Market Jitters
Week of August 28-September 3, 2026
Published in conjunction with The Nation magazine, TRACKING THE CRISIS is a weekly round-up from The Democracy Collaborative tracking the administrative, legislative, and other actions of the Trump Administration as well as the many forms of legal and movement response from across a broad range of social, political, and economic actors. TDC is providing this service for collective informational purposes, as a tool for understanding the times during a period of disorientingly rapid flux and change in the U.S. political economy. This round-up is produced by humans, not by Artificial Intelligence. TDC should not be understood as endorsing or otherwise any of the specific content of the information round-up.
TRUMP TRACKER: Administration actions
Leadership crisis in U.S. Army after Driscoll resigns; top generals break with Hegseth warning of critical vulnerabilities as United States, Iran once again exchange kinetic strikes. Six months into the United States and Israel’s active military conflict with Iran, the largest division of the U.S. Armed Forces is facing a critical leadership vacuum as nearly the entire top brass of the United States Army have vacated their positions in an unprecedented purge. On Monday, August 31, U.S. Secretary of the Army, General Dan Driscoll, resigned his post after months of clashes with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.
Since taking over the top Pentagon spot, Hegseth has purged two dozen top military leaders and blocked over 80 officer promotions, many for no apparent reason other than their race, gender or appearance, part of Hegseth’s drive to eliminate “DEI” and other issues related to the right wing’s ‘culture war.’ Driscoll had consistently fought against Hegseth’s personnel decisions, some of which Hegseth had implemented via loyalist subordinates, bypassing Driscoll’s official authority. ABC News reported that for months, Driscoll had been sending repeated warnings to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles about Hegseth’s “widespread and indiscriminate” firing of experienced officers and the blocking of promotions of officers that had been “thoroughly vetted.”
According to the Atlantic magazine, Gen. Driscoll met with Trump last week prior to his resignation, warning him about the large number of officers that have been purged by Hegseth, which reportedly took Trump by ‘surprise.’ Driscoll, known as a widely respected leader within the U.S. military, had been undertaking major reforms to the Army in a ‘modernization’ push, and warned Trump that Hegseth’s “blocking” of those efforts, “specifically by firing the generals that were responsible” for implementing the reforms, including the controversial ouster last April of General Randy George, a popular and well-loved figure within the Army ranks, threatened military readiness and undermined the capability of the U.S. Armed Forces to respond to national security threats. This week, Hegseth blocked seven more promotions of Army officers, including within the generals’ ranks, due to the candidates’ race and gender. According to sources, Trump responded to Driscoll’s warning by talking “almost exclusively” about his ballroom, leaving Driscoll with the conclusion that this administration was “doomed.” Driscoll tendered his resignation just days after the meeting.
Driscoll’s resignation leaves the United States Army in a time of war with no official leaders in top positions; no Secretary, no confirmed Chief of Staff, no confirmed Army general in charge of operations, and no confirmed commander of Army troops in Europe. According to The Hill, the Army’s Deputy Under Secretary Dave Fitzgerald is also expected to resign from his position this week following Driscoll’s departure. The Army currently has only five four-star generals actively serving in its top ranks, its lowest number in decades, with ten vacant positions. Political analyst Dominic Michael Tripi reported on X that U.S. officials are currently considering appointing Rep. Brian Mast, an ultra-conservative lawmaker and veteran who once sparked controversy by wearing an Israeli Defense Force uniform on Capitol Hill, to Driscoll’s position.
The leadership crisis within the U.S. Army comes on the heels of an unprecedented act of dissent and warning sent to Hegseth by top military officials from multiple divisions of the U.S. Armed Forces regarding the Trump Administration’s continued insistence on use of military force against Iran. On August 30, the Washington Post broke an exclusive story outlining the warnings detailed by the heads of the Army, Navy, and Air Force as well as four-star commanders overseeing U.S. military operations in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Their dissent was recorded in the August 14 edition of the Secretary of Defense Orders Book (SDOB), a twice-monthly classified report outlining the state of U.S. military assets throughout the world, the president’s priorities for the armed forces, and insights from top officers serving in the field.
