F. Left News

Today, the U.S. House of Representatives passed its version of the Farm Bill by a vote of 224-200. The Senate has yet to propose a draft version of the legislation.

In a significant victory for public health and environmental advocates, the House voted 280-142 to strip Cancer Gag Act language including Sections 10205-7 from the bill. Over 70 Republicans voted to strip the provision alongside all but six Democrats. The provision would have shielded pesticide manufacturers from health-related lawsuits. The vote comes on the heels of Supreme Court oral arguments in Monsanto Company v. Durnell, where the Trump administration is backing Roundup producer Bayer in related litigation.

Despite staunch opposition, the House Farm Bill still includes the unpopular EATS Act (Save Our Bacon Act), to strip state and local governments of the ability to pass agricultural policies within their borders; fails to reverse HR 1 cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP); and cuts more than $1 billion from a key conservation program.

In response, Food & Water Watch Senior Food Policy Analyst Rebecca Wolf issued the following statement:

“Industrial agriculture’s pesticide addiction is poisoning America. From the fields of Iowa to the halls of Congress, advocates have made our voices clear: Bayer’s cruel Cancer Gag campaign has no place in our communities. U.S. farm policy must support farmers and consumers, not the corporate overlords pulling the strings at our expense.

“This Farm Bill has industry fingerprints all over it. By shrinking markets for high-welfare sustainable farmers, and doubling down on devastating cuts to federal food assistance, this pro-factory farm bill will do more harm than good.

“It’s time to end the corporate power grab in Washington. This Farm Bill must be dead on arrival in the Senate.”

Today, the Supreme Court issued a decision striking down a congressional map in Louisiana with a second majority-Black district. This decision guts Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and turns the 14th and 15th Amendments against Black Americans.

Stand Up America’s Managing Director of Policy and Political Affairs, Brett Edkins, issued the following statement:

“This is a tragic day for the freedom to vote and representative democracy. The Supreme Court just eviscerated the last remnants of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and opened the door to even more extreme gerrymandering that will try to drown out the voices of Black and brown voters, particularly in the South.

“The Court’s decision will escalate the arms race of partisan gerrymanders across the country and could lead to Republican-controlled states redrawing election maps to add an additional 19 GOP House seats. This partisan Court has handed a major election-year gift to Donald Trump and congressional Republicans who are trying to cling to power despite their growing unpopularity with voters.

“It’s time for Congress to act as a check on this rogue Court through major reforms, including term limits, an enforceable code of ethics, and adding more justices who will defend our fundamental freedoms once Trump leaves office.”

Since 2021, Stand Up America has been at the forefront of the fight for Supreme Court reform, mobilizing its members to take nearly one million actions in support of Supreme Court term limits, expansion, and a binding code of ethics. In 2025 and 2026, Stand Up America has been deeply engaged in efforts to oppose the White House’s mid-decade redistricting scheme, driving nearly 33,000 constituent calls, emails, and letters to state lawmakers in Indiana, Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Utah, and Florida. Stand Up America members have also made hundreds of thousands of constituent calls and emails in support of federal voting rights legislation.

President Donald Trump and his sons have approximately $1 billion tied to crypto venture World Liberty Financial, which was founded by the Trumps, alongside Steve Witkoff, now Trump's special envoy for peace. A new report by Public Citizen details how the venture hinges on Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange, which pleaded guilty in 2023 to sanctions and money laundering violations tied largely to Iran—the country Trump has taken the United States to war with. The Trump administration has simultaneously dismantled the enforcement tools that would hold crypto outfits like Binance accountable—pardoning its founder, dismissing an SEC lawsuit against the company, and issuing a directive to stop prosecuting crypto platforms.

The report, “Conflict Coin: How the Trumps’ Billion-Dollar Crypto Stake Depends on a Company That Helped Iran Evade Sanctions”, reveals how Trump has leveraged investments in cryptocurrency to enrich himself and officials in his administration, specifically through working with Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, to conduct deals. Binance has hosted accounts used by at least eight entities and individuals that the Treasury Department has sanctioned for supporting terrorism or terrorist-designated groups linked to Iran, some of whom were sanctioned or prosecuted by Trump's own administration, according to court filings. In 2023, Binance reached settlements with the Department of Justice and the Treasury Department, pleading guilty to anti-money laundering, unlicensed money transmitting and sanctions violations, with the U.S. government saying the exchange failed “to implement programs to prevent and report suspicious transactions with terrorists.”

