Democrats on the US Senate Armed Services Committee called on the Pentagon on Monday to reveal how much President Donald Trump’s Iran war is costing American taxpayers, citing “ongoing efforts to hide the true cost.” US Central Command (CENTCOM) told Congress that the war had cost $43.6 billion as of September 3. But in Monday’s […]

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As US President Donald Trump deepens his ties with Pakistan’s powerful military chief Asim Munir, the nation’s government has detained the elected leadership of the last province controlled by jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s opposition party – a move critics have condemned as a coup. Pakistan’s president, Asif Ali Zardari, declared a state of […]

The post PTI opposition jailed as Trump embraces Pakistan’s Asim Munir appeared first on Asia Times.

Yemen is spiraling back toward full-scale war after its Saudi-backed government launched a major offensive on Sunday to retake territory captured by the Iran-backed group Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthis. President Rashad al-Alimi said the armed forces would seek to retake all Houthi-controlled territory, which is home to about 70% of Yemen’s population, […]

The post US backs major offensive as Yemen slides back toward all-out war appeared first on Asia Times.

Earlier this month, the UK government announced plans to cut off trade with Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank—including weapons shipments. But according to new disclosures made to Parliament, reported Thursday by Declassified UK, the sanctions regime has not actually led to any weapons licenses being suspended or revoked, validating warnings by some critics that the new Labour government’s effort to cut […]

The post UK’s new Israel sanctions haven’t suspended any weapons transfers appeared first on Asia Times.

In what environmental advocates describe as “another gift to the fossil fuel industry,” the Trump administration plans to end rules limiting the release of planet-heating emissions from power plants that burn coal and gas.

Power plants are considered the largest industrial source of greenhouse gas emissions in the US and account for about a quarter of the nation’s climate pollution, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

In 2024, the EPA under the Biden administration used the Clean Air Act to require that many new gas plants and existing coal plants reduce their carbon emissions by 90%, including by installing carbon capture technology, by 2032.

The EPA estimated that the rule would reduce the amount of CO2 emissions by about 1.38 billion metric tons over the next two decades, the equivalent of about a year of emissions from the entire US electric power sector.

Another gift to the fossil fuel industry!
The US will allow power plant polluters to dump unlimited planet-warming pollution that power plants pump into the air while burning coal and gas.@maxinejoselow https://t.co/ZeiSaFkEpC

— Safe Climate Campaign now @safe-climate.bsky.soc (@safe_climate) September 14, 2026

On Monday, Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator under President Donald Trump, announced an end to this policy at a meeting of energy ministers at the Group of 20 conference in Houston.

Not only will this prevent the enactment of a policy that the EPA has estimated would prevent around 1,200 premature deaths and 360,000 asthma cases by 2035. But the administration is also rolling out a proposal seeking to prevent future administrations from regulating carbon emissions as a health risk.

It is an effort that runs parallel to the administration’s rescission of the 2009 “endangerment finding,” which allowed the EPA to regulate vehicle emissions under Section 202 of the Clean Air Act on the grounds that they are harmful to human health. That move is also being challenged in court.

Power plants are regulated under a different section of the Clean Air Act, Section 111, which allows the EPA to regulate facilities that “cause, or contribute significantly to” dangerous air pollution.

But whereas the courts have previously interpreted this statute to regulate the outputs of entire facilities, the Trump administration is asking courts to adopt a novel reading of the statute which says each individual chemical under scrutiny must “contribute significantly” to climate change.

As Meredith Hankins, legal director for climate and energy at the Natural Resources Defense Council, explained in a policy memo last week, it likely won’t be easy for the administration to prove that the CO2 emissions from US power plants aren’t a significant driver of climate change.

“Power sector emissions account for a quarter of total US emissions, so if they cannot be counted as significant, it’s hard to conceive of any emissions that would,” Hankins wrote. “In fact, if the US power sector were a nation, it would be the world’s fifth-largest emitter after China, the United States, India, and Russia. That’s a pretty ‘significant contribution’ to the problem.”

