Mehdi Hasan

RT: @rutgerbregman Really great to see this: six Nobel Prize-winning economists (Duflo, Krugman, Diamond, Banerjee, Acemoglu and Stiglitz) just came out in favor of the California billionaire tax. You don't have to be a radical leftist to see why it's a good idea. First, look at the numbers: ten years ago, the richest 0.001% of Californians were worth $700 billion. Today, that same group (about 250 people) is worth $2.3 trillion. From 2019 to 2025, their wealth grew by $1.4 trillion. The California income tax they paid over that period was just 1.6% of that gain. A nurse or a plumber pays a higher state tax rate. Yes, many of these people built great companies, and they've made a lot of money in the process. Good for them! The problem is that wealth on this scale stops being just money. It becomes extraordinary power. In 2000, billionaires accounted for about 1% of all donations in federal elections. In 2024, it was 19%. The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the LA Times, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and the platform you're reading this on: all owned and controlled by billionaires. Now add AI. If you think power is concentrated now, just wait five years. It's going to get much worse. So, what does Prop 40 actually do? It's a one-time 5% tax on the wealth of California's billionaires. That would raise about $100 billion, enough to offset the federal Medicaid cuts. "But they'll all leave!" the critics say. Nope, they can't. The tax applies to any billionaire who lived in California on January 1, 2026, and the initiative only became public about five weeks before that. "But it'll kill Silicon Valley!" Uh no, that won't happen either. Since the tax was announced, California's share of all new US venture capital has gone up, from about 50% to 80%. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who would be one of the biggest payers, said he would be "perfectly fine" with it and had "not even thought about it once". Sure, some other billionaires can't stop thinking about it. Sergey Brin has already spent more than $100 million to defeat the proposal. At a holiday party in December he pulled Gavin Newson aside and said 'he could not stand the state’s proposed billionaire tax', because he thought the 5% tax would turn California into some kind of Soviet Union. That is, of course, nonsense. This is not going to be some kind of socialist revolution. The proposal is about restoring balance to a mixed economy. You could even argue it's about saving capitalism itself from oligarchs like Sergey Brin. I think that's exactly why Nobel Prize-winning economists are coming out in favor of this tax. If Prop 40 passes in November, it will be the first tax aimed specifically at billionaire wealth anywhere in the world. I think it could be the start of a global movement. Anyway, read the whole letter here. It's really good 👇

RT: @HalaGorani Every other White House reporter should walk out in solidarity. Not sure how any of them could justify attending another briefing after this.

RT: @DAcemogluMIT I want to briefly explain why I joined Abhijit Banerjee, Peter Diamond, Esther Duflo, Paul Krugman and Joe Stiglitz in signing the letter on the California billionaire tax: In principle, I am not convinced that permanent wealth taxes would be necessary if the tax-transfer system were designed optimally. But the US tax system is very far from optimal, and has been for decades. As I have documented in my research (for example, here: ), labor income is taxed much more heavily than capital income. This asymmetry creates two distinct problems. First, it makes the tax system highly regressive at the top. The very rich, who receive much of their income from capital or can use accounting tricks to reclassify their income as capital income, pay remarkably little in taxes. For example, a business owner who runs their own company should receive a significant part of their income as labor earnings for their work as CEO. Instead, they can take their compensation in stock and borrow against those holdings to finance whatever consumption they desire, minimizing their tax obligations. Even their heirs may avoid paying these taxes. Second, the asymmetry distorts automation decisions: it effectively subsidizes machinery and AI relative to hiring workers (for example, here: ). These distortions have allowed a small number of people to amass vast fortunes without paying their fair share of taxes, and have fueled excessive automation. The resulting inequality is a problem in its own right. It is all the more dangerous today because our institutions have become fragile, allowing the very wealthy to exert growing control over the political process. A temporary wealth tax can therefore be justified on three grounds: (1) it partially reverses the effects of more than two decades of tax avoidance by the very wealthy; (2) it acts as a brake on their growing dominance over the political process; and (3) it may pave the way for more comprehensive tax reform at the federal level. The California billionaire tax is not perfect. For example, a federal tax would lessen risks related to capital flight, and removing the rigid earmarking of the revenues for specific purposes would enable the proceeds to reduce the national debt. Nevertheless, with few other options on the table, I believe the California proposal deserves support.

RT: @AlanRMacLeod If The Atlantic magazine is doing guilt by association, here's a pic of its owner, Laurene Powell Jobs, with Ghislaine Maxwell.