The SDOB of August 14 contained orders for up to 50,000 troops to continue their deployment in the Persian Gulf through September, with orders for some units to continue into 2027, as Trump has insisted on keeping all options open, including military force, in his unsuccessful bid to pressure Iran into “unconditional surrender.” The military leaders recorded their response to the orders as a “non-concur,” meaning they registered their disagreement with the Pentagon’s orders while stopping short of disobeying them outright. They expressed concern that crucial resources sustaining U.S. operations have been pulled away from other parts of the world and redirected to the Iran conflict, and that prolonging such a large-scale operation against Iran was unsustainable and risked weakening the military’s ability to respond to threats elsewhere, including the U.S. homeland.
In particular, the Navy has been overstretched in its capacity to keep up with wartime demands, including the U.S. blockade against Iranian ports. According to the Post, the most dire warning in the SDOB came from Admiral Daryl Caudle, chief of Naval Operations, who reportedly said that the Navy cannot sustain its level of support for the war because “there is no anticipated end date.” The beleaguered USS Abraham Lincoln, which made headlines over the past several weeks due to reports of severely deteriorating conditions and several suicide attempts of U.S. servicemembers, finally docked in Pattaya, Thailand this week after having been deployed in the Gulf for a record 286 consecutive days at sea without a port call. On Monday, Caudle held a “worldwide town hall” for Navy servicemembers, listening to comments from deployed sailors who expressed concerns about conditions on board U.S. warships, and pledged better support for troops that are deployed for long stretches at sea.
In an attempt to downplay the significance of the leaked dissent, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell told reporters that Hegseth “constantly” receives formal objections to his orders from top military commanders but proceeds anyway, saying, “That’s how you run a real military.”
The Post’s bombshell report was just one of a series of revelations about the state of the Pentagon, in a wave of leaks that analysts say is unprecedented both in scope and purpose; suggesting that a kind of quiet revolt against Hegseth and the Trump Administration is taking place among experienced career officers still active within the military’s ranks. While Pentagon leaks in prior administrations had largely been designed to goad Congress and the White House into taking military action, these leaks seem intended to pull the U.S. out of Trump and Netanyahu’s war of choice against Iran, as well as warn the public about efforts by the Trump Administration to transform the military, as one MSNOW analyst said, from a force “loyal to America” to one “loyal to Trump.”
Last week, the Post reported that days before the firing of Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George in April, sources say George had been advised by fellow General Chris LaNeve, a Hegseth loyalist, to drop his investigation into an unauthorized helicopter flyby over Kid Rock’s house on March 28. Two sources told the Post that after the encounter, George confided in colleagues about LaNeve’s pointed request and appeared troubled by it. Days later, George was fired by Hegseth with no official reason cited. LaNeve is now the top candidate being considered by the Administration for George’s former post.
On Wednesday, the Post reported that the Pentagon has secretly installed several conservative veterans with large social media followings in unspecified government roles to support Hegseth’s ‘culture war’ within the military and attack those who criticize or scrutinize the Trump Administration. Sources familiar with the matter told the Post that some of these social media influencers had been appointed to civilian roles with significant influence over government policy.
Also on Wednesday, the Post reported that according to insiders, thousands of classified documents, including several decades’ worth of prior SDOBs, had been scrubbed from the Pentagon’s online portal. Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell, in a statement Wednesday, did not deny the claims but declined to explain why the action was taken, saying “the Department of War does not publicly discuss internal operational deliberative processes, including the management, handling, or access protocols for the Secretary of War Orders Book (SWOB).”
Amidst the internal chaos roiling the Pentagon, Trump elected this week to escalate military action against Iran after a month of relative calm, resuming kinetic strikes on the same day as the Post released its leak of the generals’ warning. On Sunday, August 30, U.S. missiles struck Larak Island, which CENTCOM said targeted rocket launcher sites. The IRGC vowed retaliation, saying the strikes killed Iranian civilians as well as soldiers, and launched ballistic missiles at two U.S. bases in Jordan.
