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u.s. senate
Trump and His Feral Crew of Wreckers Want to Kill America’s Future
The House budget is the Make America Immobile Act. Trump is doing his best to freeze things in place: on behalf of oil companies that want to keep pumping oil, on behalf of automakers that want to keep churning out SUVs.
May 23, 2025
Credit where due: I am ever impressed by the feral energy of U.S. President Donald Trump and his crew, who are able to do an extraordinary amount of damage every single damned day. And somehow their energetic cruelty seems to drain my own reserves: I want to stay in bed. But we fight as best we can, and so here’s my assessment of one dire day, and more importantly what we still might be able to do about it.
It began, early Thursday morning, with House passage of the budget bill, which somehow managed to get even worse in the wee hours. Among other things, a single sentence was amended in such a way as to potentially kill off most of the rooftop solar industry in the U.S. As Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin explains:
While the earlier language from the Ways and Means committee eliminated the 25D tax credit for those who purchased home solar systems after the end of this year (it was originally supposed to run through 2034), the new language says that no credit “shall be allowed under this section for any investment during the taxable year” (emphasis mine) if the entity claiming the tax credit “rents or leases such property to a third party during such taxable year” and “the lessee would qualify for a credit under section 25D with respect to such property if the lessee owned such property.”
That arcane piece of language was enough to knock 37% off the share price of SunRun today, the biggest rooftop installer in the country. And it was only a cherry on the top of this toxic sundae, which would essentially repeal all of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Nuclear power gets a little bit of a reprieve, and of course ethanol (Earth’s dumbest energy source) does great. But it’s a wipeout far greater than anyone expected even a few weeks ago. Here’s how Princeton’s Jesse Jenkins and his team at REPEAT (Rapid Energy Policy Evaluation and Toolkit) sum it up:
- Increase U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by roughly 0.5 billion metric tons per year in 2030 and more than 1 billion metric tons per year in 2035.
- Raise U.S. household and business energy expenditures by $25 billion annually in 2030 and over $50 billion in 2035.
- Increase average U.S. household energy costs by roughly $100-160 per household per year in 2030 and roughly $270-415 per household per year in 2035.
- Reduces cumulative capital investment in U.S. electricity and clean fuels production by $1 trillion from 2025-2035.
- Imperil a total of $522 billion in announced but pending investments in U.S. clean energy supply and manufacturing.
- Reduce annual sales of electric vehicles by roughly 40% in 2030 and end America’s battery manufacturing boom.
- Substantially slow electricity capacity additions, raising national average retail electricity rates and monthly household electricity bills by about 9% in 2030—and as much as 17% in some states (including Texas, Oklahoma, and Pennsylvania).
In the midst of all this, the Senate—ignoring its parliamentarian—bowed to the wishes of the auto industry and told California (and the 11 states that had followed it) that it couldn’t demand the phaseout of internal combustion vehicles by the middle of the next decade. (This is among other things federalism in reverse).
“Attacking these waivers will devastate our ability to advance the use of electric vehicles in the state,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a press conference after the vote, flanked by California Gov. Gavin Newsom and other officials. “We won’t let it happen, not when we’re facing an air pollution and climate crisis that’s getting worse by the day.”
The 1970 Clean Air Act permits California to receive waivers from the Environmental Protection Agency that enable the state to enact clean air regulations that go further than federal limits.
Oh, and then at day’s end the Department of Homeland Security told Harvard that 27% of its student body couldn’t study there beginning in the fall because they came from foreign countries.
If you add it up, this is all an effort to keep America precisely where it is now. It’s the Make America Immobile Act. Trump is doing his best to freeze things in place: on behalf of oil companies that want to keep pumping oil, on behalf of automakers that want to keep churning out SUVs. That depends, among other things, on shutting down research at universities, because they keep coming up with things that point us in a different direction, be it temperature readings demonstrating climate change or new batteries that enable entirely different technologies. If America lived alone on this planet that would be truly terrible; luckily for everyone else, there are other places (China, and the E.U.) that are not making the same set of stupid decisions. But if this stands it will kill the future for America.
