“Keep our city out of your reckless war talk,” said San Diego’s mayor, Todd Gloria, Monday night after President Donald Trump’s rambling speech at a rally in Nebraska included a particularly violent mention of the California city. Gloria was among several Democratic political leaders who were incensed after Trump – moments after predicted the Republican […]
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Oct. 06, 2026.It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
“Keep our city out of your reckless war talk,” said San Diego’s mayor, Todd Gloria, Monday night after President Donald Trump’s rambling speech at a rally in Nebraska included a particularly violent mention of the California city.
Gloria was among several Democratic political leaders who were incensed after Trump—moments after predicted the Republican Party would see a “tremendous victory” in the November 3 midterm elections—suggested that he would not object to an Iranian military or nuclear attack on San Diego and Los Angeles.
The president said that soaring prices for gas, groceries, and other essentials are a “small price to pay for keeping the world safe—keeping our country safe.”
Trump on Iran: Let 'em take out Los Angeles and San Diego, it's a small price to pay pic.twitter.com/Fc4BcjVDKj
He warned that Iran could “take out a city,” before adding that he would “let them” attack the two deep-blue cities—home to a collective 5.2 million people, with more than 20 million residents in the surrounding areas
“Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego,” Trump said at the rally in Grand Island. “This is a very small price to pay… It’s gonna be over very soon.”
The crowd responded to Trump’s comments with laughter and cheers. The president has frequently made Democratic strongholds like Los Angeles, Chicago, and his own hometown of New York City the targets of rhetorical attacks. He has also targeted those cities with the deployment of armed federal agents as part of his mass deportation agenda.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat whose name has been floated as a potential 2028 presidential candidate, condemned Trump’s remarks as “deranged and dangerous.”
“After sending the National Guard and Marines to occupy California, Donald Trump is now saying our foreign enemies should ‘take out’ Los Angeles and San Diego,” said Newsom, who later criticized Trump’s vice president and secretary of state for not speaking out against the comments.
Gloria added that San Diego, which is home to major military installations, “is not collateral damage. We are not expendable. And we are never a ‘small price to pay.’”
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass accused Trump of compromising the safety of the nation’s second-largest city.
“The role of a president is to protect the country, not to actively threaten it and encourage attacks on American lives,” said Bass. “In the face of irresponsible threats, as Angelenos, we know how to stand together and protect our city.”
Jim Desmond, a Republican running for Congress in California’s 48th District, which lies in San Diego, was also quick to distance himself from the president’s comments.
Some observers claimed the president had simply been speaking in an “especially confusing style,” as journalist Daniel Dale suggested, and did not intend to suggest that the two cities could be acceptable collateral damage.
“Of course you can say it’s inappropriate regardless for the president to casually float the possibility of a city being wiped out,” he added.
Trump’s comments came days after it was reported that the Pentagon is prepared to send thousands more troops and a third aircraft carrier to the Middle East, as talks between the US and Iran remain stalled. Gas prices remain elevated, at $4.36 per gallon on average, and nearly two-thirds of respondents to an Associated Press poll in June said they disapproved of how Trump had handled the war, which he joined Israel in starting in February without congressional approval.
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) had a succinct response to Trump’s remarks, referring to the constitutional amendment that allows members of a president’s Cabinet to remove him from office on the ground that they cannot fulfill the duties of the president.
A quarter-century ago, after a deadly terrorist attack raised fiery explosions from the World Trade Center buildings, the US Department of Homeland Security introduced a color-coded advisory system, under which orange signified “High Risk of Terrorist Activities.” For many people, including Dushko Petrovich Córdova, “this ambient, lingering orange signaled that emergency was continuous, a new way of living.” Ours is a world of prison jumpsuits and Home Depot, leaders with an affinity for fake tans and “aptitude for the orange of perpetual crisis,” public health maps of infection rates painted various shades of orange to mark severity, a sky dyed orange by wildfire smoke. We are inundated by the color; it feels, at times, inescapable. Is it really? Follow Córdova to the brilliant end of this stunner.
Once, in the late ’90s, a few years before the dawn of the orange era, I found myself in Montreal for a friend’s wedding. There was a wildfire nearby, and I remember trying to capture the eerie effect of the atmosphere turning orange with the disposable cameras that had been handed out to all the guests. The resulting pictures looked underexposed and nothing more, the otherworldly orange haze rendered mostly regular gray.
