voted for Trump because he claimed he wouldn’t launch any new wars. It’s quite obvious that Kamala Harris’s connection to Israel’s genocide hurt her at the polls.

Whether or not this typically translates into policy shifts is a separate debate.

Obama’s election effectively killed the domestic antiwar movement, and he launched the largest assassination campaign in world history. Trump’s rhetoric predictably turned out to be nonsense. The Democratic Party’s establishment certainly didn’t rethink its Israel policy as a result of the Harris loss.

This is all to say that the war in Iran, which the administration now says might last through 2029, could help propel the Democrats back into power during the midterms, but will that actually result in a foreign policy reset?

In recent weeks, Democratic leaders and presidential hopefuls have directed their anger toward Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, hoping to quash the party’s left flank before the 2028 nomination process. For them, it’s an existential battle that transcends the question of which party may or may not control Congress at any given time and there’s no broader discussion about reversing our current course beyond removing Trump from office.

Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee, Abdul El-Sayed, was recently attacked for an old 9/11 tweet in which he expressed sympathy for those who died on that day and those who were killed in the wars after.

“Today, I mourn the 3K lives, 6K injuries, & infrastructural devastation in NYC, perpetrated ignorantly in the name of my faith,” it read. “Tomorrow, I’ll mourn ~1M lives, millions of injuries, & infrastructural devastation in 3 countries, perpetrated ignorantly in the name of my country.”

According to Brown University’s Costs of War project, an additional 3.6-3.8 million people have died indirectly in post-9/11 war zones, which brings the overall death toll to at least 4.5-4.7 million and counting.

25 years after 9/11, the American Empire is undoubtedly in decline, but its demise seemingly remains far off, and we’ve yet to collectively reckon with its ongoing crimes.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz admitted this week that Israel’s goal for Gaza is the mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza in “every way possible,” despite denying allegations of ethnic cleansing for years.

“There is no real solution for Gaza in the end without this migration,” Katz said at a conference hosted by Israeli outlet Yedioth Ahronoth on Wednesday, per a translation by France 24. Israel “is organized and prepared to get them out — by sea, by air, by every way possible.”

This plan would amount to ethnic cleansing, something that Palestinians and human rights advocates have long said Israel is carrying out in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. In a report earlier this year, the UN Human Rights Office warned that Israel was carrying out policies consistent with ethnic cleansing between 2024 and 2025, including famine, destruction of civilian infrastructure, and overall imposing conditions “incompatible with [Palestinians’] continued existence in Gaza as a group.”

Katz said that Israel is “seeking Trump’s support” for the idea because no country will take in Palestinians without the approval of the U.S.

The White House has not commented on the plan. When Donald Trump took office last year, he proposed a plan for forced displacement of the entire population of Gaza, dubiously framing it as “voluntary.”

The administration’s stance has since evolved, however. In July, Trump’s “Board of Peace” announced a plan that would still implement colonial control over Gaza, but that would transition power over the Strip to a Palestinian board and demand Israel withdraw its troops from the Strip.

In a rare break with the U.S. last month, Netanyahu announced that he would not be supporting that plan. Keeping with his usual practice of introducing unworkable provisions into negotiations, he said that Israel would not withdraw until Hamas was totally disarmed.

Disarmament — which critics say would still give Israel massive power over Gaza — was already included in the Board of Peace’s 15-point plan. But Netanyahu seems determined to ensure Israel can still carry out its genocide and occupation in Gaza, pledging again on Wednesday that Israel is “not retreating.”

“We control 60 percent of the Strip, and we are not stopping, because we are eliminating the terrorists who threaten us, day in and day out,” he reportedly said.

Trump also previously vowed to end aid to Israel if it annexed the West Bank, however, despite Israel’s ongoing annexation of the occupied Palestinian territory.

The Israeli officials’ remarks were made just weeks before critical Israeli elections in October, in which Katz and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are hoping to retain far right control of the state.

Politicians in Netanyahu’s caucus have been openly calling for cruelty toward Palestinians as a campaign strategy. This week, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir posted then deleted an AI-generated video that showed a line of Palestinians on a conveyor belt being loaded into a detention facility operated by Ben-Gvir. The Palestinians are then shown leaving the facility emaciated, with the politician seemingly showing off Israel’s systematized policy of starvation of Palestinians.

Israeli officials have denied allegations of ethnic cleansing for years.