It will also, of course, kill the present. I’m not bothering to talk about the deep cruelty of the Medicaid cuts (and the fact that they will destroy America’s rural hospital system). There’s also the not-small matter of the intense attacks on transgender people the bill contains. And I won’t bother gassing on about the utter grossness of handing over yet more money to the richest among us. (The top 0.1% of earners gain $390,000 a year on average, while Americans making less than $17,000 lose on average about $1,000. This is, among other things, Christianity in reverse).
So, our job is to do what we can to make it… less worse. The U.S. Senate still has to pass its own version of the bill. Given the GOP majority, they’ll pass something very bad. Perhaps, at Trump’s urging, they’ll rush it through in the next 24 hours; more likely it will take a little longer. We need to put as much pressure as we can on that process, in order to take out the most egregious parts of the bill. Here’s what Third Act sent out on Thursday, and here’s the link we want you to use to register your opposition with Senators. It comes from our very able partners at Solar United Neighbors, who have done as much as anyone in America to help people build clean energy. Fill it out so you can get a call script and the numbers to use. Again, here’s the link. If you want a little inspiration, check out Will Wiseman’s video of rural Americans talking about one particular part of the IRA that’s helping change their lives.
I’m not going to bother pretending that this is guaranteed to work. The bad guys here are riding hard and fast, and they’re trying to shock and cow us into submission. But—don’t go easy. If they can summon the feral energy to wreck the country, we can summon the humane energy to try and save it.
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Dems, Do the Right Thing and Stop Funding Genocide
Show us, your constituents—who overwhelming oppose more arms to Israel—that you hear us and are willing to stand against tyranny and lawlessness wherever it exists.
May 06, 2025
On April 3, Sen. Bernie Sanders forced votes on the floor of the Senate on two Joint Resolutions of Disapproval, specifically S.J. Res. 33 and 26, each intended to stop the transfer of particular weaponry to Israel. Sadly, only 15 senators* voted for them. It is likely that one or both of your Democratic senators (if you have any) were among the 31 who voted “no,” or “present,” or simply did not vote, in effect endorsing an additional export of massive numbers of U.S.-made bombs to Israel, bombs that will be used to blow up more Palestinian civilians, along with the few homes, hospitals, schools, farms, and bakeries still standing.
The Palestinian human rights organization with which I work, like many other pro-peace, anti-genocide organizations and individuals, urgently implored our Democratic senators to vote with Sanders, hoping that their oft-stated commitment to human and civil rights might extend to Palestinians. We were disappointed in our representatives; chances are, you were as well.**
Sen. Sanders has three more Joint Resolutions of Disapproval (JRDs) in the pipeline. When--and if--they will make it to the floor for a vote is unknown, though we hope it won’t be far off. What we do know is that U.S. weapons are being used by Israel each and every day to slaughter noncombatants in Palestine. Opposing the transfer of arms in the future, arms earmarked to complete the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the West Bank, may feel like the tiniest drop in the proverbial bucket, given the rise of lawlessness, fascism, and terror at home, but the two are intimately connected. Self-evidently, state-sponsored murder and kidnapping cannot reasonably be construed to signal the collapse of democracy in one instance and the defense of it in another. Heroics, like a 25-hour speech in the well of the Senate meant to stand against the takeover of the U.S. by actors hostile to our Constitution and laws, pales in power when it is followed a mere two days later by a vote to continue to facilitate the killing of blameless children in another country.
How can voting to provide more offensive military equipment to a country that has a long track record of using U.S.-provided materiel in the commission of gross violations of human rights align with any legislator’s essential commitment to the rule of law?
