By Ralph Nader April 25, 2025 From a recent peaceful student rally at Columbia University came a chant that summed up their protest – “FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND DEAD AND YOU’RE ARRESTING US INSTEAD.” This is the bloody omnipresence that the co-belligerent Trumpsters and their fearful University leaders, whom Trump has targeted for submission, are relegating…

The Trump Administration has announced its intention to withdraw over $1 billion in funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the organization that supports public broadcasting in the United States in the form of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR).

Although federal funding makes up only a small portion of the overall budgets for these organizations—a combination of private donations, corporate sponsorship, state financing makes up a larger part—the funding is vital for public television and radio in smaller local markets where public or corporate support is difficult to obtain. The cuts would likely kill off those smaller stations and weaken those in larger markets.

In effect, the last traces of public media would disappear from large sections of the United States, leaving them entirely in the hands of corporate media.

This attack on U.S. public media is perhaps the least surprising news imaginable. When I was interviewed last month here in Sweden after Trump effectively shut down Voice of America (VOA), I was asked what could be next on the Republican media agenda. I didn’t hesitate in my response: next would be the de-funding of the nation's public broadcasting system. To me, it wasn’t a question of if…but when.

In its classic form, public service broadcasting of the type we have here in Europe treats the inhabitants of the country not as potential consumers, but as actual citizens.

The threat to kill public broadcasting in the U.S. is not the same as the killing of Voice of America. Through stations such as Radio Free Europe, VOA had always had been the mouthpiece of the U.S. state. It was part of global U.S. soft power, promoting the nation's foreign policy and economic interests. It was anything but objective, independent journalism.

PBS and NPR, on the other hand, are something entirely different. They represent an alternative model for how media in the U.S. could be…or, at least, could have been. Created in 1967 under President Lyndon Johnson, and decades after private media giants ABC, NBC, and CBS had been allowed to take near-complete control over U.S. broadcasting, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was meant to provide U.S. citizens with a non-commercial media alternative.

Unlike their European counterparts, however, which began as well-financed monopolies in the 1920s and 1930s, U.S. public media were born weak. They were never meant to challenge the power of U.S. corporate media.

For the past half century, U.S. public broadcasting has existed at the margins of the national media ecosystem, producing high-quality educational programming and decent news that attracted a predominantly well-educated, urban audience. Low levels of federal funding meant that U.S. public broadcasting, again unlike European counterparts such as Sweden's SVT or the UK's BBC, was forced to take money from corporations in order to survive. When I lived in the U.S., PBS took so much "sponsorship” money from oil companies such as ExxonMobil that it was jokingly referred to as the “Petroleum Broadcasting System.”

So, why kill off the last remnants of a media system that attracts only a tiny fraction of the U.S. audience and gets the majority of its financing from non-government sources?

Simple. Because of what it represents.

The Trump administration and its oligarchy of advisors have as their central goal to destroy or undermine any and all institutions in U.S. society that either suggest an alternative to private, corporate control or provide a counter-argument to the myth that the “free market” is the best option for structuring U.S. society: from education to health care to media. The very idea that the state could in any way contribute to the greater good is horrific and must be crushed.

In its classic form, public service broadcasting of the type we have here in Europe treats the inhabitants of the country not as potential consumers, but as actual citizens. In modern societies, absolutely soaked in the logic of consumption, there needs to be at least a few spaces where your value is seen as inherent and not related to how much disposable income you have.

Here in Sweden, for example, that includes not just public broadcasting, but things like universal healthcare and university education. The logic is simple: being informed, being healthy and being educated should not be privileges restricted to those who can afford it. And, a well-informed, healthy and well-educated society benefits everyone.

Public broadcasting in the U.S. is in need of serious reform. And, public broadcasting in Europe isn’t perfect. But, despite their various flaws, their value can be found not only in what they produce in terms of content, but in what they tell people about how society can be structured. That working alternatives exist and can co-exist. That it’s possible to have a free market, but at the same time recognize there are some elements of society too important to be left to the mercies of corporations, billionaires, and profit margins.

For people like Trump and Musk, these non-commercial spaces of citizenship are viruses eating away at profits. But they aren’t the virus.

They are the vaccine.

LIVE 10 am Eastern time! But you can watch anytime you’d like:

Tune in the TMI Show with Ted Rall and Manila Chan, where the dynamic duo dives into the transformative legacy of Pope Francis and the high-stakes papal succession process.

Joined by Catholic scholar Timothy Gordon, this episode unpacks the late pontiff’s revolutionary impact—his outreach to marginalized communities, progressive reforms, and polarizing clashes with conservative factions. From his bold stance on poverty and inclusion to navigating a divided Church, Francis’ era reshaped global Catholicism. The discussion explores the secretive conclave, where cardinals will elect the next pope, and highlights leading candidates poised to steer the Vatican’s future. Will the Church continue Francis’ progressive path or pivot to tradition?

Expect a thought-provoking, no-holds-barred analysis of faith, power, and the Catholic Church’s role in a rapidly changing world. With Ted’s incisive wit, Manila’s sharp insights, and Gordon’s deep expertise, this episode is a must-watch for anyone captivated by the Vatican’s past, present, and future. Catch it live or stream on-demand for a front-row seat to history in the making!

The post TMI Show Ep 125: “Pope Francis’ Legacy: What Next?” appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

A superpower in the fight against global heating is hiding in plain sight. It turns out that the overwhelming majority of people in the world—between 80% and 89%, according to a growing number of peer-reviewed scientific studies—want their governments to take stronger climate action.

As co-founders of a nonprofit that studies news coverage of climate change, those findings surprised even us. And they are a sharp rebuttal to the Trump administration’s efforts to attack anyone who does care about the climate crisis.

For years—and especially at this fraught political moment—most coverage of the climate crisis has been defensive. People who support climate action are implicitly told—by their elected officials, by the fossil fuel industry, by news coverage and social media discourse—that theirs is a minority, even a fringe, view.

That is not what the new research finds.

What would it mean if this silent climate majority woke up—if its members came to understand just how many people, both in distant lands and in their own communities, think and feel like they do?

The most recent study, People’s Climate Vote 2024, was conducted by Oxford University as part of a program the United Nations launched after the 2015 Paris agreement. Among poorer countries, where roughly 4 out of 5 of the world’s inhabitants live, 89% of the public wanted stronger climate action. In richer, industrialized countries, roughly 2 out of 3 people wanted stronger action. Combining rich and poor populations, “80% [of people globally] want more climate action from their governments.”

The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication—which, along with its partner, the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication, is arguably the global gold standard in climate opinion research—has published numerous studies documenting the same point: Most people, in most countries, want stronger action on the climate crisis.

A fascinating additional 89% angle was documented in a study published by Nature Climate Change, which noted that the overwhelming global majority does not know it is the majority: “[I]ndividuals around the globe systematically underestimate the willingness of their fellow citizens to act,” the report states.

In other words, an overwhelming majority of people want stronger action against climate change. But at least for now, this global climate majority is a silent majority.

Taken together, the new research turns the conventional wisdom about climate opinion on its ear. At a time when many governments and companies are stalling or retreating from rapidly phasing out the fossil fuels that are driving deadly heat, fires, and floods, the fact that more than 8 out of 10 human beings on the planet want their political representatives to preserve a livable future offers a much-needed ray of hope. The question is whether and how that mass sentiment might be translated into effective action.

What would it mean if this silent climate majority woke up—if its members came to understand just how many people, both in distant lands and in their own communities, think and feel like they do? How might this majority’s actions—as citizens, as consumers, as voters—change? If the current narrative in news and social media shifted from one of retreat and despair to one of self-confidence and common purpose, would people shift from being passive observers to active shapers of their shared future? If so, what kinds of climate action would they demand from their leaders?

These are the animating questions behind the 89% Project, a yearlong media initiative that launched this week. The journalistic nonprofit we run, Covering Climate Now, has invited newsrooms from around the world to report, independently or together, on the climate majorities found in their communities.

Who are the people who comprise the 89%? Given that support for climate action varies by country—the figure is 74% in the U.S., 80% in India, 90% in Burkina Faso—does support also vary by age, gender, political affiliation, and economic status? What do members of the climate majority want from their political and community leaders? What obstacles are standing in the way?

The week of coverage that started on Tuesday will be followed by months of further reporting that explores additional aspects of public opinion about climate change. If most of the climate majority have no idea they are the majority, do they also not realize that defusing the climate crisis is by no means impossible? Scientists have long said that humanity possesses the tools and knowhow necessary to limit temperature rise to the Paris agreement’s aspirational target of the 1.5°C above preindustrial levels. What has been lacking is the political will to implement those tools and leave fossil fuels behind. The 89% Project will culminate in a second joint week of coverage before the COP30 United Nations climate meeting in Brazil in November.

While it’s impossible to know how many newsrooms will participate in this week’s 89% coverage, early signs are heartening. The Guardian newspaper and the Agence France-Presse news agency have joined as lead partners of the project. Other newsrooms offering coverage include The Nation, Rolling Stone, Scientific American, and Time magazines in the U.S.; the National Observer newspaper in Canada; the Deutsche Welle global broadcaster in Germany; the Corriere della Sera newspaper in Italy; the Asahi Shimbun newspaper in Japan; and the multinational collaborative Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism based in Jordan.

We believe the current mismatch between public will and government action amounts to a deficit in democracy. Can that deficit be addressed if the climate majority awakens to its existence? Would people elect different leaders? Buy (or not buy) different products? Would they talk differently to family, friends, and co-workers about what can be done to build a cleaner, safer future?

The first step to answering such questions is to give the silent climate majority a voice. That will happen, finally, this week in news coverage around the world.

This story is part of The 89 Percent Project, an initiative of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now.

Let Earth Day be every day! Let it transcend the present state of politics and our economic hierarchy. Let it open us to the future we long for but do not yet envision.

We live on one vulnerable, extraordinary planet. We are not its overlords; we are part of an evolving circle of life, which we are still trying to understand. And we can only understand it if we also value it, ever so deeply. Earth Day is also Love Day.

Oh God, let it flow beyond the invisible borders we have created. To that end, I call forth the late Pope Francis, who died two days ago as I write—a day before Earth Day 2025. He was 88. Unlike most world leaders, he saw the need to transcend the present worldview—including religion—that currently holds the planet hostage.

The necessary changes humanity must make are collective, but also individual, at least in the sense that we must open our hearts and look for solidarity... with one another, with all of life.

As Nathan Schneider, a University of Colorado professor and contributor to the Jesuit publication America Magazine, noted recently in a Democracy Now interview, Pope Francis was insistent on linking major political issues, such as protecting the planet’s ecosystem and halting the war on migrants. “Justice for both,” Schneider said. We must “counter the idea of disposability.”

