A Doral, Florida resident checks out at a Walmart on October 10, 2025. (Photo by Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
“While President Trump claimed that he would bring down prices, the reality is that Americans have seen their costs soar even higher since he took office.”
Democrats on the congressional Joint Economic Committee released a report Thursday detailing how much more the average American family in every US state is having to spend monthly to cover the rising costs of food, shelter, energy, and other necessities under the leadership of President Donald Trump.
The panel released its report on the same day the Trump administration was supposed to publish the October Consumer Price Index (CPI) data. The closely watched CPI report was delayed by the shutdown, and the Trump White Housesaid Wednesday that it’s likely the figures will never be released.
Deploying the same methodology that Republicans used to track cost increases under former President Joe Biden, JEC Democrats found that the average US family is spending roughly $700 more per month on basic items since Trump took office in January, pledging to bring prices “way down.”
“While President Trump claimed that he would bring down prices, the reality is that Americans have seen their costs soar even higher since he took office,” said Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH), the JEC’s ranking member. “As families across the country spend more to pay their bills and put food on the table, Democrats and Republicans should be working together to lower costs. Instead, President Trump is pushing ahead with reckless tariffs that continue to fuel inflation and drive prices up even higher.”
In some states—including Alaska, California, and Colorado—average families are spending over $1,000 more per month to maintain their living standards as costs continue to rise, in part due to Trump’s erratic tariff regime.
The report’s findings run directly counter to Trump’s triumphant rhetoric on inflation and the US economy more broadly.
CNN‘s Daniel Dale noted earlier this week that Trump has been on a “lying spree about inflation,” falsely claiming that “every price is down” and that “everybody knows that it’s far less expensive under Trump than it was under Sleepy Joe Biden.”
“None of that is true,” Dale wrote. “Prices are up during this administration. Average prices were 1.7% higher in September than they were in January, according to the most recent figures from the federal Consumer Price Index, and 3% higher than they were in September 2024. There has been inflation every month of the term, and far more products have gotten costlier than cheaper.”
“Inflation not only very much continues to exist but has been accelerating since the spring,” Dale added. “As of September, the year-over-year inflation rate had increased for five consecutive months.”
Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro speaks during the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization Summit in Bogotá on August 22, 2025. (Photo by Raul Arboleda/AFPvia Getty Images)
“Intelligence is not for killing,” said Gustavo Petro, who has strongly criticized the US president.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro sat down with NBC News in Bogotá on Wednesday to discuss his decision to stop sharing intelligence with the United States over the Trump administration’s deadly boat bombings allegedly targeting drug runners in the Caribbean and Pacific.
Petro announced Tuesday that he halted “communications and other agreements with US security agencies” over the boat attacks that have killed at least 76 people. That same day, the UK government also stopped sharing intelligence related to suspected drug-trafficking vessels.
In the fight against drug trafficking, “intelligence is key,” Colombia’s leftist president told NBC chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel in Spanish. “The more we coordinate, the better. But intelligence is not for killing.”
Critics have stressed that even if the boats are transporting drugs, US President Donald Trump’s strikes are illegal. Asked by Engel whether he believes the vessels were carrying drugs, Petro said: “Maybe, or maybe not. We do not know. They are poor boatmen hired by gangsters. The gangsters don’t sit on the boats.”
Petro is one of the few world leaders who has publicly stood up to Trump. The Colombian leader told NBC, “He’s a barbarian, but anyone can change.”
As the New York Timespointed out Wednesday: “For Mr. Petro, a former rebel during Colombia’s long and brutal internal conflict, defiance is nothing new. Those who know him describe a man propelled by his convictions—a lifelong critic of corruption and inequality who became the fiery face of Colombia’s left.”
The Trump administration has responded forcefully to Petro’s critiques. In September, it revoked the Colombian president’s visa over his remarks to protesters in New York City, where he was to address the United Nations General Assembly. During the speech, Petro urged the UN to open criminal proceedings over the boat bombings.
