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Category: plutocracy

Netanyahu’s plane flies through Greek, Italian, French airspace en route to US despite ICC warrant
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This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Israel official government aircraft, Wing of Zion. [wikipedia]
The plane carrying Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the United States to attend the UN General Assembly again used the airspace of Greece, Italy, and France despite an arrest warrant issued against him by the International Criminal Court, Anadolu reports.
According to flight-tracking website Flightradar24, Netanyahu’s plane left Israel early Thursday for the United States to attend the 81st session of the UN General Assembly and crossed the airspace of European countries that are members of the International Criminal Court.
All three countries are parties to the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the ICC, and are generally required to cooperate with the court’s requests to arrest and surrender wanted individuals found on their territory.
The treaty, however, does not explicitly require a member state to intercept or force down an aircraft merely because a person subject to an ICC arrest warrant is flying through its airspace.
Netanyahu’s plane followed a similar route during his trip to the US in July, also crossing the airspace of Greece, Italy and France.
When Netanyahu traveled to the United States in September 2025 to attend the previous UN General Assembly, his plane took a route over the Mediterranean Sea and through the Strait of Gibraltar, apparently to avoid the airspace his plane used this year.
On Nov. 21, 2024, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip.
READ: Mamdani renews call for Netanyahu’s ICC arrest warrant to be honoured ahead of New York visit
Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth reported Wednesday that Netanyahu would not land at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York due to concerns that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani might not allow the plane to remain on the tarmac.
His plane instead will land at a military airport in New Jersey — exclusively under the control of the federal government under the Trump administration — or at Newark Airport in the neighboring state of New Jersey, it added.
Netanyahu is scheduled to address the 81st session of the UN General Assembly at 2 pm New York time (1800GMT) Thursday.
His visit comes amid expectations of protests against Netanyahu in New York, in condemnation of Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip and attacks in the occupied West Bank.
Israel has been waging an extermination war in Gaza since Oct. 8, 2023, killing nearly 74,000 Palestinians and injuring over 175,000, most of them children and women.
In addition to the casualties, Israel has destroyed around 90% of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, while the UN has estimated the cost of reconstruction at about $70 billion.
Alongside its genocidal war in Gaza, attacks by the Israeli army and occupiers against Palestinians and their property in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, have intensified, drawing rising international condemnation in recent months.
READ: Amnesty accuses France of ‘double standard’ over Netanyahu plane
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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.
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 rotting brain, front Orca says Sundown Syndrome is a dead givaway and he wishes someone would Lock Him Up
24 September 2026
‘The Billion Dollar Deal’: Senate Democrats Detail How Trump Serves Fossil Fuel Industry
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Article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) speak at a press conference on the fossil fuel industry’s connections to the Trump administration at the Capitol in Washington, DC on September 24, 2026. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
“Our new report exposes this old-fashioned corruption, by a thuggish government and a desperate industry, that is squeezing every last dollar out of Americans’ pocketbooks while they still can.”
While running for president in 2024, Donald Trump told oil and gas executives that he would pursue their policy priorities if the industry raised $1 billion for his campaign—and after returning to office last year, the Republican did just that, enriching those invested in fossil fuels, including himself, at the expense of the public and planet.
That’s according to “The Billion Dollar Deal: How the Fossil Fuel Industry Bought the Trump Administration, Cashed In, and Left Americans to Pay the Price,” a report released Thursday by US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Committee on Environment and Public Works Ranking Member Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI).
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“The fossil fuel industry and their allies bought their way into the Trump White House with hundreds of millions of dollars in political donations, after Trump promised fossil fuel bigwigs at a Mar-a-Lago fundraiser that he’d do anything and everything they wanted, for the right price,” Whitehouse said in a statement.
“Now, their minions run the government from the inside, driving up energy bills to deliver payouts to the donors that put Trump back in office,” he continued. “Our new report exposes this old-fashioned corruption, by a thuggish government and a desperate industry, that is squeezing every last dollar out of Americans’ pocketbooks while they still can.”
The report is based on 19 investigations into Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulatory rollbacks, 13 probes of nine other agencies, and 13 investigations into 88 separate polluters. Investigators from Schumer’s Anti-Corruption Working Group examined campaign finance filings, corporate earnings, and investor communications.
The document details how, in the aftermath of Trump’s quid pro quo offer at the Mar-a-Lago fundraiser in 2024, fossil fuel executives, along with their corporate political action committees (PACs) and dark money groups, contributed an estimated $201 million to support Trump and allied Republican lawmakers—plus $19 million toward the inaugural fund.
