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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They have intentionally made life unlivable in Gaza.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And these are only the donors we know about.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is the definition of “corporations first.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As Schulberg and Blumenthal write:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bandung and Vietnam

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

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

Ascent and Counterrevolution

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

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

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

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

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

Rise of China and the BRICS

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

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

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

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

Rhetoric and Reality in the Global South Today

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bandung and the Continuing Specter of Capitalism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And the hits keep coming.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I wouldn’t tell you to swim harder.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s time for a different approach.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The post Trump Is Shocking But Not New appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

A World War I propaganda poster warned that individuals failing to support war efforts would face future shame for cowardice. Combat required immense bravery. Today, democracy falters as Trump enacts deportations without due process and censors universities. Courage remains scarce. Will people standing silent now face judgment later?

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

The post History Warns, Courage Wanes appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Every once in a while our mad king hits on an accidentally poetic turn of phrase in one of his strangely punctuated missives. In one of this week’s movie-based announcements (not the one about reopening San Francisco’s notorious island prison, which apparently followed a showing of Escape From Alcatraz on the Palm Beach PBS station) (not PBS’ fault, support them here), he declared that he was henceforth “instituting a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands.”

It was the last phrase—“foreign lands”—that attracted me; it conjures up European monarchs of earlier centuries dispatching sailors to see if fountains of youth or dragons or some such might be found off the edges of existing charts. (No, as it turned out, just Indigenous people who could be forced to part with their “foreign lands”). It’s a reminder that for Trump, and for many of us, a myopic focus on what’s happening here is a mistake, because we’ve long assumed that we’re at the head of the world. That unconscious supremacy—born in the actual enormous lead we had in living standards in the rubble of World War II—no longer makes much sense. So just a quick survey of what those funny people in other places are up to.

The rest of the English-speaking world seems set to keep moving forward into a working energy future. And the rest of Europe too.

Take China, emerging as Earth’s first electro-state. The Wall Street Journal had an excellent account this week of just how far our economies are diverging. Autos are a key piece of technology, one that produces both a large supply and technology chain, and a clue to a country’s identity. In America, Peter Landers, pointed out, the “standard family choice” is a $50,000 gas-fired SUV; in China,

A majority of new vehicles sold in China are either fully electric or plug-in hybrids, and a look around the recent auto show in Shanghai showed that local makers have mostly stopped introducing new gasoline-powered models. In the U.S., by contrast, the traditional combustion engine still powers about 8 in 10 new vehicles.

The price difference is overwhelming. Chinese car buyers no longer need to debate whether an EV can be made affordable, not when a decent starter model costs $10,000 and a luxury seven-seater with reclining massage chairs can be had for $50,000. Because of customer demand, even the low-end models come with advanced driver-assistance software.

Ten thousand dollars for a “decent starter model.” We’re not talking junk: “a new Toyota electric-powered sport-utility vehicle for about $15,000, complete with sunroof and cup holders.” Some of this comes because Chinese automakers are paid less (enough, however, to afford a new car); some of it comes from increasingly roboticized factories; and some of it comes from government subsidy. Because the government has decided it wants to own the future: Whose cars do you think are going to do better in, um, “foreign lands”? Bloomberg, in March, reported that Chinese automakers were “taking over roads from Brazil to South Africa”:

In South Africa, China-made vehicles account for nearly 10% of sales, or about five times the volume sold in 2019. In Turkey, Chinese brands claimed an 8% share in the first six months of 2024, up from almost none in 2022. In Chile, they have accounted for nearly a third of auto sales for several years running.

China sends more vehicles abroad than any other country, and its passenger car exports surged nearly 20% to 4.9 million in 2024 alone, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers—from less than 1 million in 2020.

In Brazil,

Luiz Palladino, 61, an engineer who has owned GM and Honda vehicles in the past and currently drives a Haval H6 EV, compared the car with much more expensive luxury cars.

“The moment I got into the car I thought: It’s in line with BMWs, Audis, with top-notch car finishing,” he said. “It has everything I want.”

Ok, that’s China (where thanks to huge solar buildout the use of coal for electricity dropped 5% in the first quarter, even as electricity demand surged). Now let’s look at Britain, where humans first learned to burn fossil fuels in quantity in the 18th century. There, the Labor government is apparently set to announce that all new homes will come with solar panels up top.

