Imagine a U.S. president embarking on a lavish trip to the Middle East, signing major deals with Arab leaders—while Israel, its long-time ally, isn’t even invited to the table. This hypothetical scenario, which could easily have occurred with Donald Trump’s return to power in 2025, is a warning bell for a decades-old policy that has held America’s credibility hostage: unconditional support for Israel.

This alliance has not only stripped the U.S. of its role as a credible peace broker but has also made it complicit in human rights violations and an obstacle to democracy in the region. The time has come for the U.S. to drastically curtail its massive aid to Israel and instead invest in democratic institutions and comprehensive peace across the Middle East.

Israel: A Saboteur of Peace

Every time a genuine hope for peace has emerged in the Middle East, Israel’s actions have worked to destroy it. In the 1990s, the Oslo Accords promised Palestinian autonomy, but Israel quickly doubled down on illegal settlements in the West Bank, turning hope into despair. Between 1993 and 2000, the number of settlers grew from 110,000 to over 200,000. In 2000, the Camp David negotiations collapsed due to Israel’s insistence on retaining control over parts of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

U.S. military aid to Israel—including $12.5 billion in direct support since October 2023—has become inseparable from accusations of human rights violations.

This pattern continued. In 2005, Israel withdrew from Gaza, but instead of enabling peace, it imposed a suffocating blockade that turned the lives of 2 million Palestinians into a nightmare. Since October 2023, Israeli attacks on Gaza—backed by U.S. arms—have killed over 60,000 people, many of them civilians. These assaults, executed with 500-pound bombs supplied by the U.S., have obliterated any prospects for diplomacy. With unwavering American support, Israel has not only undermined peace but also fueled regional instability.

America’s Credibility at Risk

U.S. support for Israel—which has included $310 billion in financial aid since 1948 and 49 vetoes of United Nations resolutions critical of Israel—has disqualified Washington from being seen as a neutral mediator. When the U.S. recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in 2017, Palestinians withdrew from negotiations, plunging the peace process into a deadlock. This policy has strained America’s relations with Arab countries and opened doors for China and Russia to increase their influence in the region.

Public opinion in the U.S. is also shifting. According to a Gallup poll from March 2025, only 46% of Americans support Israel—the lowest in 25 years—while 33% sympathize with Palestinians. This shift, particularly among younger generations, reflects growing dissatisfaction with a policy that undermines the very values of human rights and democracy America claims to uphold.

Human Rights and Democratic Contradictions

U.S. military aid to Israel—including $12.5 billion in direct support since October 2023—has become inseparable from accusations of human rights violations. Amnesty International and other watchdogs have accused Israel of using American-supplied weapons in attacks on civilians, in violation of the Leahy Law. Yet the U.S. has ignored these concerns and continued arms transfers.

Domestically, Israel’s policies—such as expanding illegal settlements and curbing judicial independence—clash with the principles of liberal democracy. These contradictions have damaged America’s reputation as a defender of democracy and eroded public support. A Pew survey from March 2024 found that 51% of Americans held a negative view of the Israeli government.

A Path Toward Peace and Democracy

Scaling back support for Israel could free the U.S. from this political quagmire. Reducing the $3.8 billion in annual military aid would pressure Israel to commit to a two-state solution and recognize Palestinian statehood. This shift could deter destabilizing actions like military offensives and settlement expansion, and pave the way for comprehensive peace.

Rather than continuing military expenditures, the U.S. should invest in strengthening democratic institutions in the Middle East. Supporting civil society organizations in Palestine, Jordan, and Egypt—and enhancing regional diplomacy—could lay the groundwork for lasting peace. This approach would not only restore America’s credibility as a force for peace but also aid in resolving other crises, such as nuclear negotiations with Iran. The Abraham Accords proved that multilateral diplomacy can normalize relations, but this time, Palestinians must be included.

Challenges and the Urgency of Change

Reducing support for Israel won’t be easy. Lobbying groups like AIPAC and certain U.S. lawmakers will resist. But such resistance must not deter a necessary course correction. Without change, the U.S. will remain complicit in crimes that destroy prospects for peace. A gradual, coordinated shift—aligned with Arab allies and strengthened diplomacy—can prevent regional destabilization.

Ending a Dangerous Illusion

Unconditional U.S. support for Israel, which has repeatedly sabotaged peace, is no longer defensible. This policy has tarnished America’s image as a champion of human rights and democracy, while trapping the Middle East in a cycle of violence. The time has come for the U.S. to sharply reduce aid to Israel, recognize Palestine, and invest in regional peace and democracy. This is the only path to restoring America’s global standing and ending decades of instability.

In a historic moment, the International Finance Corporation became the first development finance institution, or DFI, to adopt an explicit policy on remedy. On April 15, IFC published its Remedial Action Framework, formalizing a commitment to address environmental and social harms caused by IFC-supported investment projects.

This milestone is not only a leap forward for IFC but also a hopeful sign for communities harmed by development projects around the world. The Remedial Action Framework (RAF) is a cornerstone in a broader shift at a moment when the World Bank Group is planning to undertake a major overhaul of the environmental and social accountability systems on the public and private sides of the institution. The RAF sets the stage for a profound institution-wide commitment to avoid and remedy harm at the entire World Bank. Whether the grievance mechanisms and accountability systems of the institution change, or amendments to the environmental and social policies occur as part of this overhaul, the principles and drive for this cultural shift at the institution must now be rooted in the notion that remedy is possible at the World Bank.

As project-affected communities have illustrated through the years, harm is harm—no matter what type of investment may have led to it.

The IFC/Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) framework is the result of years of advocacy, discussion, and perseverance by numerous stakeholders both outside and inside the institution, as recognized in the RAF itself. The strenuous efforts from civil society organizations (CSOs) and project-affected people from around the globe stemmed from firsthand experience of harm as well as technical recommendations and proposals to ensure that the remedy is centered on the rights and the needs of those who have been harmed.

The RAF is a fundamental part of an approach that will focus on remedy but will also make considerations about when and why to exit a project responsibly, as established in its Responsible Exit Approach issued in October 2024.

How the IFC/MIGA RAF Works

It is particularly meaningful that the RAF acknowledges that, like all development institutions, IFC and MIGA must play a role in the “remedial action ecosystem.” This recognition signals a full understanding of the core tenet of international law, namely that institutions should avoid infringing on the human rights of others and should address adverse human rights impacts when they have contributed to harm.

The RAF aims to provide a structured approach to address harm arising from the environmental and social (E&S) impacts of projects supported by IFC/MIGA. While the emphasis on the differentiated roles that IFC/MIGA and their clients play in providing remedy for harm remains, the support by IFC and MIGA for these remedial actions is a central part of the equation, focusing on:

• Prevention and Preparedness
• Access to Remedy
• Contribution to Remedial Action

The RAF will apply to all IFC-supported investment projects and all investment projects covered by MIGA political risk insurance guarantees. It makes distinctions for IFC/MIGA’s support for remedial actions, asserting they will vary depending on each case, stemming from factors such as the type of investment, proximity to harm, and other factors. Reaching an understanding of how these factors will be considered will require more detail than what is included presently in the RAF.

IFC/MIGA’s contribution to remedy will entail the use of influence and leverage to encourage clients to take remedial action, as well as providing support for enabling activities, such as fact-finding, technical assistance, and community development activities. Ultimately, the extent and effectiveness of these contributions will depend on the levels of engagement and participation from those seeking remedy.

While the RAF does contain references to institutional risks associated with providing direct funding for remedial actions by IFC/MIGA, it also acknowledges that the primary focus on enabling activities is meant to minimize these risks.

Notably, the RAF was approved on an interim basis, pointing to the importance of its three-year piloting phase to implement the approach. Practical application and enforcement of the RAF will certainly be the biggest challenge, but the inclusion of regular interactions with stakeholders, updates, and a final assessment to be conducted with the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO) to incorporate lessons learned to perfect the final policy is positive.

Prevention and Preparedness

The RAF emphasizes sustainability frameworks and the value of strengthening prevention and preparedness and facilitating remedy through grievance mechanisms, echoing a long-standing demand from civil society that avoiding harm must be prioritized over managing its aftermath. It is admirable to finally have IFC recognize the crucial need to identify and manage E&S risks and potential impacts to avoid harm in the first place, but this too will require a change in operations and culture at IFC so that every aspect of IFC’s operations is seen through an environmental and social lens—a shift that aligns with a human rights-based approach.

Assessing a client’s preparedness and capacity to properly identify and mitigate environmental and social risks and to provide access to remedial actions in the event of harm is one of IFC/MIGA’s primary roles. If IFC/MIGA are committed to the complementary roles required for remedial action implementation, then this primary role becomes ever more salient and fixed to its new mandate.

The RAF should be praised. It has also created an opportunity to institute an approach to remedy within the entire World Bank Group at the perfect moment.

And as IFC begins the process of updating its Sustainability Framework, it is the perfect time to capture the principles and thrust of the Remedial Action Framework and Responsible Exit Approach in a manner that enhances broad adoption and integration of the approach to remedy at the entire institution.

Although the RAF does not mention the Responsible Exit Approach—including a reference to IFC/MIGA’s leverage over a “former client”—it nods to its relevance by recognizing the challenges faced when clients are not willing to address situations of harm. Planning with clients to ensure a responsible exit from all projects—and leveraging the role of IFC/MIGA in contributing to remedy through enabling activities—remains fundamental.

Accessing Remedy

Based on the background provided in the RAF, one would assume that the framework is the result of the 2018 external review of the E&S accountability of IFC and MIGA, including the role and effectiveness of the CAO. Yet, civil society organizations that have been advocating for accountability and remedy for decades would quickly point to problematic projects such as Alto Maipo, Titan Cement, and Tata Tea, recalling the numerous communities who filed complaints proving the inadequacy of the system. For many of them, the ultimate catalyst for the turnaround would be the Tata Mundra case. This case—and the landmark Jam v. IFC litigation by Indian fisherfolk—highlighted the gaps in accountability when IFC dismissed the CAO’s findings and recommendations to bring the project into compliance and to provide remedy for communities.

Considering this history with the CAO, it is all the more notable that IFC/MIGA has embraced access to remedy as part of the holistic approach to remedial action within the RAF. They recognize the vital necessity of putting in place effective, reliable, and independent grievance mechanisms to address complaints raised by project-affected people when things go wrong.

IFC/MIGA emphasizes the client’s creation of an effective project-level grievance mechanism while maintaining the existence of IFC’s internal grievance mechanism—the Stakeholder Engagement and Response office—and the CAO. Together, these mechanisms make up the diverse cadre of options with varied levels of outcomes and results. By acknowledging the opportunity to capture lessons from the RAF’s initial implementation to inform updates to IFC/MIGA Sustainability Frameworks and the upcoming CAO Policy review, IFC/MIGA notably endorses raising the level of engagement and usefulness of these mechanisms.

For some time, CSOs and project-affected communities have been advocating for improvements to the CAO and grievance mechanisms at DFIs worldwide. Years of experience and long-standing collaboration led to the creation of the Good Policy Paper Guiding Practice from the Policies of Independent Accountability Mechanisms. These recommendations have been useful for numerous institutions seeking to improve their accountability frameworks with the ultimate goal of facilitating access to effective remedy.

What Constitutes Remedial Action for IFC and MIGA?

As stated in the RAF, “IFC/MIGA as development institutions have a role to play in the context of the broader remedial action ecosystem and may contribute to remedial action in the following ways:

• Use of available financial, contractual, and/or relationship influence and leverage to encourage clients and other responsible parties to take remedial action to address harm […]
• Provide support for enabling activities, including fact-finding, technical assistance/capacity-building, and/or community development activities.”

Even though the role of the client vis-à-vis IFC/MIGA is permanently interlinked, IFC/MIGA has approved an approach to remedy that still puts the client at the forefront of managing E&S risks and impacts, as well as funding and implementing remedial actions.

The initial perception of what was possible for a World Bank institution has evolved, noting IFC/MIGA’s commitment to contribute to Remedial Action as set forth in the RAF. While restating their role in using financial and contractual leverage to encourage clients to take remedial actions to address harm, IFC/MIGA will also provide support for enabling activities that will allow clients to provide solutions to project-affected people.

