US Ambassador Mike Huckabee called settlers besieging a Palestinian American home in the occupied West Bank “Israeli terrorists.” It’s a welcome, rare rebuke from a U.S. official, but what kind of weight does it really have when the same official has been a long-time supporter of Israeli settlements? It wasn’t that long ago that Huckabee made similar comments about settler violence gripping the Palestinian Christian village of Taybeh, where attacks continue, or the settlers who beat Palestinian American Sayfollah Musallet to death (no one has been held accountable).

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What kind of weight do Huckabee’s comments really have when, hours after using the phrase “Israeli terrorists,” he called the settlers “illegal trespassers” instead? Or when he defended the vast majority of settlers, saying they aren’t the problem, the “unsettlers” are, even though the settlements themselves are illegal under international law? It’s nice for officials to call attention to what Palestinians and their supporters have been decrying for years, but it rings hollow when nothing of substance is actually done to hold Israel accountable.

Just this week, Benjamin Netanyahu rejected Donald Trump’s Gaza plan, Israel killed a 13-year-old girl by reportedly shooting her as she memorized the Quran, and an Israeli official said the bodies of Palestinians should be held as bargaining chips.

Here’s more on all those stories and other things that happened during another troubling week in Palestine:

Saturday, Aug. 8 – Israeli Forces Shoot 13-Year-Old Girl as She ‘Memorized the Quran’

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Five years ago today, as the U.S. hurried to bring an end to its longest war and Afghanistan’s government collapsed, Taliban fighters swept into Kabul. The images were inescapable: desperate Afghans surrounding planes at Kabul airport, crowds pressed against its gates, the last American military aircraft leaving.

Then, much of the world moved on.

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But for Afghans, Aug. 15, 2021 was far from the end of the story. In the five years since the Taliban recaptured power, hundreds of thousands promised pathways to the U.S. have remained stranded; the Taliban has systematically pushed women and girls out of public life; international aid has collapsed while hunger has skyrocketed; millions of refugees have been forced back into the country; and Afghanistan has once again become the center of major regional conflict.

Here are seven things to know about Afghanistan, five years after the fall of Kabul:

1. America evacuated more than 120,000 people. Hundreds of thousands are still waiting

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It’s no secret that Donald Trump only looks out for himself, but this week, a bombshell report from the Washington Post underscored just how expendable even those closest to him really are. As Swin laid out in ‘First Draft,’ Trump left Marco Rubio, Scott Bessent, and Stephen Miller, along with the White House press corps, as human shields in a plane the administration claims was the subject of an Iranian assassination threat. (There’s also a question about the Israeli-provided unverified intel about the threat itself, as Mehdi explained in ‘First Draft’ this morning.)

We wish we could say such stories still surprise us.

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Meanwhile, in democracy news, Trump-endorsed election denier MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell lost his gubernatorial primary in Minnesota, while another Trump-endorsed election denier, Tom Tiffany, secured the Republican nomination for governor of Wisconsin. Trump still refuses to rule out declaring a national emergency to take over the midterm elections. And ICE is planning to spend up to $20 million for agents to use electric shock gloves.

That’s not all that happened this week – another bombshell report shed light on a terrifying investigation the Trump admin conducted into left-wing groups. Here’s just a taste of how Trump and his allies harmed democracy, undermined the Constitution, and hurt societies worldwide this week:

Saturday, Aug. 8 – Former Trump Lawyer Confirmed as Attorney General

The Senate narrowly voted to confirm Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer Todd Blanche as attorney general.

As acting attorney general, Blanche greenlit the second indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, reauthorized the use of firing squads for death penalty executions, and signed off on a now-supposedly rescinded $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization fund.”

Sunday, Aug. 9 – Trump Crypto Company’s Curious $100 Million Investment

The New York Times reported that a businessman once under investigation in the UK for money laundering became one of the biggest buyers of tokens from Trump’s cryptocurrency company, spending $100 million through a newly formed firm.

As much as three-quarters of the money ultimately went to a company controlled by Trump and his sons.

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Monday, Aug. 10 – Trump Left Government Officials, Reporters as Human Shields

The Washington Post published a bombshell report that Trump hid in a catering container and was secretly shuttled into a different plane when leaving Turkey last month, in response to what the administration claims was an Iranian assassination threat against the president. (Israel provided the intel about the threat – intel U.S. officials could not independently verify.)