“The charge of ‘ethnic cleansing’ against Israel is false and dangerous. It is not a legal definition but a political label, used to inflame tensions, spread hate, and fuel antisemitism,” said Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, last year. “Israel does not deport Palestinians because of their identity. Israel has, rather, temporarily removed non-combatant populations from war-zones in order to guarantee their safety.”

The statement was made in response to a September 2025 report released by Senators Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) and Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) saying that Israel was deliberately destroying civilian infrastructure and starving Palestinians with the goal of ethnic cleansing.

“After our trip to the Gaza-Egypt border last year, [Merkley] & I released a report entitled, ‘The Netanyahu Government is Implementing a Plan to Ethnically Cleanse Gaza of Palestinians.’ Now the Israeli Min[ister] of Defense confirmed that’s the goal,” said Van Hollen on Wednesday. “We must end our complicity.”

Ouano Tante worked the afternoon shift at the Tyson beef plant in Joslin, Illinois, for five years. But when she and hundreds of her co-workers arrived at work on August 13, they found the plant closed.

They speculated that someone on the morning shift might have gotten injured. Then two mid-level supervisors came outside in tears. Plant supervisors told workers the plant was closing permanently, effective immediately.

Inside, the early-morning shift had just ended when the workers were informed it would be their last. The cafeteria erupted into chaos. Plant supervisors stood guard by the doors, workers said, while everyone received their closure paperwork.

“People were crying, shaking,” Tante said. “When we were leaving the parking lot, there were so many car accidents. People were so upset.”

“They gave no reason, nothing,” said Ahoro Asselissime. “People have no job. No money to pay our bills. For 11 years, I made money for them. And now they’re not doing anything for me.”

DISASTER FOR COMMUNITY

Joslin is home to just 56 residents. But 2,500 workers from Africa, Latin America, and Burma toiled at the meatpacking plant there, butchering cattle for Tyson, one of the world’s largest meatpacking companies. The workers were represented by Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 1546.

Most of the workers live in the Quad Cities, clustered around the Illinois-Iowa border 160 miles west of Chicago. Everyone there knows someone who works at Tyson, the area’s ninth-largest employer. The closure announcement sent the community into a tailspin.

Tante, originally from Togo, had the job of determining the age of cattle by checking the size of their teeth. An overhead conveyor would move carcasses, suspended by their ankles, along the chain. Tante checked the teeth, sprinted up a set of stairs to mark the cattle’s ankles with ink, then sprinted back down to catch the next carcass.

Simultaneously, other workers drained blood from the animal by slicing the neck with knives. If Tante didn’t work fast enough or was off-pace with the other workers, she said, she could get cut by their knives.

PALTRY SEVERANCE

The laid-off workers will be paid for 36 hours a week until October, but that’s far less than they had been making with overtime.

“I got $500 this week,” said Asselissime. “My rent is $925. I have to put gas in my car, buy food for my kids. Everything is so expensive now.” Prior to the closure, Asselissime could expect around $900 a week.

“I’ve been sounding the alarm about how Tyson treats their workers for years,” said Nana Ouro-Agoro, founder of Akwaaba, a nonprofit organization that provides support to the Quad Cities’ immigrant population.

Originally from Togo, Ouro-Agoro came to the Quad Cities after winning the immigration lottery in 2008. She learned that many of her neighbors worked at Tyson, where they were frequently injured on the job and afraid to speak out. Workers told her they were being treated “worse than the cattle.”

“It was hard for me to sleep at night, hearing my fellow immigrants were working hard, getting injured, and nothing was being done,” she said.

Akwaaba helped Tyson workers with translation services and resources to help them assert their rights, including when Tyson abruptly fired dozens of Togolese workers as alleged retaliation for reporting injuries and sexual harassment. Now, about 500 of their clients—roughly 1 in 4—are out of work.

And because so much of the local economy depends on income from Tyson workers, “we’re going to see a crisis in every sector,” Ouro-Agoro said.

ONE MONOPOLY AFTER ANOTHER

It’s been a profitable few years for Tyson. So why shutter the plant? Tyson cites the nationwide cattle shortage.

Cattle stock in the United States is at a 75-year low. The costs of raising cattle have gone up significantly for ranchers, in part due to drought and higher prices for fertilizer and diesel, exacerbated by the war on Iran.

But the crisis facing Tyson workers and cattle ranchers alike is driven by one major factor: corporate consolidation. The “Big Four”—Tyson, Cargill, JBS, and National Beef—own over 80 percent of the U.S. beef industry.

The Big Four have, according to multiple court decisions, colluded to fix prices for just about everything, from the price customers pay at the grocery store to the price cattle ranchers receive for their livestock.