RT: @Britt4rva I know we are all numb but here’s the sitting president threatening to do war crimes to 90 million people in front of the entire UN

Ask yourself why the sudden obsession with Fauci now, all in lock step? What are they trying to distract from now? The shitshow in Iran? The economic decline at home? Still no full Epstein files? Trump’s corruption?

Why did Elon Musk and a bunch of unqualified kids last year get access to so much of our private data while gutting a congressionally-created government department, USAID?

"How to Handle President Trump – A Primer for the British Prime Minister" Act like you’re on ‘RuPaul’, leave your good manners at home and find a shared enemy. Tony Blair’s former political secretary briefs Andy Burnham ahead of his meeting with Trump: https://zeteo.uk/p/how-to-handle-president-trump-a-primer

RT: @RpsAgainstTrump Dr. Fauci’s diary, November 2020. Where’s the lie?

RT: @RepThomasMassie What a nightmare. By implementing the tariffs illegally, and now having to unwind them, the Trump administration created over $100 billion of profit for corporations selling foreign products, at the expense of American consumers. Your refund: $0.00 Apple’s profit: $2.2 billion

RT: @academic_la Why does everyone keep asking if Israel has a right to exist or not when they are not allowing Palestine to exist?

RT: @DropSiteNews ⭕️ Two Israeli female soldiers photographed themselves posing beside a young, blindfolded Palestinian detainee who appears to be a minor and proudly posted the image on Instagram. The post, which circulated widely online and was reviewed by Drop Site News, was uploaded by Israeli soldier Nikol Stelmashvski as part of a 20-photo carousel containing additional images from her time in Gaza. Her account [@ nikol.stel, IG] has since been made private after the photo drew public backlash. The image is the latest in a documented pattern of Israeli soldiers publicly sharing evidence of Palestinian detainees being humiliated or abused. Such conduct violates international humanitarian law, which prohibits the degrading treatment of detainees.

Hi Senator are you wittingly or unwittingly throwing shade at @realDonaldTrump?

No joke, the national security adviser of the Emirati government is financially backing Trump's new crypto bank (!) How is this not a BIGGER story? From Zeteo's 'First Draft' morning newsletter: https://zeteo.com/p/meet-the-gulf-spy-sheikh-backing

RT: @DefendOurJuries NEW: Sir Jonathon Porritt, arrested under Terrorism law outside Westminster Magistrates Court. As police escorted him away he said "I am a supporter of Palestine Action, trying to save lives is not terrorism, exposing this Governments complicity in genocide is not terrorism."

RT: @esjesjesj Elon’s doing literal Nazi propaganda again

Any reporter interviewing a Republican should be asking them if they agree with the Republican president’s desire to ‘terminate’ the constitution and be a ‘dictator’, his pardoning of the Jan 6 terrorists, and his hosting of a Neo Nazi Holocaust denier for dinner.

RT: @MarcoFoster_ Abdul El-Sayed: “Antisemitism and Islamophobia are one in the same and we need to take them on. But we cannot sit idly by and ask why is it our $3.3B a year is used to fund apartheid, genocide over the last several years, a war we have no business fighting with the attempt to annex the southern part of a neighboring country and then wonder why our kids’ schools look like they did 50 years ago. I’ll say the same thing about the money we send to Egypt. I don’t think we should be sending unconditional foreign military aid to any government”

RT: @JeromeAdamsMD Funny how the “constitutional rights vs. public health” debate forgets its own origin story. In 1777 George Washington ordered the mass inoculation of the Continental Army against smallpox - the first large-scale mandatory immunization in American history -because the disease was killing far more soldiers than the British! 🤯 Without that prioritization of collective survival over individual choice, there almost certainly would be no United States and no Constitution. 🤔

“Just because we don’t support Abdul, doesn’t mean we’re Republicans,” says a Twitter account literally called ‘Democrats for Mike Rogers’. I am losing my mind at the insane and shameless and demonstrable dishonesty of these people.

RT: @MarcoFoster_ Piers Morgan: “The murder rate in England has dropped to its lowest in 50 years. This idea which people like Elon seem to convince themselves to be correct that our motherland is being run over by Muslims who are raping, pillaging, and murdering everybody is not borne out by statistical evidence”

A reminder that, according to the latest poll, Jewish Americans say they prefer Mamdani to Netanyahu.

