Thanks to Trump’s Iran War, Big Oil Raking in $30 Million Per Hour in Windfall Profits

 

US President Donald Trump’s unprovoked war of choice in Iran has been a goldmine for the fossil fuels industry, which is earning massive windfall profits thanks to the rise in the price of petroleum.

An analysis published by The Guardian on Wednesday estimated that the 100 biggest oil and gas companies have collectively raked in an extra $30 million per hour since Trump launched his war with Iran without any congressional authorization in late February.

In just the first month of the conflict, The Guardian reported, Big Oil made $23 billion in windfall profits, and the industry is projected to haul in an additional $234 billion in windfall profits by the end of the year if the price of oil stays in the $100 range.

The top beneficiaries of the Iran conflict are Saudi Aramco, which is projected to earn $25.5 billion in windfall profits by the end of the year; Kuwait Petroleum Corp., which is projected to earn $12.1 billion; and ExxonMobil, which is projected to earn $11 billion.

“The excess profits come from the pockets of ordinary people as they pay high prices to fill up their vehicles and power their homes, as well as from businesses incurring higher energy bills,” The Guardian noted. “Dozens of countries have cut fuel taxes to help struggling consumers, meaning those nations, including Australia, South Africa, Italy, Brazil and Zambia, are raising less money for public services.”

The Guardian’s analysis was conducted by climate watchdog Global Witness, using data from intelligence provider Rystad Energy.

Patrick Galey, head of news investigations at Global Witness, told The Guardian that Big Oil’s windfall profits should be a wakeup call to the world about the dangers of relying on fossil fuels.

“Moments of global crisis continue to translate into bumper profits for oil majors while ordinary people pay the price,” Galey said. “Until governments kick their fossil fuel addiction, all of our spending power will be held hostage to the whims of strongmen.”

Climate advocates have for months been calling for a windfall profits tax on Big Oil during the Iran War as a way to retrieve some of the money consumers have lost during the conflict.

Earlier this month, the climate advocacy organization 350.org renewed its previous call to slap fossil fuel companies with a windfall profits tax, and then invest the revenue into renewable energy sources to provide real long-term relief to global consumers.

Beth Walker, an energy policy expert at climate change think tank E3G, also recommended a windfall profits tax with the aim of ending reliance on dirty energy sources.

“Governments should use taxes on windfall profits to accelerate the transition to green energy,” said Walker, “rather than deepen dependence on fossil fuels.”

 -Brad Reed, Common Dreams

 

"This Depraved Idiot Is Out of Control": With Middle East in Flames, Trump Eyes "Next Conquest"

 

 Donald Trump said late Wednesday that the American military is already looking ahead to its “next conquest” as the Middle East remains embroiled in a deadly military conflict that Trump and his ally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, unleashed six weeks ago.

In a late-night post on his Truth Social platform, Trump said US forces will remain “in place” and “around” Iran until a “real agreement” is reached to end the war, as the two-week ceasefire the president and Iranian leaders announced late Tuesday hangs by a thread due to Israel’s massive bombardment of Lebanon.

After threatening a “bigger, and better, and stronger” assault on Iran if peace talks collapse, Trump said the US military is “Loading Up and Resting, looking forward, actually, to its next Conquest”—even as senior administration officials expressed concerns that the president’s declarations of victory in Iran were premature.

Branislav Slantchev, an international relations expert who teaches political science at the University of California San Diego, wrote in response to Trump’s post that “this depraved idiot is out of control.” “We cannot live this way,” added journalist Marisa Kabas.

Trump, who has bombed more countries than any other president in modern US history despite campaigning on “no new wars,” did not name any potential targets of the American military’s “next conquest” in his Wednesday night post. But the president has lobbed threats against Cuba and Greenland repeatedly in recent months, threatening to seize both island nations by force. Last week, Trump asked Congress to approve a $1.5 trillion military budget for the coming fiscal year—a request that included tens of billions for new battleships and fighter jets.

During a speech at a Saudi-backed investment summit in Miami last month, Trump touted the US military’s illegal attacks on Venezuela and Iran before declaring, “Cuba is next.” “Pretend I didn’t say ⁠that,” the president added.

In a separate Truth Social post Wednesday night, Trump hit out at NATO and characterized Greenland, in all-caps, as a “BIG, POORLY RUN, PIECE OF ICE.”

Brian Finucane, senior adviser to the US Program at the International Crisis Group, argued that Trump is “lashing out because his war on a whim did not result in the hoped-for ‘Venezuela’ in Iran but a historic debacle instead.”

The Intercept’s Nick Turse reported last month that amid the Iran war, a top Pentagon official “revealed that US wars in the Western Hemisphere are also expanding, unveiling an effort dubbed ‘Operation Total Extermination.’”

Joseph Humire, the Pentagon’s acting assistant secretary for homeland defense and Americas security affairs, told lawmakers that the US military “supported ‘bilateral kinetic actions against cartel targets along the Colombia-Ecuador border’” in early March, according to Turse.

“The US–Ecuadorian campaign has already strayed into Colombia after a farm was bombed or hit by ‘ricochet effect’ on March 3, leaving an unexploded 500-pound bomb lying in Colombia’s border region,” Turse reported. 

“In addition to his wars in the Western hemisphere, Trump has also launched attacks on Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen during his second term—most of them sites of US conflicts during the war on terror.”

-Jake Johnson, Common Dreams

him!