The scope of enabling activities may potentially allow for a broad range of actions by IFC/MIGA. While this will require practical experiences from the piloting phase to test and perfect the framework, initial considerations of enabling activities as presented in the RAF are promising as a minimum starting point:

• Fact-Finding: To provide additional information that may inform the creation and design of remedial actions by a client, IFC/MIGA may contribute funding to hire third-party experts who can complement dispute resolution and compliance processes at the CAO. In past cases, the lack of funding for these fact-finding efforts has become an obstacle that may stall or even stop dispute resolution processes between community complainants and clients, resulting in fruitless efforts.
• Technical Assistance and Capacity Building: Communities that have been harmed are often the most willing to act, working collaboratively to rehabilitate their lands or recover their waterways and ways of life. By providing funding for technical assistance and training so project-affected communities can address environmental impacts such as contaminated water sources, IFC/MIGA will be respecting a community’s agency and rights to remedy in direct ways. IFC/MIGA’s clients may also receive this type of assistance and capacity building to aid in implementing and monitoring corrective and remedial actions.
• Community Development Activities: The resilience of communities that have lost their livelihoods due to environmental harm is often a measure of their dignity and cultural identity. By demonstrating that community opinions are received in the design, launch, and implementation of community development programs offered, IFC/MIGA will legitimize their role, encouraging ownership of these programs and activities.

Additionally, while IFC/MIGA expect that enabling activities will be the preferred mode of engagement in most cases where project-level remedial action is warranted, the RAF states that this does not prevent them from proposing other modalities for approval by the Board.

Cost of Remedial Actions and the Role of IFC/MIGA and Their Clients

A major question and point of contention over these last years has been the cost of providing remedy. Here, the matter of differentiated roles has a direct bearing on the question of cost when IFC’s client is responsible for managing E&S risks and impacts. Something worth noting is the fact that private sector clients who joined IFC/MIGA consultations on the approach to remedial action were never opposed to remedy, but mainly concerned with how this could be done. They acknowledged the role of a project developer in remedying harms resulting from project construction, operations, etc. Their main question was always how to implement such a policy and how the costs would be allocated.

The RAF is clear about the costs for remedy, stating that under IFC’s Sustainability Framework, clients are responsible for managing E&S risks and impacts as well as funding and implementing remedial actions. While this would seem straightforward, the purpose of DFIs and the implementation of their mandates are at the core of an often nebulous division of roles. Considering this, the detailed description of IFC’s Sustainability Frameworks within the RAF comes into focus, as it is precisely the issue of a client’s ability to comply with IFC’s E&S policies and standards that makes IFC’s adjacent role more obvious and essential.

As we face environmental and climate crises globally, and financial institutions join in multiplying funds available to address the growing need for solutions, we can now point to the first remedial action framework and concrete driver for ways of addressing harm and providing remedy.

For instance, if IFC’s E&S due diligence at project appraisal is done properly, and if supervision and regular monitoring during project implementation are carried out entirely, then IFC can be sure that its client has managed E&S risks and impacts. As a result, the client adhered to IFC’s Performance Standards, applying the mitigation hierarchy correctly by taking all measures necessary to prepare for and avoid or minimize adverse impacts to the environment and preventing harm to people. However, when IFC fails to supervise and monitor its client properly, or when initial due diligence is lacking, or it neglects to notice a low-capacity client, then the risks are likely to materialize, causing harm.

If IFC realizes these errors, it may request corrective actions and changes to E&S Action Plans, so its client brings the project into compliance, yet this is not guaranteed. These are precisely the types of errors that have led affected communities to file complaints at the CAO, and the issues IFC has been grappling with for many years, ultimately leading to internal shifts and restructuring in E&S governance at the institution after assessing the entire accountability system.

Funding for contributions to remedial action by IFC will be obtained through the project’s funding structure, donor trust funds, IFC’s administrative budget, or operational risk capital. At the same time, MIGA’s contribution to remedial action activities is limited to available trust funds or existing budgetary resources.

Ultimately, the fact that IFC/MIGA has incorporated the possibility of using its own financial resources to contribute to remedial actions in the RAF, while still mentioning their concern for the risk of doing so, points to a change in perceptions that will ideally continue to shift the mode of thinking at the entire institution. Simply said, remedy should be seen as the goal from now on and something that should color all decisions at development finance institutions.

Implementation and What’s Next

The RAF was approved by the Board of Directors of both IFC and the MIGA on April 3 on an interim basis for three years. Implementation of the RAF during the pilot phase will require IFC/MIGA’s regular engagement with stakeholders to receive input and share updates.

As an essential part of the initial six months of implementation, IFC and MIGA, in consultation with the CAO, will have to define and track key performance indicators related to efficiency and effectiveness to ensure proper monitoring of the interim approach. IFC/MIGA will also monitor implementation, providing the boards with briefings and annual monitoring reports.

A final assessment in consultation with the CAO will be carried out at the end of the three-year period. The final policy will incorporate lessons learned and proposed revisions for review by the boards.

Remedy or Bust

The RAF should be praised. It has also created an opportunity to institute an approach to remedy within the entire World Bank Group at the perfect moment. As project-affected communities have illustrated through the years, harm is harm—no matter what type of investment may have led to it. As we face environmental and climate crises globally, and financial institutions join in multiplying funds available to address the growing need for solutions, we can now point to the first remedial action framework and concrete driver for ways of addressing harm and providing remedy.

Other institutions are now following suit. The IDB Group has indicated for several years that internal discussions on Remedy and Responsible Exit were already underway. Most recently, IDB Invest has prepared a draft approach to Responsible Exit based on the IFC/MIGA model and has been engaging with civil society and project-affected communities to receive feedback, while also moving on internal discussions for a remedy framework.

In the days following the approval of the IFC/MIGA Remedial Action Framework, CSOs had the opportunity to meet with IFC. The conversations had an immediate change in tone. This was a different conversation with other approaches for new projects, new contracts, thinking through how to make this framework a reality, with a sense of pride.

This was not lost on anyone. It revealed the legitimacy of having a framework and accompanying Responsible Exit Approach set to paper, as approved by the boards of these institutions. It showed its significance, its weight as a standard to follow, as a directive to take, and as a way forward for an institution that has finally recognized that development can sometimes have negative impacts, and that those impacts can lead to harm for communities. But now there is a way to address these harms and provide remedy, the commitment to do so has been set, and many are ready to make this happen, as challenging as it will undoubtedly be.

Opposition by former high officials in Israeli’s military and national security establishment and Israeli allies – France, England, and Germany—to the aimless killing of civilian families in Gaza is increasing. The mainstream, U.S. media has no excuse to cease its incomplete and biased reporting on the horrific genocidal mass slaughter in Gaza. Former Deputy Minister of Economy Yair Golan called out Netanyahu for “engaging in baby killing as a hobby.”

These denunciations fortify the long-standing documented condemnations by sixteen Israeli human rights groups, including “Breaking the Silence,” whose most recent report details how Israeli platoons in Gaza use Palestinians as “human shields.”

It is time to examine the shortcomings—some imposed and some self-inflicted—in the U.S. mass media’s coverage of an out-of-control brutal Israeli regime, weaponized and funded daily first by Biden and now by Trump.

1. Start with the vast undercount of deaths in Gaza (population 2.3 million) since October 7, 2023. Curiously, the media disbelieves Hamas claims, except for its Ministry of Health report of fatalities. Hamas, the elected government of Gaza, only reports the deaths that can be confirmed by name from hospitals, clinics, and mortuaries, most of which have been destroyed or gutted. So, day after day, newspapers dutifully reported Hamas’ fatality toll—now at 54,300.

Nobody in the academic community, UN, and international relief world believes this low number. Their unofficial estimates ranging from 250,000 to 500,000 deaths. Most of these groups readily agree that almost all the survivors of the deadly bombardments of civilians and their homes, markets, hospitals, and food, fuel and other emergency infrastructures, such as destroyed water mains and electric circuits, are either sick, injured, near death, and starving.

The media has no hesitation in estimating the number of Syrians killed during the civil war over the Assad dictatorship (500,000), or the number of Ukrainian deaths following Russia’s invasion. Somehow, they can’t see that Hamas has an interest in undercounting to avoid greater condemnations by its people for not protecting them. The media should put their reporters to work on documenting a more realistic death toll. At 500,000 fatalities, the intensity of political, diplomatic, and civic pressure is quite different than the fictional 54,300 figure.

2. Netanyahu’s ban on all independent journalists from entering Gaza, including U.S. and Israeli reporters, makes it difficult to get more facts and sources on the ground. The Israeli army has killed over 300 Palestinian journalists, some with their families. Some of their apartments were targeted by U.S.-made missiles. Last year, 75 major media organizations protested this exclusion in a full-page ad in the New York Times. Signers included the New York Times, Washington Post, and Associated Press. Their effort to cover the carnage in Gaza was to no avail. Bibi Biden would not back them up. The censorship continues under Trump.

However, these are powerful media outfits with reporters close by in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. They can do much more to get the gates to Gaza opened to tell the world the grim stories of the mass killing fields that are creating the risk of a wider Middle East War. Why the media does not press harder is itself an untold media story.

3. All this world-shaking violence started when, whether by colossal blunder or contrivance, Netanyahu’s ultra-modern border security apparatus collapsed in all its parts on October 7, 2023. He has tellingly blocked any official investigation. This is a story that must be probed until Netanyahu’s responsibility for enabling Hamas is exposed. Earlier he had bragged about supporting and helping to fund Hamas year after year because of Hamas’ opposition to a two-state solution.

Instead, absence of a full investigation allowed Netanyahu to turn his blunder into a U.S.-backed series of attacks against Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. As an elderly Nazi holocaust survivor told the New York Times after October 7th, “This should never have happened.”

4. The coverage of courageous Israeli human rights groups—including soldiers, rabbis and joint Israeli and Palestinian initiatives inside Israel—is very thin. The U.S. media has given vastly more coverage to disputed claims by Netanyahu et. al of mass rapes on October 7th, debunked by Israeli media scrutiny, then it gives these truthful strivers for peace. Why?

Moreover, what could possibly be the reason for the major U.S. newspapers completely ignoring the Veterans for Peace’s (VFP) constant street protests via its 100 Chapters in the U.S. including its present 40-Day Fast in communion with the starving Palestinian families in Gaza? Just this week, The Washington Post had a prominent two-page spread showing adopted dogs in Ukraine since the invasion.

5. The slant in coverage is on the other side as well. The immensely powerful “Israel government can do no wrong” domestic lobby, led by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), has escaped investigation or even an arm’s length deep feature in major newspapers. Yet in Congress, powerful AIPAC has a “minder” attached to every Senator and Representative and has sponsored primary challenges to lawmakers brave enough to mildly criticize it for being Netanyahu’s bullhorn. AIPAC won’t even support getting American reporters inside Gaza or allowing airlifts of horribly burned or amputated Gaza children to ready and able hospitals in the U.S.

The slant infects words used and words suppressed. The New York Times and CBS regularly refer to Hamas’ terrorism, but Netanyahu has killed vastly greater numbers of Palestinian civilians for political purposes, and that mass slaughter is referred to as “Israeli military operations.” In repeating day after day that 1200 Israelis were killed, the press does not say, as they do for Hamas, that Israel’s government does not differentiate between civilians and combatants. In fact, about 400 of the 1200 were Israeli soldiers and some police officers.

All this mass bloodshed is getting to former elected Israelis. This week in an op-ed in Haaretz, former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert accused Netanyahu of “war crimes” in Gaza. Look for many more members of Israel’s political and security establishment to start speaking out and protesting.

“What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians," wrote Olmert. "We’re not doing this due to loss of control in any specific sector, not due to some disproportionate outburst by some soldiers in some unit. Rather, it’s the result of government policy—knowingly, evilly, maliciously, irresponsibly dictated. Yes, Israel is committing war crimes.”

Shockingly, Donald Trump is still afraid of Netanyahu who arrogantly broke the ceasefire Trump took credit for and thumbed his nose at Trump by doubling down on the deepening Palestinian Holocaust and ignoring Trump’s warnings about people starving in Gaza. Month after month, Netanyahu blocks thousands of trucks with humanitarian aid on Gaza’s borders paid for by American taxpayers.