Yet despite the strain placed on cattle herds, U.S. beef production in real terms has remained relatively steady, due to the heavier weight of today’s cattle compared to decades ago.

Tyson isn’t the only one closing plants. JBS, the world’s largest meatpacker, closed a facility in Memphis in June, laying off 200. JBS also announced plans to close a 1,500-worker processing plant in Souderton, Pennsylvania, but efforts from union and political leaders pushed JBS to convert the plant to a smaller facility, saving 400 jobs.

With nearly 4,000 meatpacking jobs cut just this summer, is the cattle shortage really to blame?

As of the most recent fiscal quarter, Tyson’s operating income is up 8 percent, or $547 million, over last year. Tyson attributes the increase to growth in its chicken and prepared foods segments.

Tyson CEO Donnie King took home nearly $35 million in total compensation last year, 781 times more than the median Tyson worker and double the average CEO-to-worker pay ratio among S&P 500 companies.

While cattle shortages could be cutting into beef profits (Tyson reported a third-quarter beef operating loss of $138 million), overall the company is making money hand over fist. And as the meatpackers squeeze cattle producers, the shortage itself is a problem of the Big Four’s own making.

But meatpacker consolidation is only one piece of the puzzle. The meatpackers may claim that they are also the victims of collusion—by the grocery giants.

Walmart, Amazon, Kroger, and Albertsons can collude to lower prices paid to meatpackers too. Estimates place Walmart at between 20 and 25 percent ownership of the grocery industry, while Amazon (thanks to its acquisition of Whole Foods) is now the second-largest grocery retailer in the U.S.

Grocers are pushing down prices paid to packers, while packers are slashing prices paid to ranchers. In 1980, cattle producers took home $0.63 of every consumer beef dollar and the packers and retailers took home a combined $0.37. As of 2021, that number is exactly flipped, according to More Perfect Union. All the while, workers and consumers get the shortest end of the stick; price collusion lines the pockets of meatpacking and grocery store executives, while depressing worker wages and inflating consumer prices.

UNION PENS AGREEMENT

After the Joslin plant closure, the union released the following statement: “UFCW Local 1546 has a long-standing and proud union partnership with Tyson Foods, and we were extremely disappointed in not receiving advance notice of this news. If given the opportunity, we could have sat down and found an economic solution to keep this plant operating, but sadly our voice was silenced.”

Four days after the company’s closure announcement, Local 1546 President Robert O’Toole signed an agreement with Tyson, which includes severance pay of one to four weeks, depending on years of service, on top of the two months of payments.

The UFCW agrees to “not to take any steps or action to… interfere in any way with the orderly closing of the Plant, and the Union agrees not to support any such steps or action by others.”

Many workers feel their union leadership has left them hung out to dry. “The union doesn’t care about us, Tyson doesn’t care about us,” said Asselissime. “A lot of immigrants work for this company, from Mexico, from Africa. That’s why they don’t care.”

Some workers were already mobilizing independently. The day after Tyson announced the closure, laid-off workers rallied outside the plant gates with community supporters and political groups. The workers demanded Tyson make a plan to keep the plant open; if that wasn’t possible, they wanted six months of severance pay, not two.

At various points in its history, the UFCW has taken up key fights against the packers. In 2007, it spearheaded a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security after ICE raids detained 12,000 workers at six meatpacking plants.And in 2008, after a 16-year battle, it organized the world’s largest pork processing plant, the Smithfield plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina.

But in recent years, the International union seems to have changed its tune, tying itself to the meat cartels in exchange for short-term, modest gains. Now Tyson workers say that labor-management “partnership” is swinging back at the members, with little response from union leadership.

“The union hasn’t said anything, aside from telling us to go apply for unemployment,” said Tante. “I thought the union should defend us, so I was surprised they didn’t do anything. The union could have fought for us to get more severance, but they didn’t.”

PROTESTS CONTINUE

Several hundred maintenance workers who remain in the plant are reportedly dismantling equipment and preparing the plant for demolition.

Meatpackers are notorious for refusing to sell plants to other packers, wanting to stifle competition. In 2018, for example, when Tyson closed a plant in Cherokee, Iowa, it refused to sell until the next owners agreed to limit the number of cattle they would slaughter there.

While some workers might move and get jobs at other plants, Tyson has not outlined formal transfer rights or relocation stipends (in previous plant closures, relocation bonuses have been up to $15,000). JBS has held mass hiring events in the Quad Cities for those willing to relocate to Nebraska or Utah.