While Trump switched planes, he left key officials, like Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller – along with reporters in the White House press corps – aboard Air Force One, which effectively became a decoy.

Tuesday, Aug. 11 – ICE Wants Agents To Use Electric Shock Gloves

AP reported that ICE, an agency already known for its use of excessive force, is planning to spend up to $20 million to give its agents electric shock gloves to use as part of its enforcement operations.

The manufacturer says the gloves shouldn’t be used on children, pregnant people, or elderly or disabled people.

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Wednesday, Aug. 12 – Top Trump Propagandist to Leave White House

On Truth Social, Trump announced that White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is leaving her post by the end of August, but will remain as one of the president’s “top outside advisors.”

Leavitt, the youngest press secretary ever, welcomed multiple far-right content creators into the “new media” seat at press briefings, lashed out at a reporter during an exchange about the killing of Renee Good, and argued that reporters who won Pulitzer Prizes for their coverage of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election should be stripped of their awards.

Thursday, Aug. 13 – DHS Investigated Left-Wing Groups After Pretti’s Killing

The New York Times reported that the Department of Homeland Security quietly launched an investigation into several left-leaning political organizations in the wake of Alex Pretti’s killing by federal immigration agents.

The probe targeted many groups and individuals who weren’t connected to any criminal activity, and involved expansive surveillance efforts, including infiltrating group chats on Signal, as well as obtaining financial records of organizations.

Friday, Aug. 14 – Trump Takes White House Ballroom Fight to Supreme Court

Trump asked the Supreme Court to clear the way for his White House ballroom to continue construction before an appeals court ruling halting above-ground work on the project goes into effect on Aug. 21.

The Trump administration argues the injunction that blocked the construction “threatens the security and safety” of the president.

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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:

“You’ve come to this place to talk to us? That’s honorable,” a gray-bearded man in Afghanistan’s northeastern Kunar province told me as he sipped his green tea.

I visited the region in 2021, just a few months before the withdrawal of U.S. troops and the return of the Taliban, to report on war crimes in rural areas. Too often, these regions were completely ignored. For years, Western media coverage of the war was thoroughly “Kabulized” – meaning it focused almost exclusively on the country’s capital.

Even that description is too generous. Most Western reporting was confined to Kabul’s green zone, which didn’t even reflect the reality of the rest of the capital. While the slums of Kabul expanded in the shadows of pompous mansions built by pro-American warlords using aid money, subcontracting cash, sex trafficking, and drug operations, and while fancy parties took place inside embassy compounds and NGO villas, rural Afghanistan was being systematically targeted by American drones and death squads. Entire communities were shattered, and thousands of civilians were radicalized in the process.

Ultimately, it all collapsed.

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Five years ago, American planes lifted off from Kabul’s airport, bringing a 20-year experiment in American empire to a humiliating end. In the years since, the narrative the West tells about Afghanistan has hardened into something comfortable and deeply self-serving.

The anniversary coverage will focus once again – rightly and overwhelmingly – on the Taliban’s horrific repression of women and girls, their bans on education and work, and the total dismantling of civil society. All of that is real, and all of it deserves urgent attention.

But the narrative built around these facts allows the West to assume its favorite posture: the grieving, generous patron whose noble project was ruined by an ungrateful, backward populace.

What that story leaves out is the very violence that made the Taliban’s return possible in the first place.

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Happy Friday! Mehdi here, still recovering from my Wednesday interview with Count Binface – yes, Count Binface, that’s his name! Have you not seen it yet?

Last night, Count Binface won 9,455 votes in the UK parliamentary by-election in Clacton, provoked by the resignation of sitting MP and Reform UK leader Nigel Farage in a weird and desperate attempt to distract from a hugely contentious financial scandal. Farage was re-elected with 22,239 votes, so the parliamentary investigation into his donations now picks up where it left off. So… what was the point of all this?

But let’s turn this morning to the man Nigel Farage defers to, Donald Trump, who has been in a spot of bother recently because of the man he defers to: Benjamin Netanyahu.

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‘Israeli-Derived’

Did you know that all those Iranian threats against Trump’s life that we’ve been hearing about recently come from… Israeli intelligence? And did you know that they aren’t considered all that credible by the U.S. intelligence community?

