US Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) and others react during an election night watch party on November 3, 2026 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Joel Angel Juarez/Getty Images)
“From coast to coast, Americans are demanding a country that works for all of us, not just corrupt politicians and billionaires.”
Progressive lawmakers and advocacy organizations said Wednesday in the aftermath of Democrats’ historic midterm victory that the party has a mandate to use its majorities in the US House and Senate to advance an ambitious legislative agenda and deliver the kind of transformative change that voters demanded at ballot boxes across the country.
Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, called the midterm results “a mandate to deliver big change,” emphasizing that the real work has just begun.
“Deliver on the big change people are demanding,” Casar wrote in a message to his fellow Democrats. “End the war. Stop ICE’s reign of terror. Root out corruption. Raise wages. Stop price gouging. Get money out of politics. Strengthen unions.”
“No complacency,” he added.
Top Democrats signaled in the immediate aftermath of the party’s midterm rout of President Donald Trump’s Republican Party that they would not hesitate to begin investigating alleged corruption—a major issue for voters, according to exit polls—and other wrongdoing by the White House and its allies.
House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), who is in line to become speaker in the new Congress, said Wednesday that his caucus would also work to “make significant and decisive progress on addressing the affordability crisis”—though legislative efforts could by stymied by Trump’s veto power.
Progressives—bouyed by victories in key races across the country—implored Democrats to use every bit of power that voters gave them to pursue bold change and lay the groundwork for retaking the White House in 2028, warning against a return to the status quo politics that delivered the country into the grasp of Trump and the GOP in the first place.
“Use every committee, hearing, and budget negotiation. Follow the contracts and conflicts of interest. Put executives and administration officials under oath,” Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of the advocacy group Our Revolution, said in a statement Wednesday. “Fight for concrete gains and make Trump answer for what he blocks. We know we won’t win everything at once. People need to see Democrats using every bit of power they have to fight for them.”
Geevarghese also called on Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to step aside as leader of the Senate Democratic caucus, arguing that the fight ahead “requires leadership ready to meet the moment.”
“The blue wave was powered by a progressive wave. We are the center of gravity in this party, and we intend to drive the agenda. People deserve a new New Deal: a $25 living wage, stronger unions, affordable housing, taxes on billionaires and a sustained fight for Medicare for All,” said Geevarghese. “If Democrats retreat into caution and fail to improve people’s lives, they will rebuild the distrust Trump exploited. The people organized for change. We organized to win. Now we organize to make Democrats deliver.”
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani also weighed in on the implications of Tuesday’s election results, saying at a press conference that “what last night told us is that Americans are tired of being told that their needs are unrealistic, by politicians who have been bought by the wealthiest people in the country.”
“This country has elected a new generation of leadership, a generation with a mandate to lower the cost of living, to build not bomb, to never betray the working people who entrusted them with power,” said Mamdani. “And I hear often that the politics that we’re fighting for here in New York City are not possible outside of city limits. And what last night showed us is that working people are the majority, whether we are speaking of Austin or Ann Arbor or Astoria. It is time to put those same people first in our politics.”
A meeting of the Pentagon’s Project Meridian was pictured on October 1, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Photo: US Department of Defense/X.com)
“The federal government should not be outsourcing its vision on ‘the future of warfare’ to a panel dominated by individuals that stand to profit from it.”
A coalition of government watchdog organizations sued the US Department of Defense on Monday over a recently announced initiative known as Project Meridian, a Pentagon advisory committee headed by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and Anduril Industries cofounder Palmer Luckey—billionaires whose companies benefit extensively from federal contracts.
The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, alleges that Project Meridian violates the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), which “requires that any federal advisory committee that includes non-governmental members be created by a charter, have a defined structure and purpose, make its records and meetings open to the public, and be fairly balanced in its membership.”
In his memorandum ordering the creation of Project Meridian, Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth set a deadline of January 28, 2027 for the panel to deliver recommendations to the US Defense Department on how to “map the trajectory of future warfare” and help the country “maintain global dominance.”
Project Meridian has held at least two meetings at the Pentagon, which has not disclosed the specific contents of the gatherings or released a list of attendees. Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich is helping Musk and Luckey spearhead the advisory panel, coordinated by the MITRE Corporation—whose board previously included the GOP’s nominee for US Senate in Michigan, Mike Rogers.