With upcoming opportunities for our senators to redeem their recent votes in favor of Israeli atrocities, my organization asked them to account for those votes and offered them context both political and factual. Israeli hasbara and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee have clearly swayed their understanding and actions, and while it is an uphill struggle to counter those fraudulent narratives, we try. Another drop in the bucket? Perhaps just one small way to stand against tyranny wherever it rears its head.
The letters we sent were tailored in response to our own senators’ defense of their votes; below we have written a generic version addressed to any and all of the Democratic senators who actively chose to consign more Palestinian children to the flames, to amputation without anesthetic, to living a literal hell on earth. If you are a reader here, you almost certainly know most of what follows by rote, but we thought to gather some of the pertinent facts and language in a document that would make it simpler to approach your senator should you care to. Please feel free to copy, mine, adapt, and enrich the letter. Please… use it! While this is admittedly nowhere near enough, there are times when every drop counts.
***********
Senator:
Your April 3, 2025 votes on Bernie Sanders’ JRDs left me with a number of questions as well as, quite frankly, a broken heart. I wonder why, when given the chance to take a minimal step that would slow the illegal slaughter all the world sees exploding in Gaza and the West Bank, you chose to underwrite these atrocities with more U.S. weapons.
Nearly a year ago, the Biden State Department found that Israel, using U.S.-supplied weapons, likely breached international and humanitarian law. Our own “Leahy Laws” prohibit the provision of military support to countries against which there are credible allegations of “gross violations of human rights” including: extrajudicial killings; forced disappearances; torture; rape by security forces; and other forms of cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment.
Numerous documented and ultimately undisputed instances of each of these have been perpetrated by the IDF against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Recently, the Israeli military killed 15 well-identified medics in Gaza by shooting them at close range while their hands were bound, subsequently burying both the humans and their vehicles in order to hide the war crime. Just last month, the IDF shot an unarmed New Jersey teen (and American citizen) in the West Bank. Omar Mohammed Saada Rabea was hit 11 times, and while he bled to death, Israeli soldiers actively prevented the 14-year-old from receiving medical attention.
Why, then, are you voting to arm a demonstrably corrupt regime that does not seek nor have the support of its own people in this matter?
So I ask: How can voting to provide more offensive military equipment to a country that has a long track record of using U.S.-provided materiel in the commission of gross violations of human rights align with any legislator’s essential commitment to the rule of law?
Some Democratic senators have suggested that heightened threats from Iran and its proxies require the provision of more arms to Israel so that it might defend itself from foreign attack. While I am not disputing anyone’s right to defend themselves, this seems to present another confounding misalignment between stated intent and the reality represented by “no” votes on S.J. Res 33 and 26.
The first of these, S.J. Res 33, would have blocked over $2 billion for the provision of 35,000 MK 84 2,000 lb. bombs and 4,000 I-2000 Penetrator warheads.
The second, S.J.Res.26, would have stopped almost $7 billion in funding for 2,800 500-pound bombs, 2,100 Small Diameter Bombs, and tens of thousands of JDAM guidance kits.
According to Sen. Sanders, “All of these systems have been linked to dozens of illegal airstrikes, including on designated humanitarian sites, resulting in thousands of civilian casualties. These strikes have been painstakingly documented by human rights monitors. There is no debate. And none of these systems are defensive, none of them are necessary to protect Israel from incoming drone or rocket attacks.”
The weapons you voted to provide to Israel are offensive weapons, not defensive in nature. Israel has demonstrated again and again that it is more than willing to use U.S.-supplied offensive weaponry to illegally kill, maim, and terrorize innocent civilians. A claim of self-defense against Hamas strains credulity when the death tolls as of over a month ago were: 50,021 Gazans (with actual numbers estimated as high as 250,000), and 1,605 Israelis. If it were up to me, no one would die in war. But the argument that the assault on Gaza is defensive lost any claim to legitimacy long since. True defensive weaponry, such as David’s Sling and the Iron Dome, have not been implicated in any of Sen. Sanders’ JRDs.