SURPRISE!

Reuters dropped this blockbuster story from reporter Eric Banco yesterday:

The U.S. has received several warnings from Israel over the past year that Iran intended to assassinate President Donald Trump, including before a secret Air Force One ruse in Turkey, that U.S. intelligence officials could not independently verify, according to a current U.S. official and two former officials.

That Reuters piece came off the back of earlier reporting from the Washington Post, which revealed how “U.S. intelligence officials were skeptical of an Iranian assassination threat against President Donald Trump that was relayed by Israel.”

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According to the Post, one U.S. official described the intel on the threats against the president’s life as “Israeli-derived, not U.S.-generated, and viewed as low confidence.”

So Trump secretly left Air Force One, hid in the back of a catering truck – with Natalie Harp – and got onto an alternative plane to fly to London from Ankara, as the Washington Post revealed on Monday, because of an “Israeli-derived” and “low confidence” piece of intel?

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The White House Press Secretary in Trump’s second term has attacked journalists, defended the indefensible (Being friendly with pedophile Jeffrey Epstein! Deporting Maryland father Kilmar Abrego Garcia!), and spouted absurd lies about Gaza condoms and DEI-induced plane crashes.

Now that Leavitt has announced her departure from the White House, we’ve rounded up some of her most heinous moments from the podium, all in under two minutes.

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Watch the short video above and tell us what you think it, and her!, in the comments below.

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Zeteo’s Layla Nayfeh contributed to this piece.

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1. Rehash the COVID-19 pandemic

2. Pretend to know what they’re talking about

In the last few weeks, Senate Republicans have been able to do both of these, as they relentlessly claim that the COVID-19 virus must have come from a lab in China, despite all the scientific evidence saying otherwise. Nevertheless, the GOP’s messaging has proved to be quite convincing, with the majority of Americans believing COVID-19 came from a lab.

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But here at Zeteo, we believe in cutting through the noise, listening to the experts, and hearing out reasonable people (aka, not Senator Rand Paul).

That’s why in this ‘Mehdi Unfiltered’ segment, Mehdi moderates a very factual and insightful debate on the lab leak theory. Leading virologist and Save America Movement science chair Dr. Angela Rasmussen argues that COVID-19 likely came from zoonotic – or natural – origins, not a lab, while Dr. Ashish Jha, who was President Biden’s COVID-19 response coordinator, argues that COVID-19, in his view, likely came from a Chinese laboratory.

Here are some of the key questions Mehdi asks:

• Why Jha changed his mind on COVID-19 origins and now supports the lab leak theory

• Why Rasmussen’s own research supports zoonotic origins

• Whether Republicans have overstated the merits of the lab leak theory

• Their reactions to recent GOP misinformation around the COVID-19 vaccine and miscarriages

• How prepared – or unprepared – the U.S. is for another pandemic

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You won’t see an informed, in-depth, good-faith debate like this, on Covid and its origins, anywhere else in the media!

Paid subscribers can watch the full 46-minute debate above, while free subscribers can access a 4-minute preview. Consider upgrading your subscription to never hit a Zeteo paywall again!

Check out Zeteo’s other recent articles:

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Donald Trump makes things up every day – about war, the economy, his deal-making prowess. But nothing captures his compulsion for fabulism better than golf.

Early this month, Trump announced on social media that he shot a two-under-par 70 at his Bedminster NJ course to win another of his “40 Club Championships.” The 80-year-old president boasted: “It’s called TALENT, and I have it.”

Golf aficionados immediately recognized something else, called “cheating.” Conservative journalist Scott McConnell, a Trump club member who has seen him play often, posted on X: “No one like that can win a senior club championship in any universe.”

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“No 80-year-old on earth with a pancake swing and the chip yips has ever shot TEN SHOTS under his age,” added golf writer Rick Reilly, an authority on the president’s game. The title of Reilly’s book on the subject: Commander in Cheat.

Millions of American golfers, trying to make their rounds a bit more respectable, take mulligans every weekend. It’s a harmless indulgence. What distinguishes Trump – a more than respectable golfer – is the extent of his cheating, not just on the course but in every realm of life.