Housebuilders would be mandated by law to install solar roof panels on new properties by 2027 under new rules, seen by The Times, which ministers have claimed would slash energy bills and reduce emissions.

The change was estimated to add about £3,300 to the cost of building a semi-detached or terraced house and just under £4,000 for a detached property.

However, it was expected that new homeowners would recoup the extra costs within four years, with an average three-bedroom semi-detached saving more than £1,000 a year on energy bills.

This makes eminent sense because

Fitting solar power during construction is much cheaper than adding it to older buildings, which requires costly scaffolding and often new wiring. The payoff will be lower bills for consumers and lower emissions from buildings, which have become the second-biggest carbon polluter after transport.

And it comes despite the efforts of former British Prime Minister (and current Saudi lobbyist) Tony Blair to scupper such advances. Keir Starmer has four more years on his electoral mandate; Canada’s Mark Carney five, and after last week’s smashing election win Australia’s Anthony Albanese has three; the rest of the English-speaking world seems set to keep moving forward into a working energy future. And the rest of Europe too.

In Germany, for instance, as many as 3 million apartments may now have “balcony solar” arrays, solar panels that can be bought for a few hundred euros at the equivalent of Home Depot, hung from the railing of your veranda, and plugged straight into the wall, where they provide a reasonable amount of power. As France 24 reported recently:

City authorities in Frankfurt gave Christoph Stadelmann, a 60-year-old teacher, half of the 650 euros ($676) he paid for his kit at the beginning of last year.

Stadelmann expects to make his money back within three years.

Mirjam Sax said she would recommend balcony solar panels in spite of Germany's sometimes grey weather.

"If you've got a balcony, if you've got a bit of sun, you can put up a panel or two to see if it's worth it," she said.
"It's easy, and there's a price for every budget."

You can’t do that in America, because our country has fallen behind these foreign lands. As Grist reported last week, Underwriters Laboratory, which certifies appliances, hasn’t bothered to do the work to approve the systems, which means they can’t legally be installed in most places.

These challenges will take time and effort to overcome, but they’re not insurmountable, advocates of the technology said. Even now, a team of entrepreneurs and research scientists, backed by federal funding, are creating these standards. Their work mirrors what happened in Germany nearly a decade ago, when clean energy advocates and companies began lobbying the country’s electrical certification body to amend safety regulations to legalize balcony solar.

In 2017, Verband der Elektrotechnik, or VDE, a German certification body that issues product and safety standards for electrical products, released the first guideline that allowed for balcony solar systems. While such systems existed before VDE took this step, the benchmark it established allowed manufacturers to sell them widely, creating a booming industry.

“Relentless individuals” were key to making that happen, said Christian Ofenheusle, the founder of EmpowerSource, a Berlin-based company that promotes balcony solar. Members of a German solar industry association spent years advocating for the technology and worked with VDE to carve a path toward standardizing balcony solar systems.

Happily, we have some “relentless individuals” here as well—Cora Stryker, for instance, who this year started Bright Saver—to bring the balcony technology to America. I talked with her at some length last week: I’ve stuck our exchange into question-and-answer format below

1. Is America finally getting balcony solar!? Tell me about how you heard about this new development and got involved.

Yes! We’re already doing installations in the SF Bay Area and we are looking for early adopters to help us start a “balcony” plug-in solar movement in this country like the one we are seeing in Germany. As you know, plug-in solar isn’t just for balconies. It can go almost anywhere—in the backyard, the side of a house, in front of a garage, etc. My cofounders and I started Bright Saver because we believe that the benefits of producing clean energy at home should be available to everyone, not just homeowners with good roofs who can commit to spending $20-30k, although our system is also great for folks like me who have maxed out our rooftop solar capacity and want more power. Rooftop solar is all or nothing—what we are offering is a more modular, lower-commitment, more affordable, and versatile solar option as an alternative.

In this political climate, I think we are all looking for solutions that give the power to us, literally, rather than relying on government to solve climate.

I first heard about balcony solar when you started writing about it, actually! Then I met my cofounders Kevin Chou and Rupert Mayer—tech entrepreneurs who got the climate call—and I joined as the long-time climate advocate among us.

