The Missouri GOP Serves Up a Masterclass on How to Rig an Election

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Voters, Mehlville Missouri, 2016
Voters sign in to participate in the Republican and Democratic primaries in Mehlville, Missouri on March 15, 2016. Photo credit: © Cristina M. Fletes/TNS via ZUMA Wire

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Klaus Marre 09/09/26 (WhoWhatWhy.org)

The only good thing about the Missouri GOP’s increasingly desperate attempt to steal a congressional seat is that they are forced to do it openly, which allows everybody to see what an anti-democratic and morally corrupt bunch they are.

Missouri is known as the Show Me State, and its Republican officials are currently showing the country how to steal an election. Here is how they are trying to do it, what it says about the GOP, and why it should infuriate anybody who believes in democracy.

It all started last year, when the state legislature passed a gerrymandered map with the goal of disenfranchising Black voters in Kansas City. Previously, Missouri’s House delegation consisted of six Republicans and two Democrats. While that 75-25 percent split isn’t a fair representation of the population of a state in which 60 percent voted for Donald Trump (a 5-3 split would be), that’s not awful in an age of extreme gerrymanders, especially because Democrats are mainly concentrated in two urban districts in St. Louis and Kansas City.

But it wasn’t good enough for Missouri Republicans.

That is why they eagerly followed Trump’s call to rig congressional maps across the country in the GOP’s favor in an effort to hold on to the House majority and allow the president to shirk any kind of accountability for running roughshod over the rule of law.

The result was a redistricting effort that “cracked” Kansas City, which means that, instead of leaving it in a single district that Democrat Emanuel Cleaver had held for more than 20 years, they placed parts of the city in three others in which Republicans were favored to win.

However, Missouri’s constitution grants the state’s citizens the right to have a say in the matter if enough of them petition the government to do so. In that case, a referendum would be placed on the ballot of an upcoming election to allow the people to decide.

That is precisely what happened in this case. The group People, Not Politicians collected 300,000 signatures to put the new map to a vote this fall before it could be used.

Obviously, this didn’t sit well with Missouri’s GOP officials, which is why they tried to declare the group’s effort null and void. And, to escape judicial scrutiny, Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins waited until the last moment to do so.

As a result, Missouri held its primary using the new map.

However, the state’s Supreme Court last week ruled unanimously that this was illegal.

“The referendum petition was legal, sufficient, and timely, and the secretary incorrectly concluded otherwise,” it stated and declared that the old map must be used for the midterms.

Missouri’s Republicans, still desperate to steal that one seat and running out of options to do so, then petitioned the US Supreme Court to review that ruling.

They argued that it would be unlawful to use one map for the primary and another for the general election.

“Never before in American history has a court overturned a congressional map after a primary and before a general election,” stated Missouri’s Attorney General Catherine Hanaway (R). “This unprecedented decision clearly violates federal law and has thrust our state into a full‑fledged constitutional crisis.”

As we pointed out last week, what she conveniently failed to mention is that this is a crisis of the GOP’s own making.

In any case, on Tuesday, the US Supreme Court declined to get involved when Brett Kavanaugh, who oversees emergency requests from Missouri, denied a request to overturn that ruling.

So, to summarize, at this point, both the state’s and the nation’s highest courts had weighed in on the matter and ruled, despite the GOP’s best efforts, that the old map should be used for the midterms.

However, shortly after the US Supreme Court opted to sit this one out and left in place the unanimous decision of the state Supreme Court, a Trump-appointed federal judge in Missouri said, effectively, “You know what? Let’s just use this rigged new map.”

And, even though the higher courts said otherwise, this is the ruling Missouri Republicans want to go with. They quickly announced that they would now use the new map in the fall, no take-backs!

What does this mean for the midterms? We honestly don’t know. There is a good chance that the Supreme Court(s) will get involved again, but it may also be too late at this point, which was obviously the GOP’s point all along in waiting to illegally reject the referendum initiative at the last minute and in now immediately embracing the only ruling that went in their favor even though it came from a lower court.

Here is what we do know: The sordid actions of the state’s Republicans are an affront to democracy, and they should be ashamed of themselves for trying to rig the upcoming election and circumvent the rule of law at every single turn to do so.