This is a cry from the depths of our soul. Value the planet. Value all of humanity. We have to reach beyond the world we think we know and, as the Pope put it, according to Schneider, “learn from the periphery.”

The migrant crisis and the climate crisis are intertwined. The Pope “called for solidarity across borders. He called for taking down the idols of our world—the things that we think are real that really aren’t: borders created with imaginary lines.”

That is to say: Tear down that wall, this is a wall we’ve built in our own hearts. Planet Earth is a single entity; our complex differences are interrelated. Yes, conflict is inevitable, but dehumanizing those with whom we disagree is never the answer. Yes, this is an inconvenience for those in power—and for those who want, and feel entitled, to use up the planet for personal gain. Humanity, as Pope Francis understood, is at an extraordinary transition point: beyond exploitation.

As Cynthia Kaufman writes:

The forces that are tearing apart the fabric of our world are part of a global set of practices that have developed over the past 500 years that allow people and companies to pursue profit for its own sake without regard for the needs of others. Over those centuries, destructive practices based on capitalism, slavery, colonialism, and particular forms of patriarchy have been woven into the ways that politics, economics, and culture function...

Rather than trying, under these difficult circumstances, to reestablish a new accord with the exploitative systems that dominate our world, the time is ripe to dig deeply and try to uproot those systems at their cores. That will involve building alternative ways of meeting our needs, fighting against the structures that support the current system, and rethinking our understanding of our social world. If a new accord between capital and labor is not likely to be established any time soon, our best hope is to work to build a social world based on principles of solidarity.

Principles of solidarity? This is a huge leap for the part of humanity that assumes itself to be in control of the future. Kaufman is not talking about an alliance of good guys against bad guys, but solidarity in a total way: solidarity with the planet and its extraordinarily complex ecosystem. “Solidarity” values continuous learning, understanding, and protecting, not simply controlling. That is to say: environmental stewardship.

According to the Earthday website:

It is widely acknowledged that Indigenous people, despite making up just 5% of the global population, protect a significant amount of the planet’s remaining biodiversity. Traditional Ecological Knowledge is a term for the collective Indigenous knowledge and beliefs about nature and man’s place in it, and serves as an alternative to the more objective and resource-oriented Western worldview of the environment as something to be exploited.

I would put it this way: Planet Earth has a soul.

I say this in a non-religious way, without a sense of explanatory understanding, just a sense of wonder. The planet itself is alive. And life itself should be what we value most, not... money (the invisible god).

As Earthday notes:

Like the Maōri, many Indigenous communities consider themselves “guardians” of their local environmental resources.

Within the 2.7 million square miles of the Amazon Rainforest, there are approximately 400 distinct tribes which call the rainforest home. The Guajajara tribe, in the Brazilian state of Maranhão, are particularly known for their fierce protection of their local forests from illegal loggers, and continue to risk their lives daily for their home.

Let Earth Day push our awareness beyond the invisible borders we have created and beyond the invisible god who holds us hostage. I don’t say this with a simple shrug but, rather, without knowing how this will happen—just that it must. The necessary changes humanity must make are collective, but also individual, at least in the sense that we must open our hearts and look for solidarity... with one another, with all of life. This is what I have called empathic sanity. Real change is impossible without it.

People of a certain age will remember the old black-and-white movies, The Twilight Zone, and countless Cold War-era dramas set in Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. In scene after chilling scene, people in uniform approach random pedestrians and bark, “Papers, please.”

Those who hesitate—who don’t have their documentation in order, who look “out of place,” or simply fail to comply fast enough—are dragged away. Vanished. Disappeared into the gulag or the prison camps, never to be seen again.

It was always framed as national security. Public order. Protecting the homeland. But what it really was, in both Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s USSR, was authoritarianism dressed up as bureaucracy.

This combination of surveillance, identification, and coercion has always been the hallmark of authoritarian regimes, and Trump’s is no different.

Republicans in the House have passed legislation requiring people to bring their passports to register to vote; increasingly Americans with brown skin are today carrying their citizenship papers, birth certificates, and even passports out of fear of a chance encounter with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Because it’s already started here: On his first day in office, President Donald Trump issued a directive requiring all noncitizens in the U.S.—including those on visas and green card holders—to carry proof of their legal status at all times. Failure to comply will result in imprisonment.

This policy, part of Trump’s executive order titled “Protecting the American People Against Invasion,” has sparked fears among civil rights groups that it could lead to racial profiling and wrongful detentions of U.S. citizens who may be unable to immediately prove their status.

As recently happened to Jose Hermosillo, who was held in a detention facility for undocumented immigrants for 10 days after simply asking an officer for directions.

It’s as if the Trump regime is taking a cue from those old movies, like they were templates for America’s future. After all, if you want to control a civilian population this is tried and true.

The Soviet Union’s internal passport system, introduced in 1932, became the backbone of state control over citizens. Those domestic passports—containing personal information and required for anyone over 16—weren’t just identification but permission slips for existence itself. Without the proper stamps and approvals, citizens couldn’t access employment, housing, education, or even food rations. The system created a population dependent on state approval for their most basic needs.

During crackdowns like those following the 1968 Prague Spring, these identification systems became weapons allowing authorities to swiftly target, detain, and “disappear” political opponents under the guise of administrative violations. The message was clear: Your papers aren’t just documentation; they’re the difference between freedom and vanishing into the system.

Another poignant example of this oppressive system was the “Green Ticket Roundup” on May 14, 1941, in Paris. Immigrant Jews received summonses from the Nazi-collaborating Vichy government printed on green paper, instructing them to report for a “status check.” Upon arrival, over 3,700 individuals were arrested and deported to death camps, marking one of the first mass arrests of Jews in France during World War II .

A regime of fear, enforced by ID checks and compliance demands, that began with targeting outsiders—immigrants, ethnic minorities, refugees—and then, inevitably, turned inward toward its own citizens: starting with marginalized groups, political dissenters, even the merely inconvenient.

Today, in the United States, we are witnessing the early stages of this same playbook.

Donald Trump recently attacked the U.S. Supreme Court for temporarily blocking his administration’s attempt to summarily deport migrants without due process. He raged, “We cannot give everyone a trial,” signaling his belief that constitutional protections shouldn’t apply to undocumented people, or perhaps to anyone he deems unworthy.

This wasn’t a slip of the tongue. It was a direct statement of naked authoritarianism.

Across the country, stories are piling up of ICE arrests and detentions with no transparency, no due process, and no answers. A mother from Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, was suddenly detained by ICE, leaving her children and family in a panic, not knowing where she had been taken or why. She had no criminal record, no apparent reason for the arrest, and is still missing.

In another case, the U.S. government detained a father of two under a highly questionable interpretation of immigration law, claiming he was involved with a gang despite a complete lack of evidence or criminal charges. The Center for Constitutional Rights called the detention illegal, noting it was based on racial profiling and guilt by association, not rule of law.

Even places of education are no longer safe. ICE agents reportedly detained a Harvard affiliate in what critics called a targeted enforcement action meant to intimidate immigrant students and faculty. In Los Angeles, ICE showed up in a public school district, triggering fear and outrage among parents and teachers alike.

What kind of country sends armed agents—not local police, but militarized agents of the federal government—into school communities to drag away parents or students?

A country rapidly sliding into fascism.

Remember: What happens to the most vulnerable among us eventually happens to us all.

Trump and his allies claim this is about law and order. But when you strip people of their rights based solely on their immigration status—and create a culture where anyone who “looks” undocumented can be interrogated or detained without cause—you are not enforcing the law. You are weaponizing it.

Estimates suggest there are around 10.5 million undocumented immigrants in the United States today. Trump has made it clear he sees the Black and brown people among this group as a political tool, not as people. He has floated mass deportation plans that would require enormous internment facilities and a paramilitary-style enforcement mechanism.

This is not idle talk; it is a blueprint for authoritarian control that will quickly expand beyond immigrants: He’s already said that he wants to be able to deport average U.S. citizens who piss him off to the CECOT concentration camp in El Salvador.

Consider how quickly this can escalate. In Venezuela, for example, internal identification cards are linked to government food distribution and political loyalty. Those who criticized the regime or fail to demonstrate allegiance are routinely denied basic necessities and even healthcare.

This combination of surveillance, identification, and coercion has always been the hallmark of authoritarian regimes, and Trump’s is no different. This is an old story.

And let’s not forget how it begins: first by singling out the “outsiders,” then targeting the marginalized, and finally sweeping up anyone who dares resist. We saw it in the 1930s. We saw it in the 1950s. And now, disturbingly, we are seeing echoes of it today.

Axios reported Wednesday that the Trump administration is floating the idea of arresting U.S. citizens who criticize their “anti-terrorism” policies (people who protest Israel’s Gaza policies at universities, and people who condemn Trump’s actions against immigrants) and deporting us to the same CECOT concentration camp in El Salvador:

Trump administration officials are suggesting their immigration crackdown could expand to include deporting convicted U.S. citizens and charging anyone—not just immigrants—who criticizes Trump’s policies…

Some officials say U.S. citizens who criticize administration policies could be charged with crimes, based on the notion that they're aiding terrorists and criminals.

“You have to ask yourself, are they technically aiding and abetting them, because aiding and abetting criminals and terrorists is a crime,” White House Senior Director for Counterterrorism Seb Gorka said in an interview with Newsmax.

Trump’s team also has questioned the legality of civic groups providing immigrants with “know your rights” trainings on how to respond to federal agents. Border czar Tom Homan suggested that such seminars help people “evade law enforcement.”

This is how it starts. Soon it could be policy, and anybody who protests or resists the Trump regime could end up disappeared.

The American public must resist the normalization of “papers, please” politics. We must reject the idea that entire populations can be stripped of rights simply because of how they look, where they were born, or what kind of documentation they carry.

Because once the machinery is built and the culture of silence takes hold, it doesn’t stop at the border. It never has.

The stakes couldn’t be higher. Just this month, a family in Arizona reported that their grandmother, a legal permanent resident for over 30 years, was detained by ICE during a routine check-in. No explanation was given. No timeline for release. Just the bewildering silence of bureaucratic cruelty.

For the millions living in fear, and for all Americans who value liberty, the time to act is now:

• Contact your representatives and demand oversight hearings on ICE enforcement.
• Support legal aid organizations providing representation to detained immigrants.
• Document and report ICE activities in your community to civil liberties watchdogs.
• Show up for weekly protests.
• Participate in social media and other venues to get the word out.
• Send small donations ($5-$25) to politicians who show the courage to speak out or take action against the regime every time they do so; it’ll have far more impact than a call or postcard.

Remember: What happens to the most vulnerable among us eventually happens to us all.