2) What's your hope for this project—how big can this get?

We can get big. Really big.

Seventy percent of Americans can’t get rooftop solar, but millions in that group want it. How can we produce more clean energy nationwide? We believe the solution is to address accessibility first, giving everyone an option to produce solar at home. This will give millions of Americans an option to become primary producers of their own energy, saving on electricity bills, and, we believe, bringing millions into the climate movement, giving us all hope that the power to address climate rests in our hands.

If we do this right, we follow in Germany’s footsteps, and produce several gigawatts of clean energy annually. However, unlike Germany, we can’t take the risk of letting it take 10 years to ramp up because we don’t have 10 years when it comes to climate. That’s why we started Bright Saver—to make this happen more quickly than it would on its own.

3) The U.S. has different wiring than Europe—explain if this is a problem and how it's overcome?

That’s been a structural—pun intended—concern for some time. In Europe, you can buy plug-in solar units at the grocery store for a few hundred Euros, plug them into the wall, and you’re done. Unfortunately, we can’t use those European systems because, as you point out, we have a 120-volt electrical system and most of Europe is on a 230-volt system.

Here, we are limited in the number of systems that are compatible with our electrical system and they are expensive and not easy to install. We exist to eliminate these barriers to adoption. For instance, as a nonprofit, we keep our prices low and we install the system, a complicated process that requires a licensed electrician.

My job is to put myself out of a job—if we jumpstart this movement now, we get more manufacturers into the game; competition drives down prices and increases ease of use, which stimulates more widespread adoption; and the virtuous cycle continues on market forces without us. In this political climate, I think we are all looking for solutions that give the power to us, literally, rather than relying on government to solve climate.

4) What do you need from local authorities to really make this happen?

We are primarily installing units in the backyard or front yard, where we believe permits are rarely a concern. I have young kids, and I can’t think of any parents who got a permit to put a trampoline or a slide in the backyard. Similarly, the 800 watt units we are installing are impermanent structures which you plug into an outdoor outlet like an appliance. They are half the electricity load of a hair dryer, and we include a smart power meter to make sure they never backfeed into the grid.

What we need is local and state legislation like what just passed unanimously in Utah. As you know, that legislation eliminates the ambiguity when it comes to mounted plug-in systems so folks can put them anywhere that is convenient for them. In fact, part of our nonprofit’s mission is to build a national coalition of advocacy groups to help pass such legislation in all 50 states—so please get in touch if you know groups that might want to join our coalition!

5) Why do you need donations to get this started?

Without donations, we stay small and grow slowly. I’ve been approached by several venture capitalists who say to me, you have huge market potential—let’s talk! But we want to keep lowering and lowering prices as we get bigger, not feeling the pressure of investors wanting us to raise prices and increase profits. We are a nonprofit because, well, w're not here to profit—we are here to bring solar to everyone who wants it.

We have a big vision to give all Americans the option to become energy independent. We plan to include home battery storage in the future, but we are only four months old, we have limited funding, and we need to start somewhere. Donating or becoming an early adopter will make it possible for us to stay true to our mission of serving everyone with solar energy and growing the climate movement so that every household of every means can start producing their own energy from the sun.

Many thanks to Stryker and her friends for getting this off the ground (and if you think it tickles me that she first read about the concept in this newsletter, then you’re right; that’s why I do this).

And here’s the thing. Though Americans aren’t used to it, there’s sometimes something useful in being behind all those other foreign lands. They’ve figured out what needs to happen, and all we have to do is copy. That’s what China did for decades—maybe it’s our turn. And now I’m going to go watch a bunch of foreign movies before the tariffs kick in.

May is one of my favorite months to go walking through the forests near my home in Cedar Mountain, North Carolina. Up here, near the mountainous border between the Carolinas, the air smells sweet and clean this time of the year, filtered by the bounty of trees. I’ve gotten to know some of them like neighbors: the cucumber magnolias, maples, sourwoods, and, of course, dogwoods.

I am a lifelong lover of forests. I am also the executive director of the Dogwood Alliance, an environmental organization dedicated to preserving Southeastern forests. As such, I make sure to pay attention to the forests and the trees.

