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Ro Khanna urges Democrats to strip Israel ‘integration’ provision from defense bill

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Ro Khanna - The Sanders Institute

By Rabia Iclal Turan | Anadolu Agency | November 10, 2026

US Congressman Ro Khanna on Monday urged Democrats to make removing a provision in the defense bill aimed at integrating the US and Israeli militaries a “top priority” during Congress’s post-election lame-duck session.

“As an American, I am outraged by Section 219 that integrates our military with Israel’s. Who do they think they are?” Khanna said in a video message posted on the US social media platform X.

“This needs to be the top priority in the lame duck session,” he added.

“I am pushing every Democrat and our leadership to get Section 219 out of our defense bill,” said the California Democrat.

Section 219, titled the “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative,” is part of the House version of the fiscal 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). It would require the secretary of defense to designate an “executive agent” to expand and accelerate bilateral defense technology research, development, testing, evaluation and industrial cooperation with Israel.

The House Armed Services Committee rejected an amendment from Khanna to strike the provision in June, when it was numbered Section 224. The House Rules Committee later blocked a floor vote on a bipartisan amendment from Khanna and Republican Congressman Thomas Massie to remove it.

The House passed the $1.15 trillion bill on July 22 by a 216-212 vote, with 205 Democrats voting against it.

The Senate version, which includes a similar provision, has not passed.

Khanna’s push came after President Donald Trump said last week that the US would stop providing about $4 billion in annual military aid to Israel by the end of this year, saying the aid had become a “talking point” Democrats used against Republicans.

It also came as a Gallup poll showed this year that, for the first time in its tracking, more Americans sympathize with Palestinians than Israelis following Israel’s two-year genocidal war on Gaza, which killed more than 74,000 Palestinians and injured more than 175,000, according to Palestinian figures.

Via https://alethonews.com/2026/11/10/ro-khanna-urges-democrats-to-strip-israel-integration-provision-from-defense-bill/

Newly Elected Ohio Democrat Says Senior Party Members Threatened to Make Life “LIVING HELL” If He Refuses to Back Hakeem Jeffries for Speaker

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Don Leonard on his upset win, the Blue Wave and what's next in Congress ...

Jim Hoft

November 10, 2026

The Democrat Party’s internal power struggle is getting uglier by the day.

Fresh off their victories in the 2026 midterm elections, Democrats are already turning on one another as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries attempts to consolidate his grip on the speakership.

Now, a newly elected Democrat from Ohio is publicly accusing senior members of his own party of threatening political retaliation if he refuses to fall in line behind Jeffries.

Don Leonard, the progressive former Ohio State University professor who just flipped Ohio’s 15th Congressional District from Republican incumbent Mike Carey, posted a video saying senior House Democrats told him in no uncertain terms what happens if he refuses to support Hakeem Jeffries for Speaker.

According to Leonard, they warned it would mean “making my life a living hell for the next two years here in Washington as well as being sure to lose my election” in 2028. They expect him to “wear the team jersey” and “be a good team player.”

Leonard, a first-time candidate who branded himself a “Do Something Democrat,” defeated Carey in a district Trump carried by roughly 10 points in 2024. Unofficial results showed Leonard winning by about 6–7 points (roughly 52% to 45%).

He has conditioned any support for Jeffries on two demands: a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, and ending “U.S. support for the war in Iran and the country Israel that led us into it.”

[…]

Via https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/11/democrat-civil-war-explodes-newly-elected-ohio-democrat/

Iran will target US bases in Europe if attacked again

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Mohsen Rezaee, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council

Iran’s top security official has warned that any new US attack would trigger strikes on American military bases far beyond the region, including targets in Europe and islands previously thought to be outside the range of Iranian missiles.

Major General Mohsen Rezaee, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, told Lebanon’s Al-Mayadeen network in a recent interview that if the United States “makes a mistake and attacks us,” Iran would not limit itself to nearby bases but would also hit “distant American bases” it has not previously targeted.

“If American aircraft take off from a distant military base and come to bomb Iran, we will target that base as well,” Rezaee said, adding that Iran’s defensive and offensive capabilities are now “far greater than on the first day of the war.”

He did not specify which bases or countries he was referring to.

Rezaee said if the United States and Israel had been able to bring down the Islamic Republic in the first days of launching the aggression, as they had declared and hoped they would, the war would not have reached the current dimensions affecting the entire world.

No family in the US or Europe has been spared the fallout 

“Today there is no family in America or Europe that has not been harmed by the American attack on Iran, and no economic institution in the world… has not been affected by this attack. Even European leaders are speaking about this issue,” he said.

He stressed this was the outcome of “the exceptional resistance of the Iranian people,” who he said astonished the world by showing unprecedented steadfastness, and disrupted all US and Israeli calculations.

“The Iranian people proved that America and Israel have made great historic mistakes — mistakes that will go down in America’s history for centuries,” he said.

“I can say that in this war, we imposed a heavy defeat on the enemy that attacked Iran in the military, diplomatic, political and economic arenas,” Rezaee said.

Asked about the status of negotiations, Rezaee said Iran has achieved “great victories” in diplomacy as well.

Related Story

He pointed out that Iran held three major diplomatic rounds with the Americans: the first before the 12-day war of last June, the second before the 40-day war early this year, and the third in Islamabad. In all three, he said, Iran proved it did not want war and that it was the United States that sought confrontation.

“It was very important for us to show world public opinion that America is the party that wants war,” he said.

He said the Americans scuttled the first round of talks and then went to war; abandoned negotiations in Geneva in the second round and launched an attack; and in Islamabad, despite reaching an agreement signed by both sides, reneged on their own signature.

