Elon Musk publicly endorsed “socialist” healthcare before he became the world’s richest man. Now, years later, he’s running super PAC ads decrying Democrats as “socialists” for supporting government-run healthcare.

In Maine, Musk’s America PAC is attacking Senate candidate Troy Jackson for wanting to “put the government in charge of your healthcare.” One ad, which ran on the streaming service Roku, says “the socialists know Jackson will rubber stamp their agenda,” featuring democratic socialists Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Zohran Mamdani in the background. America PAC has also sent door-knockers around Maine to hand out leaflets slamming Jackson for supporting Medicare for All, which would create a comprehensive, universal healthcare system.

Musk’s group has run other ads attacking former Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown as a supporter of “government-run healthcare,” and claiming former Virginia Congresswoman Elaine Luria will help socialists “ban our private health insurance.” (Neither Brown nor Luria back Medicare for All, though they have both supported public health insurance options in the past.)

Subscribe now

Yes, it is offensive that the world’s richest man, a major beneficiary of federal contracts and policy, would deploy his incomprehensible wealth to spend on U.S. elections – and, even more, that he would run ads mocking the idea of giving every American cheaper, improved healthcare coverage, along the lines of what people get in other wealthy, industrialized nations.

But there’s also always a tweet. Less than a decade ago, Musk openly touted the idea of government-run, “socialist” healthcare – saying it has majority support – on Twitter, the social media platform he now owns.

Read more

Good morning. Andrew here, breaking down exclusive polling on a new Senate resolution that demonstrates how sharply public opinion has shifted on Israel and its violent occupation of Palestine.

In today’s ‘First Draft,’ Democrats and Republicans agree the U.S. should investigate the killing of nine Americans in the occupied West Bank; Donald Trump and his administration revealed the exact level of bullshit they will put in a court filing before a federal judge; and Trump’s Iran war drags on and on. Let’s read on.

Subscribe now

‘Protecting U.S. Citizens’… From Israel

New polling shared exclusively with Zeteo finds bipartisan supermajority support for an effort by Democratic senators to require the State Department to investigate the killings of Americans and increasing Israeli violence in the occupied West Bank.

Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed at least 15 Americans in the West Bank since 2003. Nine Americans have been killed since 2022.

Twenty-four Democratic senators, led by Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, are pushing a privileged resolution that would require Donald Trump’s State Department to report to Congress on the killings of Americans in the West Bank since 2022, as well as on “the human rights situation concerning Palestinian children in Israeli military detention in the West Bank.”

Subscribe now

“Protecting and supporting United States citizens abroad is one of the foremost responsibilities of the United States government,” the resolution states.

It names the nine Americans killed since 2022: Omar Assad, Shireen Abu Akleh, Tawfic Abdel Jabbar, Mohammad Khdour, Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, Amer Rabee, Sayfollah Kamel Musallet, Khamis Ayyad, and Nasrallah Abu Siyam. It spells out how they were killed or how they were believed to have been killed, by Israeli soldiers or violent settlers.

Signatories on Van Hollen’s resolution include progressives Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Ed Markey, but also moderate Democrats like Richard Blumenthal, Chris Coons, Jeanne Shaheen, and Jack Reed. The senators can force a vote on the measure before the Senate goes on recess for the month of October, potentially as early as Friday.

A survey of likely voters from the Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project, conducted by Data For Progress and shared with Zeteo, finds strong support for the resolution and its goals.

Read more

Justin Baragona here. In tonight’s edition, Donald Trump’s press ban on CNN, MS NOW, and Politico was challenged in court this afternoon, where the judge didn’t seem to buy the administration’s ad hoc “national security” justification for barring the outlets. With the court almost certainly set to order the White House to restore the outlets’ access on due process grounds, I look at how this authoritarian ban has actually been bad for right-wing media. Plus, despite a blockbuster interview, ‘60 Minutes’ continues to be Bari’d, and all the latest from the WarnerMount merger.

Subscribe now

Why Fox and Co. Need Trump’s Press Ban to End

When a Newsmax anchor admitted this week that Donald Trump’s press ban was “backfiring just a little bit,” many took it as the president finally being deprived of that sweet narcotic of television coverage, which is what he craves more than oxygen itself.

And while that is certainly true, what quickly became apparent is that Trump barring CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House was also hurting the MAGA media landscape to the point that they desperately needed this ban to be reversed in short order.

Read more

If you want to receive more essays like this from Zeteo UK, in addition to everything Zeteo offers, you can always take advantage of our bundle option. And if you’re not already a paid subscriber, consider upgrading today so you never see a paywall again. A free press isn’t free!

