On Saturday, the town of Starbase, Texas was born. The town includes Elon Musk’s SpaceX launch facility and company-owned land covering 1.6 square miles.

If Musk and President Donald Trump have their way, America as a whole could eventually be Starbase, Texas.

Starbase is hardly a democracy. It’s the brainchild of Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, who founded the town because he didn’t want to deal with local regulations in getting approvals for his space launches.

Consider:

Starbase is a company town. That company is Musk’s SpaceX. Its new mayor, Bobby Peden, is a SpaceX vice president. He was the only name on the ballot. Its two commissioners are also SpaceX employees. The local measure creating Starbase passed 212 to 6. Almost everyone who voted works for SpaceX or has a relative who does.

America is starting to look like one big national company town. The largest 1% of U.S. corporations now own a record 97% of all U.S. corporate assets. Fewer big corporations dominate every American industry, and they’re exerting more political influence than ever. Musk and Trump are twisting tax laws and regulations in favor of even fewer big corporations.

Starbase is hardly a democracy. It’s the brainchild of Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, who founded the town because he didn’t want to deal with local regulations in getting approvals for his space launches. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has hamstrung federal agencies under whose authority SpaceX falls, such as the Environmental Protection Agency and Federal Aviation Administration—which just decided to allow him to go from five Starship launches a year to 25.

America, too, is looking less and less like a democracy. One man posts executive orders on social media, often without explanation or reason—and entire industries are created or destroyed, hundreds of thousands of jobs are terminated, universities and law firms are threatened, and legal residents of the United States are abducted without court hearings. Several of his advisers have disdained democracy and openly admired authoritarian Viktor Orbán’s Hungary and the late Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore.

It’s hard to know what’s happening in Starbase. There’s no independent press, and Starbase has explained little about its plans for the new city. Reporters can’t simply wander in and interview whomever they wish.

It’s getting to be that way in America too. We don’t know what Trump is going to do next or why. The White House selects the reporters and outlets it wants in its press pool. Some big outlets, such as The Washington Post and CBS, are owned by the super-rich who want to curry favor with Trump and don’t want to anger him, so they limit what their outlets can say.

Starbase is harming the environment. The first integrated Starship vehicle launched from the site in April 2023 exploded in midflight, igniting a 3.5-acre fire south of the pad site in Boca Chica State Park and sending debris thousands of feet into the air. State and federal regulators fined SpaceX for violations of the Clean Water Act and said the company had repeatedly polluted waters in the Boca Chica area.

America’s environment is also endangered—due in part to Musk and Trump, who are eviscerating environmental protections in favor of large private profit-making ventures like, well, Musk’s Starship.

Starbase is the brainchild of a single multibillionaire. He plans to live there part of the time with some of his 14 children and their four mothers, and he ultimately decides all important matters for the town.

America is the part-time home of many of the world’s billionaires, who also have outsized influence over important matters the nation deals with.

Finally, Starbase is insular. It will not share its tax revenue with anyone else. Because it’s incorporated separately, the town will keep for itself all the revenue generated by its property-owning taxpayers.

Trump’s America is becoming as insular as Starbase. Trump has all but eliminated USAID along with medical and humanitarian aid to war-ravaged people around the world. He’s cutting trade and deporting residents with student visas and green cards who don’t toe the company line.

So is Musk’s Starbase the future of America? Only if we let it become so.

Pope Leo XIV has been elected as the new leader of the Catholic Church. The new Pope will have big shoes to fill. The sheer humanity of Pope Francis—who embraced the poor and downtrodden, comforted the sick, and worked tirelessly to help the victims of wars, from Gaza to Sudan, from Ukraine to the Democratic Republic of the Congo—will be hard to match. By all accounts, Pope Leo XIV will find his own way and his own voice as the new pontiff. At this critical moment, he must also follow in his predecessor’s footsteps to protect our planet from destructive human activities, including the launch of nuclear war.

Pope Francis left a mark on the Church and the world in a way that previous papacies may not have, and not only for the ease of communication and the endless access to his writings, photos, and videos. Images of the Pope embracing Vinicio Riva, who was severely ill with a rare genetic skin condition, in 2013, or crossing St. Peter’s Square alone in the midst of the pandemic in 2020, were shared all across the globe. They became symbols of unconditional love, especially for those least fortunate, and of our joint pain amidst the worldwide upheaval wrought by COVID-19.

War to Pope Francis was always a crime against humanity, a violation of our dignity, and a failure of diplomacy.

His Holiness made the news in other ways. He furthered the conversations about the role of women in the church, LGBTQ belonging, priest celibacy, and more. Caught between those who pushed him to do more on these issues and those who scolded him for even raising them, the pontiff stuck to unity in the church, while keeping the conversations going, rather than shutting them down. He was unapologetic about deploring war, wherever it had taken its ugly roots, and eager to build bridges where connections were tenuous, including between the U.S. and Cuba. He spoke for humanity and for peace, regardless of prevailing narratives, popularity, or politics. War to Pope Francis was always a crime against humanity, a violation of our dignity, and a failure of diplomacy.

Perhaps less widely covered, but arguably with furthest reaching impact, were his stances on the environment and nuclear disarmament. They should be a part of his enduring legacy and must be positions that Pope Leo XIV embraces wholeheartedly. There are many reasons why we humans need to protect the environment and why we need to eliminate nuclear weapons. They range from security to economy to human health. But the moral reasoning is strong, and Pope Francis was a superb messenger of this critical argument. His message must live on and be embraced most forcefully not just by the new pontiff, but also other interfaith leaders.

In his 2015 Encyclical Laudato Si, Pope Francis called for universal responsibility of all members of the human family to care for one another, the Earth and all creatures on it. Covering topics such as pollution, climate change, the issue of water, and the loss of biodiversity, Pope Francis seamlessly alternated between scientific evidence and ethical reasoning. He highlighted the human impact on the environment and other Earth inhabitants from the emissions of greenhouse gases that arise primarily from burning of fossil fuels, and that have warmed the globe by more than one degree Celsius over the past several decades. Speaking of the loss of species and the human role in the destruction of their ecosystems, such as forests and woodlands, the Pope wrote, “Each year sees the disappearance of thousands of plant and animal species which we will never know, which our children will never see, because they have been lost forever. The great majority become extinct for reasons related to human activity. Because of us, thousands of species will no longer give glory to God by their very existence, nor convey their message to us. We have no such right.” Here was not just an argument based on self-preservation, ecosystem services provided to humans by intact nature, or dependence of future discoveries on conservation of existing ecosystems. Here was an argument that reached into the very essence of what it means to be human.

Francis understood that it’s not enough to just talk about these topics, but that action was sorely needed, from activities of well-meaning individuals to negotiations in the halls of the United Nations, and everywhere in between.

Pope Francis condemned nuclear weapons—even their existence, thereby introducing an urgent moral argument into the geopolitical considerations of all states, and most especially those that retain or rely on nuclear weapons for so-called security. He challenged the widespread notion that nuclear weapons keep us safe, arguing instead that the mere possession of these uniquely dangerous arms is immoral. He stated so in a Vatican conference in 2017, and then again in 2019, while visiting Hiroshima. He was a staunch supporter of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), a UN treaty that aims to eliminate all nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth. In fact, Holy See was the first States Party to the treaty, having signed and ratified it on September 20, 2017, the very first day that the TPNW was opened for signatures. In his message to the President of the First Meeting of States Parties, in June of 2022, Pope Francis stated that “a world free of nuclear weapons is both necessary and possible,” furthermore referring to existing disarmament treaties as “moral commitments.” He was supportive of not only the treaty’s elimination clauses, but also of its humanitarian provisions for victim assistance and environmental remediation. “Here my thoughts go to the Hibakusha, the survivors of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and to all the victims of nuclear arms testing,” the Pope emphasized, putting on display his seemingly boundless empathy.

Of course, Pope Francis did not bring these topics to the Catholic Church. From other Popes, to major Catholic thinkers, to dedicated clergy, Church leaders and followers have a long history of contributing to discourse on existential threats to planetary life, including from nuclear weapons. But the Pope set these topics ablaze during his time at the helm of the Catholic Church. On nuclear weapons, he did not equivocate or fall under the false spell of nuclear deterrence. He saw nuclear weapons for what they are, and he told us so in no uncertain terms, thus changing the Church’s official stance on nuclear weapons. Francis understood that it’s not enough to just talk about these topics, but that action was sorely needed, from activities of well-meaning individuals to negotiations in the halls of the United Nations, and everywhere in between.

There is much that Pope Leo XIV can do to advance a better world. But on the environment and nuclear weapons, following the path that Pope Francis blazed will be essential. Other religious and spiritual leaders should join him–as should we all.

In his budget outline for fiscal year 2026, U.S. President Donald Trump proposes a massive increase in defense spending. An increase coupled with cuts in social and environmental programs defending the health and well-being of the populace. Cuts on top of the destruction of governmental infrastructure by Elon Musk and the invasion of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency—the DOGE troopers—which fractured infrastructure in programs geared toward the well-being of the general public.

Trump’s fascination with his version of an Iron Dome defense system for the United States earlier found its way into one of Trump’s many executive orders. And the House of Representatives has moved closer to including nearly $25 billion for Trump’s now-named Golden Dome within an increase of over $150 billion in defense spending, pushing the Pentagon’s annual budget up to $1,000 billion (that’s $1 trillion).

And the known massive waste in defense expenditures springing from this influence remains basically untouched by DOGE. Let’s not forget, Elon Musk’s companies are part of defense spending.

This will increase the Pentagon’s share of any deficit also fueled by tax cuts Republicans salivate over passing. Those tax cuts disproportionally benefitting the wealthiest as shown in the budget model at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

Falsely Blaming Social Security

Republicans frequently hide behind the false narrative that Social Security is the budget buster, not national defense spending nor their get-more-rich tax cuts. Disinformation sadly reinforced by typical charts on federal spending—even those created at the Treasury Department and by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO)—showing Social Security the top spender of federal dollars. And sadly bolstering the misinformed (as apparently have been some in Congress and the news media) thinking Social Security grabs more dollars from the same basket of monies as other federal programs, among them the Defense Department.

Such erroneous depiction makes Social Security an easy target for scapegoating to deflect from the real damage in today’s Republican priorities.

Let me make it as clear as possible. Social Security is funded today, as since its creation, principally by its separate dedicated payroll tax, not from the basket of general revenue as is the case in spending at the Pentagon. And it is depletion in general-revenue receipts that leads to budget deficits.

Until recent years, Social Security had surpluses from its dedicated funding source, without a drop needed from the basket of general revenue. Instead buying Treasury securities or bonds as required by law with surplus funds, which in essence was Social Security loaning the government monies to pay for other programs.

In calendar year 2023, Social Security’s Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance combined expenditures were $1,392 billion as reported in the Social Security Trustees 2024 report (Table II.B1., page 7). Social Security’s payroll tax then covered 88.6% of its costs in 2023, or $1,233 billion. The remaining $159 billion in outlays were covered by revenues from taxes on Social Security benefits, interest on Treasury securities or bonds previously bought, and liquidating some of those Treasury securities. At most, about 12% of Social Security costs depended on coverage from revenue other than solely the payroll tax.

Now compare to national defense spending. As reported in Federal Reserve Economic Data, in calendar year 2023 expenditures for national defense totaled $785 billion. This total sum feeding completely from the general-revenue trough. And in 2023 taking at least five times more from that trough than Social Security (785/159) even when including taxes on Social Security benefits. Exclude taxes on benefits ($51 billion) because accounting wise included in Social Security’s separate funding, and the Pentagon consumption is over seven times more (785/108).

Increase Pentagon’s budget to $1,000 billion and, well, spending by the Secretary of Defense becomes an even bigger budget buster.

Attacking Medicaid

Neither is Medicaid a budget buster next to defense spending. CBO shows federal expenditures for Medicaid are $232 billion less than outlays for national defense in reporting available for fiscal year 2024. Less, not more. Despite this, Republicans seem primed to cut Medicaid to partly compensate for another Republican administration raising rather than decreasing the deficit long before Trump’s first administration.