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Happy Thursday! Swin here. There’s an episode from the classic era of ‘The Simpsons’ (yeah that’s right; I’m referencing the show again) in which the billionaire Republican tyrant Mr. Burns jumps in an escape pod and mercilessly locks out his ultra-sycophantic assistant, Waylon Smithers, because Burns wants more leg room, all the while expecting his yes-man to keep on serving. Donald Trump did his version with his decoy Air Force One caper – and I’m very sorry, I simply cannot pretend it isn’t tremendously funny.

In today’s ‘First Draft,’ we get into the wild saga of Trump, his planes, and his apparently expendable aides. Plus, responses to a progressive defeat in Wisconsin and a progressive win in Minnesota suggest Democrats might just have read the memo about the overwhelming need for unity in the attempt to wrest Congress away from the GOP, the better to hold Trump to account. Let’s read in.

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‘They Expect One of Us in the Wreckage, Brother’

One of the reasons I’m glad to no longer be a member of the White House Correspondents’ Association or the White House press pool is that I can easily decline being used as an in-flight decoy and human shield for the dumbest, most blundering U.S. president who ever lived. I can’t fathom a less honorable or more meaningless way to die – and yes, I’m taking into account that Trump’s fellow gold-plated sadist Saddam Hussein used body doubles, who might’ve had to take a bullet for him.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume (as we should probably never do) that we can take the Trump administration’s claims and the Israeli government’s intel at face value: that there was a credible threat that Iranian-government-backed actors, in retaliation for Trump’s illegal war, could try to blow up Air Force One during Trump’s flight out of a NATO summit in Turkey last month. (Allowing for the Washington Post’s reporting on Wednesday, that the CIA had “low confidence” in there being a threat.)

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It would make sense for any American president to have additional security measures in a situation like that. I’m told the White House has been taking the possibility of Iranian-linked attacks on Trump’s wife and other family members incredibly seriously and has acted accordingly during this hellish war that Trump was stupid enough to start. (More on that soon, here at Zeteo…)

But in recent days, multiple news outlets have revealed how Trump and his team conducted themselves like cartoon-villain caricatures in an attempt to make the former host of ‘Celebrity Apprentice’ feel safer in the air.

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“The Democratic leadership is, in many respects, way, way out of touch with where ordinary people are,” Sanders tells Mehdi, adding that the country’s “corrupt campaign finance system” might be starting to backfire on the Super PACs pouring millions into elections.

During the interview, Mehdi asks Sanders why he didn’t endorse Francesca Hong, who lost her bid to be the Democratic nominee for Wisconsin governor by just a few thousand votes.

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Mehdi also asks the socialist senator from Vermont whether restricting aid to Israel should be a litmus test for Democratic presidential candidates, and about criticism Sanders has received for his overriding focus on PM Benjamin Netanyahu, rather than Israel’s decades-long occupation and apartheid regime.

Plus, hear what Sanders has to say about his Senate colleague John Fetterman making a habit out of appearing on Fox to disparage him.

Want to see how Sanders responds to Mehdi’s questions? Paid subscribers can watch the full video above. Free subscribers can watch a 2-minute preview. Consider becoming a paid subscriber to unlock more award-winning content from Zeteo and never hit a paywall again.

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Justin Baragona here, bringing you the latest media dispatches from the right-wing industrial outrage complex and Bari World. In tonight’s edition, we look at why a former spokesman for Jill Biden is publicly endorsing a Trump-backed Republican for Senate, and why it may not be all that surprising. Also, if you thought Fox was bad with the anti-Muslim hate, you ain’t seen nothing yet, while it looks like Bari Weiss’s right-wing blog is doing the bidding of one of its investors.

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Why Is This Ex-Biden Spox Choosing Mike Rogers Over Abdul El-Sayed?

Days after declaring his support for Michigan’s Trump-endorsed GOP Senate candidate Mike Rogers, claiming he couldn’t defend Abdul El-Sayed’s “cowardly” stance on 9/11, Michael LaRosa, a one-time press secretary for former First Lady Jill Biden, doubled down during an appearance on MAGA sycophant Laura Ingraham’s Fox show.

And he made sure to add a dash of Islamophobia too.

Pointing out that he’d already signed a petition calling for New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani to be banned from the 9/11 commemoration next month, LaRosa demanded that El-Sayed fly to the Big Apple and personally address every single person who lost a family member in the 2001 World Trade Center attack.

