The Trump administration has assigned itself the mission of ruining education in the United States. From attacks on DEI to attaching themselves to conservative education activists, a blatantly obvious result of the Trump administration will be to make education inaccessible for anyone who is not wealthy and white.

A prime example is financial aid. The administration hasn’t yet stated where Federal Student Aid (FSA) and the application system it administers, Free Application for Student Aid (FAFSA), would be placed if President Donald Trump succeeds in his entirely misguided assault on the Department of Education. FAFSA is the standardized form that students fill out every year to receive federal assistance in paying for college, grad school, med school, law school, etc. FSA, by way of the FAFSA, now services an estimated 17 million students per year. FAFSA ensures millions of students across the country can obtain an education and pursue a career of their choice. Without it, how can students who do not come from privilege pay some exorbitant amount of money in tuition?

Reportedly, President Trump is considering moving the agency (and thus the system) to the Department of Commerce, run by Howard Lutnick. Small Business Administration (SBA) Chief Kelly Loeffler, best known for her insider trader scandal, wants to move the program to her agency. This would more than quadruple the SBA’s loan portfolio after Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has already cut “a few hundred” of SBA’s probationary staff.

Imagine AI trying to help students complete their financial aid.

Both Commerce and SBA disburse loans. SBA actually offers a myriad of different loans, even some specific to women. The problem is that with the massive reduction in the federal workforce, how can Loeffler and her skeleton staff manage to serve the needs of approximately 17 million students per year? Loeffler has only suggested moving FAFSA, not FSA (meaning the trained administrative staff) to SBA.

While the agency has grown over the years from serving just under 48,000 loans in 2022 to over 70,000 in 2024, especially after the cuts from DOGE, it does not have the dedicated workforce to service the needs of students in the way FSA can. SBA’s peak in 2024, prior to being kneecapped by Musk, was approximately 70,242 loans. That is nowhere near the average of 17 million students that FSA is used to aiding. Especially given the 2024 FAFSA mishap in which Education’s (well intentioned) attempts to streamline the application for students led to issues of communication between both students and the agency, and even an inability to process applications. It does not help that the Education Department already contracts out to lenders like Nelnet who already are keeping people in debt for longer than they should be. Students will be waiting for their federal dollars, and graduates will be forever saddled with debt.

For its part, Commerce (whose IT system similarly was hit with Elon Musk’s DOGE sledgehammer) offers flexible loans for mortgages and cars, but again, the type of loan servicing is entirely different for student borrowers. Commerce also has some issues with technology and modernization (include identity authentication and even its financial systems), which in the entirely digital landscape that is FAFSA would probably impact students in a way that would inhibit their ability to successfully complete their applications

A third and no more viable option for students is turning FSA into a government-owned enterprise. Rather than scrapping FSA, Project 2025 proposed spinning it off into a “new government corporation with professional governance and management.” A government corporation is a company created by Congress to achieve specific policy goals. This would turn FSA into something akin to Amtrak.

Now, Musk would make the argument that these loan serving agencies indicate why the federal workforce should be replaced with AI. Experts say this would be a terrible idea that would lead to chaos. CEO of the Work3 Institute, an AI advisory firm, Deborah Perry Piscione points out that while AI can streamline some paperwork, it just can’t replace civil servants. Piscione gave the example of an AI chatbot that does not understand the unique elements of a veteran applying for benefits. Imagine AI trying to help students complete their financial aid.

The Education Department already utilizes AI to answer rudimentary questions in their call centers. Last September, during the rollout of the new FAFSA, three-quarters of the calls were left unanswered. AI in its current form simply does not have the processing power to service the 17 million students who need aid.

A study from the U.S. Merit Systems Protection board MSPB) found that downsizing agencies ultimately undermined the mission they were supposed to accomplish. ED has the smallest federal workforces of the cabinet agencies, so rolling it into other agencies already saddled with existing duties would exacerbate these problems. Increasing the federal workforce, and curtailing the reliance on AI, probably would have ensured that three-quarters of phone calls would not have been missed.

The Trump administration seemingly does not believe a quality education is a right. Trump and his lackeys putting the Department of Education in limbo is probably part of the plan to eviscerate any sense of a national commitment to higher education for all. Leaving FAFSA in limbo will have a material impact on students. Just last year, almost 18 million students filled out this form, a slight uptick from the average of 17 million. The groups that are most likely to receive aid are Black students, women, and dependents (most likely to be minors).

A little history lesson for you: FSA was established under former President Lyndon Johnson through the Higher Education Act to ensure students could pay for college. Students would fill out the Common Financial Aid Form, which was later replaced by the FAFSA in 1992 during the HEA’s reauthorization. Even in the 1960s, Washington politicians knew that college was inaccessible to anyone who was not well off. The Trump administration’s decision to dismantle ED, and put millions of students at risk, will have dire consequences that will ripple across decades.

This spring my husband and I are moving three tenths of a mile and 200 years back in time.

We are moving from our super-energy-efficient, passive solar home built in 2001 to a farmhouse built in 1800. (And looking for someone to buy the cozy green home we raised our family in. Check it out here and spread the word!) We are excited to have more space to share with extended family. And, we will have a project on our hands! Regaining some of the features we are leaving behind—heat pumps, PV, a composting toilet, and more—will take time. A fun and satisfying challenge we hope!

The great news is that we will still be part of the experiment we have participated in for almost 30 years: Cobb Hill Cohousing, a multi-generational community of 23 families in Vermont’s Connecticut River Valley. The house we are moving to is located within Cobb Hill, just a bit further from the cluster of houses we’ve called home.

We will still share 280 acres of farm and forest and participate in community celebrations and decision-making. We’ll still have neighbors to help and to rely on. We’ll still have maple syrup, eggs, flowers, herbs, vegetables, milk, and cheese all produced by our neighbors on our shared land. We’ll have learning companions to navigate alongside in an increasingly destabilized world.

No one knows how to live sustainably and equitably in our current society or how to prepare for coming climate shocks. So we need to learn. And learning is faster with more minds in the mix.

A big move like ours prompts reflection. We had to move, but we didn’t want to go anywhere else. Here are six reasons that came to mind when we paused to ask ourselves why.

1. People: As disasters become more frequent and politics destabilizes, it feels more important than ever to live connected to other people. People who can be there in an emergency or help make sense of the tumult. But not just people, these specific people. We are connected to our neighbors by shared work, shared fun, and shared history. We are watching their children grow up and hopefully adding something to those kid’s lives. These are the people who brought soup when I broke my ankle, who loaned me a walker to get to the ER, who visited and cheered me up. These are the people I want to bring soup to when they need it!
   