RT: @acnewsitics Wow, look what Dr. Fauci tweeted back in 2020!!!

RT: @thescottbarber The cumulative COVID-19 death rate was lower in Democratic states than it was in Republican states, and it was substantially lower in Canada than it was in the states. And that is the fault of people who did not want to participate in life saving public policy, not the fault of Anthony Fauci.

RT: @benryanwriter Dr. Fauci began his career innovating cures for rare diseases. He is so widely cited in his academic publishing that his h-index of 243 puts him in the top 0.01 percent of all global scientists. NIAID in particular is centrally responsible for much of the global progress in transforming HIV from a certain death sentence into a manageable chronic health condition, saving tens of millions of lives worldwide.

RT: @JReinerMD President Trump today took personal credit for the rapid development of the COVID vaccine. The president says that over time he relied less and less on Fauci, and “Fauci was largely taken out of play”. Maybe Rand Paul should subpoena President Trump.

RT: @TheTNHoller A war criminal continues to get coveted air time on the biggest American networks to push his propaganda as bombs still drop on the heads of innocent people in Gaza and extremist settlers burn villages in the West Bank with IDF backing.

RT: @TMZ 🚨🎥 TMZ's Harvey Levin calls the attacks on Dr. Anthony Fauci "one of the most heartbreaking things" he’s witnessed in government, comparing the push to jail him to the fear and persecution of the McCarthy era.

RT: @siennamarla EXCL: Labour peer Maurice Glasman wrote and recorded a song dedicated to Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last Shah of Iran, and played it to him in a Parisian restaurant: https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/lord-glasman-wrote-song-exiled-crown-prince-iran-played

RT: @RibGoneRogue Just a reminder that Rand Paul is an “opthamologist,” certified by an ophthalmology board that he created. Rand Paul is not a virologist. Rand Paul’s wife invested in Remdesivir during the height of Covid as he pushed the drug on Americans. The Pauls failed to disclose their investment for 16 months. Rand Paul got richer during Covid.

RT: @DefendOurJuries Britain today: An elderly woman in a wheelchair is escorted away by the police and risks up to 14 years in prison for supporting terrorism since the Home Secretary proscribed a protest group in 2025. Her crime? She said: "I support Palestine Action and I encourage you to join".

I wish @kaitlancollins or @kasie had done this interview. Bash was totally unprepared for it, allowed RFK Jr not just to get under her skin, but make multiple false and dangerous claims that she didn’t push back against (eg Lyme disease coming from Gain of Function, or there being no studies to shown COVID vaccines protected kids, etc etc). If you’re gonna platform conspiracy theorists and grifters, you gotta be ready for their false claims and spin.

RT: @AdHaque110 "The findings demonstrate that the prejudice against Muslim political candidates stretches beyond El-Sayed — and crosses partisan lines — with 78 percent of Republicans and 22 percent of Democrats unwilling to vote for a Muslim president."

RT: @tparsi Yet another apocalyptic threat, followed by another self-congratulatory climbdown. The pattern is becoming tiresome by now: Unable to escalate his way out of the self-inflicted debacle, Trump tries to bluff his way out. Except, Tehran is not falling for it. Rather, it is confidently raising the stakes, calculating that Trump will only fully commit to a diplomatic solution once he has internalized that he does not have a military option. It’s a risky strategy - with potential attacks in Egypt and cyber attacks in the US - but one that the new and far less restrained military leadership believes is more likely to achieve security than giving in to Trump. So the next few days will undoubtedly be eventful and leave us with much to discuss. I am scheduling our next Q&A session for Friday, August 7, at 2.00 pm ET. You can register here:

A reminder that multiple academic studies - as well as international comparisons - show 100s of 1000s of Americans died from COVID who didn’t need to die had Trump taken it seriously from the beginning and been a minimally more competent president. All the noise now about Fauci and lab leaks is a distraction from that one simple undeniable fact. And Democrats who moved on from the pandemic, and holding Trump accountable for all those early deaths in 2020, left a vacuum which RFK and Rand Paul and the rightwing grift machine happily filled with character assassinations, conspiracy theories, and pro-Trump deflection.

RT: @tparsi OMG!! "In April 2024, then-Mayor Eric Adams hosted a group of active duty Israel Defense Forces soldiers at City Hall to honor them for fighting in Gaza.The meeting was kept off Adams’ public schedule, and his staff were directed to not post anything about it on social media due to concerns about it taking place as Israel had escalated strikes in Gaza, killing thousands of civilians."