“These figures capture only traceable donations,” the report emphasizes. “Other substantial sums flowed to candidate Trump through 501(c)(4) organizations that are not legally required to disclose their contributors. Dark money groups—nonprofits and shell companies that do not reveal their donors—contributed over $1.9 billion into the 2024 elections, up from $1 billion in 2020.”
The report names key figures from “the fossil fuel donor class” and includes their estimated contribution to Trump’s latest election:
- Oil and banking heir Timothy Mellon: $151.5 million
- Energy Transfer executive chair Kelcy Warren: $11 million
- Elliott Management co-CEO Paul Singer: $8 million
- CrownQuest Operating CEO Tim Dunn: $5 million
- Continental Resources executive chair Harold Hamm: $4 million
- Midland Energy founder and CEO Syed Javaid Anwar: $2 million
- GeoSouthern Energy CEO George Bishop: $2 million
- Alliance Resource Partners CEO Joseph Craft III: $2 million
- Hilcorp Energy executive chair and founder Jeffery Hildebrand: $1.7 million
- Sunoco board chari Ray Washburne: $611,000
There’s also former Liberty Energy CEO Chris Wright, who is now Trump’s energy secretary and gave an estimated $795,000. According to the report, “Lobbyists say that many CEOs now keep Secretary Wright’s personal phone number on speed dial.”
Wright is among at least a dozen former oil executives and lobbyists Trump installed at the EPA and departments of Energy, the Interior, and Justice to systematically dismantle “the regulatory architecture built over decades to protect American families from pollution and climate change,” the publication points out. “Those captured agencies delivered for the fossil fuel industry.”
The report calls out not only Wright but also Trump’s other “polluter worker bees,” including EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, and various other officials at their agencies who have ties to polluting industries.
It also calls out the GOP-controlled Congress, which last year sent to Trump’s desk the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a law that includes “tens of billions in new and expanded direct subsidies to fossil fuel companies through tax breaks, royalty cuts, a suspension of the charge on methane pollution, and other giveaways. Combined with the subsidies already on the books, independent analysts estimate the industry will collect some $190 billion in tax breaks and subsidies over the next 10 years.”
“The costs of these gifts to the fossil fuel industry fall on everyone else,” the report stresses. “Climate-related disasters cost the United States at least $115 billion in direct damages in 2025 alone. Each year, the damages to public health from fossil fuel air pollution run at about $820 billion, or $2,500 per American, and contribute to approximately 91,000 premature deaths and 216,000 new cases of childhood asthma. Homeowners’ insurance has become unaffordable or unavailable across many parts of the country. These are just some of the existing costs associated with fossil fuel production and combustion.”
“The Trump administration’s regulatory rollbacks will drive them higher, as air and water pollution as well as climate change will all get worse,” the document warns, as the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency worsens, with deadly consequences worldwide.
The report notes that “canceled and delayed wind and solar projects are also raising electricity prices for consumers in multiple states, sending billions to fossil fuel plants. And the EPA itself has estimated that the elimination of tailpipe emission standards will cost Americans a minimum of $580 billion in added fuel costs alone over the next three decades. Hundreds of thousands of jobs are being lost as the United States cedes its industrial competitiveness in clean energy technologies to China and Europe.”
Trump also partnered with Israel to launch an illegal war on Iran—which has responded by restricting ship traffic through the the Strait of Hormuz, sending global fuel prices soaring. The publication highlights that “the 100 biggest oil and gas companies collectively earned an extra $30 million per hour in the first month of the Iran conflict alone—amounting to $23 billion in windfall profits—with $234 billion projected by year’s end if oil prices remain near $100 a barrel.”
“As the Trump administration’s war in Iran drives up gas prices—with analysts warning crude prices could reach $200—American
consumers pay directly for the chaos that Big Oil’s political investments helped purchase,” the report warns. Brown University’s Costs of War Project estimates the higher diesel and gasoline prices have so far cost Americans $115.7 billion, or $883 per household.
https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&features=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%3D%3D&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=2103120384484893067&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Ftrump-oil-executives-1-billion&partner=rebelmouse&sessionId=3fe41556cc80a25f4f2da65e371d2435ae03f053&siteScreenName=commondreams&siteUserId=14296273&theme=light&widgetsVersion=6a3ad42b224df%3A1778106238597&width=550px
Trump’s war is also filling his own pockets. CNBC estimated earlier this month that the president has made up to $4.4 million from his investments in fossil fuel companies—and as Common Dreams reported earlier this week, he continues to make related trades.