"A Moral Obscenity": Trump Budget Pairs Record Military Boost with Billions in Cuts to Social Programs

Donald Trump’s White House released a budget proposal on Friday that pairs an unprecedented, debt-exploding $1.5 trillion in military spending with tens of billions of dollars in cuts to domestic agencies and education, healthcare, climate, and housing programs.  

Trump’s budget request for fiscal year 2027, which must be approved by Congress, includes $73 billion in total cuts to nondefense spending while boosting military outlays by 42%—or nearly $500 billion—compared to current levels.      

Programs cut or eliminated in the proposed budget—under the guise of slashing “woke programs” and “ending the Green New Scam”—include the Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Justice program, Community Services Block Grants, electric vehicle charging subsidies, renewable energy initiatives at the Interior Department, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and Pathways to Removing Obstacles to Housing.

The budget proposal also calls for cuts to the already-depleted Internal Revenue Service, without offering specific figures. One budget expert noted that, if enacted, the White House’s requested cuts would bring nondefense discretionary spending to “its lowest level in the modern era.” Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, wrote in response to Trump’s request that “to pay for his endless wars, he wants the biggest increase to military spending in 70 years.” “How does he pay for it? Cuts to ‘education, health, housing, and more,’” Casar added. “Hell no.”

Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, said in a statement that “the Trump-Vought budget proposal is a moral obscenity,” referring to Russell Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget.

“The $500 billion annual increase in proposed Pentagon spending—if it were instead deployed humanely—would be enough to solve or meaningfully address the nation’s great problems, from healthcare to daycare, from the climate crisis to affordable housing, from improving schools to making college education affordable,” said Weissman. “Instead, Trump and Vought propose to spend an unfathomable amount on a Pentagon that can’t even pass an audit to further empower an out-of-control and incompetent leader in Pete Hegseth.”

“As usual, the priorities of the people are simply unimportant to this administration as they think about spending our taxpayer dollars,” Weissman continued. “Republicans and Democrats in Congress should treat this proposal with all the care it deserves and immediately hit delete.”

“Trump said that our country cannot afford to help families with childcare or healthcare—but his own budget proves what a ridiculous farce that is.”

The White House unveiled its budget request days after Trump said it is “not possible” for the federal government “to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things” because “we’re fighting wars,” comments that observers viewed as a stark summary of the administration’s priorities.

“Trump is telling the American people our country somehow can’t afford childcare, Medicaid, and Medicare, but is never too stretched to fund wars of choice,” Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said in a statement Friday. “He is wrong. We are the wealthiest country in the world and can absolutely afford to both defend and invest in the American people.”

“The president is now demanding a massive increase in defense spending, including a $350 billion slush fund for his reckless war with Iran, while cutting billions from healthcare, education, housing, and more. This budget represents ‘America Last,’” said Boyle. “I will be demanding answers from White House OMB Director Russell Vought when he testifies at the House Budget Committee on April 15.”

The Trump White House is calling on Congress to approve a significant chunk—roughly $350 billion—of its proposed military budget increase via the filibuster-proof reconciliation process, which would allow Republicans to push the funding through without any Democratic support. The new budget request also calls for a “historic investment” in the Department of Homeland Security, which has been partially shut down for more than a month as Democrats push for reforms to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

“This funding would come in addition to the $170 billion passed just last year that has enabled the deaths of migrants in detention centers, the detention of children, and the deaths of US citizens at the hands of mass deportation agents,” Lindsay Koshgarian, program director of the National Priorities Project, said in response to the budget request.

“The president looked at the country, with our rising gas prices and nearly half of us struggling to afford basic necessities and decided what we really need is a bigger war budget,” said Koshgarian. “Not healthcare or childcare or relief from high prices or expensive housing, but a nearly bottomless budget for whatever wars his cronies and the contractors dream up next.”

-Jake Johnson, Common Dreams

“25th Amendment RIGHT NOW"

 

US Rep. Rashida Tlaib on Tuesday urged President Donald Trump’s Cabinet to immediately invoke the 25th Amendment and remove him from office following his genocidal threat to wipe out the “whole civilization” of Iran. “After bombing a school and massacring young girls, the war criminal in the White House is threatening genocide,” Tlaib (D-Mich.) wrote on social media. “It’s time to invoke the 25th Amendment. This maniac should be removed from office.”

Some of Tlaib’s colleagues echoed her demand. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) wrote that “Trump is too unhinged, dangerous, and deranged to have the nuclear codes.” 

“25th Amendment RIGHT NOW,” Pocan added. Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.) said in response to Trump’s openly genocidal Truth Social post Trump “just threatened to slaughter 100 million people.”

“It’s clear he’s unfit to be president, the 25th Amendment must be invoked,” wrote Thanedar. “If Vance, Rubio, and the others continue to be spineless cowards, Congress must do everything possible to stop Trump and this war.”

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who led the push in the US House for a war powers resolution to stop Trump’s illegal assault on Iran, told Common Dreams that he also thought the president should be removed.

“When an American president threatens the extinction of a civilization,” said Khanna, “we should be looking to invoke the 25th and remove him if Congress is to have value and independence.”

The 25th Amendment gives the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet—or a majority of a body established by Congress—to declare the president “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office” and remove him from the position, elevating the vice president to serve as acting president.

Given the composition of Trump’s Cabinet—which is filled with sycophants who lavish the president with praise at every opportunity—any 25th Amendment push would likely be doomed to fail.

But Trump’s Cabinet has nevertheless faced growing calls to use the tool since the president’s Easter-morning outburst warning Iranian leaders to “open the Fuckin’ Strait [of Hormuz], you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell.”