Lately, when I visit the forests, I see scars. I see the smoldering scars of the recent fires that sent my husband and me into a panicked evacuation. Or, I see the giant holes where trees used to be before Hurricane Helene, which devastated the area and kept me stranded in New York City for days unable to get in touch with my husband or my daughter. Ironically, I was at the annual gathering known as Climate Week as everyone learned that the Asheville area is not a climate haven. Nowhere really is. My neck of the woods is beautiful, but not invincible.

We’re not only fighting what’s bad but also working toward what’s good.

Still, when it comes to climate change, our forests are our best friends and biggest protectors. They can block the wind and absorb the water before it inundates communities. They’re also among the oldest and best tools in the toolbox when it comes to climate change because nothing—and I mean nothing—stores carbon like a good, old-fashioned tree.

And as destructive as the hurricane and the fires were, the biggest threat to our forests remains the logging industry. The rate of logging in our Southern U.S. forests is four times higher than that of the South American rainforests. Despite claims to the contrary, the logging industry is the biggest tree-killer in the nation.

The wood-pellet biomass industry is a major culprit. Over the last 10 years, our region has become the largest wood-pellet exporter in the entire world. Companies receive massive subsidies to chop our forests into wood pellets that are then shipped overseas to be burned for electricity. This process is a major waste of taxpayer dollars and produces more carbon emissions than coal.

And it seems that regardless of who is in charge at the state or federal level, they consistently fail to protect forests. Most recently, President Donald Trump signed executive orders that threaten to turbocharge logging and wood production while subverting cornerstone legal protections such as the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. The truth is that policies that increase logging and wood production will only make communities like mine even more vulnerable to climate impacts, while decreasing the likelihood of recovery. The Trump administration's efforts to ramp up logging and close environmental justice offices are especially troublesome given the disproportionate impact that the forestry industry has on disadvantaged communities.

It can be an alarming picture to look at, especially when I think about the communities that will be harmed the most: low-income communities of color. But, I’m not new to this movement. I’ve seen again and again, those same communities rise up and fight off some of the biggest multinational corporations on the planet and hold our elected officials’ feet to the fire.

We’ve successfully clawed back subsidies for the biomass industry, slowing the growth of wood-pellet plants, and sounded the alarm when these facilities violated important pollution limits. They’ve had to pay millions of dollars in fines, shut down plants, and scrap plans for expansion. This is what gives me hope for the people and forests of the South.

We’re not only fighting what’s bad but also working toward what’s good.

Just last month, Dogwood Alliance’s community partners in Gloster, Mississippi scored a major victory. The community exerted huge pressure on the state’s Department of Environmental Quality to deny a permit to expand wood-pellet production for Drax—one of the most powerful multinational biomass corporations—and won! This means that the town’s residents will not have to face increased air pollution, noise pollution, traffic, and the greater mutilation of their bucolic landscape. If Gloster, a town of less than 1,000 people, can beat a megacorporation, I know we can stand up to the Trump administration and continue to advance a better, more sustainable vision for the South.

Through my work, I have the absolute privilege of partnering with some of the most inspiring leaders in the environmental justice movement. For example, we are partnering with Reverend Leo Woodberry, a pastor in South Carolina, to create a community forest on the land where his ancestors were once enslaved. With the support of community-focused donors, soon the Britton’s Neck Community Conservation Forest will be full of hiking trails, camp sites, and an ecolodge for locals and tourists from around the world to enjoy. This rise in outdoor recreation and (literal) foot traffic will create a badly needed economic rejuvenation for the local community, thus turning standing trees into gold. After all, outdoor recreation creates five times more jobs than the forestry industry.

This is not an isolated story. Four years ago this month, the Pee Dee Indian Tribe cut the ribbon on their educational center and 100-acre community forest in McColl, South Carolina as part of their effort to create a regenerative economy that prioritizes ecological harmony. All across the South, people are protecting the forests that protect them through a new community-led Justice Conservation initiative, which prioritizes forest protection in the communities on the front lines of our nation's most heavily logged areas.

The other day, when I went for my walk, I noticed that the scars are starting to give way to shoots of new growth. This is the time of year when the trees come alive, lighting the forest with purple and pink and white blossoms. That, to me, is hope. That, to me, is a miracle.