Soon this pressure cooker will explode in ways either predicted by the Pentagon or unforeseen as a “Black Swan” event. The deadly impact of Israel’s war against a long-defeated small Hamas guerrilla force on our own country’s weakening democratic institutions —from freedom of speech to Congress—is reaching the awareness of ever more Americans.

The Environmental Protection Agency is rolling back critical protections that ensure safe drinking water. These regulations help ensure that our water is free of PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals,” an especially hazardous form of industrial chemicals that linger in the environment indefinitely.

PFAS are damaging to human health at even the lowest doses. Exposure to PFAS can contribute to serious illnesses including kidney cancer, liver disease, thyroid disorders, or autoimmune disorders. There are no current treatments to remove PFAS from the body.

Despite the evidence of these dire health risks, the administration is shirking their responsibility to protect people across the country from PFAS exposure.

At the end of the day, we should all be able to agree that the health and safety of our communities starts with clean water and safe food, and make this work a priority.

Now, it is more urgent than ever for state and local leaders to step up, fill this gap, and protect their communities from PFAS exposure. It’s a massive undertaking, but fortunately, there is a clear path forward.

Advocates and experts across the country have already begun to chart the way—because they’ve had to. Even though prior PFAS regulations were important, they’ve never been enough to fully protect our water, our land, or our bodies from pollution.

I encourage leaders to look to Maine as a model to follow: Maine has emerged as a national leader in addressing PFAS contamination through comprehensive state-level initiatives that demonstrate the urgent need for federal action. We're the first state to require manufacturers to report intentionally added forever chemicals in products. Perhaps most significantly, the state is working toward the elimination of PFAS from consumer products, addressing the problem at its source rather than merely managing its consequences. Maine's regulatory approach has implemented some of the nation's most protective drinking water standards for PFAS compounds, recognizing that even minute concentrations pose serious health risks.

My own work in Maine has focused on advancing programs to monitor, test, and limit PFAS in our water and food supply. Over the years, we’ve realized that establishing strong drinking water standards is just the beginning of ridding our communities of PFAS. Now, we’re tackling contamination in the food supply by working with farmers to test their land and crops and make the technical changes necessary to produce safe crops and livestock.

Our state's PFAS Advisory Fund provides critical support to farmers whose agricultural operations have been devastated by PFAS contamination, primarily through the historical application of contaminated biosolids to farmland. Complementing this effort, the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association (MOFGA) established their PFAS Emergency Relief Fund to offer direct assistance to organic producers facing immediate financial hardship from crop losses and farm closures due to contamination.

Maine has also taken the bold step of banning the land application of sludge, eliminating a primary pathway for PFAS contamination of agricultural soils.

These comprehensive regulations serve multiple critical purposes: protecting the health of farmers who work the land and face direct exposure to contaminated soils, safeguarding consumers with safe food, and preserving our most treasured and irreplaceable resources—soil and water.

I urge more local leaders to champion these initiatives with your own representatives. Every town and state has a unique political landscape, and some of these programs might not advance easily. We need new innovation and lots of legwork to develop and advance the right solutions for everyone. But at the end of the day, we should all be able to agree that the health and safety of our communities starts with clean water and safe food, and make this work a priority.

Where the federal government won’t protect us, we will take action ourselves—by raising awareness, pushing for strong state-level responses, and stopping PFAS contamination before it causes further harm.

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It’s time to get DeProgrammed! Join political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou, who bring you incisive analysis on today’s most urgent issues. Today, Ted and John dive into the latest developments shaking everything from economics to a fallen rap baron. Trump makes a bold move to double tariffs on steel imports to 50%, an attempt to reindustrialize the Rust Belt while supporting Biden’s stalled Nippon Steel-US Steel partnership in Pittsburgh, drawing $14 billion in investment. Will this acquisition, justified under trade laws but contested for Trump’s referring to immigration and drug trafficking, revive the steel industry or fall flat? Next, immigration takes center stage as the Supreme Court allows Trump administration to end Biden-era humanitarian legal protections from 500,000 immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, paving the way toward mass deportations. Additionally, ICE has escalated entrapment at courthouses, nabbing migrants immediately after the government drops deportation charges. Will people stop showing up? We pivot to the Iran talks, where Gulf leaders are pushing Iran to engage while pushing the US to restrain Israel, as Israel itself faces growing pressure from Europe over Gaza. Finally, the Sean Combs trial continues as testimony from his ex-assistant “Mia” described severe emotional distress and alleged assaults—but defense attorney Brian Steel is challenging her via her social media posts and texts from 2016. The sex trafficking and racketeering trial reminds us that we are not past the point of he-says-she-says. Tune in for unfiltered, hard-hitting commentary that cuts through the noise, unpacking these stories with the sharp wit and outsider perspective only Rall and Kiriakou can provide.

The post DeProgram: Steel Deal, Immigrants Under Threat, Iran Nuke Talks, Sean Combs appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

May 31 marks 16 years since Dr. George Tiller—an abortion provider and reproductive justice advocate in Wichita, Kansas—was assassinated by a radical anti-abortion extremist outside his church. Dr. Tiller’s murder is a stark reminder of the violence and hatred that abortion providers face daily, and was a tipping point that led to better security measures for health centers.

In the wake of Dr. Tiller’s assassination, health centers across the country strengthened their security, determined to protect patients and staff from violence. Now that protection hangs by a thread. In March, the Trump administration announced that it would stop enforcing the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, a federal law that prohibits the threat or use of force, obstruction, and property damage to reproductive health care centers and protects people like Dr. Tiller and clinic escorts who try to ensure patients’ access to care. Rolling back these protections in the name of political ideology puts lives at risk and undermines decades of work to keep patients and staff safe.

Let me tell you what this looks like in real life.

As we remember and honor Dr. Tiller's life, I urge Congress to uphold the FACE Act. Dismantling this critical legislation sends a message that condones political violence.

As a volunteer escort with Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio, I try to help patients feel safe when they come to access healthcare. I do it because, regardless of the care patients are seeking, they are needlessly subjected to name-calling, shaming, and harassment. Sometimes I use a large umbrella to visually block protestors filming patients without consent. Sometimes I help someone park farther away, where it is quieter and feels safer. I do what I can to offer warmth and dignity during a moment that can feel vulnerable, stressful, and deeply personal.

In return, I have been screamed at, had my photo taken by strangers, and have been threatened. I am not alone.

Attacks against reproductive healthcare centers, staff, and clinic escorts are not an anomaly. In the United States between 2023 and 2024, there were 621 incidents of trespassing in reproductive health centers; 296 death threats or threats of harm to abortion providers, patients, and clinic escorts; and at least 37 incidents of stalking. Behind these numbers are providers and volunteers like me and Dr. Tiller, who put their lives on the line to ensure that patients receive the care they need.

Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, states throughout the Southeast and Midwest have enacted extreme abortion bans. Patients drive to our Ohio health centers with license plates from all over the country for vital reproductive healthcare. I help them find secure parking spaces away from protestors so they can enter and exit their vehicles safely. My fellow volunteers and I distract patients from the vitriol that protestors throw their way as they walk from their cars to enter our health centers. We all show up because we believe everyone deserves access to compassionate, quality care without harassment.

The people shouting at our patients do not speak for the majority. In 2023, Ohioans voted decisively to protect reproductive rights in our state constitution. Voters sent a clear message: We believe in bodily autonomy, privacy, and access to healthcare. Yet the federal government is abandoning us at the doorway where we are most vulnerable.

The FACE Act matters. It protects patients and providers facing harassment and threats just for seeking or providing healthcare. This is not abstract policy—it is about our neighbors, friends, and family. Everyone should be able to access medical care without fear.

As we remember and honor Dr. Tiller's life, I urge Congress to uphold the FACE Act. Dismantling this critical legislation sends a message that condones political violence. Ensuring safety is the bare minimum we can offer to the doctors, nurses, and volunteers who make great sacrifices to keep our communities healthy. We cannot let personal feelings and political ideology override public health and safety.

We all deserve to feel safe when we seek medical care. And those of us who help make that care possible deserve to be protected, too.

Hardly a day goes by without the phrase "Donald Trump is a danger to the world" being given new life. The threat posed by the U.S. president applies of course to the U.S. itself, which is in danger of sliding into fascist authoritarianism, and to the planetary boundaries that the billionaire cabinet is enthusiastically trampling all over with its "drill, baby, drill" policy.

What is less noticed is another global threat being driven by the MAGA insurrection movement in the White House, which has declared war on democracy, the state, and the planet. It is the risk of nuclear war. Although Trump is calling for an end to the fighting in Ukraine, which would reduce the threat of nuclear weapons being used in this crisis hotspot, the overall dangers have increased with the new administration.

First of all, it should be kept in mind that in the U.S., the president has sole authority, without restrictions or consultation, to order a nuclear attack against any target at any time, for any reason. He does not have to consult with anyone, and the decision is beyond any control. This is made possible by the so-called "nuclear football" (officially called the "presidential emergency satchel"). Military personnel who carry it accompany the president wherever he goes.

Trump's hara-kiri and doomsday politics, which destroy trust and rely on macho gestures instead of nuclear restraint and international cooperation, are a permanent source of instability and escalation.

The U.S. president can therefore carry out nuclear strikes at any time, which would mean hundreds of millions of deaths and probably the end of humanity. Experts and some politicians in Congress warn that this is a risky, vulnerable, and undemocratic procedure, established by the Eisenhower administration in the late 1950s, which places the decision about the possible end of the world in the hands of a single person. On the other hand, this arrangement is a central element of the U.S. nuclear deterrence strategy, which is intended to send a frightening message to the world.

The mere fact that Donald Trump has once again concentrated this power in his own hands is a danger in terms of the possible use of nuclear weapons. The reasons for this are obvious. Trump has shown himself to be unpredictable, erratic, and emotionally unstable as a person and political leader. His endless lies, provocations, humiliations, and calls for violence are widely known. When he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden, he initiated and supported an attempted coup on January 6, 2021. As the new president, he ultimately pardoned 1,500 convicted violent criminals, including neo-Nazi leaders who participated in the storming of the Capitol. He also faces multiple charges, including for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in his favor, and was convicted of rape by a New York court last year.

In October 2024, over 200 mental health experts warned before the election that Donald Trump was dangerous due to his symptoms of severe, untreatable personality disorder, which they diagnosed as "malignant narcissism." This makes him completely unfit for leadership, according to the health experts. Mary Trump, Donald Trump's niece and a clinical psychologist, also warned against his reelection. In her book Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man, she calls her uncle a sociopath. In it, she describes his upbringing in a dysfunctional family that promoted greed, cruelty, and racist and sexist behavior.

At first glance, it may seem reassuring that Trump declared during his first term that nukes were "the biggest problem in the world" and that his goal was to get rid of them. In February 2025, after taking office again, he said, "There's no reason for us to be building brand new nuclear weapons. We already have so many." Unfortunately, this is just rhetoric. Trump has done nothing in this direction so far and has actually increased the nuclear risks through his actions.

In 2018, during his first term as president, Trump announced his withdrawal from the nuclear agreement with Iran, which had successfully limited the uranium enrichment of nuclear fuel in exchange for sanctions relief. Since then, Iran has accelerated its nuclear weapons program. Estimates suggest that Iran could produce several bombs in a matter of months or even weeks. Shortly thereafter, following a series of escalating threats, Trump suggested that North Korea had agreed to denuclearization. Talks followed, but an agreement never materialized.

Furthermore, the first Trump administration indicated to the U.S. Congress that if deterrence against China failed, the U.S. would have to "win" militarily. Peter Kuznick, professor of history and director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University, told Truthout: "U.S. politicians seem so panicked about China's enormous growth and the way it is challenging U.S. hegemony in the Pacific that they are willing to risk nuclear annihilation to prevent it."

Researchers at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists warned earlier this year, as they moved the Doomsday Clock to 89 seconds before midnight—midnight means "game over" for humanity—that the United States has "embarked on the world's most expensive nuclear modernization" and that "the 2024 election results suggest the United States will pursue a faster, more expansive nuclear investment program. It is possible that the United States will expand its nuclear efforts to include more nuclear options, rely more on nuclear brinkmanship to advance its security and deterrence goals, and shun proven efforts to reduce nuclear dangers. The United States is now a full partner in a worldwide nuclear arms race."