Dylan Williams, vice president for government affairs at the Center for International Policy, warned the president’s Cabinet officials on Tuesday that “if you take any part in assisting this, you too will be guilty of the crime of genocide.”

“Use the 25th Amendment now to lawfully remove Trump from office,” Williams urged. “Congress: This is an impeachable offense. Come back to DC now ready to impeach and convict Trump.”

The National Iranian American Council said in a statement that the president’s “insane, genocidal” threat to wipe out the “whole civilization” of Iran must be “wholeheartedly condemned.”

“Military leaders are not bound to follow unlawful orders, including but not limited to the destruction of civilian targets and making good on this outrageous threat,” the group added. “We call on President Trump to recant this abominable threat against 92 million Iranians. If he does not, both Congress and his Cabinet must be prepared to remove him from office via lawful means.”

-Common Dreams

84% of Democrats and 55% of Independents Support Impeaching Trump a Third Time

 

After just 14 months of President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, polling released Monday found that a majority of likely US voters support impeaching him a historic third time—which one pollster called “an unprecedented result this early in a presidential term.”

Lake Research Partners conducted the poll March 26-30 for Free Speech for People, a legal advocacy organization that has launched a campaign to “Impeach Trump. Again.” As part of that effort, FSFP gathered more than 1 million supportive signatures ahead of the latest “No Kings” rallies and has publicly detailed over 25 grounds for impeachment.

First on that list is that “in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Middle East, Trump is abusing his role as commander of the US military to commit atrocities that violate US and international law.” 

The president notably spent the weekend threatening to commit more war crimes in Iran if it doesn’t reopen the Strait of Hormuz to all ship traffic—which it only closed in response to the joint Israel-US attack on February 28.

Another key argument for impeachment on the FSFP list is that “Trump has militarized and weaponized federal law enforcement, particularly US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), to punish the opposition party, disrupt local communities, instill fear in the civilian population, and quell lawful political dissent.”

Pollsters noted both of those grounds in their question, asking respondents: “Several members of Congress have recently come out in support of impeaching President Donald Trump for violating Americans’ constitutional rights and the law, including actions by ICE in the US and the war he started with Iran. Do you support or oppose President Trump being impeached?”

Overall, 52% of all voters said they support impeachment, including 84% of Democrats, 55% of Independents, and even 14% of Republicans. Just 40% opposed, including 8% of Democrats, 34% of Independents, and 81% of Republicans. 

“The result is quite striking,” David Mermin of Lake Research Partners said in a call with reporters. “It’s a clear majority. It’s a solid majority. And it reaches across all demographics and across partisan lines as well.”

The 800 respondents represented a variety of perspectives in terms of age, gender, racial identity, education, region, and partisanship. The margin of error is +/-3.5%. Putting the finding in a historical context, Mermin noted that there were majorities in favor of impeachment in the mid-1970s, when then-President Richard Nixon was approaching impeachment and then resigned, well into his second term. Nearly a quarter-century later, during the proceeding that led to the impeachment of former President Bill Clinton, “most of that period, we did not see majorities in favor of impeaching him, even during that process,” the pollster explained.

“For President Trump, in his first term, there were two impeachment proceedings against him, and in the first one, near the end of 2019... some of the polls disagreed, but there were some polls showing him slightly about 50% approval of impeachment,” he continued. “And then the second proceeding that happened after the January 6th coup attempt, there was a clear majority... during those last few weeks of his term prior to his when he left office in January of 2021.”

As with Clinton, the House of Representatives impeached Trump, but the Senate declined to convict him. Now, both chambers of Congress are narrowly controlled by Republicans who have demonstrated an unwillingness to stand up to the president—including by refusing to advance war powers resolutions challenging his various unauthorized military actions abroad.

Mermin said that “this appears to be the earliest in a presidential term that you’ve seen a majority of Americans in favor of impeachment.” FSFP co-founder and president John Bonifaz highlighted that the polling comes when there is not even an impeachment proceeding in the House. Since Trump’s return to office last year, Reps. Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.) and Al Green (D-Texas) have introduced articles of impeachment against him, though those efforts have not gone anywhere. 

However, in the lead-up to the November midterm elections, even Trump has acknowledged that Democrats winning congressional races could lead to him being impeached a third time. “You gotta win the midterms, ‘cause if we don’t win the midterms... they’ll find a reason to impeach me,” Trump told Republicans in January. “I’ll get impeached.”

The new survey shows even higher figures for disapproval of Trump’s job performance: 57% of all voters disapprove of the job Trump is doing, including 92% of Democrats, 56% of Independents, and 16% of Republicans.

Bonifaz said that “this poll confirms what we are seeing across the country: The American people understand that Donald Trump poses a direct threat to our Constitution and to the rule of law and must be impeached and removed from public office.”

-Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams

 

Trump's Other War Against Elections

 

US Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday accused President Donald Trump of trying to sabotage the 2026 midterm elections as his illegal war on Iran jacks up gas prices and threatens higher inflation throughout the economy, angering voters across the political spectrum.

The Massachusetts Democrat’s warning came shortly after Trump signed an executive order aimed at restricting mail-in voting, a move that was widely seen as unconstitutional. Warren wrote on social media: “Trump knows his war with Iran is unpopular. Trump knows Americans are angry that he’s made everything more expensive. Instead of reversing course, Trump is trying to rig the next election. It’s illegal—and we will fight back.”

Ben Raderstorf, a policy advocate at the nonprofit group Protect Democracy, said that “just like the war in Iran, the war against the midterms is extremely dangerous and will do so much damage to our elections and our democracy.”