“Despite its ongoing operations and imminent final report,” the new lawsuit reads, “defendants have failed to comply with FACA’s procedural and substantive requirements for new federal advisory committees, including FACA transparency requirements that disallow Project Meridian’s closed-door operations.”
“Compounding the problem, Project Meridian’s private-sector membership raises precisely the type of conflict-of-interest concerns that FACA was designed to address,” the lawsuit continues. “Announced members include Elon Musk and Palmer Luckey, both leaders and stakeholders of major defense contractors with substantial financial interests in the outcome of Project Meridian’s recommendations. Other members likewise have direct financial stakes in Project Meridian’s findings or are dedicated to aggressive military action.”
The lawsuit was filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), Public Citizen, and the Project on Government Oversight. The groups urged the federal court to “hold unlawful, vacate, and set aside Secretary Hegseth’s September 30 memorandum establishing Project Meridian,” “enjoin defendants from allowing Project Meridian to continue its work until defendants bring it into compliance with FACA,” and bar the Pentagon from “accepting or acting upon any recommendations by Project Meridian while it is acting outside the law.”
Donald Sherman, CREW’s president, said in a statement on Monday that the Pentagon is “legally barred from getting advice in secret, by defense contractors with enormous potential conflicts of interest.”
“But that’s exactly what Project Meridian is doing—soliciting private counsel from contractors about military capacity including the president’s largest political benefactor,” said Sherman. “The Federal Advisory Committee Act sets clear requirements about transparency and avoiding conflicts of interest, and Project Meridian must either comply or stop operating.”
Anduril Industries, Luckey’s firm, is known for building autonomous drones. The company won a $2 billion US Navy contract last month, days after Hegseth announced Project Meridian.
“Project Meridian would outsource design of grand military strategy to two extremist Pentagon contractors, Elon Musk and Palmer Luckey,” Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, said Monday. “Very predictably, they will recommend more spending, much more spending, on more AI-enabled weaponry. That would simultaneously make the world more dangerous and starve funding for domestic and human needs.”
“The law demands balance on advisory committees, precisely to prevent connected insiders like Musk and Luckey from writing policy at the expense of the public,” Weissman added.
Climate science denier Donald Trump confirms that he knows nothing about democracy and that more liquid gold is being secured according to his policy of global privateering.
US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speak during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House on April 7, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
President Donald Trump on Tuesday claimed the United States would end its annual military assistance to Israel by the end of the year, a dubious announcement made on Election Day as Republicans face mounting backlash over their support for the Israeli government’s genocidal assault on Gaza.
In a phone interview with Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade, Trump said he had reached a deal with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu months ago to end the roughly $4 billion in annual assistance Washington provides Israel under a 2016 agreement with the Obama administration.
“They’re fine with it because they’ve become a very successful country,” Trump said of Israel. “They don’t need it. And we won’t be paying anymore.”
The president also admitted to political motivations, complaining about criticism from Democrats like Michigan US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.
“Why should we suffer the slings from lunatics like an El-Sayed when they don’t need it?” Trump asked, calling American aid a “bad talking point.”
But it’s not just Democrats. An increasingly vocal faction of Trump’s own MAGA movement has been arguing that spending billions of taxpayer dollars on arming Israel is fundamentally incompatible with the president’s stated “America First” agenda.
A March Pew Research Center survey found that 57% of Republicans under 50 viewed Israel unfavorably as prominent right-wing figures like commentator Tucker Carlson, reporter Megyn Kelly, and former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) amplify anti-Israel views amid an ongoing genocide in which more than 250,000 Palestinians have been killed and wounded.
The timing of Trump’s announcement raised eyebrows, coming on the morning of the midterm elections. Commentators opined that the announcement appeared aimed at undercutting criticism from progressive Democrats and the president’s own disaffected supporters.
Skepticism is also rooted in the fact that US military assistance to Israel technically cannot end by the end of the year.
First, the current US-Israel military assistance memorandum of understanding, signed under then-President Barack Obama in 2016, provides $38 billion over 10 years, including $33 billion in foreign military financing and $5 billion for missile defense. The MOU runs through September 2028, not December 2026.