2. Land: There’s the pleasure of coming to know a piece of land deeply. Of walking its paths in spring and summer and skiing them in winter. Of watching for the return of familiar birds and wildflowers with each season. There’s also the work and joys of stewardship, of seeing a once over-harvested forest slowly return to good health. And, by putting most of our shared land under permanent conservation easement and making it open to our neighbors for enjoyment, we find ways to share these gifts now and into the future, which is its own kind of satisfaction.
   
3. Learning: No one knows how to live sustainably and equitably in our current society or how to prepare for coming climate shocks. So we need to learn. And learning is faster with more minds in the mix. We took three tries to get a PV system at Cobb Hill. I led the first two, which ran aground. Then Sandy came in with new determination and a new path in mind. Every day when I walk past the solar-panel-covered barns I think about all three tries, how my “failures” and Sandy’s fresh eyes cracked the code. I think about the need to reinvent community meals after they paused for the pandemic (thanks Audrey!) or the need to wire EV charging ports on infrastructure that didn’t anticipate them (thanks Jesse!) And so on. We have a lot to learn at this moment in human history, but we don’t have to do it alone!
   
4. Food: There’s the taste of a fresh strawberry or an ear of corn moving from field to plate in five minutes. Then there’s the satisfaction of growing some of what you eat and knowing the people who grew more of it. In these times when the federal government’s ability to keep the food system safe is faltering, there’s also peace of mind in seeing at least part of the supply chain right outside your door.
   
5. Resilience: From the connections between good people, a well-loved bit of land, the capacity to learn, and the capacity to grow at least some food comes something bigger than any piece alone. It’s the capacity to cope. It is, hopefully, the capacity to help each other and offer support to wider circles when surprises come and the pace of change speeds up.
   
6. A link to the future: Many have passed through Cobb Hill. Some stayed for a growing season, some for their childhood, some for the length of a learning program. They’ve moved on to start (or join) other communities, farms, nonprofits. I like to think they’ve all taken something with them, a new skill, a lesson in what NOT to do, a belief that dreams can become physical stuff. Maybe in the end that’s the main reward of trying to do things differently—the encouragement to others that they can create the possibilities they see.

Cobb Hill isn’t the only way to find these six things, thank goodness. You’ll find them in smaller groups and larger ones, in cities, in the tropics, on the coast. In this time of transition and reflection in my own family, I hope that knowing they exist in one place might make it easier for you to imagine (or create) them elsewhere, too.

No media outlet has done a better job on reporting on the havoc that special government employee Elon Musk and U.S. President Donald Trump have unleashed than Wired. Their outstanding reporting continued Friday as they scooped everyone by reporting that “the Social Security Administration will no longer be communicating with the media and the public through press releases and ‘dear colleague’ letters, as it shifts its public communication exclusively to X, sources tell WIRED. The news comes amid major staffing cuts at the agency.”

That’s right—all public information about Social Security will come via X. For example, in late March SSA announced that they updated their identification verification procedures via an announcement on their website. So in the future, SSA will have to put all of this into a 280-character post or SSA can go to 4,000 characters if they are willing to upgrade to Premium or Blue.

The first thing that came to mind with SSA’s announcement—wasn’t this a conflict of interest with Elon Musk’s role at X? Many other questions followed, such as the role of asking for feedback from Social Security stakeholders, members of Congress, and last but far from least in my mind—Social Security beneficiaries. I hope that congressional oversight or the press will be able to get some answers here.

According to Wired, SSA regional staff would be cut by 87%:

Today, the agency has 547 employees working in the nearly dozen regional offices (previously, the number was closer to 700, but many people have retired, a current employee with knowledge of the staffing numbers says). After the cuts, the number is expected to be closer to 70.

The Wired piece also raises what is a very ironic twist to this switch to X. SSA employees need to get special permission to access social media. Could the move to X make it harder for SSA employees to learn what their own agency was doing? Surely, this would hinder their ability to serve the public.

It looked like SSA was moving in a more positive direction this week as the agency retreated from its position of drastic cuts to the number of services beneficiaries could access over the phone. Had these changes gone into effect, they would have dramatically impact individuals’ ability to access their earned benefits. A deluge of phone calls from beneficiaries and heat from members of Congress forced SSA to change their course.

After SSA’s retreat on phone services, advocates and members of Congress may have thought that their efforts could have been, at least for the moment, deployed somewhere else. Sadly, this is not the case. The decision to move all public communications to X demonstrated that that Trump and Musk are focused on destroying Social Security. Supporters of Social Security cannot let up for one minute. They will need to fight every day for Social Security until January 20, 2029.

U.S. President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s shared goal of fully privatizing public services from the postal service to Social Security and Medicare will destabilize society, broadening the wide chasm of socioeconomic inequalities already haunting the nation’s politics.

Until the election of Trump and his appointment of Musk, the U.S. government, unlike giant corporations, did not summarily terminate large numbers of workers to achieve “efficiencies” to augment a “bottom line.” Indeed, the present elimination of legions of government workers is wholly arbitrary, having immediate destructive impacts on American society.

Now the administration wants to enhance even further the economic and political positions of the wealthy through tax reductions disproportionately benefiting the wealthy class.

Governments are not businesses nor should they be run as businesses. Historically, the role of government is to regulate those forces in society that would, if left to their own devices, advance their own interests at the expense of society. By moderating the social and environmental impact of these private entities and their direction, and by addressing the social inequities created by disparities in socioeconomic power, the government ensures the stability and security of society. Citizens are protected from the negative consequences of concentrated wealth and the political machinations employed to maintain and to increase the wealthy and corporate class’ power and privileges. Thus breaking down the legitimate power of government facilitates economic and political concentration, denying equal opportunity to resources and wealth. This is not only an assault on individual political rights; it leads to conflict and anarchy.

Not surprisingly, billionaires are leading the charge to undermine government’s vital roles. This is tantamount to letting the fox inside the hen house. While deregulating and privatizing public services—a movement that has gradually gained momentum with the rise of economic and political conservatism from 1980 to the present—is the general plan of Trump, Musk, and their conservative collaborators, it is these two billionaires who are already profiting from the enterprise. They are each positioned to accumulate multiple tens and hundreds of millions of dollars of greater wealth by promoting market products through their access to mass media, government contracts, and deregulation. And now the administration wants to enhance even further the economic and political positions of the wealthy through tax reductions disproportionately benefiting the wealthy class.

Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and a host of other public-supported services and investments—from providing funding to enable the University of Maine to improve industry and environment to veterans’ assistance—must be insulated against the vicissitudes of market forces. Government, with its broad taxing capacity, distributes the economic risk across these programs much more securely than publicly traded stocks. Social Security checks should not be directly and irrevocably tied to the market.

At the same time, those who prosper most from the publicly funded infrastructure (i.e. educated workforce, highways, ports, etc.) must pay substantially more taxes than ordinary citizens. With fully-levied progressive taxation the government will be able to transfer wealth to less wealthy Americans in the form of programs improving peoples’ livelihoods and welfare, ensuring greater economic, social, and political stability.

LIVE 10:15 AM Eastern time + Streaming on Demand Later:

The DMZ America Podcast dives in! Buckle up for a MIND-BLOWING episode of DMZ America with political cartoonists Ted Rall and Scott Stantis as they rip into the chaotic 21st-century economy! The securities markets are in a tailspin over tariffs, and it’s exposing a brutal truth: the way we pay our bills is BROKEN. Is the classic “work for pay” model dead in the water? This episode tackles the question head-on, dissecting how globalization, automation, and gig jobs have left workers scrambling.

But it gets DARKER. A 2023 Gallup poll reveals 38% of Americans feel “mostly negative” about their financial future, while a 2024 CDC study reports depression rates spiking to 20% among adults. Rall and Stantis dig into the gut-punch reality of economic turmoil fueling widespread ennui. Are sky-high costs and stagnant wages sucking the life out of us? A 2022 Pew Research study ties financial stress to mental health declines, suggesting the link is REAL—and it’s brutal.

Why are we so damn UNHAPPY? This episode isn’t just talk—it’s a wake-up call. From Wall Street’s tariff tantrums to the quiet despair in our daily grind, DMZ America lays bare the forces shredding our economic and emotional fabric. Can we fix this mess, or are we doomed to dystopia? Tune in for a raw, no-BS breakdown that’ll leave you questioning everything about how we live and work today. Don’t miss this economic EXPOSÉ—it’s the convo you NEED to hear NOW!

The post DMZ America Podcast Ep 200: “Is the 21st Century Economy Crushing Your Soul?” appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

I need some help here. The Trump presidency and the “America only” future he’s hawking to the public like the world’s most arrogant snake-oil salesman feels beyond my ability to address right now, even though I consider doing so my life’s work.

But sometimes the news of the day simply feels too absurd, too strange, to seriously address, like President Donald Trump’s comment the other day as he sat next to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House: “You know how I feel about the Gaza Strip. I think it’s an incredible piece of important real estate.”

Dividing the world into abstract chunks of real estate! This is lethal blather, without which war would be too complex to wage. First you have to sell the concept to the public, then do whatever is necessary—murder-wise—to claim the real estate itself

What does it mean that we live in a world that includes both generosity and greed, both love and genocide? Knowing this, how do we proceed?

Meanwhile, life goes on in minuscule bits for the average person, who is unaffected by (but perhaps in favor of) this war or that war or that war. The minutiae of life—my life, your life—goes on. Sometimes I take it upon myself to notice it. Or even learn from it—dig for the soul and spirit of the universe within it. To that end I welcome “The Cardinal,” a poem I wrote several years ago, in honor of everything that doesn’t matter.

I thank you god
if that’s your name
for the beauty and the trash,
the spill, the vomit, the love and
exhaust smoke of
this new most
amazing day.
Outside my window
a cardinal shocking
as a nosebleed
pecks the raw winter
ground beneath its feet.
I thank you for its
food and mine,
for my coffee and for these
words, these malleable
playthings of awareness,
which still birth
all I think and know.
Let them stroke
the trembling potential
of what I see and what’s
to come.
The cardinal lifts.
I salute it with
my cup
and swallow.

In honor of the cardinal, let me ask: What if he “mattered”—to organized human consciousness, to the global power structure that purports to control the future? What if we valued minutiae—that is to say, basic existence, the actual world we live in—in a way that transcended our valuing of power, dominance, ownership, and control? What if humanity, Planet Earth’s organizers in chief, could push their own evolution beyond exploitation of the planet to... God knows what?

What if those with power actually valued those without power, which includes Planet Earth itself?

Sorry, but here’s more President Trump, continuing to muse about Palestine:

Having a peace force like the United States there, controlling and owning the Gaza Strip would be a good thing, because right now all it is for years and years, all I hear about is killing and Hamas and problems.

If you take the people, the Palestinians, and move them around to different countries—and you have plenty of countries that will do that... you call it the Freedom Zone, a free zone, where people aren’t going to be killed every day. That’s a hell of a place.

Yeah, an “incredible piece of important real estate” shouldn’t have genocide going on. But the cause of the genocide is the victims themselves, apparently, so we just have to move them to wherever. Maybe they’re physically, historically and spiritually connected to that land, which they call “home,” but in Trump World this is real estate—so, sorry, genocide victims, you’ll have to move. The issue here is money.

Pssst... don’t tell anyone, but this is the god we worship, fervently and thoughtlessly.

All of which leaves me feeling as lost as I did when I started this column. As I try to honor the minutiae of real life, I realize that also includes Donald Trump and all world leaders, or at least their flawed humanity, as well as earthworms and cardinals, sunlight, sky, rain and snow and everything else I can see beyond my kitchen window. What does it mean that we live in a world that includes both generosity and greed, both love and genocide? Knowing this, how do we proceed?

Slowly, I’d say, and with minimal certainty; the paradox is within all of us. The best we can do is keep our eyes and hearts wide open.

Sarah’s situation was one we see a lot in eviction court. Hers was among the 3 of every 4 households whose incomes are low enough to qualify for a federal housing subsidy but do not receive it because we underfund the programs so dramatically. So Sarah had been living for a few years in a dilapidated house where her absentee landlord charged her well below market-rate rent—just $650 a month. The implicit bargain was that Sarah would not complain to the health department or anyone else about the caved-in ceilings, mold, broken appliances, and mice that came in through the many holes in the house’s rotting exterior.

That unholy arrangement unraveled when Sarah’s landlord sold the property to a buyer who discovered Sarah had no written lease and wanted to demolish the house. We met Sarah (not her real name) in court after she had ignored multiple notices to move.

“I know the judge is going to order me out of there,” she told us. But she had looked around at available rental units and couldn’t find anything for less than $900 a month. Which was a problem, because Sarah’s entire monthly income was only a few dollars more than that. “How am I supposed to live now?” she asked.

It's a good question.

A significant portion of our nation’s unhoused population are SSI recipients, limited to an income that doesn’t come close to covering the costs of housing, food, transportation, clothing, and other necessities.