So, decades later, in 2023, when photos of smoke from yet another Canadian wildfire began to appear on social media, I was surprised by how well digital photography had captured what had proved so elusive in the late disposable-camera era. The best civilian shot I saw was of the scenery through a window. The cool interior lighting framed the orangeness outside, in the same way that you might frame a sunset, except that instead of a bright band of orange light at the horizon, this orange was everywhere, pressing at all the edges of the window frame and probably trying to get in through the cracks. In another image I saw a gray cat sitting on a windowsill, apparently unperturbed by the wide expanse of horror just behind it.
“There is only one president in this country and his name is Nicolás Maduro Moros,” Venezuela’s current interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, said on the same day as the U.S. attack that ended with the detention of the former chavista leader and his wife, Cilia Flores. Rodríguez described the military intervention in Caracas as an “illegal and illegitimate kidnapping of the president and first lady.” However, Venezuela later did not take any formal steps to demand the couple’s release or to request their immunity so they would not be tried in the United States.
With the Brazilian presidential election headed to a runoff, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is down 47% to 45% and faces a massive fight ahead. I wanted to give a quick analysis of what happened and where things are going next. Lula could still win if he can consolidate support from third parties Lula lost […]
It is Sylvester Stallone’s fourth interview of the day. Is he tired of talking yet? “No, because this is the first one about my memoirs,” he replies from a hotel room in New York, his hometown, overlooking Central Park, where he is meeting with EL PAÍS.
The U.S. midterm elections will not only determine who will occupy the Congressional seats and governorships up for grabs in November. In several states, voters will also find ballot measures seeking to amend laws, approve tax changes, or add new provisions to state constitutions.
Paul Krugman is the greatest econ writer in the world, and also a legendary economist. But I sometimes feel that he has a blind spot when it comes to the value of new technologies. In 1998 he famously wrote: The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in ‘Metcalfe’s law’—which states that […]
Die Ukraine bekommt immer mehr Probleme, weshalb Kanzler Merz mal wieder nach Kiew gefahren ist, um über eine Milliarde Euro deutscher Steuergelder zu verschenken. Deutschland bekommt auch immer mehr Probleme, aber für die Deutschen hat Merz kein Geld, denn sonst reicht es nicht für Kiew. Aber was sind die Gründe für die aktuellen Probleme der […]
Washington minaccia l’Europa sul diesel e Bruxelles sblocca le riserve strategiche. Ma anche gli USA sono in difficoltà: cosa rivela il braccio di ferro?
Lo stabilimento di camion di Springfield ha chiuso con il passaggio da International Motors a Roshel. E un suo elettore ora farà campagna per i democratici
Der Staatsbesuch von Xi Jingping in den USA war, von einem gewissen medialen Spott über Trumps auffällige Unterwürfigkeit gegenüber dem Gast aus China abgesehen, sehr unspektakulär, obwohl Trump und Xi eine lange Liste wichtiger Themen zu besprechen hatten. Da wären die Wirtschaftsbeziehungen und der Handelskrieg zwischen den Ländern, die Frage der sinkenden Anteile von US-Staatspapieren […]
Auch am letzten Donnerstag haben Robert Stein und ich wieder eine aktuelle Folge von Tacheles aufgenommen, die seit Freitagabend online ist. Sollte YouTube die Sendung löschen, finden Sie sie auch hier bei NuoViso.
Five months ago, four excited girls walked into a maximum-security area with their mother wearing the same black T-shirt printed with a photo of their father. Minutes later, he emerged from a building guarded by the military, amid camera flashes and television cameras, and looked at them with moist eyes from the other side of the fence. He could not approach or touch them. He had to respect quarantine, because in a few hours he would board the most powerful crewed rocket in history and head to the Moon. Without speaking, they said everything to each other, and the rest of the world understood them.
In late September, Israeli media reported that Netanyahu’s government intends to adjust access to key routes in the central West Bank. It plans to reopen Route 463 to settler-only traffic in the governorate of Ramallah and Al-Bireh.
Yisrael Gantz, the leader of the Yesha Council (an umbrella organization representing Israeli municipal councils across Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the Jordan Valley) confirmed that plans to reopen the road received preliminary approval and funding.
Preparations are also underway by the Israeli military to complete “the security, legal, and logistical” steps required to reopen the route (also known as Wallerstein Road).