The report states, “The Trump family's entanglement with Binance exposes a dangerous contradiction at the heart of U.S. foreign policy: The same exchange that built the infrastructure for and holds the vast majority of Trump's USD1 stablecoin has facilitated billions of dollars in transactions for Iran and designated terrorist organizations. The opacity that defines crypto isn't a bug. It's the feature that makes it useful to both speculators and sanctioned regimes, and the president of the United States is profiting from it.”

“Binance is the world's largest crypto exchange. It pleaded guilty in 2023 to sanctions and money laundering violations, and paid $4.3 billion in penalties to the United States, one of the largest corporate penalties ever. Its CEO and founder, CZ, pleaded guilty to failing to maintain effective anti-money laundering programs, and served four months in prison,” said Zach Everson, Research Director for Public Citizen’s Trump Accountability Project. “Now, this happened in 2023, about a year before World Liberty Financial launched. But the Trumps made the decision to go into business with these guys anyway, which is just flagrantly corrupt. Recent media reports suggest that Binance has continued to support Iranian interests. And yet rather than pull back, the Trumps’ company has been strengthening its relationship.”

Leave it to this still-repugnant regime to instantly twist a Keystone Cops security breach - not a so-distant-it-was-on-another-floor "assassination attempt" - to their own skeevy purposes: blaming Democrats for "this dark moment," demanding a $400 million gold ballroom for "national security," burnishing the Brave Dear Leader myth of an addled old man who barely registered it, and what gun control issue? Meet the Epstein class: When shots (again) ring out, they get a friggin' ballroom, kids get thoughts and prayers.

The latest "clown show on steroids" - and grim proof of Trump's relentless corrosion of political discourse - unfolded Saturday night at an evidently sloppily unsecured Washington Hilton, where in 1981 John Hinckley shot Reagan, who survived. The already contentious White House Correspondents' Dinner drew the black-tied, preening, profit-driven remnants of a craven legacy media - and a growing right-wing slopaganda brigade - both willing to pretend it was normal to party with an abusive enemy of free speech who's spent years attacking, belittling, suing, bullying and name-calling them as an "enemy of the people" for seeking to do their jobs and tell the truth, thus turning the evening into a queasy "case study in institutional self-abasement."

Even before the vitriolic and incendiary Trump - who led a Jan. 6 riot, urged fans to “knock the crap out” of protesters, bade Proud Boys "stand by," mused "the 2nd Amendment people" could do something" about his opponents, warned of "a bloodbath" if he was defeated, killed schoolgirls and threatened genocide in an illegal war he doesn't know how to end - let loose with what he dubbed "the most inappropriate speech ever made" (which Press Barbie called "shots fired") - before all that came a few muffled thuds of a dud of an assassination attempt, on the floor above, by a suspect who ran past a security checkpoint before being tackled. One shot was fired - it's unclear by whom - and one cop was wounded through a bulletproof vest; he is expected to be okay.

On the floor below, meanwhile, "absolute chaos" reigned. Panicked women in gowns and men in tuxedos hit the floor, flipping over chairs, lunging under tables and sometimes holding phone cameras aloft as a horde of Secret Service agents swarmed the ballroom, leaping on stage, yelling "Get down! Get down!", running in all directions at once, weapons poised and flailing. A crowd of security guys whisked J.D. Vance out of his chair first; then another cluster went for Trump, dazed and stumbling, guys holding him up on both sides. Video later showed alleged FBI head Kash Patel crouching absurdly behind a chair and RFK Jr. heroically leaving his wife behind; an idiotic "USA!" chant that "absolutely nobody wanted to hear" flared briefly before dying a well-earned death.

The suspect was identified as Cole Tomas Allen, 31, a Torrance, CA. mechanical engineer, game developer and teacher with a Masters degree in computer science; on Facebook, he also called himself "an amateur entomologist, casual composter and occasional artist." When he tried to breach the metal detectors above the ballroom, he was armed with a shotgun - loaded with buckshot not slugs "to minimize casualties" - a handgun and several knives. He was charged with two counts: Using a firearm during a crime of violence and assault on a federal officer with a dangerous weapon. Earlier, he'd posted a lucid, relatively mild missive from "a Friendly Federal Assassin" to explain his actions; it began with, "Hello everybody!" and apologies to "everyone whose trust I abused."