Like 7.5 million other people in the United States, Sarah is a recipient of Supplemental Security Income, known as SSI. SSI is a federal program for persons who have little to no income or assets and are living with severe disabilities that leave them unable to work. Sarah, 67 years old, is legally blind, uses a wheelchair, and has multiple other chronic, debilitating conditions. That allows her to qualify for SSI.

But, to her point, it doesn’t allow her to live.

Sarah’s monthly SSI check is the maximum program amount of $967. Couples who are both eligible for SSI are maxed out at $1,450 per month. SSI recipients have to comply with tight restrictions on how much income they can make or assets they can own. Most are like Sarah, fully unable to work and with no other income. So they are condemned to poverty.

As Sarah was on the cusp of learning, SSI often condemns people to homelessness, too. A significant portion of our nation’s unhoused population are SSI recipients, limited to an income that doesn’t come close to covering the costs of housing, food, transportation, clothing, and other necessities.

“I’ve had many clients who received a monthly SSI check but still can’t afford the rent,” says Jesse Rabinowitz of the National Homeless Law Center. “When there is no housing, people have no choice but to sleep outside.” That grim reality of sleeping outside brings with it a significant chance of death from exposure, assault, and untreated health crises.

Mountains of evidence point to the main cause of homelessness being the problem faced by Rabinowitz’s clients and ours: a straightforward inability to pay monthly rent.

“I want to be absolutely clear that the reason people become unhoused is that they do not have access to housing that they can afford,” says Brian Goldstone, anthropologist and author of the new book, There is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America. “The answer isn’t addiction or mental illness; it’s that they didn’t have access to housing they could afford.”

SSI: Hard to Get, Hard to Live on Once You Get It

As Sarah was learning, life on an SSI check means there is essentially no safe housing that she can afford. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. When Congress created the SSI program in 1972, the stated purpose was to “provide a positive assurance that the Nation’s aged, blind, and disabled people would no longer have to subsist on below poverty level incomes.” But the current SSI maximum benefit is well below the federal poverty line. The official poverty level itself is an underestimate of the costs incurred by people like Sarah who pay a “disability tax” of higher medical, transportation, and housing costs. That math is not mathing in particular for the women and persons of color who make up a disproportionate number of SSI recipients.

Because SSI in theory could ensure that all who cannot earn significant wages would receive a monthly stipend, it is sometimes compared to a universal basic income. But no one who has ever applied for SSI confuses the two. The program’s onerous financial and disability eligibility requirements make damn sure that there is nothing “universal” about SSI income. Less than half of all SSI applications are granted—less than a third of them at the initial application stage.

My and other service providers’ experience is that these systematic refusals occur despite the fact that the majority of SSI applicants we see are clearly eligible for the program. But the same disabilities and poverty-caused barriers that lead them to need SSI contribute to them getting snared in the red tape of the application process.

Just as we know that housing is the best response to homelessness, countless research studies confirm that increased income is a silver-bullet remedy for poverty.

Those who do successfully get enrolled in SSI face restrictive rules that all but guarantee they remain destitute. They are not allowed to receive more than $20 in cash or in-kind assistance from family or others. If a couple with disabilities marry, their combined monthly benefits are cut. Caps on savings leave SSI recipients unable to respond to life’s unexpected expenses like an uncovered medical cost or car repair. Ironically, this paternalism comes at a significant cost to taxpayers. SSI benefits are only 4% of the Social Security Administration’s outlay, but policing the program’s many recipient restrictions means SSI takes up 38% of the agency’s administrative costs.

SSI’s low benefit levels and many restrictions have been heavily criticized by poverty research and advocacy groups like the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Center for American Progress, and Brookings Institution. The organization Justice in Aging has long pushed for SSI reform.

“We need to improve the program by raising benefit levels, reducing barriers to access, and making it easier for people to afford the daily costs of living,” says Tracey Groninger, Justice in Aging’s director of economic security.

Legislation proposed in the last Congress aimed to do just that. The Supplemental Security Income Restoration Act, sponsored by 36 House members and endorsed by over 100 organizations, would have raised the SSI monthly benefit amounts to the federal poverty level and ratcheted back the prohibitive asset and outside income restrictions. In this Congress, the newly-introduced Savings Penalty Elimination Act would allow SSI recipients to keep more savings while retaining their eligibility.

The benefits-increase bill did not succeed, and has not yet been reintroduced. Hopefully, that changes soon. Just as we know that housing is the best response to homelessness, countless research studies confirm that increased income is a silver-bullet remedy for poverty. Increasing SSI benefits to a level that covers basic needs would have a dramatic effect on Sarah’s life, the lives of millions of others, and all of our communities.

America is not being lost. It's being taken.

Taken from the factory worker in Michigan whose job was shipped overseas. From the farmer in Indiana watching crops wither while markets close, subsidies disappear, and tariffs crush their bottom line. From the mother in Ohio who can't feed her children because her food stamps have been cut. From the young man in Kentucky forced to choose between insulin and rent. From the senior in Pennsylvania being told to drive to a Social Security office to collect their check—only to find their local office closed, and the nearest one hours away.

This isn't just mismanagement—it's betrayal.

We are not spectators. We are not statistics. We are the heart of this nation. And it's time we acted like it.

Major companies that were built by American labor—Ford, Caterpillar—are moving out. They're being driven out by a political agenda that's sent material costs soaring through reckless tariffs. To stay afloat, they chase cheaper labor overseas, leaving hollowed-out towns and broken families in their wake.

Meanwhile, politicians slash food assistance, threaten Social Security and Medicaid, and then have the audacity to tell us the economy is strong and it's in our best interest. They smile on TV while the working class suffers.

The elites in Washington tell us to be patient. To wait. That it's complicated. But we know what we see. Our communities are drying up. The jobs are gone. The wages are stagnant. Our groceries are more expensive. The promises are broken.

What we are witnessing is not just economic decline—it is a calculated transfer of power, wealth, and dignity from the people who built this country to the corporate and political class who believe they own it.

The Human Cost

Consider the typical of a lifelong resident of a small town in Ohio. A person who worked at the local manufacturing plant for over 20 years, a job that provided her family with stability and a sense of pride. When the plant closed due to outsourcing, she found herself unemployed, struggling to make ends meet. The ripple effect was felt throughout the community—local businesses shuttered, schools faced budget cuts, and the town's spirit diminished. Her story is not unique; it's a narrative echoed in countless towns across America.

The Illusion of Prosperity

Politicians tout stock market highs and corporate profits as indicators of economic health, but these metrics are detached from the reality most Americans face. While the wealthiest accumulate more, the average worker sees little improvement. The gig economy grows, offering precarious employment without benefits or security. The middle class shrinks as the dream of upward mobility becomes increasingly elusive.