“It rarely happens in history that a head of state signs an agreement and then, less than a month later, tears it up and sets it aside,” he said. Nonetheless, he said, Iran continues the diplomatic path seriously.

“We have set seven conditions, and if the Americans implement these conditions, we will reopen the Strait of Hormuz,” he said.

Rezaee said the Americans offered responses rigged with “deception,” which Iran rejected. “The Americans must provide a clear and explicit response to our seven conditions,” he said.

Iran’s nuclear program not up for discussion

The security chief said Iran’s nuclear program is not currently the subject of discussion and that Iran has announced specific conditions in that regard.

“First, we will not remove even a single gram of enriched material from Iran,” he said, adding that Iran has told “our Russian friends” that all enriched material will remain inside Iran and be used domestically because it has multiple applications.

He explained that Iran is designing nuclear-fueled ships and nuclear submarines and needs its enriched material for that, and may at some point produce small SMR-type reactors.

“So why should we transfer it abroad? Not a single gram, however small, of enriched material will leave Iran, and all of this material will remain in our own hands,” he said.

The second issue, he said, concerns rights granted to Iran under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. “All countries enjoy rights under this treaty, and we have 22 rights within its framework. As long as we are a member of the NPT, we have the right to enjoy all our rights and, in return, abide by all our obligations,” he said.

War will prove costly for Americans 

Rezaee insisted that Iran wanted to impose “a cost on the Americans that makes aggression against Iran costly and becomes a deterrent factor.”

“What is this cost? Securing our rights,” he said. “Therefore, Iran’s negotiations and diplomacy, whether with other countries or with the Americans, are based on the principle of deterrence and the realization of regional security.”

On regional security, Rezaee said the war proved that reliance on the United States brings nothing but insecurity. “Before the war, everyone assumed that the US provides security; but now who in the region can say America is not a source of insecurity?” he asked.

“Therefore, we must continue the diplomatic path in a way that realizes security in West Asia,” he stressed.

Asked about the naval blockade and reports that a land blockade is also on the way, Rezaee said he believes the political capacity of US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to continue the war has run out.

He said they no longer have the necessary political cover, internationally, legally, and domestically, to continue the military aggression.

“Therefore, if they want to carry out a new attack against Iran, by their own calculations the war will not last more than three to five days,” he said.

“They are now trying to identify an important objective they can achieve within these three or five days, but so far they have not been able to find such an objective.”

Via https://www.presstv.co.uk/Detail/2026/11/11/780498/iran-may-target-us-bases-in-europe-and-beyond-if-attacked-again-top-security-chief

Over one million Lebanese face ‘crisis-level’ food insecurity as Israel ravages farmland

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(Photo credit: WFP)

The Cradle

NOV 11, 2026

Emergency-level food insecurity is set to nearly double to 97,000 people by mid-2027 as families exhaust their means of survival

Crisis-level or worse food insecurity has affected more than one million people in Lebanon, according to a UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis published on 11 November, as Israeli attacks in the south ravage farmland and cut farmers off from their land.

“Behind these figures are families running out of options. Some households can still draw on savings, borrow, cut expenses or find other ways to put food on the table. For others, those options are being exhausted,” said Allison Oman Lawi, the World Food Programme’s (WFP) representative and country director in Lebanon.

“When families have nothing left to fall back on, even a small additional shock can push them deeper into crisis,” Lawi warned.

The analysis, conducted in September 2026 by the Lebanese Agriculture Ministry with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the WFP, places 1.05 million people, or 21 percent of those assessed, in Crisis or worse conditions through February 2027.

That figure is projected to climb to 1.15 million, or 24 percent, by mid-2027, while the number of people in Emergency conditions is expected to nearly double within months, from 52,000 to 97,000.

Although the share of people facing crisis or worse is now below April 2026’s projected 24 percent, recorded at the peak of displacement caused by Israeli attacks, agencies say the decline reflects shifting displacement patterns—not genuine recovery.

Purchasing power, livelihoods, and the capacity of families to cope all remain badly constrained, with jobs scarce, savings drained, and many households meeting minimal food needs only through aid and ever harsher coping measures.

Conditions are gravest in south Lebanon, Akkar, and Baalbek-Hermel, where ravaged farmland and high production costs have eroded rural incomes.

FAO’s representative in Lebanon, Veronica Quattrola, is calling for immediate support to help farmers “rebuild productive assets, resume farming and sustain their incomes.”

People who arrived in Lebanon from Syria after December 2024 are the hardest hit of any group assessed, with 45 percent facing Crisis or worse conditions, against 35 percent of Palestine refugees, 28 percent of long-staying Syrian refugees, and 18 percent of Lebanese residents, a share expected to reach 21 percent by mid-2027.

Agriculture Minister Nizar Hani told Anadolu Agency (AA) on 2 November that Israel’s war and occupation have damaged around 22.5 percent of Lebanon’s agricultural land, including some 52,000 hectares in the South and Nabatieh governorates and 4,000 in Baalbek-Hermel, while southern Lebanon has lost about 70 percent of its livestock.

Hani added that Israel used white phosphorus and doused forested areas near the border with glyphosate herbicide, damage the ministry has yet to fully assess while it waits for access to collect fresh soil, crop, and water samples.

Israeli attacks have killed nearly 4,400 people in Lebanon since 2 March 2026 and displaced hundreds of thousands, as Israeli forces refuse to withdraw from the south.