Subscribe now

As the far right surges across Europe – most alarmingly in Germany – how should we understand the economic forces behind fascism’s latest surge, and is there a way to pull Europe back from fascism’s lair? What would an effective anti-fascist economics look like?

Fascism happens whenever capitalism has an existential crisis and the left fails to offer a credible alternative. At that point, the fascist playbook stands ready. If the left does not counter it with a clearheaded, persuasive, uncompromising socialist programme, the fascists’ policies shall triumph even before fascists win office.

The fascists’ first move is, always, to plagiarise the left.

Subscribe now

They take aim at crony capitalism, corrupt bankers and the central banks’ role in supporting them. They, quite accurately, describe mainstream politics as the “uniparty”. They call for radical change. But, when it comes to defining that change, they suffer instant amnesia. Not a word comes from their mouths against Big Business, the bankers, the developers privatising social housing, the monstrous cuts the Radical Centre made to public education and health. Studiously, they steer clear of saying anything about the cult of austerity that successive governments have adopted to wreck the lives of the majority whom the fascists are trying to woo.

Instead, they revert to their radically misanthropic Purity Cult.

Portraying our cities as crawling with impure, foreign, dangerous miasmata, stirring up a moral panic about the dark-skinned aliens about to invade our borders and traverse our seafronts, they promise to purge them, to make our nation pure “again”, to eradicate these impurities: Muslims, Jews, trans people, poor brown people, whoever can be stigmatised at little cost. Once they have thus poisoned enough souls, they promise to make us great “again”.

As they rise in the polls and can sniff the aroma of governmental office, they exploit the fact that the ruling class and its conservative and centrist political representatives are more afraid of the left than they are of the fascists. To make themselves electable and fit for polite society, they embrace Zionism to rinse out their Nazi past. Soon, they begin to forge alliances with Big Business and Big Finance, exploiting the delusion that the monied can control them – the fascists. Meanwhile centrist parties, hoping to remain in government, even if only in the fascists’ shadow, adopt fascism-lite (see the Labour government’s performative cruelty to disabled people and to refugees).

Once in government, the first thing the fascists do is betray the people whose discontent they harvested to get there. They instantly get into bed with the Big Finance / Big Business / Big Tech folks who they had admonished while in opposition. They ask a techlord to gut the public service, to emulate Gleichschaltung: the Nazi policy of firing public sector employees, replacing them with its flunkies while siphoning off citizens’ data and feeding it to its servers for future surveillance and control purposes. They build concentration camps for aliens. They pardon their allies, attack the universities, take over cultural centres and use the courts to legalise their brutality – a task made so much easier after the centrists had used the same courts to imprison decent people demonstrating against genocide.

But what about the most distinctive features of fascist socio-economic policy?

Subscribe now

First, they move away from what the Radical Centre considers “fiscal responsibility” to demonstrate their concern for the suffering masses – with social benefits that, nevertheless, flow in ways designed to deny their recipients a voice (e.g. forced induction into fascist local organisations, with trades unions banned).

Second, consistent with their agenda to mobilise the nation to purify itself and to stand up against potential foreign foes, they opt for a turbocharged, and constantly escalating, version of military Keynesianism. Local militias (e.g., Donald Trump’s ICE) and a massive expansion in the defence budget go hand in hand with the projection of naked power at home and abroad. They withdraw from international organisations and treaties. They trash what is left of international law. They luxuriate in displays of maddened power. And they keep escalating.

Big Business loves it. Big Finance too. Big Tech throws a massive party to celebrate. Investment grows. Demand burgeons. Occasionally, interesting economic institutions emerge (e.g. the Nazi innovation of Labour Treasury Certificates, or MEFO Bills, to ground the new German currency in labour values, instead of gold). The stock exchange leaps into the stratosphere.

Alas, a time comes when the warehouses are full, the war machine’s profit rate declines, employment ebbs, discontent begins to grow. At that point, a massive financial crisis beckons – one that is more often than not followed by a cruel war. In the age of nuclear weapons and techno-feudal war machines, will humanity survive such an occurrence? There are solid grounds for doubting it.

What is the alternative? Wherever we turn our gaze, from Trump’s America to Burnham’s Britain to Merz’s Germany to Macron’s France, one thing shines through. The Radical Centre has lost control of the capitalist crisis it helped create. The recalcitrant ultra-right is on the march. Fascism is in the air. Social democrats in Europe and Clintonite liberals in the United States are blowing massive winds in the fascists’ sails – even when in opposition. Only the unbowed left can counter the expanding domain of radical misanthropy with a radical humanism. But, for that to be possible – let alone likely – the left must be unashamedly radical. And to be that, it needs to wage war against all those things that European social democrats and American liberals made their peace with a long time ago.

