"While Americans worry about skyrocketing costs and another endless war, President Trump is focused on a taxpayer-funded vanity project," said Rep. Don Beyer. |
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On the same day that the US Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that inflation spiked at its fastest monthly rate in four years, the Trump administration unveiled renderings of President Donald Trump’s proposed gold-covered 250-foot-tall arch to be built at Memorial Circle in Washington, DC.
The renderings, which were produced by architecture firm Harrison Design and posted on social media by the White House’s rapid response account, show a gigantic arch that would be flanked on its corners by four gold lions and topped by a 60-foot-tall gold statue of what appears to be an angel.
According to a Friday report in The Washington Post, some preservationists have expressed concerns that the arch, which would be more than twice the height of the Lincoln Monument, would disproportionately tower over the DC skyline, and would block views of Arlington National Cemetery.
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) slammed the president for pushing construction of a gaudy gold-covered arch at a time when Americans are struggling due to the cost-of-living crisis worsened by his war in Iran.
“While Americans worry about skyrocketing costs and another endless war,” he wrote in a social media post, “President Trump is focused on a taxpayer-funded vanity project that would choke traffic, block our skyline, and tower over sacred ground where those who served our nation are buried, including my own parents and sister.”
Beyer added that the arch is “about Donald Trump’s ego,” and vowed, “we’re going to stop it.”
Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) responded to the renderings by reminding the White House that “Americans can’t afford groceries.”
Progressive activist Nina Turner had a similar reaction to Clark, posting that “people can’t afford rent” in response to the renderings.
Podcaster Brian Taylor Cohen contrasted the renderings of the arch with a statement Trump made earlier this month when he said “it’s not possible” for the federal government “to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things,” because it needs to fund wars instead.
University of Missouri English professor Karen Piper also remarked on the opportunity cost of building the arch, along with other assorted Trump projects.
“This is why they’re going to take away your Social Security, saying we can’t afford it,” she wrote. “Ballrooms, arches, and Don Jr. draining the Treasury.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has been named as a contender for the Democratic Party’s 2028 presidential nomination, responded to the arch renderings by accusing Trump of “doing everything he can to wreck this country—this time with our nation’s capital.”
Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) took issue with the decision to inscribe the phrase “one nation under God” at the top of the arch.
“That phrase came from Cold War propaganda, not our Founders,” observed Huffman. “Trump stamping it on his vanity arch tells you everything about what this project is: a Christian nationalist monument, paid for with your tax dollars.”
"Billionaire-funded super PACs—AIPAC, AI, crypto, and others—are spending hundreds of millions to defeat any candidate who crosses them. They should be banned from Democratic primaries. Period." |
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Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders on Friday called for a total ban on dark money a day after the Democratic National Committee voted down a resolution that would have condemned the leading US pro-Israel lobby, which has spent nine figures on US elections over the past five years.
The DNC Resolutions Committee rejected the resolution, which condemned “the growing influence” of dark money and corporate-backed outside spending on Democratic races, specifically calling out the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee. United Democracy Project, AIPAC’s dark money arm, unleashed a $100 million blitz targeting progressives during the 2024 election cycle.
When combined with other pro-Israel lobby groups, like GOP megadonor Miriam Adelson’s Preserve America PAC, that figure soars to over $200 million, according to the public interest group AIPAC Tracker.
Instead, the DNC panel opted for a broader resolution decrying the influence of dark money—defined as undisclosed independent campaign contributions—in the 2026 Democratic primaries.
“The DNC just passed a resolution condemning dark money,” Sanders (Vt.) said Friday on X. “That’s a start, but not enough.”
“Billionaire-funded super PACs—AIPAC, AI, crypto, and others—are spending hundreds of millions to defeat any candidate who crosses them,” the senator added. “They should be banned from Democratic primaries. Period.”
Sanders campaigned twice for president, centering his opposition to the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling, which effectively ushered in the modern era of secret unlimited political spending.
According to the Brennan Center for Justice, dark money spending in federal elections has skyrocketed from negligible amounts before 2010 to over $1.9 billion in the 2024 cycle alone, with over $4 billion in total undisclosed outside financing following the high court’s contentious ruling.
Polling has repeatedly affirmed that support for Israel—which stands accused in the International Court of Justice of committing genocide in Gaza and has already been found by the ICJ to be illegally occupying Palestine under apartheid rule—is detrimental to Democrats.
The DNC’s own suppressed postmortem of the 2024 presidential election also showed that former President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’ unconditional support for Israel cost Harris votes.
As AIPAC has grown more toxic to US voters amid a litany of Israeli atrocities in Gaza and the West Bank under the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza—a growing number of Democrats, including some who once welcomed the group’s support, are turning their backs on the lobby.
“AIPAC really is not an organization that I think today I would want any part of,” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said last month after affiliated groups poured $22 million into House races in his state.
While AIPAC cash was instrumental in unseating congressional progressives including former Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) and Cori Bush (D-Mo.), its largesse failed to oust others, including Reps. Summer Lee (D-Pa.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.).
Sanders wasn’t the only one to criticize the DNC’s rejection of the anti-AIPAC resolution.
“The American people are clear: They want our government to invest in life and stop funding the bombs that are destroying lives in Palestine, Lebanon, and Iran,” Jewish Voice for Peace political director Beth Miller said Friday.
“The DNC‘s failure to pass this simple resolution condemning the outsized spending of an extremist and Republican-funded group like AIPAC in Democratic primaries shows how wildly out of touch the party is with its base,” Miller added.
"Everybody is hurt by what he's celebrating," one public employee union official told Common Dreams. "I guess it's just par for the course from this administration, but it's still a disgusting thing to hear."President Donald Trump’s top economic adviser boasted on Fox Business Thursday that the government had slashed more than 300,000 “high-paying” jobs from the federal payroll during the president’s first year back in office. Asked by anchor Maria Bartiromo about the administration’s efforts to cut government spending, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said it had made “a huge amount of progress.” “I think the biggest thing that we can point to is that we’ve cut government employment by 300,000 workers,” he said. “Those are jobs that are very high-paying that are gone forever.” He claimed the cuts reduced government spending by “an unthinkable amount of money,” perhaps $1 trillion over the next ten years. He also said that the administration “reduced the deficit last year by $600 billion” through a combination of higher-than-expected economic growth, tariff revenues, and “supply side effects” of Trump’s massive tax cut, which mostly benefited the wealthiest Americans while gutting the social safety net. Dean Baker, a longtime collaborator of Hassett’s despite their opposing political beliefs, wrote on social media that Trump’s economic adviser was dramatically exaggerating the deficit reduction that occurred during the administration’s first year. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the deficit was about $1.8 trillion for fiscal year 2025, just $41 billion less than the previous year and $56 billion lower than the $1.9 trillion deficit CBO projected in its most recent baseline. “In the real world, the deficit fell... less than one-tenth of what Kevin claims,” Baker said. Trump has touted the layoffs of hundreds of thousands of government employees from their “boring federal jobs” as one of his crowning achievements. Among the agencies hit by mass layoffs were the Department of Veterans Affairs, where more than 12,700 employees got the axe; the Department of Health and Human Services, which lost more than 14,400 workers; the Social Security Administration, whose staff shrank by more than 6,600; and the Environmental Protection Agency, which lost more than 4,000 employees. Jacqueline Simon, policy director at the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the largest labor union representing federal workers, told Common Dreams that even if slashing jobs did reduce the deficit as Hassett claimed, the harm far outweighs any such benefit—not only for the fired employees, but for the millions of Americans who depend on services they provide. “When you say 300,000 jobs, it is a nice round number, and you link it to deficit reduction, which he was lying about,” Simon said. “The fact of the matter is, the disappearance of those 300,000 jobs means degraded healthcare for our veterans; slower or nonexistent service at the Social Security Administration for the elderly and disabled who rely on Social Security for their income; and the elimination of huge swaths of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that help ensure we have clean air to breathe and clean water to drink.” “You have federal prisons absolutely overwhelmed by too many inmates and too few corrections officers, endangering public safety,” she continued. “Consumer product safety has been eviscerated. There are also serious public health concerns involving substance abuse, childhood nutrition, and vaccinations.”
She decried Hassett’s comments as “ignorant” in light of his false claims about deficit reduction, but also “just demonstrably pretty cruel and disdainful” given the impact these job losses have on individuals, families, communities, and society as a whole. “It’s cruel,” Simon said, “not only on the people who held those jobs—about a 100,000 of whom are military veterans—but the impact of the disappearance of those jobs also falls on children, the elderly, anybody who consumes agricultural products, breathes air, or relies on clean water.” “Everybody is hurt by what he’s celebrating,” she added. “I guess it’s just par for the course from this administration, but it’s still a disgusting thing to hear.” | |
"Americans are drowning under rising costs, flat wages, high unemployment, and historic layoffs—it’s no wonder they’re concerned about how they’re going to make ends meet." |
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Two recently released surveys revealed a significant drop in Americans’ self-reported wellbeing as the Trump administration launches illegal and deadly military conflicts and plunges the global economy into chaos.
On Friday, the University of Michigan issued its monthly Survey of Consumers, which showed that consumer sentiment in the US hit an all-time low after dropping by 11% since March, amid President Donald Trump’s war of choice in Iran.
The drop in consumer sentiment was almost universal, the survey found, as “demographic groups across age, income, and political party all posted setbacks in sentiment, as did every component of the index, reflecting the widespread nature of this month’s fall.”
As for the reasons for the decline, the survey found “many consumers blame the Iran conflict for unfavorable changes to the economy,” such as a major spike in gas prices, which the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday increased by more than 20% in the month since the war began.
Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, noted that the latest consumer sentiment data showed Americans are even more sour on the economy now than they were in the summer of 2022, when the economy was dealing with the highest inflation it had seen in decades.
Kendall Witmer, rapid response director of the Democratic National Committee, seized on the consumer sentiment report and accused Trump of having “tanked the economy for working families.”
“Americans are drowning under rising costs, flat wages, high unemployment, and historic layoffs,” Witmer added. “It’s no wonder they’re concerned about how they’re going to make ends meet and Trump and [Vice President] JD Vance can’t be bothered to make life more affordable for them.”
The record low in consumer sentiment comes just weeks after Gallup released its annual World Happiness Report, which showed that the US had fallen out of its rankings of the 20 happiest countries in the world.
The report says the decrease in US happiness largely came from “lower life evaluations among young adults,” and points the finger at high social media use as a key factor in making young people miserable.
Specifically, the report finds “there is now overwhelming evidence of severe and widespread direct harms (such as sextortion and cyberbullying), and compelling evidence of troubling indirect harms (such as depression and anxiety)” from social media use, adding that “the harms and risks to individual users are so diverse and vast in scope that they justify the view that social media is causing harm at a population level.”
Social media’s impact on mental health has come into focus in recent weeks with juries in multiple states finding Big Tech companies liable for creating products that harm children.
In March, a New Mexico jury found social media giant Meta liable for harming children’s mental health and safety, ordering the company to pay $375 million. A day later, a Los Angeles jury ordered Meta and Google to each pay $3 million in civil damages to a now-20-year-old woman who alleged harm and suffering caused by their products when she was an adolescent.
Journalist Derek Thompson took stock of the Gallup survey and the University of Michigan survey, as well as last year’s General Social Survey that also documented a decline in US happiness, and declared, “America is not OK.”
"Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs." |
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