Via https://thecradle.co/articles/over-one-million-lebanese-face-crisis-level-food-insecurity-as-israel-ravages-farmland

How falling birth rates affect the economy

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Signage for The Children's Place partnership with Kevin Hart.Children’s Place filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Sunday. Photo: Getty Images for Children’s Place

Brian Shilhavy

Declining birth rates are affecting the economy negatively, and in the midst of this crisis the current administration is making it much worse by deporting a major section of the work force, and a population with high birth rates (Latinos).

And in addition to all this, the U.S. has the highest infant mortality rate among wealthy countries, along with the highest vaccination rates of babies and children in the world.

From MarketWatch

Excerpts:

Americans are having fewer children, and that helps explain why Children’s Place has found itself in bankruptcy court.

Falling birth rates, cautious consumers, competition and $881 million in debt drove the children’s apparel retailer to file for Chapter 11 protection on Sunday. The New Jersey-based chain and shopping-mall fixture cut costs and shook up leadership over the past few years, but annual sales have fallen every year since 2022.

“The children’s wear market is tough because there’s a declining birth rate,” said Neil Saunders, a retail analyst at GlobalData.

“It’s also tough because parents are under pressure and they’re looking to save money, so they’ve trimmed back on volumes or they’re looking for cheaper products.

Via https://t.me/healthimpact/3867

10 Reasons Hakeem Jeffries Shouldn’t Be Next Speaker

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By Medea Benjamin
November 09, 2026

Now that Democrats have swept the House, a key question is: Who should lead it?

Hakeem Jeffries is in line to become the first Black Speaker of the House, which would be a historic milestone. But members of Congress must examine Jeffries’ record, his priorities, and the kind of leadership he would bring to this moment.

Here are ten reasons why Jeffries should not be Speaker.

1. He Has Abandoned Medicare for All

At a time when millions of Americans struggle with unaffordable health insurance, medical debt, and the threat of financial ruin from illness, Jeffries has distanced himself from one of the most important progressive reforms: Medicare for All.

Jeffries co-sponsored Medicare for All legislation from 2013 through 2021. But in an August 2026 interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, he said it is no longer legislation he supports or cosponsors. Ironically, he made that statement on the same day a CBS poll found that 90 percent of Democratic voters back the idea.

This reversal puts him at odds with party voters, but also with a majority of Democratic representatives in the House. As of late October, Rep. Pramila Jayapal’s Medicare for All Act had 118 Democratic cosponsors. A “leader” who won’t back what his own caucus and voters want is not a leader.

2. He Refuses to Break with Israel 

Perhaps nowhere is Jeffries more out of step with the progressive base than on Israel.

For decades, Jeffries has been a staunch defender of the U.S.-Israel alliance. At a pro-Israel rally in 2014, during Israel’s military assault on Gaza, Jeffries proclaimed, “Israel today, Israel tomorrow, Israel forever!.” In 2020 he told an AIPAC conference that New Yorkers consider Jerusalem their “sixth borough,” totally disregarding the plight of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation.

Even as Israel’s genocide in Gaza sparked worldwide outrage, Jeffries continued to resist calls to end U.S. military support.

In July 2026, 103 House Democrats voted to cut $3.3 billion in military aid to Israel, including the party’s second-ranking House leader, Katherine Clark. But Jeffries joined 97 other Democrats and nearly every Republican in voting to preserve the funding.

In a May 2024 60 Minutes interview, when asked whether Israel’s bombing of Gaza had been indiscriminate, Jeffries said no. By then, nearly 35,000 Palestinians had been killed. When the interviewer pressed him, saying, “You seem reluctant to criticize Israel at all,” Jeffries responded, “I’m dealing with the facts on the ground.”

Jeffries has also refused to cosponsor the Block the Bombs Act, which would restrict transfers of some of the deadliest offensive weapons to Israel, including 2,000-pound bombs, bunker busters, precision-guidance kits, and tank and artillery rounds. As of November 2026, the bill has 82 Democratic cosponsors and the endorsement of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Caucus Chair Greg Casar has pledged to push for a floor vote if Democrats regain the majority. Yet Jeffries has not signed on, and as Speaker, he would have enormous power to determine whether the bill ever receives a vote.

While Jeffries has acknowledged that U.S. policy toward Israel needs to change, he continues to support Israel’s military superiority and joint missile-defense programs. He has also refused to condemn Section 219 of the NDAA, which would further integrate U.S. and Israeli military research, technology, and production.

Ironically, both Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have recently suggested that the U.S. should stop giving Israel nearly $4 billion a year because “Israel doesn’t need it.” Whether or not we believe them, it is striking that we have yet to hear a similar call from Hakeem Jeffries.

3. He Has Failed to Champion Major Cuts to the Obscene Pentagon Budget

At a time when Americans are struggling to afford basic necessities, Trump is demanding a staggering $1.5 trillion military budget—an increase of nearly $600 billion, or 66 percent, over the previous year’s base funding. Yet Jeffries has not made substantially reducing Pentagon spending a central priority of Democratic leadership.

Yes, he has opposed funding for Trump’s war in Iran but he is a staunch advocate of continued U.S. military aid to Ukraine and has sharply criticized Trump for failing to provide sufficient support. He said “America is stronger when Russia is weaker.” In September 2026, he pledged that Democrats would continue backing Ukraine “until victory is won,” signaling his commitment to greater U.S. involvement and military assistance instead of a commitment to a diplomatic solution that would end that terrible war.

Jeffries is also an enthusiastic defender of the aggressive alliance NATO, which should have dissolved when the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991. He has called NATO “the most successful military and diplomatic alliance in the history of the world.” NATO, at Trump’s insistence, has called for all members to dramatically increase their military budgets to 5 percent of their GDP (the US is presently at 3.1 percent).