History has taught us this lesson repeatedly. We ignore it at our peril

In his second term, U.S. President Donald Trump has moved aggressively to expand the authority of the executive branch, thereby upending our traditional system of checks and balances among the three branches of government. Reforming this system while he still holds office will be impossible, but he will eventually move on, and Congress should be planning now for changes to the system of shared governance to limit outsize executive authority and prevent future autocratic abuses.

Although President Trump has pushed the envelope further than most could have imagined possible, his abuse of power is reminiscent of the Nixon administration. After the Watergate scandal and the resignation of President Richard Nixon, Congress took steps, such as the Anti-Impoundment Act, to curb presidential excesses. Following the second Trump administration, an even more fundamental restructuring may be in order.

One thrust of Trump’s second term has been a concerted effort to sideline the legal referees charged with checking abuses. Nearly a score of inspectors generals charged with addressing fraud and abuse have been summarily dismissed without cause. The Office of Government Ethics has been decapitated. The head of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel charged with enforcement of civil service laws, such as whistleblower protection, has been removed.

America did not intend to elect a dictator.

The net result is that violations of laws and ethics go unchecked because independent oversight has been neutralized. To prevent the recurrence of future lawless regimes, Congress should reinstitute some of the checks Mr. Trump has shredded but in a way that insulates them from unilateral executive reversal. Congress needs to strengthen the institutional guardrails against executive violations of ethical standards and for protection of federal employees from illegal actions and enforceable standards for scientific integrity.

One step would be a statute relocating inspectors general (IGs) within the legislative branch. IGs do not perform an inherently executive function as they lack authority to implement their recommendations. Congress should appoint fixed-term IGs and team them with the Government Accountability Office (GAO), another legislative body, to keep this strengthened watchdog function beyond executive obstruction.

In this restructuring, the independent IGs could also conduct scientific integrity reviews to resolve challenges to the accuracy of scientific and technical agency information. This would put control of scientific and technical data and analyses beyond the unilateral control of the very bureaucracies responsible for creating them and thereby prevent them from peddling disinformation. Moreover, uniform procedures would facilitate the use of expert scientists from other agencies, universities, and other institutions to serve as review panels.

Similarly, institutions charged with enforcing civil service protections, such as the Office of Special Counsel and the Office of Government Ethics, should be moved into the legislative branch, as well, to prevent them from executive nullification.

Most fundamentally, the executive should not be able to control the judges who decide on disputes the executive branch has with its employees, contractors, and others. Basic fairness requires that these referees be impartial and not under the direct control of one party in the disagreement.

These referee positions are also not inherently executive in nature. For example, under the Competition in Contracting Act of 1984, Congress designated its GAO to serve as an independent and impartial forum for the resolution of disputes concerning the awards of federal contracts. Similarly, investigations into and reviews of employment abuses and related disputes could be handled by statutorily relocated Offices of Special Counsel and Government Ethics.

Significantly, one of the more insidious recent Trump initiatives is asserting his authority to summarily remove administrative law judges (ALJs) who preside over hearings regarding administrative or legal disputes between federal agencies and affected parties. The prospect of removal at will undoubtedly pressures ALJs to alter their decisions to favor the executive agencies.

Mr. Trump is also attempting (once again) to sideline the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), the civil service court which hears legal disputes about the illegal termination or treatment of federal employees. During his first term, President Trump shuttered MSPB by refusing to appoint any persons to fill MSPB vacancies. The three-member MSPB soon lost a quorum to decided cases and entered the Biden administration with a backlog of undecided appeals of more than 3,700 cases.

In his current term, Trump is trying the same approach, seeking to remove one of the two remaining MSPB members midway in her five-year term. As a result, the MSPB has once again been shuttered and may not reopen for years,

To enforce the basic rule of law, Congress should move the cadres of administrative law judges and the MSPB to the judicial branch so that the basic fairness of these decision-makers is safeguarded and they are shielded from further executive interference.

While President Trump may claim that he is implementing the will of the public, a recent Wall Street Journal poll found broad bipartisan support for limiting Trump’s unilateral executive authority. America did not intend to elect a dictator.

Yet, the principal takeaway from events of the past few months is that President Trump has conclusively demonstrated that the executive branch cannot be trusted to police itself in following the law. To prevent future presidents from assuming the same authoritarian posture as Trump, Congress must act decisively to fundamentally rebalance our system of checks and balances.

U.S. President Donald Trump is following the authoritarian’s handbook that Prime Minister Viktor Orbán used to consolidate power in Hungary. He is attacking the independent institutions that comprise the infrastructure supporting democracy—universities, law firms, culture, and the media.

And he is winning.

Major media outlets have “bent the knee” his press secretary’s preferred phrase for capitulation to Trump’s specious demands. His latest conquest is CBS.

CBS

Days before the 2024 election, Trump filed a frivolous lawsuit accusing the network of bias in broadcasting a “60 Minutes” interview of then-Vice President Kamala Harris. Seeking $10 billion in damages, the complaint claimed that the edited interview and associated programming were “partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference” intended to “mislead the public and attempt to tip the scales” in Harris’ favor.

Prominent First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams said that “the First Amendment was drafted to protect the press from just such litigation.” Harvard Law School Professor Rebecca Tushnet called it “ridiculous junk and should be mocked.” Attorney Charles Tobin warned, “This is a frivolous and dangerous attempt by a politician to control the news media.”

A few days later, Trump won the election. And now CBS’ parent company, Paramount, wants to settle the case.

Whatever money CBS pays Trump to settle his frivolous lawsuit is extortion.

Through her family’s holding company, Shari Redstone who is “friendly with Trump” is Paramount’s controlling shareholder. If the Federal Communications Commission approves its pending merger with Skydance Media, Redstone will reap millions.

On February 6, Redstone told the Paramount board that she wanted to settle Trump’s lawsuit. The next day, Trump doubled his damages claim to $20 billion. As the media reported Redstone’s desire to resolve the case, Trump pounced. On April 13, he asserted on social media that the FCC should impose “the maximum fine and punishment” on CBS and the network “should lose its license.”

The parties have agreed on a mediator, but whatever money CBS pays Trump to settle his frivolous lawsuit is extortion. The more profound cost is the loss of CBS’ journalistic independence, which became apparent on April 22 when the producer of “60 Minutes” resigned.

In the program’s 57-year history, Bill Owens—who became the “60 Minutes” executive producer in 2019 after 30 years at CBS—was only the third person to run it. Owens’s memo to his staff should be a warning to all of us:

“[O]ver the past months, it has become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it, to make independent decisions based on what was right for ‘60 Minutes,’ right for the audience.”

CBS wasn’t Trump’s first media victim.

The Washington Post

In early November 2024, The Washington Post editorial board had signed off on an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris for president. But it never ran. Owner Jeff Bezos personally killed it and, for the first time in decades, the paper did not endorse a U.S. presidential candidate.

A few hours after Bezos’s “no endorsement” decision became public, officials from his Blue Origin aerospace company, which has a multi-billion dollar contract with NASA, met with Trump.

After Trump won the election, Bezos flew to Mar-a-Lago where he and his fiancée dined with the president-elect. Shortly thereafter, Amazon donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund. And another Bezos company—Amazon—paid $40 million to license a documentary about Melania Trump, who personally will receive $28 million.

On February 26, Bezos announced a new rightward shift for the Post: It would now advocate for “personal liberties and free markets” and not publish opposing viewpoints on those topics.

The paper’s opinion section editor, David Shipley, resigned in response to the change. Prominent columnists followed him out the door, and more than 250,000 readers canceled their subscriptions.

The Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Times had an established record of presidential endorsements too—until 2024. Its 2020 endorsement of Joe Biden blasted Trump. But in 2024, billionaire owner Patrick Soon-Shiong quashed an editorial that would have endorsed Vice President Harris. As at the Post, columnists and editorial board members resigned in protest, and the paper lost thousands of subscribers.

After the election, Soon-Shiong killed another editorial set to run with this headline: “Donald Trump’s cabinet choices are not normal. The Senate’s confirmation process should be.”

Self-censorship is the most effective, enduring, and dangerous method of abridging free speech.

Facebook

More than one-half of Americans “often” or “sometimes” get their news from social media. One-third of all adults in the U.S. get their news from Facebook (operated by Meta). Meta’s president Mark Zuckerberg was among the billionaires who traveled to Mar-a-Lago after the election, met with Trump, and donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration fund. (With the help of corporate and billionaire megadonors like Zuckerberg and Bezos, Trump raised a record $239 million for the fund.)

Then Zuckerberg gave Trump a bigger gift: Meta abandoned third-party fact-checking of Facebook posts. As his rationale, Zuckerberg repeated Trump’s false talking points that fact-checking was “censorship” and reflected an “anti-Trump bias.”

Asked if he thought Zuckerberg was “directly responding to the threats” that Trump had made to him in the past, Trump answered: “Probably.”

Meanwhile, Meta invited Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White, a longtime Trump supporter, to join its board of directors.

PBS and NPR

On April 26, Trump will send Congress his request to halt all funding for public media—including NPR and PBS.

Viktor Orbán’s Playbook—The Trump Sequel

Since his return to power, Hungary’s prime minister has used “muscular state policy to achieve conservative ends,” according to conservative activist Christopher Rufo. Orbán is “attempting to rebuild its culture and institutions, from schools to universities to media.”

Orbán began “working with friendly oligarchs to purchase and transform media companies into conservative stalwarts; directing government advertising budgets to politically-aligned outlets;… and pressuring the holdover state media… to provide more favorable coverage.”

Rufo insists that Hungary “has a media environment at least as competitive as that of many Western nations.” Experienced observers disagree:

Human Rights Watch found that the government is using its near media monopoly to strengthen its hold on democratic institutions… The government’s increased control over the media market is linked to its broader assault on rule of law in Hungary, including undermining judicial independence and state capture of public institutions…

Trump’s attacks on universities, law firms, culture, and the media are all of a piece. Viktor Orbán’s Hungary provides a roadmap of his battle plan and a preview of his end game.

The Trump administration has sparked outrage by releasing photos showcasing alleged Venezuelan gang members, deported from the US, enduring harsh conditions in El Salvador’s maximum-security CECOT prison. Unlike the Abu Ghraib scandal under George W. Bush, where leaked images exposed prisoner abuse in Iraq, Trump officials openly shared these images, framing them as proof of tough immigration policies. The photos show detainees in shackles, heads shaved, packed into crowded cells, echoing the brutality of Abu Ghraib. Human Rights Watch reports 350 deaths in Salvadoran prisons since 2022, citing torture and neglect. The administration claims the detainees, linked to Tren de Aragua, threaten US security, but evidence remains thin, fueling comparisons to past war on terror abuses.

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Wars end. Bombs remain. In December 2020, the crew of an English fishing boat were pulling in a string of crab pots 22 miles northeast of Cromer when they noticed a tug on the main line. An explosion blew the Galwad-Y-Mor into the air, injuring five crew members, one of whom lost an eye. The cause was a bomb dropped by Nazi Germany three quarters of a century before.