In October, Petro accused the administration of murdering a Colombian fisherman in one of the boat strikes. Trump then halted aid to the country. As Bloombergreported Thursday, “The US has given Colombia about $14 billion this century, the most in the Americas, much of it to help fight guerrillas and traffickers.”
The Trump administration last month also sanctioned Petro, his family members, and Colombian Interior Minister Armando Alberto Benedetti. As Engel noted, the US has also sanctioned Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Even though experts have contested Trump’s claim that “we have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela,” the country and its leader are key targets of Trump.
In addition to bombing boats off the Venezuelan coast, Trump has sent a US aircraft carrier to the region, authorized Central Intelligence Agency operations in Venezuela, and is considering strikes within the country. Maduro has ordered the deployment of nearly 200,000 soldiers and accused Trump of pushing for “regime change,” with his sights set on “oil, gas, gold, fertile land, and water.”
During the NBC interview, Petro was critical of Maduro, saying, “I believe there has been no legitimate leadership in Venezuela for some time.”
However, he also expressed concern about the possibility of Trump waging war on Colombia’s neighbor. As Petro put it, “He wants to frighten us.”
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
The construction site of an Amazon data center in Salem Township, Pa., on Oct. 10. Credit: Jason Ardan/Citizens’ Voice via Getty Images
It’s not a novel observation to say that supporters of President Donald Trump and supporters of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders find common ground on many issues. They often share a skepticism of entrenched power and a desire to dismantle systems that they think have ceased to serve everyday people.
In Indiana, this agreement includes a distrust of data centers.
“The MAGA crowd and the Bernie bros have both figured out that they’ve been getting duped,” said Kerwin Olson, executive director of Citizens Action Coalition, an Indianapolis-based consumer and environmental advocacy nonprofit. “It was data centers that really brought it all together.”
Olson’s organization is running a campaign to persuade Indiana lawmakers to place a moratorium on new data centers and to redesign electricity rates to protect residential consumers from rate increases related to data center development.
He has received an emphatic response, with groups from the left, right and in-between booking him for speaking engagements and offering their assistance.
Election results last week confirm a similar dynamic in much of the country. Democrats won races for governor in New Jersey and Virginia and for two open seats on the Georgia Public Service Commission, campaigns in which data centers and rising electricity costs were issues. Media outlets noted this pattern, including in an insightful report from Jael Holzman of Heatmap and a look ahead to next year’s elections from Marc Levy and Jesse Bedayn of the Associated Press.
While much of the discussion is about data centers, the underlying issues are broader, touching on the power of tech companies. For people who live near proposed data centers, there is an additional sense of powerlessness, which Inside Climate News has documented across the country, including the backlash to a plan for a huge data center in Bessemer, Alabama.
“It’s about big tech,” Olson said. “To steal Bernie’s words, [it’s about] these big tech oligarchs that are calling all the shots at every single level of government right now.”
I also see some similarities with local opposition to large wind and solar projects, a subject I’ve written a lot aboutover theyears. A common theme is that residents feel frustrated when powerful companies want to make changes that would alter local landscapes.
Olson said he agrees that there is some overlap between opposition to data centers and large renewable energy development, but he views the latter as more of a rural phenomenon, while concern about data centers is rising almost everywhere.
Google scrapped its plans for a large data center in Indianapolis in September amid local backlash. In northwest Indiana, residents in the small city of Hobart have organized to oppose two data centers, raising concerns about the projects’ electricity and water consumption.
It’s notable that the opposition tends to highlight concerns about high electricity bills, but doesn’t talk as much about data centers’ negative climate impacts. Indiana can see the ramifications as officials push to delay the retirement of coal-fired power plants so the state can meet an expected surge in electricity demand, driven, in part, by data centers.
Political candidates can harness this mounting opposition and data center companies will need to devote more resources to engaging with the public.
Vivek Shastry, a senior research associate at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, told me that it’s important for the AI and data center industries to find ways to provide local benefits to host communities and to minimize any negative effects on household electricity costs.