Right now, it feels like the whole world is on edge, bracing for the next major weather event. I know how helpless it can feel to watch the communities you love experience severe damage, I’ve lived it. But we are our own best hope. Just like the trees in a forest, we’re stronger together. Whether you live here in the South or across the country, I invite you to join us in protecting our forests and supporting the types of projects we’re spearheading through the Justice Conservation initiative.

When Senate Republicans brought the so-called Antisemitism Awareness Act up for a committee vote last week, they were expecting an easy win. After all, the bill had the support of Senate Republican leaders, most Israel advocacy groups, and even some Democrats.

Yet the bill faced an unexpected problem that may ultimately doom its passage. During a markup hearing of the HELP Committee, two Republicans broke ranks, joining all Democrats in approving free speech amendments that undermined the true goal of the bill: requiring colleges and universities to conflate criticism of the Israeli government and Zionism with antisemitism.

The first amendment considered was HELP Chairman Sen. Bill Cassidy's (R-La.) manager amendment, which affirmed that “Nothing in this Act shall be constructed to diminish or infringe upon any right protected under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States."

While that vague reassurance passed with bipartisan support, most Republicans refused to support substantive amendments that explicitly referenced Gaza as an example of free speech, laid out examples of protected student speech, and prohibited retaliation against dissent.

If the true purpose of the Antisemitism Awareness Act was protecting Jewish students from illegal anti-Semitic discrimination, then none of these amendments should have been a problem.

At start of the hearing, ranking member Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) warned, “Unfortunately and unacceptably, the Antisemitism Awareness Act we are considering today would label speech that criticizes the Israeli government and Netanyahu’s horrific war in Gaza as antisemitic and a violation of civil rights laws, and that is an extremely dangerous precedent.”

Sanders then offered several amendments designed to reduce the risk that government agencies and educational institutions can use the bill as a new tool of censorship.

His first amendment clarified, "no person shall be considered antisemitic for using their rights of free speech or protest under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States to ... oppose Benjamin Netanyahu's led war effort, which has killed more than 50,000 and wounded more than 113,000, 60 percent of whom are women and children” and "oppose the Israeli government's devastation of Gaza..."

All Democrats voted in favor, which was itself a surprise given how many Democratic politicians have desperately avoided any criticism of the Israeli government. The bigger surprise came from Senator Rand Paul. He broke ranks with other Republicans and supported the amendment, ensuring its passage.

A second Sanders amendment declared that the federal government cannot force any school, college, or university to adopt a policy that a branch of the federal government may compel a school "to violate the rights of a student, faculty, or staff member under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States."

In a sane world, every Republican senator would have supported such a basic amendment. Yet all opposed it except for two: Sen. Paul and Sen. Susan Collins (D-Maine).

The third Sanders' amendment clarified that speech, such as distributing flyers, inviting guest speakers, or engaging in classroom discussions, is protected unless it involves true threats or incitement of violence. Again, Paul and Collins were the only Republicans to break with their colleagues to support it.

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) introduced an amendment prohibiting the federal government from detaining or deporting students based on protected political speech. That amendment passed by a single vote, thanks again to Senator Paul. Markey stated, “When a young person writes an op-ed in the student newspaper and get whisked off of the streets of Tuffs University to a prison in Louisiana with no charges that is what we are debating today.”

If the true purpose of the Antisemitism Awareness Act was protecting Jewish students from illegal anti-Semitic discrimination, then none of these amendments should have been a problem. They should have received universal support, and their approval should not have derailed the bill.

Yet the fate of the legislation is now up in the air.

HELP Committee Chair Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said during the hearing that, “Supporting these amendments is an effort to kill this bill.”

Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Ok.) responded the next day by telling Jewish Insider that “Rand Paul totally killed that bill.” Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) also said, “These amendments are dealbreakers.”

Why? Because the Antisemitism Awareness Act has never been about countering antisemitism or protecting Jewish students from discrimination; it is about silencing pro-Palestine students and protecting the Israeli government from criticism.

The bill would require government agencies and schools to enforce federal civil rights law using the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism—a vague and widely disputed standard that poses a mortal threat to First Amendment freedoms.