I would simply contend that additional lethal arms in the hands of a government that has used these same offensive weapons virtually every single day of the last 565—in clear violation of U.S. and international laws, as well as their own negotiated cease-fire agreements—is not the best way to support Israel’s security. If an Iranian attack is your concern, there are many other avenues to pursue that would directly support Israel’s ability to avoid or prevail in such a conflict. Israel, to date, has given the U.S. absolutely no reason to believe it will use further armaments to defend itself against Iran, and daily arguments to support the expectation that it will use them to kill Palestinian civilians and remove them from their homeland. Israel’s actions must be taken as the measure of their intent.
It is also worth noting that a recent poll by Israeli TV 12 found that 70% of Israelis do not trust their own government and, in opposition to the Netanyahu government’s push to fight on, want a deal with Hamas to end the war. In fact, increasing numbers of Israeli soldiers are declining to fight in a war they understand is being waged to solely benefit the president and his cronies instead of the country they have vowed to serve and protect.
Why, then, are you voting to arm a demonstrably corrupt regime that does not seek nor have the support of its own people in this matter?
Were you aware that here in the U.S., a March 2025 Economist/YouGov poll (page 90) found that just 15% of the American people support increasing military aid to Israel, while 35% support decreasing military aid to Israel or stopping it entirely? Only 8% of Democrats polled supported increasing military aid to Israel at this time.
In addition, a November 2024 J Street poll of Jewish voters tallied 62% of American Jews supporting withholding “shipments of offensive weapons like 2,000-pound bombs until Prime Minister Netanyahu agrees to an American proposal for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza in exchange for a release of Israeli hostages.”
Sen. Sanders’ JRDs do not undermine Israel’s right to exist or to defend itself. They attempt, rather, to bring the U.S. into compliance with its own laws, and in my view, actually support an ally by refusing to enable its illegal and immoral actions. History has shown us again and again that the road to peace and stability is not one that can feasibly be built upon a foundation of war crimes and the slaughter of a civilian population.
As Jack Mirkinson, an editor at The Nationwrote:
The violence is the direct result of some very basic realities—namely, that Israel has been occupying Palestine for 75 years, has been killing and oppressing Palestinians for just as long, and has created the world’s most enduring apartheid state. And the only thing that will really put a stop to the violence is if those conditions are ended. That’s really all there is to it. You can go through all of the twists and turns since 1948, but if you don’t come back to that fundamental truth, there’s no real conversation to have.
Sen. Sanders will undoubtedly be asking for your vote on further JRDs in the future, each of them targeting the sale of arms which Israel has habitually used to kill innocent civilians (including Americans) in both Gaza and the West Bank. I sincerely hope that you will reconsider sending more offensive weapons to Israel and will co-sponsor Sen. Sanders’ JRDs, or at very least vote against expanding U.S. complicity in Israel’s illegal assault on the people of Palestine. Show us, your constituents—who overwhelming oppose more arms to Israel—that you hear us, and perhaps most importantly, that you have the integrity to stand against tyranny and lawlessness wherever it exists.
Senator, do the right thing.
Sincerely,
A Heartbroken Voter
*Voted Yea: Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Andy Kim (D-N.J.), Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Peter Welch (D-Vt.). If one of these folks is your senator, a thank you would not go amiss.
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'Serious Disregard for Human Life': Dem Senators Press Hegseth on Yemen Civilian Casualties
"President Trump has called himself a 'peacemaker,' but that claim rings hollow when U.S. military operations kill scores of civilians."
Apr 25, 2025
A trio of Democratic senators on Thursday demanded answers from embattled Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth regarding U.S. airstrikes in Yemen, which have reportedly killed scores of civilians including numerous women and children since last month.
"We write to you concerning reports that U.S. strikes against the Houthis at the Ras Isa fuel terminal in Yemen last week killed dozens of civilians, potentially more than 70," Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Tim Kaine (D-Va.) wrote in a letter to Hegseth.