Or, to put it differently, Show Me political corruption at the highest level and I’ll show you Missouri.

  • Klaus MarreKlaus Marre, a former congressional reporter, is a senior editor for US politics at WhoWhatWhy. He writes regularly here, and you can also follow him on Bluesky and Substack.

Nithya Raman Builds Momentum in LA Mayor’s Race

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by Randy Shaw on September 8, 2026 (BeyondChron.org)

Raman Offers Change

Will Nithya Raman join Boston’s Michelle Wu, Seattle’s Katie Wilson and New York City’s Zohran Mamdani in becoming a new generation of progressive mayors? It sure looks that way. Mayor Karen Bass’s missteps and a lot of mayoral bad luck have boosted Raman. Voters are calling for change. Re-electing incumbent Mayor Bass does not serve that goal.

Background on the Race

Soon after Councilmember Nithya Raman announced on February 6 she was running, I wrote “Can Nithya Raman Upset Karen Bass in LA Mayor’s Race?” I concluded,  “Raman’s path to victory depends less on fervent support for her and more on a cross section of the electorate opposing Bass’s re-election.”

That’s exactly what is happening.

Those unhappy with Bass’s response to the Palisades/Malibu/Altadena fires are not giving her four more years. And after these fires receded into the political background a terrible fire at the Lineage warehouse in June devastated heavily Latino Boyle Heights.

The aftermath of that explosion has been horrific.” Media reports of giant rats and a terrible stench caused by 85 million pounds of frozen food rotting near a residential neighborhood. The fire burned for a week. It again showed Bass as unable to protect city residents.

In July LA Times columnist Gustavo Arellano described Eastside residents as “fed up with politicians who are not listening.” 

Those impacted by the Lineage fire and its aftermath are unlikely to vote for Bass. These disasters support a larger narrative about Bass’s failure to effectively run the city.

Bass has made many missteps. Her ad to promote the city’s ability to fix potholes floundered when the pothole she publicly claimed she would fix was covered by a car. Nevertheless, her campaign team thought voters would be impressed by Bass’s pledge to remove such obstacles in the future.

Instead, the ad promoted her administrative incompetence. As described on Reddit, “Mayor Bass publicly responds to pothole repair request…by not repairing the pothole.”

Bass has waffled on new housing production.  Despite the city’s desperate need for new housing, she exercised the city option under state law to delay building apartments in key neighborhoods until 2030.

Bass has also allowed NIMBY’s to block the Venice Dell Community‘s 120-unit affordable housing project. As the Los Angeles Times editorialized in 2024: “Mayor Bass Has No More Excuses for Delaying Venice Dell Housing.” The editorial highlighted the “long and unnecessary obstacle course set by Los Angeles city officials.”

I detailed opposition by wealthy neighbors to  this essential project on a city-owned parking lot in Generation Priced Out, my book about the housing crisis. While the path to starting construction may finally be clear,  Bass’s wavering on key issues has become all too common.

This mayor’s race is about competence and laying the groundwork for Los Angeles’s future, not ideology. That’s why many conservative and moderate voters will cast ballots Raman.

Homelessness

Mayor Bass implemented an Inside Safe program to get people off the streets. She hoped that her efforts would help her re-election.

But it was reported in April that 40% of those participating in the program returned to the streets. A July report then found homelessness increasing by 3.4% in Los Angeles over the past year while declining 50% in Raman’s council district (See “Street homelessness went up in Los Angeles. In Nithya Raman’s district, it was nearly cut in half.” LA Times, July 24, 2026.

This is bad news for Mayor Bass.

My experience in San Francisco mayor’s races taught me that accuracy about a city’s approach to homelessness is greatly outweighed by public perceptions. Los Angeles voters do not perceive Bass as reducing homelessness despite all the money spent.

In contrast, the 50% drop in Raman’s district will convince many voters that she can improve upon Bass’s record in reducing homelessness. Bass’s campaign is attacking Raman for votes on homelessness as its know that the July report could prove costly with voters.

Endorsements

Mayor Bass has an overwhelming number of progressive endorsements.  This includes Raman’s fellow progressive council members and most labor unions.