A Call to Action

Enough.

We are not spectators. We are not statistics. We are the heart of this nation. And it's time we acted like it.

Rise Up.

Get off your knees. Don't just sit on the couch and watch it happen. Rise up! Use your voice. Post your grievances. Use social media. Call your representatives. Write letters. Talk to your neighbor. See what's happening. What they're doing isn't how a country should treat its people—and it damn sure isn't right.

Rise up by showing up. At the ballot box. At the school board. At the union hall. At the town meeting. Wherever decisions are made, do what you can. Your presence matters.

Rise up because this country wasn't built by the connected—it was built by the committed. By steelworkers and carpenters. Nurses and truck drivers. Teachers and veterans. People who worked with their hands, loved with their hearts, and built the greatest nation on Earth.

Reclaiming Our Future

It's time to take it back.

Take back our jobs. Demand fair trade policies that protect American workers and hold corporations accountable for outsourcing. Support local businesses and invest in community initiatives that foster economic resilience.

Take back our towns. Advocate for infrastructure projects that create jobs and improve our communities. Push for affordable housing and quality education that ensure a brighter future for the next generation.

Take back our dignity. Stand up against policies that favor the wealthy at the expense of the working class. Demand transparency and integrity from our leaders.

Take back our rights. Protect the social safety nets that safeguard our most vulnerable. Fight for healthcare, fair wages, and the right to organize.

And take back America.

We are many. Let them hear us. Let them know—we will not be silent.

To the politicians in power—the ones slashing our benefits, outsourcing our jobs, gutting our economy—then turning around and telling us it's for our own good... I've got one thing to say to you:

Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's rain.

Take Back America.

It was the great Kris Kristofferson, whom we just lost last fall, who wrote that “freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” Is that what Trump meant by his “Liberation Day” of tariffs last week, which liberated America’s 401K investors of billions of dollars? At least millions of citizens felt the freedom to take to the streets over the weekend with their grievances, which should give all of us hope.

In an America that feels on edge right now, few things in the nation’s capital are more precarious than the GOP’s fragile hold on power in the U.S. House. The Republicans’ current 220-213 majority is one of the smallest in modern times. And with crucial votes just ahead on issues like President Donald Trump’s proposed tax cuts that favor billionaires and corporations, every vote counts.

Well, unless you’re one of 800,000 Texans who live in Houston or its adjacent Harris County suburbs.

Voters who live in the Lone Star State’s 18th Congressional District, which is nearly 76% Black and Latino, have received a series of gut punches, beginning last year when longtime incumbent and civil rights icon Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee died in office. The district then went strongly for another well-known local, Houston’s 70-year-old former mayor Sylvester Turner, giving him nearly 70% of the fall vote, even after his disclosure he was suffering from a rare form of bone cancer.

Sadly, Turner’s career as a U.S. congressman lasted less than 10 weeks. In late winter, the Houstonian fell ill and died on March 5. The intervening weeks — a momentous time back on Capitol Hill, including a budget vote carried by Republicans by a narrow margin — saw a large crowd come together for Turner’s funeral and candidates stepping forward to replace him.

What was missing for more than a month was any effort by Texas’ right-wing GOP Gov. Greg Abbott to call a special election to fill the vacant seat. Last week, as residents in the 18th grumbled and at least one Democratic hopeful — along with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries — threatened to sue, Abbott finally spoke...

...not to call the election, but to say he was holding things up because of his ongoing complaints about how one of the few Democratic counties in a mostly red state conducts its elections. It is true that Harris County voters have experienced problems like long lines — often because of a lack of polling places and other restrictions imposed by the GOP-led statehouse. Meanwhile, Abbott cynically worked with state lawmakers to enact legislation that ousted one Democratic elections chief.

But Turner’s untimely death has given Abbott a MAGA two-fer: a chance to keep a safe Democratic seat vacant for as long as he can get away with it, and to stroke the Big Lie that any election that Republicans lose must involve voter fraud.

“Harris County is a repeat failure as it concerns operating elections,” Abbott insisted in a local interview. “Had I called that very quickly, it could have led to a failure in that election, just like Harris County has failed in other elections. They need to have adequate time to operate a fair and accurate election, not a crazy election like what they’ve conducted in the past.”

Monday night, as the impasse started getting more attention, Abbott did decide to declare a special election — not in June, when a statewide runoff is already scheduled, but during the Nov. 4 general election. That means citizens in and around Houston will go eight full months without a representative on Capitol Hill. It’s outrageous.

Abbott’s filibuster of giving Harris County a free, fair and prompt congressional election may offer an answer to the hottest burning question as spring 2025 dawns across the nation: How on earth do Republicans, who seem to be fueling a voter rebellion with Trump’s insane tariff scheme, consumer prices that are rising despite a campaign promise to bring them down, and the president’s popularity plunging, expect to win the 2026 midterms, let alone keep the White House in 2028?

The governor of America’s second-largest state just said the quiet part out loud: voter suppression.

If you spend too much time on social media, as I do, you frequently see liberals commenting on the next elections, only to add, “assuming we have an election.” It feels like extreme internet paranoia and in one sense it arguably is, because it’s impossible to imagine there won’t be balloting in 19 months.

Or, at least, something that resembles an election.

Although there may be few opportunities to as aggressively put a thumb on the scale of election fairness as Abbott is currently getting away with, it’s also becoming clear that Republicans — who’ve embraced anti-democratic tactics from closing polling places on college campuses to advocating for strict voter ID laws — are taking their war on voting to the next level.

Look no farther than North Carolina, where the Democratic candidate for the state’s Supreme Court, incumbent Associate Justice Allison Riggs, should have been sworn in for a full term months ago, after the 2024 results showed she’d defeated Republican Jefferson Griffin by a scant 734 votes.

The moral of the story should have been that every vote counts, but instead it has been that Republicans can’t accept defeat in a democratic election. After losing a recount, Team Griffin went into state court asking that a whopping 60,000 ballots get tossed out because of a complicated technicality in the way these voters had initially registered, even though they had presented valid IDs to vote as required by law.

A federal court had ruled against this challenge before the election, and the proposed massive disenfranchisement was rightfully called “ridiculous” by Charlotte Observer columnist Paige Masten, who added: “But it seems to be the Republican playbook these days: If at first you don’t succeed, just try to throw the votes out.”

