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There’s a New Democratic Machine. It’s Unabashedly Socialist.

By
Akela Lacy
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There’s a New Democratic Machine. It’s Unabashedly Socialist.


As democratic socialists toppled establishment favorites this midterm cycle, the old guard of the Democratic Party picked up a preferred cudgel against insurgents: These people were propped up by white, urban, coastal, educated electorates — not the ones the Democrats were trying to reach, and certainly not the working class.

It’s true that the four victorious socialists running for Congress — Chris Rabb in Philadelphia, Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez in New York City, and Melat Kiros in Denver — won in major cities where progressive politics are more likely to be popular than in the country’s many more rural, poorer, and less educated districts. But before this cycle’s big surge, the Democratic Socialists of America had spent the past decade backing and recruiting candidates in down-ballot races across the U.S., multiplying the number of people in office by a figure of eight and electing mayors, city councilors, state lawmakers, and other local officials in 39 states.

“Everybody is feeling the crunch. Everybody is deeply concerned for their families, for their security,” said Becky Cooper, campaign manager to Francesca Hong, a Wisconsin state representative and formidable DSA candidate for governor. “That transcends political party, transcends ages, and it transcends geography. This is not just a coastal elites thing.”

Despite the narrative that the socialist model only works among electorates dominated by young, white, coastal elites, the DSA, the largest socialist organization in the U.S., is decentralized and operates chapters in a majority of states. Its members currently hold office in states like Ohio, North Carolina, Texas, and Tennessee. Many of those candidates have been elected to local offices even as far-right campaigns to take over bodies like school boards have dominated in recent years. Since 2018, 305 DSA-backed lawmakers have won their races. Democratic socialists won state legislative primaries this season in Georgia and Kentucky, and they’re on the ballot in upcoming primary races in Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, where Hong has polled first or second in recent months in a tight gubernatorial primary.

In order to win, they’ve built what some might call a machine, joining forces with more mainstream progressive organizations to marshal resources against a well-financed political establishment that buried candidates on the left in 2024.

Their success has sent the Democratic establishment into a frenzy. Dismissing the wins in his backyard, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said the socialist victories in New York were concentrated in “higher-income districts” with an “outsized focus on issues connected to the Middle East.” 

But while Valdez and Avila Chevalier won a majority of voters in areas dominated by the young, wealthy, and college-educated, Avila Chevalier beat longtime incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat among Black voters, while Valdez dominated over Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso among majority-Hispanic precincts — suggesting the socialism-curious share of the electorate is more complex than its critics might make it seem. 

It’s “a very reductionist identity politics from pundits and critics who don’t have anything meaningful to offer working-class voters.”

“People are going to keep trying to move the goalposts to pretend like this isn’t a movement sweeping the nation,” said democratic socialist New York state Sen. Jabari Brisport, pointing to another DSA member who won a primary upstate in Buffalo. “It’s an attack line that will keep coming again and again, a very reductionist identity politics from pundits and critics who don’t have anything meaningful to offer working-class voters.” 

According to Cooper, Democratic leaders hold responsibility for the surging popularity of the socialist brand. 

“The socialist label is more popular than the Democratic label because people are recognizing that they’ve been fed a bill of lies through capitalism,” she said. 

Democratic socialists looking to take over the governor’s mansion in Wisconsin say their message isn’t contingent on geography, race, or class.

“You’ve had throughout history political leaders use socialist policies without actually calling it socialism,” said Wisconsin state Rep. Darrin Madison, the first Black socialist elected in the state. He pointed to policies like the New Deal, the eight-hour workday, and Social Security. “Building systems of mutual aid, that’s a form of socialism,” Madison said.

Wisconsin’s long history of socialist politics has enjoyed a revival in recent years. Milwaukee sent the first socialist to the House in 1910 and elected three socialist mayors over the next half century, but the state’s socialist caucus died out in the early 1930s — after passing close to 300 bills in the preceding decade. Frank Zeidler, elected Milwaukee mayor in 1948, was the last socialist elected in the city until 2020, when voters elected Ryan Clancy to the County Board of Supervisors. Two years later, Madison and Clancy won election to the state Assembly; the first thing the pair did after taking their oaths of office was to found the Socialist Caucus, which had died out in the 1930s. The caucus doubled in size last year to four members, adding Hong and state Rep. Christian Phelps.

Socialists resuscitated their Wisconsin roots at a time when Democrats had earned a reputation for shirking their responsibilities at every level of Wisconsin’s government. After Bernie Sanders beat Hillary Clinton in the state’s 2016 Democratic primary, its general election voters swung toward Donald Trump — clinching his first presidency. Until current Democratic Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers was elected in 2018, the state was under full Republican control.

“The last time that Wisconsin had a [Democratic] trifecta was 16 years ago now,” Clancy told The Intercept. After Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle did not seek reelection, the Democratic candidate lost the 2011 governor’s race to Republican Scott Walker, and the GOP flipped both state legislative chambers. “The Democrats at the time squandered that opportunity, and they really failed to deliver for the state.” 

Those failures, Clancy said, included not codifying abortion rights ahead of the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, and not raising the minimum wage, which is still $7.25 an hour, when they had the votes to do so. “They didn’t even bring it up for a vote because they feared what that would mean for their large-dollar donors,” Clancy said.

Cooper said Hong’s campaign is hearing from voters who are increasingly blaming the capitalist system for the problems they see around them. In response, the campaign is talking about what it says is the true definition of socialism, Cooper said: “Taking care of our neighbors, taking care of people’s economic needs.”

“They’re waking up to the fact that it is capitalism at the heart of these issues. It is people profiting off of our neighbors being sick, or not being able to afford groceries or not being able to afford their credit card bills, when we see that people are becoming billionaires while we’re suffering and literally just trying to feed our families,” she said. 

Hong’s performance in recent polling shows that socialist policies are resonating with voters, Madison said. 

“When folks say this is a reflection of the elites and folks from academia and young folks in college, that does a disservice to community members and their abilities to understand the circumstances that they are in and the ways in which parties have exploited their pain,” he said. 

“It doesn’t speak to the reality that folks are facing.”

Nearly 2,000 miles southwest of Wisconsin’s capitol, the city of Los Angeles has all the markers of a coastal haven for democratic socialist politics to thrive: a large working class, high racial diversity, a significant immigrant population with a rich history of progressive organizing, all existing alongside pockets of wealthier, whiter, college educated residents who lean left. The city has its own storied history of socialism and nearly elected a socialist mayor in the early 1900s, riding a wave of labor and working-class support and drawing on the socialist model of Milwaukee. 

Since 2020, the LA DSA chapter has gained a foothold in City Council with challenges to the Democratic establishment. When Nithya Raman unseated an incumbent that year with the backing of DSA LA, the victory sent shockwaves throughout an LA establishment — then the DSA repeated the feat three times in subsequent cycles.

Now, Raman has a chance to unseat incumbent Democratic mayor Karen Bass in November, tempting comparisons that suggest the city is on the cusp of its own wave of governmental transformation akin to New York under democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Yet DSA LA has struggled to break out of its main stronghold of the city’s east and northeast sides, into some of the city’s power centers, such as South LA, which has majority Black, Latino, and working-class precincts.