This is taking place amid chaotic DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) attacks led by Elon Musk against the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), in which hundreds of scientists and experts responsible for the country's nuclear security were fired. It is unclear whether all of them have returned to the agency after the layoffs were reversed and whether security gaps are to be feared.

The Trump administration is meanwhile pursuing a "peace through strength" strategy in its foreign policy. This is the motto of former U.S. President Ronald Reagan, under which the U.S. launched a historic wave of rearmament. Republicans in the U.S. Congress also support this concept. They want to fuel the arms race by increasing the already historically high U.S. defense budget. There are calls on Trump to demonstrate to Russia that the U.S. holds global supremacy. And there is pressure to resume nuclear testing in order to win the arms race, which observers view as very worrying. The military establishment is even calling for the reintroduction of tactical nuclear weapons into the U.S. arsenal, which can be used in regional wars, which would mean further dramatic destabilization.

But what increases the nuclear risks above all is that, just months after taking office, the Trump administration has triggered "potentially the fastest and most dangerous acceleration of nuclear arms proliferation around the world since the early Cold War." His repeated "America First" statements, saying that the U.S. no longer feels bound by partnerships and would not come to the rescue of allies in an emergency, have left them feeling abandoned by the United States.

This has sparked a debate in European capitals about whether the U.S. nuclear umbrella can still be relied upon. France and the U.K. have offered to fill the gap. In an interview in March before his election as Germany's new chancellor, Friedrich Merz did not even rule out the idea of developing his own nuclear bomb. And in Poland, Prime Minister Donald Tusk is now talking about his country "must reach for the most modern capabilities also related to nuclear weapons." In Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is openly considering reintroducing a nuclear deterrent.

The risk of nuclear weapons spreading further across the globe is greatest in East Asia. During his 2016 election campaign, Trump said that Japan and South Korea might have to develop nuclear weapons. "It's only a matter of time," he said. Former South Korea's right-wing president, Yoon Suk Yeol, finally welcomed the deployment of U.S. tactical weapons in South Korea and intended to arm his country with nuclear weapons. Even though Democratic Party candidate Lee Jae-myung, who is leading in the presidential election polls (official vote is on Tuesday, June 3), is skeptical about South Korea going nuclear, the debate continues in the country. Political scientists Jami Levin and Youngwon Cho see this as a fatal development:

While Trump has been busy burning bridges in Europe and North America, his allies in East Asia—South Korea and Japan—have been watching the implosion of the U.S.-led international order in dismay. They have no alternative to the American nuclear umbrella but to build their own deterrent capabilities.

Polls show that more than two-thirds of South Koreans support their country acquiring nuclear weapons independently of the U.S.

Above all, the increasing confrontation with China is viewed with concern. The tariff war that Trump started against Beijing could exacerbate the security crisis in the Pacific and end in a military conflict, according to fears. Trump's trade attacks are reinforcing the trend toward "decoupling," i.e., the economic disentanglement of the two economies from one another. This, in turn, could lead to a rivalry in which both sides are tempted to harm each other through proxy conflicts and attacks on national security. At the same time, strategy papers from the Pentagon show how easily an economic war can escalate into a military conflict (which would put the nuclear option on the table between the two nuclear powers), according to Jack Werner of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in the U.S.:

In a context of mounting economic pain on both sides, with surging nationalism in both countries becoming a binding force on leaders, both governments are likely to choose more destructive responses to what they regard as provocations from the other side. A single misstep around Taiwan or in the South China Sea could end in catastrophe.

Trump's economic and military advisers in the White House are geared toward confrontation with China. That is also the purpose of the presidential order to build a new space-based missile defense system, known as the "Golden Dome." Since Reagan, there have been repeated attempts to initiate such programs. U.S. President Barack Obama wanted to build ABMs (anti-ballistic missiles) in Eastern Europe, but it was only in the wake of the Ukraine war that the Czech Republic gave the green light.

However, all these missile defense systems are not about the possible interception of nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles, i.e., self-defense, which cannot work technically, as military analysts have determined. ABM is, as the Rand Corporation, among others, explains, "not just a protective shield, but an enabler of U.S. actions." Lawrence Kaplan, professor at the U.S. Army War College and former senior editor of The New Republic, sums it up as follows: "In other words, missile defense is about preserving America's ability to exercise power abroad. It's not about defense. It's about offense. And that's exactly why we need it."

Even if such defense systems are incapable of preventing nuclear first strikes, they have the advantage of theoretically intercepting retaliatory strikes by enemies in response to a first strike. This means that there would be no threat of self-destruction, which could encourage military planners in the U.S. to launch first strikes while other nuclear powers lose their deterrent capability. And the message of Trump's "Golden Dome" has been received by those who were targeted. China, like Russia, has described the announcement from Washington as a "destabilizing" initiative.

While Trump has initiated negotiations in the Ukraine war that could reduce the nuclear dangers between NATO and Russia, he is simultaneously increasing them in the Pacific in an economic and military confrontation now focused on his main adversary, China, which increases the likelihood of a nuclear conflict.

The same applies to the Middle East. The Gaza war waged by Israel's Netanyahu government, a nuclear power, continues to be enabled by the U.S. with weapons and diplomatic blockade, while Trump has promoted the ethnic cleansing of the completely sealed-off enclave with his "Riviera Plan" remarks. The massacre of Palestinians, which has been going on for over a year and a half, has the potential to set the entire region ablaze. This is evident from the military exchanges with the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Iran. Israeli Minister of Heritage Amichai Eliyahu even suggested in an interview that dropping a "nuclear bomb" on the Gaza Strip was "an option."

Israel is also regularly indicating that one prepares for an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. Tehran has declared that it will hold Washington responsible if this happens. This could spark a full-scale war in the region that would draw the U.S. into the conflict, with all the dangers that this entails. At the same time, Trump is exacerbating the conflict himself. Although he wants to negotiate with Iran, he has announced military action if Tehran does not agree to his deal and end all uranium enrichment—which experts consider a dangerous hardline demand that will ultimately lead to war. They argue that it is unnecessary and unacceptable for the country because it would also rule out the civilian use of nuclear power for Iran. Trump threatened that if Tehran did not completely shut down its nuclear program, there would be "all hell to pay," while "all options are on the table"—which is an implicit threat of a nuclear strike.

A similar threat was directed at Russia. On social media, Trump stated on May 28: "What Vladimir Putin doesn't realise is that if it weren't for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened in Russia, and I mean REALLY BAD. He's playing with fire." Putin's confidant and Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, Dmitry Medvedev, replied: "Regarding Trump's words about Putin 'playing with fire' and 'really bad things' happening to Russia. I only know of one REALLY BAD thing—WWIII."

It is at this point a war of words between two nuclear powers. But Trump's hara-kiri and doomsday politics, which destroy trust and rely on macho gestures instead of nuclear restraint and international cooperation, are a permanent source of instability and escalation. It is therefore important to raise public awareness of the existential threat once again as civil society pressure on governments especially in countries that possess nuclear arms has to increase by seeking ways to revive the policy of détente—i.e. negotiations on disarmament and arms control, as took place in the 1970s under U.S. President Richard Nixon and in Germany with Chancellor Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik. Even under President Bush senior, there were initiatives launched that reduced the risks. These deescalation efforts are the results of organized peace movements that made a difference. Even in the dark times today there are still possibilities for addressing the dangers of atomic annihilation.

By Ralph Nader May 30, 2025 Opposition by former high officials in Israeli’s military and national security establishment and Israeli allies – France, England, and Germany – to the aimless killing of civilian families in Gaza is increasing. The mainstream, U.S. media has no excuse to cease its incomplete and biased reporting on the horrific…

I rarely ask you to look at charts. Today is an exception. This one is from the Economic Policy Institute. It compares the typical American’s pay starting just after World War II (light blue line) with the nation’s increasing productivity since then (dark blue).

The chart shows the widening divergence between the rise of pay and the yields from productivity.

In the first three decades after World War II, the typical American’s pay rose in tandem with the nation’s growing productivity. The benefits from higher productivity were broadly shared.

But then, starting in the late 1970s and dramatically after 1980, pay barely grew, even as productivity continued to soar. The benefits from higher productivity went increasingly to the top.

Why?

I’ve been looking into this question for a long time.

I’ve also been living it, as head of policy for the Federal Trade Commission under Jimmy Carter, secretary of labor in the Clinton administration, and an economic adviser to Obama. I’ve chronicled this in my upcoming memoir, Coming Up Short.

Much of the answer has to do with a giant upward shift in power.

It started in 1971, with a memo written for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce by Lewis Powell exhorting corporations to play a far more active role in American politics. They did, and their increasingly active role paid off, at least for their CEOs and top investors.

It continued through Reagan’s tax cuts and deregulation, his legitimization of union bashing, and the emergence of corporate raiders who insisted that corporations maximize shareholder value above all else.

And onward through George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton’s North American Free Trade Agreement, their support for China’s accession to the World Trade Organization, and their deregulation of Wall Street.

And then through George W. Bush’s tax cut — again, mainly for big corporations and wealthy individuals — and Barack Obama’s bailout of Wall Street after it nearly destroyed the world economy.

Deregulation. Privatization. Tax cuts. Free trade. Stagnant pay for most. A soaring stock market for the top.

That’s the legacy of neoliberalism.

It also brought us Trump — who exploited the anger and resentment stirred up by all this and pretended to be a strongman on the side of the working class (while quietly giving the emerging American oligarchy everything else it wanted, including a giant tax cut; he’s readying another as you read this).

Now some neoconservatives, posing as “moderates,” are hijacking the story and trying to rehabilitate neoliberalism.

Consider David Brooks, who wrote recently in The New York Times that:

— “wages really did stagnate, but they did so mostly in the 1970s and 1980s, not in the supposed era of neoliberal globalism.” (Brooks is wrong. Look at the above chart. Pay did begin to head up again in the 2000s but the pay-productivity gap has continued to widen.)

— there was “a return to higher productivity and higher wage growth, from 1994 to today. That is to say: Median wages have grown since NAFTA and the W.T.O., not declined.” (Wrong again. Look at the chart.)

— “the inequality gap is not as great as one might think.” (Well, I think it significant, and most analysts agree.)

— “the basic approach to economic policymaking that prevailed between 1992 and 2017 was sensible and … our job today is to build on it.” (Sensible only as compared to Trump’s first and second terms. But as I said, hardly sensible when you consider that widening inequality combined with unbridled globalization, deregulation, and union-bashing contributed to the rise of Trump.)

Neoliberalism should not and cannot be rehabilitated.

We need instead a strong, bold progressive populism that strengthens democracy and widens prosperity by:

— busting up big corporations,

— stopping Wall Street’s gambling addiction (e.g. replicating the Glass-Steagall Act),

— getting big money out of politics, even if this requires amending the Constitution,

— requiring big corporations to share their profits with their average workers,

— strengthening unions, and

— raising taxes on the super-wealthy,

— to finance a universal basic income, Medicare for all, and paid family leave.

Those now trying to rehabilitate neoliberalism won’t like any of this, of course, but we cannot return to the path we were on. It will just lead to more Trumps, as far as the eye can see.

On May 27, 2025, NPR and three of its member stations filed a federal lawsuit against President Donald Trump and senior administration officials, challenging the legality and constitutionality of a sweeping executive order that seeks to eliminate all federal funding for public media. The order, signed in secret on May 1 and titled “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media,” instructs federal agencies and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to sever direct and indirect support for NPR and PBS.

The White House claims public broadcasters have become ideologically compromised—too progressive, too elite. But the lawsuit lays bare what this order truly represents: an act of retaliation against protected speech, an attempt to coerce editorial compliance through financial pressure, and a direct violation of the First Amendment and the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967.

This isn’t just a legal question. It’s a campaign to punish an institution for refusing to perform ideology—or worse, for refusing to perform for profit.

Calling NPR “left-wing” isn’t just a complaint—it’s a tactic. It frames the pursuit of truth as bias, and intellectual legitimacy as partisanship.