The challenge has dragged out deep into 2025, until last week when Republican judges on the intermediate Court of Appeals powered a 2-1 ruling that stunned the Tarheel State by siding with Griffin’s argument, although most of the potentially disenfranchised voters were given three weeks to prove their identity and make their votes count. Still, the ruling — which Riggs is appealing to a Supreme Court where her colleagues are mostly Republican — could cancel out enough Democratic votes to change the outcome. It’s a grim reminder of what was expected from Team Trump if he’d lost last November, and a warning of what’s ahead.

These miscarriages of democracy in Texas and North Carolina come at the same time that Trump has signed an executive order — arguably not worth the piece of paper he scribbled his name across — with the goal of suppressing future votes.

The sweeping diktat signed by the president late last month demands that would-be voters produce proof of citizenship, seeks greater cooperation between the federal government and states on finding and removing ineligible voters, and also to leverage federal dollars to prevent mail-in ballots received after Election Day from being counted. The order has been panned by legal scholars, who note that such rules are typically set at the state level, and is already the subject of a lawsuit by 19 states.

Still, Trump and the GOP have laid down a marker for the 2026 election, and beyond. The party’s recent actions make it clear that they will make it harder for regular folks to cast a ballot, by any means necessary, including a new wave of voter ID laws, constant legal challenges, and maybe cancelling elections where they can. And any efforts to fight back, by Democrats or other aggrieved citizens, will trigger more Big Lies about election fraud.

The hole in the Republican strategy is that as Trump continues to set America on fire with his unhinged presidency, even extreme suppression can’t stop a tsunami at the ballot box.

By Ralph Nader April 11, 2025 If there was ever a strong contemporary case for declaring that silence is complicity, consider the hush of Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, and even George W. Bush as they grind their teeth over the Donald Trump/Elon Musk wrecking of America. Trump is destroying…

France’s shocking surrender to Nazi Germany in June 1940 left citizens stunned and unsure how to resist the German occupation and Vichy’s collaborationist regime. Distrust was everywhere—few knew whom to confide in without risking betrayal. Prewar political parties, blamed for the defeat, lay discredited; the French Communist Party, later a Resistance powerhouse, stood down under Hitler’s nonaggression pact with Stalin. It took a year for the Resistance to gain traction. Backed by the Allies, De Gaulle’s Free French in London parachuted agents into occupied territory, uniting disparate groups with clashing ideologies. After Germany invaded the USSR in June 1941, communists joined en masse, adding militancy. By late 1941, 10,000 to 20,000 fighters were sabotaging factories, cutting rail lines and assassinating German officers.

Americans who want to resist Donald Trump face similar disarray and demoralization. Liberals blame progressives for failing to turn out for Kamala while leftists point fingers at Democrats for failing to counter a hard-right turn. Unlike France, where a coalition of resistance eventually coalesced, the U.S. lacks a unified revolutionary force waiting in the wings.

Project 2025 isn’t Pétain’s Collected Speeches—ICE raids and deportations aside, this is still autocracy lite. Vichy’s dictatorship had already taken root. So what’s the point of this analogy? Resistance is hard, even in France, with its history of three revolutions and major uprisings like the 1871 Paris Commune before World War II.

In the U.S., where sustained political protests have not taken over the streets for over 50 years, many on the left haven’t seen real resistance. How can they know what actively and effectively engaging the government of the world’s most powerful nation-state looks like?

Last weekend saw the first major protests of Trump’s second term. Thousands marched in cities in all 50 states against the president’s policies and deportation orders, braving snow in some areas. For opponents, the turnout—estimated at a million nationwide—offers hope. Anger is palpable. Energy is high. Are the “Hands Off!” demos the start of a lasting movement or, like the 2017 Women’s March (co-organized by some of the same Democrat-allied groups), a fleeting outburst?

If sustained, can marches alone create enough disruption to force Trump to back off? The history of protests suggests no.

Economic pressure has historically worked. In ancient Egypt circa 1157 BCE, hungry pyramid workers withheld their labor over small rations, as recorded in the Middle Kingdom’s Turin Strike Papyrus. The pharaoh caved. In 494 BCE, Rome’s Plebeians walked out, threatening to create a new city and crashing the economy until the Patricians granted representation, debt forgiveness and other concessions. Without organization, however, such tactics are destined to fail. Occupy Wall Street’s call for a general strike in 2011 and a February 2025 anti-Trump consumer boycott fizzled, leaving leftists looking impotent and foolish.

In Nazi-occupied Europe, resistance meant defiance at mortal risk. Dutch families like the ten Booms hid Jews in secret rooms, supplying food and forged papers despite Gestapo raids. France’s Maquis sheltered downed pilots, guiding them via the Comet network. Polish partisans spirited fighters through forests, sharing meager rations. These acts—punishable by torture, execution or deportation—disrupted Nazi control and saved lives. They were a message to the outside world: we refuse to stand by passively.

Little of this is possible without a unified militant political movement to organize people and to defend them when they are in trouble. So it’s understandable that, at this time when events are moving quickly, opponents of Trumpism choose to take a stand in the streets—marching and chanting and carrying signs is something anyone can do, especially when they have the day off from work on a Saturday. But nothing can substitute for the long hard work of rebuilding the American left from the ground up. Moreover, protest marches can be counterproductive. Local police departments and other agencies photograph and use drones to track protesters and add them to their databases, making troublemakers easier to catch in the future.

Resisting Trump might mean hiding migrants from ICE’s anonymous kidnapping squads in homes or safe houses, offering food, medical care or fake IDs through modern underground railroads. This risks prison, fines or asset seizure under a vicious federal law (8 U.S.C. § 1324) that bans harboring undocumented immigrants. In this surveillance state, it would be difficult to avoid detection. Discretion is essential.

Real resistance—the kind that matters—carries danger. In 2018, Ravi Ragbir, a Trinidadian activist, was detained by ICE in Manhattan for an 18-year-old conviction. Protesters, including councilmen Jumaane Williams and Ydanis Rodriguez, blocked the ICE van; both were arrested and one injured, but they won. A judge later blocked Ragbir’s deportation, citing his activism as a First Amendment defense. In Portland that year, days-long blockades of an ICE facility over family separations forced ICE to move and release some detainees. In Harlem in March, a white New Yorker named Dustin West and his neighbor physically intervened in an ICE arrest and were handcuffed and roughed up.

Resistance isn’t for everyone. Only about two percent of the French actively resisted the Nazis. But everyone understood what real Resistance was. If you’re serious about opposing Trump and a perceived slide into autocracy over which he is presiding, you must first grasp what resistance demands—sustained commitment, risk and, sometimes, standing between the agents of the state and their targets.

(Ted Rall, the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis and The TMI Show with political analyst Manila Chan. Subscribe: tedrall.Substack.com.)