“Donald Trump will always choose self-enrichment over helping American families, and as this report reveals, his fossil fuel corruption is costing Americans billions,” said Schumer. “Instead of using the presidency to address the affordability crisis, lower costs, and protect Americans’ health and safety, Trump has used his power to deliver for his billionaire buddies in the fossil fuel industry. The message from this administration is clear: Big Oil gets the profits, and American families get the bill.”
Released less than six weeks away from the midterm elections, Senate Democrats’ report not only lays out a range of issues, but offers some fixes, including demands to tax the windfall profits of Big Oil, as well as legislation that would “shine a light behind the dark money front groups and shell organizations that fossil fuel interests use to hide their spending.”
The report also calls for making polluters pay for planet-heating emissions and empowering lawsuits to hold them accountable. It further advocates for ending fossil fuel subsidies and directing that money to clean energy, consumer relief, and infrastructure resilience.
“The Trump administration is pumping public money into the fossil fuel industry and stripping public protections to pad the profits of some of the wealthiest corporations in the nation,” David Arkush, director of Public Citizen’s Climate Program, said in response to the report. “The campaign contributions to Donald Trump by Big Oil have paid dividends and have allowed the fossil fuel industry to continue to pollute our communities.”
“This administration has ceded our nation’s clean energy future to dirty energy and is doing its best to sacrifice the economy, public health, and the environment to Big Oil’s profits,” he added. “Every American family struggling with high costs is suffering because of the corrupt relationship between Donald Trump and the fossil fuel industry.”
Article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
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.
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 rotting brain, front Orca says Sundown Syndrome is a dead givaway and he wishes someone would Lock Him Up
24 September 2026
Violating Federal Judge’s Order, Trump White House Denies Access to Politico, MS NOW, CNN Reporters
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Article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
US President Donald Trump speaks to reporters in the Oval Office of the White House on September 18, 2026. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Journalists from each of the outlets were barred from entering the White House complex just hours after a Trump-appointed federal judge ordered the president to reverse his ban.
Update (8:40 am ET):
Trump administration officials denied Politico, MS NOW, and CNN reporters access to the White House complex on Thursday morning, in blatant violation of a federal judge’s decision ordering President Donald Trump to immediately reverse his ban on the three outlets.
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US District Court Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee, ordered the White House in an early Thursday ruling to “immediately return, reinstate, and restore” press passes to reporters from the three outlets.
Politico reported that its journalist had “his press credentials confiscated” upon trying to enter the White House complex hours after Kelly’s ruling.
Laura Barrón-López, a White House reporter for MS NOW, said she was also denied access to the White House. She said a Secret Service agent confiscated her press badge after it failed to scan properly.
Barrón-López said it is “not clear, based on the interaction that I had, whether or not this is a defiance… of the court order, or it’s some kind of incompetence or lag in the system where they have not updated our press badges.”
Watch her account:
MS NOW reports that their White House reproter was denied access to the White House this morning despite a court order demanding she have access pic.twitter.com/wqUiB413jV
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 24, 2026

According to CNN, one of its reporters and a photojournalist were “denied access to the White House grounds” early Thursday.
“There was no reason provided for the refusal and CNN will continue to try to gain access as regular business hours start,” the outlet added.
Earlier:
A federal judge on Thursday ordered President Donald Trump to immediately restore White House access to CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, prominent media outlets that the president banned last week.
Timothy Kelly, a Trump-appointed judge for the US District Court in Washington, DC, granted the media outlets’ request for a temporary restraining order as the legal fight continues. Kelly ruled that the outlets showed “a likelihood of success” on their claim that the president’s ban and revocation of reporters’ press credentials violated the Fifth Amendment’s due process protections.
The judge rejected the Trump administration’s claim that the president’s ban on the three outlets was necessary to protect national security.
“The court is skeptical—at least on this record—that defendants’ interest in safeguarding national security is the actual motivation for, or is even advanced by, the revocation of plaintiffs’ hard passes,” Kelly wrote. “The record lacks factual support for defendants’ contention that the revocation of plaintiffs’ hard passes will in fact protect national security or that national security will be endangered if the court orders their passes reinstated while this litigation proceeds.”
Trump’s initial announcement of the ban, on September 18, said nothing about national security. The president vaguely accused the outlets he has long attacked of publishing “FICTION and LIES.”
In letters submitted to the court as part of the ongoing legal fight over the ban, the White House press office cited examples of reporting from the three outlets that it claimed damaged US national security.
