(March 26, 2025)
The letter was organized by the Responsible Wealth Project in coordination with Americans for Tax Fairness and Voices for Progress, according to reports.
The group sent out a similar letter to Congress in 2022. A group of wealthy Americans also sent a letter to presidential candidates in 2020 urging them to tax the ultra-wealthy more for the benefit of most Americans.
(January 16, 2025)
The very richest Americans are among the biggest winners from President Joe Biden’s time in office, despite his farewell address warning of an “oligarchy” and a “tech industrial complex” that threaten US democracy.
The 100 wealthiest Americans got more than $1.5 trillion richer over the last four years, with tech tycoons including Elon Musk, Larry Ellison and Mark Zuckerberg leading the way, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The top 0.1% gained more than $6 trillion, Federal Reserve estimates through September show.
(Sept 13, 2023(
At the Private and Public Sector Entity Levels. (In trillions of U.S. dollars)
PRIVATE SECTOR:
Households 121.9
Nonprofits 8.6
Noncorporate businesses 17.2
Total U.S. Private Sector 147.7
PUBLIC SECTOR:
Federal government – 21.3
State and local government 11.5
Total U.S. Public Sector – 9.8
Instrument discrepancies – 1.1
TOTAL U.S. WEALTH 136.8
Relatedly, substantial percentages of both independents and Republicans stressed that they felt the Democratic Party is untrustworthy, either because they lie or because they are corrupt. One Republican respondent reported feeling that the Democratic Party “has become extremely corrupt while pointing the blame at others. [They are] more interested in helping themselves than helping their constituents.” Along similar lines, an independent respondent charged that the Democrats were the “party of the rich and fraudulent.”
The contrast between this and the “Fighting Oligarchy” message could hardly be starker. Where Sanders and AOC have been crisscrossing the country promoting the message that Trump should be rejected because he’s a servant of wealthy and powerful “titans of industry,” Harris wants to appeal to the oligarchs themselves to save us from the “communist” Trump.
California governor Gavin Newsom recently took a similar line. In his appearance on the Pivot podcast, Newsom responded to host Kara Swisher’s question about Mamdani by bringing up Trump’s deal with Intel, whereby the government agreed to buy almost 10 percent of the company’s stock.
Mamdani and Trump, the governor suggested, weren’t so different. Newsom said it “sounds like Trump’s been paying a lot of attention to” Mamdani, given Trump’s “desire to socialize great American companies.” Just like Mamdani wants to start a few municipally owned grocery stores in New York, Trump wants to do something similar, Newsom contended, through public ownership of a slice of Intel. According to Newsom, it’s “just perverse” that someone like Mamdani could be “shaping the Democratic Party in the context of the socialist brand” when Democrats should be pointing out every day that Trump “is the leading nationalist and socialist of our time.”
(September 2, 2025)
„There was a time where you couldn‘t speak bad, if you wanted to be a politician, you couldn‘t speak badly. But today, you have, you know, AOC plus three, and you have all these lunatics, and they‘ve really, they‘ve changed it. You‘re too young to know this, but if you go back 15 years, probably that‘s when it started… Israel was the strongest lobby I‘ve ever seen. They had total control over Congress, and now they don‘t, you know, I‘m a little surprised to see that. And people, they forgot about October 7th. You know, October 7th was a truly horrible day, because I‘ve seen the pictures,“ Trump elaborated.
(September 2, 2025)
In an interview with The Daily Caller, Trump said that because of left-wing U.S. politicians rallying against Israel and the growing unpopularity of its war in Gaza, the country is losing influence.
„Israel, you would understand this very much, Israel was the strongest lobby I’ve ever seen. They had total control over Congress, and now they don’t, you know, I’m a little surprised to see that,“ he said.
(June 20, 2025)
Polling shows Americans are ready to support independent populists running on economic platforms. But what they don’t want is anything associated with the Democratic Party’s brand.
How about a new second party instead of a third party?
Mossad chief David Barnea, and US Congressmen Rick Crawford, Josh Gottheimer and Ronny Jackson were present at the meeting, adds the PMO, without providing further details.
In a separate statement, the PMO says that Netanyahu met yesterday evening with an AIPAC-organized delegation of Republican US members of Congress.