America’s complex tapestry of federal, state and local laws, which has evolved over centuries through legislation, judicial rulings and amendments—a system that includes over 80,000 pages in the U.S. Code and millions of state regulations—contains numerous obscure laws and obsolete case decisions. Like unexploded ordnance from World War II, they lie hidden until they detonate without warning.

A case in point: the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which grants a president the authority to detain, deport or restrict non-citizens from nations deemed hostile during times of war, or when a foreign government invades the U.S. The Trump Administration revived this ancient law, deemed “outdated and dangerous” by the Brennan Center for Justice, to justify deporting hundreds of Venezuelan men whom the White House calls gang members.

The Supreme Court will soon consider whether or not they buy Trump’s dubious claim that the Tren de Aragua gang is acting on behalf of the Venezuelan nation-state, his tenuous argument that their presence in the U.S. constitutes a military-style “invasion” under the meaning of the statute signed into law by President John Adams, and his sketchy declaration that the men are all gang affiliated, no due process required.

A better question is: why is this law still on the books? The last time it was used was by FDR, who invoked it after Pearl Harbor to round up, detain and deport non-citizens of Japanese, German and Italian descent. While two-thirds of the 120,000 Japanese Americans sent to U.S. concentration camps were American citizens detained under a presidential Executive Order, the Alien Enemies Act was used to imprison law-abiding non-citizens. With such an infamous history of abuse and executive overreach, it’s weird that Congress didn’t repeal the Alien Enemies Act in the 1980s, when the U.S. formally issued apologies and reparation payments to FDR’s internment-camp victims.

Trump is also exploiting the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) of 1952, a relic of the McCarthy era that includes unconstitutionally vague provisions allowing the government to deport non-citizens for actions it deems to violate the foreign policy interests of the United States, however the government chooses to define it. According to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, fighting anti-Semitism is a core national security policy (that’s new to me and everyone else), protesting in favor of the people of Gaza is tantamount to supporting Hamas, which is anti-Semitic, so supporting Hamas promotes anti-Semitism, so participating in a demonstration against Israel’s war in Gaza is harmful to national security interests. That’s the pretext for ICE’s abductions and attempted deportations of college students Mohsen Mahdawi, Ranjani Srinivasan, and master’s degree graduate Mahmoud Khalil of Columbia University, and Tufts doctoral student Rumeysa Öztürk.

Courts are trying to sort out which, if any, of Trump’s claims hold legal water. Really, though, they shouldn’t have to. Also really: it shouldn’t have been available for Trump to abuse in the first place.

As with the Alien Enemies Act, the INA remains American law after repeatedly being used as a tool of oppression—to deport labor organizers during the Red Scare of the 1950s, prohibit leftist intellectuals from giving speeches under Reagan, deport thousands of Muslims after 9/11, and even to deport HIV/AIDS patients. Its repeal is long overdue.

Other legal landmines abound.

The USA Patriot Act passed after 9/11 expanded government surveillance, allowing warrantless data collection, roving wiretaps and access to personal records under the guise of counterterrorism. As we learned from Edward Snowden, the NSA abused the Patriot Act to collect millions of communications from innocent Americans, yet it remains the law of the land. The Act’s vague definitions (“relevant to an authorized investigation”) and minimal oversight allow government thugs to target political opponents and suppress dissent. The Patriot Act is un-American. It should be shredded.

Civil asset forfeiture laws allow cops to seize your property. All they have to do is claim that they suspect the cash or cars or whatever of being tied to a crime, even if you are never charged or are found not guilty. Federal and state laws place the burden on owners to prove their innocence. It’s well-documented that federal forfeitures totaling $45.7 billion between 2000 and 2019 often targeted low-income individuals unable to fight back. Supreme Court justices have repeatedly expressed skepticism about these statutes, but neither they nor Congress has acted to protect the public. Every time you drive past a policeman, one of those laws lurks like a highway robber, ready to devastate your personal finances in an instant.

Laws with potential for abuse often serve the interests of powerful political forces. The Espionage Act, a 1917 law used against whistleblowers like Daniel Ellsberg, Chelsea Manning and Snowden, remains in force. Both parties have exploited it—Trump prosecuted eight leakers, Biden continued the case against Julian Assange. Suppressing dissent is bipartisan. Civil asset forfeiture is a cash cow.

Periodic attempts at reform, like the piecemeal Law Revision Commission of the 1970s and Congressional Research Service reports, are mostly ignored.

The current system, where laws once passed are nearly impossible to repeal regardless of their flaws, is unworthy of a rational society. Congress and state legislatures should establish permanent standing committees to continuously review old laws for repeal or amendments to modernize them. Similarly, federal and state courts should regularly review case law to flag flawed decisions like the 1944 Korematsu decision in which the Supreme Court upheld FDR’s internment camps for Japanese Americans, and has since been used to justify such outrages as Bush’s extraordinary renditions and Trump’s first-term Muslim travel ban.

Insanely, Korematsu remains in force.

(Ted Rall, the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of “What’s Left: Radical Solutions for Radical Problems,” which will be published May 1st. He co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis and The TMI Show with political analyst Manila Chan. Subscribe: tedrall.Substack.com.)

The post Detonating Democracy: The Threat of Obsolete Laws appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

LIVE 3 pm Eastern but you can Stream at your convenience:

Don’t miss this episode of DeProgram with hosts John Kiriakou and Ted Rall, delivering razor-sharp analysis on three explosive stories rocking the political sphere.

First, they dive into the Ukraine crisis, focusing on President Trump’s proposed peace deal to end the war with Russia. As Trump pushes for a swift resolution, sidelining NATO and pressuring Kyiv, what are the implications for U.S. foreign policy and global alliances? The hosts unpack the deal’s promises and pitfalls, questioning whether it’s a genuine path to peace or a geopolitical gamble.

Next, they tackle the Pete Hegseth scandal, where the Defense Secretary allegedly used his personal computer and Signal chats to handle classified Pentagon data. This reckless breach raises alarms about national security and Hegseth’s fitness for office—is this a one-off error or evidence of deeper incompetence?

Finally, Kiriakou and Rall expose Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s stunning lapse: her purse, containing $3,000 cash and sensitive documents, was stolen at a Washington, D.C., restaurant. If Noem can’t safeguard her own belongings, how can she protect the nation from terrorism and border threats?

With their trademark candor and wit, the hosts connect these stories, revealing a troubling pattern of chaos and mismanagement in America’s leadership. DeProgram cuts through the noise, challenging mainstream narratives and empowering listeners with unfiltered truth. Whether you’re skeptical of government overreach or hungry for clarity on today’s headlines, this episode is a must-listen. Stream now on YouTube, Rumble and X and join the conversation as Kiriakou and Rall dissect Trump’s Ukraine peace deal, Hegseth’s personal computer fiasco, and Noem’s security blunder!

The post DeProgram: “Trump’s Ukraine Gamble, Hegseth’s Laptop Blunder, and Noem’s Purse Fiasco” appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

In 2022, Pope Francis created a will expressing his desire that just one word be inscribed on the stone marking his burial place: Franciscus.

Franciscus, Latin for Francis, is the name Jorge Mario Bergoglio chose when, 12 years ago, cardinals elected him to become the Bishop of Rome. He sought union with Saint Francis, known as one who lived on the margins, who discarded his worldly clothes, and who kissed the lepers. Pope Francis longed for “a church that is poor and is for the poor.” He recognized, as Bishop Robert McElroy once expressed it, that “too much money is in the hands of too few, while the vast majority struggle to get by.”

As the spiritual leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics, Pope Francis unified people of different generations. He encouraged genuine love for humans—“Todo, todo, todo.” Or, as the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.’s personal physician, the late beloved Chicagoan Dr. Quentin Young would often say, “Everybody in, nobody out.”

“Why,” he asked, “would anyone give weapons to people who use them for war?... The answer is money, and the money is drenched in blood.”

Pope Francis exhorted people to set aside the futility of war and to always care for those who bear the worst brunt of war, particularly the children. His were the words of a man whose heart aches for children who are being punished to death, sacrificed by powerful people whose lust for greed and power overcomes their capacity for compassion.

“Yesterday, children were bombed,” Pope Francis said in his final Christmas message last December. “Children. This is cruelty, this is not war.” He added, touching the cross he wore around his neck, “I want to say this, because it touches my heart.”

Pope Francis was speaking about the children of Gaza, who have been orphaned, maimed, sickened, starved, forcibly displaced, traumatized, and buried under fire and rubble. In excerpts from the book Hope Never Disappoints. Pilgrims Toward a Better World, published in November 2024, he was blunt about Israel’s accountability, writing: “What is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide. It should be investigated to determine whether it meets the definition formulated by jurists and international bodies.”

On Easter, the day before his death, Pope Francis expressed in a written message: “I appeal to the warring parties: Call a cease-fire, release the hostages, and come to the aid of a starving people that aspire to a future of peace!”

During the current war, beginning in 2023, Pope Francis developed a strong relationship with parishioners of the Church of the Holy Family in Gaza. By holding virtual gatherings with the hundreds of people sheltering in the church, he was able to stay in daily touch with the realities they faced under Israel’s siege and bombardment. On days when he learned that the bombing was particularly heavy, Pope Francis would call to check in on them as many as five times a day.

Pope Francis carried his anti-war message to the seats of power in places around the world. In September 2015, exasperated by the superpowers’ desire to control others through militarism, he posed a simple question to the U.S. Congress: “Why,” he asked, “would anyone give weapons to people who use them for war?... The answer is money, and the money is drenched in blood.”

Pope Francis emphasized the stewardship so vitally needed for future generations to have a habitable planet, sounding an alarm about the need to address climate change. “The world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point,” he stated in a magisterial document released in October 2023. “Despite all attempts to deny, conceal, gloss over, or relativise the issue, the signs of climate change are here and increasingly evident.”

The Pontiff likewise denounced the use of atomic energy for the purposes of war, and declared possession of nuclear weapons to be immoral, asking, “How can we speak of peace even as we build terrifying new weapons of war?”

In accordance with his wishes, Pope Francis will be buried in a basilica dedicated to the Virgin Mary, a place he went to pray before and after each of his 47 “apostolic missions.” The Basilica of Saint Mary Major is located in one of Rome’s poorer neighborhoods, a church in a neighborhood with refugees. Francis has entrusted himself to the protection of Mary, the mother of Jesus.

I’d like to think that those words, “Todo, todo, todo,” will break down the barriers creating illusory divisions between us, leading us toward true egalitarianism, embracing Earth and one another, grateful always for the chance to “choose life, so that you and your descendants can live.”

Beloved Franciscus, “Oremus.” Let us pray.

“America needs something more right now than a “must-do” list from liberals and progressives. America needs a different story… the leaders, and thinkers, and activists who honestly tell that story and speak passionately of the moral and religious values it puts in play will be the first political generation since the New Deal to win power back for the people… The right story will set our course for a generation to come…”

“Tell it—for America’s sake.”—Bill Moyers, A New Story for America (2006)

The time has come. The crisis intensifies, and the struggle is being joined. Abraham Lincoln’s warning of 1862–“We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of Earth”—speaks ever more directly to us. But keep listening. Lincoln did not merely issue a warning to his fellow citizens. Believing they already essentially knew what he was to say, he reminded them of who they were and made it perfectly clear to them what they had to do to overcome the crisis and prevail against the enemy they confronted. He told them that winning the war and sustaining the Union required not simply defeating the Confederacy, but also making America’s revolutionary promise all the more real for all the more Americans. He told them that to truly secure the United States they had to end slavery. He called on them to make America radically freer, more equal, and more democratic.

The time has come for us to do the same. The time has come for us to remind ourselves of who we are and what that demands. The time has come for us to take hold of our history and make America radical again.

The resurgent democratic energies and agencies we are sensing and seeing reveal that Americans not only continue both to believe in America’s revolutionary promise and to feel the radical impulse imbued in American life by the Revolution and sustained by the struggles of generations, but also yearn to defend American democratic life. Thus, they challenge not only a treacherous and reactionary president and his party. They challenge us—the democratic left—as well.

Even as we draw inspiration and encouragement from America’s progressive and radical story, we should never forget what our forebears never forgot, that the America we seek lies not in the past, but in the future that we are struggling to make.

They challenge labor unionists, progressives, radicals, socialists, and true liberals to do what we have failed to do for the past 50 years. They challenge us to finally fulfill the fearful expectations that in the 1970s drove the corporate powers that be and their conservative and neoliberal champions to declare war on the progress of American democratic life and pursue to this day class-war and culture-war campaigns against the democratic achievements of generations; the hard-won rights of workers, women, and people of color; and the very memory of how those achievements were secured and those rights were won. They challenge us to unite in a coalition—call it a “popular front” if you wish—to liberate the Democratic party, the historic Party of the People, from the Money Power and to take up the fight to truly assure life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to all Americans. A coalition determined to not only win elections, but also harness the powers of democratic government, subject capital to ever greater public regulation and control, and push the nation all the more in a social-democratic direction.

We cannot delay. We must start doing what we have not been doing. We must embrace our history and recognize that we are radicals at heart. And we must build a coalition of democratic forces which is committed not merely to restoring the democratic legacy of generations and the rights of workers, women, and people of color, but also, if we are to truly secure them, to radically or, if you prefer, progressively extending and deepening them. We must address the needs of the commonwealth and its citizens by re-appropriating through taxation the wealth transferred from working people to capital and the rich. We must empower labor both private and public to organize and bargain collectively and to elect union brothers and sisters to corporate boards. We must make ourselves more secure by demilitarizing and de-weaponizing everyday American life and by establishing a system of universal national healthcare. We must enact the Equal Rights Amendment and guarantee a woman’s right to control her own body. We must not simply abolish the Electoral College, but actually enact a constitutional amendment guaranteeing citizens the right to vote. Moreover, we should redeem FDR’s vision of an Economic Bill of Rights for all Americans.

We must, however, do more than come up with a “must-do list” that will appeal to and draw together diverse interests. We must do what America’s finest radical and progressive voices have always done in the face of crises and forces determined to stymie, or bring an end altogether to, the progress of American democratic life. We must recover and proclaim anew the revolutionary promise projected in Common Sense, the Declaration, the Preamble, and the Bill of Rights so as to call out the powers that be and call forth our fellow citizens.

We must do what our greatest democratic poet Walt Whitman did on the eve of the Civil War when he wrote in his continuing epic, Leaves of Grass:

YOU just maturing youth! You male or female!
Remember the organic compact of These States,
Remember the pledge of the Old Thirteen thenceforward to the rights, life, liberty, equality of man,
Remember what was promulged by the founders, ratified by The States, signed in black and white by the Commissioners, and read by Washington at the head of the army,
Remember the purposes of the founders,––Remember Washington;
Remember the copious humanity streaming from every direction toward America;
Remember the hospitality that belongs to nations and men; (Cursed be nation, woman, man, without hospitality!)
Remember, government is to subserve individuals,
Not any, not the President, is to have one jot more than you or me,
Not any habitan of America is to have one jot less than you or me.

We must do what Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her colleagues did at Seneca Falls in 1848 when they stated in the Declaration of Sentiments that “all men and women are created equal”; what Frederick Douglass did in 1852 when he asked his fellow Americans “What to the slave is the Fourth of July?”; what Lincoln did most eloquently at Gettysburg in 1863 when he projected a “new birth of freedom” to assure that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth”; what Eugene Debs did when he called forth Paine and other radicals and progressives to champion the causes of labor and socialism; what Franklin Roosevelt did in proclaiming the Four Freedoms and envisioning the creation of an Economic Bill of Rights for all Americans; and what Martin Luther King, Jr. did when demanding a fulfillment of America’s revolutionary promise on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963.

Moreover, we must lay claim to or, better, reclaim America’s past and—without discounting the terrible tragedies and ironies that have marked the lives of so many Americans—articulate the truly radical story of America, the truly radical story that is America. The story of how, in the face of fierce opposition, and despite all of our terrible faults and failings, generations of Americans native-born and newly-arrived, men and women in all their extraordinary diversity, have struggled both to realize the nation’s fundamental promise of equality and life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and to enlarge not only the We in We the People, but also the powers of the people. Indeed, the story of how our greatest generations confronted and transcended mortal threats to American democratic life in the 1770s, 1860s, and 1930s-40s (not to mention the 1960s) by making the United States radically freer, more equal, and more democratic. And we must tell that story in a way that enables us to not only appreciate why we feel the democratic impulses and yearnings we do, but also to recognize and embrace our many and diverse struggles to make real the nation’s promise past and present as ours not respectively “theirs” alone.

Finally, even as we draw inspiration and encouragement from America’s progressive and radical story, we should never forget what our forebears never forgot, that the America we seek lies not in the past, but in the future that we are struggling to make. And in that spirit, we should recall, if not publicly recite, lines such as these from Langston Hughes’ 1936 poem “Let America Be America Again”:

O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!

The time has come to take hold of our history and make America radical again. The time has come not merely to take back America, but all the more to make America America.

Note: This article is based on the Afterword to my 2020 book Take Hold of Our History: Make America Radical Again.

Under the guise of efficiency, the Trump administration is taking a sledgehammer to essential programs and agencies that are the backbone of America’s civilian government. The virtual elimination of the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, and plans to shut down the Department of Education are just the most visible examples of a campaign that includes layoffs of budget experts, public health officials, scientists, and other critical personnel whose work undergirds the daily operations of government and provides the basic services needed by businesses, families, and individuals alike. Many of those services can make the difference between solvency and poverty, health and illness, or even, in some cases, life and death for vulnerable populations.

The speed with which civilian programs and agencies are being slashed in the second Trump era gives away the true purpose of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). In the context of the Musk-Trump regime, “efficiency” is a cover story for a greed-driven ideological campaign to radically reduce the size of government without regard for the human consequences.

The first two months of the Trump-Musk administration undoubtedly represent the most blatant power grab by the executive branch in the history of this republic.

So far, the only agency that seems to have escaped the ire of the DOGE is—don’t be shocked!—the Pentagon. After misleading headlines suggested that its topline would be cut by as much as 8% annually for the next five years as part of that supposed efficiency campaign, the real plan was revealed—finding savings in some parts of the Pentagon only to invest whatever money might be saved in—yes!—other military programs without any actual reductions in the department’s overall budget. Then, during a White House meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on April 7, President Donald Trump announced that “we’re going to be approving a budget, and I’m proud to say, actually, the biggest one we’ve ever done for the military... $1 trillion. Nobody has seen anything like it.”

So far, cuts to make room for new kinds of military investments have been limited to the firing of civilian Pentagon employees and the dismantling of a number of internal strategy and research departments. Activities that funnel revenue to weapons contractors have barely been touched—hardly surprising given that Elon Musk himself presides over a significant Pentagon contractor, SpaceX.

The legitimacy of his role should, of course, be subject to question. After all, he’s an unelected billionaire with major government contracts who, in recent months, seemed to have garnered more power than the entire cabinet combined. But cabinet members are subject to Senate confirmation, as well as financial disclosure and conflict-of-interest rules. Not Musk, though. Not only hasn’t he been vetted by Congress, but he’s been allowed to maintain his role in SpaceX.

A Hollow Government?

The Trump and Musk hollowing out of the civilian government, while keeping the Pentagon budget at enormously high levels of funding, means the United States is well on its way to becoming the very “garrison state” that President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against in the early years of the Cold War. And mind you, all of that’s true before Republican hawks in Congress like Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), who is seeking $100 billion more in Pentagon spending than its officials have asked for, even act.

What’s at stake, however, goes well beyond how the government spends its money. After all, such decisions are being accompanied by an assault on basic constitutional rights like freedom of speech and a campaign of mass deportations that already includes people with the legal right to remain in the United States. And that’s not to mention the bullying and financial blackmailing of universities, law firms, and major media outlets in an attempt to force them to bow down to the administration’s political preferences.

In fact, the first two months of the Trump-Musk administration undoubtedly represent the most blatant power grab by the executive branch in the history of this republic, a move that undermines our ability to preserve, no less expand, the fundamental rights that are supposed to be the guiding lights of American democracy. Those rights have, of course, been violated to one degree or another throughout this country’s history, but never like this. The current crackdown threatens to erase the hard-won victories of the civil rights, women’s rights, labor rights, immigrant rights, and LGBTQ rights movements that had brought this country closer to living up to its professed commitments to freedom, tolerance, and equality.

Back in 2019, right-wing populist and Trump buddy Steve Bannon told PBS “Frontline” that the key to a future victory was to increase the “muzzle velocity” of extremist policy changes, so that opponents of the MAGA movement wouldn’t even know what hit them. “All we have to do,” he said then, “is flood the zone. Every day we hit them with three things. They’ll bite on one, and we’ll get all of our stuff done. Bang, bang, bang. These guys will never—will never be able to recover. But we’ve got to start with muzzle velocity.”

The Trump/Musk administration is now implementing just such a strategy in a staggering fashion.

Sparing the Pentagon

Despite a certain amount of noise about DOGE-driven efficiencies at the Pentagon, the department has indeed been spared the fate of civilian outfits like the Agency for International Development and the Department of Education, which have been either decimated or are slated for elimination altogether.