First, investment cannot be left to the financial markets. Second, private banks can no longer be allowed to harness society’s collective capacity to create money. Third, the oligarchic principle of a free market in shares needs to be replaced by the principle of one employee, one share, one vote in the shareholders’ general meeting.

These three policies, if they become the foundation of a socialist left, can accomplish two things. They can lure the masses back from fascism’s lair, and they can create the shared prosperity that removes the driving forces behind crisis and war.

The question is not whether the left can afford to be radical. The question is whether the left can afford not to be. The fascists are waiting. The only thing that is preventing them from wrecking the world is their incompetence. It would be irresponsible to continue to bank on it.

Share

Yanis Varoufakis is an economist, politician and author. His latest book is ‘Raise Your Soul: A Personal History of Resistance’.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Zeteo.

Check out more from Zeteo:

Subscribe now

“We’re not coming to just shake the table for the sake of shaking it. But the table does need to be shaken,” Kiros tells Mehdi.

Kiros, who’s all but assured to win her deep blue district, discusses whether she will be voting for minority leader Hakeem Jeffries as House speaker, how democratic socialism is the tool to counter “billionaires that are literally developing a technology that is designed to replace us,” and why she will not disown Hasan Piker, with whom she campaigned. “We are holding a Twitch streamer to a higher level of accountability than a lot of these administration officials.”

Watch the full conversation above to hear how being fired from her job as a corporate attorney over her opposition to the genocide in Gaza led to Kiros’ upset win against a 15-term incumbent democrat, plus how she defines as democratic socialism, and the need to address gerontocracy in the U.S.

Share

Paid subscribers can watch the full video above. Free subscribers can watch a 3-minute preview. Consider becoming a paid subscriber to unlock content like this and a lot more from Zeteo.

Check out more from Zeteo:

Read more

Happy Wednesday – it’s Swin again. The world’s crassest, most buffoonishly violent imperialist is at it again, and he’s not just making his own nation listen. He’s forcing all the “United” ones to listen too.

In today’s ‘First Draft,’ we’ll get right into why Donald Trump gave the worst United Nations speech ever delivered by a U.S. president, and that includes Trump’s past speeches in New York in September.

Plus, GOP Senator Susan Collins has a ProPublica-sized problem in Maine, after a bombshell report about a bribery probe Trump’s crooked DOJ made go away, and Trump’s forever war with Iran drags on. Let’s get to it.

Subscribe now

‘Spoils’ Brat

If you didn’t tune into Donald Trump’s address to the United Nations General Assembly in Manhattan, the president played the hits – meaning, it was a disgusting carnival of self-aggrandizement, flailing bullyboy nonsense, and mindless bloodlust masquerading as MAGA-fried realpolitik.

He threatened the Cuban delegation, at a time when his government is brutally asphyxiating that nation. As he often does, he threatened the Iranian people with genocide, “annihilation,” and “hell,” because he can’t face the fact he’s badly losing a war he started. He bragged about his boat bombing campaign and boasted of his invasion of Venezuela and kidnapping of its leader, openly telling all nations, democratic and not, that the United States is now fully, openly in the business of pillaging, looting, and extra-legal killing.

Subscribe now

No more plausible deniability. No high-minded nods to “spreading democracy” or “human rights.”

The Trump doctrine is just a new version of his old remarks about sexual assault on the Access Hollywood tape; When you’re America, they let you do it.

“In January, at my direction, the United States military conducted a massive military operation penetrating deep into the Venezuelan capital,” Trump told the UN on Tuesday. “Last month, we signed the largest oil deal in history [with Venezuela’s leadership] … It was a war … To the victor belong the spoils, you’ve all heard that.”

Read more

The headlines are hard to miss: AI could kill all humans in 10 years, a growing number of AI researchers and executives have warned in recent weeks. Not everyone believes it’s as dire as some are making it out to be, and instead see much of the hype as a marketing campaign designed to fill the pockets of Big AI. Regardless of where you are on the contentious issue, one thing is clear: AI poses enormous risks, and whether regulation or a slowdown happens or not, the technology itself isn’t going anywhere and will likely continue to change the way we live.

Subscribe now

That’s why it’s important to understand the confusing word salad of phrases and acronyms researchers and experts often use to describe the fast-developing technology, its risks, and its potential benefits.