(July 29, 2025)
A new poll from Gallup, conducted in July, shows that only 32 percent of Americans approve of Israel’s “military action taken in Gaza,” down 10 percentage points since last September. Among Democrats, only 8 percent support Israel’s actions, the lowest approval rating to date. Compare that to 25 percent of independents and a robust 71 percent of Republicans.
The first of two votes pushed by progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders — which came to 27-70 — renewed efforts to halt American weapons transfers in protest of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and a deepening humanitarian crisis. Democrats split on the vote, with 12 new supporters who previously backed arms sales to Israel.
(March 17, 2025)
Step one: buy. The average American derives most of their disposable income from the wages they earn working a job, but the superrich are different. They amass their fortune by buying and owning assets that appreciate.
(…)
Instead of selling their assets to make major purchases, the superrich can use them as collateral to secure loans, which, because they must eventually be repaid, are also not considered taxable income.
(…)
According to a provision of the tax code known as “stepped-up basis”—or, more evocatively, the “angel of death” loophole—when an individual dies, the value that their assets gained during their lifetime becomes immune to taxation.
(…)
“Only morons pay the estate tax,” Gary Cohn, a former Goldman Sachs executive and the then–chief economic adviser to Donald Trump, memorably remarked in 2017.
The poll, released on May 30 by Atlas Intel, found Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and former transportation secretary in the Biden administration, to be the top pick among Democrats who responded to the survey.
(May 28, 2025)
These findings add to the evidence not only that support for Palestinian rights and a Palestinian state are far higher than many within the political establishment have been willing to acknowledge, but that Democrats’ refusal to take these issues seriously has become a severe political liability.
Yet over four months into the Trump presidency, even as it positions itself as the party defending democracy, the Democratic establishment has failed to respond to public sentiment and signal any serious shift in its support for Israel.
(February 23, 2017)
For those progressives ready to make the leap to another party, there are various options to consider. To begin with, there are the left third parties that existed prior to 2016, including but not limited to the Vermont Progressive Party, the Green Party, Socialist Alternative, and the Justice Party. Most of these groups have demonstrated that they are capable of winning elections, under the right conditions and with strong enough candidates. All seem to have gotten some boost from the energy generated by the Sanders campaign.
There also are a couple of bold new attempts by Berners to found their own parties, which may appeal more directly to Bernie’s huge base. One is the Progressive Independent Party; it aims to create a coalition of third parties and likeminded groups on the left. The other is the Draft Bernie for a People’s Party movement, which actually seeks to recruit Bernie Sanders to found a new progressive populist party.
„Democratic voters are sending a clear message: They want leaders who will fight Trump and put working people first,“ said Danielle Deiseroth, executive director of Data for Progress, the progressive think tank behind the surveys. „The base is tired of weak opposition and business-as-usual politics.“
„This level of discontent is unsustainable for a party looking to build back in the wake of major losses—at a certain point, Democratic leaders will need to show voters that they are taking a stronger stance against Trump, or step aside for someone who will,“ Deiseroth added.
“The evidence collected by the Commission reveals a deplorable increase in sexual and gender-based violence,” said Navi Pillay, Chair of the Commission. “There is no escape from the conclusion that Israel has employed sexual and gender-based violence against Palestinians to terrorise them and perpetuate a system of oppression that undermines their right to self-determination.”
The release of the report was accompanied by two days of public hearings held in Geneva on 11-12 March, during which the Commission heard from victims and witnesses of sexual and reproductive violence and medical personnel who assisted them, as well as representatives from civil society, academics, lawyers and medical experts.
The report found that sexual and gender-based violence – which has risen in frequency and severity – is being perpetrated across the Occupied Palestinian Territory as a strategy of war for Israel to dominate and destroy the Palestinian people.
Specific forms of sexual and gender-based violence – such as forced public stripping and nudity, sexual harassment including threats of rape, as well as sexual assault – comprise part of the Israeli Security Forces’ standard operating procedures toward Palestinians.
Other forms of sexual and gender-based violence, including rape and violence to the genitals, were committed either under explicit orders or with implicit encouragement by Israel’s top civilian and military leadership, the report said.
A U.N. report released Thursday accused Israel of carrying out “systematic” gender-based violence during its 17-month war in the Gaza Strip, including by shelling fertility clinics and hospital maternity wards, causing maternal deaths by blocking aid deliveries, and subjecting male and female detainees to sexual humiliation or abuse.