He touched on these subjects in a recent blog post, co-written with his colleague Diana Hernández. When I read this, my first thought was, “Wait, there are local benefits?”
He explained that there are opportunities in terms of energy and money. He pointed to examples in Denmark and Finland of data centers harnessing their waste heat to contribute to district heating systems for local communities.
Beyond that—which I think would be a challenge to do in the United States—he said AI and data center developers can make community benefits part of their proposals. This could mean working with local leaders to find ways to address local needs through philanthropy.
“To the extent that there is a partnership with communities, and there are these pathways to enable tangible co-benefits,” he said.
The opposite can also be true, with local communities feeling like they are bearing the burden of a data center with few, if any, benefits.
Shastry’s larger point is that government officials and corporate leaders need to make sure that development does not harm the most vulnerable consumers by driving up costs of water and electricity. To do otherwise would feed into consumer unrest.
“It’s important to get those processes and protections right early on, because the pace of this growth is such that once you lock into certain kinds of rates and other pathways, it then becomes harder to reverse,” Shastry said.
Voters are already getting upset about electricity rate increases that they blame on data centers, even though the AI industry is in its infancy. The negative effects, if left to fester, could get much worse.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Research based on a poll of 11,000 Reform UK supporters, the biggest survey of its kind, tells us more about who is intending to vote for the party than has been previously known.
The in-depth polling analysis from Hope Not Hate reveals a voter coalition that stretches from struggling workers and frustrated graduates to wealthy retirees, in places from Hitchin to Runcorn.
While immigration is often viewed as the defining issue for Reform supporters, the data shows a far more complex picture. This diverse coalition is deeply divided on big issues such as the economy, the climate crisis and the role of government.
…
Who are the Reform supporters?
The research divides them into five groups, based on their attitudes towards different issues. These groups are the “working right”, “hardline conservatives”, “squeezed stewards”, “contrarian youth” and “reluctant reformers”. They differ in some key ways.
…
Anki Deo, who leads the policy and insights team at Hope Not Hate, says that in “an era of hyper-marginal politics where election results are decided by just a few percentage points”, identifying these groups and where they live is crucial.
She adds: “For those of us desperate to prevent a Farage-led government in 2029, this research shows us that not all is lost. Reform UK voters do not fit a single profile or ideology. Far from a homogenous group, it is a broad coalition, with many voters having quite different and contradictory views from each other.
Nigel Farage explains the politics of Reform UK: Racism, Fake anti-establishmentism, Deregulation, Corporatism, Climate Change Denial, Mysogyny and Transphobia.Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.Nigel Farage reminds you that he’s the man that brought you Brexit and asks what could possibly go wrong.
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Palestinians who returned to Khan Yunis, a city heavily damaged during Israel’s two-year-long attacks on the Gaza Strip, struggle to survive amid the rubble of destroyed buildings and limited resources on November 6, 2025. [Abed Rahim Khatib – Anadolu Agency]
Israel’s allies worldwide are desperately scrambling to help Tel Aviv re-establish a convincing narrative, not only concerning the Gaza genocide, but the entire legacy of Israeli colonialism in Palestine and the Middle East.
The perfect little story, built on myths and outright fabrications — that of a small nation fighting for survival amid ‘hordes of Arabs and Muslims’ — is rapidly collapsing. It was a lie from the start, but the Gaza genocide has made it utterly indefensible.
The harrowing details of the Israeli genocide in Gaza were more than enough for people globally to fundamentally question the Zionist narrative, particularly the racist Western trope of the ‘villa in the Jungle’ used by Israel to describe its existence among the colonised population.
Not only have people across the globe, but even Americans have decisively turned against Israel. What began as an alarming trend — from the Israeli viewpoint, of course — is now the irrefutable new reality. National polls indicate that support for Palestinians among US adults has risen, with 33 per cent now saying they sympathise more with the Palestinians — the highest reading so far and an increase of six percentage points from last year.