He apologized to his parents "for saying I had an interview without specifying it was for 'Most Wanted,'" to his colleagues and students, to "everyone abused or murdered before this or after, any "person raped in a detention camp, fisherman executed without trial, schoolkid blown up, child starved... I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes." As a Christian, he noted, "Turning the other cheek when *someone else* is oppressed is not Christian behavior; it is rather complicity in the oppressor’s crimes." He blasted the "insane" incompetence of the lax security he encountered, said he felt "awful" about what he thought he had to do, and expressed "rage thinking about everything this administration has done...Stay in school, kids."

Despite its placid tone, MAGA world promptly dubbed it "a manifesto" of "anti-Christian bile" from "a depraved crazy person." Press Barbie blasted the "demonization (and) hateful rhetoric directed at Trump...Nobody has faced more bullets and violence." Similarly, nobody in the cult wants to admit they're adamantly declining to acknowledge years of vicious Trump rhetoric that have shaped "an angry, polarized nation," or the role of rabid MAGA responses, say, to AOC noting she's glad everyone was safe - "There is a special place in hell for demons like you," "Go fuck right off with the other Commie losers" - or the "vibes for security" so lax - no photo ID, attendee list, checkpoint to enter the ballroom, basic competence - even attendees and the would-be assassin both denounced it.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Despite faux-thoughtful deadlines - "Stunned Washington Faces Searching Questions About Political Violence" - Trump entirely missed the point, rambling and deflecting in his clueless, bonkers, self-serving way. He said he wanted the dinner to go ahead: The show must go on. He (weirdly) crooned about the "very strong, really attractive law enforcement." He babbled he'd "studied assassinations...The most impactful people, they're the ones they go after. Like Abraham Lincoln. I hate to say I’m honored by that, but I’ve done a lot." He called the presidency "a dangerous profession," worse than bullfighting. He declared the "manifesto" “strongly anti-Christian," and the perp "a very sick person...a lone wolf whack job," though he's an incomparably more dangerous one.

Mostly, relentlessly, he shilled for his ballroom: "This event would never have happened...The conditions that took place, I didn't wanna say it but this is why we have to have it...We need levels of security probably like no one's ever seen...This is exactly the reason our great Military, Secret Service, Law Enforcement and every President for the last 150 years have been demanding a large, safe, secure Ballroom be built," which is bullshit 'cause only he's demanding it. Still, miraculously, within six minutes of the lone shot fired, MAGA pivoted, lockstep, online to the same skeevy, amidst-a-war-and-ravaged-economy-how-is-this-a-thing refrain: This is why Trump needs the ballroom. Also, the lawsuit against it "puts the lives of the President, his family, and his staff at grave risk."

As if the whole corrupt ballroom shtick, "the definition of a non-sequitur,” wasn't grotesque enough, there was the right's virtual ignoring of any recognition of guns as a relevant part of the deadly equation - this, in a country with more guns than people, with 120 mass shootings since the start of the year, with over 3,800 people dead and over 6,500 wounded, with 100 people shot every day, with Trump having dismantled gun safety and mental health measures, with as yet no accountability for Renee Good and Alex Pretti being gunned down in the street, with the awful, prevailing, willfully blind, "gun violence for thee but not for me" admonishment that, "Every few months, Americans are asked to resume their banquet, and pretend a shooting didn’t just happen."

Which is what we regularly ask of our kids. "Last night, powerful people hid," wrote Digital Drumbeat. "Journalists, lobbyists, and politicians dove under tables, pressed against walls, and ran for exits..Secret Service moved. Protocols activated. And within hours, everyone went home. Welcome to the reality American children, teachers, and parents live every single day. Except they do not get the protocols. They do not get the security detail. And not all of them get to go home." It was not "crouching in a locked, darkened classroom for three hours while your phone dies and you cannot call your mother," or a teacher saying "to be very, very quiet," which is "a Tuesday in America." What we can't imagine: "Wanting an entire secure ballroom for one man, and not wanting gun reform for every child."

