CovertAction Bulletin

NATO held its 2025 Parliamentary Assembly in Dayton, Ohio between May 22 and 26. Though it promotes itself as a force in defense of peace and security, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s history exposes its true purpose: propping up Western imperialism and hegemony. It’s an international body started with the goal of containing and threatening the Soviet Union, and since the fall of the USSR...

Donald Trump held phone calls with both Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday, then announced that the two countries will “immediately start negotiations toward a ceasefire” in the 3-year-long conflict between the two. His announcement also touted a goal of increased trade and economic ties with Russia. It also comes weeks after the U.S. and Ukraine...

On Tuesday, UnitedHealth Group announced that CEO Andrew Witty was stepping down. The announcement came from Witty as the company suspended its full-year financial outlook - because it believes that medical costs will be higher than forecast. UnitedHealth’s revenue was over $400 billion. The year before Witty became CEO in 2021, its revenue was $257 billion - that’s a 55% increase. At the same tim...

Israeli Minister of National Security and supporter of extremist, far-right policies Itamar Ben-Gvir visited the United States in late April. From the time he got off his plane in Florida and throughout events in New Haven, CT, New York City and Washington, DC, he was met with opposition, protest and resistance. Even some Zionist groups opposed his visit, which included stops at Trump’s Mar-A-Lago...

April 20th marked the fifteenth anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the largest oil spill in U.S. history, which killed 11 workers and spilled 134 million gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. For those who rely on fishing and related industries off the Gulf Coast, as well as for those who were involved in the recovery and cleanup efforts, real relief is still yet to come. The A...

Mahmoud Khalil, likely days away from the birth of his first child, is still being held in Louisiana as his lawyers fight for his freedom after a judge ordered that he can be deported. Just Monday, Columbia student Moshen Mahdawi was detained by ICE during a regular interview as part of the citizenship process. Hundreds of students from more than 90 institutions across the country have had their s...

Talks are set to begin on April 12th in Oman between the United States and Iran about Iran’s nuclear program. The announcement was made as Benjamin Netanyahu left the White House after his second visit to DC in as many months. In a short video posted after the meeting in Hebrew with English subtitles, Netanyahu praised Donald Trump and said, “We agree that Iran will not have nuclear weapons,” addi...

After breaking the ceasefire deal, Israel is continuing its ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and beyond, and threatening to further ignite wider conflict by bombing Syria and Lebanon. In just one 48-hour period after the end of the ceasefire, a combination of bombings from the air and a ground invasion killed over 500 Palestinians in just 48 hours. Though both countries are increasingly is...

Tens of thousands of new and newly-unredacted documents related to the killings of JFK Jr, his brother RFK and Martin Luther King Jr have been released over the past week. While historians and journalists are still pouring over the files to see what new historical information can be learned from them it’s becoming clear that there’s no smoking gun - no document changing the official narrative of t...

The Israeli government, with the full backing of the White House, has completely thrown out the January ceasefire and negotiations and resumed the genocidal bombing campaign against Palestinians in Gaza, which may be followed up by a full-scale ground invasion. Over 400 people were killed, including over 170 children, in Israeli air strikes on Monday night. It was the deadliest nights of the last...

Over the weekend, federal agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent legal resident of the United States, and said they were stripping him of his permanent resident status and going to deport him back to Palestine. During the student encampments and protests at Columbia University last year, Khalil was a public figure involved in negotiating with the University’s administration on behalf of Colum...

Following up on last week's show where we discussed the quickly-changing dynamics of U.S.-European relationships under Donald Trump, we look at the “peace deal” Trump has penned with Ukraine that reportedly includes significant mineral rights for the U.S. we focus on how the Ukraine conflict and its possible end reflect the shifting focus of U.S. imperialism. Ukrainians have been used as pawn...