A Reuters/Ipsos poll released Tuesday evening found that 66% of US voters—including 40% of Republicans—want a quick end to Trump’s war on Iran, even if his administration doesn’t achieve its vague and constantly shifting objectives, which have ranged from thwarting an imminent threat that analysts say was not present, to full-scale regime change, to destroying a nuclear weapons program that US intelligence has repeatedly found does not exist.

Reuters reported that two in three respondents to the new survey “said they ⁠expected gas prices to worsen over the next year, including 40% of Republicans.”

While oil prices fell sharply on Tuesday after Trump declared that US forces would end their assault on Iran in “two weeks or maybe a few days longer,” the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) estimated last week that the gas price surge stemming from the war was on pace to cost American drivers an additional $9.4 billion per month.

“Alabama is the most affected state in the nation, with residents spending an extra $52 per person, per month,” ITEP found. “Other heavily impacted states include Mississippi ($51), Wyoming ($49), Kentucky ($47), and New Mexico ($44).”

Trump is expected to address the nation on the Iran war at 9 pm ET on Wednesday, more than a month into a military campaign that was not authorized by lawmakers and that has sparked a regional conflict, killing thousands and displacing millions.

The president told reporters on Tuesday that Iran “doesn’t have to make a deal” to end the war, and Trump has privately told aides that he’s willing to end the assault without securing the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.

“We leave because there’s no reason for us to do this,” Trump said.

-Common Dreams

Trump is "feeling 'bored' after starting a war that has killed thousands of people, created chaos across the Middle East, and raised prices for US consumers"

 

…In a social media post, Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) called the president “beyond despicable” for feeling “bored” after starting a war that has killed thousands of people, created chaos across the Middle East, and raised prices for US consumers.

“Donald Trump is now ‘a little bored’ with his ‘little excursion’ in Iran, as if war is nothing more than passing amusement to him,” said Beyer. “War is not a game. It’s not a spectacle. It’s not something you pick up and drop when it stops entertaining you.”

Beyer then highlighted the human costs of Trump’s war, which he launched at 4 a.m. on a Saturday morning without any authorization from Congress.

“Real people have paid the price of this war,” he wrote. “We’ve already lost 13 Americans killed in action, with many more seriously wounded. Civilians have been killed throughout the Middle East, including the US missile strike that killed more than 150 schoolchildren.”

Trump and allies such as Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) have signaled that after the US is finished with Iran, they will next attempt to topple the government of Cuba, where the White House has caused a catastrophic fuel shortage in recent weeks with its ramp-up of the blockade that’s been in place for decades. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this month that “the embargo is tied to political change on the island.” […]

-Common Dreams

"People Can’t Afford Healthcare": Sanders Rips Pentagon Request for Another $200 Billion

 

US Sen. Bernie Sanders said Thursday that it is absurd for the Trump administration to demand another $200 billion from Congress for an illegal war on Iran after lawmakers already approved $1 trillion in military spending for the year—and while millions of people across the nation are struggling to afford basic necessities.

“You got people all over this country, 20% of households, spending 50% of their income on housing,” Sanders (I-Vt.) said in an appearance on MS NOW. “People can’t afford healthcare. People can’t afford childcare. And this guy, in addition to giving tax breaks to billionaires, now wants to spend another $200 billion on a war that should never have been fought.”

The senator’s remarks came as President Donald Trump, who has not yet formally requested the funds from Congress, suggested another $200 billion would be a “small price to pay” as the US-Israeli war on Iran heads toward its fourth week with no end in sight.

“I think the Trump people are in a bit of panic,” Sanders said Thursday. “They’re losing ground. Gas prices are soaring. There is massive discontent against this war. It’s got to end, and we’ve got to make sure that Trump is neutered in 2026.”

With the Trump administration considering a plan to deploy thousands of additional troops to the Middle East amid widespread fears of a ground invasion of Iran—which would explode the price tag of an already costly war—the National Priorities Project (NPP) released an analysis highlighting where the $200 billion requested by the Pentagon could be better spent.

The group estimated that $200 billion would be enough for all of the following this year:

-Medicaid for the 17 million people who will lose it due to budget cuts and other policies;

-Food stamps for the 22 million people who will go hungry due to Trump’s budget cuts;

-Medical care for the 1.8 million veterans of the last forever war who still live with disabilities; and

-Tripling the number of kids in Head Start, from just over 700,000 to 1.4 million kids.

“Pete Hegseth would rather the US bomb Iranian families than feed American families,” wrote NPP’s Lindsay Koshgarian, referring to the Pentagon secretary. “We should remember the lies that led us into war in Iraq a generation ago. That war ultimately cost nearly $3 trillion. We must not go down that path again. Our tax dollars should be helping struggling Americans, not feeding new forever wars.”

-Jake Johnson, Common Dreams

"Trump’s assault on US democracy is truly without precedent"

 

A report released on Tuesday by the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden has found that President Donald Trump and his administration are dismantling democracy in the US at a speed that “is unprecedented in modern history.”

In its report, V-Dem categorizes the first year of Trump’s second term as “a rapid and aggressive concentration of powers in the presidency.” In fact, V-Dem says that the Trump administration has accomplished in just one year what most budding autocracies take a decade to achieve, adding that “the speed of decline is comparable to some coups d´état.”