History of the road
The road was paved in 1994 under the directions of Pinchas Wallerstein, a founder of the settlement movement, to connect the illegal settlements of Beit El (north-east of Ramallah and Al-Bireh) and Dolev (north-west of Jerusalem).
However, following the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000, the Israeli army barred Israeli people from using the road for security reasons. They also placed a locked iron gate on its end near Ein Qiniya village, northwest of Ramallah.
Why has the reopening of the route raised concerns among Palestinians in the West Bank?
Experts argue that Israel’s move will impact not only the governorate itself, but the entire occupied West Bank because of its central location, major metropolitan status, and role as a commercial hub.
To understand the repercussions of the route reopening, BreakThrough News spoke with Jamal Jumaa, a Palestinian activist, expert on Israeli settlement and apartheid-related issues, and coordinator of the Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign (Stop the Wall).
Aside from dividing the governorate’s northern and southern halves, Jumaa noted that reopening the road is dangerous because it will block the center of Ramallah and Al-Bireh from two-thirds of its villages, which are situated to the west.
The prominent Palestinian activist added that when Israel builds such roads for settler traffic, it fences them off on both sides and prohibits the use of adjacent lands. The Israeli authorities consider those lands a buffer zone, citing the security of the settlers as their reason.
“This entails setting up military towers and checkpoints. The road will cut off continuously inhabited Palestinian villages north-west and south-west of Ramallah. Therefore, we are talking about the establishment of roughly four military checkpoints along the road,” he continued.
Jumaa pointed out that the road will complicate the life of Palestinians by restricting their access to vital healthcare and education facilities, including the Istishari Arab Hospital, Birzeit University, and the Arab American University.
He also noted that the intended reopening of the road “is part of dividing and dividing more Palestinians from each other.”
On the political level, Jumaa suggested that the road “hits the heart of the West Bank, which gives a clear signal to the Palestinian Authority that it has no sovereignty over anything.”
It is worth noting that since its establishment, the Palestinian Authority has designated Ramallah and Al-Bireh as a de facto administrative capital. Yet, this has not prevented the Israeli authorities from fragmenting and isolating the governorate by establishing illegal settlements, military outposts, checkpoints, and gates.
Brazil’s presidential elections are sparking reactions across the region. The economic (and, by extension, geopolitical) importance of this South American giant leaves no regional politician or social organization indifferent, as they know that much of the continent’s future is at stake at the Brazilian polls.
Support for Bolsonaro from Washington and Milei
Flávio Bolsonaro, son of the far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro (who is in prison for conspiring to carry out a coup d’état against Lula da Silva), has received explicit support from Argentine President Javier Milei – a move that cost Buenos Aires a diplomatic crisis with Brasília due to the Argentine leader’s anti-Lula statements made on Brazilian soil.
Likewise, Flávio Bolsonaro enjoys the direct support of President Donald Trump. The US president has maintained a recent tradition (heavily criticized by many) of publicly expressing support for this or that far-right Latin American candidate who, upon winning the election, fully aligns their country with Washington’s foreign policy and joins the US-led military alliance known as the Shield of the Americas.
Trump has also imposed direct trade sanctions on Brazil over the conviction of Jair Bolsonaro, whom Trump calls a “friend.” In addition, the United States sanctioned the judge who convicted Bolsonaro, Alexandre de Moraes, sending a clear message of condemnation against the Brazilian justice system – a move that some political analysts have called foreign “interference” in the Brazilian judicial system.
Unions and the Latin American Left support Lula
Lula has also received support from another very important female leader in the region: Claudia Sheinbaum. In recent weeks, the president of Mexico has repeatedly highlighted the positive aspects of Lula’s administration: “I believe that President Lula has been a very good president … He has done an extraordinary job leading Brazil, and the indicators show it.” The endorsement of his candidacy has clearly been indirect, but given Mexico’s geopolitical importance, many in Lula’s Workers’ Party surely appreciate it.
Lula has also received support from neighboring countries to the south. In Uruguay, the ruling coalition, the Frente Amplio (FA), has shown direct and militant support for Lula’s campaign. Fernando Pereira, president of the FA, stated that the electoral battle in Brazil “is between democracy and barbarism.” He also warned against US interference in the elections: “Brazil will not accept U.S. interference in the election.”
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