Kenneth S. Stern, the original drafter of the IHRA definition, has testified to Congress that, "My fear is, if we similarly enshrine this definition into law, outside groups will try and suppress–rather than answer–political speech they don’t like. The academy, Jewish students, and faculty teaching about Jewish issues, will all suffer." Stern has repeatedly stated that the definition was never meant to be enforceable law and that doing so risks unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination. That is precisely what this legislation seeks to achieve.

The IHRA definition declares that any student describing the founding of Israel as a "racist endeavor" has engaged in antisemitism punishable by their school and the government of the United States—even though racist militias and terrorist groups like the Irgun subjected Palestinians to a horrific campaign of ethnic cleansing and mass murder during the founding of Israel.

IHRA also declares anyone “applying double standards” to Israel is antisemtiic. If someone criticizes the Israeli government's war crimes in Gaza but hasn't made time to criticize the RSF's war crimes in Sudan, they must be antisemitic. Ditto for anyone “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis,” comparisons that--while controversial—have even been made by far-right supporters of the Israeli government.

As Sen. Paul noted during the hearing, these and other examples establish a dangerous double standard. No other foreign government is granted this level of immunity from criticism under U.S. civil rights law. If enforced through Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, these vague and politically motivated examples would transform legitimate political critique into grounds for federal investigations, and dissent into a punishable offense.

If passed, this bill—even in its watered-down form—would open the door for the Israeli government and its supporters to misconstrue American civil rights laws.

CAIR, like many other civil rights groups, has called on congress to not pass the Antisemitism Awareness Act into law, as it would give the Department of Education—under a Trump administration already targeting, arresting, detaining, and attempting to deport anti-genocide protesters—even more power to investigate, silence, and punish speech on campus critical of Israel. We are already seeing the consequences. More than 1,700 student visas have been revoked since January. Students like Columbia’s Mahmoud Khalil and Tufts’ Rumeysa Ozturk remain in ICE custody for nothing more than participating in peaceful, protected protest and speech. Others face deportation for daring to speak out. This is not theoretical. This is not speculative. It is happening now.

In its original form, the Antisemitism Awareness Act would have given the Trump administration even more power to escalate its attack on free speech for Palestine. Even with the addition of Sanders' amendments, the now-contradictory bill still threatens free speech protections by including the IHRA definition.

That's still not good enough for most Senate Republicans and pro-Israel groups pushing the bill. Now that the bill cannot be so easily weaponized to silence dissent against Israeli government's war crimes in Gaza or its founding ideology, at least some of its key backers are threatening to abandon it.

Congress must reject this bill in full. No amendment can salvage legislation built on an anti-democratic foundation. Americans have the right to speak out against injustice, whether it occurs in our own country or in Gaza.

We must be absolutely clear about what is at stake. If passed, this bill—even in its watered-down form—would open the door for the Israeli government and its supporters to misconstrue American civil rights laws. That is not only a betrayal of free speech. It is a threat to American sovereignty.

Americans must unequivocally oppose antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Black racism, anti-immigrant sentiment, and all forms of hate. But conflating antisemitism with opposition to Israel’s military occupation, apartheid policies, or the ongoing genocide in Gaza is not just dishonest. It is dangerous.

Congress must reject this bill in full. No amendment can salvage legislation built on an anti-democratic foundation. Americans have the right to speak out against injustice, whether it occurs in our own country or in Gaza.

Silencing speech does not stop hate. It only deepens injustice. And we should not stand by while our government attempts to criminalize moral clarity.

On April 3, Sen. Bernie Sanders forced votes on the floor of the Senate on two Joint Resolutions of Disapproval, specifically S.J. Res. 33 and 26, each intended to stop the transfer of particular weaponry to Israel. Sadly, only 15 senators* voted for them. It is likely that one or both of your Democratic senators (if you have any) were among the 31 who voted “no,” or “present,” or simply did not vote, in effect endorsing an additional export of massive numbers of U.S.-made bombs to Israel, bombs that will be used to blow up more Palestinian civilians, along with the few homes, hospitals, schools, farms, and bakeries still standing.

The Palestinian human rights organization with which I work, like many other pro-peace, anti-genocide organizations and individuals, urgently implored our Democratic senators to vote with Sanders, hoping that their oft-stated commitment to human and civil rights might extend to Palestinians. We were disappointed in our representatives; chances are, you were as well.**

Sen. Sanders has three more Joint Resolutions of Disapproval (JRDs) in the pipeline. When--and if--they will make it to the floor for a vote is unknown, though we hope it won’t be far off. What we do know is that U.S. weapons are being used by Israel each and every day to slaughter noncombatants in Palestine. Opposing the transfer of arms in the future, arms earmarked to complete the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the West Bank, may feel like the tiniest drop in the proverbial bucket, given the rise of lawlessness, fascism, and terror at home, but the two are intimately connected. Self-evidently, state-sponsored murder and kidnapping cannot reasonably be construed to signal the collapse of democracy in one instance and the defense of it in another. Heroics, like a 25-hour speech in the well of the Senate meant to stand against the takeover of the U.S. by actors hostile to our Constitution and laws, pales in power when it is followed a mere two days later by a vote to continue to facilitate the killing of blameless children in another country.

How can voting to provide more offensive military equipment to a country that has a long track record of using U.S.-provided materiel in the commission of gross violations of human rights align with any legislator’s essential commitment to the rule of law?

With upcoming opportunities for our senators to redeem their recent votes in favor of Israeli atrocities, my organization asked them to account for those votes and offered them context both political and factual. Israeli hasbara and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee have clearly swayed their understanding and actions, and while it is an uphill struggle to counter those fraudulent narratives, we try. Another drop in the bucket? Perhaps just one small way to stand against tyranny wherever it rears its head.

The letters we sent were tailored in response to our own senators’ defense of their votes; below we have written a generic version addressed to any and all of the Democratic senators who actively chose to consign more Palestinian children to the flames, to amputation without anesthetic, to living a literal hell on earth. If you are a reader here, you almost certainly know most of what follows by rote, but we thought to gather some of the pertinent facts and language in a document that would make it simpler to approach your senator should you care to. Please feel free to copy, mine, adapt, and enrich the letter. Please… use it! While this is admittedly nowhere near enough, there are times when every drop counts.

***********

Senator:

Your April 3, 2025 votes on Bernie Sanders’ JRDs left me with a number of questions as well as, quite frankly, a broken heart. I wonder why, when given the chance to take a minimal step that would slow the illegal slaughter all the world sees exploding in Gaza and the West Bank, you chose to underwrite these atrocities with more U.S. weapons.

Nearly a year ago, the Biden State Department found that Israel, using U.S.-supplied weapons, likely breached international and humanitarian law. Our own “Leahy Laws” prohibit the provision of military support to countries against which there are credible allegations of “gross violations of human rights” including: extrajudicial killings; forced disappearances; torture; rape by security forces; and other forms of cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment.

Numerous documented and ultimately undisputed instances of each of these have been perpetrated by the IDF against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Recently, the Israeli military killed 15 well-identified medics in Gaza by shooting them at close range while their hands were bound, subsequently burying both the humans and their vehicles in order to hide the war crime. Just last month, the IDF shot an unarmed New Jersey teen (and American citizen) in the West Bank. Omar Mohammed Saada Rabea was hit 11 times, and while he bled to death, Israeli soldiers actively prevented the 14-year-old from receiving medical attention.

Why, then, are you voting to arm a demonstrably corrupt regime that does not seek nor have the support of its own people in this matter?

So I ask: How can voting to provide more offensive military equipment to a country that has a long track record of using U.S.-provided materiel in the commission of gross violations of human rights align with any legislator’s essential commitment to the rule of law?

Some Democratic senators have suggested that heightened threats from Iran and its proxies require the provision of more arms to Israel so that it might defend itself from foreign attack. While I am not disputing anyone’s right to defend themselves, this seems to present another confounding misalignment between stated intent and the reality represented by “no” votes on S.J. Res 33 and 26.

The first of these, S.J. Res 33, would have blocked over $2 billion for the provision of 35,000 MK 84 2,000 lb. bombs and 4,000 I-2000 Penetrator warheads.

The second, S.J.Res.26, would have stopped almost $7 billion in funding for 2,800 500-pound bombs, 2,100 Small Diameter Bombs, and tens of thousands of JDAM guidance kits.