“If we’re serious about building power in the areas where we want to build power, then the process has to begin much earlier than a candidate coming to DSA” for an endorsement, said DSA LA co-chair Leslie Chang. She acknowledged the need to break out of LA’s own “commie corridor,” where many DSA members live.

Like in New York, DSA LA has had to battle accusations that its candidates only draw support from white, college-educated voters, despite winning in multiple districts with majority-Latino residents. This reality played out in two city council races on LA’s west and south sides, where one DSA candidate lost outright and the other made it to the runoff — but trailing the establishment pick by 13 percentage points.

Chang, who spent a week in New York knocking on doors and phone-banking for that socialist slate, said the LA chapter needs to follow New York’s lead to train and identify “homegrown” candidates within the organization. 

“We need multi-year power building plans for a lot of the things that we want to achieve,” Chang said. “We have to commit to working on projects, like non-electoral campaigns in districts, to become better embedded in that community that we want to represent.”

While DSA found success in its first citywide race when its endorsed city attorney candidate, Marissa Roy, locked out the incumbent from the top two and made it to a November runoff, its members were split over whether to back Raman for mayor or long-shot candidate Rae Huang. Its city council members endorsed Bass. Now, DSA LA’s larger membership has to weigh whether to endorse Raman in November’s runoff as she faces lingering mistrust among the organization and LA’s left after she diverged from her DSA colleagues on key housing issues and on Palestine and Israel. If she does want to unlock the group’s army of canvassing volunteers, Raman would need to collect at least 50 signatures from DSA members, sit for an interview with its electoral politics committee, and fill out a questionnaire that would likely include policy commitments important to the group.

Still, recent socialist victories have had a reverberating effect on the nation’s second largest city. The LA chapter saw bumps in membership after Mamdani’s election last year and another after New York’s congressional primaries, adding 70 new members to its total of 5,000. Chang said the wins in New York have also energized the chapter to begin building toward electing members to the California State Legislature, where only one current DSA member from the Silicon Valley is serving. Elsewhere in California, Mai Vang, endorsed by the Sacramento DSA chapter, is headed to a runoff after leading longtime Democratic incumbent Rep. Doris Matsui; the previous person who held the seat was Matsui’s husband Bob.

“When New York wins, LA wins,” said Sean Wakasa, a DSA LA co-chair with Chang, also mentioning the wins in Philadelphia and Denver. “We’re building politics that working-class people can see themselves in, and it’s built around addressing universal issues around affordability around the ability for people to work.”

DSA might bristle at the suggestion that it’s becoming a political machine. The group prides itself on getting buy-in from its members before taking a position on policy issues and having a painstakingly democratic structure — not the top-down politics they say has led to the downfall of the Democratic Party. 

But DSA is playing the game. It’s one group in a coalition of lefty organizations whose chapters have beefed up their coordination this cycle to power socialist and progressive candidates. 

In all four of its congressional primary wins so far this cycle, DSA chapters have teamed up with Justice Democrats, the left insurgent group that rose to prominence in 2018 when it helped get the first two DSA members of Congress elected — Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich. — but suffered last cycle when two of its newer incumbents, Reps. Jamaal Bowman of New York and Cori Bush of Missouri, were ousted by AIPAC-backed challengers. Now, joining forces with DSA chapters and Sunrise Movement, the youth-led climate group that has expanded its ambit to oppose war and authoritarianism, Justice Democrats is receiving mea culpas for previous death knells — as JD spokesperson Usamah Andrabi told The Intercept when Kiros won: “We’re just having an amazing fucking cycle.”

Groups on the left have also massively increased their spending in this year’s primaries after losing candidates last cycle who faced tens of millions of dollars in attacks from deep-pocketed super PACs and dark-money groups. Several pro-Palestine PACs are working or spending on primaries for the first time this cycle. The super PAC American Priorities, funded by Mamdani donors, has spent more than $4 million so far. Those investments have helped shift the dynamics in congressional races even in the face of similar outside spending against the left.

“Justice Democrats has the expertise to run federal challenger primaries — embedding in campaigns as staff and advisers, managing budgets, recruiting and training candidates, coordinating donors and leading independent expenditure programs,” Andrabi told The Intercept. “Combining that expertise with local DSA’s immense field and organizing power, which is unmatched in cities like NYC, delivers these monumental victories.

The national groups that helped power Kiros, Valdez, Avila Chevalier, and Rabb’s congressional campaigns don’t work on state-level races. But the DSA’s local Wisconsin chapters and another three campus chapters of the Young Democratic Socialists of America have endorsed Hong and are helping to boost her campaign by canvassing, fundraising, holding events, and calling voters. A new DSA chapter for Central Wisconsin formed last week and is also expected to endorse her. 

Still, Hong’s campaign expects to face a surge in outside spending against her. “We know that super PAC money is going to come in, especially with Fran’s stance on data centers. We know AI money is going to come in,” said Cooper, Hong’s campaign manager. She also said she expects to face money from the pro-Israel lobby, though its flagship national group does not spend on state races. 

“We know that we are never going to raise the most money.”

“That doesn’t change our message or our work. We know that we are never going to raise the most money. We know that we’re not going to have a ton of independent expenditures coming in to rescue us. We have 6,000 volunteers on the ground,” she said. The weekend after the New York primaries, the campaign knocked 10,000 doors in a day and a half. “That is how we will offset paid media and the spending and all those kinds of things, is getting people out to have real conversations.” 

In addition to outside spending, Cooper said the current pearl-clutching around the rise of democratic socialist candidates was to be expected. 

“Any time within the larger pendulum swings, there’s smaller ones as well.”

NRC is (sort of) getting rid of “as low as reasonably achievable” standard

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IwPost
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NRC is (sort of) getting rid of “as low as reasonably achievable” standard

Last week, just before the US started its break for the July Fourth holiday, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) proposed a new rule that would change how it regulated exposure to radiation. The Trump administration has been pushing to restart construction of nuclear power plants in the US, and many pro-nuclear advocates have been complaining about the US’s existing regulations, portraying them as the main barrier to the flourishing of the industry. So, it had seemed likely that major revisions were coming.

Instead, the NRC’s proposed new rules endorse the science behind its current rules and suggest that any problems are largely in the vagueness of the terminology that it has been using. So, instead, it’s endorsing standards that are meant to accomplish the same thing, but avoid using some of the language it had relied on. Probably the clearest indication of the evolutionary change at play is that the NRC estimates the changing rules will save industry—not just power, but also medical and research applications—only about $9.5 million a year.

LNT and ALARA

There are two technical abbreviations at the center of US nuclear regulations. The first is LNT, which stands for “linear non-threshold.” It’s in reference to the issue of whether there’s any level of radiation that is so low that it no longer produces harmful biological effects—the “threshold” in LNT. The “non-threshold” implies that it doesn’t, and that’s in keeping with biology, which has demonstrated that even single particles or photons of radiation can damage DNA and that the mechanisms cells have for repairing that damage are inherently error-prone. The “linear” in LNT simply describes how the impact of radiation scales directly with the dose.

Despite the solid foundation in basic biology, LNT has been difficult to demonstrate in the real world. Humans are exposed to many factors that can influence the development of cancer, including naturally occurring radiation. Teasing out the impact of a small dose of radiation that occurs in addition to all those other exposures is extremely challenging, and the impact of extremely low exposures has not been decisively demonstrated.