The effort to gut power plant regulations comes after the hottest meteorological summer recorded in US history and amid a year with one of the largest numbers of climate disasters on record, including widespread drought, destructive wildfires, and repeated flooding and tornado outbreaks.

As the planet has warmed over the last half-century, the US has seen a sharp, near-sevenfold increase in weather disasters costing over $1 billion, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“While wildfires rage, floods devastate communities, and families struggle to afford skyrocketing electricity bills and insurance premiums, the Trump administration is handing the fossil fuel industry a license to keep polluting,” said Holly Bender, chief program officer for the Sierra Club, following news of the EPA’s rollback of power plant rules. “This is full-throated climate denial while the climate crisis happens in real time and a shocking betrayal of the American public.”

She added that “the Sierra Club will fight back against this reckless and dangerous proposal with everything we have in the courts, in Congress, and in communities across the country.”

If successful, the reversal of the power plant rules would be one of the most significant steps in Zeldin’s push to eviscerate the EPA’s authority to combat climate change on behalf of the fossil fuel industry. Earlier this summer, during a meeting of the National Coal Council, he bragged that “many of the items” on the industry’s “wish list are now done.”

He has put the wheels in motion to roll back virtually every Biden-era regulation on the coal industry, including rules limiting pollution from mercury and toxic metals, controls on toxic wastewater from coal plants, and limits on coal ash.

And while seeking to undermine the legal basis to regulate greenhouse gases, Zeldin’s EPA has also taken a sledgehammer to its practical ability to do so, dismantling offices that collect climate data, erasing information about human-caused climate change from the agency’s websites, and filling research panels with scientists employed by the fossil fuel industry.

Former State Department energy official Alan Eyre noted that on the world stage, the US “has always been obstructionist” when it comes to climate policy. Under Trump, he said, “we’re actively malevolent.”

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.”

Press freedom groups are issuing dire warnings on Thursday that House Republicans’ efforts to subpoena the nonprofit left-wing news organization BreakThrough News represent a dangerous new step in a McCarthyite war on political dissent.

On Wednesday, Fox News reported that BreakThrough, a New York-based outlet, was one of three nonprofits that had been issued subpoenas by the GOP-controlled House Ways and Means Committee as part of an investigation into $39 million worth of donations from tech mogul Neville Roy Singham, a self-described socialist who has used his wealth to fund left-wing nonprofits.

In letters sent Tuesday, the committee, led by Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.), said that BreakThrough, as well as two other organizations—the People’s Forum Inc., a New York-based activist hub, and Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research—had not turned over any documents that had been requested as part of an investigation into whether rules around tax exempt status for nonprofits should be tightened to protect against foreign influence.

The committee has accused Singham, an American who now lives in Shanghai, of exploiting the tax code and using shell companies and donor-advised funds to hide foreign money that has been used to promote the interests of the Chinese Communist Party. It does not, however, make any specific accusation of legal wrongdoing.

The subpoena requires BreakThrough News to turn over records about its finances, foreign donors and grant recipients, fiscal-sponsorship arrangements, and communications with Singham and any foreign entities.

BreakThrough News is under attack.

The House Ways and Means Committee has made us the target of its latest witch hunt. We're not going down without a fight.

Go to https://t.co/2mYEsl3MYA and:

1- Add your name to the petition calling on the House Ways and Means Committee to… pic.twitter.com/Vr8uELkJJW

— BreakThrough News (@BTnewsroom) July 23, 2026

In a statement on Wednesday, BreakThrough News said it was “under attack.”

“For years, Republican lawmakers have painted a target on our backs, falsely claiming that our political views and reporting are part of some foreign plot,” the outlet said. “Now, the MAGA-dominated House Ways and Means Committee has issued us a subpoena—demanding internal communications, financial records and more. Make no mistake, this is a flagrant abuse of power, and a direct attack on our work as journalists and on the First Amendment generally.”