The attack on NPR is not incidental. It is part of a broader, systematic effort to hollow out the institutions that sustain a shared civic life. It arrives amid a sweeping retreat from democratic infrastructure, in a media environment already distorted by market forces and polarized spectacle. The point is not to shrink government, but to starve the parts of it that still serve public truth.

And when that truth is no longer institutionalized—when public media is stripped away—we are left with a brittle and binary media ecosystem. One pole is built on the commodification of dissent: branded, aestheticized resistance packaged for affirmation but divorced from redistribution. The other is built on grievance-fueled nationalism: disinformation-heavy, algorithmically weaponized, and driven by a hunger for cultural control.

To be clear: This is not a critique of independent movement journalism, which continues to speak truth to power. The critique is directed at large-scale, corporate liberal media that simulates transformation while avoiding structural change. Between that and right-wing propaganda lies a collapsing middle—where nuance, contradiction, and collective understanding once lived.

Over the past decade, American institutions have developed a method of control that depends not on silencing dissent, but absorbing it. Dissent becomes aestheticized. A movement becomes a marketing slogan. A crisis becomes a campaign. Moral performance replaces material change. The result is a politics of gesture—rhetorically progressive, materially stagnant.

This logic has reshaped journalism itself. Newsrooms adopt the language of equity while preserving internal hierarchies. Social platforms reward provocation, not precision. Engagement becomes the end goal. As backlash rises, even institutions that once embraced equity quietly retreat—rewriting mission statements, cutting DEI staff, and recasting structural critique as reputational risk.

In this context, public media has held a distinct line. NPR hasn’t turned itself into a lifestyle brand. It hasn’t gamified its coverage or collapsed journalism into performance. Its reporting focuses on infrastructure—housing, public health, rural economies—topics long abandoned by commercial outlets because they don’t scale.

What’s at stake isn’t just funding—it’s whether journalism can still exist as a civic discipline rather than a partisan weapon or a market product.

And yes, it has a tone. That tone reflects a commitment to method, verification, and proximity to academic and professional norms. That is precisely what’s under attack. Calling NPR “left-wing” isn’t just a complaint—it’s a tactic. It frames the pursuit of truth as bias, and intellectual legitimacy as partisanship. The same campaign now targeting NPR has already targeted public universities, climate science, and historical scholarship.

This executive order wasn’t born of fiscal conservatism. It came from a worldview where facts are threats unless they’re profitable or loyal. On the surface, this is about money. Beneath it lies a deeper question: Can democracy survive without institutions committed to unmonetized, unmanipulated truth?

Public media is one of the last places where journalism operates outside of market logic. If it falls, we’re left with only two choices: branded content that performs outrage for engagement, or weaponized narrative designed to dominate. In that void, journalism becomes either commercialized or coerced.

We’re already living in the early stages of that collapse. Local papers are gone. Regional reporting has been gutted. What remains is a patchwork of influencers and platforms, each calibrated to a target audience, each echoing a self-reinforcing narrative.

Public media’s refusal to conform—to accelerate, to provoke, to monetize—is now treated not as moderation, but as provocation.

The lawsuit NPR has filed is necessary. But it also marks a threshold. What’s at stake isn’t just funding—it’s whether journalism can still exist as a civic discipline rather than a partisan weapon or a market product.

Public media is quiet. It’s moderate. It rarely declares. But in a media economy built on spectacle and churn, quietness itself has become an act of resistance.

The attack on NPR is not just political retaliation. It is a warning. It shows how intolerable independent institutions have become in a country where truth is measured by allegiance and journalism is judged by its usefulness to power.

The refusal to commodify dissent, the refusal to monetize distrust, is no longer just a professional standard. It is a political act.

And in a democracy increasingly organized around spectacle, that act may be the last thing keeping the lights on.

The revolution, Gil Scott-Heron once wrote, would not be televised. If NPR falls, it will not be broadcast at all. Not because no one is speaking—but because the signal has been cut.

LIVE 10 AM Eastern time, Streaming Anytime:

Brace yourself for a chilling episode of “The TMI Show with Ted Rall and Manila Chan,” delving into the haunting 20th anniversary of Natalee Holloway’s murder. In 2005, the 18-year-old woman vanished during her high school graduation trip to Aruba, sparking global headlines. Natalee was last seen with Joran van der Sloot, who was arrested multiple times but never convicted of her murder due to Aruba’s statute of limitations. Finally,in 2023, van der Sloot confessed to killing her following his signing to a plea deal for extortion and wire fraud, admitting that he bludgeoned her and dumped her body in the sea. This closure, after nearly two decades, has reignited debates over justice, international law, and travel safety. Why did it take so long to get the answers? How do legal loopholes impact cases like this?

Join guest Ally Pennington, Artifacts and Programs Manager at the “Alcatraz East Crime Museum,” for an interview exploring these questions. The museum’s new exhibit, “International Journey to Justice: Catching Natalee Holloway’s Killer,” opened April 18th to mark this milestone. We’ll also unpack why Americans are obsessed with grisly crimes and what draws millions to crime museums? What else awaits at Alcatraz East? Expect a wild ride through history with artifacts like Ted Bundy’s VW Beetle and O.J. Simpson’s Ford Bronco.

Plus:

• Russia’s fossil fuel billions help its war in Ukraine, with €883bn earned since 2022 despite Western sanctions, evidencing that sanctions never work.
• A paranoid NATO plans a massive troop boost, raising 120–130 brigades to counter Russia, with Germany urged to add 40,000 soldiers.

The post TMI Show Ep 149: “True Crime: Our National Obsession” appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

People in the United States of America continue to allow the normalization of very dangerous measures solidifying authoritarian government, and the administration of President Donald Trump continues to escalate each measure. The latest measure arrived on May 27 when Secretary of State Marco Rubio ended all embassy reviews of applications for student and exchange visas from foreign nationals, stating that a new policy including social media vetting will be announced soon. Rubio also suspended scheduling any new interviews for three types of visas that enable foreign nationals to participate in U.S. institutions: F (for students at academic institutions), M (for students in vocational or non-academic schools), and J (for teaching and research exchange visitors). The new policy has not been revealed yet.

Here is yet another case that should break the people of the U.S.—if not the feckless supposed opposition party, the Democrats—from their political paralysis. The Trump administration inherited a largely informal apparatus of campus repression relying on the defamation, arrest, and suspension of students and faculty members who opposed the U.S. role in supporting what the Israeli government now openly admits is a campaign of deliberate starvation and full land dispossession of the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank. Trump’s administration seized upon the zeitgeist already brewed by university leaders and fueled by a coalition of Zionist and far-right organizations, and seized it with an aim far more expansive than simply punishing pro-Palestinian activism and speech.

Trump is not attacking Harvard, but extorting the institution in an attempt to put its allowable pedagogies and discourses beneath his state.

Trump’s aim is a campaign of terror and intimidation against universities and colleges designed to suppress free speech and critical thinking. The “Palestine exception” has proven to be a useful proxy as its enforcers are not simply the usual MAGA suspects, but include many liberal Democrats and cultural custodians who spent the last few years warning of Trump’s dangers while gladly serving as the handmaids of a repression whose contours they foolishly believed they could limit to one supposedly justified cause. The collaboration with only nominal opponents of antisemitism was a clever move by the MAGA right, as it bound them to silence in a pivotal early phase.

Now the later phase of the Trumpian war on free speech and free thought in higher education is unleashed, and the sorts of powers that Rubio will soon wield over student and researcher visas will allow for the state to pick and choose who enters the halls of academe—and who will be punished for eventually transgressing servitude to the ruling ideology.

Some people are mistakenly calling Trump’s higher education measures an “attack on universities.” Trump’s agenda is far from an attack—it is a right-wing elite capture, in which the current liberal managerial keepers of institutions either are replaced with MAGA counterparts or the current keepers break down and comply (and some already have). Jokes abound about the possible mismatch of some poorly-educated MAGA bootlicker running Harvard or Yale, but Trump’s administration and its congressional lackeys are mostly Ivy Leaguers themselves. U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), the most strident congressional Inquisitor of college presidents, is a Yale graduate like Vice President JD Vance. Trump went to Penn. Steve Bannon went to Harvard, like Pete Hegseth.

Trump is not attacking Harvard, but extorting the institution in an attempt to put its allowable pedagogies and discourses beneath his state. He has tried the same at Columbia University, and his administration states that the University of California system is next. The Task Force on Antisemitism led by gadfly former television commentator Leo Terrell functions as a spear tip of moralistic outrage masking the shakedown that Trump’s gangster presidency is actually waging. Trump and his collaborators don’t want to shut down Harvard, Columbia, or any institution of higher education whose trustees will turn over the keys to the MAGA regime. As the DOGE “cuts” demonstrate, the Trump administration understands how to effect ideological capture using traditional but empty Republican rhetoric about balancing budgets and preventing “waste.” The goal is to claim the spoils of the state, and use all state organs to assault private institutions that harbor resistance to the state.

Of course, this ideological capture is far from abstract as it brutally impacts the lives of foreign students lawfully studying and exerting their First Amendment rights (which apply to everyone on our soil, contrary to the Trump doctrine’s insistence otherwise) in the United States. Before both the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs in May, Rubio reiterated his servile liturgy on the pro-Palestinian students targeted by the Trump administration, sometimes at the behest of Zionist organizations like Betar.

“I will continue to revoke student visas,” Rubio stated, while also repeating an argument ad hominem that the targeted students occupied and damaged campus buildings and threatened other students. When asked about the case of the now-released Tufts doctoral student Rümeysa Özturk, who was arrested and disappeared to Louisiana for the mere act of co-signing a student newspaper editorial, Rubio reset to the same defamatory lines about breaking campus rules and a visa not being a right but a privilege.

Georgetown University postdoctoral researcher Badar Khan Suri, baselessly accused by the Department of Homeland Security of spreading Hamas propaganda, was chained at the ankles and wrists during his detention at Prairieland Detention Center in Texas, where he was housed from his March arrest until a federal judge ordered his release in May. Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil, who actually holds a green card and not a visa, remains incarcerated in Louisiana and missed the birth of his child and his graduation ceremony.

While the ultimate goal of the Trump administration is a right-wing elite capture of higher education, especially its most prestigious institutions, the weaponization of the Palestine exception will not be dissipating any time soon. In the wake of federal judges freeing some of the students disappeared for their speech, Trump ally U.S. Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) declared that “Palestinianism”—by which he means all recognition of Palestinian people as human beings—is terrorism that should not be allowed in U.S. Fine also endorsed dropping an atomic bomb on Gaza to murder its entire remaining population. After the terrible murder of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim outside of the Capitol Jewish Museum by a purported pro-Palestine activist, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that even stating “Free Palestine” is equivalent to saying “Heil Hitler.” Hate speech that keeps possible opponents of authoritarianism divided—and causes real harm—tragically is one of the main currencies of Trump’s MAGA movement.

No one should expect any consistency even on the question of antisemitism, because Trump is only committed to hegemonic power for his state and its collaborators. There is no moral principles held categorically, which is why moralistic opposition politics have largely done nothing to stop Trump’s hold on power tightening. While Rubio is railing against pro-Palestine students, Trump’s white nationalist supporters were cheering the admission into the U.S. of 49 Afrikaaner farmers from South Africa, including one who had called Jewish people “dangerous” and “untrustworthy.” Again, Trump wants immigration just like he wants Harvard—just in forms that extend his ideological capture and venerate his broadly racist, patriarchal nationalism.

As international students comprise 5.9% of U.S. university admissions, they represent a mighty financial cudgel. In 2023-4, 25% of international students in the U.S. were studying math or computer science and 20% were studying engineering, they may be less likely to engage in political activism than their domestic counterparts and even before Trump more likely to keep a low profile to their host government (not to mention governments back home). Trump’s coalition includes a lot of people who are genuine extremist Zionists, so expect him to offer up more international students and for the State Department’s new policies to include social media scans of pro-Palestine content. Yet also expect Trump to be ready to make deals with any and all institutions of higher education who will cave to his demands for controlling allowable teaching and expression—and any nations who pledge that their students will arrive obedient. And, tragically, expect a lot of U.S. universities and colleges to fall in line.