Complicating matters, a number of people have advocated for something called hormesis, in which small doses of radiation purportedly promote the cellular repair of damage from other sources. The evidence for this is even spottier, and when the NRC was petitioned to adopt hormesis as part of its scientific framework during Trump’s first term, it rejected the petition.

Given its acceptance of an LNT model of exposure risks, the NRC had chosen exposure standards that fell under the general term of ALARA: as low as reasonably achievable. If any exposure to radiation poses a risk, then minimizing it is the clearest way to protect the health of people who work with radioactive substances. The challenge there is that it’s possible to set exposure limits that people outside the industry regularly exceed each time they board a commercial aircraft.

So, the word “reasonable” plays an outsized role while remaining highly subjective. Critics have charged that it precipitates an endless cycle of reasonable exposure limits leading to searches for additional ways to lower them further, or of adoption without cost considerations. And here, the NRC is acknowledging that there have been issues. “In essence, the reasonableness test that is supposed to be inherent to ALARA-related decision-making has gradually become an expectation that if a means of dose reduction is available, regardless of its reasonableness in relation to the total dose and the amount of reduction, it should be applied without further consideration,” its new proposal suggests.

In the past, the NRC has attempted to address this by attaching a financial value to each unit of exposure based on estimates of the value of healthy life developed elsewhere. But in the new proposal, it accepts that “there have been challenges in the implementation of the ALARA requirement, namely a lack of clarity of when dose reduction is deemed sufficient, excessive subjectivity, and susceptibility for selective or inconsistent enforcement.” So, it’s giving up on a term that it now views as a source of confusion.

What’s different

One of the key things here is that the LNT model of exposure risks isn’t going away. In its earlier denial of petitions that it change its standards, the NRC had concluded that “in the absence of convincing evidence that there is a dose threshold or that the health effects of low levels of radiation are fully understood, the LNT model for cancers and genetic effects was appropriate for formulating radiation protection standards and planning radiation protection programs.” In the proposed new rules, that logic is left intact. “The NRC finds that no consensus-supported, regulation-ready alternative model to the LNT model exists at this time,” it states.

More specifically, it states, “It is unlikely there might be a threshold level of exposure below which biological response does not occur. Such a threshold could only occur if DNA repair processes were totally effective in that dose range or if a single radiation track were unable to produce an effect.”

It’s worth noting that the NRC is making that decision despite the fact that Trump issued an executive order that describes LNT and then calls it irrational. “The NRC utilizes safety models that posit there is no safe threshold of radiation exposure and that harm is directly proportional to the amount of exposure,” the order reads. “Those models lack sound scientific basis and produce irrational results.” The agency is keeping LNT in place despite being specifically ordered to reconsider it.

With LNT intact, the scientific backing for ALARA remains in place. So, the new proposed regulations largely focus on calling it something else. “The NRC proposes to remove references to the ALARA principle, which rests on the LNT model’s assessment of risks from very low doses of radiation, from its regulations,” the proposed changes say. “Instead, the NRC would apply a less-subjective, graded approach to managing doses below regulatory limits.”

To replace ALARA, the NRC will start with a limit at which evidence clearly indicates radiation impacts would be apparent and set exposure thresholds below that. From lowest to highest exposure, these thresholds will require increasingly aggressive efforts to limit exposures.

The language of the details is a bit confused, however. As its name implies, the LNT model suggests there are no thresholds below which biological risks go away, and the NRC accepts that model. Yet it’s regulated based on thresholds. It’s also referring to those thresholds as an implementation of an “optimization” approach to safety. But it also quotes a definition of optimization that refers to it as a form of ALARA—which, again, is a term that the NRC wants to get rid of.

Beyond that action, the rule changes the NRC is proposing largely focus on updating regulations on the use of equipment to monitor exposures. Technology has advanced since the agency last modified its requirements there, and it’s using this proposal to update them accordingly.

Number crunching

Regardless of the confusion, it’s clear that the changes aren’t going to cause the sort of boom in nuclear power that the Trump administration expected in its executive order. One of the key features of the planned rules is that any organization that’s currently in compliance will remain that way without making any changes. Changes will only make sense if an organization thinks it can save money by adopting them.

And, as noted above, those savings for industry will be pretty minimal, with the total estimated at $9.5 million a year. Even if we assume that these savings go only to nuclear power and are ascribed only to dropping ALARA (as opposed to cheaper exposure monitoring, for example), spread out across the 57 nuclear plants in the US, that means just an average savings of a bit over $150,000 per plant.

So, those who viewed ALARA as the cause of all the nuclear industry’s woes will likely be excited to see the NRC eliminate it. But they’ll also be disappointed to find that its scientific foundations remain intact, and the regulatory environment will be minimally changed as a result.

Royal Family Plotting to ‘Drown Out’ Prince Harry?

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IwPost
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Royal Family Plotting to ‘Drown Out’ Prince Harry?


Prince Harry is heading back to Britain this week, but the Royal Family reportedly has no intention of letting his visit dominate the headlines.

The Duke of Sussex, 41, is expected to spend several days in the UK promoting the Invictus Games before traveling to England’s Midlands and making a private visit to the grave of his late mother, Princess Diana, at Althorp.

However, palace insiders claim senior royals are preparing to quietly undermine Harry’s trip by filling the royal calendar with enough public appearances to “totally drown out” the publicity surrounding his return.

Harry will make the trip without his wife, Meghan Markle, 44, or their two children, 7-year-old Prince Archie and 5-year-old Princess Lilibet.

The family reportedly decided to stay behind because of continuing concerns over Harry’s security arrangements in Britain.

While Harry carries out his own engagements, King Charles, 77, and other senior working royals are scheduled to complete more than 29 public appearances between the duke’s arrival and departure. The packed calendar also includes private audiences and official meetings.

One palace source said there is little interest inside the royal household in becoming entangled in another round of drama involving Harry.

“There is absolutely no appetite within the household to be drawn into another cycle of drama surrounding the Duke of Sussex,” the source said. “The King’s priority, and the priority of every working royal, is to get on with the job.”

According to the insider, the palace believes the best way to respond to Harry is not to respond at all.

“The feeling is that the strongest response is not to engage with the drama but to keep the focus on public service, allowing official engagements to speak for themselves rather than reacting to every headline,” the source added.

Another royal insider said the palace is determined not to allow the monarchy’s schedule to revolve around Harry’s movements or his latest family disputes.

“The program of engagements was always going to be full, but there is a clear determination that the institution should not revolve around Harry’s movements or the latest twists in his personal situation,” the insider said.

Senior members of the Royal Family reportedly want the week’s coverage to focus on the charities, communities and organizations they are supporting rather than on Harry’s personal battles.

But the insider went even further, claiming the strategy is meant to steal attention away from the duke.

“Essentially, the intention is really to sabotage Harry’s trip by generating so much press coverage around their engagements it will drown out the publicity he wants to drum up with his visit,” the source claimed.

Many of the royal appearances were reportedly scheduled long before Harry finalized his travel plans. Still, the timing comes as frustration grows inside palace circles over what insiders see as another unnecessary controversy involving the estranged prince.