Yet many endorsements were made prior to Raman announcing her candidacy. And there is a difference between a union endorsing Bass and mobilizing members to elect her.

Last week Raman secured the endorsement of UNITE HERE Local 11. President Kurt Peterson stated “Nithya has stood with us and our members through many fights. We believe [she] is the right person to help us solve the city’s problems.”

Petersen said “Unite Here had the largest ground operation of any union in the state during primaries in June and knocked on more than 300,000 doors. Our endorsement means a lot more than a press release.”

The Los Angeles chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) also recently endorsed Raman. It too will bring more bodies to the challenger’s field campaign.

A Desire for Change

Not since Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign have we seen a national, state and local election cycle more driven by a desire for Change. And this focus goes beyond progressive mayoral candidates. San Francisco’s moderate Daniel Lurie won election vowing major changes and his popularity has continued as he creates a more positive vibe in the city.

This desire for Change is how Raman gets the moderate and conservative votes she needs. Do voters really want Karen Bass running Los Angeles for another four years?

My sense is no. But we will find out soon.

Randy Shaw

Randy Shaw is the Editor of Beyond Chron and the Director of San Francisco’s Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which publishes Beyond Chron. Shaw’s new book is the revised and updated, The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco. His prior books include Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America. The Activist’s Handbook: Winning Social Change in the 21st Century, and Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century.

SF Voters Have Clear Choices in Key Races

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by Randy Shaw on September 8, 2026 (BeyondChron.org)

San Francisco voters have two marquee races in November: the Wiener-Chan congressional contest and the Yekutiel-McCoy D8 Supervisor battle. In both cases the differences between candidates are so clear that voters can easily pick their favored candidate.

Here’s how we see it.

Wiener-Chan

San Francisco’s 2024 mayor’s race had one clear progressive, Aaron Peskin. He ran against four moderates: Mayor Breed, Daniel Lurie, Mark Farrell and Ahsha Safai. Moderates spent millions offering voters non-ideological reasons to back their preferred candidate.

The Wiener-Chan congressional race is different. What separates the two is clear. At this point its less about persuasion than turning out their supporters.

I wrote on October 27, 2025 —- Can Connie Chan Defeat Scott Wiener?— that “Chan will need money to get her message out. Never having run outside of D1, she has nowhere near the financial backing and name recognition as Wiener.”  I added, “Nancy Pelosi would not back a candidate in San Francisco and then not ensure the campaign had sufficient funds.”

I sure got that right. But there’s a big difference between Pelosi raising money for Chan and claims that the speaker emeritus is “running” Chan’s campaign.

That accusation has a racist tinge. It suggests that a working-class Asian-American immigrant wouldn’t be doing so well in the polls unless she had transferred control of the campaign to Nancy Pelosi. This racist take ignores that Chan won two elections in D1 when most pundits saw her losing. D1 was then redistricted in 2024 to make sure Chan lost. She still won. Chan obviously knows how to run winning campaigns.

Huge Difference on Housing

Wiener and Chan have dramatically divergent views on housing development. Scott Wiener has done more to promote new housing construction than any legislator in California history. Connie Chan opposed the Wiener upzoning bills.

There are other issues in the race— AI regulation, relationships with tech, and whether the city should elect its first gay or first Asian American congress member. Wiener has always been identified with the city’s moderates and Chan with the progressives, which adds another clear dividing line.

But most voters will pick the candidate who shares their views on housing.

Yekutiel vs. McCoy

This has been a very curious D8 race. The media has focused entirely if not exclusively on Brad Chapin’s allegations that Manny Yekutiel sexually abused him at a party in February 2020.

Where the candidates stand on key D8 issues has been largely ignored. Last week the media lampooned Yekutiel’s proposal for a citywide underground transit system. Yekutiel also wants to see 10,000 new housing units built in his district. Apparently many reporters are suspicious of candidates  offering a bold vision for San Francisco’s future.

Yekutiel’s detailed plan to fill retail vacancies in D8 was ignored by most media despite this being a major district issue.  It’s as if the media’s quota for D8 stories has already been filled with stories on the claim of sexual abuse.

