The Dictatorship

The U.S. is complicit in Israel’s starvation of Gaza. There are two ways to change that.

Published

11 months ago

July 25, 2025

The U.S. is complicit in Israel’s starvation of Gaza. There are two ways to change that.

Imagine an army captured the city of Philadelphia, fenced it in, closed its waterfront and opened just a few gates for supply trucks. Now imagine the army bombed Philadelphia’s hospitals, razed land used to grow food, barred fishing and closed those gates to all but an intermittent trickle of aid. If you saw news footage of children dying of malnutrition and read U.N. warnings of mass starvation, would you doubt those reports? If the military blocking the food trucks was using U.S. public money to buy weapons, would you question the need to stop the flow of arms and demand that the military let aid in?

An estimated thousands or tens of thousands of people have died from complications related to the supply blockage, including malnutrition, dehydration and disease.

Since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks on Israeli civilians, which constituted crimes against humanityIsraeli authorities have used starvation as a weapon of war in varying degrees, intermittently blocking all aid to the Gaza Strip, which resembles Philadelphia in size and population. Since Israel ended the aid shutdown in May, the government has permitted supplies to enter the territory in quantities catastrophically insufficient for its approximately 2 million residents. The Israeli military also razed cropland banned fishingdestroyed hospitals and water infrastructure and cut electricity, rendering people almost entirely dependent on the obstructed external supplies. An estimated thousands or tens of thousands of people have died from complications related to the supply blockage, including malnutrition, dehydration and disease. Aid agencies are begging to be allowed to deliver food sitting in nearby warehouses or waiting just outside Gaza.

Israel has controlled the movement of goods into Gaza since 1967 and, in the 1990s, built fences and walls around it, making residents dependent on the Israeli military opening crossings, in order to eat. What we are seeing play out now in recent months is weaponization of this control, with increasingly deadly results.

The Israeli government denies famine or aid obstruction and blames the United Nations and Hamas for any shortages. Israeli officials accuse aid agencies of “distributing lies,” say restrictions are needed to prevent diversion by Hamas, and argue that because tons of U.N. aid is still on the Gaza side of crossings, waiting to be distributed, there’s no need to allow more in. On Friday, Reuters revealed the existence of a U.S. Agency for International Development report finding no evidence of systematic Hamas diversion of U.S.-funded aid.

Official Israeli misinformation is not particularly sophisticated, but it’s repetitive, relentless and reliant on Western dehumanization of Palestinians to help render the information Palestinians convey — with words and with images and videos they share of their emaciated bodies — suspect. Only racism — the belief that some people’s lives are worth less than others, and that some people’s statements are inherently unreliable — can explain American susceptibility to Israel’s denial of starvation in Gaza. If you block food to a besieged population, nearly half of whom are children, what do you think will happen?

Thursday’s statement by U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff that, in the absence of a ceasefire deal, he’ll explore alternative options to “try to create a more stable environment for the people of Gaza” would be laughable given the billions of dollars of U.S. support for the army that’s blocking the food — if it didn’t involve 57 children documented by the Gaza Ministry of Health to have died of malnutrition in just over two months.

There are two things the United States government should urgently do to end U.S. complicity in the mass starvation.

First, the U.S. must tell the Israeli military to open all crossings into Gaza, end onerous bureaucratic restrictions and allow aid groups to flood the strip with food. On average since March 2, just 28 international aid trucks have entered Gaza daily, compared with 500 total trucks per day before the war. Limited additional quantities have entered via the U.S.- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), but reaching their distribution sites is dangerous or impossible for most people in Gaza. That severity of the food shortage makes safe and orderly delivery to civilians nearly impossible. Out of 1,090 truckloads of aid collected from the crossings last month by veteran international organizations, all but 43 were looted or “self-distributed” by hungry crowds.

According to the U.N., the Israeli military has failed to approve safe delivery routes, mechanisms and timing for truck delivery.

According to the U.N., the Israeli military has failed to approve safe delivery routes, mechanisms and timing for truck delivery. This, combined with the desperation that starvation creates, is the main reason it’s been so hard to distribute the little aid that has entered Gaza — that’s why there is some aid in Gaza still waiting to be distributed. If Israeli authorities allow unrestricted aid into Gaza, subject only to physical inspection and credible U.N. assurances against diversion, and cooperate with the U.N. on delivery, supplies will reach the level at which safe, dignified distribution will become possible.

Second, the U.S. must end support for dangerous, militarized distribution schemes like the GHF and instruct the Israeli military to resume cooperation with the United Nations and the other principled, impartial aid groups. Hundreds of people have been fatally shot by Israeli forces or crushed in a stampede after walking for miles to reach the four highly militarized GHF distribution points that have replaced the hundreds of community distribution sites aid groups ran until Israeli authorities banned them from bringing in food for household distribution. Workarounds to parachute small quantities of food into Gaza were ineffective in the past and would be even less effective now, given the scope of the need and the desperation.