The latest dispute centers on security.

Harry reportedly hoped Meghan and the children would join him in Britain, but those plans fell apart after the Home Office’s Royal and VIP Executive Committee declined to reconsider the security arrangements imposed after the couple stepped away from royal duties.

Harry ultimately decided his family would remain elsewhere in Europe while he traveled to Britain alone.

Sources close to the situation have questioned why such a high-profile trip was organized before his security plans were settled, especially after Harry previously lost a legal challenge over his access to publicly funded police protection while visiting the UK.

The security battle is not the only complication hanging over the trip.

There are also questions about whether Harry will meet with King Charles following a separate dispute over where the duke would stay.

Charles reportedly invited his younger son to stay at a royal residence, with Buckingham Palace offered as an option. Harry, however, is no longer expected to stay there.

According to reports, Harry failed to formally accept the invitation before a deadline at the end of last week. He was then told the accommodation was no longer available.

A representative for Harry reportedly called the decision “disappointing” and accused the Royal Family of withdrawing the offer “at the last moment.”

The representative said Harry had delayed responding because he was trying to arrange his own security after learning he would not receive official protection during the visit.

It is now unclear where Harry will stay while in Britain, although the duke is known to prefer hotels over royal residences.

With Meghan and the children staying away, his palace accommodation gone and senior royals preparing for a wall-to-wall week of engagements, Harry’s latest homecoming appears to be growing more chaotic before it has even begun.

Iraq prepares to reopen Syrian land route for oil exports to bypass Gulf

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IwPost
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Iraq prepares to reopen Syrian land route for oil exports to bypass Gulf

Iraq is planning a new land route through Syria to diversify its oil exports after the rising security risks in the Strait of Hormuz paralyzed the global oil and energy market amid the Middle East crisis, Anadolu reports.

Iraq exports most of its crude through southern terminals in Basra, but recent maritime tensions in the Gulf have prompted Baghdad to seek alternatives.

Asim Jihad, an Iraqi oil expert, told Anadolu Agency that the Iraqi Oil Ministry’s main mitigation strategy is to increase shipments through Turkiye’s Port of Ceyhan from the current daily volume of 150,000-200,000 barrels to 300,000 barrels.

Suspended shipments in the Strait of Hormuz are costing Iraq around 3.5 million barrels of oil per day.

He said the ministry is preparing to export 50,000 barrels of Basra crude per day to global markets by tanker trucks through Syria’s Banyas port, as Iraq needs to offload heavy crude that is causing blockages in refineries and disrupting operations.

While revenues from the alternative tanker shipments are expected to be limited, Jihad said Baghdad is pursuing the option to ease economic pressure and address budget shortfalls.

READ: Iraq sends first oil shipment to Syria via newly reopened key border crossing

He said constructing new pipelines would be the ultimate and only sustainable long-term option, as the existing Iraq-Syria oil pipeline is not currently suitable for exports.

Ali Naji, president of the Eco-Iraq Observatory, said resuming shipments through Syria is important because it would provide Iraq with a much-needed alternative and allow the country to build a more flexible export structure by reducing its heavy dependence on the Gulf.

Naji said establishing an additional export corridor through Syrian territory could lay the foundation for bilateral cooperation in oil and logistics, support broader economic ties, and create a suitable environment for reactivating pipeline projects or developing new energy infrastructure.

He added that the high logistical cost of transporting oil by tanker trucks, compared with traditional pipelines, poses a challenge to the project, along with the limited volume that can be moved by truck and ongoing security risks along land routes.

OPINION: The future of Gulf energy and trade routes after the Hormuz crisis

Judah Gribetz, Architect of $1.25 Billion Holocaust Restitution Plan, Dies at 97

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IwPost
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Judah Gribetz, Architect of $1.25 Billion Holocaust Restitution Plan, Dies at 97


Judah Gribetz, the former aide to New York Gov. Hugh L. Carey who later designed the distribution plan for more than $1.25 billion in restitution from Swiss banks to Holocaust survivors and other victims of Nazi persecution, died Friday at his home in the Rockaway Park neighborhood of Queens. He was 97. 

Gribetz was appointed by Brooklyn federal Judge Edward R. Korman to develop a framework for distributing the settlement reached in a class-action lawsuit against Swiss banks. The lawsuit accused the banks of causing additional harm to victims of Nazi persecution by failing to return assets entrusted to them during World War II. 

The settlement covered more than 500,000 claimants, including Jews whose deposits were never returned, former enslaved laborers whose employers held revenues in Swiss banks, and individuals whose property looted by the Nazis had been disposed of through Swiss institutions. 

Gribetz’s assignment as a “Solomonic role,” which required him “to adjudicate between the competing needs of different groups of aging Holocaust survivors, from Florida to Ukraine,” The Forward wrote.  

After 18 months of work, Gribetz presented Korman with a 900-page plan. It allocated up to $800 million to survivors or their heirs whose claims involving unreturned bank deposits were validated, with payments adjusted for inflation. 

The remaining $450 million was designated for other eligible claimants, including former enslaved laborers, who initially received $1,000 each, later increased to $1,450, as well as needy victims whose property had been looted and who received assistance through various programs. 

By 2020, nearly $1.288 billion, including accumulated interest beyond the original settlement amount, had been distributed or allocated to more than 458,400 claimants. 

Looking back on the effort in an interview with The New York Times, Gribetz said the work had been demanding but “very satisfying.” 

“We tried to do as transparent and as far-reaching a solution as possible,” he said. 

Born on April 1, 1929, in Brooklyn, Gribetz was the son of Abraham and Ida (Heller) Gribetz. His father became executive director of the Hebrew Free Loan Society in 1938, helping immigrants in need. 

 

 

 

Kremlin suspected of flying drones over Europe using Russian shadow fleet

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Kremlin suspected of flying drones over Europe using Russian shadow fleet

Mysterious drone flights that disrupted major European airports and flew over NATO member military bases hosting US nuclear weapons may be the work of a coordinated Kremlin campaign launched from Russian-linked commercial ships.

That recent assessment from the UK-based International Institute for Strategic Studies used automatic identification system (AIS) maritime tracking data and other publicly available data to show how Russian-linked ships and “shadow fleet” vessels that transport sanctioned Russian oil were often located nearby during various drone incidents. The report suggests that the drone incidents—which impacted a dozen NATO member countries and Ireland between August 2024 and February 2026—also revealed the vulnerability of European air defenses against surveillance and harassment incursions by low-cost drones.

The IISS report identified 144 drone sightings over Europe during that time period that were unlikely to involve hobbyist recreational drones or drone activity related to the war in Ukraine. About 48 percent of the sightings took place over military bases, 26 percent happened over critical infrastructure such as ports and energy or industrial facilities, and 18 percent occurred over civilian airports. Most occurred at night or in the early morning hours before sunrise, and the drones themselves were typically described in media reports as resembling “professional” or “military-style” drones.

The think tank’s report does not claim that all drone sightings were attributable to Russian drones or were even real. But it describes the pattern of certain drone incursions as being “consistent with the Kremlin’s effort to probe allied defenses, test civilian-military response mechanisms and normalize low-level airspace violations below the threshold of an armed attack.”