Those who believe the claim disqualifies Yekutiel have three choices: Gary McCoy, Darshini Patel, and Michael Nguyen. I see this as a Yekutiel-McCoy race. There are vast differences in the careers of these two candidates.

McCoy was the Vice President of Policy & Public Affairs at HealthRIGHT 360 when that group opened the Linkage Center in UN Plaza in 2022. He is among the most high-profile spokespersons for the harm reduction approach to drug activity.

McCoy’s support for a plan to attract drug users from across the city to UN Plaza proved a $20 million disaster for the city. The Tenderloin, Mid-Market and SOMA have yet to fully recover. Some of those who came to San Francisco to enjoy the illegal safe injection site found their way to the Castro.  Voters who support opening future safe injection sites in the city have a clear choice for McCoy.

Manny Yekutiel is best known for Manny’s, a politically-oriented social gathering space in the Mission. Manny has raised millions of dollars for San Francisco through his Civic Joy Fund, which he started with Daniel Lurie. He is running as a small businessperson focused on boosting public safety, building housing and growing the city’s economy.

As with Wiener-Chan, the D8 race revives the longstanding progressive-moderate split. Voters who identify with either political faction have a clear choice.

Randy Shaw

Randy Shaw is the Editor of Beyond Chron and the Director of San Francisco’s Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which publishes Beyond Chron. Shaw’s new book is the revised and updated, The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco. His prior books include Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America. The Activist’s Handbook: Winning Social Change in the 21st Century, and Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century.

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Guest Editorial: Tax California Billionaires Now!

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by Martin Bennett on September 7, 2026 (BeyondChron.org)

This Labor Day it’s essential to highlight that reducing inequality is the main purpose of labor unions through collective bargaining for living wages, comprehensive benefits, and improved workplace health and safety conditions.

Moreover, unions provide a political voice for their members and lobby for legislation, such as restrictions on child labor, a minimum wage, the forty-hour week, and Social Security, that benefit all working people.

Recently, the California Labor Federation, representing 1300 affiliated unions with 2.3 million members, endorsed Proposition 40, the California Billionaire Tax Act on the November ballot.

Prop 40 is a one-time 5% wealth tax spread over five years on California’s 250 billionaires who lived here on January 1, 2026. Prop 40 defines wealth as the value of stocks, bonds, trusts, and specified property holdings, minus outstanding debt.

According to the California Budget and Policy Project, if approved, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth would decline from $200 billion to $190 billion.

Why is such a tax necessary?

First, wealth inequality has soared nationally and in California. A report by UC Berkeley economists Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez, and Jasper Boll of the Paris School of Economics, finds that from 1982 to 2026, California billionaires’ wealth has skyrocketed by 38-fold to $2.3 trillion, while the real family income of the average California family has merely doubled.

Second, the measure would generate about $100 billion in revenue that the state desperately needs because of the massive Trump tax cuts for the wealthy last year and the slashing of health care funding (H.R. 1).

The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that up to 1.6 million California Medi-Cal recipients could lose health insurance. Eighty-three California hospitals are at risk of closing, and up to 145,000 health care workers could be laid off, according to the UC Berkeley Labor Center. Ninety percent of the Prop 40 revenue will backfill these health care cuts, with the balance dedicated to public education.

Third, Zucman, Saez, and Boll claim that billionaires pay less in taxes than the average taxpayer, relative to income. They calculate that between 2018 and 2020, across all local, state, and federal taxes, billionaires paid just 24 percent of their income in taxes, whereas the typical taxpayer paid 30 percent.

The main reason is that both the federal government and California tax investment income or capital gains (about 72 percent of billionaire wealth) only when stock is sold.

Most billionaires earn very little in salaries, such as Zuckerberg’s, which is $1 a year. They borrow tax-free against their colossal wealth to pay for ongoing expenses.

The billionaire tax provides a remedy by taxing all wealth regardless of whether it has been realized or not.

The argument opponents make is that if Prop 40 passes, billionaires will leave the state, resulting in the loss of capital and jobs. However, there is no historical evidence to support this assertion.