BreakThrough said it does not receive any funding from foreign governments or institutions and that it already complies with all the tax and public reporting requirements that nonprofits have to follow.

“We are not charged with any crime, because our only ‘crime’ has been to tell the truth–by covering the activities of the Palestine solidarity movement, unmasking the truth of ICE’s terror in our streets, and exposing Washington’s crimes around the world, from Cuba to the Congo,” the outlet said. “That’s the journalism they want to shut down. Their goal is to saddle us with legal proceedings and hostile media to drain our resources and stop this important work.”

While the committee stated that they are investigating BreakThrough over its financing rather than its politics, letters sent to the organization have treated the content of its reporting as circumstantial evidence of malign foreign influence, referring to it as “anti-American” and claiming that its negative coverage of Israel was “sowing division within the United States.”

Chip Gibbons, the policy director of the free speech advocacy group Defending Rights & Dissent, told Common Dreams that the subpoena of BreakThrough was a “deeply chilling assault on the First Amendment.”

“Such tactics are, quite literally, a throwback to the House Un-American Activities Committee, which today is mostly viewed as a disgrace,” Gibbons said. “I say mostly, because just three days ago [Secretary Marco] Rubio’s State Department released a report preposterously attacking the US left, including some of these groups, as Cuban fronts that cited old HUAC reports.”

He further emphasized in a press release that there was “no plausible need” for a news organization to provide documents as part of a broad congressional inquiry.

“The only thing these groups are accused of is essentially receiving donations from a US citizen who has been the subject of an intensive campaign of demonization,” Gibbons said. “It is lawful for Americans to donate to activist causes and media projects while holding views disfavored by Congress. This is clearly not a valid legislative inquiry at all, but an attempt to intimidate and chill dissenting opinions.”

Seth Stern, the chief of advocacy for the Freedom of the Press Foundation, agreed that “Congress shouldn’t be using a tax investigation as a pretext to dig through a newsroom’s internal communications or financial records.

“Freedom of the press,” he said, “applies to all journalists, regardless of whether politicians like their editorial slant or their politics.”

House subpoena of @BTnewsroom threatens press freedom.

We strongly urge the House Ways and Means Committee to withdraw its subpoena against BreakThrough News and stop using congressional oversight as a tool to retaliate against independent media.https://t.co/xPZgHkLPZd

— Freedom of the Press Foundation (@FreedomofPress) July 23, 2026

In what it has portrayed as a fight against “left-wing terrorism,” the Trump administration has increasingly blurred the lines between violent activity and protected political speech that they claim “incites” violence.

National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, signed by Trump in September, designates large swathes of left-wing viewpoints on race, gender, immigration, and other topics as “indicators” of domestic terrorism that have been used to link entire groups of people to violent acts they themselves did not commit.

Rubio said last week that the administration would soon be designating more left-wing organizations as terrorist groups, while senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller said that the full force of the state would be used to “disrupt, identify, defund, de-bank, arrest, prosecute” those deemed to “foment” political violence, not just those who actually commit it.

He has previously pledged to use the law to “dismantle” organizations that use heated rhetoric to refer to their right-wing opponents, including calling them “fascist” or “authoritarian.”

Nora Benavidez, senior counsel at Free Press, described the subpoena of BreakThrough as an extension of a “retaliatory ethos” Trump has taken towards critical journalists “with the goal of shutting down criticism and dissent.”

She told Common Dreams, “BreakThrough News is not the first, nor will it be the last, to come under official attack for bringing people alternative and useful news coverage about ICE abuses, foreign policy, Palestinian rights, and other topics.”

“Allowing a congressional committee to harass an independent newsroom with a broad subpoena sets an awful precedent,” Stern said. “If lawmakers can abuse tax oversight to single out outlets whose reporting offends them today, no newsroom in America is safe from government intimidation tomorrow.”