Other obscenities abound: The billions in ballroom funding from corporations, most of which are seeking billions more in federal contracts; the latest grift of secretly awarding the ballroom-building company a no-bid $17.4 million contract to repair two fountains in Lafayette Park that Biden estimated would cost $3.3 million; the "brazen inversion of reality" that is the MAGA claim criticism of Trump's hateful, violent rhetoric is what somehow incites more violence, when he's done more than anyone in recent history to normalize it; the righteous indignation - Fire Jimmy Kimmel (again) for joking Melania looks like an expectant widow! - when anyone notes the gross hypocrisy. Color America skeptical: "Fuck him, he can only go to the well so many times."

Also, we're still gonna need those Epstein files. See Trump lash out at CBS' Norah O'Donnell when she quotes Cole Allen's "pedophile, rapist, and traitor": "I was waiting for you to read that (because) you're horrible people..I'm not a rapist...I'm not a pedophile... You're disgraceful." Will Bunch: "This is our country now." The Rude Pundit: "We live in the goddamn United States. We're never far away from someone shooting a gun. It's what we are debased enough to call 'freedom.'" And in the two days before the shooting, Trump made a racist attack against Hakeem Jeffries, called for Hillary and Obama to be arrested, boasted of more war crimes. In brief, "We don't have to pretend that a motherfucker isn't a motherfucker just because someone wanted to kill him."

Update: It seems CBS cut out more paranoid babbling in his "I'm not a rapist" interview. His brain is oatmeal and grievance.

NORAH O’DONNELL: What did security tell you about what may have been his motives?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, see, they– the part– the reason you have people like that is you have people doing No Kings. I’m not a king. What I am– if I was a king I wouldn’t be dealing with you. No, I’m not a king. I– I get– I– I don’t laugh. I don’t– I– I see these No Kings, which are funded just like the Southern Law was– funded– you saw all that? Southern Law is financing the KKK and lots of other radical, terrible groups.

A new report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) finds that the expansion of US sanctions against Cuba beginning in 2017 were likely the primary cause of a major increase in infant mortality in Cuba. The report, by Alexander Main, Joe Sammut, Mark Weisbrot, and Guillaume Long examines the unprecedented increase in Cuba’s infant mortality rate (IMR), which soared by 148 percent from 2018 to 2025. During this time, US unilateral economic coercive measures against Cuba were greatly tightened by President Trump and then largely maintained under President Biden before being tightened even further during the second Trump administration. Had Cuba’s IMR remained stable over the last eight years, then approximately 1,800 deaths of infants would not have occurred.

“The Trump policy of ‘maximum pressure’ on Cuba has killed a lot of babies — and, although we don’t yet have data for the last few months, it’s highly likely that more babies are dying now, and at an even higher rate than last year as a result of the current US fuel blockade targeting Cuba,” CEPR Director of International Policy and report coauthor Alexander Main said. “The question is how many more babies will have to die before the current economic siege against Cuba is lifted.”

The report notes that “In Cuba, where for decades the state has invested substantially in health care services, the IMR was … among the lowest in the Western Hemisphere, and lower than in the US,” but that “Since 2018 … Cuba’s IMR has increased from an annual rate of 4.0 per 1000 live births to a rate of 9.9 as of 2025.”

The paper also notes that Cuba, unlike its neighbors in the region, has not rebounded economically from the COVID-19 pandemic, averaging just 0.4 percent annual per capita GDP growth from 2020 to 2024, versus 3.2 percent for the Latin American and Caribbean region as a whole.

The report looks at the economic and social effects of the hardening of US sanctions since 2017, focusing in particular on the impact on Cuba’s health-care sector. Trump administration pressure on Cuba has included restrictions that have sharply diminished the island’s important tourism sector; severely limited exports of goods to Cuba — including essential medication and medical equipment; cut Cuba’s access to international financial markets by putting the country back on the State Sponsors of Terrorism list; curbed remittances; pressured countries to end their partnerships with Cuba’s medical missions, and notably imposed a recent fuel blockade that prevents Venezuelan oil from reaching the island.

“US sanctions have targeted Cuba’s key sources of export earnings, such as tourism, remittances from Cuban Americans to their family members, and even by putting pressure on other countries to end primary care programs staffed by Cuban doctors. These measures sharply reduced Cuba’s capacity to pay for needed food and medicines,” CEPR International Research Fellow and coauthor Joe Sammut said. “Cutting off medical services exports is doubly cruel as these programs mostly serve marginalized communities in poorer countries, while bringing in foreign currency revenues to Cuba in a mutually beneficial trade. As such the increasing US sanctions have a negative health-care spillover even beyond the island of 10 million people.”