As data reported by the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (MACPAC) indicate, about 70% of total spent nationally in fiscal year 2023 across Medicaid programs in each state entailed federal monies. Federal funds already billions less than outlays for national defense. And even more billions less if Republicans ultimately do increase the defense budget as planned.

Given Medicaid is administered by each state with a combination of state and federal monies, some Republican strategies to cut Medicaid include reducing federal monies allowed states, leaving it to states to fill the revenue gap or cut services.

A battle among oligarchs over the expansion of monies in the budget made available to them by Republican lawmakers.

As the Kaiser Family Foundation’s analysis showed, the elderly population receiving Medicaid-paid services, principally in nursing homes or at home, accounted nationally for 20% of total Medicaid spending in 2021. With nearly another third of Medicaid expenses servicing individuals with disabilities, plus around 15% involving services for children.

So happens also, data reported by MACPAC indicate among the 10 states whose Medicaid budgets in 2023 relied the most on federal monies (from between 79% to 82% federal funds in AR, AZ, ID, KY, LA, MS, MT, NM, OK, and WV), nine voted for Trump in 2024. While among the 10 states relying least on federal monies (from between 60% to 64% in CO, CT, MA, MD, MN, NH, NJ, NY, PA, and WY), 8 voted for Kamala Harris.

Seems Republicans have a constituency issue in cutting Medicaid to dampen the increasing deficit spending alone from Trumpian excitement in increasing defense spending, to say nothing about lowering taxes for the wealthiest.

President Dwight Eisenhower in his farewell speech in 1961 stated: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.” And the known massive waste in defense expenditures springing from this influence remains basically untouched by DOGE. Let’s not forget, Elon Musk’s companies are part of defense spending.

Then also, as the Government Accountability Office reports, contract spending at the Department of Defense accounts for the majority of federal monies going to private companies. Lockheed Martin, for one, doesn’t even hide drooling over potential contracts for the Golden Dome initiative. The Guardian reports, Musk also is apparently working to steer even more governmental contracts toward his companies. And that apparently includes working to grab new contracted work anticipated in the Golden Dome project.

A battle among oligarchs over the expansion of monies in the budget made available to them by Republican lawmakers. Expansion with rationalization validating through hefty decreases in monies available in programs benefitting the health, education, security, and freedom in communal experience among ordinary people.

Everyday people sacrificed on the altar.

Forty years ago this month, I was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force.

I would be part of America’s all-volunteer force (AVF) for 20 years, hitting my marks and retiring as a lieutenant colonel in 2005. In my two decades of service, I met a lot of fine and dedicated officers, enlisted members, and civilians. I worked with the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps as well, and met officers and cadets from countries like Great Britain, Germany, Pakistan, Poland, and Saudi Arabia. I managed not to get shot at or kill anyone. Strangely enough, in other words, my military service was peaceful.

Don’t get me wrong: I was a card-carrying member of America’s military-industrial complex. I’m under no illusions about what a military exists for, nor should you be. As an historian, having read military history for 50 years of my life and having taught it as well at the Air Force Academy and the Naval Postgraduate School, I know something of what war is all about, even if I haven’t experienced the chaos, the mayhem, the violence, or the atrocity of war directly.

My own Orwellian turn of phrase for such mania is: Destruction is construction. In this country, an all-too-offensive military is sold as a defensive one.

Military service is about being prepared to kill. I was neither a trigger-puller nor a bomb-dropper. Nonetheless, I was part of a service that paradoxically preaches peace through superior firepower. The U.S. military and, of course, our government leaders, have had a misplaced—indeed, irrational—faith in the power of bullets and bombs to solve or resolve the most intractable of problems. Vietnam is going communist in 1965? Bomb it to hell and back. Afghanistan supports terrorism in 2001? Bomb it wildly. Iraq has weapons of mass destruction in 2003? Bomb it, too (even though it had no WMDs). The Houthis in Yemen have the temerity to protest and strike out in relation to Israel’s atrocities in Gaza in 2025? Bomb them to hell and back.

Sadly, “bomb it” is this country’s go-to option, the one that’s always on the table, the one our leaders often reach for first. America’s “best and brightest,” whether in the Vietnam era or now, have a powerful yen for destruction or, as the saying went in that long-gone era, “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.” Judging them by their acts, our leaders indeed have long appeared to believe that all too many villages, towns, cities, and countries needed to be destroyed in order to save them.

My own Orwellian turn of phrase for such mania is: Destruction is construction. In this country, an all-too-offensive military is sold as a defensive one, hence, of course, the rebranding of the Department of War as the Department of Defense. An imperial military is sold as so many freedom-fighters and -bringers. We have the mega-weapons and the urge to dominate of Darth Vader and yet, miraculously enough, we continue to believe that we’re Luke Skywalker.

This is just one of the many paradoxes and contradictions contained within the U.S. military and indeed my own life. Perhaps they’re worth teasing out and exploring, as I reminisce about being commissioned at the ripe old age of 22 in 1985—a long time ago in a country far, far away.

The Evil Empire

When I went on active duty in 1985, the country that constituted the Evil Empire on this planet wasn’t in doubt. As President Ronald Reagan said then, it was the Soviet Union—authoritarian, militaristic, domineering, and decidedly untrustworthy. Forty years later, who, exactly, is the evil empire? Is it Vladimir Putin’s Russia with its invasion of Ukraine three years ago? The Biden administration surely thought so; the Trump administration isn’t so sure. Speaking of President Donald Trump (and how can I not?), isn’t it correct to say that the U.S. is increasingly authoritarian, domineering, militaristic, and decidedly untrustworthy? Which country has roughly 800 military bases globally? Which country’s leader openly boasts of trillion-dollar war budgets and dreams of the annexation of Canada and Greenland? It’s not Russia, of course, nor is it China.

Back when I first put on a uniform, there was thankfully no Department of Homeland Security, even as the Reagan administration began to trust (but verify!) the Soviets in negotiations to reduce our mutual nuclear stockpiles. Interestingly, 1985 witnessed an aging Republican president, Reagan, working with his Soviet peer, even as he dreamed of creating a “space shield” (SDI, the strategic defense initiative) to protect America from nuclear attack. In 2025, we have an aging Republican president, Donald Trump, negotiating with Putin even as he floats the idea of a “Golden Dome” to shield America from nukes. (Republicans in Congress already seek $27 billion for that “dome,” so that “golden” moniker is weirdly appropriate and, given the history of cost overruns on American weaponry, you know that would be just the starting point of its soaring projected cost.)

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, fears of a third world war that would lead to a nuclear exchange (as caught in books of the time like Tom Clancy’s popular novel Red Storm Rising) abated. And for a brief shining moment, the U.S. military reigned supreme globally, pulverizing the junior varsity mirror image of the Soviet military in Iraq with Desert Storm in 1991. We had kicked the Vietnam Syndrome once and for all, President George H.W. Bush exulted. It was high time for some genuine peace dividends, or so it seemed.

The real problem was that that seemingly instantaneous success against Saddam Hussein’s much-overrated Iraqi military reignited the real Vietnam Syndrome, which was Washington’s overconfidence in military force as the way to secure dominance, while allegedly strengthening democracy not just here in America but globally. Hubris led to the expansion of NATO to Russia’s borders; hubris led to unipolar dreams of total dominance everywhere; hubris meant that America could somehow have the most moral as well as lethal military in the world; hubris meant that one need never concern oneself about potential blowback from allying with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan or the risk of provoking Russian aggression as NATO floated Ukraine and Georgia as future members of an alliance designed to keep Russia down.

It was the end of history (so it was said) and American-style democracy had prevailed.

Even so, militarily, this country did anything but demobilize. Under President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, there was some budgetary trimming, but military Keynesianism remained a thing, as did the military-industrial-congressional complex. Clinton managed a rare balanced budget due to domestic spending cuts and welfare reform; his cuts to military spending, however, were modest indeed. Tragically, under him, America would not become “a normal country in normal times,” as former United Nations Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick once dreamed. It would remain an empire—and an increasingly hungry one at that.

In that vein, senior civilians like Secretary of State Madeleine Albright began to wonder why this country had such a superb military if we weren’t prepared to use it to boss others around. Never mind concerns about the constitutionality of employing U.S. troops in conflicts without a congressional declaration of war. (How unnecessary! How old-fashioned!) It was time to unapologetically rule the world.

The calamitous events of 9/11 changed nothing except the impetus to punish those who’d challenged our illusions. Those same events also changed everything as America’s leaders decided it was then the moment to double down on empire, to become even more authoritarian (the Patriot Act, torture, and the like), to go openly to “the dark side,” to lash out in the only way they knew how—more bombing (Afghanistan, Iraq), followed by invasions and “surges”—then, wash, rinse, repeat.

So, had we really beaten the Vietnam Syndrome in the triumphant year of 1991? Of course not. A decade later, after 9/11, we met the enemy, and once again it was our unrepresentative government spoiling for war, no matter how ill-conceived and ill-advised—because war pays, because war is “presidential,” because America’s leaders believe that the true “power of its example” is example after example of its power, especially bombs bursting in air.

The “All-Volunteer” Force Isn’t What It Seems

Speaking as a veteran and a military historian, I believe America’s all-volunteer force has lost its way. Today’s military members—unlike those of the “greatest generation” of World War II fame—are no longer citizen-soldiers. Today’s “volunteers” have surrendered to the rhetoric of being “warriors” and “warfighters.” They take their identity from fighting wars or preparing for the same, putting aside their oath to support and defend the Constitution. They forget (or were never taught) that they must be citizens first, soldiers second. They have, in truth, come to embrace a warrior mystique that is far more consistent with authoritarian regimes. They’ve come to think of themselves—proudly so—as a breed apart.

Far too often in this America, an affinitive patriotism has been replaced by a rabid nationalism. Consider that Christocentric “America First” ideals are now openly promoted by the civilian commander-in-chief, no matter that they remain antithetical to the Constitution and corrosive to democracy. The new “affirmative action” openly affirms faith in Christ and trust in Trump (leavened with lots of bombs and missiles against nonbelievers).

Citizen-soldiers of my father’s generation, by way of contrast, thought for themselves. They chafed against military authority, confronting it when it seemed foolish, wasteful, or unlawful. They largely demobilized themselves in the aftermath of World War II. But warriors don’t think. They follow orders. They drop bombs on target. They make the war machine run on time.

To end wars and weaken militarism in America, we must render it unprofitable.

Americans, when they’re not overwhelmed by their efforts to simply make ends meet, have largely washed their hands of whatever that warrior-military does in their name. They know little about wars fought supposedly to protect them and care even less. Why should they care? They’re not asked to weigh in. They’re not even asked to sacrifice (other than to pay taxes and keep their mouths shut).

Too many people in America, it seems to me, are now playing a perilous game of make believe. We make believe that America’s wars are authorized when they clearly are not. For example, who, other than Donald Trump (and Joe Biden before him), gave the U.S. military the right to bomb Yemen?

We make believe all our troops are volunteers. We make believe we care about those “volunteers.” Sometimes, some of us even make believe we care about those wars being waged in places and countries most Americans would be hard-pressed to find on a map. How confident are you that all too many Americans could even point to the right hemisphere to find Syria or Yemen or past war zones like Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq?

War isn’t even that good at teaching Americans geography anymore!

What Is To Be Done?

If you accept that there’s a kernel of truth to what I’ve written so far, and that there’s definitely something wrong that should be fixed, the question remains: What is to be done?

Some concrete actions immediately demand our attention.

• Any ongoing wars, including “overseas contingency operations” and the like, must be stopped immediately unless Congress formally issues a declaration of war as required by the Constitution. No more nonsense about MOOTW, or “military operations other than war.” There is war or there is peace. Period. Want to bomb Yemen? First, declare war on Yemen through Congress.
• Wars, assuming they are supported by congressional declarations, must be paid for with taxes raised above all from those Americans who benefit most handsomely from fighting them. There shall be no deficit spending for war.
• Americans are used to “sin” taxes for purchases like tobacco and alcohol. So, isn’t it time for a new “sin” tax related to profiteering from war, especially by the corporations that make the distinctly overpriced weaponry without which such wars couldn’t be waged?