Jeffries’ ties to the military-industrial complex are particularly troubling. During the 2026 election cycle alone, Jeffries’ campaign reportedly received approximately $212,000 from military PACs.

Democrats cannot simply promise better healthcare, affordable housing, quality education and climate action while supporting a massive military budget. Real change requires shifting resources from weapons and war to the needs of ordinary people. The next Democratic Speaker must be prepared to challenge the military-industrial complex.

4. He Continues to Accept Pro-Israel Lobby Money

Jeffries’s position on Israel cannot be separated from his longstanding political relationship with the AIPAC lobby.

At a time when AIPAC funding has become toxic and so many Democratic candidates rejected AIPAC money, Jeffries has maintained his ties to the organization.

According to Track AIPAC, Hakeem Jeffries has received more than $1.5 million in campaign contributions from AIPAC and other pro-Israel lobby groups over his congressional career. During the 2026 election cycle alone, his campaign received nearly $300,000 in contributions from pro-Israel PACs.He has also taken five AIPAC-sponsored trips to Israel since arriving in Congress.

Following the November elections, AIPAC publicly celebrated Jeffries as one of the candidates it supported.

How can congressional Democrats be led by someone so closely tied to AIPAC, a lobby increasingly toxic to their own voters?

5. His Backroom Dealings with Jared Kushner Raise Serious Questions About His Judgment

At a time when Americans are demanding investigations into the Trump family’s financial dealings, Hakeem Jeffries chose to sit down privately with Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and influential adviser.

In August 2026, reports revealed that Jeffries had met with Kushner to discuss possible cooperation on housing, immigration and affordability. Yet Kushner, who holds no official government position, continues to wield influence over U.S. foreign policy while maintaining lucrative financial relationships with Gulf governments through his investment firm.

House Judiciary Committee Democrat Jamie Raskin has already launched an investigation into Kushner’s foreign financial entanglements, demanding documents and communications about his dealings with foreign governments. So why was Jeffries meeting with him behind closed doors?

With Democrats taking control of the House in January, they need a speaker committed to untangling the dirty web of corruption committed by Trump and his inner circle.

6. He Has Elevated Warhawks to Key Foreign-Policy Positions

You can tell a political leader’s priorities by whom they put in power. And Jeffries’s choices speak volumes.

In August 2026, Democratic leaders elevated Rep. Jared Moskowitz, one of the House’s most outspoken pro-Israel hawks, to the top Democratic position on the powerful House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa. Moskowitz has been an unwavering defender of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, continued U.S. weapons shipments, and Israel’s brutal military operations in Lebanon. He has also openly supported both Israeli attacks on Iran and Trump’s 2025 bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities, and initially opposed congressional efforts to prevent the 2026 war before later backing War Powers restrictions.

With Democrats in control of the House, Moskowitz will be positioned to chair the Middle East and North Africa Subcommittee, wielding significant influence over congressional oversight and policy toward Israel, Palestine, Iran, and the entire region.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Wesley Bell, two other staunch defenders of Israel, were added to the Foreign Affairs Committee. Bell had defeated progressive Rep. Cori Bush in 2024 after massive spending by AIPAC’s super PAC. Progressives are still steaming over the role of Wasserman Schultz in undermining Bernie Sanders during the 2016 Democratic presidential primary.

The backlash to these appointments was immediate. Rep. Ro Khanna warned, “Don’t put Israel hawks out of touch with our voters in charge of our Middle East policy.” The Council on American-Islamic Relations condemned the appointments as an insult to voters and an attempt to shield Israel from accountability for its actions in Gaza.

7. Jeffries Represents the Democratic Party’s Dependence on Corporate Money

The Democratic Party claims to fight for working people, but Jeffries remains deeply connected to the wealthy corporate interests that dominate Washington.

His campaign has benefited from millions of dollars in contributions associated with Wall Street, pharmaceutical and insurance companies, real estate interests, Big Tech and military contractors.

These financial relationships raise a fundamental question: How aggressively will Democrats challenge corporate greed, Wall Street speculation, soaring healthcare costs and the military-industrial complex when their leader maintains such close ties to these powerful interests?

Progressive Democrats have demonstrated that grassroots organizing and small-dollar fundraising offer an alternative to corporate PAC money.

The Democratic Party cannot credibly promise to take on corporate power without confronting the influence of big money within its own leadership.

8. He Has Defended the Democratic Establishment Against Progressive Challengers

Jeffries has a long history of protecting entrenched Democratic incumbents against progressive challengers.

In 2020, he backed longtime pro-Israel congressman Eliot Engel against Jamaal Bowman, who defeated Engel in a stunning primary upset. In 2022, Jeffries traveled to Chicago to campaign for veteran Congressman Danny Davis against young progressive organizer Kina Collins, who came within seven percentage points of victory.

And in 2026, Jeffries backed Dan Goldman, Adriano Espaillat and Shri Thanedar against progressive challengers Brad Lander, Darializa Avila Chevalier and Donavan McKinney. All three incumbents lost their primaries, and all three challengers went on to win in November.

This pattern is no coincidence. In 2021, Jeffries joined forces with centrist Democrats Josh Gottheimer and Terri Sewell to establish Team Blue PAC, designed to protect Democratic incumbents against primary challengers.

While voters are demanding a new direction, Jeffries has repeatedly sided with the establishment candidates they rejected.

[…]

Sign the petition demanding new leadership. Call your member of Congress at 202-224-3121.