Of particular concern is the failure of the legislative branch of the US government to apply any kind of oversight or check upon the executive branch, the report explains. “The Republican-controlled Congress seems to have abdicated its constitutional role in favor of the executive branch, ceding significant legislative, fiscal, and oversight powers during 2025,” the report says. “The Trump administration has de facto repeatedly taken over the Congressional ‘power of the purse’—enshrined in the Constitution and in the 1974 Impoundment Control Act—unilaterally cancelling or reallocating federal funding.”

The report also points fingers at the US Senate for repeatedly rolling over and confirming unqualified Trump nominees, which it says is tantamount to letting the White House “sideline” the upper chamber’s authority altogether.

V-Dem goes on to document the administration’s repeated assaults on the judicial branch and the rule of law in general during his second term, starting when Trump issued a mass pardon to more than 1,500 alleged or convicted criminals who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Since then, the administration has waged a pressure campaign against judges who rule against it consisting of “impeachment resolutions and misconduct complaints,” while also using executive orders to punish major law firms simply for representing the president’s political enemies in court.

The lone bright spot in US democracy, says V-Dem, is that the administration has not yet been able to attack states’ powers to administer their own elections, although not for lack of effort. “Actions taken in 2025 raise concerns regarding the integrity of the 2026 midterms,” the report warns. “This primarily concerns attempt to assert federal control over election processes, which must be decentralized and state-run, according to the Constitution.”

The report notes that Trump has issued an executive order that attempts to override states’ election laws by restricting mail-in voting and mandating voter IDs at polling places nationwide but adds that “many provisions of this order have been blocked, and others are still being challenged in federal court.”

In an interview with The Guardian, V-Dem founder Staffan Lindberg used historical context to explain why Trump’s assault on US democracy is truly without precedent. “Our data on the USA goes back to 1789,” he said. “What we’re seeing now is the most severe magnitude of democratic backsliding ever in the country.” He also said that other authoritarian leaders have taken much more time in ripping down their states’ democratic institutions than Trump has. “For Orbán in Hungary, it took about four years,” Lindberg said, “for Vučić in Serbia, it took eight years, and for Erdoğan in Turkey and Modi in India, it took about 10 years to accomplish the suppression of democratic institutions that Trump has achieved in only one year.”

-Brad Reed, Common Dreams

"Their failure to sufficiently fight back 'against a war-crazed Trump administration'"

 

A coalition of peace groups last Wednesday launched a new national campaign calling for the top Democrats in Congress—Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries—to resign from their leadership roles, citing their failure to sufficiently fight back “against a war-crazed Trump administration.”

The coalition, which includes Peace Action and RootsAction, launched a petition declaring that it is “time for congressional Democrats to replace Schumer and Jeffries with leaders who are willing and able to challenge the runaway militarism that has dragged our country into launching yet another insanely destructive war,” this time against Iran.

“Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries have not acted to prevent war on Venezuela or the current war on Iran,” the petition reads. “They worked to delay a vote on Iran until after the war had started, while failing to clearly oppose it before or after the launch of the war. Schumer and Jeffries have shown that they cannot be trusted to prevent more wars, more threats of wars, or the transfer of another half a trillion dollars a year into the war machine.”

Kevin Martin, president of Peace Action—the largest grassroots peace network in the US—said in a statement that he doubts “at this point whether many people look to Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries for ‘leadership’ in Congress, but we would settle for them getting with the program and representing their base, and the majority of Americans, who want them to stand strongly against Trump’s illegal wars and domestic terror campaigns against the American people.”

“They need to speak out loudly and clearly, and get their caucuses in line, to oppose the upcoming $50 billion or more for Trump’s illegal war of aggression on Iran, and to cut off US weapons to Israel,” said Martin. “Failing to do so will only increase calls for them to step down or be replaced by colleagues who understand where the American people are on these and other critical issues.”

Since the start of the illegal US-Israeli assault on Iran, Schumer and Jeffries have focused largely on procedural objections to the war, the Trump administration’s incompetence, and the president’s failure to clearly articulate his objectives, rather than explicitly opposing the military onslaught.

In an appearance on NBC‘s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Jeffries declined to say whether he would oppose the Trump administration’s expected push for $50 billion in new funding for the unauthorized war on Iran. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” Jeffries said, chiding the administration for failing to “make its case as to the rationale or justification for this war of choice in the Middle East.”

Sarah Lazare and Adam Johnson wrote for The Nation last week that “it’s not enough to check the box, to do the bare minimum, to reinforce every argument for war only to balk at the process and ask whether there’s a ‘plan’ for after the myriad war crimes have already been committed.”

“The only way to read this half-hearted response from the Democratic Party leadership,” they argued, “is de facto support.”

-Jake Johnson, Common Dreams

The Bombing of an Iranian Girls' School

 

US investigators reportedly believe that American forces were behind the bombing of an Iranian girls’ school that killed more than 160 people—mostly young children—during the initial wave of attacks launched Saturday by President Donald Trump in coordination with the Israeli military.

Citing two unnamed officials, Reuters reported Thursday that US military investigators have found it is “likely” that American forces were responsible for the deadly strike on the school in the southern Iranian town of Minab, though the investigation has not yet been completed. Schools are protected under international law, and targeting them is a war crime.

“Reuters was unable to determine more details about the investigation, including what evidence contributed to the tentative assessment, what type of munition was used, who was responsible, or why the U.S. might have struck the school,” the outlet noted. “The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military matters, did not rule out the possibility that new evidence could emerge that absolves the U.S. of responsibility and points to another responsible party in the incident.”