To end wars and weaken militarism in America, we must render it unprofitable. As long as powerful forces continue to profit so handsomely from going to war—even as “volunteer” troops are told to aspire to be “warriors,” born and trained to kill—this violent madness in America will persist, if not expand.

Look, the 22-year-old version of me thought he knew who the evil empire was. He thought he was one of the good guys. He thought his country and his military stood for something worthy, even for “greatness” of a sort. Sure, he was naïve. Perhaps he was just another wet-behind-the-ears factotum of empire. But he took his oath to the Constitution seriously and looked to a brighter day when that military would serve only as a deterrent in a world largely at peace.

The soon-to-be-62-year-old me is no longer so naïve and, these days, none too sure who’s evil and who isn’t. He knows his country is on the wrong path, that the bloody path of bullets and bombs (and profiting from the same) is always perilous for any freedom-loving people to travel on.

Somehow, America needs to be put back on the freedom trail that inspires and empowers citizens rather than wannabe warriors brandishing weapons galore. Somehow, we need to aspire again to be a nation of laws. (Can we agree that due process is better than no process?) Somehow, we need to dream of being a nation where right makes might, one that knows that destruction is not construction, one that exchanges bullets and bombs for ballots and beauty.

How else are we to become America the Beautiful?

The Hands Off! rallies signal a vibrant public urge to challenge Donald Trump, yet true resistance demands more than sporadic sunny Saturday gatherings. History, like the French Revolution, teaches us that authentic rebellion is relentless, unpredictable, ceaseless, and boldly confrontational. It thrives not in fleeting moments of fervor but in sustained, gritty determination that disrupts the status quo daily. Imagine a movement that pulses through streets, workplaces, and communities, refusing to relent. Such resistance would unsettle power, forcing accountability through constant pressure. The spark of defiance is there; now it must grow into a fire that burns consistently, reshaping the political landscape with unwavering resolve and fearless action.

What IS the Left? What should we fight for? How can we rebuild outside of the Democrats? Order my latest book “WHAT’S LEFT” here at Rall.com. It comes autographed to the person of your choice, and I’ll deliver it anywhere. Cost including shipping is $29.95 in the USA.

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On DeProgram, hosts John Kiriakou and Ted Rall dissect a series of urgent issues dominating today’s headlines. They begin with the arrests of pro-Palestinian protesters at Columbia University, where NYPD buses hauled off demonstrators amid a Trump administration crackdown targeting student activism. The hosts explore how these arrests, including that of Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian student detained during a citizenship interview, reflect a broader assault on free speech. Next, they tackle Senator John Fetterman’s bizarre behavior, questioning the motives behind his increasingly erratic public statements and private actions. The discussion shifts to the case of Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish Ph.D. candidate detained for co-authoring a pro-Palestinian op-ed. A federal appeals court recently ordered her transfer to Vermont by May 14th, marking a setback for Trump’s aggressive deportation policies.  Finally, they expose disturbing reports that Trump’s team is exploring deporting Asian immigrants to Libya, a move lawyers argue violates international law. With their incisive commentary, the hosts connect these stories to reveal a chilling pattern of authoritarianism, eroded civil liberties, and systemic overreach. This episode is essential listening for those seeking unfiltered insights into the forces shaping our world. Join Kiriakou and Rall as they challenge the establishment narrative and call for resistance—stream now on your favorite podcast platform.

The post DeProgram: Crackdowns, Chaos, and Covert Schemes appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

I want to say a few words about an issue that people all over the world are thinking about—are appalled by—but for some strange reason gets very little discussion here in the nation’s capital or in the halls of Congress. And that is the horrific humanitarian disaster that is unfolding in Gaza.

Thursday marks 68 days and counting since ANY humanitarian aid was allowed into Gaza. For more than nine weeks, Israel has blocked all supplies: no food, no water, no medicine, and no fuel.

Hundreds of truckloads of lifesaving supplies are waiting to enter Gaza, sitting just across the border, but are denied entry by Israeli authorities.

Do we really want to spend billions of taxpayer dollars starving children in Gaza?

There is no ambiguity here: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s extremist government talks openly about using humanitarian aid as a weapon. Defense Minister Israel Katz said, “Israel’s policy is clear: No humanitarian aid will enter Gaza, and blocking this aid is one of the main pressure levers.”

Starving children to death as a weapon of war is a clear violation of the Geneva Convention, the Foreign Assistance Act, and basic human decency. Civilized people do not starve children to death.

What is going on in Gaza is a war crime, committed openly and in broad daylight, and continuing every single day.

There are 2.2 million people who live in Gaza. Today, these people are trapped. The borders are sealed. And Israel has pushed the population into an ever-smaller area.

With Israel having cut off all aid, what we are seeing now is a slow, brutal process of mass starvation and death by the denial of basic necessities. This is methodical, it is intentional, it is the stated policy of the Netanyahu government.

Without fuel, there is no ability to pump fresh water, leaving people increasingly desperate, unable to find clean water to drink, wash with, or cook properly. Disease is once again spreading in Gaza.

Most of the bakeries in Gaza have now shut down, having run out of fuel and flour. The few remaining community kitchens are also shutting down. Most people are now surviving on scarce canned goods, often a single can of beans or some lentils, shared between a family once a day.

The United Nations reports that more than 2 million people out of a population of 2.2 million face severe food shortages.

The starvation hits children hardest. At least 65,000 children now show symptoms of malnutrition, and dozens have already starved to death.

Malnutrition rates increased 80% in March, the last month for which data is available, after Netanyahu began the siege, but the situation has severely deteriorated since then.

UNICEF reported Wednesday that “the situation is getting worse every day,” and that they are treating about 10,000 children for severe malnutrition.

Without adequate nutrition or access to clean water, many children will die of easily preventable diseases, killed by something as simple as diarrhea.

For the tens of thousands of injured people in Gaza, particularly the countless burn victims from Israeli bombing, their wounds cannot heal without adequate food and clean water. Left to fester, infections will kill many who should have survived.

With no infant formula, and with malnourished mothers unable to breastfeed, many infants are also at severe risk of death. Those that survive will bear the scars of their suffering for the rest of their lives.

And with little medicine available, easily treatable illnesses and chronic diseases like diabetes or heart disease can be a death sentence in Gaza.

What is going on there is not some terrible earthquake, it is not a hurricane, it is not a storm. What is going on in Gaza today is a manmade nightmare. And nothing can justify this.

What is happening in Gaza will be a permanent stain on the world’s collective conscience. History will never forget that we allowed this to happen and, for us here in the United States, that we, in fact, enabled this atrocity.

There is no doubt that Hamas, a terrorist organization, began this terrible war with its barbaric October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which killed 1,200 innocent people and took 250 hostages.

The International Criminal Court was right to indict Yahya Sinwar and other leaders of Hamas as war criminals for those atrocities.

Clearly, Israel had the right to defend itself against Hamas.

But Netanyahu’s extremist government has not just waged war against Hamas. Instead, they have waged an all-out barbaric war of annihilation against the Palestinian people.

They have intentionally made life unlivable in Gaza.

Israel, up to now, has killed more than 52,000 people and injured more than 118,000—60% of whom are women, children, and the elderly. More than 15,000 children have been killed.

Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment has damaged or destroyed two-thirds of all structures in Gaza, including 92% of the housing units. Most of the population now is living in tents or other makeshift structures.

The healthcare system in Gaza has been essentially destroyed. Most of the territory’s hospitals and primary healthcare facilities have been bombed.

Gaza’s civilian infrastructure has been totally devastated, including almost 90% of water and sanitation facilities. Most of the roads have been destroyed.

Gaza’s education system has been obliterated. Hundreds of schools have been bombed, as has every single one of Gaza’s 12 universities.

And there has been no electricity in Gaza for 18 months.

Given this reality, nobody should have any doubts that Netanyahu is a war criminal. Just like his counterparts in Hamas, he has a massive amount of innocent blood on his hands.

And now Netanyahu and his extremist ministers have a new plan: to indefinitely reoccupy all of Gaza, flatten the few buildings that are still standing, and force the entire population of 2.2 million people into a single tiny area, where hired U.S. security contractors will distribute rations to the survivors.

Israeli officials are quite open about the goal here: to force Palestinians to leave for other countries “in line with President [Donald] Trump’s vision for Gaza,” as one Israeli official said this week.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said this week that “Gaza will be entirely destroyed,” and that its population will “leave in great numbers.”

For many in Netanyahu’s extremist government, this has been the plan all along: It’s called ethnic cleansing.

This would be a terrible tragedy, no matter where or why it was happening. But what makes this tragedy so much worse for us in America is that it is our government, the United States government, that is absolutely complicit in creating and sustaining this humanitarian disaster.

Last year alone, the United States provided $18 billion in military aid to Israel. This year, the Trump administration has approved $12 billion more in bombs and weapons.

And for months, Trump has offered blanket support for Netanyahu. More than that, he has repeatedly said that the United States will actually take over Gaza after the war, that the Palestinians will be pushed out, and that the U.S. will redevelop it into what Trump calls “the Riviera of the Middle East,” a playground for billionaires.

This war has killed or injured more than 170,000 people in Gaza. It has cost American taxpayers well over $20 billion in the last year. And right now, as we speak, thousands of children are starving to death. And the U.S. president is actively encouraging the ethnic cleansing of over 2 million people.

Given that reality, one might think that there would be a vigorous discussion right here in the Senate: Do we really want to spend billions of taxpayer dollars starving children in Gaza? You tell me why spending billions of dollars to support Netanyahu’s war and starving children in Gaza is a good idea. I’d love to hear it.

But we are not having that debate. And let me suggest to you why I think we are not having that debate.

That is because we have a corrupt campaign finance system that allows the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to set the agenda here in Washington.

In the last election cycle, AIPAC’s PAC and Super PAC spent nearly $127 million combined.

And the fact is that, if you are a member of Congress and you vote against Netanyahu’s war in Gaza, AIPAC is there to punish you with millions of dollars in advertisements to see that you’re defeated.

One might think that in a democracy there would be a vigorous debate on an issue of such consequence. But because of our corrupt campaign finance system, people are literally afraid to stand up. If they do, suddenly you will have all kinds of ads coming in to your district to defeat you.

Sadly, I must confess, that this political corruption works. Many of my colleagues will privately express their horror at Netanyahu’s war crimes, but will do or say very little publicly about it.

History will not forgive our complicity in this nightmare. The time is long overdue for us to end our support for Netanyahu’s destruction of the Palestinian people. We must not put another nickel into Netanyahu’s war machine. We must demand an immediate cease-fire, a surge in humanitarian aid, the release of the hostages, and the rebuilding of Gaza—not for billionaires to enjoy their Riviera there—but rebuilding Gaza for the Palestinian people.

Every day brings a new story about the outsized role of private wealth in American politics. Elon Musk slashing and burning his way through federal agencies. Billionaire campaign donors like Howard Lutnick and Linda McMahon running cabinet departments. Other Trump patrons reportedly shaping policy on everything from crypto to the Middle East. Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, a small group of major donors is organizing to fund the party’s 2026 push to retake Congress.

And these are only the donors we know about.

The Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision ushered in the era of “dark money”—ballooning campaign spending by groups that do not disclose their funding sources. On Wednesday, the Brennan Center published a study by the journalist Anna Massoglia. She found that dark money groups spent almost $2 billion on the 2024 election, roughly double the total spent in 2020. And that’s the money Massoglia could identify—the real total is almost certainly higher, perhaps substantially so.

Voters are deeply unhappy about the role of money in politics, but years of inaction to address this issue have also left them understandably cynical.

The term “dark money” as we use it refers to election spending by groups that are not legally required to—and do not—disclose their donors. Most of this spending would have been illegal before Citizens United, which eviscerated many long-standing limits on campaign money and led to the creation of super PACs, political organizations that can raise and spend unlimited money on campaigns.