Veronica Ceballos, originally from Mexico, worked at Tyson for 19 years, commuting on rural backroads through harsh Iowa winters. Even after she injured her back working on the line, she transferred to a different position and continued working. Since her children are now adults, she says, she has the flexibility to relocate if necessary. But she worries for co-workers who don’t have that option.

Several hundred Tyson workers and their families have continued organizing protests and rallies, calling on Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker to invoke eminent domain to bring the plant under state ownership and re-open its doors, and on Tyson to increase severance pay to six months. On September 3, workers and community supporters will caravan to Springfield to march on the state capitol building at noon.

“There are people who’ve worked at Tyson for 20 years, 30 years. People with health issues, people who are sick, people who can no longer work elsewhere,” Asselissime said in a speech at a rally of about 100 workers on August 27. “We need fair severance pay, so we can have a future.”

Caitlyn Clark is a national organizer at Essential Workers for Democracy (www.ew4d.org), an organization dedicated to rank and file member education and empowerment for workers in grocery, meatpacking, and retail.

Correction 09/10/2026: Workers were informed about the plant closure on August 13, not August 14 as previously stated.

The small self-proclaimed state of Somaliland is aiming to become a regional player: it is now an ally of Israel and has commercial and security agreements in the Gulf. Now it's hoping for US support.

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After years of organizing, residents in Howard County, Maryland, say they’re running out of options to find out what their plastic recycling corporate neighbor, W.R. Grace, is emitting. 

The multinational chemical company and the state’s main permitting agency have fulfilled state and federal permitting and regulatory requirements for W.R. Grace’s pilot program to recycle plastic.

“As long as the facility meets local zoning and land-use requirements, MDE is obligated to review an air quality permit application for activities related to the facility,” the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) said in its final determination letter, granting the necessary air permit. While MDE required the company to control and monitor for volatile organic compounds and “forever chemicals,” an environmental impact assessment was not required given the scope of the pilot project. MDE’s air quality control regulations prohibit a source from causing a nuisance or odor. 

In recent weeks, residents have reported foul odors emanating from the W.R. Grace facility, which initiated the pilot program in 2023. Residents told Prism that they don’t know whether the air is toxic; W.R. Grace has claimed that some of the information about the process is proprietary, limiting what the public can learn about its operations and emissions. 

Residents of Cedar Creek and River Hill, two communities in Columbia, Maryland, that sit as close as 240 feet from the chemical facility, said the company can legally leave the public in the dark. This isn’t just an issue for Maryland residents, but should ring an alarm bell for communities across the country.

“Even in this very Democratic city … no one’s listening,” said Shamieka Preston, a community organizer with the Stop Grace Coalition who said she lives 400 feet outside the facility’s fenceline. Preston ran for Howard County Council to represent District 4 and lost her primary election in June. She ran on a platform to hold W.R. Grace accountable after other attempts failed, including a court challenge to the company’s operations permit and trying to change zoning rules about how far industrial facilities have to be from residential areas.

In 2022, Preston moved her family from California for a better quality of life and safety. In Maryland, her family could live in a larger house and access high-quality public schools. Soon after the family’s move to Cedar Creek, W.R. Grace applied for its permit. 

Plastics recycling

Advanced chemical recycling, or “pyrolysis,” refers to the process of applying extreme amounts of heat to plastic without the presence of oxygen, turning it into pyrolysis oil. Once that oil is refined, it can be used as transportation fuel. W.R. Grace disputes that its experimental technologies conduct pyrolysis.

“Grace scientists have developed a new way of recycling plastic that has the potential to reduce emissions, save energy, and lower costs compared to other plastic recycling options such as pyrolysis,” a W.R. Grace spokesperson told Prism in an email.

The company “followed the proper MDE process, including participating in a public hearing and a 120-day comment period,” the spokesperson said, adding that the “pilot research project will not impact the health or wellbeing of our local community or the employees who work at the facility every day.” 

Plastics recycling, pyrolysis, and chemical recycling are the latest forms of so-called solutions to the climate crisis, said Rita O’Connell, a staff organizer at Beyond Plastics, a research and advocacy organization housed at Bennington College in Vermont. She told Prism that people should be wary of the narrative that plastic is recyclable and its consumption relatively harmless. O’Connell has consulted with the Stop Grace Coalition. 

About 6% of all plastics that have ever been produced have been successfully recycled, she said.