The only drone incident directly attributed to Russia came in February 2026, when the Swedish military confirmed spotting and subsequently jamming a drone that took off from the Russian signals intelligence vessel Zhigulevsk in Swedish territorial waters. The Russian drone launch took place while the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle and its escort ships were nearby during a visit to Sweden. But despite being the only confirmed example, the incident showed that Russian-linked ships have the capability to launch drones at sea for potential surveillance purposes.

The drone lineup

One possible drone candidate for ship-launched operations is the Merlin-VR, a fixed-wing drone developed by Russia that can be launched by a shipboard catapult system and recovered by parachute. It has the necessary flight range to enable a number of identified drone incursion incidents, while being capable of night operations and having the ability to spend time loitering over targets, according to the IISS report.

Russian companies have also developed vertical-take-off-and-landing (VTOL) drones, including the Legioner E29 Fixed-Wing Electric Drone, that require very little deck space for takeoff and landing operations. However, the IISS report suggests that homemade or commercial drones could have also been modified for a Kremlin drone campaign over Europe to prevent easy attribution to Russia.

A more common Russian drone model reported as being involved in the campaign is the Orlan-10, a fixed-wing drone with an operational range of 500 kilometers and battery endurance of up to 12 hours, along with maximum speeds between 90 kilometers per hour and 130 kilometers per hour. Such performance capabilities are “consistent with maritime launch from a vessel operating well beyond visual detection range of the European coastlines in question,” according to the IISS report.

The Orlan-10 range and payload capabilities are “consistent with stand-off collection against coastal and inland targets,” while also being able to fit within the deck space of a “mid-sized commercial vessel,” according to the IISS report. The Orlan-10 can carry payloads such as a module for spoofing signals from GPS and other global navigation satellite systems, along with a communications network monitoring module and various optical and thermal sensors.

The Orlan-10’s distinctive combustion engine noise is also consistent with the accounts of people who witnessed drone incursions that took place near RAF Lakenheath in the UK between November 20 and November 26 in 2024.

Drone sightings and lurking ships

The mystery drone incursions in November 2024 occurred at RAF Lakenheath and several other Royal Air Force stations—including RAF Fairford, RAF Feltwell, and RAF Mildenhall—that represent the home bases for thousands of US Air Force personnel and dozens of US military aircraft.

As the largest US military base in the UK, RAF Lakenheath is also set to receive more than $1.6 billion in upgrades that include facilities for housing a nuclear arsenal, The Guardian reported on June 30, 2026.

The drone incidents over the UK military bases in November 2024 occurred when the cargo ship Hav Dolphin, flagged in Antigua and Barbuda but operating with a Russian crew, was docked in the UK. The same Hav Dolphin ship was later separately investigated by German authorities after it anchored offshore near the German city of Kiel in May 2025, which coincided with drone sightings at a German submarine base at Eckernförde just northwest of Kiel on the Baltic Sea coast.

The incidents in the UK coincided with other drone sightings over sensitive military sites in November 2024. For example, drones repeatedly entered the airspace over Kleine-Brogel Air Base in Belgium for three consecutive nights in early November, while other drone sightings occurred over a military facility in Leopoldsburg. The Kleine-Brogel Air Base houses US nuclear weapons that could be deployed by allied aircraft under NATO’s nuclear-sharing arrangement.

Meanwhile, drones were spotted over Ramstein Air Base in Germany on November 26, 2024, which represents the headquarters for both NATO Allied Air Command and the US Air Forces in Europe and Air Forces in Africa. Such mystery drone flights over Ramstein continued through early 2025.

Drones also targeted the Volkel Air Base in the Netherlands for three separate days in November and December 2025. That base houses military aircraft capable of being armed with US nuclear bombs under the NATO nuclear-sharing agreement.

The biggest drone incursion at Volkel occurred during the evening of November 21, 2025, a “highly coordinated flight” of up to 10 drones was spotted over Volkel and evaded capture or destruction despite base security attempts to shoot them down. That coincided with drone sightings over Eindhoven Airport that forced authorities to briefly shut down civil air traffic across the southern Netherlands.

Those drone incursions over the Netherlands coincided with “multiple suspicious vessels,” including the shadow fleet ships Arctica, Cgas Leopard, Tranquil Sea, and Eagle S, loitering in international waters or at anchorages near the Dutch and French coasts. The Eagle S oil tanker had been previously investigated for severing undersea cables in the Baltic Sea on Christmas Day in 2024, although a Finnish court dismissed the case after ruling that it lacked jurisdiction over the matter.

In early December 2025, five drones were detected over the Île Longue base in Brittany, France, which houses French nuclear ballistic missile submarines and the stockpile of their nuclear weapons. By chance, the suspect ships Hav Dolphin and Arctica (the latter operating under a different name at the time) were also located within 350 and 370 kilometers of the base at the time, while three other shadow fleet ships were even closer.

A prime shadow fleet suspect

One of the most intriguing ship suspects linked to various drone incidents is the oil tanker Boracay. That ship became the focus of a Danish investigation after drone sightings in September 2025 disrupted air traffic operations at airports all across Denmark and even forced the temporary closure of Copenhagen Airport along with the Aalborg Royal Danish Air Force base.

Danish authorities did not specifically name Russia as the main culprit behind the drone incursions but described the possibility of drones launching from ships. Much of their investigation focused on the Boracay shadow fleet vessel that was located off the Danish coast during the incidents.

On September 28, 2025, French naval commandos made additional discoveries after boarding the Boracay off the French coast—possibly because of the ship’s suspected link to the drone incidents over Denmark. The French commandos found that the ship had a Chinese captain but also happened to be carrying two Russians employed by the Moran Security Group, a Russian private military company founded by former Federal Security Service officers. One of the Russians also previously worked for Russia’s Wagner Group private military company.

Interviews revealed that the Russians were charged with “gathering intelligence, protecting the vessel and ensuring the captain strictly adhered to Russian interests.” That provided “direct evidence of a shadow-fleet vessel linked to Russian intelligence structures,” according to the IISS report.

On March 30, 2026, a French court sentenced the Chinese captain in absentia to one year in prison and issued an arrest warrant after convicting him of failing to comply with orders to stop his ship. The court also ordered the captain to pay a $172,000 fine.

The European response

The full report goes into much more detail about the movements of individual shadow fleet vessels during various drone incidents. But the overall picture of the possible Russian drone campaign suggests that the European response has been fragmented and uncoordinated for the most part so far.

The European Union is working to develop a European Drone Defence Initiative (EDDI) that would enable member countries to deploy interoperable counter-drone technologies for detecting, tracking, and shooting down or otherwise neutralizing drones. But the system is not expected to be fully functional until the end of 2027.

The IISS report also warns that “no amount of hardware will compensate for the absence of political authority to use it,” and suggests that European governments need to better coordinate to establish legal clarity around rules of engagement for drone incursions.

Then there is the “hardest” problem of maritime accountability, according to the IISS report. That will require European governments to be more willing to investigate and stop Russian-linked ships and shadow fleet vessels from loitering near European coasts while launching drones with “effective impunity.”

Indonesia needs China’s know-how, not just its cash and contracts

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Indonesia needs China’s know-how, not just its cash and contracts

For more than a decade, Indonesia has measured its economic partnership with China in dollars and cents. The numbers are certainly impressive: Chinese companies have poured billions into nickel processing, industrial estates, power plants and, more recently, electric vehicle batteries.