A proposal to lay off 60,000 civilian employees at the Pentagon will have harsh consequences for those expecting to lose their jobs, but it is only 5% of the department’s workforce of 700,000 government employees and another more than half a million individuals under contract. By contrast, the workforce of USAID, which offered a peaceful helping hand to countries around the world, was rapidly reduced from 10,000 to less than 300.

The goal is to Make America Unequal Again with an expansive program that could leave current levels of inequality, which already exceed those reached during the “Gilded Age” of the late 19th and early 20th century, in the proverbial dust.

In addition, the layoffs of research scientists and public health experts may prove to have disastrous consequences down the road by reducing the government’s ability to prevent or respond to infectious diseases and possible pandemics like new variants of Covid-19 or the bird flu. To compound the problem, the administration has ordered the firing of 1 in 5 employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and is now pressing that agency to terminate more than one-third of its outside contracts.

In addition, the almost instant firing of independent government inspectors general, who were charged with overseeing government waste, fraud, and abuse, at the start of Trump’s second term in office bodes anything but well for policing an administration already awash in conflicts of interest. Worse yet, the freezing of actions by the civil rights division of the Justice Department will allow racial injustice to flourish without the slightest meaningful legal pushback.

Then there are the plans of both the Trump administration and House Republicans to slash programs from Medicaid to Social Security to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that serve tens of millions of Americans. In addition, there have already been staff cuts at the Social Security Administration, as well as steps taken to make it harder to apply for benefits there, and that’s undoubtedly just the beginning. In the future, there could be devastating direct benefit cuts to a program that serves more than 70 million Americans. And such crucial programs may, in their own fashion, end up on the chopping block, in part to make way for a planned multi-trillion-dollar tax cut geared mainly—you undoubtedly won’t be surprised to learn—to helping individuals at the high end of the income scale.

In short, the goal is to Make America Unequal Again with an expansive program that could leave current levels of inequality, which already exceed those reached during the “Gilded Age” of the late 19th and early 20th century, in the proverbial dust.

The Pentagon Exception

While most government agencies are either under siege or fear that they will be so in relatively short order, one agency has largely escaped the budget cutter’s knife: the Pentagon. In 2024, that agency (including nuclear warhead work done at the Department of Energy) already received an astonishing $915 billion, accounting for more than half of the federal government’s discretionary budget that year.

Meanwhile, as a New York Times analysis recently showed, the revenues of major weapons contractors have barely been touched. So far, General Dynamics (with a loss of less than 1%) and Leidos (with a loss of 7%) are the only firms among the top 10 weapons contractors to experience any kind of reduction in revenues from DOGE’s efforts.

One possible tradeoff within the Pentagon could be a move away from big platforms like aircraft carriers and piloted combat aircraft toward faster, nimbler, more easily produced systems based on applications of artificial intelligence, including swarms of drones. Elon Musk is already a longtime critic of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter jet, which he’s slammed as “the worst military value for money” in the history of Pentagon procurement. His solution, however, is ever more advanced drones, presumably produced by his Silicon Valley allies.

But there is another possibility: The Pentagon might further boost its budget so that it can fund systems large and small, simultaneously feeding both the big contractors and the emerging military tech firms. After all, despite Musk’s critique, the president only recently announced that Boeing will produce a new plane, the F-47 (that “47” being—you guessed it!—in honor of America’s 47th president).

If there is a move toward tradeoffs between existing systems and new tech, both sides will have ample lobbying clout at their disposal. After all, the Silicon Valley crowd is literally embedded in the Trump administration from Musk to Vice President JD Vance, a protégé of Peter Thiel, the founder of the military-tech firm Palantir. Shortly after graduating from Yale Law School, Vance took a job at Mithril, a venture capital firm owned by Thiel. When Vance left that firm in 2019 to run for the Senate in Ohio, he did so with $15 million in backing from Thiel.

And Thiel is just one of the tech moguls backing Vance. An analysis by CBS News found that:

Vance, a relative newcomer to national politics, has assiduously courted billionaires and Silicon Valley titans to bankroll his unlikely rise from bestselling memoirist of despair, drugs, and generational poverty in Appalachia to a ticket that could seat him a heartbeat away from the presidency.

The conservative New York Post summarized the state of play in an article headline in July 2024: “Silicon Valley Cheers Vance Pick as More Tech Billionaires Back Trump.” And keep in mind that Musk and Vance are not the only advocates for the military-tech sector embedded in the Trump administration. Stephen Feinberg, second-in-charge at the Pentagon, worked for Cerberus Capital, an investment firm that has a history of investing in the handgun and defense industries. And Michael Obadal, a senior director at Anduril, has been selected to serve as the deputy secretary of the Army. A recent analysis by Bloomberg, in fact, found that “more than a dozen people with ties to Thiel—including current and former employees of his companies, as well as people who have helped manage his fortune or benefited from his investments and charitable giving—have been folded into the Trump administration.”

For their part, the Big Five arms contractors, led by Lockheed Martin, still have a firm foothold in Congress, having made millions in campaign contributions, employed hundreds of lobbyists serving on commissions that influence military spending and strategy, and placed their facilities in a majority of the states and districts in the country. Even if some in the Pentagon tried to phase out the F-35, Congress might well add funds to that institution’s budget request to save the program.

Recent procurement decisions suggest that there may be a desire in both Congress and the Trump administration to finance traditional contractors and emerging tech firms alike. The two largest recent program announcements—Boeing’s selection as the prime contractor for that F-47 next generation combat aircraft and President Trump’s commitment to a “Golden Dome” defense system supposedly geared to protecting the entire United States from incoming missiles—will offer ample opportunities to both traditional arms firms and emerging military tech companies. The procurement phase of the F-47 program could cost up to $20 billion, but as Dan Grazier of the Stimson Center has noted, that $20 billion will be “just seed money. The total costs coming down the road will be hundreds of billions of dollars.” Meanwhile, General Atomics and Anduril are competing to build drone “wingmen” that would work in coordination with those future F-47s in battle situations.

At this point, President Trump’s Golden Dome isn’t a fully fleshed out concept, but count on one thing: Attempting to meet his goal of a comprehensive, leakproof defense against missiles would require building large numbers of interceptors and new military satellites woven together with advanced communications and targeting systems, at a potential cost over time of hundreds of billions of dollars. And while the big weapons firms may have an inside track on building the hardware for the Golden Dome, emerging tech firms are better positioned to produce the software, targeting, surveillance, and communications components of the system.

Golden Dome is poised to go forward despite the fact that, as Laura Grego of the Union of Concerned Scientists has asserted, “It has been long understood that defending against a sophisticated nuclear arsenal is technically and economically unfeasible.” But that reality won’t stem the flow of massive quantities of tax dollars into the project, no matter how unrealistic it may be, since profits from producing it will be all too realistic.

Resistance Rising?

There are signs of growing resistance to the Musk-Trump agenda from lawsuits, to rallies against the oligarchy led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), to a boycott of Musk’s Tesla automobiles. Such efforts will need to be supplemented by the involvement of millions more people, including Trump supporters hurt by his cuts to essential programs that had helped them stay above water financially. The outcome of all this may be uncertain, but the stakes simply couldn’t be higher.

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On “The TMI Show,” hosts Ted Rall and Manila Chan dive into the U.S. Supreme Court oral arguments in Mahmoud v. Taylor, where religious parents in Montgomery County, Maryland, seek to opt their children out of LGBTQ storybook time in public schools. The conservative majority appears poised to rule in favor of the parents, emphasizing religious freedom and parental rights. Manila argues parents should have the right to customize their children’s education, reflecting the views of many who believe public schools should accommodate personal beliefs. Ted, however, contends that allowing such choices undermines a standardized curriculum, questioning what’s next—parents picking specific history or math chapters?

On one side, parents assert their constitutional right to guide their children’s moral and religious upbringing, feeling that exposure to certain materials conflicts with their values. On the other, the school board argues that opting out disrupts educational goals of inclusivity and diversity, potentially fragmenting the system if every family cherry-picks lessons. The hosts debate the broader implications: could this lead to a slippery slope where core subjects are dissected based on individual preferences? They also discuss potential outcomes, noting the Courts likely ruling may set a precedent for future cases, reshaping how public schools balance parental rights with the need for a cohesive educational framework.

The post TMI Show Ep 124: “The LGBTQ Storytime Case: A La Carte Education?” appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Set in the hills of the West Bank, The Teacher, written and directed by British-Palestinian filmmaker Farah Nabulsi, tells the riveting story of Bassem (Saleh Bakri), a Palestinian high school English teacher struggling to inspire his students under the pall of Israel's occupation.

What’s it all for—the studying, the scholarship—if only to see armed settlers burn down your village olive trees and an Israeli government demolish your family home to make way for another illegal settlement? To the Palestinian teen who speaks in despair, as though old and tired with little for which to live, the middle-aged Bassem tells his student to return to his books to “regain control” in pursuit of an education that holds hope for a better life.

Although the film is Bassem’s journey of self-blame, newfound love, and quiet yet determined resistance, we also see events through the eyes of his prized student Adam (Muhammed Abed Elrahman), who becomes Bassem’s surrogate son replacing the one Bassem lost, the one we meet only through scenes that take us back in time.

Now—during the U.S.-armed Israeli genocide in Gaza and emboldened settler movement ripping through the West Bank—it is hard to imagine Nabulsi entering the Israeli-controlled West Bank to film The Teacher.

Blessed with looks and smarts, the surrogate son Adam pours over his books at a desk in the dirt outside overlooking the village destined for erasure. His home is gone. The tractor left only slabs of cement under which Adam recovers a desk, a couch, and a pair of binoculars that afford him advance notice of a looming threat or gut punch.

One measure of a good movie is whether you care about the characters or feel compelled to watch them, regardless of whether you agree with their choices or roles in the film, regardless of whether the character is a teacher invested in his students or a cunning Israeli intelligence officer who knows exactly which emotional button to push. For character development—raw, textured—The Teacher scores 10 out of 10, not only because Bassem is heroic, protective, and ultimately selfless but because both he and Adam are tested in ways most of us never will be challenged, leaving us wondering what we would choose if we lived under occupation—the scorched land of nighttime raids and vigilante violence, where our futures are not our own, where the fork in the road between self-defense and vengeance sometimes merges and where the greater good beckons us to hush creeping doubts. Would we remember The Teacher’s words: “Revenge eats away at you and destroys from the inside”?

Reviewers from legacy media—The New York Times, the LA Times—criticize the movie for having too many subplots. “But a teacher-student bonding narrative, a legal procedure, a family tragedy, a romance, and a kidnapping thriller are a lot to hang on one character,” writes NYT reviewer Ben Kenigsberg. “Nabulsi, unfortunately, muddles the story with multiple subplots, some inelegant acting, and contrived English-language dialogue,” writes the LAT’s Carlos Aguilar.

Did these movie critics see the same film this reviewer saw?