Much more is at stake in Kseniia Petrova’s case than a handful of frozen French frog embryos. The latest scene in the drama played out Wednesday morning at Vermont District Court with 50 or so supporters. In contrast to the hundreds of signs for the Madhawi and Ozturk hearings, just one older woman held a small brown cardboard square she must have made herself: “Free Kseniia Petrova.”

“Do you have a connection to this case?” I asked her. Her faded T-shirt looked so different from the fashionable garb of the city scientists and allies.

“I’m just an American who’s fed up with what’s going on,” she said. She understood the importance of this moment, and so did District Judge Christina Reiss. Why were we in this Vermont courtroom again? Yet another person detained in Boston by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was whisked away and jailed in Vermont, where their attorney filed for habeas corpus, the process for challenging wrongful detention. Wednesday’s hearing was primarily on the question of whether bail would be granted.

At every stage, this case has been handled as if a neighbor who let his dog poop on someone’s lawn was put in jail for a month and charged with criminal trespassing and environmental endangerment.

Ten minutes before the hearing began, Petrova herself appeared on two big screens, a diminutive figure imprisoned in a small white room. Alone, not even an interpreter. Her dark brown hair and eyes stood out against her pale skin. She wore prison garb, an ill-fitting, short-sleeved khaki shirt with a white tee beneath it. Even so, she looked cold, holding herself.

By noon, the rule of law had won again in Vermont. Judge Reiss ruled that customs officers do not, in her words, have the power of the Secretary of State to revoke a visa on the spot. This was done to Petrova with no factual or legal basis. A customs violation is not a reason for being inadmissible to the United States. The judge brushed aside the government’s notion that there had been any undue delay in filing for habeas corpus. She ordered that Petrova be freed from ICE custody on bail, telling the government to propose release conditions by May 30. She did stop short of granting Petrova’s request that ICE be ordered not to rearrest her as soon as she is free, although her lawyer pointed out that there is strong reason to be apprehensive.

Kseniia Petrova did her boss a favor by agreeing to carry a package of frog embryos back from France for another lab leader. Perhaps she expected to be in the hands of a more rational system than she faced in Russia, which she fled after her arrest for opposing the war in Ukraine. Text exchanges after her plane landed in Boston show her light mood about the fertilized eggs: “I can’t swallow them!” she replied when asked what her plan was for getting the items through customs. But what should have been a light comedy of errors turned into a Chekovian plot with shocking escalations.

When a dog identified something unusual in Petrova’s suitcase, she was taken aside, and the scientific samples were revealed. The customs official said they had revoked her visa, meaning she was in the country illegally; she was told she could return to France and reapply to the U.S., or be sent to Russia. She chose France, an offer which was then revoked, and ICE locked her up in Vermont, then Louisiana. At every stage, this case has been handled as if a neighbor who let his dog poop on someone’s lawn was put in jail for a month and charged with criminal trespassing and environmental endangerment.

Just how serious was Petrova’s infraction? And is the person who committed it a danger to society? A flight risk?

In court Wednesday, the founder of the field of regenerative medicine, Dr. Michael West, testified that the samples were “inert, nontoxic, nonliving,” in no way a hazard. When he said they had no commercial value, Petrova visibly chuckled. He likened them to “shoe leather” as a source of potential biological hazards.

When asked about Petrova’s science, Dr. West said that she is doing excellent work in the “most valued and needed field in current medical research.”

“Would you hire her?” Dr. West was asked.

“In a heartbeat,” he replied. That got a big smile from Petrova—and a garbled objection from the government.

Prof. Marc Kirschner, Petrova’s ultimate boss, came personally to testify from the laboratory which bears his name at Harvard Medical School. He spoke of Petrova’s “significant impact” on his laboratory. Her absence is keenly felt. Her particular contribution was finding ways to quantify the “amazing pictures of tissues” from the lab’s newly invented microscope. Dr. Kirschner too was unable to imagine that she would be a danger to society. Petrova’s scientific peers also testified that she loves her job, and misses her work, her friends, and colleagues. Petrova wrote that the lab was a “paradise.” Is that the word of someone who wants to flee?

Would it have been better judgment for Petrova to submit paperwork for the preserved frog eggs? Of course. But has anyone who has ever crossed an international boundary not quietly carried at least one dubious item at some point? The government’s response to this minor offense has been Orwellian. Judge Reiss said, “The government is essentially saying, ‘We revoked your visa, now you have no documentation and now we’re going to place you in removal proceedings.’” Then the government detained her. When a bail hearing was scheduled that could result in Petrova’s release, the government only took two hours to trump up criminal charges against her. It was an obvious ploy to keep her in custody even if the judge released her.

Behavior which usually results in a small fine suddenly became criminal—subject to fines of up to $250,000 and up to 20 years in prison. Comparable cases involve boots made of endangered sea turtles or living birds smuggled in panty hose.

Do these twists and turns sound like the United States of America, or like Vladimir Putin’s Russia? At this point, Petrova will only go free if the Massachusetts Criminal Court also grants bail—and if ICE doesn’t snap her up again, or deport her to Russia. As Judge Reiss said, “Ms. Petrova’s life and well-being are in peril if she is deported to Russia,” and she is serving our national interests in research where answers are desperately needed.

So far, this drama has been something of a farce. Let’s not allow it to end in tragedy.

The slaughter goes on, usually in the name of war, which reduces human life to, at best, a strategic abstraction. Dead civilians—dead children—are collateral damage, which means they’re nothing at all.

How can we be more than just spectators as we learn, every day, more stunning details about the hell going on across the planet? How can the human race stand up collectively to the cancer of war? Humanity, in the name of nationalism, has essentially organized itself against itself: We’ve declared one another “the enemy,” which means that only some of us are human. The others are simply in the way.

And nowhere, as we all know, is the news more hellish and shocking than the stories that emerge daily from Gaza, which continues to undergo, in full view on social media... genocide. It looks like this, according to CNN:

Dr. Alaa al-Najjar left her ten children at home on Friday when she went to work in the emergency room at the Nasser Medical Complex in southern Gaza.

Hours later, the bodies of seven children—most of them badly burned—arrived at the hospital, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza. They were Dr. Najjar’s own children, killed in an Israeli airstrike on her family’s home... The bodies of two more of her children—a 7-month-old and a 12-year-old who authorities presume to be dead—remain missing.

Only one of her ten children, 11-year-old Adam, survived. Dr. Najjar’s husband Hamdi, himself a doctor, was also badly injured in the strike.

This is the context in which another piece of news emerges, an opposite event, a beam of light which, oh God, I pray represents the dawn of humanity’s future: Veterans For Peace, along with 28 co-sponsoring organizations, has launched a 40-day fast calling for an end to Israel’s genocidal war on, and starvation of, Gaza. Some of the participants gather daily in front of the United Nations headquarters in New York, aligning themselves—in all their vulnerable humanity—with the organization’s founding purpose.

A letter the fasters wrote to U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres concludes: “Uppermost in our minds with this request to meet with you at your earliest convenience is the U.N. founding goal to save ‘succeeding generations from the scourge of war.’”

I quote these words not with a sense of “yeah, yeah” abstraction but rather because the writers are people like you and me, stepping out of their daily lives and into a determination to be part of, and help create, a world beyond war—beginning with an Israeli cease-fire and the salvation of Palestine, but hardly stopping there.

To put it another way: The words attempt to link individuals with a global institution. What I hear in these words is the call for a collective, planetary effort to transcend war. This effort must include every single human on this planet, including you and me, and demands our participation and sacrifice, not simply our shrug of hope. I hear a call for the United Nations to reinvent itself as United Humanity. And thus the future emerges.

One of the participants in the fast is my old friend Kathy Kelly. I talked to her on day six of the fast. Participants are limiting themselves to consuming 250 calories a day, she noted, which is about the amount Palestinians have available to them. Several hundred people are participating in the fast in New York, with more people, around 600 in total, throughout and beyond the United States. If you’re interested in joining the effort, visit the websites of either Veterans for Peace or Friends of Sabeel North America.

The fast is very much a public event, Kathy told me. On Memorial Day, for instance, a few days into the fast, they ceremonially honored not just veterans but some of the victims of the current genocide, bringing the al-Najjar family into public grief by reading the names of the children who were killed.

Kathy gave me a list of their names and ages. I feel like they belong here: Yahya: 12 years old; Rakan: 10 years old;; Eve: 9 years old; Jubran: 8 years old; Ruslan: 7 years old; Reval: 5 years old; Sadin: 3 years old; Luqman: 2 years old; Sidra: 6 months old. Adam, age 11, the sole surviving child, was critically injured.

Yeah, this is war. Its details matter. And as an American, I am complicit in the hell this country’s militarism has wreaked throughout my lifetime: the collateral damage, the environmental damage, it has bequeathed Planet Earth, followed by nothing more than an indifferent, strategic shrug.

So I feel compelled to return for a moment to Alaa al-Najjar, the doctor and mom who recently lost 9 of her 10 children, with her husband and last surviving child seriously injured. Her niece told CNN that

Dr. Alaa broke down when she showed the last bottle of breast milk she had expressed for her infant daughter, Sidra, whose body remains missing.

She told me today that her chest aches so much as she was breastfeeding, every day at work, Dr. Alaa pumped milk to provide for Sidra, and today she showed me the last bottle she prepared for her.

Dr. Alaa can barely speak. If you could see her face, you would understand her pain. She is only praying for her son and husband to recover.

And also, this: According to a fellow doctor at the hospital, Alaa al-Najjar has “continued to work despite losing her children, while periodically checking on the condition of her husband and Adam.”

This is peace—this is love—standing in the aftermath of war, refusing to give up. I see hope for the future here. I see humanity’s role model.

Colorful career criminal Willie Sutton once may (or may not) have been asked why he robbed banks. “Because that is where the money is,” he supposedly replied. A similar principle may explain the first foreign trip of President Donald J. Trump’s second term, which was not to a traditional U.S. ally in Europe. Rather, he set off to visit the capitals of the Gulf hydrocarbon potentates Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. In royal palaces there, he feasted and was offered hundreds of billions of dollars in investments in American companies and opportunities for the Trump Organization, too. Qatar even courted controversy by giving him a $400 million Boeing 747-8 plane to serve as a future Air Force One.

And the publicity was regal. Strikingly missing, however, was a side trip to Israel or any evident consultations with the extremist government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

If Israel gets in the way of deal-making with the Gulf plutocrats, it could become an annoyance that Trump might feel he can’t afford.

Instead, Israel was frozen out and blindsided by Trump’s pronouncements. On the eve of his trip, the president took the Israelis by surprise when he abruptly announced that he would halt his (costly and fruitless) bombing campaign against the Houthis of Yemen. Israeli leaders then had to listen to Trump proclaim that the U.S. “has no stronger partner” than Saudi Arabia, with which he brokered a $142 billion deal for American arms. The United Arab Emirates has a sovereign wealth fund of $2.2 trillion, while Saudi Arabia’s is $1.1 trillion and that country’s leader, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, has already deposited $2 billion of it in the investment firm of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund has $526 billion. And such sums don’t even include those countries’ vast currency reserves, earned by selling petroleum and fossil gas.

And in that single, several-day trip, President Trump managed to realign U.S. Middle Eastern policy to center on—and yes, it should be capitalized!—an Axis of the Plutocrats, Gulf sheikhs who are using their galactic fortunes to reshape the region from Libya to Sudan, Egypt to Syria, and who are hungrily eyeing new investment opportunities in areas like the emerging artificial intelligence industry.

Syria: A Very Strong Background

Oh, and while he was traveling Trump revealed that Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Saudi Arabia’s bin Salman had indeed convinced him to lift American sanctions on Syria, a step distinctly opposed by the Israelis. While in the Saudi capital of Riyadh, he even held a surprise meeting with fundamentalist Syrian President Ahmad al-Shara, who had once led an al Qaeda affiliate. Asked about whether the Israelis opposed the step, Trump replied, “I don’t know. I didn’t ask them about that.” In fact, The Associated Press reported that, in an April meeting with Trump, Netanyahu had specifically pleaded with him not to lift those sanctions on Syria, since he claimed he feared that the new fundamentalist government there might eventually stage an attack on Israel.