On Monday, Trump posted an AI-generated video of an oil refinery erupting in video game-like explosions with the caption, “Kharg Island being blown to smithereens!” Pentagon officials scrambled to deny that an attack on Kharg Island had taken place as Iranian Energy Minister Hamid Bovard mocked the fake video, calling it “laughable” and reporting conditions on Kharg Island as “calm and appropriate.” Iranian newspaper Hamshahri ran an image on its front page Tuesday mocking Trump’s use of the deepfake video, depicting Trump asleep in pajamas with his head on a pillow decorated with jet fighters and a mask over his eyes bearing the words “Dream of Victory.”
U.S. Treasury Secretary Bessent announced sanctions against the major Egyptian bank Misr, proposing a rule that cut off the UAE-based branches of the bank from conducting business with U.S. companies. The central banks of both Egypt and the UAE announced that they would work together to ensure Misr could continue “business as usual” despite the announced sanctions.
On Tuesday, the United States launched a “huge wave” of strikes on Iran after two oil tankers caught fire in the Strait of Hormuz; the IRGC said that the tankers had struck mines while attempting to navigate an unauthorized route. U.S. missiles rained down on several cities in southern Iran, including Asaluyeh, Jiroft, Bandar Abbas, Qeshm Island, Konarak, Chabahar, Jask, Sirik and Lavan. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Baghaei vowed that Iran would respond “with firmness” after reports surfaced that a U.S. missile had struck a residential home where a wedding celebration was taking place, killing five civilians including a child and wounding over 50 others. Ebrahim Azizi, head of Iran’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, condemned the attacks, saying: “Targeting a wedding and slaughtering innocent civilians in Kuhestak, Iran, is the ultimate proof of the utter desperation of the fake defenders of human rights, a repetition of their atrocities in Minab and Lamerd,” adding that “these crimes will not go unpunished.”
In his first message since the escalation, Supreme Leader Khamenei threatened that Iranian armed forces have “unforgettable lessons” in store for the United States, as Iranian attacks targeted U.S. forces stationed in Jordan, Kuwait, Iraq, and Bahrain. Trump responded saying, “If the failed Nation of Iran retaliates for this very justified attack, they will be hit again at a much harder and higher level”.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, in an appeal to Israeli voters, openly boasted on Israeli television that he had successfully manipulated Trump into attacking Iran, saying: “It took a long time to bring the United States to its senses. I’ve had close to 1,000 hours on American television with the ability to influence the United States – with the intimate knowledge of all its leaders, both those who support us and those who don’t support us.” Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi blasted Netanyahu on X, saying: “In Hebrew, Netanyahu openly crows that he suckered the U.S. Administration into a war on Iran on behalf of Israel… in English, he praises POTUS’ leadership,” ending his post by calling Netanyahu a “serpent.”
The United States and Iran continued to trade strikes and barbs on Wednesday and Thursday, with Iran attacking U.S. military facilities in Kuwait and UAE “in response to America’s crimes against the Iranian people.” The U.S. and Iran also targeted tankers aligned with either side in the Strait of Hormuz, trading “tanker-for-tanker” attacks in the disputed waterway. Trump assured his base that the attacks would “not last too long” while maintaining that the U.S. military remained ready to strike Iran “any time we want.”
One U.S. official told Axios that the current policy was to reduce strikes on tankers by periodically hitting Iran with strikes, using the metaphor “mow the lawn,” first coined by Israeli forces to describe the IDF’s periodic massacres of civilians in Gaza. Analyst Trita Parsi noted that by resorting to the notorious Israeli policy, the Trump Administration is “apparently giving up on solving the issue militarily, economically, or diplomatically. Instead, permanent warfare is needed to manage the problem,” he said, adding: “Make no mistake – to periodically bomb a country is to fight a forever war.”