In late June, Indonesia and China’s CATL broke ground on a lithium-ion battery plant in West Java that is expected to begin operating by the end of 2026. It is part of a $6 billion supply chain stretching from nickel mining to battery recycling.

By those measures, Indonesia has done well. But there is another way to judge whether an industrial strategy is working, and it receives far less attention. After years of Chinese investment, what technologies can Indonesian companies develop today that they could not develop ten years ago? That question matters because investment and technological progress are not the same thing.

Indonesia’s nickel industry illustrates why. The government’s downstream policy has fundamentally changed the industry. Instead of exporting raw ore, Indonesia now produces intermediate products such as mixed hydroxide precipitate (MHP), an important ingredient for battery production.

Yet much of the higher-value processing still takes place elsewhere. Battery materials such as lithium iron phosphate (LFP), which has become the dominant battery chemistry in China, are largely produced outside Indonesia before batteries are assembled domestically.

There is nothing unusual about participating in global supply chains — every manufacturing economy does. The more important question is whether Indonesia is gradually moving into the parts of the supply chain where products are designed, manufacturing processes are improved and intellectual property is created.

Those are the activities that generate lasting industrial strength, and China understood this long before it became the world’s manufacturing powerhouse.

When Beijing welcomed foreign manufacturers in the 1980s and 1990s, the objective was never simply to create jobs or increase exports. Investment became one way of acquiring knowledge.

Chinese firms learned through joint ventures, supplier networks, research institutes and deliberate industrial policies. Over time, they stopped assembling products designed elsewhere and began competing with the companies that had once taught them.

Indonesia has successfully attracted Chinese capital. Whether it has built equally strong institutions for absorbing Chinese technology, however, is much less obvious. One reason is that technology transfer is still discussed as though it happens automatically, but in reality technology has to be successfully absorbed.

Engineers need opportunities to master production processes. Local suppliers need incentives to move beyond manufacturing components and into designing them. Universities need stronger links with industry so that research finds its way onto factory floors instead of remaining in academic journals.

Indonesia’s debate often feels incomplete on this point. Investment figures are announced with great enthusiasm. Export values are carefully tracked. New factories become symbols of success. Yet there is remarkably little discussion about how to measure technology transfer itself.

How many Indonesian engineers have moved into senior technical positions? Which investment projects have generated patents owned by Indonesian firms? So far, there is little public data to answer either question, and without answers, technology transfer remains more an aspiration than a policy.

The structure of investment also deserves closer attention. Indonesia generally treats foreign investors as though they all contribute knowledge in similar ways, but that assumption deserves closer scrutiny.

Partnerships with Chinese state-owned enterprises may create different opportunities for technological learning than projects led by private companies with primarily commercial priorities. That difference should not be assumed — it should be studied.

The same thinking applies beyond industry. Some Chinese academics have questioned why many Indonesian universities appear more interested in establishing commercial companies than strengthening the links between research laboratories and manufacturers.

The criticism may be overstated, but it points to a genuine issue: strong industrial economies depend on effective “lab-to-fab” systems that move ideas from research into production. Indonesia has spent years building factories; it now needs to devote equal attention to building those connections.

China’s own economic transition may create new opportunities. Years of fierce competition have left much of China’s solar industry struggling with falling prices and shrinking profits. Some of the country’s biggest solar manufacturers are responding by expanding aggressively into battery storage, where margins are stronger and demand is growing faster.

For Indonesia, this changing landscape is worth watching. China itself accelerated its technological rise in the years following the 2008 global financial crisis by acquiring distressed foreign companies, particularly in Germany, to gain access to patents, engineering talent and advanced manufacturing expertise. Indonesia has rarely, if ever, discussed pursuing a similar strategy.

This is where Danantara, Indonesia’s new sovereign investment fund, could eventually play a larger role. Instead of looking only at financial returns or domestic infrastructure projects, it could identify opportunities to acquire technology, intellectual property and engineering capabilities while valuations in parts of China’s clean-tech sector remain under pressure.

None of this would replace foreign investment, nor should it. Indonesia still needs foreign investment, just as it needs strong economic ties with China. But the next phase of that relationship should be judged differently. The first decade was about bringing factories to Indonesia.

The next should be about ensuring that the knowledge behind those factories no longer remains somewhere else.

Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat is director of the China-Indonesia and MENA-Indonesia desks at the Center of Economic and Law Studies (CELIOS), a Jakarta-based think tank.

FIFA Gives Trump Exactly What He Wants

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Nick Turse
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FIFA Gives Trump Exactly What He Wants


President Donald Trump regularly resorts to bluster and threats to get his way — from efforts to overturn election results to campaigning for international prizes — often with little success. But in FIFA, he has finally found a pliant partner to massage his ego and do his bidding.

In a highly unusual move this weekend, the international soccer federation reversed a suspension of a top U.S. player after a personal intervention by Trump, undermining the integrity of the game, according to experts.

Trump personally called FIFA President Gianni Infantino, following a win by the U.S. men’s soccer team in the FIFA World Cup last week, and asked him to review the one-game suspension of striker Folarin Balogun, the team’s top goal scorer. On Sunday, FIFA reversed course, announcing Balogun would be eligible to play in the upcoming U.S. match against Belgium. It was the first time that FIFA has nullified a suspension for a red card received during the World Cup in 64 years.

“Thank you to FIFA for doing what was right, and reversing a great injustice!” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sunday. 

The Union of European Football Associations expressed “disbelief at such an unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable decision” that it said undermined not just the tournament but soccer itself.

“Football, like any other sports, relies on rules, which are the basis for fair, honest and transparent competition,” UEFA said in a statement. “When the certainty of rules is no longer guaranteed by its guardians, the integrity of the game is at stake and the credibility of a competition is undermined.”

On Monday, Trump described FIFA referee Raphael Claus, who gave Balogun the red card after a review suggested by the video assistant referee, as “very suspect” — an apparent reference to past accusations of match fixing.

Asked if his intervention with Infantino created a troubling precedent which would lead other world leaders to attempt to exert influence over soccer, Trump dismissed concerns. “I had nothing to do with the decision,” he said on Monday. “What I did have to do is, I said, I think this should be reviewed.”

The red card reversal is not FIFA’s first concession to Trump. After years of lobbying and begging by Trump failed to win him a Nobel Peace Prize, FIFA created its own peace prize last year and presented it to Trump.

FIFA signed a partnership agreement with Trump’s so-called Board of Peace to “foster investment into football for the purpose of helping the recovery process in post conflict areas,” Infantino announced earlier this year. Trump controls the Board of Peace’s finances as its chair, creating what looks to be a massive slush fund. For the past year, FIFA has also leased office space at Trump Tower in New York City.

For more than six months, FIFA has ducked questions from The Intercept about the Peace Prize and the organization’s fealty to Trump. FIFA spokesperson Jhamie Chin did not reply to repeated questions about the federation’s recent capitulation over Balogun’s suspension.