The lawmakers noted that "the United Nations Protection Cluster's Civilian Impact Monitoring Project has... assessed that March 2025 marked the highest monthly casualty count in Yemen in almost two years, tripling the previous month, with a total of 162 civilian casualties."
"If these reports of civilian casualties are accurate, they should come as no surprise," the senators said. "Using explosive weapons in populated areas—as these intense strikes appear to do—always carries a high risk of civilian harm."
"Further, reports suggest that the Trump administration plans to dismantle civilian harm mitigation policies and procedures at the Pentagon designed to reduce civilian casualties in U.S. operations," the letter notes. "And the Trump administration has already dismissed senior, nonpartisan judge advocates, or JAG officers, who provide critical legal counsel to U.S. warfighters, especially when it comes to the laws of war and adherence to U.S. civilian harm mitigation policies."
"The Defense Department also recently loosened the rules of engagement to allow [U.S. Central Command] and other combatant commands to conduct strikes without requiring White House sign-off, removing necessary checks and balances on crucial life-and-death decisions," the senators added. "Taken altogether, these moves suggest that the Trump administration is abandoning the measures necessary to meet its obligations to reducing civilian harm."
The senators asked Hegseth to answer the following questions:
- Has the Department of Defense (DOD) assessed the number of noncombatant and combatant casualties in each of its strikes inside Yemen?
- What has DOD's process been for assessing the acceptable civilian casualties for individual strikes inside Yemen, and assessing estimated levels of civilian harm and collateral damage?
- What role have legal advisers, including JAG officers, played in reviewing the legality of U.S. strikes in Yemen?
- What DOD instructions or orders currently govern department civilian harm mitigation and response actions?
- Were the civilian harm mitigation and response experts at CENTCOM and/or at the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence consulted in planning for these strikes?
- How does the department plan to engage with the families or communities affected by these strikes, including acknowledging civilian harm and exploring avenues for potential redress?
Last month, Hegseth
announced that the Pentagon's Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Office and Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, which was established during the Biden administration, would be closed. Hegseth—who has
supported pardons for convicted U.S. war criminals—lamented during his Senate confirmation hearing that "restrictive rules of engagement" have "made it more difficult to defeat our enemies," who "should get bullets, not attorneys," according to his 2024 book The War on Warriors.
Asked during his confirmation hearing whether troops under his leadership would adhere to the Geneva Conventions, Hegseth replied, "What we are not going to do is put international conventions above Americans."
During his first administration, President Donald Trumprelaxed rules of military engagement meant to protect civilians as he followed through on his campaign pledge to "bomb the shit" out of Islamic State militants and "take out their families." Thousands of civilians were killed during the campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria as then-Defense Secretary James "Mad Dog" Mattis announced a shift from a policy of attrition to one of "annihilation."
Meanwhile, noncombatant casualties soared by over 300% in Afghanistan between the final year of the Obama administration and 2019.
Overall, upward of 400,000 civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen have died as a direct result of the U.S.-led War on Terror, according to the Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.
In Yemen, the U.K.-based monitor Airwars says U.S. forces have killed hundreds of civilians in 181 declared actions since 2002. Overall, hundreds of thousands of Yemenis have died during the civil war that began in 2014, with international experts attributing more than 150,000 Yemeni deaths to U.S.-backed, Saudi-led bombing and blockade.
The U.S. bombing of Yemen has not received nearly as much coverage in the corporate media as the scandal involving Hegseth's use of Signal chats to share plans for attacking the Middle Eastern country with colleagues, a journalist, and relatives. However, critics say the mounting backlash over the high civilian casualties there is belying Trump's claim of an anti-war presidency.
"President Trump has called himself a 'peacemaker,' but that claim rings hollow when U.S. military operations kill scores of civilians," the senators stressed in their letter. "The reported high civilian casualty numbers from U.S. strikes in Yemen demonstrate a serious disregard for civilian life, and call into question this administration's ability to conduct military operations in accordance with U.S. best practices for civilian harm mitigation and international law."
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