The justices got many things wrong in Citizens United. One of them was their assurance that all the new campaign spending they had just allowed would be transparent, allowing Americans to be fully informed about who was trying to influence their votes.

The justices seem not to have realized, however, that many of the new groups they were now permitting to spend unlimited amounts on campaigns were not subject to any disclosure rules. There have since been numerous efforts to fix this oversight and require all major campaign donors to be made public—most recently as part of the Freedom to Vote Act, which came within two votes of overcoming a Senate filibuster in 2022—but none of those bills have made it through Congress.

Meanwhile, dark money in federal elections has continued to rise—and become even harder to trace. In the years immediately after Citizens United, groups that didn’t reveal their donors tended to purchase their own campaign ads, which were at least reported to the Federal Election Commission if they ran in the weeks before the election and were therefore fairly easy to track. Even if the source of the money was opaque, we could see the spending itself.

Now, as our new analysis shows, reported campaign ads account for just a tiny fraction of dark money spending. Most of it now goes directly into the coffers of super PACs, and some of it pays for online ads and early-cycle TV and radio ads not subject to any legally required disclosure. We are able to track down some of that money due to voluntary disclosures and research using services that monitor TV advertising, but our overall tally of dark money spent in 2024 is an undercount, possibly by a large margin.

Both Republicans and Democrats benefited from significant dark money support in 2024, but the majority of traceable dark money backed Democrats. Most of those funds went toward enormous spending in the presidential race—$1 out of every $6 in dark money that we can track was funneled to Future Forward, the super PAC backing Joe Biden and then Kamala Harris. Trump’s dark money support that we know about was not as high, although it still amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars (including more than $35 million that paid for apparent “false flag” ads in swing states designed to look like they came from Harris).

Ultimately, neither party will have any incentive to curb reliance on secret spending absent a change in the law. To congressional Democrats’ credit, they included a fix in the Freedom to Vote Act. It was among the most popular provisions in the bill, enjoying broad public support among voters from both parties.

Voters are deeply unhappy about the role of money in politics, but years of inaction to address this issue have also left them understandably cynical. Regaining Americans’ trust must include concrete steps to make it easier for them to hold political leaders accountable. Providing the transparency that even Citizens United promised 15 years ago would be a good place to start.

“Corporations First.” That’s the slogan that would truthfully describe the Trump administration’s approach to law enforcement, not “America First.”

A new investigation by my organization shows that the Trump administration is dropping investigations and enforcement actions against corporations that showered money on Trump’s inauguration earlier this year.

Seventy-one big businesses, which were facing at least 102 ongoing federal enforcement actions at the time of Trump’s inauguration, collectively gave a whopping $57 million to the Trump-Vance inaugural fund, we found. And many may now be collecting special favors.

Time will tell whether the payments by other big corporate inauguration donors—like Amazon, Apple, Boeing, FedEx, Goldman Sachs, Google, Johnson & Johnson, Nvidia, and Pilgrim’s Pride—will see enforcement go away, too.

Trump’s inaugural haul from corporations facing investigations and lawsuits alone is comparable to the total amount raised for the inaugurations of former Presidents Barack Obama in 2009 ($53 million) and Joe Biden in 2021 ($62 million). And it’s just a third of the record-breaking $239 million Trump collected overall, $153 million of which came from corporate donors.

Regardless of president or party, private funding for the presidential inauguration poses a serious threat of corrupt influence buying by corporations and the wealthy. Unlike the vast majority of Americans, they can ingratiate themselves to an incoming administration with six- and seven-figure checks.

Donations by for-profit corporations are particularly suspect—corporations’ purpose, after all, is to amass wealth for private investors, an agenda that frequently pits them against laws and regulations that protect consumers, workers, and the broader public interest.

We may not know exactly what favors corporations might seek. But it’s reasonable to assume that getting rid of penalties or investigations for ripping off consumers, exploiting workers, polluting our environment, and engaging in illegal and unfair business practices would be high on the list.

Public Citizen has compiled a list of more than 500 enforcement actions against corporations that the Trump administration inherited from the Biden administration. During President Trump’s first 100 days alone, federal agencies halted or dropped at least 126 of these enforcement actions.

These include actions against 15 corporate inauguration donors whose cases were dismissed or withdrawn, plus six whose cases were halted. These 21 corporations collectively donated $18 million to the inaugural fund.

These include companies accused of violating consumer financial protections, such Bank of America, Capital One, JPMorgan, and Walmart; some crypto businesses accused of violating securities laws, such as Coinbase, Crypto.com, Kraken, and Ripple; private prison corporations that allegedly mistreated inmates, like CoreCivic and GEO Group; and businesses accused of engaging in illegal bribery schemes in foreign countries, including Cognizant, Pfizer, and Toyota.

Time will tell whether the payments by other big corporate inauguration donors—like Amazon, Apple, Boeing, FedEx, Goldman Sachs, Google, Johnson & Johnson, Nvidia, and Pilgrim’s Pride—will see enforcement go away, too.

To be fair, some cases against corporate inauguration donors do appear to be proceeding unhindered. The antitrust cases against Google and Meta are proceeding, the FTC’s case against Uber for deceptive billing practices has been filed, and Gilead Pharmaceuticals is being required to pay $202 million to settle allegations of paying illegal kickbacks to doctors.

These signs of ongoing enforcement are a good thing. But among the more than 100 cases being dropped and halted, they’re exceptional. Because of the mass firings of federal workers at enforcement agencies, they likely represent the conclusion of past enforcement efforts, not the continuation of an ongoing trend.

Dropping corporate cases en masse, as the Trump administration is doing, is a greenlight for corporate lawlessness. It portends a return to recklessness and greed that fueled corporate catastrophes like Wall Street’s 2008 financial crisis, the Oxycontin-fueled opioid crisis, BP’s oil spill disaster, and Boeing’s deadly 737 Max crashes.

It is the definition of “corporations first.”

As U.S. President Donald Trump and friends claim control over the country, celebrating their war on migrants—“the enemy” of the moment, whom they’ve created and dehumanized—much of America writhes in shock and irony as it looks on.

The president who hates criminals is also our criminal-in-chief. But fortunately (for him), he’s above the law! Court rulings don’t apply to him—not when he’s busy keeping America safe from the boogeymen. To be an exalted leader, you need to keep a serious percentage of the populace in a state of simple-minded fear: The enemy are very, very bad people. They belong to gangs. They eat our pets. But I will protect you.

I’ll reopen Guantánamo. I’ll reopen Alcatraz. And the electorate can sigh with a sense of relief and safety. He’s bringing back our greatness—that is to say, our racist certainty. He’s recreating a country that real Americans can understand... one that’s like them.

Reopening Gitmo, reopening Alcatraz—depriving innocent and marginalized people of the right to pursue life—will not keep us safe.

At least this is how it seems. But before I get too deeply immersed in Trump-inspired sarcasm, let me grapple with some deeper reality as well. American “greatness” has primarily been military in nature: us vs. somebody! The nation’s mainstream consciousness, be it Democratic or Republican, cannot stop playing war. At least this has been the case throughout my lifetime.

As Jessica Schulberg and Paul Blumenthal recently pointed out at Huffington Post, for instance, the Bush-era War on Terror helped give birth to Trump’s war on migrants: today’s terrorists, the “invaders” of the present moment. They quote J. Wells Dixon, an attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, who represented Gitmo detainees under Bush. He notes that Trump’s initial plan to open Gitmo was “an effort to outsource detention and torture to avoid the constraints of U.S. law. It’s the natural consequence and evolution of what we’ve seen throughout the last 20 years, certainly with the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program and the use of black sites overseas.”

However, to Trump’s frustration, there was “too much rule of law” at Gitmo, making matters too difficult to turn the hellish site into a dumping ground for thousands of migrants. Trump’s waging war! The last thing he needs is rule of law. So his next step was to work out an agreement with El Salvador’s authoritarian president, Nayib Bukele, allegedly paying El Salvador some $6 million to send American migrants to the country’s maximum-security hellhole, the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo. This would allow Trump’s war to continue.

As Schulberg and Blumenthal write:

On March 15, shortly after ICE sent all migrants in Guantánamo back to U.S. facilities, Trump signed an executive order, claiming that Tren de Aragua had “invaded” the U.S., and that any Venezuelan migrant age 14 or older with alleged ties to the gang could be removed under the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th-century wartime authority only previously invoked during the War of 1812 and both World Wars.

Some good—or at least hopeful—news from all this is that the opposition to Trump’s war-gaming isn’t sheerly marginal. The opposition is also politically structural, such as, for instance the existence of sanctuary cities—whose governments refuse to cooperate, or allow their police departments to cooperate, with ICE, despite the risks they face for doing so.

For instance, a few days ago, the Trump administration sued Colorado and the city of Denver “for allegedly,” according to Truthout, “obstructing federal immigration enforcement. The suit objects to sanctuary policies—local initiatives to protect immigrant communities from federal deportation efforts—and argues that such policies encroach on federal authority.”

“This move follows Donald Trump’s recent executive order instructing the DOJ to penalize sanctuary cities, including threatening to withhold federal funding.”

Obviously, this is no small challenge to face. Maybe Trump will wind up succeeding with his authoritarian agenda—God help the migrants, God help all so us—and if that happens, humanitarian opposition will have to continue nonetheless, no matter how difficult things get. But opposition is also present right now. So is political belief in a higher value than waging war and defeating an “enemy.”

In response to the federal lawsuit against Denver, a statement from the mayor’s office declared that the city “will not be bullied or blackmailed, least of all by an administration that has little regard for the law and even less for the truth.”

This is not simply an “us vs. them” confrontation between the Trump-MAGA world and progressives. The confrontation is both pragmatic and spiritual: What keeps us safe? Reopening Gitmo, reopening Alcatraz—depriving innocent and marginalized people of the right to pursue life—will not keep us safe. What we must embrace and learn to understand, both individually and collectively, is what I call empathic sanity: the ability to live as one, to value everyone’s full humanity.

Turns out there are more than 200 sanctuary cities in the United States. As George Cassidy Payne writes at Medium, a sanctuary city is a place of reverence, committed to the enormous value that all people are fully human. All people are equal.

“In this context,” he writes, “sanctuary cities offer more than a geographical claim. They challenge us to look past a person’s nationality and recognize their humanity. They call us to prioritize their place of residence, viewing them as global citizens, not by their place of birth. In the sanctuary, people are treated with radical respect; here, no one has the right to harm another without their consent, nor to judge anyone based on their skin color, accent, citizenship status, or nation of origin.”

This sounds like a first step in the creation of international security.

As the controller of Lehigh County and a pension board member, I am entrusted with safeguarding public workers' retirement savings—people who fix our roads, teach our children, and keep our community running. This duty requires more than spreadsheets. It demands foresight, integrity, and courage when risks outweigh rewards. Public pensions are not just private retirements—they are public trusts. Every dollar mismanaged today becomes a broken promise tomorrow.

That's why I introduced a resolution, which our board passed, to halt new Tesla stock purchases in our actively managed funds.

Tesla's earnings have collapsed by 71% compared to last year. Auto revenues are down 20%. Sales in Germany plummeted 76% in February. Tesla lost 49% of its market share in China while BYD gained 161%. General Motors, once dismissed as outdated, now leads domestic electric Vehicle sales with a 50% increase in 2024. Its price-to-earnings ratio, how much investors pay for every dollar the company earns, is wildly inflated compared to industry norms. That kind of mismatch isn't a vote of confidence; it's a flashing warning light.

Public pension boards have long been treated as silent partners in the economy. But silence is no longer neutral. We are shareholders in the future, and that gives us responsibility.

But the numbers tell only part of the story. Tesla is bleeding trust.

The company's CEO, Elon Musk, has made himself a spectacle. He dismantled Twitter's identity on a whim, and now, by becoming a symbol of political division, he's destabilizing one of America's most recognizable brands. The consequences are already here: public walkouts, showroom protests, declining global sales.