Sociologist Cristobal Young, author of The Myth of Millionaire Tax Flight (2017), studied 13 years of millionaire tax records nationwide and found that only 2.4 percent of millionaires moved to another state annually, compared with 2.9 percent of the population at large.

Young also researched California millionaires after the voters in 2012 approved the largest tax increase ever on top earners. Two years after the ballot initiative, the state experienced a loss of just .04 percent of millionaire residents.

Studies reached similar conclusions for other states boosting taxes on the wealthiest, including New Jersey in 2020, New York in 2021, and Massachusetts in 2022

Why?

The research has found that 60 percent of California millionaires are older than 50 years; most have children and are socially and professionally tied to where they made their money. With children in school, property ownership, and extensive professional and social connections, they are unlikely to move for tax reasons.

Moreover, California tech billionaires depend on skilled professionals who are graduates of UC and CSU, and on innovation that is a byproduct of the exchange of ideas among tech workers across companies clustered in places like Silicon Valley and San Francisco.

California billionaires benefit immensely from the publicly financed infrastructure of universities, transportation, and healthcare. It’s time for them to pay their fair share to offset the pending catastrophic health care cuts.

Martin J. Bennett is Instructor Emeritus of History at Santa Rosa Junior College and a consultant for UNITE HERE Local 2. He is also a delegate to the North Bay Labor Council AFL-CIO.

Martin Bennett

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The legacy of 9/11: A surveillance society

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September 9, 2026 (Prospect.org)

KUTTNER ON TAP
The legacy of 9/11: A surveillance society

America now has a witches’ brew of government and corporate surveillance. None of it was necessary.

When the attacks of September 11, 2001, stunned America 25 years ago, the Prospect had just moved to Washington and brought on a new executive editor in Harold Meyerson. In about a week, we managed to assign and edit an issue that was one of our best ever. The cover line was “Defending an Open Society.”
The articles in that issue challenged the widespread assumption that we were now in a new normal, in which the vulnerability of an open society had been horribly revealed. Painful as it might be, America supposedly had to sacrifice some liberty to regain some security.
Then as now, that premise was disastrously wrong. But over 25 years, America ended up needlessly sacrificing both.
At the time, it seemed that the ability of a cell of terrorists to pass unnoticed, and to seize and weaponize not one but four jetliners almost simultaneously, demonstrated the pathetic vulnerability of the United States. But as testimony to the 9/11 Commission later revealed, American counterintelligence knew everything it needed to know in 2000 and 2001 to prevent the 9/11 attacks. The problem was that the White House under George W. Bush and Dick Cheney was obsessively focused on Saddam Hussein and didn’t want to know about al-Qaeda in the U.S.
Richard Clarke, director of counterterrorism for the National Security Council, had urgently requested a meeting of NSC principals on January 25, 2021, in a memo during Bush’s first week in office, to develop a comprehensive strategy against jihadists in America. He was rebuffed. Over the next several months, Clarke’s team assembled evidence of a planned attack, pilots being trained, and sleeper cells, but the White House kept fending him off.
Had the Supreme Court not intervened to steal the election for Bush, and had Al Gore been president, Clarke’s urgent warning would almost surely have been taken seriously and 9/11 never would have occurred. We had all the counterintelligence surveillance we needed. We just didn’t have a president who was paying attention.
In the panic that followed the attacks, a wish list of every previously rejected bad idea for warrantless surveillance and spying on Americans was hastily assembled. This became the USA PATRIOT Act. It was rushed through Congress in a fervor of misplaced patriotism and signed on October 26. It passed the House 357-66, and the Senate 98-1. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, the lone Senate dissenter, warned in a powerful floor speech, “Preserving our freedom is one of the main reasons that we are now engaged in this new war on terrorism. We will lose that war without firing a shot if we sacrifice the liberties of the American people.”
Among other odious items in the administration’s anti-terrorism bill, as Georgetown Law professor David Cole wrote in the Prospect’s 9/11 issue, were provisions to make aliens “deportable not for terrorist activity but for peaceful and nonviolent associational activity … It would authorize the Immigration and Naturalization Service to detain immigrants indefinitely on the attorney general’s say-so, even when they have a legal right to live here permanently and cannot be deported. And it would resurrect the doctrine of ideological exclusion by allowing aliens to be denied entry for their speech.”
All of this, of course, prefigured President Trump’s grotesque anti-immigrant measures.
Meanwhile, one of the genuine vulnerabilities that did need attention—international money laundering by terrorists—was remedied by the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020. But the same politicians who support surveillance of citizens and consumers are big supporters of crypto, which is a gift to terrorists and criminals who launder money.
One of the little-noticed consequences of the post-9/11 hysteria has been a diabolical symbiosis between government surveillance and corporate surveillance. What Shoshana Zuboff was the first to call surveillance capitalism has now become ubiquitous, as platform monopolies like Amazon and Google vacuum up customer data to sell targeted ads, screw rivals, and use personalizing pricing.
As the big tech monopolies pursue these surveillance strategies, experience gained in the national security establishment is highly prized. At least 200 people from counterintelligence posts have gone to work for Google, Facebook, and Amazon.
They include Caroline Atkinson, President Obama’s deputy national security adviser for international economics (2011–2015). She subsequently became head of global policy at Google. Robert Kimmitt, general counsel and executive secretary of the National Security Council, went to Facebook. Brian Walsh, special assistant to the president and senior director for intelligence at the National Security Council, went to a senior post at Amazon Web Services. And dozens more.
And the revolving door works both ways, with Trump’s top science, technology, and national security staff coming from Big Tech. What both sectors have in common is a commitment to surveillance.
None of this makes Americans more secure. It makes us more vulnerable.
Robert Kuttner
Co-Editor, Co-Founder