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“He should look them in the eye and tell them that there is no justification for what happened,” LaRosa groused. “I would like him to wipe the grin off his face when he is talking about it, too!”

LaRosa was linking El-Sayed to comments made seven years ago by influential leftist streamer Hasan Piker, who has been campaigning for El-Sayed. Though Piker took those remarks back, saying he “obviously” didn’t mean America deserved 9/11, it hasn’t mattered to El-Sayed opponents who have found their new bogeyman. (Notably, Rogers falsely claimed that El-Sayed “believes that America deserved 9/11” shortly after El-Sayed secured the Dem nomination.)

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Editor’s Note: We thought you might find this interview with Count Binface a worthwhile watch, so we are republishing it from Zeteo UK.

If you’re currently only a Zeteo subscriber but want to get more content like this from Zeteo UK as well, consider upgrading to our bundle option.

This is not your usual Mehdi Hasan interview.

While the guest you see above may seem like a character from a kids’ show or an adult into some really weird cosplay, he is actually a candidate in the special election of Clacton-on-Sea in southeastern England. If you haven’t been living under a rock in the UK for the past few weeks, you’ll know his name is Count Binface, and he has a can full of ideas for defeating his opponent in the Clacton by-election on Thursday: Reform UK leader Nigel Farage.

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“I thought if I came down in my true form, I might freak you out, you humans,” the space warrior tells Mehdi. Count Binface aims to break the mold of your usual British politician. His policies range from capping the price of Flake ice cream at 99p to forcing politicians who resign mid-parliament to face a by-election. “Everyone just needs to calm down a little. Maybe that’s how I come in.”

To be clear, this is not a joke - though, as you’ll see, Mehdi does struggle to keep a straight face throughout the interview.

“He [Nigel Farage] made a false equivalence between a democratic mandate from Clacton and the results of a parliamentary inquiry into his financial affairs. I would say that’s going to come out in the wash,” Binface says.

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Watch the full interview above to hear the Count’s stance on hand dryers in men’s toilets, whether the UK is considering changing the rules to allow him to keep his regalia on in the House of Commons chamber should he win and become an MP, and what he makes of the British mainstream media.

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Good morning. Martin here, writing on another day (and night) of momentous primary elections, with the direction of the Democratic Party once again in play. It may be the middle of August, but politics won’t slow down.

In today’s ‘First Draft,’ we look first to an alarming moment, in which a far-right TV host urged Donald Trump to declare a national emergency in order to grab control of midterm elections Republicans seem bound to lose, and the president played alarmingly coy. Are we dangerously numb to such moments?

We also consider what turned out to be a mixed night for progressives with primary hopes, as Francesca Hong, the democratic socialist many thought would be Democrats’ nominee for governor in Wisconsin, lost a tight battle with moderate David Crowley. There was still a big win for the left in Minnesota, where Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan won the Senate primary.

We also have exclusive polling that shows a near-tie for Senate in Kansas, which hasn’t sent a Democrat to the upper chamber in 96 years. All around the U.S., the electoral stakes are high. Let’s read on.

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‘Stranger Things’

Donald Trump openly flirted with a new coup against U.S. democracy, telling an interviewer, “Stranger things have happened.”

The president was speaking to Real America’s Voice, the far-right network that is home to shows including ‘The War Room,’ hosted by former Trump campaign chair, White House strategist, and election attacker Steve Bannon, and ‘The Charlie Kirk Show.’ Host Wayne Allyn Root – a conspiracy theorist who once said Trump was like “the King of Israel” and like “the son of God” – told Trump that declaring an emergency over the midterms would be a viable alternative to the SAVE Act, the voter suppression bill that the president has obsessively championed but which remains stalled in the GOP-run Senate.

Root said:

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Um Mahmoud* considers herself “one of the lucky few.” From Gaza, she was diagnosed with cancer in 2020 after years of experiencing often debilitating back pain. But she happened to be in Ramallah, receiving treatment, when Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza broke out in October 2023.

Nearly three years later, however, Um Mahmoud is facing a different kind of death sentence: While she’s escaped the immediate threat of bombs, gunfire, and healthcare collapse, she’s trapped in the occupied West Bank, where the Palestinian Authority can no longer pay for her treatment owing to Israel’s withholding of tax revenues. So she must wait, without treatment – while the cancer ravages her body.