Netanyahu faces an uncertain political future after indecisive parliamentary elections last month, and as The Times of Israel noted Tuesday, he has discussed phasing out American assistance, but over a decade—not abruptly ending it this year.
Second, Section 219 of the House-passed fiscal year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act would establish a United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative, coordinating joint research, development, testing, and industrial cooperation in areas including missile defense, drones, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity. The highly contentious provision would significantly integrate the two countries’ defense industries and institutionalize cooperation.
“The announcement that Trump is cutting off US aid to Israel is false hype to make US voters think Trump cut off the spigot,” saidAIPAC Tracker, which tallies how much money politicians have taken from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. “The reality is Trump and Congress are trying to replace aid with [a] military tech merger.”
Similarly, Section 622 of the separate fiscal year 2027 Intelligence Authorization Act would compel the president to “expand and enhance intelligence sharing” with Israel, explicitly stating that such sharing shall generally “not be suspended, reduced, or otherwise materially limited,” with certain exceptions.
Perhaps most importantly, Trump’s own comments suggest that the announcement would not end the flow of American weapons to Israel. When Kilmeade pressed him on whether he meant military hardware or financial assistance, Trump replied: “I’m giving in any way you want to define it. You can consider it barter. You can consider it military aid or cash.”
Furthermore, nothing suggests that the US is abandoning its fundamental support for Israel, despite it being the only country that United Nations experts and others say is simultaneously committing genocide in Gaza as well as occupation, colonization, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid in the West Bank.
Skepticism over Trump’s claim abounded Tuesday, with the Washington, DC-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) noting that US arms sales to Israel will not end.
“Let’s be clear. Selling American weapons to a foreign government engaged in war crimes is just as immoral and illegal as giving those weapons away for free,” CAIR asserted. “Because federal law prohibits providing weapons to foreign militaries engaged in human rights abuses, ending free military aid is not enough. Our nation must completely stop arming and otherwise enabling the Israeli government’s unjust wars and crimes against humanity.”
Defense analyst William Hartung said in a statement that Trump’s announcement “may be less than meets the eye.”
“While the timing is a slap in the face [to] Netanyahu, coming as he struggles to form a coalition that would keep him in power, it may not ultimately change the amount of US tax dollars flowing to Israel, because Congress is considering a measure that would open the way to joint US-Israeli arms development across a wide range of areas,” said Hartung.
The IMEU Policy Project said in response to the announcement that “President Trump is a serial liar who has announced over $20 billion in weapons giveaways to Israel since taking office.”
“He and other politicians realize our taxpayer funding for Israel is a liability,” the IMEU Policy Project continued. “That’s why he and his allies in Congress are at this very moment trying to advance legislation to conceal support for Israel by integrating Israeli weapons companies into the Pentagon.”
“This is a bait and switch that would result in Americans funding Israeli weapons makers in record amounts,” the group added.
US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speak during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House on April 7, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
“This is where Section 219 of the NDAA comes in,” said one observer. “They’re going to transfer all of the aid behind closed doors and cut it from the appropriations process.”
President Donald Trump on Tuesday claimed the United States would end its annual military assistance to Israel by the end of the year, a dubious announcement made on Election Day as Republicans face mounting backlash over their support for the Israeli government’s genocidal assault on Gaza.
In a phone interview with Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade, Trump said he had reached a deal with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu months ago to end the roughly $4 billion in annual assistance Washington provides Israel under a 2016 agreement with the Obama administration.
“They’re fine with it because they’ve become a very successful country,” Trump said of Israel. “They don’t need it. And we won’t be paying anymore.”
The president also admitted to political motivations, complaining about criticism from Democrats like Michigan US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.
“Why should we suffer the slings from lunatics like an El-Sayed when they don’t need it?” Trump asked, calling American aid a “bad talking point.”
But it’s not just Democrats. An increasingly vocal faction of Trump’s own MAGA movement has been arguing that spending billions of taxpayer dollars on arming Israel is fundamentally incompatible with the president’s stated “America First” agenda.
A March Pew Research Center survey found that 57% of Republicans under 50 viewed Israel unfavorably as prominent right-wing figures like commentator Tucker Carlson, reporter Megyn Kelly, and former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) amplify anti-Israel views amid an ongoing genocide in which more than 250,000 Palestinians have been killed and wounded.