The Israeli government is responsible for starving Palestinians in Gaza, but U.S. backing makes it complicit, too. How many more children need to die of hunger before the U.S. government admits that without food, human beings will die — and that U.S. economic, military and diplomatic support should not be used as a tool in mass starvation?

Sari debt

Sari Bashi is a human rights lawyer, the former program director at Human Rights Watch and the author of “Upside-Down Love,” forthcoming in 2026.

The Dictatorship

Trump and Vance tout Iran deal as a payday for US farmers

Published

3 hours ago

June 25, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Trump and Vance tout Iran deal as a payday for US farmers

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance say their interim deal to end the war with Iran will deliver a financial windfall to American farmers.

But the Iranians deny it. And in the absence of more details, sanctions experts are flummoxed over exactly how billions of dollars’ worth of Iranian assets would make their way to the American heartland from the escrow accounts where they’ve been locked for years by U.S. sanctions.

A tentative agreement reached last week would reopen the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas once passed, and allow Iran to start selling its oil freely again during a 60-day period when the two countries will continue negotiating key issues. The memorandum of understanding also promised to unfreeze Iranian assets.

Trump’s deal has come under fire for failing to address the reasons the president cited for going to war with Iran on Feb. 28, including curbing Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, its missile program and its support for militant groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

Lashing back at critics Tuesday on his Truth Social media platform, Trump said U.S. farmers would get a payday: The U.S. Treasury Department, he wrote, would release the Iranian assets “into escrow, controlled by the U.S.A., and will be used for the purchase of food and medical supplies, exclusively from the United States, including Corn, Wheat, and Soybeans from our great American farmers. These are things that are desperately needed by Iran.’’

Vance, who spoke about the proposal after high-level talks in Switzerland, and Trump say that any frozen funds and assets held outside of Iran will be used to buy U.S. crops.

But the Iranians deny that’s part of the deal. A spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Esmail Baghaei, said any agricultural purchases would be based on “prices and quality,’’ not terms dictated by Washington.

“It is interesting that the philosophy and goal of the war, which was the destruction of the Iranian civilization and the collapse of Iran, has become enriching American farmers,” Baghaei said.

Sign up for Morning Wire: Our flagship newsletter breaks down the biggest headlines of the day.

Iran’s ambassador in Geneva, Ali Bahreini, rejected Vance’s contention that the U.S. and Qatar would dictate how Iran uses unfrozen funds. “Iran is the only country who decides what to do with those assets,” he told reporters.

A U.S. official dismissed the contradiction, asserting that Iranian leaders were speaking to their domestic audience. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record.

Joseph Glauber, a research fellow emeritus at the International Food Policy Research Institute, said Iran was unlikely to abandon its other trade partners on food.

Iran’s major suppliers include Brazil, India, Turkey, the European Union, Canada, Australia and Argentina, he said. Trump’s demand to buy from the U.S. would “create some hard feelings with some of our competitors.”

Under previous sanctions, the U.S. has required that money foreign countries spend on imports from Iran — such as South Korean purchases of oil and Iraqi purchases of Iranian electricity — be locked in escrow accounts and typically released only if the Treasury approves and if the proceeds go toward “non-sanctionable’’ items such as food and medicine.

On Monday, the U.S. Treasury approved the sale of Iranian oil, petrochemicals and petroleum products through Aug. 21. It did not mention any escrow accounts.

Richard Goldberg of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who coordinated efforts to put diplomatic pressure on Iran in the first Trump administration, said in a post on X that he would welcome “a clarification that Iran is actually restricted to only buying U.S. agricultural products.”

Richard Nephew, senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, said it’s unclear what the new U.S.-Iran agreement actually means for releasing restricted Iranian assets.

Could the U.S. require that the assets be used to buy American farm products?

“Well, we can try!’’ Nephew, who helped design Iran sanctions in the Obama and Biden administrations, said by email. “All you really need to do is to tell a foreign bank that they can move the money but only to a U.S. bank to buy soybeans or whatever.”

Banks do not have to comply, he said. If they refuse, the U.S. could sanction them as well.

But it’s rare for the U.S. to conduct itself that way, he added, “in part because we don’t usually like to give the impression that we treat national security issues as a cash grab.”

___

Associated Press writers Josh Boak and Michelle L. Price in Washington contributed to this report.

The Dictatorship

4 years after fall of Roe, Mika shares story she ‘can’t get out’ of her head

Published

13 hours ago

June 25, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

4 years after fall of Roe, Mika shares story she ‘can’t get out’ of her head

Jun. 24, 2026, 4:49 PM EDT

Wednesday marks four years since the Supreme Court issued its landmark Dobbs decisionwhich effectively overturned Roe v. Wade and repealed the constitutional right to an abortion. On “Morning Joe,” co-host Mika Brzezinski explained how the ruling set off a domino effect across the United States, affecting not just abortion-related care, but also altering “the state of women’s healthcare as a whole.”