For those of us managing public money, those signs matter. Tesla no longer behaves like a company focused on innovation, customer loyalty, or product integrity. It behaves like a company driven by ego. That is not a foundation we can trust with our employees' retirements.

This is why we voted to pause. We also requested that our investment consultant provide a complete accounting of our exposure.

We are not alone in this concern. Dutch and Danish pension funds have already divested. Canada's largest public-sector union has called for action. In the U.S., state treasurers and union leaders are beginning to raise similar alarms. Momentum is building, and it's grounded in a simple reality: Fiduciary responsibility must be insulated from erratic leadership.

Tesla has spent years fighting off unions, firing organizers, intimidating workers, and refusing to sign collective bargaining agreements. But now, the stability it has rejected might be the only thing that can restore what it has lost. Unions don't just raise wages, they stabilize companies. They create guardrails that protect against reckless leadership and ensure that decision-makers are accountable not just to shareholders, but to the people who build the product. A unionized workforce would offer not just internal structure, but public credibility. When workers have power, companies are held to account.

I urge public pension funds nationwide, especially those shaped by organized labor, including the United Auto Workers, to look hard at their Tesla holdings. These funds represent the collective strength of working people. They should not underwrite volatility, reward self-interest, or ignore risk. Coordinated action by labor-aligned funds can do more than shift portfolios; it can send a clear message to the market: Long-term value isn't earned through celebrity or chaos, but through companies that treat their workers, customers, and shareholders like they matter.

There is a connection between morality and capitalism. Profit built on spectacle crumbles quickly. But profit built on trust, stability, and accountability, that endures. That's the kind of return our retirees deserve.

Public pension boards have long been treated as silent partners in the economy. But silence is no longer neutral. We are shareholders in the future, and that gives us responsibility. We can't build a just economy while funding its collapse. If our dollars prop up instability, then silence is complicity.

The Bandung Conference in April 1955 has achieved the status of a mythical moment in the history of the Global South. There have been many accounts that have highlighted its downsides—among them, the underrepresentation of leaders from sub-Saharan Africa and the absence of anyone from Latin America, the way Cold War geopolitical rivalries found their way into the meeting, its legitimization of the nation state as the principal unit of interaction among the peoples of the postcolonial world to the detriment of other avenues of expressing and harnessing solidarity, and the disappointing aftermath exemplified by the India-China frontier war in the Himalayas in 1962.

Despite these undoubtedly important though arguably revisionist assertions, the “Bandung Moment” has achieved mythical status since, while its expression in the conference proceedings may have been less than perfect, the spirit of postcolonial unity among the rising peoples of the Global South pervaded the conference. Moreover, this spirit of Bandung has been a constant spur to many political actors to reproduce it in its imagined pristine form, leading to dissatisfaction with successive manifestations of Third World solidarity. To celebrate the spirit of Bandung is not simply to mark 70 years since the Asia-Africa Conference, but to affirm what being faithful to its principles and ideals means today.

It took determined resistance from the peoples of Vietnam, the Middle East, and other parts of the world to force the United States and its allies to learn the consequences of violating these principles, but it was at the cost of millions of lives in the Global South.

The Bandung document was primarily an anti-colonial document, and it is heartening to note that so many governments and peoples in the Global South have rallied behind the people of Palestine as they fight genocide and settler-colonialism in Gaza and the West Bank. The role of South Africa in lodging and pursuing the charge of genocide against Israel in the International Court of Justice, with the formal support of 31 other governments, is exemplary in this regard.

Bandung and Vietnam

April 2025 , the 70th anniversary of Bandung, is also the 50th anniversary of the reunification of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The celebrations over the last few days in Ho Chi Minh City brought back images of that decisive defeat of the American empire—the iconic photos of a tank of the People’s Army smashing through the gate of the presidential palace in Saigon and the frenzied evacuation by helicopter of collaborators from the rooftop of the U.S. embassy. In retrospect, the defeat in Vietnam was the decisive blow dealt to American arms in the last century, one from which it never really recovered. True, the empire appeared to have a second wind in 2001 and 2003, with the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, respectively, but that illusion was shattered with the panicked, shameful exit of the United States and its Afghan subordinates from Kabul in 2021, the images of which evoked the memories of the debacle in Saigon decades earlier.

The defeats in Vietnam and Afghanistan were the dramatic bookends of the military debacle of the empire, which had massive repercussions both globally and in the imperial heartland. Bandung underlined as key principles “Respect of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all nations” and “Non-intervention or non-interference into the internal affairs of another country.” It took determined resistance from the peoples of Vietnam, the Middle East, and other parts of the world to force the United States and its allies to learn the consequences of violating these principles, but it was at the cost of millions of lives in the Global South. And it is by no means certain that the era of aggressive Western interventionism has come to an end.

Ascent and Counterrevolution

The economic dimension of the struggle between the Global South and the Global North since Bandung might have been less dramatic, but it was no less consequential. And it was equally tortuous. Bandung was followed by the founding of the Non-Aligned Movement in Belgrade in 1961, the formation of the Group of 77, and the establishment of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). This upward arc in the struggle of the Global South for structural change in the global economy climaxed with the call for the New International Economic Order (NIEO) in 1974.

Then the counterrevolution began. Taking advantage of the Third World debt crisis in the early 1980s, structural adjustment was foisted on the Global South via the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, United Nations agencies like the U.N. Center for Transnational Corporations were either abolished or defanged, and the World Trade Organization (WTO) supplanted the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and sidelined UNCTAD. The “jewel in the crown of multilateralism,” the WTO was meant to discipline the Global South not only with trade rules benefiting the Global North but also with anti-development regimes in intellectual property rights, investment, competition, and government procurement.

Will the BRICS or any other alternative multilateral system be able to avoid replicating the old order of power and hierarchy?

Instead of the promised “development decades” heralded by the rhetoric of the United Nations, Africa and Latin America experienced lost decades in the 1980s and 1990s, and in 1997, a massive regional financial crisis instigated by Western speculative capital and austerity programs imposed by the International Monetary Fund ended the “Asian Economic Miracle.”

Although most governments submitted to IMF-World Bank structural adjustment programs, some, like Argentina, Venezuela, and Thailand resisted successfully, backed by their citizens. But the main area of economic war between North and South was the WTO. A partnership between southern governments and international civil society frustrated the adoption of the so-called Seattle Round during the Third Ministerial Conference of the WTO in Seattle. Then during the Fifth Ministerial Conference in Cancun in 2003, developing country governments staged a dramatic walk out from which the WTO never recovered; indeed, it lost its usefulness as the North’s principal agency of global trade and economic liberalization.

Rise of China and the BRICS

It was the sense of common interest and working together to oppose northern initiatives at the WTO that formed the basis for the formation of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), which gradually emerged as an alternative pole to the U.S.-dominated multilateral system in the second decade of the 21st century.

The anchor of the BRICS was China. A country that had beaten imperialism over five decades of struggle in the first half of the 20th century, the People’s Republic confidently entered into a devil’s bargain with the West: In return for offering cheap labor, it sought massive foreign investment and, most important, advanced technology. Western capital, seeking super profits by exploiting Chinese labor, agreed to the deal, but it was China that got the better end of the bargain, embarking on a crash industrialization process that made it the number one economy in the globe as of today (depending of course on which metric one uses). The Chinese ascent had major implications for the Global South. China not only provided massive resources for development, becoming, as one analyst put it, the “world’s largest development bank.” By reducing dependence on the Western-dominated financial agencies and Western creditors, it also provided policy space for Southern actors to make strategic choices.

The obverse of China’s super industrialization was deindustrialization in the United States and Europe, and coupled with the global financial crisis of 2008, this led to a deep crisis of U.S. hegemony, sparking the recent momentous developments, like U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war against friends and foes alike; his attacks on traditional U.S. allies that he accused of taking advantage of the United States; his abandonment of the WTO and, indeed, of the whole U.S.-dominated multilateral system; and his ongoing retrenchment and refocusing of U.S. economic and military assets in the Western Hemisphere.

All these developments have contributed to the current fluid moment, where the balance in the struggle between the North and South is tipping toward the latter.

Rhetoric and Reality in the Global South Today

But living up to and promoting the spirit of Bandung involves more than tipping the geopolitical and geoeconomic balance toward the Global South. The very first principle of the Bandung Declaration urged “Respect for fundamental human rights and for the purposes and the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.” Nehru, Nasser, and Zhou En Lai played stellar roles in Bandung, but can it be said that the governments they represented have remained faithful to this principle? India today is ruled by a Hindu nationalist government that considers Muslims to be second-class citizens, the military regime in Egypt has engaged in egregious violations of human rights, and Beijing is carrying out the forcible cultural assimilation of the Uygurs. It is difficult to see how such acts by these governments and others that initiated the historic conference, like Burma where a military junta is engaged in genocide, and Sri Lanka with decades of a violent civil war, can be seen as consistent with this principle.

Indeed, most states of the Global South are dominated by elites that, whether via authoritarian or liberal democratic regimes, keep their people down. The levels of poverty and inequality are shocking. The gini coefficient for Brazil is 0.53, making it one of the most unequal countries in the world. The rate for China, 0.47, also reflects tremendous inequality, despite remarkable successes in poverty reduction. In South Africa, the gini coefficient is an astounding 0.63, and 55.5% of the people live under the poverty line. In India, incomes have been polarizing over the past three decades with a significant increase in bilionaires and other “high net worth” Individuals.

Perhaps the greatest obstacle to a new, equitable global order is the fact that all countries remain embedded in a system of global capitalism, where the pursuit of profits remains the engine of economic expansion, both creating great inequalities and posing a threat to the planet.

The vast masses of people throughout the Global South, including Indigenous communities, workers, peasants, fisherfolk, nomadic communities, and women are economically disenfranchised, and in liberal democracies, such as the Philippines, India, Thailand, Indonesia, South Africa, and Kenya, their participation in democracy is often limited to casting votes in periodic, often meaningless, electoral exercises. South-South investment and cooperation models such as the Belt and Road Initiative and free trade agreements frequently entail the capture of land, forests, water, and marine areas, and extraction of natural wealth for the purposes of national development. Local populations—many of whom are Indigenous—are dispossessed of their livelihoods, territories, and ancestral domains with scant legal recourse and access to justice, invoking the specter of homegrown colonialism and counterrevolutions.

Bandung, as noted earlier, institutionalized the nation state as the principal vehicle for cross-border relationships among countries. Had global movements like the Pan-African movement, the women’s movement, the labor movement, and the peasant movement been represented at the 1955 conference, the cross-border solidarities institutionalized in the post-Bandung world could perhaps have counteracted and mitigated, via lateral pressure, elite control of national governments. Those advocating for the self-determination of peoples, and for the redistribution of resources, opportunities, and wealth within national boundaries, would perhaps not have been demonized and persecuted as subversives and threats to national interests.

During this current moment of global transition, as the old Western-dominated multilateral system falls into irreversible decay, the new multipolar word will need new multilateral institutions. The challenge, especially for the big powers of the Global South, is not to create a replica of the old Western-dominated system, where the dominant powers merely used the U.N., WTO, and Bretton Woods institutions to indirectly impose their will and preferences on the vast majority of countries. Will the BRICS or any other alternative multilateral system be able to avoid replicating the old order of power and hierarchy? To be honest, the current political-economic regimes in the most powerful countries in the Global South do not inspire confidence.

Bandung and the Continuing Specter of Capitalism

At the time of the Bandung Conference, the political economy of the globe was more diverse. There was the communist bloc headed by the Soviet Union. There was China, with its push to move from national democracy to socialism. There were the neutralist states like India that were seeking a third way between communism and capitalism. With decades of neoliberal transformation of both the Global North and the Global South, that diversity has vanished. Perhaps the greatest obstacle to a new, equitable global order is the fact that all countries remain embedded in a system of global capitalism, where the pursuit of profits remains the engine of economic expansion, both creating great inequalities and posing a threat to the planet. The dynamic centers of global capitalism may have moved, over the last 500 years, from the Mediterranean to Holland to Britain to the United States and now to the Asia Pacific, but capitalism continues to both penetrate the farthest reaches of the globe and deepen its entrenchment in areas it has subjugated. Capitalism continually melts all that is solid into thin air, to use an image from a famous manifesto, creating inequalities both within and among societies, and exacerbating, indeed threatening to render terminal, the relationship between the planet and the human community.