“The promise of chemical recycling for legislators and municipal leaders is, ‘Oh good, we don’t have to worry so much about this plastic crisis because we can just send it off to be turned back into plastic,’” O’Connell said. “That essentially functions as an incredibly effective public relations campaign for the plastics and the petrochemicals industries to keep making as much plastic as they want.”

Maryland residents are also concerned that W.R. Grace has claimed many of the components of its research are proprietary, including information about feedstock sources and composition, fuel, and what chemicals are used in the heating process. The company has repeatedly stated that atmospheric emissions from the pilot program will be “low,” despite the thermal oxidizer running 16 hours per day, 250 days per year.

Lisa Krausz, who lives in River Hill near the W.R. Grace facility, told Prism that the emissions aren’t any less of a concern just because the pilot program engages in less chemical recycling than a commercial operation might. In fact, “pilot projects can actually be more risky because they’re testing stuff,” Krausz said. “It’s all experimental.”

W.R. Grace isn’t required by the state to make public what catalyst it uses to break down plastic feedstock. But, Krausz said that some catalysts, like chromium, can become toxic after exposure to high heat. 

Who does plastics recycling really benefit?

The Biden administration ushered in a wave of experimentation with advanced chemical recycling. In 2022, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that its New Chemical Division would “streamline” the review of “environmentally friendly chemical substitutes” in order to bring new fuels to market that would help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Sources of fuel that are derived from “waste” such as plastic are included in this effort.

Despite the lofty goals of chemical recycling to meet the moment of unprecedented plastic pollution, environmental advocates caution that plastic pyrolysis is a way to offer the oil and gas industry a public relations lifeline and convince the public that recycling is an effective means of waste management. 

Scott Throwe, vice president of the consulting organization Throwe Environmental, worked at the EPA for three decades, including helping to lead development and enforcement of Clean Air Act regulations. 

Throwe said there is almost no federal guidance or leadership on the subject of pyrolysis. Without a risk analysis for the industry, specific regulations addressing air pollutants that result from this process, or understanding the manifold and complex risks of emissions, companies simply have to make sure their emissions don’t violate the current Clean Air Act regulations—even if those regulations were written prior to pyrolysis facilities starting to operate.

Deregulation and destabilization at the EPA have a filter-down effect on states. “There’s a very strong laissez-faire attitude at EPA with the states right now, and the state agencies basically, for all practical purposes, have carte blanche,” Throwe said. The problem, he said, is that state agencies might not have the breadth of experience or institutional knowledge to establish and maintain robust monitoring schemes. 

“This is a pilot plant, so things are going to go wrong—that’s the nature of pilot operations,” Throwe told Prism.

Correction, Aug. 31, 2026: This story has been updated to correct where two residents live: Lisa Krausz live in River Hill, and Shamieka Preston lives in Cedar Creek.

Editorial Team:
Sahar Fatima, Lead Editor
Carolyn Copeland, Top Editor
Stephanie Harris, Copy Editor

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President Donald Trump on Monday warned Americans that they risk becoming “backwards and poor” unless they allow Big Tech companies to build artificial intelligence data centers in their communities.

In a social media post, the president expressed indignation that any town or city wouldn’t welcome data centers, which have drawn nationwide opposition for generating pollution and jacking up utility bills.

“The only reason that communities throughout the USA should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor,” Trump wrote. “If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign.”

In reality, AI data centers create very few jobs once they are completed, as most of their functions are fully automated.

Trump then said that Americans “will only have yourselves to blame” if they “kill the Golden Goose” that is AI data centers.

“China could not be happier with this anti Data Center movement,” Trump wrote. “Actually, they can’t believe it is happening!”

Building AI data centers has become massively unpopular throughout the US.

A poll conducted by Embold Research and published by Heatmap Pro earlier this month shows that 75% of Americans now oppose building AI data centers in their area, including 61% registering strong opposition.

While Republicans polled in the survey were more supportive of data centers than Democrats and independent voters, it nonetheless found that opposition among Republicans outweighed support by 43 points.

Polling analyst G. Elliott Morris marveled at how politically tone deaf the president sounds when it comes to data centers, commenting that “Donald Trump is actively trying to help as many Democratic senators as possible get elected.”

Longtime GOP operative Frank Luntz similarly noted data centers’ unpopularity, citing a recent Gallup poll showing 63% of Republican voters oppose having one of the facilities built in their communities.

“We’re about to see whether President Trump can sway those voters to support them, as he’s done on many issues before,” Luntz remarked.