To help, we’ve put together a quick cheat sheet of nine of the most common confusing terms – from AGI to ASI to RSI to “alignment” – you should know. Many of these terms don’t have universally agreed-upon definitions and refer to theoretical concepts that some experts don’t even think are possible, but here’s how best to think about them:

1. Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)

While popular AI applications like Claude or ChatGPT can be impressively capable with specific sets of tasks, artificial general intelligence (AGI) would match or exceed human capabilities across different areas. There is no single definition of AGI, but you can think of it as an AI system that can learn, solve problems, and generally operate much like – or better than – a human. People can have relationships with others and make their own decisions. Chatbots, while impressive, are only able to generate text that’s similar to what they’ve been trained on, based on a prompt. A theoretical AGI model would have the same flexibility that humans have.

AGI remains a hypothetical term. But OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says his company will reach AGI by the end of the year. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, however, says AGI is just a “marketing term,” though he has admitted that we are on the verge of creating AI systems that are “better” than humans at most things.

2. Artificial Superintelligence (ASI)

Read more

'Night Flower: Inside AIPAC’s Fight for Influence’ is a major investigative documentary about the rise, power, and changing fortunes of America’s most influential pro-Israel lobbying group, and we are delighted to release the trailer, above, to the world today.

Drawing on interviews with former AIPAC officials and insiders (who know the intimate details of its inner workings), politicians, and activists, the film will trace the evolution of AIPAC from a one-man advocacy operation into one of the most powerful lobbying groups in the U.S. and explore how it has finally become a massive lightning rod in U.S. elections in 2026.

For a subscriber-based independent media company like Zeteo, funding a major investigative documentary film like this is no small thing, which is why we need your financial help in getting this ambitious production across the finish line.

Subscribe now

If you are a free subscriber and feel like this documentary is important, that what it’s investigating is worth airing and publicizing, then do consider helping fund - and finish! - the film by becoming a paid subscriber today. You will then also be able to watch it in full, without a paywall, when it is released in the coming weeks.

For those of you who are already paid subscribers, thank you so much, because projects like this wouldn’t be possible without you. If you’d like to help contribute to the ongoing production of this important film, you can also donate to Zeteo here.

Share

This unique investigation from 1st and Orchard Films is the work of Dion Nissenbaum, the two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and filmmaker behind Zeteo’s ‘Who Killed Shireen?’ and Zach Goldbaum, the Emmy Award-winning director behind the 2024 New York Times Opinion film ‘Meet the World’s Most Honorable Bank Robbers of Lebanon.’

Stay tuned for the release of the film, as well as a series of live screenings, in the coming weeks. And if you're not a paid subscriber yet, be sure to subscribe to Zeteo so you get those announcements straight to your inbox.

And thanks again to all of our paid subscribers and, in particular, our founding members. We simply could not commission, produce, or air this film without your financial support. Should you want to help projects like this even further, you can always donate to us here.

Share

Good morning, friends. Prem here, with a very timely cross-section of news. While the pro-Israel lobby’s influence has been on full display across U.S. current events (for example, in the Ellisons’ takeover of the media, in Robert Kraft censoring Macklemore, and in the NFL targeting a player for wearing the names of murdered Palestinian kids), artificial intelligence has also been commanding headlines. Today, we bring to you the latest chapter in an accelerating campaign: websites paid for by Israel, seemingly seeking to influence chatbots to give pro-Israel answers.

We’ll also check in on that Ellison takeover and aghast responses from free speech advocates as well as CNN and CBS staffers who spoke to Zeteo’s own Justin Baragona, and consider the unsavory company kept by Michigan GOP Senate candidate Mike Rogers as he challenges Democrat Abdul El-Sayed in a key battleground race. There’s plenty more news too, so let’s dive in.

Subscribe now

AI - Emphasis on the ‘I’

Israel is paying for a new website in its ongoing effort to apparently influence AI chatbots so they spit out pro-Israel answers.

Foreign agent filings show that as part of a $1 million effort, the Israeli government has propped up the website “IsraelFact.com.” The site is the latest in a constellation of propaganda and influence campaigns that have cropped up in recent months.

Subscribe now

Over the past month, “IsraelFact” has been churning out content sometimes multiple times per day, each article’s headline phrased as a question. The topics range from “What Does Israel’s Ceasefire Decision Say About Its Forces in Gaza?” and “How Many Moslems Live in Israel?” to “Is It Legal for Settlers to Take Palestinian Land Under Israeli Law?” and “Can Uncultivated Palestinian Farmland Be Expropriated?”

The website includes this disclaimer: “Israel pays for this site. We are registered as a foreign agent in the United States.”

The website has published at least 119 articles in a month. The articles largely frame content in such a way that could propel chatbot answers to provide either a pro-Israel narrative or minimize counter-narratives.

The site’s mission is laid out quite plainly.

Read more

After ProPublica reported that a Russian oligarch had financed wedding festivities for Donald Trump Jr., his bride confirmed the facts but not their obvious significance.