Trump appears to have been entirely unmoved by Netanyahu’s plea. After meeting al-Shara in Riyadh, the president summed up his view of the former guerrilla and supporter of hardline Salafi Islam this way: “Young, attractive guy. Tough guy. Strong past. Very strong past. Fighter.” On recognizing Damascus’s new government and issuing a waiver on those congressionally mandated sanctions, Trump observed, “Now it’s their time to shine… So, I say, ‘Good luck, Syria.’ Show us something very special.” It’s worth noting that al-Shara claims he wants good relations with all his country’s neighbors and is open to peace with Israel.

You wouldn’t know it from Netanyahu’s heated rhetoric, but during the Syrian civil war of the last decade, Israel did give medical help to the Support Front (Jabhat al-Nusra) that al-Shara founded and led when it was fighting against Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorial regime. Since al-Shara’s group sometimes persecuted the heterodox Druze minority in Syria, this step outraged Israel’s own Druze minority, some of whom at one point attacked an ambulance taking a wounded Syrian rebel to an Israeli hospital, while the group’s leaders lobbied Netanyahu to cease aiding the al Qaeda-linked outfit.

Netanyahu’s recent suggestions to Trump that al-Shara, now in control of much of Syria, poses a threat to Israel, were therefore wholly disingenuous. Moreover, the jackboot is entirely on the other foot. As soon as the revolution in Damascus succeeded, Netanyahu ordered an orgy of destruction, bombing naval ships in the Syrian port of Latakia and military installations across the country, leaving Syria virtually helpless. Israeli troops then marched into Syria, occupying swathes of its territory and taking control of a dam that supplies 40% of its water. Israeli far-right cabinet member Bezalel Smotrich then pledged that Israel’s multi-front war of expansion there would only end when Syria was—you couldn’t put it more bluntly than this—“dismantled.”

Now, Israeli analysts not only fear a resurgent Syria but also worry that since Erdogan has Trump’s ear on Syrian policy, he will be emboldened. Turkey, after all, backed the rebel group that has now taken power and is their main international sponsor. Turkish fighter jets are already operating in northern Syrian air space, and Israel’s attempt to establish hegemony over its southern regions is endangered by Turkish claims that, going back to Ottoman times, Syria has always been in its sphere of influence.

Iran: No Nuclear Dust

Trump also sidelined Netanyahu during his trip by continuing to press for a new nuclear deal with Iran. His Gulf Arab hosts showed a collective enthusiasm for the ongoing talks, and Trump revealed that Qatar’s ruler, Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani, had indeed lobbied him to begin direct discussions with Iran. The Gulf Arab monarchies fear being caught in the crossfire of any future American-Israeli war with Iran. The leaders of Qatar and the other Gulf states are anxious that the (all too literal) fallout from any aerial strikes on enriched nuclear materials in Iran could drift onto their populations, affecting their water supplies. Trump tried to reassure his hosts that “we’re not going to be making any nuclear dust in Iran,” adding that he wanted to try negotiations first in hopes of forestalling any such outcome.

During both the first Trump administration and the Biden administration, Washington’s pitch to the Gulf Arab states was that they should recognize Israel, do business with it, and form a military alliance with it against Iran. Jared Kushner succeeded in making this argument to the postage-stamp Gulf countries of the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, which signed the Abraham Accords with Israel on September 15, 2020.

Trump appears to have developed the same fascination that possessed Barack Obama when it comes to “opening” Iran the way Richard Nixon once opened China.

However, Kushner and then-President Biden failed to bring Saudi Arabia aboard. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman resisted going on a war footing with Iran, especially after the devastating 2019 attack by that country or one of its proxies on the Kingdom’s Abqaiq refinery, which underlined Riyadh’s vulnerability. Not surprisingly, then, in March 2023, the Saudi foreign minister joined his Iranian counterpart in Beijing, where the two countries restored diplomatic relations and began deconfliction talks.

Once Israel launched its total war on the Gazan population in October 2023, bin Salman could hardly sign on to the Abraham Accords. In the region, it would have looked as if he were helping to destroy the Palestinian Arabs while putting a target on Iran, one of the Palestinians’ few remaining state champions. Unlike Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia has a substantial citizen population—some 19 million people—whose opinions the government has to be at least a little bit anxious about, especially since the blood of the average Saudi is indeed boiling at the daily atrocities being committed by Israel in Gaza. Last year, bin Salman’s office leaked to Politico that he feared he would be assassinated if he recognized Israel under such grim circumstances and he insisted on the need for an independent Palestinian state (which seemed to get Washington off his back on the issue).

In addition, Trump appears to have developed the same fascination that possessed Barack Obama when it comes to “opening” Iran the way Richard Nixon once opened China. Nothing, of course, could be more unwelcome in Tel Aviv. Netanyahu has repeatedly threatened to attack Iran’s civilian nuclear enrichment facilities (though Western intelligence agencies do not believe that country actually has a nuclear weapons program). In an April meeting, Trump informed Netanyahu that he wanted to try negotiations before anybody attacked Iran and pointedly gave the prime minister a copy of his book The Art of the Deal.

Qatar: A Fundamental Role

If Qatar did convince Trump to try negotiating with Iran, then Sheikh Tamim won a major round in the contest for influence with the American president. It was a victory in keeping with Doha’s longstanding regional role as a mediator and seeker of peaceful solutions to conflict. And the rise of Qatari influence is another blow to Netanyahu, who has attempted to sideline the Gulf gas giant even though he was happy to make use of its services.

Since Hamas’ bloodthirsty October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, elements of the Israeli government and its supporters have attempted to blame Qatar for supposedly supporting and bankrolling Hamas. The allegations are breathtakingly false and serve as a smokescreen for Hamas’ actual patron (in a manner of speaking), Netanyahu himself. They were aimed, however, precisely at turning Qatar into a distrusted regional pariah, a ploy that has so far failed spectacularly.

That the fundamentalist Hamas movement came to power at the ballot box in Gaza in 2006 and could not be dislodged struck Netanyahu as a potential blessing. The bad blood between Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) on the West Bank left Palestinians politically divided. Netanyahu made that very rivalry a pretext for preventing the establishment of a state for the 5 million stateless Palestinians under Israeli occupation. He put severe import-export restrictions on Gaza but otherwise allowed Hamas to run it as its own fiefdom. Hamas rocket fire from time to time (which seldom did any real damage) was a price Netanyahu was then willing to pay. He had a close associate act as a go-between regarding transfers of money from Qatar and Egypt into Gaza for civilian aid and administration. From 2021 on, Egypt and Qatar deposited aid money for Gaza civilian reconstruction in an Israeli bank account, and then Israel transferred it to the Gazans.

That’s right: Bibi Netanyahu was once functionally Gaza’s comptroller. Moreover, in 2011-2012, the Obama administration asked Qatar to host members of the Hamas civilian politbureau so that they could take part in indirect negotiations with both the U.S. and Israel. The favor Qatar did for Washington and Tel Aviv, however, would prove burdensome to its diplomacy. In 2018, the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim, grew so frustrated with Hamas that he decided to kick its officials out and cease sending aid to Gaza. Terrified that his divide-and-rule approach to the Palestinians might be jeopardized, Netanyahu frantically dispatched the head of the Israeli intelligence outfit Mossad to Qatar to plead with the emir to continue the arrangement.

In 2020, The Times of Israel revealed that Mossad head Yossi Cohen had written a letter to Tamim about the Gaza money transfers, saying: “This aid has undoubtedly played a fundamental role in achieving the continued improvement of the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip and ensuring stability and security in the region.” As late as 2023, other Israeli government officials were still sending similar messages, according to that paper. The subsequent attempt of the Netanyahu government to shift blame for its disgraceful Gaza policy onto Qatar has struck few seasoned observers as plausible.

Regarding Trump’s recent visit, the Israeli genocide in Gaza was the one outstanding issue on which Gulf leaders appear to have made little headway. After a roundtable with Qatari business leaders, the president said of Gaza, “Let the United States get involved and make it just a freedom zone.” These remarks, wholly detached from reality, did not clarify whether he still agreed with Netanyahu on a plan to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip, which no one in the Arab Gulf could accept. In any case, insiders say Trump is frustrated that Netanyahu doesn’t “wrap up” the war, but that the president has not exerted the pressure necessary to stop it.

A Stark Pivot

Trump’s foreign policy trip marked a stark pivot away from what had long been a neoconservative version of Middle Eastern policymaking in Washington. In the era of President George W. Bush, some officials typically argued that Israel was Washington’s only reliable democratic partner in the Middle East and that all policy in the region should be organized around that reality. In the process, of course, they downplayed the plight of the Palestinians, claiming in 2002 that peace would only come in the region when the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein was overthrown. They gradually developed a rhetoric for stuffing Washington’s version of democracy down the gullets of Middle Eastern regimes—at the point of a gun, if necessary. They either marginalized Arab regimes or sought to scare them into an alliance with Israel. Their ultimate goal then was a war on Iran that would overthrow the government there. “Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran,” they used to proclaim in a creepy combination of male chauvinism and juvenile jingoism.

Trump’s own regime is, of course, not free of either toxic masculinity or a jejune hyper-nationalism. However, unlike Bush and the neocons, the 47th president seems uninterested in kicking off long, debilitating foreign wars, which his base has come to hate. Still, think of him, at least in part, as Trump of Arabia. Of course, he’s mainly interested in making money for himself and his wealthy backers there. If Israel gets in the way of deal-making with the Gulf plutocrats, it could become an annoyance that Trump might feel he can’t afford. So far, however, the president seems unwilling to make the hard choices necessary to end the genocide and position the Middle East and the U.S. for prosperity, leaving us all in limbo with only a new Trump Tower in Dubai to show for it.

Ted Rall’s cartoon calls out the media for covering up and deflecting Biden’s mental decline— hilariously and absurdly while promising to investigate who was responsible. Outlets like The Washington Post—whose reporters and editors had to have known the truth the whole time—are vowing to find who concealed Biden’s condition, as our trust in institutions continues to erode. 

The post Looking For the Real Democracy Killer appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

I didn’t become a teacher to picket in front of rocket test sites.

But I also didn’t become a teacher to watch public education be sold for scrap. So two weeks ago, I loaded up my car with signs, snacks, and plenty of water and drove out to the SpaceX facilities in Hawthorne, California. I spent the day rallying alongside a sea of educators, parents, students, and union members, gathered at Elon Musk’s place of business to protest his corrupt crusade to decimate our public schools and privatize our public goods.

I’m a special education teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Our schools, like schools all across the country, are facing pressure to tighten the belt in anticipation of DOGE cuts and federal disinvestment.

We reject that logic. As should every public servant and elected official in the country.

Preemptive austerity measures play right into the hands of the people dismantling our government. Now is the moment to dig deep. Educators across California and the nation are calling on our electeds and our superintendents to pour back into our communities, not abandon them.

Our protest was one of several rallies held across the country in response to threats to dismantle the Department of Education. From Los Angeles to Washington D.C., teachers have come together to defend every student’s freedom to learn and to stand against the extremist politicians trying to gut the resources our students and families depend on.

This administration’s end game relies on a population that is uneducated and disempowered. One where our children don’t know our histories or learn from them. Instead of nurturing young people who question the world around them, they want to produce workers that can be underpaid, mistreated, and controlled. This is about power, not policy.

And yes, the appointment of WWE’s Linda McMahon as Education Secretary is a clear sign of this administration's disdain for public education, but that agenda has long been fueled by Musk’s own contempt. His hostility toward public schools began well before his time in Trump’s orbit. Case in point: Hawthorne served as SpaceX’s main headquarters for years, until Musk opened a new hub in Texas, supposedly in protest of a California education law that protects LGBTQ+ students and upholds their right to learn.

It’s time people stop seeing Elon Musk as a visionary when he’s clearly a political actor. His attack on public education is part of a larger strategy. This administration’s end game relies on a population that is uneducated and disempowered. One where our children don’t know our histories or learn from them. Instead of nurturing young people who question the world around them, they want to produce workers that can be underpaid, mistreated, and controlled. This is about power, not policy.