Can we fulfill the aspirations of Bandung without bringing forth a post-capitalist system of economic, social, and political relations? A system where people in all their diversity and strengths can participate and benefit equally, free from the violence of bigotry, racism, patriarchy, and authoritarianism, and from the slavery to endless growth that is destroying the planet? That is the question, or rather that is the challenge, and the “unfinished business” of Bandung. The 10 principles that form the basis of the Bandung spirit are reflected in international human rights law but have been cynically manipulated to serve particular geopolitical, geoeconomic, racialized, and gendered interests. Being faithful to the spirit of Bandung in our era therefore, requires us to go beyond the limits of Bandung. The Bandung Spirit continues to signify ideals of anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism, peace, justice, self-determination, and solidarity—ideals that were shaped by the peoples of Asia and Africa at the forefront of struggles for liberation from colonialism and resistance to imperialism, who gave their lives for liberty. Despite the achievement of independence from colonial occupation—with significant exceptions like Palestine, West Papua, and Kanaky—struggles of rural and urban working classes for freedom from capitalist exploitation and extractivism, and from fascist alliances between capital and authoritarian states continue.

“History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake,” declares a character in a famous novel. The world might seem to be on the cusp of a new era, with its promise of a new global order, but the Global South still has to awaken from the nightmare of the last 500 years. It is not coincidental that the birth of capitalism also saw the beginning of the colonial subjugation of the Global South. Only with the coming of a postcapitalist global order will the nightmare truly end.

Early this year, as snow froze into sheets of solid ice, covering the ground for weeks, almost 20% of St. Louis Public School students were unhoused. Meanwhile, in warm town halls, former city Mayor Tishaura Jones praised a proposed new hazardous chemical facility, displaying the city's economic priorities.

St. Louis's northside has long been subjected to the environmental effects of militarization, from the radiation secretly sprayed on residents of Pruitt Igoe and Northside communities in the 1950s, to the dumped cancer-causing Manhattan Project radioactive waste that poisoned Coldwater Creek. A proposed new Israeli Chemical Limited (ICL) facility in north St. Louis would not only be another colonial imposition, but it also poses disastrous environmental risks for the entire state.

A new ICL facility would further establish St. Louis as a hub of militarization and an exporter of global death and destruction. In St. Charles, Boeing has built more than 500,000 Joint Direct Attack Munition guidance kits, known as JDAMS. An Amnesty International report tied these to attacks on Palestinian civilian homes, families, and children, making our region complicit in war crimes. In addition to hosting the explosives weapons manufacturer Boeing, Missouri is home to Monsanto (now Bayer), which produced Agent Orange.

Why does a foreign chemical company with almost $7 billion in earnings need so much funding from our local and federal government at the expense of our residents?

What's lesser known is that Monsanto is responsible for white phosphorus production in a supply chain trifecta with ICL and Pine Bluffs Arsenal. White phosphorus is a horrific incendiary weapon that heats up to 1,400°F, and international law bans its use against civilians. From 2020 to 2023, the U.S. Department of Defense ordered and paid ICL for over 180,000 lbs of white phosphorus, shipped from their South City Carondelet location to Pine Bluff Arsenal in Arkansas. White phosphorus artillery shells with Pine Bluff Arsenal codes were identified in Lebanon and Gaza after the Israel Defense Forces unlawfully used them over residential homes and refugee camps, according to Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Another ICL facility, combined with the new National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency that analyzes drone footage to direct U.S.military attacks, would put North St. Louis squarely on the map for military retaliation from any country seeking to strike back against U.S. global interventionism.

Within a mile of the Carondelet ICL site, the Environmental Protection Agency has identified unsafe levels of cancer-risking air toxins, hazardous waste, and wastewater discharge. The new facility would be built within five miles of intake towers and open-air sedimentation ponds that provide drinking water to St. Louis. An explosion or leak could destroy the city's water supply and harm eastern Missouri towns along the Mississippi. ICL has committed multiple Environmental and Workplace Safety violations, including violating the Clean Air Act at its South City facility. In 2023, it was declared the worst environmental offender by Israel's own Environmental Protection Ministry after the 2017 Ashalim Creek disaster, and were fined $33 million.

ICL claims the new North City site is a safe and green facility for manufacturing lithium iron phosphate for electric vehicles; however, lithium manufacturing is hardly a green or safe process. Lithium and phosphorus mining require enormous amounts of freshwater—a protected resource—resulting in poisoned ecosystems and a limited water supply for residents and wildlife in the local communities where they are sourced.

In October 2024, a lithium battery plant in Fredericktown, Missouri, burst into flames, forcing residents to evacuate and killing thousands of fish in nearby rivers. The company had claimed to have one of the most sophisticated automated fire suppression systems in the world, yet it still caused a fire whose aftermath continues to affect residents today, with comparisons being drawn to East Palestine, Ohio. Meanwhile, in January, over 1,000 people in California had to evacuate due to a massive fire at a lithium facility, the fourth fire there since 2019. Despite ICL claiming that the new site will use a "safer" form of lithium processing, it's clear that lithium facilities are not as safe as profit-driven corporations claim them to be.

Missouri leaders repeatedly prioritize corporate profits over people via tax abatements. ICL is receiving $197 million from the federal government. The city is forgiving a $500,000 loan to troubled investors Green Street to sell the land to ICL and is proposing a 90% tax abatement in personal property taxes for ICL, plus 15 years of real estate tax abatements. This is a troubling regional trend, considering that in 2023, St. Louis County approved $155 million in tax breaks to expand Boeing, also giving them a 50% cut in real estate and personal property taxes over 10 years.

Corporate tax breaks in the city have cost minority students in St. Louis Public Schools $260 million in a region where 30% of children are food insecure. Over 2,000 people in St. Louis city are homeless. Enough babies die each year in St Louis to fill 15 kindergarten classrooms. Black babies are three times more likely to die than white babies before their first birthday, and Black women are 2.4 times more likely to die during pregnancy. Spending public funds on corporate tax breaks instead of directing them toward food, housing, and life-saving medical care for Black women and babies is inexcusable. Why does a foreign chemical company with almost $7 billion in earnings need so much funding from our local and federal government at the expense of our residents?

Officials cite "job creation" as a major reason to expand ICL. Still, the new facility is only expected to create 150 jobs, and there is no evidence that these jobs will be given to people in the community where it is being built. Investing in Black and minority businesses would lead to actual self-sustaining economic development.

Despite receiving hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government, local tax breaks, the backing of former Gov. Mike Parson, and approval from city committees, the facility's opening is not a done deal. The St. Louis City Board of Alders could still intervene. Stopping a facility with this much federal and international backing would require massive pushback from Missourians. Residents deserve more information and input in this process, especially considering the city's resistance to hearing public comments. Notably, when locals submitted a Sunshine request for the ICL permit in March, it was so heavily redacted that it was unreadable.

This facility would turn local Black neighborhoods into environmental and military sacrifice zones, and our response to city, state, and federal leaders should be a definitive and resounding No!

CODEPINK Missouri has a petition to stop the building of the ICL facility in St. Louis.

Middle East Eye reports that Saudi Arabia pressured the Trump administration to cease bombing Yemen in advance of his planned trip to the Kingdom next week because such raids would be an embarrassment for him and his host. U.S. President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he was convinced that the Houthis were sincere in their new pledge to cease targeting shipping in the Red Sea.

The subtext here is that people in the region believe the U.S. is bombing an Arab country on behalf of Israeli shipping in the Red Sea and to protect Israel from repercussions for its Gaza genocide. Attacking the Houthis, who are not otherwise popular, on these grounds while Trump is in Riyadh would make it look like Saudi Arabia is also running interference for the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Houthi strategy of hitting out at Israeli interests has helped rally the people around them and lends them some regional popularity.

Both the Biden administration and the Trump administration have bombed Yemen in reaction to the Houthi targeting of Red Sea shipping and attacks on Israel in sympathy with the people of Gaza, against whom Israel has conducted serial atrocities.

MEE says that the Saudis have requested that Trump not bring up normalization with Israel on this trip, since Riyadh is determined not to recognize Israel until there is a firm prospect of a Palestinian state. Unlike the UAE and Bahrain, which did recognize Israel, Saudi Arabia has a fairly large population of citizens, most of whom would be extremely upset to see their king reward the Israelis for their Gaza atrocities by establishing diplomatic relations.

The Houthis do not appear to have made any pledge to cease targeting Israel with missiles, and the Israeli government was reportedly blindsided by the Trump move. Trump kept them out of the loop, much to their dismay. On Tuesday, Israel itself bombed Sanaa in retaliation for the Houthi missile attack Sunday on Ben Gurion Airport.

Oman’s foreign minister, Badr Albusaidi, confirmed the White House announcement of the cessation of hostilities. Oman has been a go-to mediator for conflicts in the region, and is helping negotiate a Trump deal with Iran.

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A senior Houthi official, Politburo member Muhammad Ali al-Houthi, expressed cautious optimism, saying that the American pledge to halt bombing the small country on the southwest edge of the Arabian Peninsula would be “field tested.”

Both the Biden administration and the Trump administration have bombed Yemen in reaction to the Houthi targeting of Red Sea shipping and attacks on Israel in sympathy with the people of Gaza, against whom Israel has conducted serial atrocities. Trump alone has ordered 800 bombing raids on the desperately poor country. Yemen is the only Arab country to have reacted against the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Its methods, however, have involved war crimes, since it has attacked civilian container ships, most of them not actually connected to Israel, and has attacked civilian targets in Israel—or has been unable to control its missiles, endangering civilian life—which is a war crime.

Former National Security adviser to the Iranian parliament, Heshmetollah Felahat, said Tuesday that the cessation of U.S. bombing of Yemen was connected to U.S.-Iran negotiations and was a way for Trump to block attempts of Netanyahu to draw the U.S. into war with Iran. He said that the chances of successful U.S.-Iran negotiations just went up.

Increasing taxes on high income earners helped raise revenue without hampering the wealth of the millionaire class in Massachusetts and Washington, according to a new policy brief from the Institute for Policy Studies and State Revenue Alliance.

A common counter to raising taxes on the rich is that they will simply flee their home states to jurisdictions with friendlier tax codes. While some tax migration is inevitable, the wealthy that move to avoid taxes represent a tiny percentage of their own social class. The top one percent are incentivized not to move because of family, social networks and local business knowledge.

Our findings support the case against tax flight: The number of individuals with a net worth of at least seven-figures continued to expand in both Massachusetts and Washington after tax hikes. The millionaire class has grown by 38.6 percent in Massachusetts and 46.9 percent in Washington over the past two years. The seven-figure clubs in those states saw their wealth grow by $580 million and $748 million, respectively.

We have witnessed a counterrevolution over the past 50 years where the nation’s wealth and income has concentrated at an extreme level in the hands of a small but powerful minority.

Not only did millionaires not flee the states imposing new taxes, but the states became richer. The four percent surtax on million-dollar incomes in Massachusetts and the seven percent tax on capital gains of $250,000 or more in Washington State succeeded in raising revenue — $2.2 billion for FY 2024 and $1.2 billion in its first two years of implementation, respectively.

These new resources have been invested in educational programs that support early learning, childcare, and free school lunches and community college. In the case of Massachusetts, some of the revenue collected is earmarked towards public transportation.

That experience contrasts with the failure of the Great Kansas Tax Cut Experiment that began in 2012. The Sunflower State lagged behind its neighbors in a number of economic categories and experienced revenue shortfalls. The experiment was abandoned five years later.