The post What Is Resistance? appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

As part of U.S. President Donald Trump’s seemingly endless journey on the Good Ship Retribution, he has, as widely reported, now fired shots across the bow of a number of law firms. Their “crime” has been having the audacity to employ lawyers Trump dislikes or representing people or causes he dislikes. The sanctions he wants to enforce are significant, including barring the offending firms’ attorneys from receiving federal contracts, striping them of security clearances, and even barring them from entering federal buildings. And this is in addition to launching federal investigations into their DEI policies.

Because, after all, what could be worse than diversity, equity, and inclusion?

The law firms Trump is attacking are, at least mostly, huge operations, the type of firms that are collectively known as “Big Law.” While some of these firms are fighting back, many have chosen to cut a deal. In other words, they’ve caved. Large firms that have folded include Milbank, Paul Weiss, Skadden Arps, and Willkie Farr & Gallagher. The “honor” of being regarded as the leader of the pack, however, goes to Paul Weiss, as the first to cave.

While earning a living is important, being a lawyer is about much more than money.

As an attorney practicing in a small law firm in Wichita, Kansas, I have little in common with lawyers working in Big Law firms. A Paul Weiss lawyer and I are both attorneys, but we practice in different worlds. For 40 years I have defended healthcare providers in malpractice cases. These lawsuits sometimes involve millions of dollars. That’s chicken feed to these guys. The top Big Law litigators will at times handle litigation involving hundreds of millions of dollars or even more, while, at the same time, the firm’s business lawyers represent corporations in transactions involving multiple billions of dollars.

These Big Law firms are immense. Paul Weiss has over 1,000 lawyers.

My firm has six, and that includes one who is basically retired.

Top partners in Big Law firms like Paul Weiss can charge $2,400 an hour or more.

My usual billing rate is less than a tenth of that number.

The annual pay last year for an equity partner in Paul Weiss was $7.5 million.

My pay is, shall we say, somewhat lower.

A true multinational firm, Paul Weiss has offices located from Asia to Europe and their home base in North America, with offices in both the U.S. and Canada.

My firm has just the one office and none of us have practiced law outside the United States. But I have visited Canada a few times.

I do, however, have one thing in common with Big Law attorneys. We all took the same oath to support and defend the Constitution which, by definition, includes supporting and defending the Rule of Law.

Very few lawyers specialize in constitutional law or professional ethics. Most of us practice in areas like divorce cases (family law), defending or prosecuting criminal cases (criminal law), trying civil lawsuits (trial lawyers), probating wills (estate practice), and representing corporations in business transactions (business law). Working in these specialized areas of the law there’s little occasion to think deeply about concepts like defending the Constitution. But the oath, and the lawyer’s obligation to follow it, is always there.

Law is a profession, but also a business—and, as they say, the business of business is business—in other words, making money. And there is nothing wrong with this. EMS providers save lives, but they also have bills to pay. The need to pay bills is just as true for lawyers. But while earning a living is important, being a lawyer is about much more than money.

Those leaders of Big Law, still refusing to vigorously defend or even speak out in support of the Rule of Law, need to consider what matters most to them. What they would most want to be remembered for—maximizing profit or defending freedom?

Defending the Constitution when, and if, the need arises must always come first. This is true even when doing so is painful, which at times it can be. As a publication of the American Bar Association has said, lawyers “are obligated to act in support of the U.S. Constitution in all situations, especially where it’s the hardest for you.”

Many lawyers have gone through an entire career never having to face an issue like this. But those of us practicing today aren’t that lucky. We live in a time when the survival of the Constitution and the Rule of Law are in the greatest jeopardy since the Civil War. The American people decided to give the staggering power of the presidency to a man who has never tried to conceal his hunger for absolute power, nor his love of cruelty.

Making matters worse, the separation of powers, which is supposed to protect us from presidential overreach, has, in the words of Don McLean, caught the first train to the coast. Congress is moribund. The Supreme Court hasn’t clearly spoken yet. There is reason for concern, given the majority’s far-right ideology, as to how they will rule when the time comes. And even if the Supreme Court rules against Trump he may refuse to accept it, creating a constitutional crisis.

To be honest, I can live with a constitutional crisis. What scares me more is if there isn’t one. That when the general public is finally forced to face up to Trump’s authoritarian agenda, people will yawn and go about their lives. And why wouldn’t they, given the example set by institutions like Columbia University caving to Trump’s extortion/ And the same goes for much of Big Law—choosing the easy route of ignoring their oath to keep the cash flowing into the firm accounts.

Big Law does have much to lose if they fight. Crossing Trump has the potential of creating a serious crimp in their cash flow. Not only would they be risking government business, but they would face a real risk of losing major corporate clients—their biggest cash cow. Corporations will have no problem recognizing that if they continue to retain lawyers who are on Trump’s enemies list, they will face a significant risk that Trump will sic MAGA on them, which could seriously damage their business. If Columbia University and Big Law are willing to kiss Trump’s ring, can anyone doubt that for-profit corporations will do the same?

So yes, Big Law has much to lose. But realistically we aren’t talking about closing the doors of a firm. The worst-case scenario is probably something like equity partners at Paul Weiss only taking home $4 million a year for a few years instead of $7.5 million. But the fact remains, they took an oath. This is part of the quid pro quo inherent in becoming a lawyer. You are allowed to practice your profession, but to do so you must first take an oath accepting the obligation to support and defend the Constitution. This is a duty all lawyers share, whether they work in big firms, small firms, corporate legal departments, the government, or a nonprofit entity. It’s a big part of what defines us.

To abandon that pledge at this moment, when the Constitution is in mortal danger, is shameful. Those leaders of Big Law, still refusing to vigorously defend or even speak out in support of the Rule of Law, need to consider what matters most to them. What they would most want to be remembered for—maximizing profit or defending freedom?

It shouldn’t be a hard decision.

In the colonial view of the world—and, in its own strange fashion, U.S. President Donald Trump’s view couldn’t be more colonial—white European colonizers were embattled beacons of civilization, rationality, and progress, confronting dangerous barbaric hordes beyond (and even, sometimes, within) their own frontiers. Colonial violence then was a necessary form of self-defense needed to tame irrational eruptions of brutality among the colonized. To make sense of the bipartisan U.S. devotion to Israel, including the glorification of Israeli violence and the demonization of Palestinians, as well as the Trump administration’s recent attacks on Black South Africa, student activists, and immigrants, it’s important to grasp that worldview.