As Netanyahu Threatens Libel Suit, Haaretz ‘Stands By Its Reporting’ on 10/7 Attack

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Benjamin Netanyahu

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gives a news conference in Jerusalem on June 15, 2026. 

(Photo by Ronen Zvulun/pool/AFP via Getty Images)

“As always when a story really hits home, Netanyahu threatens to sue,” said one researcher.

Julia Conley

Sep 09, 2026 (CommonDreams.org)

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz did not appear alarmed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s threat on Wednesday to sue the outlet over its new reporting that Netanyahu was explicitly warned about the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack that killed more than 1,200 Israelis and led to the Israel Defense Forces’ destruction of Gaza.

After Netanyahu sent a “warning letter” saying he would file a libel lawsuit against Haaretz and journalists Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval over their Tuesday report, the newspaper said simply in a post on social media, “Haaretz stands by its reporting.”

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The newspaper based its reporting on accounts from three senior foreign sources, reporting that in September 2023, now-deceased Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar had told an intermediary trusted by both Hamas and Israeli intelligence agencies that an “earthquake” would be coming to Israel.

The warning reportedly came after Sinwar had grown frustrated with deadlocked talks over an exchange of Israeli and Palestinian prisoners.

Sinwar told the intermediary to convey a message to the United Arab Emirates, with whom Netanyahu had developed close ties, “that I am preparing the mother of all surprises. A terrifying operation. Something extraordinary.”

UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed then gave a warning to Netanyahu in a 45-minute phone call weeks before the attack, according to Haaretz.

Netanyahu lashed out at the newspaper in a social media post, saying the reporters “fabricated a false story against the prime minister that never happened and was never created.”

“The Prime Minister’s Office, the National Security Council, and the military secretary meticulously reviewed the prime minister’s call log for those days—and found no trace of it whatsoever,” said Netanyahu, who is behind his top opponent, former military chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot, in polls ahead of legislative elections set for October 27.

Netanyahu’s official social media account also confirmed he had instructed his lawyers to file the libel lawsuit. He blamed security officials for failing to alert him to the October 7 attack early enough after it had begun, repeating a recent claim that they feared he would launch an aggressive response to the attack and set off a war.

“If, instead of fearing a miscalculation, they had instructed the IDF, the Shin Bet, and the standby units to preempt the blow, and if they had updated Prime Minister Netanyahu in time, the terrible massacre could have been prevented,” said Netanyahu’s official account.

Netanyahu has been attempting to account for his actions on October 7 recently, releasing his full schedule from the day of the attacks last week. The log showed he did not speak to IDF officials until several hours after the attack began.