The timing of Trump’s announcement raised eyebrows, coming on the morning of the midterm elections. Commentators opined that the announcement appeared aimed at undercutting criticism from progressive Democrats and the president’s own disaffected supporters.
Skepticism is also rooted in the fact that US military assistance to Israel technically cannot end by the end of the year.
First, the current US-Israel military assistance memorandum of understanding, signed under then-President Barack Obama in 2016, provides $38 billion over 10 years, including $33 billion in foreign military financing and $5 billion for missile defense. The MOU runs through September 2028, not December 2026.
Netanyahu faces an uncertain political future after indecisive parliamentary elections last month, and as The Times of Israel noted Tuesday, he has discussed phasing out American assistance, but over a decade—not abruptly ending it this year.
Second, Section 219 of the House-passed fiscal year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act would establish a United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative, coordinating joint research, development, testing, and industrial cooperation in areas including missile defense, drones, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity. The highly contentious provision would significantly integrate the two countries’ defense industries and institutionalize cooperation.
“The announcement that Trump is cutting off US aid to Israel is false hype to make US voters think Trump cut off the spigot,” saidAIPAC Tracker, which tallies how much money politicians have taken from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. “The reality is Trump and Congress are trying to replace aid with [a] military tech merger.”
Similarly, Section 622 of the separate fiscal year 2027 Intelligence Authorization Act would compel the president to “expand and enhance intelligence sharing” with Israel, explicitly stating that such sharing shall generally “not be suspended, reduced, or otherwise materially limited,” with certain exceptions.
Perhaps most importantly, Trump’s own comments suggest that the announcement would not end the flow of American weapons to Israel. When Kilmeade pressed him on whether he meant military hardware or financial assistance, Trump replied: “I’m giving in any way you want to define it. You can consider it barter. You can consider it military aid or cash.”
Furthermore, nothing suggests that the US is abandoning its fundamental support for Israel, despite it being the only country that United Nations experts and others say is simultaneously committing genocide in Gaza as well as occupation, colonization, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid in the West Bank.
Skepticism over Trump’s claim abounded Tuesday, with the Washington, DC-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) noting that US arms sales to Israel will not end.
“Let’s be clear. Selling American weapons to a foreign government engaged in war crimes is just as immoral and illegal as giving those weapons away for free,” CAIR asserted. “Because federal law prohibits providing weapons to foreign militaries engaged in human rights abuses, ending free military aid is not enough. Our nation must completely stop arming and otherwise enabling the Israeli government’s unjust wars and crimes against humanity.”
Defense analyst William Hartung said in a statement that Trump’s announcement “may be less than meets the eye.”
“While the timing is a slap in the face [to] Netanyahu, coming as he struggles to form a coalition that would keep him in power, it may not ultimately change the amount of US tax dollars flowing to Israel, because Congress is considering a measure that would open the way to joint US-Israeli arms development across a wide range of areas,” said Hartung.
The IMEU Policy Project said in response to the announcement that “President Trump is a serial liar who has announced over $20 billion in weapons giveaways to Israel since taking office.”
“He and other politicians realize our taxpayer funding for Israel is a liability,” the IMEU Policy Project continued. “That’s why he and his allies in Congress are at this very moment trying to advance legislation to conceal support for Israel by integrating Israeli weapons companies into the Pentagon.”
“This is a bait and switch that would result in Americans funding Israeli weapons makers in record amounts,” the group added.
Donald Trump sings and dances, says that it’s fun to kill everyone … unless he gets distracted or falls asleep.UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham admits to blatently lying and engaging in deception to become leader of the UK Labour Party and Prime Minister. He asks who could possibly object to the IDF starving people to death, conducting forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing all Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He says they’ve got a genocide to do for Israel and to stop objecting.Ed Miliband says that he and the Labour Party are full of shit criminalising people holding signs as terrorists despite anything he says.
Bold Politics is back and Zack Polanski is joined by internationally renowned climate activist, Greta Thunberg to discuss how the establishment went from wanting pictures with her to trying to bring her down, how the media are selective with their support for human rights issues and why the backlash to protesting on certain issues is more toxic than others.
dizzy: Much too long for my liking, fine at X 1.25