In its letter to CNN, the White House points to the outlet’s reporting on “construction details related to the East Wing bunker” and a story on the US military’s bombing of an Iranian elementary school.
Ted Boutrous, the lawyer representing the news outlets, welcomed Kelly’s decision to grant the temporary restraining order, which will be in effect for 14 days.
“This is a strong ruling vindicating freedom of the press, due process, and the rule of law,” Boutrous said. “We greatly appreciate the court’s swift action.”
Kelly ordered the Trump administration to “immediately return, reinstate, and restore” White House press passes to reporters from CNN, MS NOW, and Politico.
It’s unclear how swiftly the news outlets will resume their typical coverage of the White House following the judge’s order. Earlier this week, a White House event was broadcast with no audio after the administration dropped CNN from its TV press pool duties, prompting other major networks to ditch pool coverage in solidarity with CNN.
On Wednesday, when Trump greeted Chinese President Xi Jinping upon his arrival in the US, no major TV network captured the moment.
“Other television outlets whose crews were present, according to signs on their tripods and cameras, were NewsNation, Newsmax, Right Side Broadcasting Network, One America News, and LindellTV,” The Associated Press reported.
Article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
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.
Donald Trump sings and dances, says that it’s fun to kill everyone … unless he gets distracted or falls asleep.
24 September 2026
Rights Groups Detail Sweeping ‘Suppression of Pro-Palestine Speech’ on US Campuses
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Article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Police officers arrest protesters during a pro-Palestinian demonstration at the City College of New York during crackdowns on encampments at both CCNY and Columbia University on April 30, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
“The Trump administration’s targeting of students and faculty who oppose Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza is dangerously reminiscent of McCarthy-era censorship and a blatant violation of academic freedom.”
While the traumatic experiences of foreign-born scholars such as Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk have drawn international headlines, a report released Wednesday by a pair of leading rights groups highlights how their arrests by immigration agents were part of a wider assault “on free speech and association on college campuses, particularly against students, faculty, and staff protesting Israel’s war on Gaza and the US government’s political, economic, and military support of the war.”
Titled “Student Speech Under Attack: Suppression of Pro-Palestine Speech and Dissent on Campus,” the new report from the ACLU and Amnesty International USA catalogs university and law enforcement responses to protests and encampments, schools’ actions to restrict speech, the Trump administration’s crackdowns on institutions and foreign scholars, and how all of that has had a chilling effect.
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The report also features case studies on six schools—City College of New York, Columbia University, Tulane University, University of Michigan, University of Texas at Austin, and University of California, Los Angeles—and various targeted scholars, including Khalil and Öztürk as well as Yunseo Chung, Badar Khan Suri, Leqaa Kordia, and Mohsen Mahdawi.
Like Khalil, Mahdawi was a Columbia student and lawful permanent resident of the United States. At his citizenship interview last year, masked US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested and detained him for his advocacy in support of Palestinian rights. The Trump administration’s attempt to deport Mahdawi, who was raised in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, is ongoing.
“At the time of his arrest and detention, he was an undergraduate student at Columbia University majoring in philosophy and planning to start a master’s degree program at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. Mahdawi said he dedicated himself ‘to understanding how to achieve a lasting peace for Palestinians and Israelis, particularly through the study of conflict resolution,’” the report notes.
“As a student at Columbia, Mahdawi was an outspoken critic of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and an activist and organizer in student protests on Columbia’s campus until March 2024, after which he took a step back and was not involved in organizing,” the document details. “Mahdawi attended protests opposing military escalations in the region and gave speeches at several of these protests advocating for Palestinian human rights and a permanent ceasefire. Mahdawi appeared in numerous televised interviews and print news articles regarding the military campaign in Gaza and related protests.”
While Mahdawi was targeted by the Trump administration, not Columbia, the publication points out that he “had contacted university administrators asking for help in finding safe housing, stating that he feared abduction by ICE agents,” and, according to him, the school “did nothing in response to his request.”
The report also notes Columbia’s decadeslong reputation as “the activist Ivy,” and how “student activism in support of Palestinian rights began in October 2023… sparking a multiyear, nationwide movement of campus anti-war demonstrations calling for academic institutions to divest from what organizers and Amnesty International characterize as Israeli apartheid.”
The ACLU and Amnesty laid out how Columbia suspended student groups that held peaceful demonstrations, refused to divest from Israel, threatened to expel students who joined an encampment, and had New York Police Department officers forcibly remove protesters who occupied a campus building and dubbed it “Hind’s Hall” for a Palestinian child killed by Israeli forces.