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Um Mahmoud’s story is both about one woman who desperately needs cancer treatment – and one about how Israel’s genocide extends far beyond the borders of Gaza.

A Difficult Journey Even Before Oct. 7

Before I get into Um Mahmoud’s story, it is important to describe the situation of cancer treatment in the West Bank and Gaza before 2023.

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“There’s one issue they [AIPAC] won’t talk about,” says Eli Clifton, co-author and cofounder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, “they don’t talk about Israel, and I think that that’s the admission from AIPAC…that their actual issue is toxic.” Clifton notes that pro-Israel super PACs could end up raising and spending a quarter of a billion dollars this election cycle alone.

But it’s not all about money, as Ian Lustick, co-author and former State Department expert on Israel-Palestine affairs, tells Mehdi. “I spoke with Blinken and Sullivan and Biden, trying to tell them what the actual situation in Israel was like. But they’re socialized psychologically not to even be able to include in their agenda of possibilities what the realities are there.”

Watch this important conversation to understand how the U.S. paved the way for Israel to become the “extreme right-wing rogue state” it is today, as Lustick puts it, how people can push back against the lobby’s influence in the U.S., and a lot more.

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Click here to buy a copy of Clifton and Lustick’s book, ‘Israel’s Lobby: America in the Grip of a Foreign Power.’ 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!

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Happy Tuesday! It’s Swin again. The Trump White House is acting like it’s a foregone conclusion that Democrats take back the U.S. House next year… to the point that President Donald Trump is preemptively, and rather hilariously, spinning that the voters are “very angry” at Republican candidates but they are “not angry at me.” (They are extremely mad at him, and he is the reason his party’s chances are looking increasingly dreadful in the 2026 midterm elections, but who’s keeping score, really?)

In today’s ‘First Draft,’ we get into some new reporting on just how much the White House is planning for a congressional Democratic majority to take over within months – and those plans involve a lottttttttttttttttttttttttttt of defiance of Congress, on a scale that could make even first-term Trump administration officials blush. Plus, Trump signs an insane executive order on vaccines and doctor-turned-Senator Bill Cassidy, the man who made Robert F. Kennedy Jr. health secretary, decides to say anti-vaccine conspiracy theories are wrong. Let’s read in.

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Immovable Object Awaits Usually Stoppable Force

If (or, as many Democratic and Republican officials now expect, when) Democrats retake the House after the 2026 midterms, they will have a humongous pile of subpoenas ready to go. Democrats aren’t in the majority today, so their demands for documents are largely for public-relations purposes. But should they win back the House, several lawmakers and senior aides on Capitol Hill tell me they have planned – in the phrasing of one of those aides – a “death by a thousand cuts” strategy of investigations, requests, televised hearings, and possible criminal referrals.

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One goal would be to slam Donald Trump, his administration, and some of the broader MAGA elite with so many investigations and oversight demands that at the very least the onslaught slows down the president’s vast and increasingly authoritarian machinery of destruction and abuses, which has so far enjoyed the protection of Republican majorities in the House and Senate.

The historic levels of corruption of President Trump, his family business empire, and other associates and enablers; the rank lawlessness of so much of the administration, at home and abroad; ICE killings; the Epstein files; Elon Musk’s empire and DOGE legacy; the ongoing catastrophic Iran war; and so much else – you name it, Dems are ready to slam Trumpland with investigations about it, the congressional sources say.

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So, I didn’t hold back in this 7-minute rebuttal video, above, in which I lay out why Shapiro’s movie is actually very Islamophobic and why the Daily Wire co-founder is totally wrong about the number of Muslim bad guys in Hollywood. I also break down the real reason why Shapiro and the Daily Wire are making films about ISIS right now: to distract from Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

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Watch the full video above to see me bring plenty of receipts on how this new movie is just the latest example of Hollywood’s overwhelmingly negative depictions of Muslims and Arabs.

We are making this video free to watch, without a paywall, but a free press isn’t. If you’d like to see more videos like these, please consider upgrading your subscription or donating to support Zeteo’s work and never hit a paywall again.

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Seven years ago, on Aug. 10, 2019, Jeffrey Epstein was found dead inside his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges. New York City’s medical examiner ruled his death a suicide by hanging, later supported by federal investigations.