Bond market turmoil goes global as sell-off deepens due to oil crisis and heightened geopolitical risk, casting shadow over G20 and SCO summits. Long-term bond yields rose sharply this week, hitting multi-decade highs across all the advanced capitalist economies and setting off alarm bells throughout the global economy as investors spooked by the resumption of active conflict in Iran, persistent inflation as oil climbs, and anxiety around the U.S. economy’s fiscal situation extended a global sell-off of government bonds. The U.S. 10-year Treasury yield hit 4.81% on Wednesday, its highest level since November 2023, while the UK’s 30-year bond hit 5.86%, its highest level since 1998; 10-year yields on German and French bonds hit their highest since 2011 and 2008 respectively, while Japan’s 10-year yield surged above 3%, its highest level since 1996. All together, the gauge of global bond yields hit 3.72% on Tuesday, its highest level since June 2008, just before the global financial crisis plunged the world into the Great Recession.
The surge in global bond yields also dragged down global stock markets on Tuesday as pessimism around inflation, fuel prices, and overleveraging sent investors fleeing into gold, crypto, and hard assets. The Dow and S&P 500 slipped nearly 1% as the Nasdaq missed its growth targets for a third straight month, while gold prices spiked over $157 to open at $4,491 per ounce Thursday morning. Asian markets tumbled Wednesday, with the Nikkei falling 2.85%, China’s CSI index dropping by 1.4% and South Korea’s Kospi index dropping over 3.3%.
Since the resumption of hostilities between the United States and Iran on Tuesday, the price of oil surged again past $95 a barrel, up 30% from July lows, sending U.S. gasoline prices to their highest August in history as the price of diesel climbed to record highs, 51% above its level at the start of the Iran war. This suggests that the current yield levels do not simply reflect investor psychology or temporary mispricing due to expectations, but are a structural reflection of material circumstances driving up real yields, which makes the chain reaction driving this trend much more difficult to unwind.
On top of the usual suspects driving up bond yields, a new complication thrown into the mix is the record-level issuance of corporate bonds related to the AI hyperscaler buildout, flooding the market with an oversupply of bonds and pitting governments against AI tech companies as they compete for buyers among a pool of investors already worried about the real value of their eventual returns from long-term debt. The failure of recent and unprecedented government interventions by Treasury Secretary Bessent and the Bank of Japan to cool yields and currency debasement also added to the anxiety driving the global bond sell-off.
Joe Bruselas, chief economist at financial consulting firm RSM US, told CNN this week that “Global investors are looking at a potent mix of higher inflation, higher interest rates and an unsustainable fiscal path.” The surge is not expected to abate anytime soon, as the U.S. government continues to spend nearly $1 trillion each on military spending and interest payments on its now-$40-trillion-plus debt load, European central banks are mulling rate hikes as governments spend more on defense amid geopolitical tensions with Russia, AI corporate issuance continues to rise, investors are demanding more compensation for lending money into a market laden with multiple dimensions of risk, and no countervailing force can be seen on the horizon to cool down overheated bond markets to any significant degree. Bruselas said, “You put all of those together, you’ve got a recipe for a global increase in interest rates, which means everything that touches credit in the major economies is about to get much more expensive.”
Most worrying for average American consumers already struggling to afford basic necessities is the rise in the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield, which is the benchmark for nearly all forms of consumer borrowing. The average interest rate for 30-year mortgages in the U.S. touched 6.89% on Tuesday, nearly a full percentage point higher than at this point last year and its highest since the Twelve-Day War of June 2025. Credit card rates also edged higher for the first time since May, pushing the average interest rate for credit card debt to 23.8%. Corporate debt is also affected by the 10-year benchmark rate, offering little relief from anxiety over spiraling AI-related debt. With the 10-year yield topping 4.8% this week, analysts are watching this particular number anxiously as it nears the fateful milestone of 5%, the tipping point at which the bond market generally pushes the economy into a recession. With the midterm elections just two months away, the prospect of squeezing American consumers even more spells extra trouble ahead for the GOP.