Columbia University student demonstrators unfurl a banner that reads “Hind’s Hall” as they barricade themselves inside a campus building on April 30, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Alex Kent/Getty Images)
Early last year, as Khalil was arrested outside his home and President Donald Trump threatened to pull $400 million in university funding, Columbia promised to the administration that it would add three dozen “special patrol officers” with arrest powers, and later announced that its University Judicial Board punished over 70 students.
However, as the report stresses, it’s not just Columbia. After Israel began what many experts have called a genocidal assault on Gaza following the October 2023 Hamas-led attack, “students across more than 100 universities organized, calling for educational institutions to end their financial ties to corporations linked to the war,” and their protests and encampments were often met with “university leaders’ swift and punitive responses.”
“Universities and colleges faced pressure from wealthy donors, trustees, and figures outside of university or college leadership, including members of Congress, to suppress pro-Palestinian protests and dismantle encampments,” the publication acknowledges. “By restricting or banning protests outright, involving campus police and external law enforcement in the surveillance, intimidation, and repression of participants, and pursuing students with legal and administrative consequences, university and college administrators escalated tensions.”
“During the disbandment of encampments, law enforcement forcefully pushed and arrested demonstrators, leading to concussions, cuts dislocations, and other severe injuries,” the report continues. “In many instances, demonstrators posed no threat, did not resist arrest, and were sometimes attempting to deescalate or document the protest.”
Police crack down on a pro-Palestinian protest at Indiana University in Bloomington on April 25, 2024. (Photo by Jeremy Hogan/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Justin Mazzola, Amnesty’s deputy director of research, said in a statement that “universities and colleges should prepare students for open discourse in a pluralistic society. Instead, campus leadership has suppressed free speech and peaceful protest while enabling the Trump administration to advance its anti-rights agenda and seek ideological control over higher education.”
Mazzola also called out the Trump administration—which, as the report lays out, has issued related executive orders, conducted campus visits, abused Title VI investigations, conditioned funding on acquiescence, revoked student visas, targeted scholars for deportation for protected speech, and attempted to evade court reviews of deportations.
“The Trump administration’s targeting of students and faculty who oppose Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza is dangerously reminiscent of McCarthy-era censorship and a blatant violation of academic freedom,” he asserted. “The Trump administration must stop stifling political expression on campus and end its relentless push for ideological conformity in higher education. Students’ rights must be respected, protected, and fulfilled.”
The report features recommendations for schools, campus and local law enforcement, the Trump administration, and Congress. It also details rights on campus, reminding students and educators that they “have the right to peacefully protest, and the government has a duty to respect, protect, and facilitate that right—not suppress it.”
University of Texas at Austin graduate students, faculty, and demonstrators protest Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip after walking out of commencement on May 11, 2024. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
As for US colleges and universities, they “must take all possible measures to ensure that their campuses are spaces where students may exercise their rights to freedom of speech and expression without fear of unwarranted punishment or retaliation regardless of viewpoint,” said Jennifer Turner, principal researcher in the ACLU’s Human Rights Program.
“Schools should resist the pressures placed on them to silence and punish students or faculty who engage in protest or advocacy for Palestinian rights,” Turner added. “Instead, they should stand up to the federal government’s intimidation tactics and defend the university’s core mission of fostering free-flowing inquiry and debate.”
The groups’ report was released after Khalil and other Palestine defenders sued Columbia in federal court last week over what Khalil called “gross and systemic discrimination against Palestinian students.” He vowed that “next, I will turn to the hateful individuals at Columbia who were also responsible for what we endured.”
Article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
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.
Donald Trump sings and dances, says that it’s fun to kill everyone … unless he gets distracted or falls asleep.
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.
24 September 2026
‘We Don’t Waste Our Time’ With Courts, Says Trump, Bragging of Extrajudicial Murders in Pacific and Caribbean
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Article by Stephen Prager republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
US President Donald Trump arrives for a Shield of the Americas meeting in conjunction with the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly at the UN headquarters on September 22, 2026 in New York City. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Critics have described Trump’s boat strikes as extrajudicial killings that violate due process. At a meeting during this week’s gathering of the UN General Assembly, he seemed to agree.
Critics have often described President Donald Trump’s campaign of boat strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific—which have taken the lives of at least 234 mostly unknown people—as extrajudicial killings that flout the very basics of due process.
On Tuesday, Trump essentially described them that way too, seeming to suggest that killing people outside the law is the whole point.