“It was an extraordinarily generous wedding gift from a friend,” a statement on Bettina Trump’s Instagram said. Dismissing suggestions of any quid pro quo, the statement added: “Generosity doesn’t automatically come with an agenda.”

President Donald Trump and his family typically explain their suspicious relations with Russia that way. To an astonishing degree, nothing to see here has worked. Indeed, in Trump’s long career as a con man, his hustle with Vladimir Putin stands alone.

Subscribe now

Their undeclared alliance has proven infinitely more consequential than Trump fleecing students of his “university,” stiffing creditors, or escaping the Vietnam draft. Reciprocal back-scratching has helped him gain wealth and power, corrupted his political party, and boosted an authoritarian adversary while weakening America and the free world.

The two men’s audacity begs the question: how did they pull this off?

Read more

Subscribe now

Have you heard the news?

Zeteo UK officially launched last week with a sold-out show sponsored by Substack at the Barbican Centre featuring a a wide-ranging onstage interview with Zack Polanski.

Mehdi and Zeteo UK’s new political editor, Shehab Khan, sat down with the Green Party leader, who spoke out against Israel’s genocide in Gaza:

“I feel, as a Jewish person, a responsibility to say, ‘When I grew up in my teenage years understanding about the Holocaust and the history of the Jewish race, never again means never again – not just for one group of people, but for every single group of people.’”

Share

But Gaza isn’t the only topic Mehdi and Shehab press Polanski on. In this wide-ranging interview – and audience Q&A! – he also talks about:

• His Jewish identity and how his views on Israel have evolved

• Whether Andy Burnham’s leadership has killed the Green Party’s momentum

• The media hit pieces and right-wing propaganda unleashed against him

• If he’ll resign as party leader if he loses his upcoming parliamentary election

• Whether the Green Party will split the vote and lead to the rise of Reform UK

• His televised clash with Ed Balls on “Good Morning Britain”

• Whether the upcoming Israeli elections will bring change

• And his plan for addressing the rise of AI and data centers.

Paid subscribers can watch the near hour-long conversation above, while free subscribers can access a five-minute preview. Consider upgrading your subscription to never hit a Zeteo paywall again!

Share

Thank you to Substack for sponsoring a great evening at the Barbican Centre.

Check out more from Zeteo:

Read more

Good morning. Martin and Swin here, in Martin’s case, forgoing the usual Happy Mondays link because the news this morning is rather serious, if not outright unhappy. Try this for size, instead.

In today’s ‘First Draft,’ we’ve got exclusive reporting from Trumpworld about the president’s state of mind as he appears to ponder, yet again, a major escalation in his disastrous war with Iran, even as what promise to be disastrous midterm elections loom. We also take a look at Donald Trump’s petulant decision to ban CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, and a predictably anodyne response from the rest of the press. Let’s get to it.

Subscribe now

‘Political Suicide’

On Saturday, without explanation to the press or public, Donald Trump cut short a visit to the presidential retreat at Camp David. Trump has never liked the place much, but presidents do tend to make unexpected trips from the Maryland hills back to the Washington swamp when something big is cooking. They don’t usually travel with two top golfers and a model, true. But Trump’s gonna Trump, as we know.

On Sunday, Trump proved that maxim again when he told Fox he was considering ordering a war crime, saying he was deciding between “wiping Iran out, letting them rot economically, or making a deal. My question is, ‘If and when do I blow the entire nation up?’ They better behave.”

Subscribe now

As has been pointed out throughout the seven-month war, Trump has often made such dire threats and nothing so serious has resulted – a point made without wishing to lessen the parade of horrors Trump’s war has produced, not one iota. This time, speaking to Fox, Trump offered another possible get-out, saying he was open to meeting Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian at the UN in New York this week.

But as the Wall Street Journal depicted ‘Veep’ levels of mania in the White House – the president off the leash and alarming aides in the absence of departed press secretary Karoline Leavitt and chief of staff Susie Wiles, who has been addressing health concerns – the State Department issued a security alert to citizens across the Middle East, a common move ahead of military action. Furthermore, amid stark reporting on the “cascade of preventable failures” that led U.S. forces to annihilate at least 123 children at a school in Iran on day one of the war – the Trump administration hasn’t owned up, but the evidence is overwhelming – multiple outlets reported regional preparations for renewed U.S. bombing.

In Iran, the Revolutionary Guard said it had information that a new attack was coming, and added that if so, “all U.S. bases and interests in the region will become targets of continuous, effective and painful attacks without any limitations or considerations.”

For Zeteo, Swin hit the phones, working his Washington sources, testing the strength of reports that Trump is looking for “foreign policy victories” ahead of the midterm elections.