Researcher Shaiel Ben-Ephraim compared Netanyahu’s threat to sue Haaretz to his angry response earlier this year to a report by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, which included testimony from 14 Palestinians who said they had been sexually assaulted in Israeli prisons or during attacks by the IDF or Israeli settlers.

Netanyahu claimed the Times’ reporting was “blood libel” as he threatened to take legal action in May. Thus far, he has not followed through on the threat.

“This will likely end up just like the time he threatened to sue The New York Times,” said Ben-Ephraim, “and didn’t because every word was true.”

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On Tuesday, four Israeli opposition leaders called for an independent commission to investigate the October 7 attacks, citing a “series” of revelations about Netanyahu’s actions and reported inaction ahead of the assault.

“Netanyahu and his partners in the October 7 government are unfit to continue in office,” they wrote. “We will work in coordination and with the required responsibility to prevent them from leading to another disaster.”

The prime minister has long resisted calls for an independent investigation, agreeing earlier this year only to a proposal in which half of the commission’s members would be selected by Netanyahu’s own government, in violation of Israeli law—a suggestion that one opposition leader, Yair Lapid, called a “shameful farce” that was meant to “help the prime minister duck responsibility.”

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Julia Conley

Julia Conley is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.

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Young Voters Disrupt Meeting to Urge USPS Board of Governors to Reject Trump Attack on Voting

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An election worker processes mail-in ballots at the Los Angeles County Ballot Processing Center during California’s state primary election in the City of Industry on June 2, 2026.

 (Photo by Patrick T. Fallon / AFP via Getty Images)

“Trump is threatening not just our ability to mail our vote but our right to decide our future and the direction of our country.”

Brad Reed

Sep 09, 2026 (CommonDreams.org)

A group of young voters on Wednesday crashed a meeting of the United States Postal Service Board of Governors and demanded that they not carry out President Donald Trump’s executive order to disrupt the mail-in voting process.

The voters, which were organized with the help of Sunrise Movement, walked into the Board of Governors’ meeting in Potomac, Maryland, and asked members if they would commit to delivering all ballots sent through the USPS for November’s midterm elections.

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Stella Lovelady, 24, approached the board members holding a sign that read “Let Us Vote,” and said she is “worried that Donald Trump will prevent millions of people from voting by mail.”

“I’m worried young people’s voices won’t be heard in November because their ballots won’t be delivered,” said Lovelady. “Trump is threatening not just our ability to mail our vote but our right to decide our future and the direction of our country.”

Alex Ames, a 24-year-old voter from Georgia, asked the board members to “commit to us, to the public today, that you will mail every ballot out and not cave to Donald Trump’s political demands.”

Amber McReynolds, chair of the Board of Governors, thanked Ames for her input but informed her that she was intruding on a private meeting.

“We understand it’s a meeting but this is also an emergency,” Ames responded. “Ballots have already started getting mailed out. And if there’s a new emergency screening system that hasn’t been practiced before and all these ballots get tossed out, young voters, potentially millions of people, will not get their ballots in November.”

Shortly after this, the young voters were escorted out of the meeting.

Earlier this year, Trump signed an executive order that instructed the United States Postal Service to not deliver ballots in any states that have not given the federal government access to its voter lists.

However, that order is currently tied up in court, and both Wisconsin and North Carolina last week began mailing out ballots to voters.

Aru Shiney-Ajay, executive director of Sunrise Movement, said that the president’s attempts to restrict mail-in voting show he is “desperate” and “has decided the only way he can win is if possibly millions of people can’t vote.”

“The American people won’t let that happen,” Shiney-Ajay emphasized. “We’ll defeat this wannabe dictator in November like we did in 2020—with our votes, our voices and our peaceful actions.”