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“For years, administrations just played games, and they’d bring them to a court in Miami or something, and the judge would release them immediately, and they’d go back to selling drugs,” Trump said. “But now, we don’t waste our time doing it.”
War crimes. No judge. No jury. Just Trump. https://t.co/lishHLiyTR
— arman walker (@armanwalker) September 23, 2026

He was speaking at a meeting of the Washington-led “Shield of the Americas” coalition, an alliance of leaders and foreign ministers ostensibly dedicated to stamping out drug cartels and other criminal organizations across the Americas.
The boat strike campaign—known first by the Defense Department as “Operation Southern Spear” before it was rebranded last month as Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere—is part of this effort. The administration says the more than 70 vessels it has targeted with lethal strikes since last September were engaged in “narco-trafficking,” and that killing their operators is a justifiable form of self-defense.
The principal illicit cargo on the maritime routes targeted by Southern Spear is cocaine. But the White House rarely provides any evidence publicly to substantiate that the boats it targets are involved with drug trafficking, and members of Congress have complained that even classified briefings lacked hard evidence. Some of those killed in the strikes have later been identified as ordinary fishermen and other civilians with no known ties to the drug trade.
An investigation from the Washington Office on Latin America found in July that the military has relied on extraordinarily broad criteria to launch the strikes against anyone deemed to be “affiliated” with a secret list of designated terrorist groups. They do not require the commanders launching them to know the identities of those aboard a vessel or have any evidence that it is carrying drugs at all.
Even if the boats were engaged in drug trafficking as the administration claims, wrote Ben Saul, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism, in a report released earlier this week, there are no “international legal rights to unilaterally use military force” to counter drug cartels or other organized crime groups that have not mounted any “armed attack” against the US.
The strikes, Saul added, were not a “last resort” or “necessary or proportionate” since the US had not tried to use non-lethal means like intercepting or boarding them before resorting to bombings.
Concurring with several other UN experts, he said that the strikes were “contrary to international law, violate the human right to life, and plausibly constitute crimes against humanity,” including “murder.”
Trump’s comments on Tuesday seemed to underscore what Saul and others critical of the boat bombings have emphasized: that rather than using lethal force as a last resort to repel an immediate threat, his administration was simply killing suspects as an alternative to avoid a cumbersome legal process.
Norman Ornstein, a political scientist and scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said in a post on social media that Trump’s comments were “worthy of the International Criminal Court.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has suggested the administration’s calls to “dismantle” the ICC are in part out of concern that the court, which prosecutes war crimes and other international criminality, could be used to prosecute members of the Trump administration over the boat strikes.
Trump described the ICC as “anti-American” and “evil” during a speech at the UN General Assembly earlier on Tuesday, in which he also threatened to “annihilate” Iran and celebrated that he was claiming the “spoils” of war from Venezuela.
Trump brags about the boat strikes: You’ve seen it. They disappear very quickly. pic.twitter.com/ZDX23noedP
— Acyn (@Acyn) September 22, 2026

During that same speech, he also boasted that his administration “has carried out dozens of strikes on cartel drug boats, destroying 97% of the drugs coming into the ocean and sea,” a claim that his administration has not provided evidence to substantiate.
An internal analysis by the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), reported on in July by the Washington Post, found the opposite, in fact, stating that the strikes “failed to affect the supply or price of cocaine in the United States.”
As Trump heralded the boat strike campaign before the eyes of the world on Tuesday, a coalition of more than 70 lawmakers across the Americas called for the US to end what it said were “hundreds of extrajudicial killings of civilians.”
The statement was signed by 15 Democratic members of the US Congress, including Reps. Jesús “Chuy” García (D-Ill.), Greg Casar (D-Texas), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.). It was also signed by lawmakers from Puerto Rico as well as 12 other countries across the Americas—Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay.
“The identities of nearly all the victims remain publicly unknown, and many families lack effective or safe avenues to obtain information or redress. Coastal and fishing communities face fear and uncertainty as these attacks put lives and livelihoods at risk,” the lawmakers wrote.
“The rights to life, due process, and protections against the arbitrary use of force are core principles of democratic rule of law that our countries have committed to uphold,” they added. “Allegations of drug trafficking, however serious, do not circumvent or override these protections, nor do they justify lethal force against people who pose no imminent threat.”
Article by Stephen Prager republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
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.
Donald Trump sings and dances, says that it’s fun to kill everyone … unless he gets distracted or falls asleep.
24 September 2026