Read more

According to polling, the race is tied. Does Jackson have what it takes? He joins Zeteo’s John Harwood for a candid conversation about his campaign, live on Substack, where he took questions from Zeteo subscribers watching in real time.

Subscribe now

Watch the full video above to find out why Jackson believes this is a “change election” – and to hear him take on Collins over her anti-abortion track record, Medicare for All, and high gas prices. Jackson also answers questions about Joe Manchin’s endorsement of Collins, his past as a Republican, and just how much he aligns with Platner’s politics.

Free subscribers can watch a 1-minute preview, paid subscribers can watch the full 20 minutes. Consider upgrading to a paid subscription and never hit a paywall again!

This was a live conversation on Zeteo.com and the Substack app, where subscribers could ask questions. Be sure to subscribe to catch the next Substack Live.

Share

Check out more from Zeteo:

Read more

A child cries as he remains trapped by the rubble of a collapsed building. A Palestinian man holds up a dead child pulled from the wreckage. Palestinian rescue workers use their bare hands to dig to reach those screaming for help. Those were the scenes this week after a war-damaged building collapsed in Gaza City as several Palestinian families slept inside.

At least 12 of the 21 Palestinians who died were children. Rescue operations were complicated by the limited resources Palestinian first responders have to work with because of Israel’s severe restrictions on heavy machinery and other equipment from entering the Strip. The fact that dozens were rescued is purely due to the ingenuity and resilience of Palestinian rescue workers.

Subscribe now

Meanwhile, this week, Israel continued its attacks in Gaza, killing, among others, a 15-year-old boy. In the occupied West Bank, settler attacks continue to intensify, while a leading Israeli think tank issued a rare “strategic alert,” warning “Jewish terrorism” against Palestinians has become “a distinct strategic threat to the State of Israel.” Here’s more on all of those stories and others from another troubling and deadly week in Palestine:

Saturday, Sept. 12 - Pregnant Woman Dies After Being Shot in the Head by Israeli Forces

Read more

Subscribe now

“I wanted the comment on the budget. It was my constitutional right,” Erakat tells Mehdi, “I was told I need to leave the room. I was never told I was arrested before I was rough-handled by two officers who placed handcuffs on me, on purpose, very tight, who began to rough-handle me, to spread my legs to search me, and to explain that this is what happens when you don’t listen.”

Erakat was charged with trespass and obstruction after the mayor prohibited discussion of Israeli bonds during the hearing. Joining Erakat on the show is Lydia Ghuman, executive director of the Internationalist Law Center, who organized the effort to protest the county’s investments in Israeli bonds.

“No other foreign country can get investment of local taxpayer dollars, but Israel can,” she says. “Florida is in many ways an experiment, a lab for Zionist influence, and uses Florida as a test case to see what policies, what they can push, due to the relationships they’ve been able to form with local politicians.”

Share

Watch the full interview above to hear the details of the hearing that led to Erakat’s arrest, and how a county in Florida became the world’s largest government investor in Israeli bonds.

This video is being shared without a paywall. If you believe in the work we do and want to see more of it, do consider becoming a paid subscriber. And if you’re not ready for the commitment, then a donation would still go a long way.

Check out more from Zeteo:

This week the far-right Supreme Court handed Democrats a rare victory, rejecting Donald Trump’s bid to restrict mail-in voting. But (because there is always a but when it comes to Trump and his cronies), the ruling was “cryptic,” as some experts have put it, and the public should expect more “turbulence” around the issue into 2028.

Trump, of course, wasn’t happy and lashed out at his own picks on the Court. In fact, The Donald did a lot of lashing out this week at the judicial branch. He threatened to tear down the Kennedy Center if he’s not allowed to put his name on it. What a democracy we live in when the president of the United States continuously throws tantrums when he doesn’t get his way because of … the law…yet seemingly ignores the issues Americans truly care about – i.e., high gas prices due to his failing war.

Trump and his cronies found other ways to harm democracy, undermine the Constitution, and hurt free societies. From Laura Loomer’s latest vile comments to the Trump admin’s latest move to make climate change worse, to the president banning CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House, here’s ‘This Week in Democracy – Week 87’:

Subscribe now

Saturday, Sept. 12 – Laura Loomer Posts More Vile Tweets

Conspiracy theorist, Islamophobe, and Trump ally Laura Loomer attacked CNN host Abby Phillip on Twitter, saying she “may just be the biggest lying c*** on TV,” and floating the idea of suing her, after Phillip rightly pointed out that Trump brought Loomer to the 9/11 memorial back in 2024.

In another tweet, Loomer berated the family member of a 9/11 victim.