Trump undercutting the credibility of the single largest and most-watched sporting event in the world mirrors his long-running efforts to weaken the electoral process in the United States and undermine the integrity of elections. Trump is currently attempting to force Congress to pass legislation — the SAVE America Act — which threatens to increase the difficulty or block the ability to vote for millions of eligible American citizens, justifying the legislation with false claims of voter fraud. According to research by the Brennan Center for Justice, more than 21 million citizens do not have ready access to a birth certificate, a passport, or naturalization papers that would be needed to comply with a so-called “show your papers” provision.

For years, Trump has regularly peddled fictions about “rigged” elections, including his 2020 presidential election loss to Joe Biden. After the 2020 election, the results were certified, and 61 of 62 lawsuits challenging the results of the election failed. Trump refused, however, to accept the facts and continues to peddle the lie that he won the 2020 race. Since then, Trump has regularly claimed, without offering evidence, that Democratic electoral victories are the result of fraud. Most recently, he claimed, without any proof, that the Los Angeles mayoral race was “rigged” against former reality star Spencer Pratt.

Trump said on Monday that he would view a victory by Belgium in the same light. “If they beat us, I say it was rigged, just like the election was rigged in 2020,” he announced.

In awarding him its inaugural peace prize, FIFA said that Trump was “recognised for his tireless efforts to promote peace.” In the five-plus years Trump has been in the White House, alone, the U.S. has been embroiled in more than 20 military interventions, armed conflicts, and wars, according to an analysis by The Intercept.

Chin deflected when asked in February how FIFA could ignore Trump’s constant war-making. The spokesperson failed to respond to repeated follow-up questions on Monday.

Amid Mounting War Casualties, Pete Hegseth “Defunded and Impeded” Efforts to Protect Civilians, Lawmakers Say

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Hannah Allam
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Amid Mounting War Casualties, Pete Hegseth “Defunded and Impeded” Efforts to Protect Civilians, Lawmakers Say

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

Ten Democratic lawmakers told Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in a letter Sunday that his gutting of a program focused on protecting civilians is a leadership failure that imperils service members and erodes the military’s moral standing.

Led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., the joint letter echoed concerns raised by a recent Defense Department inspector general report that described civilian protection efforts as largely “inactive.” Lawmakers also cited reporting by ProPublica and other news outlets in pushing to preserve the framework known as civilian harm mitigation and response, or CHMR.

“The Trump administration — potentially in violation of federal law — has defunded and impeded civilian protection efforts,” the lawmakers asserted.

A Pentagon spokesperson declined to answer questions from ProPublica, noting: “As with all congressional correspondence, the Department will respond directly to the authors.”

The retreat from civilian protection drew global attention in February when an apparent U.S. strike killed dozens of children and teachers at a school on the first day of the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran — an incident the Pentagon says is under investigation.

Beyond those deaths, conflict monitoring groups have recorded a surge in reports of civilian casualties, most notably in Somalia and Yemen, which have both seen a dramatic increase in U.S. strikes under the second Trump administration.

In March, ProPublica interviewed current and former national security officials across party lines who said the discarding of civilian protections is part of a broader remaking of the military around two key principles: more aggression, less accountability.

The harm mitigation leadership, housed in a specialized Civilian Protection Center of Excellence mandated by Congress in 2022, aimed to reduce the number of civilian casualties of U.S. military operations, a problem that has spanned administrations in the post-9/11 “forever wars.”

The idea was to embed prevention specialists within targeting teams and foster a culture that prioritizes civilian security in accordance with U.S. law and international rules of war. Senior military leaders have publicly supported the mission, expressing both a moral obligation to safeguard civilian life and a necessity to hit their intended targets.

The program was still being rolled out when momentum halted under Hegseth.

In the spring of 2025, as U.S. operations in Yemen reportedly killed dozens of civilians, the Defense Department was scrapping the CHMR mission as out of step with Hegseth’s “lethality” doctrine, according to current and former staffers. Hegseth repeatedly has expressed disdain for guardrails he describes as hindrances to combat forces.

By the time of the Iran school strike, current and former personnel told ProPublica, the protection mission had been slashed by about 90%, leaving just a handful of staffers to monitor civilian harm issues even as the Defense Department accelerated the strike tempo across swaths of Africa and the Middle East.

Militant groups exploit civilian casualties to gain recruits and support, a practice retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who commanded U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, has called “insurgent math”: For every innocent killed, the theory goes, at least 10 new enemies are created.

“The Trump administration’s military adventurism overseas, combined with its obvious disregard for civilians, do not make the American people or our service members safer,” the 10 Democrats said in their letter to Hegseth.

Three signees are military veterans: Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona and Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado.

The letter ended with 20 questions the lawmakers want answered by July 9, including requests for the latest CHMR staffing and funding numbers, and an explanation for why the department wasn’t cooperative with the inspector general’s inquiry.

Current and former CHMR personnel said it’s impossible to know whether a more robust prevention team could’ve helped the military avoid civilian casualties in Yemen and Iran. But they said the program could have made a difference, providing transparency and immediate inquiries into civilian deaths.

Within days of the strike on the elementary school adjacent to an Iranian military compound in Minab, open-source investigative outlets surfaced video showing a U.S.-made Tomahawk missile likely was responsible. The Washington Post, citing officials familiar with the Minab inquiry, reported that the school was on a U.S. target list and “may have been mistaken for a military site.”

A partially destroyed building, with piles of rubble and school desks in front of it.
Over 150 students and staff members of the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in Iran were killed in a missile strike. Stringer/Anadolu via Getty Images

Nearly five months later, the Trump administration has yet to explain what happened.

“The command investigation will take as long as necessary to address all the matters surrounding this incident,” Hegseth said in March.

Annie Shiel, U.S. director of the Center for Civilians in Conflict, which advocates for the protection of noncombatants in warfare, said congressional support is “critical” at a moment when the CHMR mission hangs in the balance.

“The department is violating U.S. laws and policies that have grown out of hard-learned lessons from past wars and garnered bipartisan support across multiple administrations,” Shiel said.

Plan Sprung From Civilian Deaths

Historically, the military’s prioritizing of civilian protection has followed a pattern, analysts say: A catastrophic incident kills civilians, the Pentagon pledges reviews and reforms, the issue recedes from view and oversight slips until the next disaster.

During the Biden administration’s chaotic withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan in August 2021, a missile strike in Kabul killed an aid worker and nine of his relatives, including seven children. Then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin apologized and said the department would “endeavor to learn from this horrible mistake.”

That incident, along with a New York Times investigation into deaths from U.S. airstrikes, spurred the adoption of the civilian harm mitigation and response action plan in 2022. Proponents didn’t view the plan as a cure-all but called it a step toward breaking the cycle of intermittent attention by making civilian protection a year-round mission.

Now that mission is in limbo, and, according to the May inspector general’s report, defense leadership “withheld access” to department tools that track the program’s implementation.

“You are in violation of the law right now on civilian harm,” Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., told Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll at a hearing in May. “I’d like to know either A. what the explanation is for why you think it’s OK for you to ignore the law that this Congress passes or B. what you’re planning to do to fix that problem.”

The new letter comes as critics, including some Republicans and veteran commanders, grow increasingly vocal about Hegseth’s attempts to overhaul the Department of Defense, which the Trump administration refers to as the Department of War.