Democratic US Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed wasted no time tying the president’s position on data centers to his opponent, Republican Mike Rogers.

“Make no mistake—this is Mike Rogers’ position on data centers,” wrote El-Sayed. “He’s got up to $2.6 million invested in companies cashing in on the data center boom, all while Michiganders watch their utility bills soar. You can’t trust a word out of Mike’s mouth because he’s only out for himself, for Donald Trump, and for Big Tech—not Michigan.”

Faiz Shakir, a longtime adviser to US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), observed that Trump is merely “sharing the perspective of Wall Street and Big Tech” and is showing “no interest… in grappling with the mass revolt across American communities, or to learn anything from them.”

Screenwriter David Simon, creator of the acclaimed television series The Wire, accused Trump of brazenly lying about data centers’ economic benefits.

“If data centers are a geographic benefit to communities, you can be sure they’d be siting and building them in affluent and politically connected environs,” wrote Simon. “Curiously, they’re dumped in poorer, less influential places. Go fucking figure.”

Republican Kentucky state Rep. Savannah Maddox took issue with the president disparaging communities opposed to data centers, which include many of the rural communities that voted for him in three presidential elections.

“Rural doesn’t mean ‘backwards and poor’ and development doesn’t always equate to being ‘successful and rich,’” wrote Maddox. “President Trump wouldn’t be president without the rural voters who inhabit America’s heartland. It is not wrong of us to question the sudden and wide-scale effort to convert arable land into data centers. We are not stupid for wanting to protect our rural way of life.”

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A growing number of establishment Democrats are facing backlash from progressives for their escalating attacks on leftist streamer Hasan Piker, with critics accusing the party’s corporatist wing of obsessing over an online influencer while ignoring the economic and foreign policy grievances driving millions of voters away on the eve of the critical midterm elections.

The latest controversy erupted after Piker argued during an online broadcast that Jewish Americans’ public support for Israel could contribute to antisemitism. Piker’s comments drew swift condemnation from prominent Democrats, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (NY), who, without naming Piker, called them “dangerous and antisemitic.”

Other Democrats piled on, prompting rebuke from progressives, who accused the centrists of caring more about an online personality than winning back control of Congress in November.

Former progressive Michigan congressional candidate Kyle Blomquist called it an “absolute mass psychosis event.”

Wild to see establishment Dems fighting a Twitch streamer harder than they're fighting Trump. Putting out statements attacking @hasanthehun while meeting with Jared Kushner. It's so obviously playing into the right's midterm strategy of distracting people from rising costs. pic.twitter.com/vhxHN9pTpB

— Aaron Regunberg (@AaronRegunberg) August 25, 2026

“Too many demotivated Democrats stayed home in 2016 and 2024. We can’t repeat past mistakes,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said on social media.

Khanna implored Democrats to stop calling Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—who is Jewish—an antisemite and “stop wasting time attacking Hasan Piker instead of [President Donald] Trump’s robber-baron corruption.”

“Don’t put Israel hawks out of touch with our voters in charge of our Middle East policy,” he added. “It is time for a reckoning: Are we a party that represents corporate interests and super PACs, or will we represent the American people?”

According to Track AIPAC, pro-Israel Democrats have taken tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions from pro-Israel lobby groups, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s United Democracy Project.

Khanna’s comments came a day after Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), the leading Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, announced the appointment of Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) as ranking member of the Middle East and North Africa Subcommittee. Moskowitz, who said earlier this year that he is “to the right” of Vice President JD Vance in his support of Trump’s illegal US-Israeli war of choice on Iran, is one of the strongest supporters of Israel in Congress.

This, at a time when three-quarters of Democratic voters oppose US aid to Israel—up from just 45% three years ago—and after the issue was a factor in former Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss to Trump in the 2024 presidential election.

A majority of Democratic voters also believe that Israel’s US-backed war on Gaza is a genocide, a position also held by United Nations experts, around 20 countries that joined South Africa’s ongoing genocide case at the International Court of Justice, human rights groups, and scholars around the world—including in Israel.

Jasper Nathaniel, a US journalist known for his coverage of Israel’s illegal occupation, settler colonization, and ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, posted on X: “The entire bipartisan political establishment has coalesced around a willful misreading of what Hasan Piker said in order to silence criticism of Israel. They’re doing the same thing to Mark Ruffalo in Hollywood. It’s all fucking gaslighting. Don’t give an inch.”