Sunday, Sept. 13 – Trump Eliminates Greenhouse Gas Emission Limits on Power Plants

The New York Times reported that the Trump administration would eliminate a rule that limited greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin announced the move on Monday, along with a new proposed rule that would make it harder for future administrations to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

Share

Monday, Sept. 14 – Russian Oligarch Helped Pay for Trump Jr.’s Wedding Expenses

ProPublica reported that Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to help pay for Donald Trump Jr.’s recent wedding, including renting a private island in the Bahamas and the fireworks show.

It’s unclear why Kremlev, who ProPublica says is a member of Vladimir Putin’s circle, helped pay for the wedding, considering Trump Jr.’s reported net worth of roughly $300 million, but the move raised concerns among national security experts who question the motive for the financial assistance.

Tuesday, Sept. 15 – ICE Lost Track of Miscarriage Data

The Guardian published a harrowing exposé on ICE’s record detentions of pregnant women, reporting that the agency lost count of the number of women who suffered miscarriages while in its custody.

ICE records showed there were 18 miscarriages during the first nine months of Trump’s second term, but the agency didn’t have any data past Oct. 3, 2025. Women who spoke to The Guardian say they didn’t receive follow-up care after they miscarried or were hospitalized for pregnancy complications.

Subscribe now

Wednesday, Sept. 16 – ICE Deports Political Rival of Ecuadorian President

The New York Times reported that ICE hastily deported José Serrano last month – a critic of Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa – the same day immigration judges appointed by the Trump administration reversed a ruling that found he was likely to face torture if he was removed and returned to his home country. Serrano was arrested by ICE agents in Miami last year, just days after Noboa met with then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in Ecuador.

Meanwhile, Mother Jones reported that the Trump administration deported a dozen Somali men to the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay last month after telling them they were being returned to Somalia. Several of the men had applied for asylum and secured work authorizations, and at least one had filed a habeas corpus petition.

Thursday, Sept. 17 – Virginia AG Warns DHS It May Have Broken Several State Laws

Virginia’s attorney general sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security warning that DHS may have broken multiple state laws during a wide-ranging investigation into so-called voter fraud, and demanded the probe end immediately.

The letter comes days after a whistleblower revealed that some DHS agents used personally identifiable information, such as birth dates and partial Social Security numbers, to pose as voters on state websites to access their voting records.

Friday, Sept. 18 – Trump Bans CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House

Trump said on Truth Social that “effective immediately” he is banning CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House over their negative media coverage of him, a clear violation of the First Amendment. He warned he could soon ban other news organizations as well.

Share

Did you miss previous weeks of ‘This Week in Democracy’? Catch up here. And check out more of Zeteo’s reporting from this week below:

If El-Sayed wins in November, he would become the first Muslim to ever be elected to the U.S. Senate. But on the campaign trail, he’s faced a barrage of racist, Islamophobic attacks from his Republican opponent, right-wing media, and the White House.

Now, in a new and candid interview with Mehdi in Washington DC, El-Sayed doesn’t hold back when it comes to his critics, noting that Vice President JD Vance will “never” have the charisma of his “idiot ass boss,” calls Trump “vain” and “narcissistic,” and says his opponent Mike Rogers is “a bit of a coward.”

Subscribe now

Mehdi and El-Sayed also talk about:

• Trump’s planned $2.8 billion weapons gift to Israel (“Those 2,000-pound bombs are never going to save a child”)

• Mike Rogers not showing up to their televised debate this week (“He knows he’s between a rock and a hard place”)

• Why pro-Israel billionaire Robert Kraft forcing pro-Palestine Macklemore to be dropped from Ed Sheeran’s tour is “a dangerous situation”

• How tired he is of journalists constantly asking him about Hasan Piker (“I wish folks in the media took the job more seriously”)

• The attacks on his wife, and the questions about billing at her medical practice

• His viral video lip-syncing and dancing to Taylor Swift (“I’m a girl-dad … I have become very familiar with Taylor Swift’s entire body of work.”)

Paid subscribers can watch the full half-hour video interview above, while free subscribers can access a 2-minute preview. Consider upgrading your subscription to never hit a Zeteo paywall again.

Share

Check out more from Zeteo:

Read more

Good morning. Martin and Andrew, delighted to bring you the news you need to start your day.

Thursday was another average day in Donald Trump’s Washington – meaning in one sense averagely batshit, the president using White House remarks to muse about banning fishing, and in others averagely alarming.

Trump’s existential threat to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is one such worrying development. On that score, in today’s ‘First Draft’ we have a scoop for you, one that reveals more about the financial shape the center is in, thanks to Trump. We also look at a remarkable political ad cut by a senior GOP congresswoman in Lafayette Square next to the White House, which shows how Trump’s grip is slipping, and there’s more Iran news too. Let’s dive in.