Lastly, the brief looks at the revenue potential of a wealth tax aimed at ultra-high net worth individuals. We identified individuals with $50 million or more in wealth across four states and estimated how much different taxes could raise. These individuals have the liquidity to pay and, as my colleague and former tax attorney Bob Lord has argued, need to have their rate of accumulation curbed.

A two percent wealth tax on this class of ultra-high net worth individuals has the potential to raise $7.4 billion in Massachusetts, $21.9 billion in New York, $700 million in Rhode Island, and $8.2 billion in Washington. This is a significant source of potential revenue that can be invested in a green transition, permanently affordable housing, and universal healthcare.

At the time of writing, legislators in Washington State are awaiting Governor Bob Ferguson’s signature to pass new taxes to help bring down their $16 billion budget deficit. Even a one-time 3% wealth tax could bring down the deficit from $16 billion to $3.7 billion.

We have witnessed a counterrevolution over the past 50 years where the nation’s wealth and income has concentrated at an extreme level in the hands of a small but powerful minority. They use their resources to increase their access to the state, buy up more assets, and squeeze the living standards of the working class. We have the policy tools at our disposal to reverse this trend. Let’s put progressive taxation to work.

On May 2, New York Magazine’s Ben Terris penned a bombshell exposé that profiled Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman’s struggles with mental health, his maltreatment of staff, and his pervasive support for the genocide in Gaza, among other concerning discoveries. The coverage was extensively sourced and researched, and many of the revelations Terris uncovered were previously buried by stakeholders who counted on the Pennsylvania seat to hold blue. This sort of fearless and intrepid journalism, unattached to political or partisan interests, is a crucial requirement for our democracy to maintain a shred of integrity.

The shocking disclosures made in Terris’ piece did not all occur overnight—these indications of Fetterman’s inability to appropriately serve in the Senate date back years. The senator’s mental health, as described by his closest advisers in the coverage, has been detrimental to not only his ability to represent the people of Pennsylvania but also to his own well-being and the health of his family. All parties privy to any of this information would have had every reason to bury any trace of the senator’s behavior, except a reporter brave enough to tell the story.

Now more than ever, we need truth tellers who are willing to be uncomfortable.

Sen. Fetterman’s win in 2022 delivered Democrats the majority they needed to control the Senate. Per Terris’ reporting, that majority came at a cost. The standard that our partisan system places on individuals who will hold great power is dismal, including the lowest bar possible for a commitment to human dignity as represented in Fetterman’s consistently violent comments on the genocide in Gaza.

In a two-party system that continues to compromise below bare minimum standards for human rights to make partisan gains, there has to be a robust media ecosystem that uncovers those compromises. Just days before the Fetterman exposé, The Colorado Sun’s Jesse Paul released a year-long investigation covering former Rep. Yadira Caraveo’s (D-Colo.) significant struggles with depression, mental health, and alarming concerns from staff. Rep. Caraveo lost a razor-thin general election in November and is now seeking to regain her seat in 2026. With a swing district like Colorado’s 8th, the Democratic Party would gain nothing from being forward about Caraveo’s mental health status. Colorado needed this investigation by Paul to make an appropriate decision about who represents them in Congress. Rep. Caraveo’s party needed this investigation to hold them accountable for their dismissal of concerning behavior when a candidate seemed electable. Democracy needs more of this.

The far-right, including the Trump White House, continues to challenge the trustworthiness and ethics of our media landscape. Media conglomerates are constant in their pursuit of cutbacks and layoffs as an editorial recession continues to toxify the spaces where news is created. An estimated 1 in 10 editors and reporters have lost their jobs over the past three years. The future of traditional media is dark, as print, broadcast, and digital media continue to lose subscribers, make detrimental cuts to staff, and face continued attacks from political stakeholders. The decay of American media is concerning for a plethora of reasons, but most importantly because pieces like Terris’ and Paul’s would never have seen the light. Negligence and abuse would go unchecked, and corruption’s roots in democracy would be deeper and wider.

Now more than ever, we need truth tellers who are willing to be uncomfortable. Willing to negate personal political interests in pursuit of a story that loses a congressional race but holds power accountable and raises the bar for who power is afforded to. The Fetterman exposé is not an easy read, but democracy doesn’t need more fluff pieces.

The House Natural Resources Committee majority just unveiled the worst piece of legislation for the environment in history—a bill that wouldn’t just sell off Alaska but that would threaten democracy and environmental protections across the country. The proposed “budget” reconciliation legislation is saturated with destructive provisions that would set our nation’s conservation legacy back for decades.

Don’t be distracted by the chaos. This “energy dominance” bill is not about good budgeting. It’s a clear handout to fossil fuel executives and a key part of President Donald Trump’s plan to sell off your public lands to wealthy oil, gas, and mining corporations for unchecked industrialization.

Starting with the threats to wild Alaska alone, you can find an unprecedented and sweeping giveaway of our nation’s lands and waters. Mandated industrialization, the override of environmental standards, cutting out the public—the text reads like something drafted in an oil tycoon’s boardroom.

This is not a budget. It’s a backroom deal for billionaires that steamrolls tribal rights, community voices, and our nation’s most iconic wild places.

First, the Arctic. Despite a well-documented history of failure, the bill would force the Department of the Interior to reinstate leases from a failed 2021 oil and gas lease sale in the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. That sale intended to pay for the last round of Trump billionaire tax cuts—a sale for which not one major oil company showed up to bid and less than 1% of projected revenues were collected. Taxpayers are still waiting for their money. Nevertheless, today’s bill would mandate four more lease sales in the refuge over the next decade, as well as lease sales in the Western Arctic every two years.

From there, the bill attempts to rewrite environmental law by declaring that rushed approvals are automatically in compliance with landmark statutes like the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), Endangered Species Act (ESA), Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), and Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA).

That’s not laziness—it’s an attempted authoritarian overreach.

In practice, that could look like agencies having just 30 days to approve permits—like those deciding whether seismic blasting can legally harm or kill polar bears—with no public input and zero accountability.

Then comes the most egregious power grab: The bill attempts to strip away judicial review of government decisions in the Arctic Refuge. Only the State of Alaska or oil companies could sue. The Gwich’in people, who have stewarded this place as their cultural homeland since time immemorial? Silenced. The basic democratic rights of the American public? Quashed. The same gag order appears for the Western Arctic, attempting to halt litigation over the Willow project and prevent future legal challenges to drilling by Iocal Indigenous communities or others.

And the hits keep coming.

The bill would require another six offshore oil and gas lease sales over the next 10 years in the waters of Cook Inlet, each covering no less than a million acres. Once again: environmental review sidestepped, public legal challenges all but erased.

The bill would also amend ANILCA to mandate approval of the Ambler Road, a 211-mile industrial corridor that would cut through National Park and Bureau of Land Management lands, disrupt caribou migration, and threaten subsistence for Alaska Native communities. Just like with Arctic drilling, this provision lets corporations sue the government to fast-track approvals while denying that same legal access to impacted Indigenous communities and the public. This language should terrify anyone who cares about tribal sovereignty or public lands.

Also hidden within the bill is language that would increase national timber harvest by 25%, possibly including the old-growth forests of the Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska—some of the most carbon-rich and ecologically important temperate rainforests on the planet. And it would slash funding for federal land management, threatening the long-term care of public lands from Denali to the Everglades.

So, what do Americans get in return? Not much. These fossil fuel handouts won’t lower energy prices, fix the deficit, or benefit future generations. The last Arctic Refuge lease sale brought in pennies on the dollar and had no impact on gas prices or our dangerous dependence on oil. This bill won’t boost revenue; it just fast-tracks extraction while silencing oversight.

Here’s the truth: This is not a budget. It’s a backroom deal for billionaires that steamrolls tribal rights, community voices, and our nation’s most iconic wild places.

We need Congress to reject this toxic package. Because our public lands—and our democracy—aren’t up for sale.

Isn’t the most remarkable—and least remarked-upon—aspect of the Pete Hegseth Defense Department reality show the fact that no one has appeared worried that the nation’s security might actually be threatened by this? That no one has seemed particularly concerned about any danger resulting from the vast U.S. military arsenal ostensibly being placed in the hands of someone who had obviously not read the job manual? But then why would they? Did anyone seriously think China’s Ministry of State Security was dashing off memos advising the country’s leaders to invade the United States because control of its armed forces had somehow fallen into inept hands? Or that something like that was going on in Russia… or Denmark… or Canada… or any other of our enemies, old or new?

Apparently not. Why? Well, at recent count, the U.S. was in possession of a fleet of 299 deployable combat vessels, 3,748 nuclear warheads, 5,500 military aircraft, 13,000 drones, and 2,079,142 military personnel. All of this comes with highly detailed operational plans for situations involving an actual attack on the nation. But no one seemed to think that what Hegseth was spending his time on had much, if anything, to do with that eventuality. From the point of view of the nation’s legitimate security, that’s a good thing. But it raises the question of what was Hegseth on about, anyhow?

The story that brought the question of the Trump foreign policy team’s competence to the fore has little to do with the matter of American national defense. What it’s really about is the unauthorized, global use of American military force. The few Americans whose well-being were plausibly threatened by Hegseth’s now infamous sharing of the details of upcoming bombing missions—with his wife, brother, lawyer, as well as the editor of The Atlantic—were the pilots of those missions.

While, as in so many areas, he may well be the crudest exponent and practitioner of American foreign policy that we’ve seen in some time, the bombs Trump orders do not fall far from those dropped by previous administrations.

The object of this ongoing bombing campaign—which the administration says has struck a thousand targets—is the Yemen rebel group called the Houthis, an organization allied with Iran and militarily opposed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The recent U.S. attacks came in response to a resumption of Houthi efforts to block Israeli shipping in the Arabian Gulf that followed upon Israel’s breaking of its cease-fire agreement with Hamas, along with its blocking of humanitarian aid to Gaza. In response to the renewed U.S. assault, the Houthis have attacked the U.S.S. Harry S. Truman, the aircraft carrier which then-President Joe Biden deployed to the Gulf last December as a base for the anti-Houthi airstrikes that he had ordered.

Now, although it may seem quaint to mention such technicalities as the law in relation to the routine U.S. bombing of another nation, the truth of the matter is that—whether one considers bombing the Houthis to free up Arabian Gulf shipping a good idea, or whether one doesn’t—we are simply not at war either with the government of Yemen or with the Houthis trying to supplant it. Nor has Congress authorized the use of force there, in lieu of a declaration of war.

If you have trouble recalling Congress declaring war, that’s because you probably weren’t alive in 1942, the last time it did so (against Bulgaria, Hungary, and Rumania.) The wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan? No declaration of war deemed necessary. And while the current Republican-controlled Congress may be distinguishing itself for new depths of subservience, generally the Democrat and Republican leadership alike tend to act as if questions of war and peace were above their pay grade, with only a minority of Democrats and a handful of Republicans ever making noise about the latest military action taken in our name. Congress’ ultimate responsibility notwithstanding, Presidents Biden and Donald Trump have made their decisions to launch attacks on Yemen unilaterally.

What we’re dealing with here is what we might call the Defense Department’s Offense Division—the part that maintains the 700–800 foreign military bases around the globe (the exact number is classified, but maybe if you could get your number on Hegseth’s phone list…), along with the ships that ply its waters and the planes and drones that fly its airs. As previously noted, Trump is not the first president to bomb Yemen. And while, as in so many areas, he may well be the crudest exponent and practitioner of American foreign policy that we’ve seen in some time, the bombs Trump orders do not fall far from those dropped by previous administrations. Prior to the current episode, the U.S. has bombed Yemen during every single year since 2009—nearly 300 times, primarily via drone.

Nor is Yemen the first country bombed during the second Trump administration; Iraq, Syria, and Somalia have preceded it. None of this was considered much by way of news—a failing of the news media, yes—but less so than of the congressional leaders who have failed to make it news. Here too, while Trump may denigrate his predecessors, he apparently takes no issue with their bombing choices, joining the George W. Bush, Obama, Trump I, and Biden administrations in the serial bombing of Somalia that has occurred more than 350 times over the course of those presidencies. The U.S. has also bombed Syria and Iraq every year since 2014.