As Brzezinski noted, states across the country have enacted harsher abortion restrictions since the 2022 ruling, with 13 outright banning the procedure with very limited exceptions. This has created a climate of fear among those who treat pregnant patients, with many healthcare providers worrying that any care involving an abortion could violate the law, even when the mother’s health is at risk.

“We are talking about people dying when they’re miscarrying because doctors are too afraid to intervene and save their lives,” Amy Littlefield, abortion access correspondent for The Nation, told MS NOW.

Brzezinski said the laws have effectively limited women’s “access to lifesaving healthcare.”

The MS NOW host reflected on some high-profile stories of pregnant women who faced delayed care in states with near-total abortion bans, noting “the numbers of cases that we’ve covered here on the show of women who have had their lives threatened, have been forced to give birth to dying or dead babies, and then, by the way, denied the access to ever create life again, because they became sterilized in the process.”

“There’s an image I can’t get out of my head,” Brzezinski added, before sharing reporting from ProPublica about Porsha Ngumezi, a 35-year-old mother who died in Texas in 2023 after not receiving timely care for a miscarriage.

“For months afterward, Porsha’s 3-year-old son would chase after women who looked like her on the street, shouting, ‘That’s Mommy!’” Brzezinski said. “That’s the detail I can’t forget. I can’t stop imagining that little boy chasing after strangers on the street. And that story repeats itself.”

You can watch Brzezinski’s full comments in the clip at the top of the page.

Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW. She was previously a segment producer for “AYMAN” and “The Mehdi Hasan Show.”

The Dictatorship

Who is Darializa Avila Chevalier, Mamdani-backed winner of New York House primary?

Published

14 hours ago

June 25, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Who is Darializa Avila Chevalier, Mamdani-backed winner of New York House primary?

Jun. 24, 2026, 6:03 PM EDT

One of the biggest upsets in Tuesday night’s primaries came in New York’s 13th Congressional District, where Darializa Avila Chevalier, a 32-year-old democratic socialist, managed to beat incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat, 71, who was backed by establishment Democrats.

Chevalier, a doctoral student in sociology at the City University of New York, secured 49.4% of votes in the district — which encompasses upper Manhattan, Harlem and parts of the Bronx — defeating Espaillat, who received about 46% of the votes after representing the district for nearly a decade, according to The Associated Press. She now advances to the November general election, which she is presumed to win in the solidly Democratic district.

Chevalier’s primary win marks a major win for the Democrats’ left-wing flank that backed her, including New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdaniwho endorsed Chevalier last month during a joint interview on MS NOW’s “The Briefing with Jen Psaki.”

Here is what to know about Chevalier and the platform she campaigned on.

She has never held elected office

Prior to her congressional campaign, Chevalier had never run or held elected office. But she has been involved with advocating for issues that became political flashpoints, including helping organize the pro-Palestinian encampments at Columbia University, according to her biography on the website of the Justice Democratsthe progressive group that recruited her to run.

The daughter of Dominican immigrants, Chevalier also worked as an organizer for Families for Freedom, a New York City group that assists immigrants facing deportation.

Chevalier earned a bachelor’s degree in Middle Eastern studies from Columbia University in 2016 and later worked as a paralegal, according to her LinkedIn.

Chevalier faced scrutiny during her campaign over previously articulated stances and incendiary comments, including her appearance at a Times Square rally the day after Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, where attendees reportedly suggested the attack was justified.

At a March candidates’ forum, Chevalier declined to condemn Hamas, saying that a request to do so “ignores the 75 years of occupation that the Palestinian people have been subjected to and the conditions that that folks were living under before this genocide began,” the local outlet City & State reported. Later, on local radio station WNYC, Chevalier said she did condemn Hamas when asked, adding, “As far as I know, the U.S. does not send a single dime to Hamas. What we fund is the Israeli military.”

In a series of since-deleted social media posts between 2018 and 2022Chevalier also used expletives to refer to former Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democratic National Committee, calling for abolishing borders and stopping all deportations, according to BLN. Other reports noted that she called former President Joe Biden a “rapist” and disparaged white people in some of her posts.

Chevalier has said she has “grown considerably” since writing those posts and that she regrets them. Mamdani defended her after the social media posts surfaced but said he was unaware of them before endorsing Chevalier.

She’s the left’s preferred candidate

Chevalier’s focus on affordability, expanding housing access and opposing war and deportations made her the preferred candidate of many progressive groups. In addition to the endorsements from Mamdani and the Justice Democrats, she was also backed by the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America and several progressive members of the New York City Council.

After her primary win, the Democratic establishment also seems to have rallied behind her, despite her previous expletive-laden critiques of them.

In a statement Tuesday, DNC Chair Ken Martin called Chevalier “a tireless advocate for the hard-working people of New York City” who “will fight for healthcare, affordable housing, public education, civil rights, and an economy that works for everyone.”

Julianne McShane is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW who also covers the politics of abortion and reproductive rights. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at jmcshane.19 or follow her on X or Bluesky.