Global financial leaders from the G20 gathered in Asheville, North Carolina for their annual summit among the turmoil on Monday and Tuesday, with all eyes on Bessent and Fed Chair Kevin Warsh as they were expected to present solutions to the current mess. In his opening statements, Bessent touted the strength of the U.S. economy as a leader in solving sovereign debt issues in emerging markets and low-income countries, insisting to skeptical ears that the “only way for us to get out of this is to grow our way out of this.” Bessent could not help but throw a little dig at U.S.-Canada trade tensions, saying that Canada could hardly win a tit-for-tat trade war with an economy thirteen times its size and joking that perhaps Canada might send submarines from the Edmonton Mall to attack the United States. Canadian PM Mark Carney was not amused.
Warsh, fresh off of the Fed’s Jackson Hole meeting where he failed to rule out a possible rate hike in the near future, told the G20 of his confidence in the inevitability of a secular growth phase to guide markets out of the current conundrum; although he admitted Bessent “had his work cut out for him” regarding the Treasury buyback interventions set to start on September 9, and that in the near term “we may have to endure an overshoot before things structurally calm, as the current upside pressure on real rates remains intense.”
Bessent proposed a growth plan focused on further deregulation and the elimination of “non-market distortions” aimed at curbing countries with “excessive growth surpluses” and “over-reliance on exports for growth,” comments clearly aimed at China. While Bessent claimed that 19 countries in the G20 agreed to sign on, China refused to back the plan, leaving the G20 without a joint agreement on a pathway forward. European ministers also erupted in outrage when Russian finance minister Anton Siluanov showed up, leading to a squabble over the summit’s traditional photo op as multiple European leaders refused to stand next to the Russian, who ultimately opted to stand aside. The political squabbles did little to calm jittery markets as bond yields continued to surge.
Also on Monday, heads of state gathered for the 25th annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization – a consortium of ten Eurasian countries including China, India, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan – which kicked off in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan alongside the World Nomad Games. In contrast to the contentious G20 meeting, the theme of the SCO summit was “The Call for a Multipolar World Order,” which concentrated on taking at least rhetorical steps towards peaceful resolutions of the conflicts in Ukraine and Iran as well as mutual prosperity as the organization, initiated and anchored by China, posed itself as a multi-polar alternative to the G7 amid a critical time of geopolitical realignment.
The ten countries voiced their support for Iran’s resistance to U.S. and Israeli aggression while Modi politely read out his plea to Putin to end the war in Ukraine. Most significantly for global markets and geopolitics, however, was Putin’s call to create an SCO Development Bank that would operate “independently of financial systems controlled by countries that, in his words, use finance as a ‘weapon’.” The proposal was backed by China and Iran, while Kazakhstan offered to host the new institution, which would provide an alternative international financial architecture to the IMF and World Bank and weaken Washington’s power to use the global financial system as leverage to pressure other nations for its economic or political ends.
The SCO’s share of global GDP currently stands at 34% and is larger than the total share commanded by the G7. The proposal also comes as more countries pull back from the U.S. dollar and an increasingly unstable U.S. financial system; the Dutch central bank this week relocated 86 tonnes of gold in its foreign exchange reserves from the New York Fed to London, citing “geopolitical risk.”
The Bishkek Declaration, the joint statement issued by the SCO countries after the summit, extended an invitation to “welcome cooperation with interested states and international organizations and multilateral associations whose activities are not directed against the interests of the SCO and its member States.” Among other statements supporting tech sovereignty, the demilitarization of space and a commitment to developing common safeguards for the development of AI technology, the Declaration also affirmed specifically its support for Iran’s sovereignty and condemned attacks on Iran and Palestine, and affirmed the “inalienable right to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes and implement equal, sustainable and mutually beneficial international cooperation in this area without discrimination.” A lengthy section was also dedicated to the fight against global terrorism, with remarks directed at the Taliban in Afghanistan as well as certain unnamed states, as the SCO emphasized that “double standards in the fight against terrorism are unacceptable.” The Declaration also stated that SCO member countries “oppose unilateral coercive measures that are contrary to the UN Charter and other norms of international law.”