US, Israel in Talks To Extend Military Aid Through 2033 Despite Trump Saying It Would End

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US Air Force Airmen and Israeli military members unload cargo from a US Air Force C-17 Globemaster III on a ramp at Nevatim Base, Israel, October 15, 2023 (US Air Force photo)

Dave DeCamp | November 9, 2026

According to Ynet, the US would increase the $500 million it gives Israel for missile development, and continue the $3.3 billion in Foreign Military Financing

The US and Israel are negotiating a new Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that would extend US military aid to Israel through 2033 and increase US funding for Israeli missile development, despite President Trump claiming he would end the aid by 2027, according to a report from the Israeli news site Ynet.

The US currently provides Israel with a minimum of $3.8 billion in military aid each year under an MoU negotiated under the Obama administration that expires in 2028. It includes $3.3 billion in Foreign Military Financing, a State Department program that provides foreign governments with funds to purchase US arms, and $500 million through the Pentagon for missile defense funding.

The Ynet report said that the plan would be to halve the 10-year MoU term to five years and keep the FMF funding at $3.3 billion per year while increasing the $500 million missile fund to an unspecified amount. The idea would be to phase out the aid after the five years, which aligns with a plan backed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to shift the US-Israel relationship “from aid to partnership.”

The purpose of the Netanyahu plan is to further intergrate the US and Israeli military industries, and it is being advanced through Section 219, an amendment tucked into the House’s version of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act. The Senate’s version of the NDAA includes a similar amendment, though so far the two chambers haven’t negotiated the final bill.

Ben Freeman of the Quincy Institute recently warned that if the integration moves forward, Israel could “end up getting WAY more” than the $3.8 billion it receives annually from the US and that the funds would “just be buried in the DoD budget.” Freeman made the comments after Trump declared on Election Day that he and Netanyahu agreed the US would end military aid by the end of the year.

The Ynet report said that the US and Israel are hoping to finalize the new MoU before the new Congress is sworn in this January and that the negotiations have involved representatives working on behalf of Secretary of State Marco Rubio and officials from Israel’s Defense Ministry and its embassy in Washington.

Since October 7, 2023, the US has provided significantly more military aid than the annual $3.8 billion package to support its genocidal campaign in Gaza and its other various wars in the region. On top of the direct financial aid, the US has also fired $11 billion worth of interceptors defending Israel from missile attacks during the wars with Iran, and has reportedly deployed an additional Patriot missile defense system to Israel to prepare for the next potential escalation.

Via https://news.antiwar.com/2026/11/09/report-us-israel-in-talks-to-extend-military-aid-through-2033-despite-trump-saying-it-would-end/

The vindication of Marjorie Tayor Green

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Marjorie Taylor Greene Iran

Trump called her crazy and a traitor when she was just telling the truth: That Americans saw his Iran war and arming Israel a betrayal of ‘America First’

Ten weeks ago, Donald Trump called Marjorie Taylor Greene, his former ally and a former Georgia Republican congresswoman, a “LOSER.”

Greene shot back that Trump was a “neocon puppet for Israel.” Both of them do this a lot these days.

Last week, it was Republicans who were big losers in the midterm elections. The president might have been the biggest loser of them all.

Greene knew why.

“Look, if you’re in the administration and you’re ready to… run for president, you need to continue taking in the lessons that were sent by the American people on Tuesday, and it was really the same lesson that was sent in 2024,” she advised in a video post the day after the midterms.

Greene laid out what she considered core issues that led to the 2024 re-election of Trump, and then, as borne out in the exit polls and vote counts, the Democrats’ 2026 sweep.

“No more foreign wars, (Americans) don’t support the war in Iran,” Greene said. “We don’t want to fund foreign countries and foreign wars. We don’t want to fund Israel, we don’t want to fund killing children in Gaza.”

“And we want to put Americans first,” she added.

The deeply unpopular Iran war was at the center of why Republicans performed so poorly on Tuesday. Even before that, voters in both major parties were already souring on the U.S. backing of Israel and particularly the bloodshed in Gaza at the hands of the Israel Defence Forces, a policy that Trump has been fully invested in, as was President Joe Biden. This anger was particularly salient among younger voters and even most young Jewish-Americans.

Among Republicans, Greene was ahead of the curve on this.

In mid-2025, then-Rep. Greene, who the New York Times described at the time as “an avatar of MAGA politics on Capitol Hill,” became the first congressional Republican to call the Gaza crisis a “genocide.”

“It’s the most truthful and easiest thing to say that Oct. 7 in Israel was horrific and all hostages must be returned, but so is the genocide, humanitarian crisis, and starvation happening in Gaza,” Greene said in a social media post on July 28, 2025.

As her vocal opposition to the war grew, so did her criticism of foreign aid, which she saw as prioritizing Israel over U.S. interests. She also demanded the administration release the Epstein files, an original MAGA promise. It was then that Trump began machine-gunning MTG with new names: calling her “wacky,” “lunatic,” and even “Marjorie Traitor Greene,” insisting that the once avid MAGAite had turned against him and his movement.

When she was elected to Congress in 2020, Greene was presented regularly by legacy media as merely the QAnon candidate, reportedly dabbling in rightwing conspiracy theories. In that same period, Trump called Greene “a future Republican star.”

Five years later, after she resigned from Congress, it was Trump who was calling Greene crazy. By then, the feeling was mutual.

Yet it was also Trump who went from promising no new wars on the campaign trail, often flanked by Greene, to later justifying his own war of choice by conjuring up questionable, but familiar, propaganda about Iran being weeks away from having a nuclear weapon and the U.S. having to end the war with Tehran after “47 years.”