The secretary’s sweeping terminations of high-ranking officers without public explanation has drawn bipartisan criticism and accusations that the moves are rooted in political vengeance, racism and bias against women. Hegseth has repeatedly condemned military officers for comments lauding diversity, saying in one speech, “We became ‘the woke department.’ … We’re done with that shit.”

Hegseth has said that out of respect for the officers he won’t speak about why they were fired. He said it was “very difficult to change the culture of a department that was destroyed by the wrong perspectives with the same officers that were there.”

Public rebukes followed Hegseth’s decision last month to effectively fire Gen. Chris Donahue, a respected four-star commander who came up the ranks through the special forces. In 2023, Donahue said that any concerns over wokeness were “BS,” adding: “We’re focused on people, war-fighting and making sure that we’re prepared for the next fight. There ain’t no ‘woke’ here.”

FCC to end Biden-era rule that forces ISPs to list all their fees

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FCC to end Biden-era rule that forces ISPs to list all their fees

The Federal Communications Commission will vote to eliminate a rule that requires Internet service providers to list all of their so-called “passthrough” fees on an easily accessible broadband price label. The FCC vote could also make the price labels themselves a bit harder for consumers to find.

ISPs routinely advertise prices much lower than those actually charged to consumers on their monthly bills. One method of raising monthly bill prices above advertised rates is to tack on fees that, ISPs claim, are used to offset charges imposed by local governments.

ISPs would be well within their rights to advertise accurate monthly prices and charge those exact prices on monthly bills. But because ISPs rarely do that, the FCC has required them to make specific price disclosures to consumers for the past decade.

The Biden-era FCC updated the broadband-label rules to require that ISPs “itemize on the label all discretionary monthly fees that the provider passes through to the consumer.” The change drew protest from Comcast and other ISPs that complained bitterly about the complexity of listing all the hidden fees they had chosen to charge.

Under Chairman Brendan Carr, the Trump FCC has steadily whittled away at requirements imposed under Democrats. An order released in draft form last week would eliminate the requirement to itemize passthrough fees and let ISPs list them in a single “up to” amount. The “up to” amount can include both government fees and fees charged by non-government entities such as owners of utility poles.

“Rather than continuing to require providers to itemize ‘passthrough fees’ that can vary by location, we allow providers to display such fees in the aggregate, either as a maximum or ‘up to’ amount for the total fees applicable in any location where the service plan is offered, or as the exact total of such fees assessed in a particular location,” the FCC draft order said.

Making price info less accessible

The order to be voted on later this month includes a few other changes that will please ISPs and their lobby groups. ISPs will be allowed to provide links to price labels instead of displaying the full labels prominently on ordering pages and account portals, and will be allowed to stop making the price-label information available in machine-readable spreadsheets.

The FCC is also relaxing the requirement that price information be available over the phone. The FCC said the change will “allow phone sales representatives to present label information conversationally, as a summary of key label fields, rather than require verbatim recitation.”

The changes have been in the works since October 2025, when the FCC issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to let the public submit comments on the proposals. The outcome of that process is the draft order, which will be voted on at the FCC’s July 22 meeting and take effect 30 days after it is published in the Federal Register.

There are many types of passthrough fees that ISPs will be able to stop listing individually and roll into the “up to” amount. The FCC defined the fees as follows, saying they include just about anything that isn’t a tax:

For purposes of this Report and Order, “passthrough fees” are monthly charges that 1) are imposed by a government entity or third-party infrastructure owner rather than set by the provider itself; 2) represent costs the provider chooses to pass through to consumers rather than rolling them into the base monthly price; and 3) vary by consumer location. For example, “passthrough fees” include state and local right-of-way fees, pole attachment fees imposed by third-party pole owners, and similar charges. “Passthrough fees” do not include taxes.

If ISPs wanted to make things simpler for consumers, they could treat these non-tax expenses as the cost of doing business and incorporate them into their advertised monthly prices. The prices consumers ultimately pay might not change if advertised prices were accurate, but it would be easier for regular people to figure out what they’ll pay when they sign up for service.

Junk fees, hidden charges

A planned change mentioned earlier in this article will likely result in fewer consumers seeing the price labels at all. Instead of displaying the full label at the point of sale and in each customer’s account portal, ISPs will be allowed to use hyperlinks to direct potential buyers and current customers to the labels displaying the full price information.

“While using hyperlinks to broadband labels instead of displaying the labels automatically may result in fewer consumers reading the label, interested consumers still have the opportunity to view the broadband label,” the FCC said.

It may become more difficult for third parties to collect price data because the FCC intends to eliminate the requirement that ISPs provide the price-label contents separately in machine-readable spreadsheet files on their websites. ISPs will still have to make the information accessible to people with disabilities by making the labels compatible with screen readers and other assistive technologies.

Public interest groups urged the FCC to scrap the planned changes during the comment period. The changes will make “the problem of junk fees, hidden charges, and difficult-to-understand billing worse, which could result in the widening of the digital divide. The Commission must not weaken oversight by allowing ISPs to operate without transparency, evade accountability, and entrench abusive practices,” a January 2026 filing said.

The filing was submitted by Public Knowledge, the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, the Open Technology Institute at New America, the National Consumer Law Center, the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. The groups said that scrapping the fee-itemization rule “would strip consumers of critical pricing transparency and invite providers to mask charges they choose to pass along to consumers. Allowing providers to forgo itemization is similar to permitting hospitals to send bills to patients with no explanation of charges, medication, or facility fees.”

The groups urged the FCC to preserve machine-readable price information, saying it “clearly benefits consumers by aiding in the development of comparison shopping tools and aggregate market research.” The groups also said that “telephone-based disclosures remain essential to informed consumer decision-making” because they “serve as an important safeguard against scams and misleading offers that may reach consumers via mailers, e-mail, text messages, fake/scam websites, or robocalls.”

ISPs get what they asked for

Another planned change will eliminate a requirement that providers archive all labels for at least two years after a service plan is no longer available. The Utility Reform Network, an advocacy group, told the FCC that the archived labels provide crucial data about how prices and services change over time, and that machine-readable labels are important for affordability research and information accessibility.

The Utility Reform Network also said that itemization of passthrough fees helps prevent bill shock. Displaying an “up to” price instead “would only serve to dilute the effectiveness of the label and increase consumer confusion around how the final price they pay is calculated,” the group said.

Cable and telecom lobby groups submitted comments supporting the FCC plan to eliminate or relax various requirements.

“The Commission correctly highlights the complexity and burdens providers have had to undertake to display all ‘charges that providers impose at their discretion, i.e., charges not mandated by a government’—including the passthrough of government-imposed fees,” USTelecom said. “To comply with this government-imposed fees requirement, providers must create and update hundreds of different labels to account for geographic variability and to ensure that their systems properly queue the label specific to the proper location when the customer inputs their address.”

USTelecom said that requiring machine-readable information is only helpful for “third-party researchers who are not the intended beneficiaries of the label” and “has no clear purpose or benefit except for third parties seeking to mine this information.”

Urging the FCC to stop requiring the listing of all fees, cable lobby group NCTA said it is burdensome “to create and maintain labels for each and every combination of government passthrough fees.” The NCTA complained that this rule and others “are unnecessary or unhelpful in informing consumers about the services that providers offer and impose an outsized compliance burden on providers.”

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