Midterm elections thrown into chaos amid USPS whistleblower revelations; Trump Administration hunts for elusive evidence of ‘voter fraud.’ On Tuesday, September 1, Senator Richard Blumenthal released a bombshell report relayed to him by an anonymous whistleblower within the United States Postal Service that could throw the midterm elections into chaos with just two months to go. The whistleblower claims that in defiance of court orders blocking Section 3 of Trump’s executive order signed in March restricting mail-in voting, the USPS has moved forward with a “secretive, rushed effort” to implement Trump’s order anyway.
In a letter to Postmaster General David Steiner, Blumenthal wrote that according to the whistleblower, “USPS’s effort to develop and deploy the Portal has been ‘rushed,’ ‘risky and haphazard’ because leadership has demanded an impossible timeframe… In an effort to meet impossible deadlines, USPS has eliminated standard and needed testing, thereby creating substantial risk of a ‘catastrophic failure’ of the system that could derail the midterm elections.” In the complaint, the whistleblower wrote: “The apparently sloppy and rushed manner in which the Federal Ballot Mail Portal and supporting IT systems are being built poses significant risk. Potentially millions of American voters may not receive their mail-in ballot this election cycle in a timely manner, or at all.”
Election watchdog Marc Elias reports that at the heart of the issue that could disenfranchise millions of voters is the new system’s “zero-percent failure policy,” in which a single error on a single printed ballot could render an entire bulk-mailing batch ineligible for distribution. As the whistleblower complaint goes, “As presently designed, if even one bar code on one single ballot in a bulk-mailing of 10,000 ballots fails to properly scan during the verification process, the entire batch is rejected and sent back to the state – effectively stopping the ballots from being mailed to voters.” An example Blumenthal cited as an inconsistency that would cause such an error is “someone [who] has recently changed their name after marriage or moved” – the same sections of the electorate that would have been at risk if the SAVE Act had been implemented.
The whistleblower complaint also alleged that even after receiving a court-ordered preliminary injunction on June 25 blocking the USPS from implementing its new system, “USPS continued work on the Portal despite numerous court orders enjoining it from doing so.” The court order had instructed USPS to “in good faith take such steps as are necessary to prevent explicit or implicit implementation of [the executive order] and to cease and reverse any implementation of those provisions.” The whistleblower indicated that USPS had initially stopped work, but then mysteriously resumed the work on July 29, before any challenge to the order had been addressed. It was not until Monday, August 24, that the Supreme Court lifted the injunction blocking the implementation on procedural grounds.
Last Thursday, August 28, a coalition led by the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts re-filed their lawsuit seeking to re-impose the injunction now that the USPS rule was finalized and the plaintiffs had standing. U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani issued a 14-day Temporary Restraining Order against USPS, allowing the agency to continue work on the portal but not force the new system on states that refused to hand over their voter information to the federal government. On Tuesday, the plaintiffs submitted the whistleblower complaint to Talwani ahead of a hearing on Thursday, September 3.
Talwani on Thursday pressed the Trump Administration for more information regarding the order and how the system was being implemented, asking DOJ attorney Michael Velchik: “I’m here 70 days before the election and I have nothing from USPS telling me how this will happen… As you sit here today, you can’t tell me the government has a program ready to go?” She did not issue an injunction immediately, but said she would make a ruling as soon as possible once she had the information. USPS executive vice president Steven Monteith filed a statement Thursday afternoon saying the agency was continuing to make “refinements” to the system and that it would be available for voluntary use “sometime next week.” The Trump Administration again appealed to the Supreme Court Thursday to lift the new TRO issued by Talwani last week.
Mailing dates for several states begin this week, beginning with North Carolina, which is set to send out ballots starting on Friday, followed by Minnesota and Virginia scheduled to send out ballots starting September 18th. Mail ballots are scheduled to be sent in all but three states by October 29th.