In November 2025, Greene announced that she would not run for re-election, saying she refused to be a “battered wife,” seemingly referring to Trump’s reneging on his campaign promises combined with increased attacks on her personally. Trump had already vowed to back a primary challenger against her.

“I have too much self-respect and dignity, love my family way too much, and do not want my sweet district to have to endure a hurtful and hateful primary against me by the president we all fought for, only to fight and win my election while Republicans will likely lose the midterms,” Greene explained a year ago.

Greene was in a similar position to that of her friend and fellow antiwar Republican ally, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who did run for re-election this year and was defeated in his Kentucky GOP primary in May by Trump-aligned, billionaire pro-Israel donors in the most expensive House primary race in U.S. history.

Greene never surrendered her antiwar, anti-genocide posture, and in fact has probably become more fierce since she decided not to seek re-election. Nor has she abandoned the America First brand that defined Trump’s 2016, 2020 and 2024 presidential campaigns, a message that some Democrats successfully capitalized on after Trump discarded it.

When Zohran Mamdani, the self-described democratic socialist mayor of New York City, participated in a debate during his 2025 campaign, the candidates were asked if he or she would like to visit Israel. Popular rightwing populist Tucker Carlson remarked to Greene during an interview that Mamdani, “was the only person in the New York City mayor’s debate to say he wanted to focus on New York City.”

Carlson noted that unlike the other candidates, Mamdani said “I’m running New York. That’s my job.”

“He gave the right answer,” Greene responded. Carlson agreed. How prescient both were.

In late October, Greene said the best way the Trump administration could ensure a win for Democratic Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed over reliably hawkish Republican Mike Rogers would be to attack Iran again before the midterms.

It’s a stupid senseless war and America hates it,” she posted on X

“We also hate neocons,” Greene added. “This is not an endorsement, I’m not a Democrat, but I’m also not a neocon Republican.”

El-Sayed himself was asked in July about a potential crossover between his philosophy and Greene’s, known to many as just “MTG.”

“So I talked to a former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene on this podcast in April and it’s kind of remarkable how similar some of your positions are. Like, she also has condemned AIPAC’s influence and politics, called for no more US taxpayer dollars to Israel, said that the cost of health insurance needs to go down,” Dasha Burns posited to El-Sayed on her POLITICO podcast, “The Conversation.”

“Do you think you could build this new coalition with people like MTG?” the Democrat was asked.

“When you ask me about why establishment elite Democrats are so worried about me? It’s because there are a lot of people who listen to her who are going to vote for me in the general election,” he replied.

Many who once voted for Trump in 2024 went for Democrats in 2026.

Democrat El-Sayed handily defeated his Republican opponent last Tuesday by running his own version of an “America First” campaign. “And when it comes to the question of foreign policy, the difference is usually AIPAC money. And if we got that money out, maybe our political consensus would match our public consensus,” El-Sayed said of the formidable pro-Israel lobby.

Greene said after the election, “I think America spoke very loudly that we don’t want politicians that are loyal to AIPAC and loyal to a foreign country.”

Marjorie Taylor Greene began her Washington career as the most devoted Trump loyalist, who would go to the wall for his America First message. She still does.

It was Trump who reversed course, leading so many in the same coalition that delivered him the election two years ago to now reject him and his latest iteration of the GOP.

“Marjorie is strong on everything and never gives up – a real WINNER!,” Trump wrote in 2020.

“We never changed, Trump did,” Greene wrote in August.

[…]

 

Politicians Fight Data Centers While Betting Your Retirement on Them

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What Is an AI Data Center? | IBM

TradingView

Investors looking to reduce their exposure to artificial intelligence (AI) may need to rethink their pension exposure. According to an Equable Institute analysis released Wednesday, state and local pension funds hold a lower-bound estimate of $578.1 billion to $706.6 billion in AI-related companies.

Meanwhile, a Wall Street Journal report found that across 13 major public funds, a basket of domestic AI-linked stocks drove $138 billion in paper gains between the end of 2022 and June.

Those gains helped pensions climb out of the hole from the 2008 financial crisis – yet heavily exposed them to one sector with 3 risks building at once: heavy concentration, political backlash against data centers, and warnings of “bubble-like” financing.

A Handful of Giants

As of June 30, 2026, AI-related companies made up 35.1% of all reported public equity investments by state and local pension funds. For funds reporting in the second quarter, the expanded AI basket reached 38.5% of public equity holdings.

The Magnificent 7 account for 63.3% of public AI-related holdings. The largest positions are NVIDIA Corp. at $47.3 billion, Apple Inc. at $42.5 billion, and Microsoft Corp. at $28.2 billion. Funds also reported $4.1 billion in newly listed Space Exploration Technologies Corp. shares.

Overall, at least 9% to 11% of the $6.42 trillion in public pension assets is tied to AI companies. Some funds are far more exposed: Colorado PERA has 18.7% of its total assets in AI, New York City’s pension funds 14.8% and the New York State Teachers’ Retirement System 14.6%.

“A positive economic outcome from the emergence of AI could meaningfully stabilize public pension plans; but a negative event like an AI-bubble bursting could cause very meaningful losses that stakeholders should be aware of,” said Anthony Randazzo, Equable’s executive director.

“Every public pension fund should be doing an internal audit of their own AI exposure and making public the findings.”

The Infrastructure Contradiction

The WSJ’s analysis points to a clear contradiction. Pensions rely on AI returns, while local politicians keep fighting the infrastructure AI needs.

In July, New York put a moratorium on many new data center projects while it studies regulation, even as its pension funds’ AI holdings surged. “It’s so contradictory,” said Joseph Hernandez, who ran as the Republican candidate for New York state comptroller. “We’re on both sides of the bet.”