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Brad Reed

Brad Reed is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

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The Poison Squad: The Forgotten Men Who Ate Poison to Save America | History Documentary for Sleep

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ECHOES OF HISTORY Oct 20, 2025 The Poison Squad: The Forgotten Men Who Ate Poison to Save America Imagine volunteering to eat poisoned food. Every day. For five years. For science. In 1902, twelve brave young men did exactly that. They became known as The Poison Squad – government volunteers who ate meals laced with borax, formaldehyde, salicylic acid, and other toxic chemicals commonly used in American food. Their mission: Prove these chemicals were dangerous. Their sacrifice: Their health. Their legacy: The FDA and modern food safety laws. This is the true story of Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley, the crusading chemist who took on the powerful food industry, and the ordinary men who suffered to change what America eats forever. PERFECT FOR:

  • Falling asleep to history
  • Relaxing evening listening
  • Educational background content
  • Learning while resting
  • ASMR history enthusiasts

CHAPTERS: 00:00 – Introduction: The Volunteers 03:00 – Chapter 1: The Problem (American Food in 1900) 08:00 – Chapter 2: The Crusader (Harvey Wiley’s Mission) 13:00 – Chapter 3: The Volunteers (Meet the Poison Squad) 16:00 – Chapter 4: The Hygienic Table (The Setup) 20:00 – Chapter 5: Borax (The First Test) 24:00 – Chapter 6: Salicylic Acid (The Second Test) 27:00 – Chapter 7: Sulfurous Acid (The Third Test) 29:00 – Chapter 8: The Long Campaign (Five Years of Testing) 32:00 – Chapter 9: The Public Reacts (Fame & Opposition) 34:30 – Chapter 10: The Jungle (Upton Sinclair & Roosevelt) 36:30 – Chapter 11: The Aftermath (Victory & Legacy) 38:00 – Chapter 12: The Legacy (Modern Food Safety) THE STORY COVERS:

  • The state of American food in 1900 (formaldehyde in milk, borax in meat, copper sulfate in vegetables)
  • Dr. Harvey Wiley’s crusade for food safety
  • The recruitment of 12 young volunteers
  • Five years of documented suffering and scientific testing
  • Corporate opposition and political battles
  • The passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act (1906)
  • The creation of the FDA
  • The lasting impact on consumer protection

HISTORICAL CONTEXT:

  • Turn of the 20th century America
  • Industrial Revolution and processed foods
  • Lack of food regulations
  • Corporate power vs. consumer protection
  • Progressive Era reforms
  • Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency
  • Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”

WHY THIS STORY MATTERS: Before the Poison Squad, American food was a toxic lottery. Companies could put anything in food – formaldehyde, borax, morphine, cocaine – with no consequences. No labels. No oversight. No protection. These twelve ordinary men – clerks, students, government workers – volunteered to eat poison. They documented their suffering. They provided scientific proof that changed history. Every time you read a food label, every time you trust that your food is safe, remember the Poison Squad. SOURCES & FURTHER READING:

  • Blum, Deborah. “The Poison Squad: One Chemist’s Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century” (2018)
  • Wiley, Harvey W. “The History of a Crime Against the Food Law” (1929)
  • U.S. Department of Agriculture Bureau of Chemistry Records
  • Congressional Records (1902-1906)
  • Contemporary newspaper accounts (Washington Post, New York Times)
  • FDA Historical Archives
  • Stratton, S. Wesley. Personal diary (1902-1907)

The Day Israel Attacked America

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Al Jazeera English Nov 3, 2014 Al Jazeera investigates the shocking truth behind a deadly Israeli attack on a US naval vessel. In 1967, at the height of the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War, the Israeli Air Force launched an unprovoked attack on the USS Liberty, a US Navy spy ship that was monitoring the conflict from the safety of international waters in the Mediterranean. Israeli jet fighters hit the vessel with rockets, cannon fire and napalm, before three Israeli torpedo boats moved in to launch a second more devastating attack. Though she did not sink, the Liberty was badly damaged. Thirty-four US servicemen and civilian analysts were killed, another 171 were wounded. Later Israel apologised for what it claimed to be a tragic case of mistaken identity. It said that it had believed the ship to be hostile Egyptian naval vessel. US President Lyndon Johnson was privately furious but publicly the White House chose not to challenge the word of its closest Middle East ally and accepted that the attack had been a catastrophic accident. However, as this exclusive Al Jazeera investigation reveals, fresh evidence throws new light on exactly what happened that fateful day – and the remarkable cover up that followed.