The New York Times reported this week that hundreds of Department of Homeland Security agents have begun a massive initiative to scour state voter rolls for “noncitizens” in a highly-touted Trump Administration effort to uncover “voter fraud.” According to documents obtained by NYT, agents are using “personally identifiable information about individual voters, such as their dates of birth and partial Social Security numbers,” to look them up on voter rolls.
Since the 2020 election, Trump has repeatedly promoted the narrative of ‘epidemic’ fraud in voting to cast doubt on the integrity of state-run elections, emphasizing “noncitizen voting” to appeal to the MAGA base though even the Heritage Foundation – the authors of Project 2025 – have failed to uncover more than 100 verified cases of non-citizen voting over 25 years of past election records.
While the DHS is spending an immense amount of resources to Trump’s search for elusive “noncitizen” voters, Democratic lawmakers Sen. Alex Padilla and Rep. Joseph Morelle sent a letter this week to DHS head Markwayne Mullin asking why $39.6 million that was appropriated by Congress in April for state-level election security has not been distributed by DHS to the specified recipients at state and local election offices. The letter stated: “With the midterm elections occurring in two months, we write with grave concern that time is running out… to assist state and local election officials in protecting our elections from cyber and mis-and disinformation threats.” NPR reports that as of Thursday, neither DHS nor Mullin has issued a statement in response.
MOVEMENT TRACKER
Tohono O’odham Nation in standoff with ‘armed’ federal agents after kicking border wall construction crews off Tribal land. Tensions are rising around border wall construction in Arizona, as the Tohono O’odham Nation, a federally recognized tribe of around 37,000 members whose ancestral territory is bisected by the U.S.-Mexico border, have accused federal agents of unlawfully trespassing on tribal lands. In a statement released Tuesday, the Tohono O’odham Nation said that “approximately 20 masked, armed Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents” accompanied construction workers to three locations in the tribe’s territory, adding that CBP prevented tribal police from issuing trespassing citations to the contractors. Despite the presence of a SWAT team, the statement adds that “at this time, interactions between [Tohono O’odham police] and federal law enforcement have been peaceful and professional.”
Last month, Federal Judge Richard Leon denied the Tohono O’odham Nation’s request for a federal injunction to halt construction, rejecting the tribe’s arguments that construction amounts to illegal trespassing would shrink tribal lands without congressional approval; despite this setback, tribal representatives have stated that they are prepared to fight the judge’s ruling and will continue in their fight to stop construction through litigation.
Arizona Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva released a video statement supporting the tribe after touring the planned construction area, saying: “This is tribal land. It does not belong to Trump. But DHS and its private contractors are entering sovereign tribal lands over the objections of the Tohono O’odham Nation anyway. This level of disrespect is shameful and will go down as a stain on our nation’s history and its treatment of indigenous peoples. This isn’t just about a wall. It’s about erasing people, cultures, and bulldozing over tribal sovereignty. DHS must stop this immediately.”
The conflict has also sparked outrage amongst Native Americans across the country, as many held hopes that the appointment of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, a Cherokee tribal member and the second-ever Indigenous cabinet member, could improve relations between Homeland Security agencies and tribal governments. Tohono O'odham Tribal Chairman Verlon Jose said in a statement Wednesday, “these illegal actions by border wall contractors put decades of successful partnership in jeopardy. As the federal government knows, effective border security relies on modern technology, not outdated and expensive static border walls. This overreach by the Trump administration must stop, and our sovereignty, along with tribal sovereignty across the country, must be respected.”
Union nurses fight back against Palantir. Last week, hundreds of nurses across the country engaged in mass civil disobedience actions to demand that hospitals and elected officials cut ties with AI company Palantir. National Nurses Union members and allies stopped traffic in eight cities on August 27th in protest, with signs highlighting such issues as Palantir’s ELITE system, an application that utilizes improperly attained Medicaid data to help federal agents identify individuals for arrest. In a statement on their website, the NNU highlight the billions of dollars in federal contracts awarded to Palantir under Trump, noting that the company already manages more than one-fifth of all U.S. hospital beds; the statement also notes Palantir’s role in the genocide in Gaza, where more than 1,500 healthcare workers and tens of thousands of civilians have been killed by Israeli military action in recent years.