“If a US role were to be confirmed,” Reuters added, “the strike would rank among the worst cases of civilian casualties in decades of US conflicts in the Middle East.”

HuffPost Akbar Shahid Ahmed echoed Reuters’ reporting, writing that Pentagon officials “told Congress in multiple briefings this week that they believed the US was most likely responsible (though probe ongoing).”

The reporting came on the heels of a New York Times analysis that concluded the US was “most likely to have carried out the strike,” given that American forces were simultaneously bombarding an adjacent Iranian naval base. The Times also rejected the claim that an Iranian missile hit the elementary school.

“The strikes were first reported on social media shortly after 11:30 am local time,” the Times reported. “An analysis of those posts—as well as bystander photos and videos captured within an hour of the strikes—helps corroborate that the school was hit at the same time as the naval base. One video, pinpointed by geolocation experts, showed several large plumes of smoke billowing from the area of the base and the school.”

Beth Van Schaack, a former State Department official who currently teaches at Stanford University’s Center for Human Rights and International Justice, told the Times that “given the US’ intelligence capabilities, they should have known that a school was in the vicinity.”

Trump administration officials have said very little about the Iranian school strike in their triumphant rhetoric about the war, which Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth hailed as the “most lethal, most complex, and most precise aerial operation in history.” Hegseth has also openly dismissed what he’s called “stupid rules of engagement,” rejecting constraints on US forces that are designed to prevent the killing of civilians.

Asked about the school strike during a March 4 press conference, Hegseth responded: “All I know—all I can say is that we’re investigating that. We, of course, never target civilian targets, but we’re taking a look and investigating that.”

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio referred reporters to the Pentagon when asked about the attack but added that “the United States would not target, deliberately target, a school,” in purported contrast to the Iranian government, which Rubio claimed is “deliberately targeting civilians” because “they are a terroristic regime.”

Two first responders to the scene of the attack, as well as a parent of one of the killed children, told Middle East Eye earlier this week that the school was hit by two strikes, a possible “double-tap” attack. An Al Jazeera investigation concluded the attack on the school was likely deliberate.

Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International, called the school attack “a horrific US war crime, up there with My Lai,” referring to US soldiers’ massacre of Vietnamese civilians in 1968. The US military initially covered up the massacre.

“In a sane world, Hegseth would resign, Congress would hold immediate hearings and establish an investigation, and the US would come clean,” Konyndyk wrote on social media. “None of that is likely, so international mechanisms should kick in, including the [International Criminal Court]. And Hegseth should probably talk to a lawyer.”

On Thursday, as US and Israeli officials vowed to ramp up their assault on Iran, two boys’ schools southwest of Tehran were reportedly bombed. 

“The targeting of civilians, educational facilities, and medical institutions constitutes a grave violation of international humanitarian law and human rights law,” a group of United Nations experts said earlier this week.

-Jake Johnson, Common Dreams

“The Sri Lanka Navy was left to pull the dead bodies from the water"

 

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday was condemned for his boasts on Wednesday about sinking an Iranian military ship after allegations emerged that it was “defenseless” at the time it was torpedoed in international waters by a US submarine.

Military.com reported Thursday that the Iranian ship had been departing from a biennial multinational naval training exercise that it had been invited to participate in by the Indian government. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has so far remained silent on the US attack on the ship, but other politicians in India delivering sharp condemnations.

According to the Times of India, opposition leader Rahul Gandhi tore into Modi for not speaking up after the US torpedoed a boat that his government had invited into its waters. “The conflict has reached our backyard, with an Iranian warship sunk in the Indian Ocean,” Gandhi said. “Yet the PM has said nothing. At a moment like this, we need a steady hand at the wheel. Instead, India has a compromised PM who has surrendered our strategic autonomy.”

In a social media post, former Indian Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal said there was no way that the Iranian ship could have been perceived as any kind of military threat.

“I am told that as per protocol for this exercise ships cannot carry any ammunition,” he wrote. “It was defenseless... The attack by the US submarine was premeditated as the US was aware of the Iranian ship’s presence in the exercise to which the US navy was invited but withdrew from participation at the last minute, presumably with this operation in mind.”

Drop Site News reporter Ryan Grim noted that, in addition to striking what appears to have been a defenseless boat, the US also didn’t help rescue any of the shipwrecked men who were aboard the vessel.

“The Sri Lanka Navy was left to pull the dead bodies from the water,” Grim commented. “I am hard pressed to think of any other nation throughout history that would do something so cowardly and despicable. We are genuinely in a league of our own, and American media—mostly shrugging off the bombing of a girl's school and acting as if carpet bombing Tehran is a normal military tactic—is deeply complicit.”

Author Bruno Maçães also pointed to the decision to leave the shipwrecked crew at sea as an act of historic depravity. “Really quite extraordinary that the US bombed an Iranian ship and then left the surviving sailors to drown,” Maçães wrote. “There are many, many accounts of the Nazis or Imperial Japan saving survivors at sea. I see we have now dropped below that level.”

Mohamad Safa, executive director of PVA Patriotic Vision, an international multilateral organization with special consultative status at the United Nations Economic and Social Council, said that the US attack on the Iranian ship constituted either a war crime or straight-up murder.

“What Pete Hegseth ordered the military to do violates international law,” he wrote. “The Iranian ship was near Sri Lanka, in international waters outside the combat zone and on a training exercise. Under the Geneva Conventions, you are obligated to rescue the crew of a ship that you sink during war. Abandoned any survivors and leaving them to drown is illegal and a war crime.”