The 49-page report, by a U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry, said that “Israeli authorities have destroyed in part the reproductive capacity of the Palestinians in Gaza as a group, including by imposing measures intended to prevent births, one of the categories of genocidal acts in the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention.”
Antiwar and countercultural activism by millions of young people of every backgound turned campuses and cities into both battle grounds and zones of social and cultural innovation while helping to bring down two presidents and rearranging both the Democratic and Republican Parties. The impact of these movements registered widely: in the military which had to be redesigned to operate without conscription; in mass media which scrambled to recapture a generation that had discovered underground newspapers; and especially in the new ways that many Americans would from then on view their nation‘s institutions and role in the world.
If ever there was a searing, sanctimonious self-immolation in presidential politics, this was it and the costs are incalculable. The damage will reverberate for decades and might never be recovered.
It will be all but impossible for the Democratic Party to accept responsibility for the catastrophe it has inflicted on America, through its head, Joe Biden, and the complicity of all of the party’s upper echelon. It will, thus, ensure that nothing will change. We desperately need a new party that reflects the interest and needs of the American people, and not those of the party’s corporate owners. Change cannot come too soon.
(January 23, 2016)
In addition to Saudi Arabia’s vast oil reserves and role as the spiritual anchor of the Sunni Muslim world, the long intelligence relationship helps explain why the United States has been reluctant to openly criticize Saudi Arabia for its human rights abuses, its treatment of women and its support for the extreme strain of Islam, Wahhabism, that has inspired many of the very terrorist groups the United States is fighting. The Obama administration did not publicly condemn Saudi Arabia’s beheading this month of a dissident Shiite cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, who had challenged the royal family.
(January 30,2025)
“It was shocking and a betrayal to me and every person who was killed on 9/11, their families, and my brothers and sisters in uniform.” She continued, “When as a member of Congress, I learned about President Obama’s, dual programs that he had begun, really to overthrow the regime of Syria and being willing to, through the CIA’s Timber Sycamore program that has now been made public, of working with and arming and equipping Al Qaeda in an effort to overthrow that regime, starting yet another regime change war in the Middle East.”
Israel‘s military offensive on the Gaza Strip has killed at least 46,899 Palestinians and injured 110,725 since October 7, 2023, the Palestinian enclave‘s health ministry said in an update on Saturday.
23 Palestinians were killed and 83 were injured over the past 24 hours, a ministry statement said.
(January 17, 2025)
Finally, as Americans, we must grapple with our role in this dark chapter. The United States allowed this mass atrocity to continue by providing an endless supply of weapons to Netanyahu and failing to exert meaningful leverage. This blanket military support took place in clear violation of U.S. and international law. This must not happen again. Future political leaders should learn from this terrible lesson and restore respect for our own laws and moral principles.
The truth of the matter is that every day for the past year, Biden could have secured a cease-fire by using America’s vast leverage, and every day for the past year, from all the evidence we have today, Biden chose not to.
(January 17, 2025)
Despite a cease-fire agreement, Israeli attacks killed at least 88 more Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, bringing the overall death toll since October 2023 to 46,876, the Health Ministry in the enclave said on Friday.
Abdel Aal, who lost two children to airstrikes in the 15-month war, said he is not hopeful for an end to the killings in Gaza.
„The Palestinian people have not been able to take delight even just for a moment in the past 75 years while the death and destruction has taken place in these countries,“ he said.
There was no comment from the Israeli military on the latest strikes.
Israeli airstrikes have killed 117 Palestinians since the announcement of a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas, according to an official tally on Friday.
According to Mahmoud Basal, spokesperson for Gaza‘s Civil Defense service, the latest attacks include 32 women and 30 children.
In early November, a small group of senior U.S. human rights diplomats met with a top official in President Joe Biden’s State Department to make one final, emphatic plea: We must keep our word….
New reporting published Wednesday details the impotence and insincerity of President Joe Biden‘s „multiple threats, warnings, and admonishments“ to Israel as it annihilated the Gaza Strip, killing tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians while receiving tens of billions of dollars in U.S. arms and unwavering diplomatic support.
Writing for ProPublica, Brett Murphy showed how multiple „red lines“ issued by Biden administration officials were ignored by Israel with impunity.
Medical sources told Anadolu that most of the victims were killed in intensified Israeli attacks across Gaza following the announcement of a cease-fire deal Wednesday evening.
At least 81 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in the past 24 hours, the health ministry announced on Thursday.