Subscribe now

‘It’s a Mess,’ Alright

Earlier this week, a federal judge said for a second time Donald Trump’s name could not be added to the exterior of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the “living memorial” to the murdered 35th president on the banks of the Potomac in Washington, DC, because only Congress could order such a change. In response, the Trump administration closed the building down.

The next day, Trump said of the center: “It’s a mess. The Kennedy Center for many years has lost tens of millions of dollars, even hundreds of millions of dollars. It’s a loser financially… For me to go and fix it, I’m the one capable of fixing it and then have to subsidize it for years to come, because you will lose with the Kennedy Center, they were losing hundreds of millions of dollars and sometimes hundreds of billions, this is before I got involved.”

Subscribe now

So Zeteo asked the Kennedy Center for its 2025 tax return, which was filed last month.

Handed over, it showed that while Trump’s claims about the center’s finances being in a perilous state may now be accurate – a slide reporting by the Washington Post has shown to have happened since the president took over the institution – he is both lying about previous losses and hiding his own deliberate financial assault.

The tax return does not show the Kennedy Center perpetually losing “hundreds of millions” or “sometimes hundreds of billions.” But it confirms issues, particularly around Trump’s takeover.

As of Sept. 30, 2025, the Kennedy Center had record net assets of $778 million. The center reported $517 million in revenue last year, and $210 million in revenue less expenses.

But if not for untapped appropriations from Congress – $257 million as part of Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill – the center would have been in the red. That’s because it listed a $48 million “bad debt expense” in its tax return. Program revenue declined by $16 million and pledges and grants declined by $30 million in the seven or so months after Trump began his Kennedy Center takeover. That was before he added his name to the building, a move that reportedly caused ticket sales and donations to plunge much further.

Read more

Trump has spent years arguing it was just one big hoax. And while you might think the scandal has been debunked and discredited, a new book by veteran political journalist David Corn proves that couldn’t be further from the truth.

It’s called How Russia Won: Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and the Fight for America, and in a can’t-miss ‘Mehdi Unfiltered’ interview, Corn tells Mehdi about the book’s biggest revelations, whether he has any regrets about being the first to report on the existence of the infamous Steele dossier, and lays out how Russia might interfere in the 2026 midterm elections.

Subscribe now

“If this becomes a crisis, you can expect to see Russian disinformation operations trying to make it worse… and getting behind Trump and amplifying his charges of rigged elections,” Corn says. “If this is happening, the FBI, the director of national intelligence, the State Department – they will be silent on this.”

Corn also discusses why he believes Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen is trying to cozy back up to the president, admits some liberals put “too many eggs in the Mueller basket,” and explains why Democrats failed when it came to the Trump-Russia scandal.

“If you go back to 2016, you had Trump siding with a foreign adversary attacking the nation,” Corn tells Mehdi. “Now, maybe it wasn’t illegal, but it was wrong. It was an act of betrayal. But that was never contextualized by the Democrats.”

Share

Paid subscribers can watch the full video interview above, while free subscribers can access a 2-minute preview. Consider upgrading your subscription to never hit a Zeteo paywall again.

Click here to buy a copy of Corn’s book, How Russia Won: Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and the Fight for America. And if you’ve already read it, feel free to share your review of the book in the comments below!

Looking for more book recommendations? Visit the Zeteo Book Club here for inspiration!

Subscribe now

Check out more from Zeteo:

Read more

In the tough competition for ‘most Islamophobic Republican member of Congress,’ Nancy Mace of South Carolina is a top contender. Just in recent weeks, she has said that “every single Muslim holding public office in America is a trojan horse, and a threat to both national security and our republic” and claimed that “not all muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are muslims.”

So Mehdi went on ‘Piers Uncensored’ today to debate the racist Republican congresswoman and challenge her record of bigotry and hate towards Muslim Americans – as well as her loyal support for Israel and Trump.

Subscribe now

Mace constantly tried to interrupt and talk over our editor-in-chief, and ridiculously and desperately accused him of being “jihad adjacent,” but Mehdi, as ever, held his ground and brought receipts for all of her racist lies and crazy scandals – including her own former staffers telling New York magazine that she allegedly sent them to liquor stores at all hours of the day and night to buy alcohol for her. (As you’ll see, Mace denies the allegations.)

Watch their full debate (shouting match?) on ‘Piers Uncensored’ above.

If you like the work Zeteo and Mehdi are doing, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. And if you’re already one, you can always help further with a donation.

Share

Check out more from Zeteo: