by Marianne Dhenin | Apr 7, 2026 | Article, Economy, Economy and Inequality, Politics and Movements: US, Reprint
This article was originally published by Truthout on April 06, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license.
When Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) was running roughshod over the Social Security Administration (SSA) last year, experts warned it could spell disaster for disabled, ill, and aging Americans who depend on its programs. A March 2026 report by the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF) and the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) offers insights into just how dire the situation has become.
“It seems that applications are taking longer and being denied more often and running into more errors in the process,” Matthew Borus, a professor at Binghamton University and one of the report’s authors, told Truthout.
The new report is based on interviews with more than 50 benefits specialists working at dozens of organizations nationwide that, together, assist about 8,000 claimants each year in obtaining and maintaining Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). Those programs provide financial assistance to about 13.5 million older Americans and those with disabilities.
The programs have long been criticized for their inadequacy and steep barriers to access. Now, things are getting worse. “It just feels like you’re banging your head against the wall,” Brenna, who is using a pseudonym for fear of retaliation against her organization or clients, told Truthout.
Brenna works as an attorney at a medical-legal partnership in Washington, D.C., an organization comparable to those interviewed for the DREDF and AAPD report. She helps vulnerable patients apply for SSI/SSDI.
“It seems that applications are taking longer and being denied more often and running into more errors in the process.”
“It becomes difficult to trust even what advice you can give
by Adam Johnson | Apr 5, 2026 | Article, Iran, Media Criticism, Opinion, Politics and Movements: International, Politics and Movements: US, War
The term “hostage” is broadly understood to be the illegitimate capture of a civilian in order to extract concessions from a government or military actor. A “prisoner of war” is broadly understood to be a combatant captured by an adversary in the course of a battle. The former conveys innocence on the part of the captured and illegitimacy, terrorism and criminality on the part of the capturer. The latter conveys a lawful and reasonable response to being attacked by another military actor. Thus, how and why our media is framing Iran’s response to the unprovoked attack by the US is of tremendous importance: any potential “hostage crisis” could be used to further escalate the conflict and rally public support behind increased military aggression on the part of the US-Israeli coalition.
So it’s noteworthy that the mere potential of a single American being captured by Iran is immediately being framed by western media as an illegitimate act of aggression on the part of the country he or she was bombing. Indeed, several major Western media outlets are already rushing to frame the capture of a prisoner of war as a “hostage”:
Times of London: “US fighter pilot feared to have been taken hostage by Iran”
BBC: “If the airman is taken hostage and images circulated, it will be a propaganda victory for Iran”
ABC News Australia: “If the missing pilot is taken hostage…” “A US pilot taken hostage…”
“US fighter pilot… taken hostage by Iran.” Let us stew in that Orwellian phrasing for a bit. Though they do not explicitly call the downed pilot is a “hostage,” the New York Times dutifully orients his capture squarely
by Glenn Diesen | Apr 3, 2026 | Article, Iran, Israel, Politics and Movements: International, Politics and Movements: US, Reprint, War
This story originally appeared in Professor Glenn Diesen’s Substack on April 2, 2026. This shortened, edited version is shared here with permission.
Joe Kent is the former US Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, who resigned in March 2026 due to the war against Iran.
“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran,” Kent wrote in his letter of resignation to President Donald Trump. “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”
I recently spoke with Kent about the mistake of attacking Iran and the intrusive influence of Israel over US foreign policy.
[Editor’s Note: The following transcript has been lightly edited for length and readability from the original full conversation, available here]
Joe Kent: As I said in my resignation letter, I believe that Iran posed no imminent threat to us; Iran was not on the cusp of attacking us. Since President Trump came back into office—and people with basic access to the internet can verify this—we watched the Iranians observe a very calculated escalation ladder.
They stopped their proxies from attacking us as they were attacking us under the Biden administration. When Trump came back into office, they sat at the negotiating table with us up until the 12-Day War and Operation Midnight Hammer. Now, mind you, during the 12-Day War, they didn’t attack us at all. Once we attacked them and hit their nuclear sites, they responded by firing an equal amount of missiles as we dropped bombs at a very empty quadrant on a base in Qatar. And then they
by Jake Johnson | Apr 3, 2026 | Article, Economy, Economy and Inequality, Military, Military Industrial Complex, Politics and Movements: US, Reprint
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on April 03, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
President Donald Trump’s White House released a budget proposal on Friday that pairs an unprecedented, debt-exploding $1.5 trillion in military spending with tens of billions of dollars in cuts to domestic agencies and education, healthcare, climate, and housing programs.
Trump’s budget request for fiscal year 2027, which must be approved by Congress, includes $73 billion in total cuts to nondefense spending while boosting military outlays by 42%—or nearly $500 billion—compared to current levels.
Programs cut or eliminated in the proposed budget—under the guise of slashing “woke programs” and “ending the Green New Scam”—include the Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Justice program, Community Services Block Grants, electric vehicle charging subsidies, renewable energy initiatives at the Interior Department, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and Pathways to Removing Obstacles to Housing.
The budget proposal also calls for cuts to the already-depleted Internal Revenue Service, without offering specific figures.
One budget expert noted that, if enacted, the White House’s requested cuts would bring nondefense discretionary spending to “its lowest level in the modern era.”
Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, wrote in response to Trump’s request that “to pay for his endless wars, he wants the biggest increase to military spending in 70 years.”
“How does he pay for it? Cuts to ‘education, health, housing, and more,’” Casar added. “Hell no.”
Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, said in a statement that “the Trump-Vought budget proposal is a moral obscenity,” referring to Russell Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget.
“The $500 billion annual increase in proposed Pentagon spending—if it were instead deployed humanely—would be enough to solve or meaningfully address the nation’s great problems, from healthcare to daycare,
by Branko Marcetic | Apr 3, 2026 | Article, Gaza, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Politics and Movements: International, Politics and Movements: US, Reprint, War
This story originally appeared in Jacobin on April 01, 2026. It is shared here with permission.
One of the most appalling aspects of the Gaza genocide — besides its near-unprecedented slaughter of children and other innocents and its near-obliteration from existence of an entire society, unpparalleled in the modern era — is that officials in both the United States and Israel were overtly hoping to make it the new, horrifying standard for modern war. As we’re seeing right now in Iran and Lebanon, they’re not wasting any time applying that standard elsewhere.
Last year, as Gaza lay in ruins with more than 10 percent of its population killed or injured, the New Yorker ran a chilling story related to the Gaza genocide. The magazine reported that a variety of US military lawyers and legal experts viewed Israel’s spree of murder and destruction in Gaza as not just a completely acceptable way to prosecute a war but as “a dress rehearsal” for a future conflict with a US adversary like China: namely, one free of restraint, adherence to international law, and squeamishness about killing civilians.
What Israel did with full US backing in Gaza, in other words, should be the new normal for war, at least when “our side” does it.
The report sat uncomfortably alongside a pattern of US and Israeli officials incessantly invoking the Allies’ carpet bombing campaigns during World War II to justify the genocide they carried out. For almost the entire period after the war, those bombing campaigns were universally understood to be war crimes and a moral horror — including by Curtis LeMay himself, the psychotic general who led the firebombing of Japan and later itched for nuclear war with the Soviet Union —
by Eleanor J. Bader | Apr 2, 2026 | Article, Economy and Inequality, education, labor, Politics and Movements: US, Reprint, Unions
This article was originally published by Truthout on April 01, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license.
Sixty-two years ago, St. John’s University (SJU) in New York City became the site of the first major faculty strike in U.S. history — a year-long conflict that followed the firing of 33 teachers, including three priests, without due process. Now, the struggle over labor conditions has forced the faculty to once again mobilize, a move precipitated by the current college administration’s abrupt announcement that it will no longer recognize two faculty unions or continue negotiations to hash out a new contract.
St. John’s president, Rev. Brian J. Shanley, and Provost and Senior Vice President Simon Geir Møller, told the National Catholic Reporter (NCR) that the move was necessary to give the college “the flexibility required to innovate … and deliver on our promise to our students.”
But faculty members, who had been demanding improved wages and greater transparency in how their share of health insurance premiums are calculated, call it union busting.
And while the university’s administrators did not respond to Truthout’s multiple requests for an interview, they told NCR that the decision rests on a 2020 decision promulgated by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). That decision, Bethany College, 369 NLRB No. 98, removed NLRB jurisdiction over most of the 849 religiously affiliated colleges and universities in the country and prompted at least eight predominantly Catholic schools — Bethany and Boston Colleges, and Duquesne, Edward Waters, Loyola Marymount, Marquette, St. Leo and Wilberforce universities — to end union recognition on campus.
Critics see this as part of a general rightward trend in higher education.
“The anti-union arguments that have emerged coincide