-Common Dreams

Without Congress' Approval, Trump Launches an Illegal War Against Iran

 

Donald Trump announced in the early hours of Saturday morning that the US has launched a massive military operation aimed at toppling the Iranian government as blasts were reported in Tehran, including near the offices of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Israel, under the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is taking part in the assault. Unnamed Israeli security sources told Channel 12 that Israel and the Trump administration are “going all in” against Iran as Trump instructed Iranians to “stay sheltered,” warning that “bombs will be dropping everywhere.” People were seen seeking cover in Tehran as the US and Israeli bombs began to fall.

The assault, dubbed “Operation Epic Fury” by the Pentagon, comes days after the US and Iran took part in talks in Geneva, which Trump’s envoys characterized as “positive.” In announcing military action on Saturday, Trump said falsely that the Iranian government has “rejected every opportunity to renounce their nuclear ambitions.”

The US and Israeli attacks—which both nations characterized as “preemptive”—are plainly illegal under international law, which prohibits the threat or use of force except in response to an armed attack. The Trump administration is also violating US law, which gives Congress the sole power to declare war.

“The term ‘preemptive’ is pure propaganda,” wrote Drop Site journalist Jeremy Scahill. “The US once again used the veneer of negotiations as a cover to bomb Iran. Tehran had just offered terms that went far beyond the 2015 nuclear deal. What was preempted was diplomacy. The same propaganda tactics used in the 2003 Iraq war.”

Trump, who ditched the 2015 nuclear deal during his first White House term, repeatedly made clear in his remarks Saturday that he does not intend the new assault on Iran to be limited in scope like his bombings of Iranian nuclear sites last year. 

In the weeks leading up to Saturday’s attack, the Trump administration carried out a massive military buildup in the Middle East even as the president publicly claimed he was open to a diplomatic resolution.

“We may have casualties,” the US president said of American troops. “That often happens in war. But we’re doing this not for now. We’re doing this for the future.” Trump also urged the Iranian armed forces to surrender or “face certain death” as the US fired Tomahawk cruise missiles and other munitions at Iran.

The Iranian government’s immediate response to Saturday’s onslaught was a pledge of “crushing retaliation” and a wave of drone and missile attacks on Israel. The Associated Press reported that “hours after the strikes on Iran, explosions rocked northern Israel as the country worked to intercept incoming Iranian missiles.”

Iran’s foreign minister later informed his Iraqi counterpart that Iran would be targeting US military installations in the region in retaliation for Saturday’s attacks.

A spokesperson for the Iranian military declared that “we will teach Israel and America a lesson they have never experienced in their history. Any base that helps America and Israel will be the target of the Iranian armed forces,” the official added.

-Jake Johnson, Common Dreams

Trump Administration’s New Healthcare Plans Could Slap Families With $31,000 Deductibles

The Trump administration is proposing new regulations for healthcare plans purchased through Affordable Care Act exchanges that, on the surface, could offer patients lower monthly premiums. 

However, the New York Times reported on Thursday that these plans would make up for the lower premiums by charging deductibles as high as $15,000 for individuals and $31,000 for families, meaning that people on these plans would have to pay significant up-front costs should they get sick before getting any benefit from having insurance.

For perspective, the Times noted that these deductibles would be “eight times the average for someone with job-based insurance.” Health experts who spoke with the Times were blunt about these plans’ prospects for success. “Nobody wants that product,” Harvard health economist Amitabh Chandra said. “It’s going to be a really cheap product that nobody wants.”

Dr. Joseph Betancourt, president of the Commonwealth Fund, told the Times that the plans being mulled by the administration would push greater assumption of risk onto patients and away from insurers. “There’s no doubt that we have an affordability crisis,” he said. “As we move forward to shifting more of the burden to patients, there’s a chance to really exacerbate the crisis.”

Katherine Hempstead, senior policy adviser for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, told the Times that the cheaper Trump plans are “normalizing hardship, and... normalizing catastrophe” by creating a form of health insurance that offers even less coverage than the cheapest plans available on the exchanges.

The high-deductible plans are being pushed by Medicare and Medicaid Administrator Mehmet Oz, who made headlines earlier this year by saying the goal of the Trump administration’s healthcare policy was to have Americans be healthy enough so they could stay at work for at least an extra year before retiring.

“If we can get the average person... to work one more year in their whole lifetime, just stay in your workplace for one more year,” Oz said during an interview on Fox Business, “that is worth about $3 trillion to the US GDP.”

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is widely expected to seek the presidency in 2028, pounced on the report about the high-deductible plans. “[Trump’s] economic agenda is simple,” Newsom wrote in a social media post, “force hard working families to pay more and give billionaires a tax break.”

Johanna Maska, a former aide to President Barack Obama, expressed disbelief that this was Republicans’ long-promised replacement plan for the ACA. “A $31,000 deductible is unacceptable,” she wrote. “This is the Republican long awaited plan? This is not healthcare that helps Americans.”

-Brad Reed, Common Dreams

"More Chaos": Trump Hammered for Plan to Double Down on Tariffs After Supreme Court Ruling

 

Donald Trump defiantly vowed to continue slapping tariffs on imported goods on Friday after the US Supreme Court overturned the so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs he implemented last year. In a press conference held hours after the Supreme Court ruled against the president’s tariff regime, Trump said that he had other tools at his disposal that allowed him to hit foreign products with taxes.

Among other things, Trump said he was going to issue a 10% global tariff using his authority under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 that allows the president to levy tariffs to address “large and serious” balance-of-payments deficits with foreign nations.