As the report discusses, recent research has shown that unilateral, broad economic sanctions are as deadly as armed conflict, killing some 564,000 people annually, according to a study by CEPR economists Francisco Rodríguez, Silvio Rendón, and Mark Weisbrot published in August in The Lancet Global Health. More than half of these deaths are children under five, and deaths of infants are even more disproportionate, since they are three-quarters of the under-five population.

“The sanctions on Cuba starkly illustrate how these economic sanctions work: they target the civilian population, often with the goal of provoking regime change,” said Mark Weisbrot, CEPR Co-Director. “This can dramatically increase death rates, as shown statistically in the Lancet Global Health study of economic sanctions throughout the world. The increased mortality in Cuba fits this pattern, and the causality is visible.”

The US Senate may vote as early as Tuesday, April 28, on a War Powers Resolution introduced by Senators Tim Kaine, Adam Schiff, and Ruben Gallego to “to prevent [US] Armed Forces from engaging in hostilities [against Cuba] unless authorized by Congress.”

“This legislation pending in Congress right now argues persuasively that the current blockade constitutes a military participation in hostilities that is unlawful according to the US Constitution and law because it has not been authorized by Congress,” Weisbrot said.

“The collective punishment of civilians is prohibited by the Fourth Geneva Convention when there is armed conflict, and can be prosecuted as a war crime. This would appear to be applicable now that the current naval blockade involves the US military.”

The report also describes the vulnerability of newborn babies in Cuba to the impact of blackouts and fuel scarcity — as recently reported by The New York Times. “The blockade has had a particularly dire effect on Cuba’s health-care infrastructure, with frequent power outages interrupting the use of critical equipment for the treatment of patients, including incubators for premature babies, and ventilators to help sick newborns breathe,” Guillaume Long, CEPR Senior Research Fellow and coauthor said.

The report notes: “Given the effects of the US energy blockade, it is highly likely that Cuba’s infant mortality rate has increased significantly since December of 2025, when it had reached 9.9 per 1000 live births. Other key health indicators, such as life expectancy and maternal mortality have also very likely deteriorated since the beginning of the year.”

The right to protest is sacrosanct. That is why thousands of New Yorkers spoke out when Council Speaker Julie Menin and Councilmember Eric Dinowitz introduced two bills that infringe on our constitutional rights under the cynical and false pretense of fighting antisemitism.

And it is why today, as Jewish New Yorkers, we welcome Mayor Mamdani’s decision to veto Intro 175B, which would have limited our right to protest in front of educational institutions. We remain outraged with the City Council members who passed the other bill, Intro 1B, to undermine protest in front of houses of worship, with a veto-proof super majority.

Eliza Klein, JVP New York City Organizer:

“These bills are not about Jewish safety. Especially at a time when the federal government is attacking our cities — including specifically targeting those who speak out for Palestinian freedom — New Yorkers want elected leaders to protect our constitutional rights, not limit them.”

Organizing matters. Thanks to meetings, calls, letters, and testimony from thousands across the city, these anti-democratic bills were watered down and no longer have an enforcement mechanism. However we are clear-eyed about the dangerous precedent these anti-Palestinian City Council bills send: that if you want to violate international law or US law, you need only to do it inside a house of worship and you will be insulated from protest.

Despite what some have claimed, these bills are not about Jewish safety. They were introduced following protests outside houses of worship hosting non-religious political events, including auctioning off occupied Palestinian land from the West Bank – which is illegal under international law, federal fair housing law, and state and local anti-discrimination law.

We call on New York City’s legislators to stop weaponizing our identities to justify repression of dissent – which is sacred to our Jewish tradition. Rather than limit our Constitutional right to protest, our legislators should end the sales of stolen Palestinian land in our city.

The City Council has failed New Yorkers by passing these bills. We affirm Mayor Mamdani’s decision to veto Intro 175B. This fight is not over – we have one month to prevent the City Council from trying to override Mayor Mamdani’s veto, and we will continue to organize and protect the right to protest in our city.

Not in our synagogues. Not in our name.