In Pennsylvania and California, officials and union representatives are pushing back over power prices, land use, water consumption and threats to communities.

Sen. Katie Muth [D-PA], who serves on the Public School Employees’ Retirement System board, said many former public employees don’t know their retirements rely partly on AI. She said even she struggles to work out the fund’s exposure: “It’s like being Nancy Drew.”

‘Bubble-Like’ Exuberance

According to David Colla, global head of credit investments at Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), there’s “bubble-like” exuberance in AI financing.

“You cannot wake up one day and just say, ‘Well, we just had this theme that AI was great, and we woke up, and it was 25% of our portfolio,” Colla said for Bloomberg.

Circular financing adds to the risk. Hyperscalers are bankrolling AI upstarts that rely on their products. If smaller players fail, the odds of a domino effect rippling through the ecosystem are significant.

Equable’s $578 billion floor also doesn’t fully capture private equity or corporate debt. Colla said CPPIB is examining off-balance-sheet structures in which shell companies take on the debt needed to build data centers. He said lenders should look even harder at privately held AI developers, whose finances are less transparent.

“There will be winners and losers along the way,” Colla said. “And there’s going to be a lot of volatility.”

[…]

Via https://www.tradingview.com/news/benzinga:273afc42c094b:0-politicians-fight-data-centers-while-betting-your-retirement-on-them/

AI Designed to Lie to You – Big Pharma Just Learned the Hard Way by Wasting $Billions on AI-Recommended Drug

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by Brian Shilhavy
Health Impact News

While it has taken longer than I thought, people are finally waking up to the fact that AI LLMs (large language models) are not capable of thinking and reasoning like human beings are.

When ChatGPT was launched in November of 2022 by Microsoft, it became the most downloaded app of all time, and the AI LLM races began.

While the actual technology behind AI LLMs is actually pretty amazing, it was the belief system that quickly developed around it that drove massive amounts of spending to try and apply it to many applications, some of which were merely pure fantasy and science fiction.

Because the results of an AI search or response to a question were being displayed in speeds we had never seen before, and because those results were programmed to be delivered in human language form, the illogical leap of faith was made that these were more than just machines with incredibly fast microprocessors and huge amounts of computer RAM stored in computer Clouds.

The belief was that these AI models could do more than just present the data it searched, but that it could somehow take the data and reason and think like a human being does even though it was not programmed to do so, which would result in new frontiers of research and achievements.

But at the end of the day AI LLMs are still just computer code being run on computer hardware, doing what it was programmed to do.

This fact was realized very recently in the area of Big Pharma drug development, where $billions were invested into new research that was brought about due to AI LLM technology.

Billions of dollars were invested into these two drugs which had made it to Phase 3 drug trials.

But this past weekend, it was acknowledged that these two drugs were a complete failure, performing no better than placebos, and they were halted.

Why the latest heart drug failures should make us all more skeptical of AI hype

A pioneering new approach was supposed to transform biopharma research. Instead, it flopped

Excerpts:

The next time someone tells you that artificial intelligence, or any other new technology, is going to cure every disease, point them to the effort to fight heart attacks and strokes, which together are the largest killer in the developed world.

Because again and again, pharmaceutical researchers have learned the same hard lesson: Technologies that were supposed to speed new medicines to patients have fallen short. Two studies presented Saturday at the annual meeting of the American Heart Association are a perfect example. A new understanding of genetics was supposed to increase the odds of success — and did anything but.

Source.

Novartis, Novo Nordisk Heart Drug Failures Should Temper AI Hype

Two large trials of heart drugs from Novartis and Novo Nordisk found no benefit against heart attacks and strokes, results presented at the American Heart Association meeting. A medicine writer says the setbacks are a caution for claims that new technology will cure disease.

Excerpts:

Two large trials of heart drugs from Novartis and Novo Nordisk showed no benefit in preventing heart attacks and strokes, according to results presented at the American Heart Association’s annual meeting in November 2026.

The heart drug failures should make investors and the public more cautious about promises that new technology will quickly deliver cures, argues Matthew Herper, a senior medicine writer who covered the meeting.

Novartis tested a drug called pelacarsen. It lowers a substance in the blood called Lp(a), which genetic research had indicated should reduce cardiovascular risk. The trial found no effect on the rate of heart attacks and strokes.

Novo Nordisk ran a separate large study of an anti-inflammatory drug that targets a protein called IL-6. That study also showed no benefit.

Both drugs were aimed at targets that looked promising on paper. Neither delivered in patients.

Heart attacks and strokes together are the largest killer in the developed world, Herper noted. Drugmakers have spent years searching for new ways to prevent them.

Both trials were built on newer ideas about how the disease works. Herper says the genetics behind these targets was supposed to improve the odds of success. In his words, it “did anything but.”

Herper draws a wider lesson for anyone pitching artificial intelligence, or any other new technology, as a way to cure every disease. He points to the repeated record in heart disease, where pharmaceutical researchers have learned that technologies meant to speed new medicines to patients have fallen short.

For companies, a failed late-stage trial is costly. These studies involved large numbers of patients and tested whether a drug cut real events, such as heart attacks and strokes, rather than a number on a lab test. Lowering Lp(a) did exactly what the drug was designed to do, yet it did not change the outcomes that matter to patients.

Source.

A promising drug for an inherited heart risk flops, stunning doctors

Excerpts:

The study randomly divided 8,350 people who’d previously experienced a cardiovascular event like a heart attack or stroke and high levels of Lp(a) into two groups: Half received pelacarsen, while the other half got a placebo.