RT: @TheElders “It’s no longer a matter of individual settlers. It’s now a policy. It’s a policy of getting rid of Palestinians from villages and literally obliterating the West Bank.” Mary Robinson spoke to @IsaCNN on @CNN about her recent visit to the Middle East, alongside fellow Elders @HelenClarkNZ, Graça Machel and Hina Jilani, and their conclusion that the Israeli government aims to make Palestine disappear. Watch a clip below ⬇️

RT: @MarvaKreel That first statement is such a weird world view. There’s no country in the world I will “love and defend always”. No one should have one of those?? I love living in the UK, but when it’s bombing children, I protest?? And don’t defend it?? Blind nationalism is sick and bizarre

"First Draft: Wild Attack on Mamdani Shows Netanyahu Knows He’s Cornered" The Israeli PM used Fox to mount lurid claims about the New York mayor, hurling unchallenged accusations without a fraction of fact. Read/share/subscribe to Zeteo's First Draft: https://zeteo.com/p/wild-attack-on-mamdani-shows-netanyahu

RT: @AOC I appreciate AIPAC proving it doesn’t belong in the Dem Party and especially our primaries. From endorsing Jan 6th members to ensuring Congress remains in the hands of a 34-count felon, AIPAC is an org committed to undermining democracy at home and abroad. See you in November.

RT: @DropSiteNews 🇵🇸 Freed Gaza captives arrive with visible signs of torture after Israeli detention The 60 Palestinians released Monday arrived at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis in poor health. Families and Palestinian prisoners’ advocacy group Nibras Al-Wafa Team for Prisoners and Liberators Affairs said many showed visible signs of torture and abuse suffered inside the Negev prison, while several required urgent medical treatment upon arrival. Israel continues to hold about 9,400 Palestinian prisoners, including thousands from Gaza, according to Palestinian prisoner organizations.

RT: @zeteo_news “[Israel is] basically putting Palestinians in smaller and smaller cages to make the coming genocide easier.” Palestinian campaigner @fadiquran tells @mehdirhasan@mastox.eu that settler violence is “the worst I have seen it in my life.” Watch the conversation, link in replies.

RT: @tparsi On March 4, a week into the illegal war with Iran, Lindsey Graham says that within 3-4 weeks, the Iranian government would lose control over some cities. And by the end of that week, the Arab states would be more "openly" involved in the war, he predicts, suggesting that some Arab states were secretly involved in the war from the outset. We are now on day 150 and not a single Iranian city has fallen. America is so much worse off listening to this warmonger's deranged fantasies.

RT: @DrRobDavidson He’s an abject failure. He’s attacking the real frontline doctors by spewing total BS about “treatments” for COVID that don’t work. I was there. People were dying and we were doing everything we could to help them. He’s failing us on Measles and explosive diarrhea. He must go.

This is insane. @shannonrwatts has literally zero principles or moral consistency. Hasan Piker = bad! Destiny = totally fine!

RT: @clashreport Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz: Twenty-four Lebanese villages, hundreds of years old—we destroyed all the buildings, not house by house, but entire villages. Their destruction has been completed. You need to understand: 15,000 to 20,000 homes across all 24 villages have been destroyed.

RT: @yashar NEW Suri, Katie Holmes’s daughter, who was abandoned by her biological father, Tom Cruise, legally dropped the last name “Cruise” at some point, per a new report from Page Six. Suri Noelle is the name she used to register to vote. Good for her. A reminder: Tom Cruise believes that having any sort of connection to Suri will impede Scientology and could possibly cause him to become sick or injured. He also believes that by remaining connected to her in any way, he is committing a suppressive act, is a danger to Scientology, and is therefore a danger to the future of humanity. This is all because her mom was declared a suppressive person, an enemy of Scientology. As a result, Suri is considered PTS, a potential trouble source. (Link to story in post below)

RT: @AlexCrawfordSky A call to action from the Evangelical Lutheran pastor in Ramallah about the growing, violent settler attacks on Palestinian villages which continue with impunity. ‘I do not want to share statistics, he says, ‘I am tired of numbers. We're not numbers. We're not headlines. We're talking about mothers, fathers, children, grandparents — with names, with stories, with futures that are being cut short’

Have you asked this question about Donald Trump?

We’re screwed in the next pandemic. Screwed.