Such undeserved criticism suggests the writers are imposing their detached notion of reality on a drama that is all too real. The critics’ desire for a less complicated storyline with more refined dialogue suggests colonization of the art form rather than criticism. Strands of multifaceted characters must not be removed to suit cinematic preferences for a formulaic Hollywood blockbuster.

Conversations in The Teacher resonate as familiar even in the most unfamiliar surroundings, where rough-around-the edges Palestinian teens stereotype Lisa (Imogen Poots), the blonde British school counselor, as a mere do-gooder. “Miss United Nations has arrived,” joke the teens who call their teacher a “player” when between cigarette puffs he locks eyes with the British import. As for the subplots—the gun behind the bookcase, the woman who emerges in only a towel, the judge who delivers injustice—these are not disconnected B or C stories but deftly interwoven branches of the A story about survival and subterfuge under the boot of a brutal occupier. Life is not simple nor a singular line, certainly not when the path to decolonization can be uncertain and torturous, both for the colonized and the colonizer, though never in equal measure.

Nabulsi—who wrote the script in Britain during the Covid-19 lockdown and met with checkpoint delays during three months of filming in the West Bank—adds depth to her story when she introduces the subplot based on the abduction of Gilad Shalit, a former Israeli soldier held captive for over five years in Palestine before released in a hostage deal that freed 1,027 Palestinian prisoners. In one of the most compelling scenes in The Teacher, a U.S. American father, an Israeli resident whose son is held hostage by Palestinians, sympathizes with Bassem having lost a son, for in a metaphorical sense the American father also lost his son after the young man insisted the family emigrate to Israel following a Birthright Israel trip. Now the father, whose wife berates him—much as Basem’s wife berated her husband for failing to protect their son—finds himself a stranger in a strange land called Israel. No, he assures Bassem, he is not one of them, one of the heartless occupiers.

Nabulsi, the daughter of a Palestinian mother and a Palestinian-Egypian father, was born and raised in London, where she pursued a career in finance and worked for JPMorgan before becoming a filmmaker. She switched careers, from stocks to scripts, after visiting Palestine to trace her family history—a mother who fled to Kuwait following the 1967 war, a father who emigrated to London to study civil engineering.

Nabulsi’s short film The Present—also set in occupied Palestine and also starring Palestinian actor Bakri—was nominated for an Oscar and won a BAFTA (British Academy Film Television Award). The Teacher—a suspenseful one hour and 55 minute drama—premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September of 2023, just weeks before October 7. During shooting Nabulsi set up large black screens to cover actors playing IDF soldiers because she feared that if villagers thought the soldiers were real, a hurricane of heartache would ensue.

Now—during the U.S.-armed Israeli genocide in Gaza and emboldened settler movement ripping through the West Bank—it is hard to imagine Nabulsi entering the Israeli-controlled West Bank to film The Teacher. Fortunately, for us, the movie audience; for Palestine, the resistance; and for the solidarity movement, marchers across the globe, The Teacher can be livestreamed on several platforms or watched in theaters from coast to coast.

On April 16, the U.K. Supreme Court made a landmark ruling that the legal definition of a “woman” must refer solely to biological sex. The implications of this decision were immediate and severe—trans women may now be strip-searched by male officers and excluded from spaces where their safety and dignity depend on recognition. At first glance, the decision may seem like a dry point of legal semantics. But in reality, it reflects a far deeper and more dangerous shift: the consolidation of an authoritarian political logic that treats trans lives as expendable in the pursuit of social order and hierarchical control.

This is not a policy based on scientific evidence or democratic deliberation. It is part of a wider cultural strategy designed to fracture public solidarity, weaponize identity, and enforce a hierarchy of who deserves protection. These strategies rely on well-worn tools: the stoking of moral panic, the resurrection of essentialist binaries, and the reduction of rights to a zero-sum contest. At the centre of it all is a necropolitical logic—one that governs through the threat of exclusion and disposability, using the unequal and conditional distribution of life, rights, and freedom as a tool to maintain dominance, privilege, and control.

Yet these politics do not operate only on a material level. They work most powerfully through identity—through constructing certain groups as more or less deserving of life. This is where queer necropolitics becomes a vital framework for understanding the terrain we are on. In this logic, queerness itself becomes a site of state violence, not because it poses a real threat, but because it disrupts the neat social categories authoritarian capitalism needs in order to manage, discipline, and divide us.

Transphobia as a Form of Moral Panic

The U.K. Supreme Court’s decision is only the latest episode in an escalating series of culture war skirmishes that target trans people under the banner of protecting women. These moral panics, like those which target and continue to target migrants, queers, and sex workers, rely on sensationalism and fear rather than evidence. They mobilize deep-seated anxieties about gender, identity, and social change into a reactionary demand for order and exclusion.

Proponents of these anti-trans positions often frame themselves as defenders of feminism. They argue that allowing trans women into women’s spaces compromises safety or dilutes hard-won rights. But these arguments closely mirror the language and tactics of far-right populist movements. They draw on a worldview in which society is fractured into antagonistic identity blocs, and in which any gain by one group must come at the cost of another. This zero-sum logic reinforces the idea that rights are scarce—and that groups must compete for recognition, safety, and survival.

The question becomes: Which oppressed group will be chosen for protection by the state, and which will be excluded?

Critically, these arguments lack grounding in either biology or social science. Claims about fixed “biological sex” ignore the robust and growing scientific consensus that sex is not binary and that human sexual traits exist along intersecting spectrums. From chromosomal variation to endocrine diversity, biological reality defies the simplistic male-female binary that the court ruling seeks to enshrine. Social science, too, has long shown that gender is a social construct with material effects, shaped by context, power, and historical processes.

Yet despite this, trans women continue to be painted as dangerous intruders, especially in spaces like sports or prisons. In sport, arguments against inclusion often rely on misinformation and biologically essentialist (and deeply racist) assumptions. However, both scientific research and legal analysis show that trans athletes face no inherent advantages—and are often at a disadvantage due to systemic barriers and social exclusion.

Through casting trans inclusion as a threat to cis women’s rights, this rhetoric not only distorts the goals of feminism but plays directly into the authoritarian politics it claims to resist. Instead of building coalitions among those historically marginalised, it encourages rivalry and suspicion. The question becomes: Which oppressed group will be chosen for protection by the state, and which will be excluded? In this framework, protection is no longer a right—it is a prize to be fought over.

The Necropolitical Logic of Authoritarian Capitalism

These attacks reveal a profound transformation in how power is exercised. It is no longer enough to control access to resources, wealth, or institutions. Authoritarian capitalism now governs at the level of life itself—who is deemed socially legitimate, who is recognized by the law, and who is left to navigate violence and precarity without protection. This form of rule is what theorists have identified as necropolitics: the power to determine who lives and who dies, not only physically, but socially, economically, and symbolically.

A queer necropolitical perspective deepens this understanding. It shows how queerness—particularly trans identities—are positioned as excessive, abject, or threatening within systems that demand legibility and conformity. Queer bodies do not just live precariously under this regime; they are actively made precarious. Their visibility becomes grounds for surveillance; their autonomy becomes justification for abandonment. Crucially, queer life—and by extension, any life that resists being neatly classified and controlled—is often only tolerated when it serves a political purpose or stays out of sight.

This logic did not emerge in isolation. It evolved from the earlier structures of neoliberalism, which systematically turned basic goods—such as housing, education, and healthcare—into commodities to be fought over. Under neoliberalism, survival became a matter of individual competition. But as the failures of that model have become increasingly visible, its competitive logic has migrated: Now it is identity itself that is rendered scarce. Rights are no longer distributed through citizenship or universal protections, but through contest between demographic groups.

This shift has produced a kind of demographic austerity. If trans people gain access to gender-affirming care, it is framed as coming at the expense of cis women’s services. If migrants seek asylum, it is painted as a drain on national resources. If Black communities organize for safety and justice, it is seen as threatening the status of white working-class voters. These dynamics reflect a necropolitical state that no longer promises inclusion through shared humanity, but only conditional recognition based on identity, utility, and submission.

In this way, trans people—and queer people more broadly—are turned into political symbols whose lives can be bartered, debated, or denied. Recent legal commentary has detailed how trans voices were excluded from the court’s reasoning. Policy analyses show how access to gender-affirming services is increasingly restricted. Meanwhile, broader populist movements are reinforcing essentialist identities globally—such as the Trump administration’s recent effort to promote racial essentialism and reject race as a social construct.

These are not isolated developments. They are the global grammar of a resurgent necropolitical order.

The Necessity of Queer Resistance to Necrophobic Politics

Faced with these conditions, the most urgent political task is to reject the premise that life must be earned through conformity. Queer politics does not simply advocate for inclusion; it challenges the very structure that renders certain lives less liveable in the first place. It refuses the logic of scarcity, of competition, of “deservingness,” and insists instead on a politics rooted in abundance, solidarity, and mutual care.

This form of resistance is especially vital in confronting necrophobic politics—the cultural and institutional tendency to reject or erase those who live outside normative scripts of gender, sexuality, race, or ability. Queer resistance confronts this head-on, not by asking for tolerance, but by building new ways of relating, surviving, and resisting violent normative logics. It appears in grassroots movements for the collective ownership of our spaces, mutual aid networks, in trans-led care collectives and cooperatives, and in artistic and theoretical projects that imagine life beyond legibility.

The culture and legal war against trans people is not a side issue. It is a central front in the struggle over what kind of society we want to live in.

The point is not simply to expand the margins of acceptability. It is to dismantle the very system that produces social death in the first place. As recent academic research and political analysis show, authoritarian capitalism survives by creating artificial crises of identity, which can then be managed, exploited, or repressed. Queer resistance makes those crises unmanageable. It refuses to play the game of identity competition. It recognizes that our survival depends not on winning favor from the state, but on transforming the conditions that make such favor necessary.

This resistance is already under way. Across courts, classrooms, and communities, people are challenging the reduction of identity to threat and fighting to build alliances across difference. Even as the far-right attempts to recapture the public imagination with a nostalgic vision of fixed categories and rigid roles, queer communities continue to model what it means to live otherwise—to live together and otherwise—outside the confines of binary thinking and zero-sum fear.

The culture and legal war against trans people is not a side issue. It is a central front in the struggle over what kind of society we want to live in. Will we be divided into discrete groups, each vying for conditional safety under an authoritarian state? Or can we build a world where life is not reduced to a bargaining chip, but recognized as fundamentally shared, entangled, and worth protecting—simply because it exists?

Queer politics answers this question with a resounding refusal to accept the terms as they have been offered. It defines freedom not as something won by denying others their rights or survival, but as the shared pursuit of joy, dignity, and possibility through the creation and exploration of diverse ways of living. And in doing so it provides the radical blueprint for a different and better future.