As the Trump administration openly threatens historic American allies in Europe, weighs in on German elections in favor of the far-right, and pushes the idea of MEGA - Make Europe Great Again - it’s becoming increasingly clear that the relationships and dynamic between the US and Western Europe is changing at a scale we haven’t seen in almost a century. The uneasy transatlantic alliance could be a...

Donald Trump has nominated Linda McMahon, a former executive with World Wrestling Entertainment and twice-failed Senate candidate as well as the Administrator of the Small Business Administration under his first term, to lead the Department of Education. Speaking about her nomination in early February, Trump said he wants her to put herself out of a job - to shutter the US Department of Education....

After Hamas submitted a two-page report documenting multiple violations of the tense ceasefire in place since January 19, and said it would on its end delay the release of some hostages until the issues are resolved, the Israeli government is now ramping up for another phase of all-out war against the Palestinian people. Benjamin Netanyahu threatened that if all Israeli hostages are not released b...

Over the weekend and early into this week, Elon Musk’s so-called DOGE, Department of Government Efficiency, effectively shut down the US Agency for International Development on a temporary basis. Musk, Donald Trump and their lackeys attacked USAID because they claim it’s a “viper’s nest of radical-left [m]arxists who hate America,” to quote a Musk post on X, saying it’s a corrupt organization that...

After getting rain over the weekend, three of the main fires devastating the Los Angeles area are nearly 100% contained, meaning that firefighters have been able to create barriers around the fires. But the Palisades Fire, the Eaton fire and the Hughes fire continue to burn a combined nearly 48,000 acres of land. And to the south, just a few miles north of Tijuana Mexico, the Border 2 Fire has bur...

Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday was met with protests around the country. As he immediately launched attacks on immigrants, the environment, LGBTQ people, labor and beyond, people took to the streets in opposition, pledging to continue organizing to defend the oppressed against the onslaught of attacks from Trump and the billionaires. On this episode, we get into some of the many executive o...

On January 13th, CovertAction Magazine held a webinar featuring whistleblowers and activists who formerly have served in various U.S intelligence agencies to discuss their perspectives on what to expect from those agencies and beyond under Donald Trump. On today’s show, we bring you part of the webinar, which featured John Kiriakou, Coleen Rowley, Ray McGovern and Larry Johnson, and was moderated...

Early on New Year’s Day, a truck drove into a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, resulting in dozens of injuries and at least 14 deaths. The alleged attacker, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, was killed in a shootout with police. Immediately, the media and government seized on supposed and self-described connections with ISIS with no critical thought towards what they’re calling a terrorist attack. On thi...

When UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was killed on December 4th in New York, the casings of the bullets used to kill him had “deny”, “delay” and “depose” written on them. These so-called “three Ds” of the insurance industry describe how companies go out of their way to get out of paying claims. Even before a suspect was identified and arrested, popular sentiment was broadly with the shooter. T...

Calls for the resignation of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol have rung out from civil society and beyond after Yoon declared martial law on December 3rd. The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) called for strikes until Yoon steps down, and groups under and beyond that organization are heeding the call. Yoon’s brief and apparently sudden declaration of martial law caused many to protes...

At the end of November, groups aligned with Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) or the “Levant Liberation Committee” and previously known as the Al-Nusra Front, launched significant attacks on the Syrian government in the Idlib and Aleppo regions, taking part of the city of Aleppo. The Syrian Arab Army has mobilized to push back against HTS. The offensive of course comes within days of the ceasefire in Le...

On Tuesday afternoon, the Israeli security cabinet approved a ceasefire deal with Hezbollah after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the cabinet and then with a pre-recorded video addressed the Israeli public, expressing his support for the deal. But in the leadup to the security cabinet vote, and while Netanyahu was making his case in support of the deal, Israel has been engaging in some...

Shortly after we recorded our last episode and mentioned the bill, the House of Representatives tried and failed to vote on HR 9495, the “Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act” bill. House Republicans tried to suspend the rules and push a vote through, and got 52 Democrats to vote with them, but weren’t able to get the ⅔ majority they needed under House procedural rules....