Even the once unshakeable pro-Israeli majority among Republicans is softening in favour of Palestinians, with 35 per cent of Republicans favouring an independent Palestinian state, a significant increase from 27 per cent in 2024, demonstrating a clear shift in a segment of the Republican base.
The Israeli government is now fighting with every resource at its disposal to dominate the information war. It is focused on injecting calculated Israeli falsehoods into the discourse and aggressively blocking the Palestinian viewpoint.
Latest reports of an Israeli campaign to win social media by granting millions of dollars to TikTok and other social media influencers is only a fraction of a massive, coordinated campaign.
The war is multifrontal. On 4 November, news reports revealed that Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales personally intervened to block editing access to the page dedicated to the Gaza Genocide. He claimed that the page fails to meet the company’s “high standards” and “needs immediate attention.” According to Wales, that specific page requires a “neutral approach” — meaning, in practice, that blatant censorship is required to prevent the genocide from being accurately described as the “ongoing intentional and systematic destruction of the Palestinian people.”
Israel has long been obsessed with controlling the narrative on Wikipedia, a strategy predating the current Gaza genocide. Reports dating back to 2010 confirm that Israeli groups established specific training courses in ‘Zionist editing’ for Wikipedia editors, with the explicit goal of injecting state-aligned content and shaping key historical and political entries.
The censorship campaign against Palestinians and pro-Palestinian voices is as old as the media itself. From the very start, mainstream media in the West has been structurally aligned with corporate agendas that are naturally allied with money and power; thus, the prominence of the Israeli view and the near-complete erasure of the Palestinian perspective.
Years ago, however, Israel began realising the existential danger of digital media, particularly the open spaces in social media that allowed ordinary individuals to become independent content creators. The censorship, however, took an ugly and pervasive turn during the genocide, where even the use of words like ‘Gaza’, ‘Palestine’, let alone ‘genocide’, would result in shadowbanning or outright closure of accounts.
In fact, very recently, YouTube, which was previously known for being less severe in censoring pro-Palestinian voices than META, shut down the accounts of three major Palestinian human rights organizations (Al-Haq, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights), erasing more than 700 videos of crucial footage documenting Israeli violations of international law.
Sadly, though not surprisingly, not a single mainstream social media platform is innocent of censoring any criticism of Israel. Thus, it becomes a daily practice that references to Palestine, the Gaza genocide, and the like must be written in coded language, where, for example, the Palestinian flag would be replaced by an image of a watermelon.
Many pro-Palestine activists are now highlighting the direct complicity of Western media, especially in the UK, in attempting to whitewash the rape accusations against Israeli soldiers. Instead of using the unequivocal word ‘rape’, mainstream outlets refer to the horrific Sde Teiman episodes merely as ‘abuses’. While Israeli politicians and other war criminals are openly celebrating the so-called ‘abuses’ and the rapists as national heroes, mainstream British and French media are still refusing to accept that the widespread torture, rape, and mistreatment of Palestinians is part of a centralised, systemic agenda, not mere individual ‘abuses’.
Compare this to the wall-to-wall, sensationalised coverage of alleged ‘mass rape’ by Palestinians in southern Israel on 7 October — despite the fact that no independent investigation was ever conducted, and that the claims were made by the Israeli army without credible evidence.
This is not mere bias and hypocrisy, however, but direct complicity, as stated by the Gaza Tribunal’s final statement on 26 October 2025. “The Jury finds a range of non-state actors to be complicit in genocide,” the verdict read, including “biased media reporting in the west on Palestine and under-reporting of Israeli crimes”.
The final reckoning unfolds in the information warzone. The coming months and years mark the most critical fight for truth in the conflict’s history. Israel, relying on censorship, intimidation, and manufactured consent, will use every method to secure a victory. For Palestinians and all who champion justice, this battle for history is as consequential as the genocide itself. Israel must not be allowed to sanitize its image, because polishing genocide guarantees its repetition.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
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Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