But the staggering failures, from guards who neglected to conduct required checks to falsified records to malfunctioning security cameras, have maintained the air of suspicion and conspiracy that still surrounds his death.

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In the years just before and since Epstein’s death, several figures in his orbit have died, including former business partners, employees, alleged associates, and survivors. They’ve died under circumstances varying from cancer to suicide, overdose, and, in one recent case, a cause that has yet to be determined. Like Epstein himself, they took with them firsthand knowledge of his world, answers to questions we may never get.

Here are nine notable people connected to Epstein who have died in the last decade – and what the available evidence actually tells us about their deaths:

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As the host of the massively popular and long-running YouTube series ‘The Majority Report’, Sam paved the way for progressive pundits with his sharp and funny analysis of U.S. politics. That’s why Sam was the perfect guest for this week’s ‘We’re Not Kidding’ for Mehdi to discuss the wave of progressive and socialist wins across the country.

“What do you say to this common line now — that this is the Democrats’ ‘Tea Party’?” Mehdi asks.

“It’s only analogous in the sense that there is an insurgency,” Sam says. “The establishment of the Democratic Party is completely out of touch with the voters.”

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Oh and don’t think Mehdi forgot that Sam was the person who told Mehdi to participate in that insanely racist ‘Jubilee’ debate. Sam himself did a ‘Jubilee’ debate earlier in 2025, which also went viral. Togthether, for the first time, they unpack their insane experiences (though Mehdi’s was objectively more insane) and what it revealed about young MAGA conservatives. “What’s animating their movement is what you exposed on that Jubilee,” Sam says. “I think it’s really important for people to understand the stakes and really how we got here.”

The two also weigh in on what we’re now calling ‘The Great Tucker Carlson Debate.’ Will the right-wing podcaster run for president? Can he be trusted on issues like Israel and foreign wars? Is there utility to going on his platform, or vice versa? And which part of the debate does Sam think is “bullshit?”

You’re gonna have to watch to find out - and to discover which right-wing cable host’s “Jewish beard” did Sam describe himself as!

Just a heads up — ‘We’re Not Kidding’ will be taking a break for the rest of August and will return in early September.

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Free subscribers get a 5-minute preview of the video above while Zeteo’s paid subscribers can watch it in full. You can find previous episodes of ‘We’re Not Kidding’ wherever you get your podcasts.

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Good morning, and as tradition now demands, Happy Monday. Martin here, happy as ever to be delivering the news you need. We may be in the dog days of August, with the Senate finally having followed the House out of DC for an absurdly long summer break, but political battles continue.

In today’s ‘First Draft,’ we look at a fascinating first few days in Abdul El-Sayed’s campaign for U.S. Senate in Michigan, as the Democratic candidate mixes persuasive answers to predictably hostile news anchors with off-the-cuff hooks, jabs, and roundhouses befitting politics in the Trump age but all too rare from the Dems. Has Donald Trump finally met his match when it comes to the art of the counter-punch? We may be about to see. Also, we take in Senator Bill Cassidy’s truly excruciating explanation of his vote to make top Trump lackey Todd Blanche attorney general, and consider another dispiriting day in Trump’s zombie war with Iran. Time to dive in.

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Meet the Dem Who Fights Back

In late 2019, after Donald Trump stoked huge controversy by suggesting a revered Democratic congressman had gone to hell, the White House defended the president as “a counter-puncher,” who only delivered such right hooks when he was “under attack.”

The subjects of that Trump insult were the late Rep. John Dingell (the longest-serving member of Congress, ever) and his widow and successor, Rep. Debbie Dingell, who still represents Michigan on Capitol Hill. Since then, nationally, there have been countless other instances of Trump “counter-punching” opponents and critics with barely a blow in return. But now it looks like the Wolverine state has delivered a counter-puncher Democrats can call their own: Abdul El-Sayed, the newly minted candidate for U.S. Senate, after a bruising primary. And that should have Trump worried.

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From the president down, Republicans are going in hard. On Saturday, Trump posted pictures of himself with his third wife, Melania Trump, and El-Sayed with his only wife, Sarah Jukaku, who was wearing a hijab. The Islamophobic and racist message was as inevitable as the wrongly placed apostrophe in the caption: “Two VERY DIFFERENT America’s.” El-Sayed’s response was swift – and brutal.

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