According to Sen. Sanders, “All of these systems have been linked to dozens of illegal airstrikes, including on designated humanitarian sites, resulting in thousands of civilian casualties. These strikes have been painstakingly documented by human rights monitors. There is no debate. And none of these systems are defensive, none of them are necessary to protect Israel from incoming drone or rocket attacks.”

The weapons you voted to provide to Israel are offensive weapons, not defensive in nature. Israel has demonstrated again and again that it is more than willing to use U.S.-supplied offensive weaponry to illegally kill, maim, and terrorize innocent civilians. A claim of self-defense against Hamas strains credulity when the death tolls as of over a month ago were: 50,021 Gazans (with actual numbers estimated as high as 250,000), and 1,605 Israelis. If it were up to me, no one would die in war. But the argument that the assault on Gaza is defensive lost any claim to legitimacy long since. True defensive weaponry, such as David’s Sling and the Iron Dome, have not been implicated in any of Sen. Sanders’ JRDs.

I would simply contend that additional lethal arms in the hands of a government that has used these same offensive weapons virtually every single day of the last 565—in clear violation of U.S. and international laws, as well as their own negotiated cease-fire agreements—is not the best way to support Israel’s security. If an Iranian attack is your concern, there are many other avenues to pursue that would directly support Israel’s ability to avoid or prevail in such a conflict. Israel, to date, has given the U.S. absolutely no reason to believe it will use further armaments to defend itself against Iran, and daily arguments to support the expectation that it will use them to kill Palestinian civilians and remove them from their homeland. Israel’s actions must be taken as the measure of their intent.

It is also worth noting that a recent poll by Israeli TV 12 found that 70% of Israelis do not trust their own government and, in opposition to the Netanyahu government’s push to fight on, want a deal with Hamas to end the war. In fact, increasing numbers of Israeli soldiers are declining to fight in a war they understand is being waged to solely benefit the president and his cronies instead of the country they have vowed to serve and protect.

Why, then, are you voting to arm a demonstrably corrupt regime that does not seek nor have the support of its own people in this matter?

Were you aware that here in the U.S., a March 2025 Economist/YouGov poll (page 90) found that just 15% of the American people support increasing military aid to Israel, while 35% support decreasing military aid to Israel or stopping it entirely? Only 8% of Democrats polled supported increasing military aid to Israel at this time.

In addition, a November 2024 J Street poll of Jewish voters tallied 62% of American Jews supporting withholding “shipments of offensive weapons like 2,000-pound bombs until Prime Minister Netanyahu agrees to an American proposal for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza in exchange for a release of Israeli hostages.”

Sen. Sanders’ JRDs do not undermine Israel’s right to exist or to defend itself. They attempt, rather, to bring the U.S. into compliance with its own laws, and in my view, actually support an ally by refusing to enable its illegal and immoral actions. History has shown us again and again that the road to peace and stability is not one that can feasibly be built upon a foundation of war crimes and the slaughter of a civilian population.

As Jack Mirkinson, an editor at The Nation wrote:

The violence is the direct result of some very basic realities—namely, that Israel has been occupying Palestine for 75 years, has been killing and oppressing Palestinians for just as long, and has created the world’s most enduring apartheid state. And the only thing that will really put a stop to the violence is if those conditions are ended. That’s really all there is to it. You can go through all of the twists and turns since 1948, but if you don’t come back to that fundamental truth, there’s no real conversation to have.

Sen. Sanders will undoubtedly be asking for your vote on further JRDs in the future, each of them targeting the sale of arms which Israel has habitually used to kill innocent civilians (including Americans) in both Gaza and the West Bank. I sincerely hope that you will reconsider sending more offensive weapons to Israel and will co-sponsor Sen. Sanders’ JRDs, or at very least vote against expanding U.S. complicity in Israel’s illegal assault on the people of Palestine. Show us, your constituents—who overwhelming oppose more arms to Israel—that you hear us, and perhaps most importantly, that you have the integrity to stand against tyranny and lawlessness wherever it exists.

Senator, do the right thing.

Sincerely,

A Heartbroken Voter

*Voted Yea: Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Andy Kim (D-N.J.), Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Peter Welch (D-Vt.). If one of these folks is your senator, a thank you would not go amiss.