“What Hasan said is completely intuitive. Everyone knows that Israel’s genocide of Palestinians—and the Jewish institutions’ blanket support for it—has created more hostility towards Jews,” he added. “There is no good-faith argument against this.”

Below is a fuller transcript of Piker's remarks. No doubt much that some would disagree with, but there's no call for or justification of violence – the opposite, actually. pic.twitter.com/AZiksRy4VR

— Branko Marcetic (@BMarchetich) August 25, 2026

Jacobin staff writer Branko Marcetic asserted Wednesday that “centrists despise Hasan Piker more than they want to win.”

“It’s an extreme stretch to describe Piker’s remarks as an incitement of or justification for violence and bigotry against Jews,” he continued. “The basic point he’s making—that the tendency by pro-Israel voices to conflate Jewishness with lockstep support for Israel makes Jews less safe—has been made by a number of Jewish voices, including Ezra Klein at The New York Times, David Klion at The Nation, Norman Solomon at The Guardian, union organizer Molly Kraft, and Hannah Arendt nearly 80 years ago.”

The dispute has now ensnared Michigan US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who campaigned alongside Piker during his successful Democratic primary bid. El-Sayed has somewhat distanced himself from Piker’s comments, emphasizing that the campaign represents his own views and condemning antisemitism. It hasn’t placated establishment Democrats.

Some Democrats have implored their party to keep its eyes on the proverbial prize—winning back Congress—instead of engaging in senseless internecine battles.

“Billionaires are draining our resources to develop a technology they want to replace us, millions will lose Medicaid in the new year to pay for tax cuts for the rich, and we’re spending billions on genocidal wars the voters oppose,” said Melat Kiros, the progressive Democratic nominee for Colorado’s 1st Congressional District. “But sure, let’s keep talking about Hasan Piker.”

It’s not just Democratic Socialists of America-type progressives who get it. Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) admonished reporters during a Wednesday campaign rally for El-Sayed at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

.@RepDebDingell (D-MI) says Hasan Piker is "not what November is about," and that Republicans are trying to divide Democrats over it: "I'm still trying to figure out is it the reason he exercises and looks buff why he has so many followers?" pic.twitter.com/zZLTCHHbTy

— CSPAN (@cspan) August 26, 2026

“Don’t any reporter ask me again about Hasan Piker,” she said angrily. “It’s not what November is about.”

“Republicans are… trying to divide us,” she continued. “And we’ve got to stop letting them try to divide us.”

Weighing in on corporate Democrats’ attacks on Piker from across the Atlantic, British writer and activist Owen Jones said Wednesday that “the Democratic establishment know they’ve lost their base. These smears are driven by panic.”

“The bottom line about what’s happening here is this: The American people have turned against Israel in revulsion at the genocide and want to stop facilitating its crimes. That opposition is overwhelming among the Democratic rank-and-file,” he continued.

“But the Democratic Party establishment remains invested in the alliance with Israel—and they fear being swept aside by pro-Palestinian left-wing candidates in upcoming primaries,” Jones asserted, adding that centrists “would prefer to lose to the Republicans than win with the left. They would prefer to keep facilitating Israel’s genocide and heinous crimes rather than win.”

“That’s what we are dealing with here,” he added. “And if it means destroying US democracy to defend Israel—that’s a price they’re willing to pay.”

Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy and a former foreign policy adviser to Sanders, expressed a similar sentiment on social media.

“You’ve never seen corporate Democrats fighting as hard and as on message against Trump as they are against Hasan right now,” he said. “It’s insane.”

Scientists and climate action campaigners on Thursday pointed to the collapse of a glacier as a likely cause of disastrous flash flooding in Tibet and Nepal’s Rasuwa district, where emergency workers are searching for more than 1,300 missing people after water and mud poured into the Trishuli River valley, crashing through villages where thousands of people live and sweeping away bridges, homes, and miles of roads.

An initial assessment by geologists and glaciologists found that in satellite imagery taken before the flooding, a glacier was seen about 4,000 feet above the valley where at least 353 people were later killed Wednesday by the rushing waters and mudslide.

The glacier appeared about 2 million square feet smaller after the flooding, while the valley was “strewn with ice and mud” and the nearby river was “swollen beyond its banks, submerging the surrounding vegetation beneath murky brown floodwaters.

The scientists said an “ice avalanche”—a massive chunk of ice that fell off a glacier in the mountainous region and into the valley below, was likely at least partially to blame for the flash flooding, but noted that it was too early to rule out other or additional causes.