Protesters placed 50 pairs of baby shoes in the street in each city, with each pair representing 10 babies who have been detained by federal agents since Trump’s return to office, alongside large copies of heartbreaking letters and notes written by the over 6,000 children who have been detained. Each of the protests, held in Los Angeles, Palo Alto, Austin, Asheville, Chicago, Portland, New Orleans, and Washington, D.C., drew large crowds and media attention. Allied groups also participated in and supported the protests, including CodePink, Jewish Voice for Peace, Mijente, and the American Friends Service Committee.
Mamdani imposes one-year restriction on AI in New York City schools. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has announced that the NYC School District, the largest in the country, will be implementing a ban on AI use in schools for all students through the eighth grade, alongside new limitations on AI use in high schools, grade-based limits on daily screen use in classrooms including keeping students off laptops and tablets through third grade, and a district-wide ban on AI grading tools and on use of “companion chatbots” for students’ psychological support.
New York City schools aren’t alone in implementing new constraints on technology use in the classroom; this year, several states and the Los Angeles Unified School District have begun to implement age-based limits on screen time in schools, with LAUSD rapidly implementing a ban on screen use through first grade. These moves come amidst a backdrop of increasing public concern over the cognitive and psychological impacts of AI and technology use among youth, alongside worries over environmental consequences of AI use and possible safety risks for vulnerable users.
Some researchers highlight the phenomenon of “cognitive surrender,” wherein a portion of individuals who utilize AI regularly show a tendency to “outsource” cognition to the program and accept its answers without question; the new AI restrictions in NYC’s schools will also come with twice-yearly AI literacy classes for high school students, designed to help them engage critically with these programs before becoming reliant on them. In his statement announcing the moratorium, Mayor Mamdani wrote that, “the tech industry wants us to believe that A.I.-powered early education is not only inevitable, but necessary. We do not see it that way.”
21 States sue to block Medicaid ban on transgender youth care; federal judge rules admin cannot force states to restrict trans youth athletes. A coalition of 22 Democrat-led states sued the Trump administration on Wednesday to block a Department of Health and Human Services plan that would bar Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program funds from being used to provide gender-affirming care, such as puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapies, for individuals under 19 years of age. The 60-page lawsuit, filed in Massachusetts federal court, notes that these same treatments remain covered for other purposes, leading the filers to believe that the Trump administration implemented this ban solely to punish transgender youth.
The lawsuit states: “The administration seeks such broad and unprecedented powers in part to advance its social policy agenda, a key component of which involves relentless attacks on a small and vulnerable population – transgender individuals – whose very existence the president scapegoats to stoke national division.” The lawsuit also argues that the ban creates unlawful barriers for low-income Americans, and strips states of their role as Medicaid and CHIP administrators without congressional approval. It claims further that the basis of the ban is arbitrary and capricious, highlighting that HHS received thousands of public comments upon publishing a proposed version of the change, 90% of which were opposed to the ban.
The ban comes after a previous attempt to restrict transgender youth care was derailed, when a federal judge ruled earlier this year that the Trump administration could not bar hospitals that provide such care from receiving federal funding. In addition to Massachusetts, the coalition includes California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Maryland, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia.
In related news, a federal judge has dismissed a Trump administration lawsuit that sought to challenge the state of California’s policy of allowing transgender children to play sports on teams that match their gender identity. The Justice Department argued in their suit that the policy, which has been in place since 2013, violates Title IX because, they claimed, Title IX requires access to be based on biological sex rather than gender identity. However, U.S. District Judge Cynthia Valenzuela found this claim to be unsubstantiated, stating that nothing in Title IX and its implementing regulations requires states to exclude transgender girls from girls’ sports teams and facilities.