However, as a Friday analysis by the libertarian Cato Institute explains, any tariffs enacted through Section 122 expire after 150 days without authorization from Congress, which in theory could put vulnerable congressional Republicans on the spot to vote for or against the president’s signature policy this summer right before the 2026 midterm elections.

The president’s decision to plow ahead with his politically unpopular tariffs drew immediate criticism from Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who said during an interview with MS NOW that Trump was creating even more economic uncertainty. “What he’s done is just doubled down and tried to make it worse,” Klobuchar explained, “which, of course, is going to create more cost and chaos for the American people.”

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman also predicted more chaos in the months to come from Trump’s trade policies, particularly when it comes to businesses that will now lobby to get back the money illegally seized from them by the president’s unconstitutional tariff regime.

Writing on his Substack, Krugman argued that Trump finding alternative means to levy tariffs would not “obviate the need to refund the tariffs already collected,” because “if you seized money without constitutional authority, finding other revenue sources going forward doesn’t make the original seizure legal.”

David Frum, staff writer at The Atlantic, predicted that the coming lawsuits aimed at getting refunds for the illegal tariffs would be a massive mess. “The post-tariff litigation is going to be nightmarish,” he wrote on social media. “Wrongfully taxed plaintiffs will now sue for return of their illegally taken money. Can their customers then sue for a portion of the higher prices caused by the wrongful taxes? More Trump chaos.”

However, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent downplayed the possibility of American businesses and consumers getting refunded for the tariffs. While speaking at the Economic Club of Dallas on Friday, Bessent was asked if he expected a “food fight” for the $175 billion in tariff revenues that government has illegally collected since April. “I’ve got a feeling the American people won’t see it,” Bessent said of the tariff money.

However, some Democrats indicated that they were not simply going to let the administration getting away with money they unlawfully confiscated from US businesses and consumers. “Donald Trump illegally stole your money,” wrote Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). “He should give it back to you. Instead Trump is scheming up new ways to force Americans to pay even more.”

Democrats on the US House Ways and Means Committee wrote that “Trump does not want to refund the money he illegally stole from you,” vowing the party “won’t stop fighting to get your money back.”

Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker wrote Trump a letter after the Supreme Court ruling demanding that the president provide every family in his state a $1,700 refund for the tariffs, which he said “wreaked havoc on farmers, enraged our allies, and sent grocery prices through the roof.”

-Brad Reed, Common Dreams

 

Marco Rubio’s Imperialist Munich Speech Seen as a "Cause for Worry, Not Applause"

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s defense of Western colonialism and imperial power at the Munich Security Conference and the applause his remarks received from attendees were seen as deeply unsettling in the context of the Trump administration’s brazen trampling of international law, including the recent kidnapping of the president of a sovereign nation.

While Rubio gave lip service in his remarks to multilateral cooperation with Europe in what he called the global “task of renewal and restoration,” he made clear the US would carry out its agenda alone if needed and accused European allies of succumbing to a “climate cult,” embracing “free and unfettered trade,” and opening their doors to “unprecedented wave of mass migration that threatens the cohesion of our societies,” echoing the rhetoric of his boss, US President Donald Trump.

Rubio lamented the decline of the “great Western empires” in the face of “godless communist revolutions and by anti-colonial uprisings that would transform the world and drape the red hammer and sickle across vast swaths of the map in the years to come”—and made clear that the Trump administration envisions a return to “the West’s age of dominance.”

“We in America have no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline,” said Rubio. “We do not seek to separate, but to revitalize an old friendship and renew the greatest civilization in human history.”

Attendees at the Munich conference—which notably did not include representatives of Latin America at a time when the Trump administration is embracing and expanding the Monroe Doctrine—gave Rubio a standing ovation: “Standing ovation for Rubio in Munich. Standing ovation for Netanyahu in Washington,” wrote Progressive International co-general coordinator David Adler, referring to the Israeli prime minister’s visit to the US capital last week. “We are ruled by a transatlantic clique of criminals and mid-wit minions who clap like seals when their white supremacy is laundered by the language of ‘Western values.’ Sick stuff.”

Critics viewed the US secretary of state’s speech—both the explicit words and its undertones—as a self-serving interpretation of the past and a dangerous vision of the future, and expressed alarm at the celebratory response from the Munich crowd.

Geopolitical analyst Arnaud Bertrand called Rubio’s address “one of the most revisionist and imperialist speeches I’ve ever seen a senior American official make, and that’s saying something.”

“Basically the man is openly saying that the whole post-colonial order was a mistake and he’s calling on Europe to share the spoils of building a new one,” Bertrand wrote on social media. “When an imperial power is speaking to you of sentiments, of how much they like you and how they want to partner with you—the much weaker party—that’s cause for worry, not applause.”

Nathalie Tocci, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Europe, compared Rubio’s address to US Vice President JD Vance’s openly hostile attack on European nations during his Munich speech last year.

“Rubio’s message was more sophisticated and strategic than Vance’s. But it was just as dangerous, if not more so, precisely because it lowered the transatlantic temperature and may have lulled Europe into a false sense of calm,” Tocci wrote in a Guardian op-ed on Monday. “As Benjamin Haddad, France’s Europe minister, said in Munich, the European temptation may be to press the snooze button once again.”

“If Europeans were comforted by a false sense of reassurance as they walked away from the packed Bayerischer Hof hotel in Munich,” Tocci added, “they risk walking straight into the trap that MAGA America has laid for them.”

-Jake Johnson, Common Dreams