All of this has been justified under tortured, expansive legal interpretations of the 2001 and 2002 Authorizations for Use of Military Force permitting military action against entities that “planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons” as well as “to defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq.” Under Bush, the authorization was interpreted to extend to the occupation of Iraq. Under Barack Obama, it would encompass action against groups that did not even exist in 2001, but were “descendants” or “successors”—such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The first Trump administration would expand that logic to warfare against eight different groups—including the assassination of an Iranian military commander. It was now understood to allow for military actions anywhere on the globe.

Before the Trumpists coopted the use of the term “Deep State”—to encompass what they believe to be a malign government network that supports programs like the “Ponzi Scheme,” as Elon Musk sees it, of Social Security, or Medicare—the term was used by quite a different group of people to quite a different end. The Deep State back then referred to the unelected elements of the government committed to waging endless war, often covert, often illegal—e.g. the Central Intelligence Agency—the sort of thing President Lyndon Johnson was talking about when he said that under President John F. Kennedy the U.S. had been running “a damned Murder, Inc. in the Caribbean.”

We don’t call that the Deep State anymore because, as the above discussion indicates, our government no longer feels a need to hide these things. It’s above ground now—part of the DOD’s Offense Division. The CIA now conducts assassinations openly—via drone.

This is the part of the U.S. government that should really worry us. It’s what Pete Hegseth was hired to run, something that was clear right from his Senate confirmation hearings that culminated in a narrower win than even his boss’s on Election Day—his approval requiring a vice presidential tie-breaking vote for only the second time in history (the first being the approval of Betsy DeVos as Trump I Secretary of Education) From the get go, Hegseth was forthright in declaring himself against increased “wokeness”—and for increased “lethality.”

One simple way to increase lethality is to broaden the potential killing range. And in this area, Hegseth came with a pretty strong record, having successfully lobbied for pardons of soldiers convicted of war crimes during the first Trump administration, and suggesting in a book he wrote last year, The War on Warriors, that rather than adhering to the Geneva Conventions, the U.S. would be “better off in winning our wars according to our own rules.”

Nor has he missed a beat since taking office; he’s announced plans to terminate the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Office and the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, and the Army will no longer require training in the law of war; henceforth it will be optional. Results have quickly followed, with the bombing of a migrant detention center in Yemen, for instance. One of Hegseth’s infamous Signal chats even described the targeting of a civilian location.

One last thought for the secretary: Pete, If you were to spend your time on our national defense—instead of “lethality” in attacking foreign nations with which we are not at war—you could probably rest easier about using your phone. Of course, we both know that’d get you fired in a New York minute. You’re there to play offense.

If you were drowning, I wouldn’t ask how you got there before throwing you a lifeline.

I wouldn’t tell you to swim harder.

I wouldn’t tell you to make better choices, I wouldn’t hope you sink, and I wouldn’t put you in a cage.

If you were drowning, I would reach for you, pull you up, and do everything in my power to keep you alive.

That’s what harm reduction is: keeping people alive.

We don’t criminalize someone for losing a limb to the effects of diabetes. We don’t arrest them for not taking their insulin or for struggling to manage their blood sugar. We surround them with medical care, support systems, and resources to help them live healthier lives.

The first step isn’t forcing someone into a system they aren’t ready for. The first step is keeping them alive long enough to say yes.

Problematic substance use—a chronic, relapsing disease—is no different. And harm reduction is one of the many courses of medical action we’re taking to address this in MacArthur Park, Los Angeles, where the opioid crisis and homelessness collide in painful, visible ways.

I understand the frustration. I hear the anger. Lock them up, people say—oblivious to the harrowing truth that this crisis is made profoundly worse in our jails.

I want a healthy, accessible, thriving MacArthur Park just as much as my neighbors; a MacArthur Park where hardworking families aren’t forced to live amid trauma and visible substance use. But let me be clear: I don’t throw people away—and I don’t invest in failed solutions.

People don’t wake up one day and decide to become homeless or addicted. They end up there because they’ve been failed by an economic system that keeps people in poverty, by a housing system that makes rent impossible to afford, by a criminal justice system that treats problematic substance use like a crime instead of a disease, by a political system that chronically underfunds mental health, and by a for-profit healthcare system that allowed big pharmaceutical companies to manufacture the opioid epidemic and knowingly steal thousands of lives in exchange for billions of dollars.

We’ve spent over a trillion dollars on the failed War on Drugs, and the availability and potency of illicit drugs have only increased—along with our prison population.

It’s time for a different approach.

Decades of research have shown that harm reduction strategies provide significant public health benefits, including preventing deaths from overdoses and preventing transmission of infectious diseases. That’s why our office partnered with the LA County Department of Health Services and Homeless Healthcare Los Angeles (HHCLA) to deploy an overdose response team in the park seven days a week. Every day, they provide wound care, hygiene kits, naloxone, methadone, and harm reduction tools to people experiencing problematic substance use. They clean up biohazardous waste, picking up and safely disposing of left-behind needles and pipes that put our families in danger. They do the work that Recreation and Parks and LAPD can’t while reducing call volume to emergency responders, and we are all safer for it.

Since launching in late 2024, this team has collected over 14,000 hazardous items and distributed more than 3,600 naloxone kits—totaling over 11,000 doses of life-saving medication—and saved 52 lives. Those 52 people have names and faces and stories and hopes and dreams. They are someone’s child, someone’s friend, someone who now has a shot at accepting treatment, because we know that recovery isn’t a straight path—it takes multiple touchpoints. The first step isn’t forcing someone into a system they aren’t ready for. The first step is keeping them alive long enough to say yes.

I also want to be clear about what our office can and cannot do. The City Council cannot make arrests. What we can do is invest in solutions. We can choose to fund the strategies that actually reduce harm, that save lives, that address the root causes of these crises. Or, we can choose to push people out of sight and throw them away.

The fight for humanity goes far beyond MacArthur Park. We see it happening across the country. We see it in how President Donald Trump treats immigrants like pawns, willing to let families suffer for cheap political points. We see it in how he attacks the LGBTQ+ community, stripping away protections and treatment, denying their very existence. We see marginalized communities degraded and vilified and sacrificed at the altar of power, and we see misinformation peddled at every turn to satiate a hungry, desperate base. It is easy to dehumanize. It is easy to discard people. It is easy to think of human lives as inconvenient. But we have to resist that urge. We are better than that in Los Angeles. We have a moral responsibility to set an example for the rest of the nation: one that’s rooted in compassion, humanity, and data-driven approaches. And since my very first day in office, that’s what I’ve always done, no matter how uphill the battle may be.

MacArthur Park is struggling. Yes, we are frustrated, scared, and sometimes, angry. But I refuse to abandon the people suffering in front of us.

We don’t throw people away. We fight for them.

The philosopher Nigel Warburton shrugged: “Users of slippery slope arguments should take skiing lessons—you really can choose to stop.” But slippery slopes are a thing precisely because people often choose to keep cruising along until they smash into Sonny Bono’s tree.

Critics from both parties describe Donald Trump’s behavior and policies as unprecedented. This presidency, however, did not emerge from a vacuum. Everything Trump does builds on presidential politics of the not-so-recent past—mostly, but not always, Republican.

Trump has shocked free speech advocates and civil libertarians by ordering his masked ICE goons to abduct college students off city streets for participating in campus protests criticizing Israel for carpet-bombing Gaza. (An aside: what will he say when someone avails themselves of their Second Amendment rights rather than allow themselves to be chucked into an unmarked van by random strangers?)

Government oppression of dissidents in America has a rich and foul history. During the 1999 Seattle WTO protests, which included many college students, Bill Clinton’s Immigration and Naturalization Service (the predecessor of ICE) detained and initiated deportation proceedings against students from Canada and Europe who were arrested for opposing free trade agreements. Under Reagan, the INS moved to deport African students who participated in rallies urging colleges to pull investments out of apartheid-era South Africa. Nixon’s FBI and INS worked to revoke the visas of students who protested the Vietnam War, particularly those from Canada and Latin America. George W. Bush conducted “extraordinary renditions,” including off U.S. streets, where individuals like Maher Arar, who was entirely innocent, were detained without charge and sent to third countries for interrogation that included torture, under the guise of national security.

Trump is demanding that universities and major law firms bend the knee, insisting that college administrators surrender to federal oversight and eliminate DEI policies, and that attorneys allocate hundreds of millions of dollars in pro bono legal work to clients allied to Trump.

It’s freaky—but there is precedent for this kind of bullying.

Even though universities like UC Berkeley, Columbia and Kent State viciously suppressed anti-Vietnam War protesters, Nixon threatened to cut federal funding unless they unleashed even more police violence. The FBI’s COINTELPRO program spied on professors and students and Nixon’s Justice Department fired off letters to university presidents demanding that activist students be suspended or expelled. Nixon’s INS visa revocations normalized targeting student activists; Trump exploits that now.

The Education Department, under Reagan, threatened to withhold federal funds from colleges whose admission and financial aid policies included affirmative action. Bush went after universities like MIT, NYU and the University of Michigan for allowing international students and faculty to criticize U.S. foreign policy. The DOJ and FBI demanded student visa records and monitored campus groups—especially Muslim Student Associations—for links to radical Islamists.

FDR attacked “Wall Street lawyers” for obstructing his New Deal, and his top officials leaned on firms to represent labor unions pro bono in order to make up for their alleged pro-business bias.

Though the Trump Administration will almost certainly fall short of its goal of deporting a million people it alleges are in the United States illegally, this White House looks exceptionally aggressive against illegal immigration due to moves like deporting 238 alleged (but probably not) Venezuelan gang members to a private for-profit gulag in a third country with which they have no affiliation, El Salvador, and refusing to bring back one it admits was expelled illegally as the result of an “administrative error.”

But the real Deporters in Chief were Bill Clinton, who “removed” 11.4 million undocumented workers from the U.S., and George W. Bush, with 8.3 million. The Bush Administration kidnapped “enemy combatants” without due process and shipped them the U.S. concentration camp at Guantánamo Bay.Detainees from countries like Afghanistan, Yemen and others were held in a third country (Cuba) without being returned to their home nations. Some were later transferred to fourth countries like Albania or Qatar for resettlement or further detention.

You have to go back further to find antecedents for Trump’s 10% universal tariff on all imports, up to 145% on China, and reciprocal tariffs on about 90 countries. Still, here too, there’s nothing new under the sun. Biden continued Trump’s first-term 25% tariffs against China. Reagan slapped tariffs against Japan and Canada. Herbert Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which added an average of 45% tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods to try to protect farms and industries during the Depression.

Then there are the DOGE mass firings orchestrated by Elon Musk. Musk’s chainsaw-wielding theatricality aside, going after federal bureaucracy with an axe instead of a scalpel is anything but new.

Through his National Performance Review (later renamed “Reinventing Government”), Clinton eliminated 377,000 federal jobs—17% of the total workforce. He got rid of about 100 programs and consolidated 800 agencies. Not unlike Musk’s “fork in the road” mass email offers, Clinton offered buyouts up to $25,000 to about federal 100,000 workers. Reagan, Carter and Nixon each fired tens of thousands of federal workers. Like Trump, Reagan called for the elimination of the Department of Education; probably like Trump, he failed.

In most cases, such as Nixon’s surveillance or Clinton’s deportations, liberals and mainstream media offered brief, muted criticism. If there had been broader and more sustained outrage in response to these previous outrages, odds are that Trump would be operating with somewhat less untrammeled volition today.

We can’t go back in time. Hopefully this moment will remind us that there are consequences for every decision not to protest and not to raise hell—and that those consequences may play out in the distant future.

(Ted Rall, the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of “Never Mind the Democrats. Here’s WHAT’S LEFT.” Subscribe: tedrall.Substack.com.)

What IS the Left? What should we fight for? How can we rebuild outside of the Democrats? Order my latest book “WHAT’S LEFT” here at Rall.com. It comes autographed to the person of your choice, and I’ll deliver it anywhere. Cost including shipping is $29.95 in the USA.

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