Neither the patients nor the study investigators knew who was getting the drug and who wasn’t. Most patients were followed for nearly five years.

At the end of the study, researchers’ main comparison between the two groups was an outcome called MACE — major adverse cardiovascular event. It included any kind of heart-related death, as well as non-fatal heart attacks, strokes, and whether patients had needed an urgent procedure to treat a blocked blood vessel, like heart bypass surgery.

When the study results were unblinded, however, there was a surprise. While high-risk patients taking pelacarsen had much lower levels of lipoprotein (a) than at the start of the study, they had virtually the same risk of dying of heart disease or having a serious cardiovascular event as someone in the placebo group. Roughly 12% of patients in each arm of the study had a serious heart-related event over the course of the study, whether they got pelacarsen or not.

[…]

The medication did exactly what everyone expected it would, lowering Lp(a) levels by an average of about 77% in patients who took it. But there was no sign that it had any impact on the risk of death from cardiovascular disease, heart attacks, strokes, or the risk that a person might need a stent or bypass surgery to treat a clot near their heart.

[…]

Source.

In my almost two decades of covering the deception and corruption in Big Pharma, I have seldom, if ever, found such admissions of failures in pharmaceutical drugs like I have seen in these reports. But in order to blame AI for these failures, they had to first admit that they were failures.

In fact, ever since Merck’s cholesterol lowering drug Lipitor was the all-time best-selling drug before it lost its patent, the results have always been the same as these drug trials: the drug will lower one’s cholesterol, but it will not prevent death by cardiovascular disease.

This has ALWAYS been true! It is just that Big Pharma did not want to admit this, due to the massive profits they have made over the years by selling drugs to people to lower their cholesterol, a substance our body needs, or we would instantly die.

25% of our body’s cholesterol is in our brains, and there is solid research that the increase in prescribing these statin cholesterol-lowering drugs is linked to an increase in neurological diseases in older people such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and dementia.

[…]
The Clue to Why Low Fat Diet and Statins may Cause Alzheimer’s

However, due to the belief that AI could look at the same data and come up with new ideas about cholesterol and heart disease, is what drove this most recent research, and ended up in a total failure.

AI is Designed to Lie to You – Fake Viruses and Fake Intelligence

This religious belief in AI and the thinking that it can act and reason like human beings, is destroying our economy.

From the New York Times:

Tech Stocks Had a Terrible Day. What’s Coming Could Be Worse.

Excerpts:

We’ve been here before. As with so many other transformational inventions — railroads, electricity, the internet — outsize enthusiasm for artificial intelligence is supporting a level of spending that’s gotten ahead of plausible profit expectations, a defining characteristic of a financial bubble.

Now that the stocks of some A.I. builders and suppliers are wavering, we think it’s important to ask the next critical question.

What happens to the American economy if this bubble bursts? The damage could run deep.

[…]

What happens if the A.I. boom goes bust?

There’s a consensus building among investors, academics and market analysts that any downturn would be relatively mild, similar to what happened in the early 2000s, after the dot-com bubble burst.

The inflation-adjusted value of the overall economy, or real gross domestic product, shrank less than half a percent. And while unemployment rose, it was considerably lower than it was at the peak of the financial crisis.

Unfortunately, this consensus looks too optimistic.

First, the A.I. bubble is by all measures substantially larger than the dot-com bubble; the stock market has increased by more than it did between 1996 and 2000 and is currently worth 240 percent of G.D.P., versus 160 percent at the peak of the dot-com bubble.

This difference in magnitude means that if the stock market fell as much as it did over the course of the dot-com bust, the amount of lost wealth could translate into a reduction in real consumer spending that would be twice as large. That reduction would show up as a lower demand for goods and services, which could in turn reduce business investment, hiring and overall growth.

Our current economy is also more fragile than it was back in 2000.

Hiring has been sluggish and real wages are falling, the latter because of elevated war-induced inflation. The Federal Reserve has been gradually raising interest rates, leading to higher borrowing costs and potentially dialing back economic activity.

Additionally, today’s fiscal conditions and outlook are much worse. In 2001, the federal government ran a budget surplus of 1.2 percent of G.D.P.; today, it is running a historically large deficit of 6.2 percent of G.D.P. That could limit Congress’s willingness to inject even more borrowed money into the economy to offset any downturn.

[…]

Source.

And not only are AI investments destroying our economy, they are giving evil state actors another thing to use to instill fear into the public over something that does not even exist, similar to the fake viruses, with the COVID “virus” being the most “successful” fake virus to date, in terms of controlling the populations by locking them in their homes and then beginning to injure and kill them with dangerous vaccines and drugs as a “solution” to a fake problem.

I have frequently referred to AI as FI, Fake Intelligence, because that is what it actually is. It has ZERO intelligence, and simply repackages data in human language format, making people think they are communicating with an intelligent being.

But that has not stopped people like Bill Gates and other Tech billionaires who all probably know that the hype around AI is fake, from making doomsday predictions about how “rogue AI agents” will soon take over the world and wipe out humanity.

Their puppet in the White House, Donald Trump, is going along with the hoax by issuing an executive order to rename “AI” to “SI”, or “Superior Intelligence.” See: Trump Announces that “Artificial Intelligence” (AI) is Now Renamed “Super Intelligence” (SI) – What Comes Next?

[…]

Via https://vaccineimpact.com/2026/ai-is-designed-to-lie-to-you-big-pharma-just-found-this-out-the-hard-way-by-wasting-billions-on-developing-a-drug-recommended-by-ai/