The satellite imagery appeared to show that “a glacier in the area basically snapped off in a clean break, allowing it to fall just over a vertical kilometer to the valley bottom,” Daniel Shugar, a geologist at the University of Calgary in Canada, told The New York Times. “The bottom looks like a bomb exploded—it’s just deposits from the broken-up glacier.”

The chunk of ice was likely about 2,000 feet wide, Shugar told the Times, and fell nearly 4,000 feet—a fall that would have “pulverized” the ice into water.

Aakriti Dotel, national network coordinator for the climate action group Nepalese Youth for Climate Action said the floods were “another painful reminder of the growing climate crisis facing Nepal and the Himalayas.”

“As our glaciers melt and extreme weather events become increasingly unpredictable, communities living downstream are bearing the devastating consequences,” said Dotel. “We mourn the lives lost and the livelihoods affected and call for urgent global climate action. There must be stronger support for vulnerable mountain communities, and accountability from those most responsible for the climate crisis.”

The disaster stunned officials in the area, where there had been no rainfall before the floodwaters and mudslide overtook the region.

Intense videos circulating on social media Wednesday showed people attempting to run away as water and mud crashed into villages in the region.

🇳🇵🌊 Nepal flash flood kills at least 95, hundreds missing

➤ A massive flash flood swept away villages in Nepal’s mountainous Rasuwa district near the Tibet border Wednesday, killing at least 95 people and leaving hundreds missing, including 384 tourists and eight South Korean…

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) August 26, 2026

Tom Fletcher, the United Nations humanitarian chief, said he had mobilized $2 million from the UN Global Emergency Fund “to save lives with emergency medical care, shelter, water.”

The secretary-general of the Nepal Red Cross told CNN that about 20,000 houses have been “swept away” in the region.

“These people do not have anything,” said Rishi Khanal. “To feed them for some time, some days is a very serious thing to us… The shelter problem is there. The drinking water problem is there.”

A truly desperate assessment out of Nepal from the Secretary General of @NepalRedCross: pic.twitter.com/QrJ4vZhmSz

— Becky Anderson (@BeckyCNN) August 26, 2026

A police officer in the village of Syabrubesi told the Times that waves of water crashed into his police station Wednesday morning, right after he got off the phone with a friend who had warned him a flood was headed toward the town.

“One of my senior officers and I were together when the wave struck. I was thrown out, but he was unlucky and was buried or swept away,” he told the newspaper. “I cannot explain how big the waves were. They engulfed several-meters-high buildings in a fraction of seconds… It wasn’t just water. It was a combination of boulders, sand, and thick sludge.”

Seven people were working at the station when the flood hit, and the officer is one of three who have been found alive. He said he was concerned that the other four are among the missing.

Homes, schools, government buildings, and the office of a hydropower project are among the infrastructure destroyed in Syabrubesi.

More than 160 glaciers in Nepal have entirely melted in recent decades, as scientists have warned that continued fossil fuel extraction is heating the planet and causing dangerous extreme weather. The area of the country’s glaciers also shrank by about one-quarter between 1970-2010.

At The Conversation, Levan Tielidze, a research fellow in glacial geomorphology at Monash University, wrote that “it’s too early to say this was the exact cause. But we know that the great ice stores of the Himalayas—known as the world’s ‘third pole’ because it contains the largest amount of snow and ice after the Arctic and Antarctic—are no longer safe.”

Tielidze continued:

What happened in Nepal is likely due to an enormous ice-and-rock landslide sweeping down a mountain pass and gathering up ice, water, rock, trees and dirt.
The landslide was so large it was originally thought to be an earthquake, as the seismic energy registered as a 4.4 magnitude quake on seismographs.
By the time it reached Gyirong Port—a China-Nepal border crossing—the wall of debris resembled a tsunami of dirt. Early estimates suggest the wave may have been 30 meters high.

Rising global temperatures have been linked to previous collapses of glaciers, including in Switzerland last year when the Birch Glacier wiped out nearly an entire town of 300 residents, who had evacuated before the disaster. Eleven mountain climbers were also killed by a glacier collapse in Italy in 2022.

“Every destabilized glacier in a warming Himalaya is a ticking time bomb that can go off unannounced, and when it does, those least responsible for the climate crisis pay with their lives,” said Savio Carvalho, head of campaigns and networks for 350.org. “This moment of grief has a clear message for world leaders: Delay is deadly. Rich countries must finally deliver the finance and protection they owe frontline communities. Without a rapid transition away from fossil fuels, the planet will continue to heat up and lives can be lost in a flash.”