Our children are not under-resourced by accident. They’re being robbed. And Elon Musk is a prime example of how that works in a democracy that’s captured by corporate interests. These people don’t want public services to work. They want to own them. Musk says our budgets are bloated, but refuses to pay property taxes. He attacks public educational programs like NPR and PBS, yet collects billions in public subsidies for SpaceX, Tesla, and Twitter/X. While teachers are forced to strike for reasonable pay raises, Musk is handed public money and then uses it to bankroll campaigns to abolish the Department of Education. This isn’t innovation, it’s extraction.

But their agenda isn’t just about schools. The forces behind Project 2025 are pushing plans to shut down entire federal departments and destabilize the programs our communities rely on. They’re calling for the elimination of Medicaid, Meals on Wheels, Social Security, and more. These cuts would devastate poor and working-class Americans, veterans, the elderly, and most of all, our students and their families. They want our kids hungry, our elders unsupported, and our communities too desperate to fight back while they steal and profit off our labor.

Although the threats to dismantle the DoE, as well as the ICE raids against our immigrant students, have made this personal, we educators are always on the frontlines of democracy. We work with students of all abilities, from all racial and economic backgrounds. We see inequity firsthand. We are workers ourselves and we know what it means to be overworked and underpaid. When we organize, we’re not just fighting for a contract. We’re fighting for a country where a child’s zip code doesn’t decide their worth.

Trump, Musk, and their wealthy allies want to run the country like a company. But a nation isn’t a business, it’s a collective promise to each other.

When we shortchange teachers, we shortchange students. And when we underfund schools, we make inequality permanent. In 2023, our union was able to enact a groundbreaking contract that provided some financial relief for many educators in our city. But for many of us, that just meant catching our breath — not catching up. We’re still behind on rent. Student loans are resuming, and many educators who had hoped for relief are facing renewed financial strain. Teachers are working second jobs, burning out, and leaving the field altogether. And when teachers leave, students feel it: high turnover leads to instability; under-resourced classrooms lead to deepened inequity.

The real crisis isn’t overspending but underinvestment. At every level, federal, state, and local leaders claim there’s no money. But the money exists. The district has it. The state has it. The feds definitely have it. They’re just hoarding it, or worse, handing it to billionaires. You don’t solve a shortage by starving the people doing the work. You solve it by investing — in people, in classrooms, in kids.

Trump, Musk, and their wealthy allies want to run the country like a company. But a nation isn’t a business, it’s a collective promise to each other. They’ve already come for federal workers. Now it’s teachers. Next, it’ll be nurses, postal workers, transit operators or anyone who doesn’t fit their agenda to drag us backward. This isn’t fear-mongering. It’s a fact.

But we will not let billionaires steal our future. We will not disinvest. We will not capitulate. We believe in a future where every child has a safe, well-funded public school. Where public goods serve the public good. And where educators are respected, not discarded.

They may have rockets. But we have each other. And we’re not going anywhere.

Last Thursday, May 22, a coalition named Veterans and Allies Fast for Gaza kicked off a 40-day fast outside the United Nations in Manhattan in protest against the U.S.-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza. Military veterans and allies pledged to fast for 40 days on only 250 calories per day, the amount recently reported as what the residents of Gaza are enduring.

The fasters are demanding:

1. Full humanitarian aid to Gaza under U.N. authority, and
2. No more U.S. weapons to Israel.

Seven people are fasting from May 22 to June 30 outside the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, where they are present from 9:30 am to 3:00 pm, Mondays to Fridays. Many others are fasting around the U.S. and beyond for as many days as they can. The fast is organized by Veterans For Peace along with over 40 cosponsoring organizations.

Remarkably, over 600 people have registered to join the fast. Friends of Sabeel, North America is maintaining the list of fasters.

Who will stop the genocide in Palestine, if not us? That is the question that the fasters and many others are asking. The U.S. government is shamelessly complicit in Israel’s genocide, and to a lesser extent the same is true for the European governments. The silence and inaction of most Middle Eastern countries is resounding. Lebanon, Yemen, and Iran, the only countries to come to Palestine’s aid, have been bombed by Israel and the U.S., with the threat of more to come. Syria, another country that stood with Palestine, has been “regime changed” and handed over to former al-Qaeda and ISIS extremists.

On the positive side, some governments are making their voices heard. South Africa and Nicaragua have taken Israel and Germany, respectively, to the International Court of Justice—Israel for its genocide, Germany for providing weapons to Israel. And millions of regular people around the globe have protested loudly and continue to do so.

Here in the United States, Jewish Voice for Peace has provided crucial leadership, pushing back against the phony charges of “antisemitism” that are thrown at the student protesters whose courageous resistance has spoken for so many. University administrators have been all too quick to crack down on the students, violating their right to freedom of speech, but even these universities have come under attack from the repressive, anti-democratic Trump administration.

Peace-loving people are frustrated and angry. Some are worried they will be detained or deported. And many of us are suffering from Moral Injury, concerned about our own complicity. How are we supposed to act as we watch U.S. bombs obliterate Gaza’s hospitals, mosques, churches, and universities? What are we supposed to do when we see Palestinian children being starving to death, systematically and live-streamed?

Because our movement is nonviolent, we do not want to follow the example of the young man who shot and killed two employees of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. But we understand his frustration and how he was driven to take forceful action. We take courage from the supreme sacrifice of U.S. Airman Aaron Bushnell, who self-immolated in front of the Israeli Embassy, asking “What would you do?”

Student protesters at several universities around the country have initiated “hunger strikes,” often considered a protest of last resort. Now they have been joined by military veterans.

“Watching hundreds of people maimed, burned, and killed every day just tears at my insides,” said Mike Ferner, former Executive Director of Veterans For Peace and one of the fasters. “Too much like when I nursed hundreds of wounded from our war in Viet Nam,” said the former Navy corpsman. “This madness will only stop when enough Americans demand it stops.”

Rev. Addie Domske, national field organizer for Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA), said, “This month I celebrated my third Mother’s Day with a renewed commitment to parent my kid toward a free Palestine. As a mother, I am responsible for feeding my child. I also believe, as a mother, I must be responsive when other children are starving.”

Kathy Kelly, board president of World BEYOND War, also in New York for the fast, said, “Irish Nobel laureate Mairead Maguire, at age 81, recently fasted for 40 days, saying ‘As the children of Gaza are hungry and injured with bombs by official Israeli policy, I have decided that I, too, must go hungry with them, as I in good conscience can do no other.’ Now, Israel intensifies its efforts to eradicate Gaza through bombing, forcible displacement, and siege. We must follow Mairead’s lead, hungering acutely for an end to all weapon shipments to Israel. We must ask, ‘Who are the criminals?’ as war crimes multiply and political leaders fail to stop them.”

Another faster is Joy Metzler: 23, Cocoa, Florida, a 2023 graduate of the Air Force Academy who became a Conscientious Objector and left the Air Force, citing U.S. aggression in the Middle East and the continued ethnic cleansing in all of Palestine. Joy is a now a member of Veterans For Peace and a co-founder of Servicemembers For Cease-fire.

“I am watching as our government unconditionally supports the very violations of international law that the Air Force trained me to recognize,” said Joy Metzler. “I was trained to uphold the values of justice, and that is why I am speaking out and condemning our government’s complicity in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.”

I spoke with VFP leader Mike Ferner on Day 7 of his Fast. The NYPD had just told him and the other fasters that they could no longer sit down in front of the U.S. Mission to the U.N. on the little stools they had brought. But Mike Ferner was not complaining.

He said: “We go home every night to a safe bed and we can drink clean water. We are not watching our children starve to death before us. Our sacrifice is a small one. We are taking a stand for humanity and we encourage others to do what they can. Demand full humanitarian relief in Gaza under U.N. authority, and an end to U.S. weapons shipments to Israel. This is how we can stop the genocide.”

More information about how you can participate or support the fasters is available at Veterans and Allies Fast for Gaza.

One of my purposes in sending you this daily letter is to give you the truth about an important issue that U.S. President Donald Trump and his lapdogs in Congress are demagoguing—so you can spread the truth.

Right now, the Senate is taking up Trump’s “Big Beautiful budget bill” (really a Big Bad Ugly Bill) that just emerged from the House.

If enacted, it would be the largest redistribution of income in the nation’s history—from the poor and working class to the rich and super-rich.

The entire work requirement would affect 7% at most. In reality, a work requirement would cause many more who are eligible to lose their Medicaid coverage. The current estimate is at least 8.6 million people.

How? The tax cut mainly benefits the wealthy. A major source of funding is at least $715 billion of cuts in healthcare spending, mostly from Medicaid.

It also contains a poison pill that would remove the power of federal courts to hold officials in contempt of court—fining or imprisoning them if they fail to follow court orders. As the courts push back against Trump, this is a critical power.

The bill cuts Medicaid spending by requiring Medicaid recipients to work.

Republicans are spreading lies about this work requirement.

Here are the facts you need to know—and share:

1. 64% of adult Medicaid recipients already work.

Many recipients work in jobs that don’t typically offer health insurance and pay little—which makes Medicaid vital. These people aren’t freeloaders mooching off the system, as Republicans claim. They’re barely scraping by.

2. Adults on Medicaid who aren’t working have good reasons not to.

• 12% are primary caregivers.
• 10% have an illness or disability.
• 7 % are attending school.

3. So, 93% of all Medicaid recipients either already working or having good reason not to.

The entire work requirement would affect 7% at most. In reality, a work requirement would cause many more who are eligible to lose their Medicaid coverage. The current estimate is at least 8.6 million people.

4. The work requirement kicks eligible people Medicaid because of its burdensome and confusing reporting requirements.

It’s not really meant to put people to work. It’s a shady way of kicking people off Medicaid to fund tax cuts mainly for the wealthy.

In Arkansas, which tried a work requirement for Medicaid, more than 18,000 people who were eligible lost coverage mainly because of the paperwork reporting hoops they had to jump through.

5. When Arkansas enacted work requirements, there was no significant change in employment rates.

Because, again, Medicaid recipients already have high rates of employment to begin with.

6. If Republicans really want to put people to work, they’d make it easier to get Medicaid—not harder.

After Ohio expanded Medicaid, enrollees had an easier time finding and holding down a job.

Access to healthcare means people can manage chronic conditions, afford medication, or receive mental health treatment—all of which helps people keep their jobs.

Republicans are spouting lies about a work requirement for Medicaid because they’re really trying to push eligible people off it—to help finance their big tax cut mainly for the rich.

Senate Republicans can afford to lose only three Republican votes. Otherwise, the Big Bad Ugly Bill is dead. Please share these facts.

LIVE 10 AM Eastern time, Streaming Anytime:

It’s global crisis Thursday on “The TMI Show with Ted Rall and Manila Chan,” diving into a geopolitical powder keg! Ten years ago, President Obama pushed for a nuclear deal with Iran while Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu rattled sabers and threatened to bomb Tehran’s nuclear-power enrichment facilities. Now, Trump faces the same threat from the Bibster, but the stakes are higher. Netanyahu’s coalition leans on far-right extremists, and Iran is weaker than ever—its proxies Hamas and Hezbollah are battered, and Assad’s regime in Syria just collapsed. Bibi’s threats to strike Iran’s nuclear sites might not be just talk this time.

Back in 2015, the JCPOA forced Iran to gut its nuclear program and allow inspections in exchange for sanctions relief, though it was permitted to enrich uranium at low levels until 2030. Trump scrapped the deal in 2018, slapping sanctions back on. Now, Iran has enriched uranium to 60% purity—experts say it’s less than a year from a bomb if it wants one. (It says it doesn’t—and the CIA believes them.) Netanyahu sees a nuclear Iran as an existential threat and wants it crushed, while Trump thinks Iran’s vulnerability makes it ripe for a deal. Just yesterday, Trump told Bibi to hold off on bombing.

Public support for Israel is waning in wake of its genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza—only 46% of Americans still support Israel, the lowest in 25 years, with even some conservative voices like Tucker Carlson backing away. Will Trump and Netanyahu clash, or will diplomacy win?

The post TMI Show Ep 148: “Crazy Bibi Wants to Bomb Iran” appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.