When a leader has ignored the legislative and judicial branches of government, has made hundreds disappear like under Pinochet, has targeted people based on speech, and rules by executive order, there is no other way to describe them but as a dictator.

Who, then, is to blame for the American dictator’s rise? It’s neoliberalism, stupid.

The 50-plus years of neoliberal policies have undercut unions, deregulated industry, enabled wild corporate profits, padded the pockets of politicians, and enabled the revolving door whereby elected figures could become lobbyists after leaving office.

On the American dictator’s first day in office, he began dismantling democracy by creating an executive order to end the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship.

Other neoliberal policies that have harmed the American people are free trade and the outsourcing of jobs. Complementing job loss from overseas, the unregulated development of industrial robots and AI has swallowed even more employment. The U.S. political leadership gave minimal attention to planning what would be next for the unemployed and underemployed that resulted from their job gutting policies.

Ever true to hyper-capitalist policies, the “market forces” were allowed to play out. So, service industry jobs became the default for many, although this industry, too, has seen the increase in “efficiency,” or using AI and machines rather than people. For those employed in the service industry, with its minimal benefits and lower salary, it’s a far cry from manufacturing and white-collar jobs that they would have likely had if not for the neoliberal agenda.

This has led to extreme economic and social precarity.

A corollary to neoliberal industrial policies was media deregulation, particularly the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, which led to “The Rush Limbaugh Show” and a media ecosystem that allowed for the creation of Fox News and MSNBC.

For the less educated, it became more challenging to discern fact from fiction. People listened to outrageous media personalities who were often flat-out lying and began miming them in pointing to and decrying shadows on the wall. Rising demagogues made use of these scapegoat shadows, defining them as immigrants and those who oppose the Palestinian genocide.

Exacerbating decades of decline and a decade of xenophobic populism, inflation rose after the Covid-19 pandemic and was often misattributed to former U.S. President Joe Biden. The American people chose the alternative to Biden’s vice president even though President Donald Trump had ignited an insurrection against the United States on January 6, 2021, and embraced (with a wink) the extremist-right Project 2025 plan before the 2024 election.

On the American dictator’s first day in office, he began dismantling democracy by creating an executive order to end the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship.

In just three months, the dictator has set to work destroying American democratic institutions and civil rights protections. And for this mammoth calamity, we have decades of neoliberal deregulation to thank.

Like millions of other people, I was deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Pope Francis, one of the most vocal and humble advocates for sharing the world’s resources.

Since assuming the throne of St Peter in 2013, the Pope championed many causes that are dear to progressive activists—from agroecology to post-growth economics, fossil fuel divestment, arms trade regulation and global monetary reform.

But at the heart of his advocacy was a focus on ending inequality both globally and on a national basis, repeatedly calling upon governments to redistribute wealth and benefits to the poor in a new spirit of generosity.

I first recall being struck by Pope Francis’ headline-grabbing speech in 2014, when he urged the United Nations to promote a ‘worldwide ethical mobilization’ of solidarity with the poor to help curb an ‘economy of exclusion’ that is taking hold everywhere today.

A year later in 2015, the papal encyclical Laudato Si’—subtitled ‘On care for our common home’—made bigger headlines around the world with its powerful critique of laissez-faire ideology and its destructive effects on the environment. The trenchant letter expounded on the responsibility of rich countries to address their ‘ecological debt’ to less developed countries, with an acknowledgement of ‘differentiated responsibilities’ in addressing climate change. It was a radical entreaty for resource transfers between the Global North and South, and significant reductions in the consumption of non-renewable energy within developed countries.

The eloquent discourse of Laudato Si’ also reflected the core understanding of many environmental activists—that the climate and inequality crises are inextricably interconnected. Again and again, Pope Francis railed against our collective indifference to widespread human suffering. He persistently argued that the welfare of nations is interrelated, so the massive poverty and hunger experienced in the fragile economies of developing nations is, in turn, reflected in the destruction of the natural environment. Hence the urgency of remediating the enormous discrepancies in living standards throughout the world, which calls for a sense of global solidarity and interdependency that is tragically lacking in human affairs.

During the coronavirus pandemic, Francis also set out the challenge for rich nations to cooperate and distribute the vaccine freely to the world, rather than hoarding resources and treating one’s own nation first. The 2020 encyclical titled Fratelli tutti—‘Brother’s all’—made clear that Covid-19 was exposing existing inequalities, and fraternity on a state level requires richer countries to help poorer ones if we are to give meaning to the equality of human rights. Clearly, the world failed to heed Pope Francis’ plea to ensure recovery from the crisis tackled poverty, inequality and the climate emergency by ‘sharing resources in a just and respectable manner’.

Another theme that Francis constantly returned to was the need for cancelling the debts of countries unable to repay them. In his final papal bull for the Jubilee Year 2025, titled Spes non confundit—‘Hope does not disappoint’—he described debt forgiveness as a matter of justice more than generosity, and again decried the true ecological debt that exists between the Global North and South.

Francis was rightly known as the ‘Pope of the peripheries,’ standing up for the most vulnerable and marginalized peoples. He made clear his opposition to Western government policies of battening down the hatches and draconian responses to international migrants. Soon after taking office, Francis visited the Italian island of Lampedusa where he condemned European ‘indifference’ to the drowning of migrants crossing the Mediterranean in small boats. He later visited numerous camps for excluded migrants and refugees living ‘ghost lives in limbo,’ calling upon us to see Christ in the stranger and outsider. This was a sharp rebuke to reactionary politicians like Trump, Meloni, and Orbán, instead emphasizing the need for ‘universal fraternity’ as influenced by St. Francis of Assisi, after whom the Pope took his name.

It was a fitting testament to Francis’ advocacy for the poor and forgotten that he died hours after calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. In his annual Urbi et Orbi —‘To the City and World’—message on Easter Sunday, the day before he died, Francis repeated his appeal to the warring parties to "come to the aid of a starving people that aspires to a future of peace." Few politicians, it seems, have followed the Pope's counsel throughout his 12-year-long pontificate. Which now leaves it up to us, the ordinary people of goodwill, to uphold Francis’ tireless advocacy and hope for a better world.

Millions of people across the United States and parts of Canada and Mexico recently witnessed a total solar eclipse—a rare and breathtaking alignment of the Earth, moon, and sun. Scientists had predicted its precise timing and path years in advance, with detailed maps showing where the event would be most visible.

Across the U.S., communities prepared—gathering in fields, schools, and rooftops with protective glasses and cameras in hand. They trusted science. They trusted preparation. They showed up.

In the same week one year later, over 600,000 people across all 50 states signed up to protest against U.S. President Donald Trump and his ongoing threat to democracy for the Hands Off Protests in 1,300 locations. These protests were not spontaneous—they were planned, anticipated, and powerfully aligned. Total estimates for the day’s peaceful protests are 3 million people.

It is not always possible to predict the exact moment of breakthrough, but one can prepare for the shift through mutual aid, political education, youth leadership, and conflict transformation training.

If it is possible to chart the movement of celestial bodies with such precision, then it is also possible to chart the social conditions that produce change. Responses to the conditions that cause criminality, injustice, or violence can also be charted and faced.

A crime can unfold in seconds, but its consequences—especially in marginalized communities—can last a lifetime. The root conditions that set the stage—poverty, childhood trauma, environmental injustice, disinvestment in education, and systemic racism—are all in place and can be addressed.

Knowing the precursors of injustice, it is prudent not to sit still and wait for tragedy before taking action. It is best to approach social justice the same way the world prepares for an eclipse—with foresight, community, and coordination.

Research from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) confirms that adverse childhood experiences (ACEs)—like neglect, abuse, or household dysfunction—can have long-term impacts on health, behavior, and justice involvement. Communities with higher poverty rates have higher crime rates, not because of moral failure, but due to decades of disinvestment and inequality.

As someone who has spent decades working for criminal and social justice reform in communities and far beyond, I see that systems and practices can indeed seed meaningful social change.

The Theory of Change is a framework that maps how and why desired change is expected to happen in a particular context. It’s not magic. It’s modeling. And when used correctly, it helps communities anticipate outcomes and align resources toward justice.

Like eclipse chasers who travel to be in the “path of totality,” social justice organizers prepare to be where the change is coming. They build coalitions, train communities, and develop infrastructure so that when the time is right, they do not to miss the moment to act.

At this time in history when daily political efforts are aimed at reversing timeworn, proven paths to social justice, such as defunding financial assistance to federal programs, universities, associations, and individuals based on principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion, it is urgent to prepare and put into place ways to counter the effects.

This preparation involves policymakers, funders, nonprofits, communities, advocates, individuals, families, institutions, and faith-based organizations to work toward the goal of social change of equity, fairness, access, and justice.

You cannot stare directly at an eclipse without special tools. Similarly, you often can’t see the slow build of a movement until it’s in full swing. Yet humans can sense change—like animals do before an eclipse, like trees that darken and cool in response to a shadow overhead.

Similarly, social change is intangible yet deeply felt. It is not always possible to predict the exact moment of breakthrough, but one can prepare for the shift through mutual aid, political education, youth leadership, and conflict transformation training.

Preparation now is crucial. Facing funding cuts nationally to vital services, rollbacks of civil rights protections, and an increasing normalization of political violence, it is urgent to create needed structures that assess possibilities in order to anticipate and respond proactively.

Throughout history, research shows that Black women have sensed these shifts and led people and communities through them—not just during well-known moments—but in everyday resistance throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.

For example, Rosa Parks didn’t just refuse to give up her seat one time; she was a seasoned organizer and a supporter of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or the SNCC Legacy Project. Shirley Chisholm wasn’t just the first Black woman to run for president—she helped reframe what political leadership looks like.

Barbara Jordan called out President Richard Nixon with such clarity it redefined accountability in American politics. Tennis icon Serena Williams crip-walked across a tennis court and reclaimed joy on a global stage. First Lady Michelle Obama wore sleeveless dresses and shattered expectations of what dignity and leadership looked like in a Black woman’s body.

A 2021 Texas A&M University study reports, “Black women, through their inclusive, community-based activist endeavors, continue to carve out fugitive spaces and counterpublics where counternarratives are actively generated to fight for a more equitable and inclusive democracy that serves all.”

As a Black woman, I see that Black women are the eclipse, the unexpected alignment. They have known through history how to bring light through the dark.

Social change can happen in quiet corners—in small towns, church basements, classrooms, or in the act of mentoring one young person. It doesn’t have to be a massive protest or a U.S. Supreme Court ruling. It can be both.

But when those moments do arrive—like the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the LGBTQ+ rights movement—they are rarely surprises. They are the result of decades of work, layered with setbacks and strategy.

As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” But that arc doesn’t bend on its own. It requires intention and action.

It is time not just to watch the changes happening, but to prepare and to make change, witnessing the outcomes together.