On the Caribbean island of Barbados, Great Britain’s 1688 Act “For the Governing of Negroes” proclaimed that “Negroes… are of a barbarous, wild, and savage nature, and such as renders them wholly unqualified to be governed by the Laws, Customes, and Practices of our Nation: It is therefore becoming absolutely necessary, that such other Constitutions, Laws, and Orders, should be… framed and enacted for the good regulating or ordering of them, as may both restrain the disorders, rapines, and inhumanities to which they are naturally prone and inclined.”

The ever-present barbarian threat is now embodied by “aliens” and “radicals” who challenge Israeli colonial violence and a U.S.-dominated global order.

When I read those words recently, I heard strange echoes of how President Trump talks about immigrants, Palestinians, and Black South Africans. The text of that act exemplified what would become longstanding colonial ideologies: The colonized are unpredictably “barbarous, wild, and savage” and so must be governed by the colonizing power with a separate set of (harsh) laws; and—though not directly stated—must be assigned a legal status that sets them apart from the rights-bearing one the colonizers granted themselves. Due to their “barbarous, wild, and savage nature,” violence would inevitably be necessary to keep them under control.

Colonization meant bringing white Europeans to confront those supposedly dangerous peoples in their own often distant homelands. It also meant, as in Barbados, bringing supposedly dangerous people to new places and using violence and brutal laws to control them there. In the United States, it meant trying to displace or eliminate what the Declaration of Independence called “merciless Indian savages” and justifying white violence with slave codes based on the one the British used in Barbados in the face of the ever-present threat supposedly posed by enslaved Black people.

That grim 1688 Act also revealed how colonialism blurred the lines between Europe and its colonies. As an expansionist Europe grew ever more expansive, it brought rights-holding Europeans and those they excluded, suppressed, or dominated into the same physical spaces through colonization, enslavement, transportation, and war. Enslaved Africans were inside the territory, but outside the legal system. Expansion required violence, along with elaborate legal structures and ideologies to enforce and justify who belonged and who never would, and—yes!—ever more violence to keep the system in place.

Ideas Still With Us

The legacies of colonialism and the set of ideas behind that Act of 1688 are still with us and continue to target formerly colonized (and still colonized) peoples.

Given the increasingly unsettled nature of our world, thanks to war, politics, and the growing pressures of climate change, ever more people have tried to leave their embattled countries and emigrate to Europe and the United States. There, they find a rising tide of anti-immigrant racism that reproduces a modern version of old-fashioned colonial racism. Europe and the United States, of course, reserve the right to deny entry, or grant only partial, temporary, revocable, and limited status to many of those seeking refuge in their countries. Those different statuses mean that they are subject to different legal systems once they’re there. In Donald Trump’s America, for instance, the United States reserves the right to detain and deport even green card holders at will, merely by claiming that their presence poses a threat, as in the case of Columbia University graduate and Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, arrested in New York but quickly sent into custody in Louisiana.

Colonial racism helps explain the Trump administration’s adulation of Israeli violence against Palestinians. In good colonial fashion, Israel relies on laws that grant full rights to some, while justifying the repression (not to mention genocide) of others. Israeli violence, like the Barbadian slave code, always claims to “restrain the disorders, rapines, and inhumanities to which [Palestinians] are naturally prone and inclined.”

South Africa, of course, is still struggling with its colonial and post-colonial legacy—including decades of apartheid, which created political and legal structures that massively privileged the white population there. And while apartheid is now a past legacy, ongoing attempts to undo its damage like a January 2025 land reform law have only raised President Trump’s ire in ways that echo his reaction to even the most modest attempts to promote “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” or that dreaded abbreviation of the Trump era, DEI, in American institutions ranging from the military to universities.

Israel, though, remains a paragon of virtue and glory in Trump’s eyes. Its multiple legal structures keep Palestinians legally excluded in a diaspora from which they are not allowed to return, under devastating military occupation, with the constant threat of expulsion from the occupied West Bank and Gaza, and in occupied East Jerusalem, where they are Israeli residents but not full citizens and subject to multiple legal exclusions as non-Jews. (Donald Trump, of course, had a similar fantasy when he imagined rebuilding Gaza as a Middle Eastern “Riviera,” while expelling the Palestinians from the area.) Even those who are citizens of Israel are explicitly denied a national identity and subject to numerous discriminatory laws in a country that claims to represent “the national home of the Jewish people” and to which displaced Palestinians are forbidden to return, even as “Jewish settlement is a national value.”

Good Discrimination, Bad Discrimination

Lately, of course, right-wing politicians and pundits in this country have been denouncing any policies that claim special protections for, or even academic or legal acknowledgement of, long marginalized groups. They once derisively dubbed all such things “critical race theory” and now denounce DEI programs as divisive and—yes!—discriminatory, insisting that they be dismantled or abolished.

Meanwhile, there are two groups that those same right-wing actors have assiduously sought to protect: white South Africans and Jews. In his February executive order cutting aid to South Africa and offering refugee status to white Afrikaner South Africans (and only them), Trump accused that country’s government of enacting “countless… policies designed to dismantle equal opportunity in employment, education, and business.” No matter that such a view of South Africa is pure fantasy. What he meant, of course, was that they were dismantling apartheid-legacy policies that privileged whites.

Meanwhile, his administration has been dismantling actual equal opportunity policies here, calling them “illegal and immoral discrimination programs, going by the name ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).’” The difference? President Trump is proud to kill policies that create opportunities for people of color, just as he was outraged at South Africa’s land reform law that chipped away at the historical privilege of white landowners there. His attack on DEI reflects his drive to undo the very notion of creating de facto equal access for citizens (especially people of color) who have long been denied it.

Trump and his allies are also obsessed with what his January 30 executive order called an “explosion of antisemitism.” Unlike Black, Native American, Hispanic, LGBTQIA+, or other historically marginalized groups in the United States, American Jews—like Afrikaners—are considered a group deserving of special protection.

What is the source of this supposed “explosion” of antisemitism? The answer: “pro-Hamas aliens and left-wing radicals” who, Trump claims, are carrying out “a campaign of intimidation, vandalism, and violence on the campuses and streets of America.” In other words, the ever-present barbarian threat is now embodied by “aliens” and “radicals” who challenge Israeli colonial violence and a U.S.-dominated global order.

And—this is important!—not all Jews deserve such special protection, only those who identify with and support Israel’s colonial violence. The American right’s current obsession with antisemitism has little to do with the rights of Jews generally and everything to do with its commitment to Israel.

Even the most minor deviation from full-throated support for Israeli violence earned Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) the scorn of Trump, who called him “a proud member of Hamas” and added, “He’s become a Palestinian. He used to be Jewish. He’s not Jewish anymore. He’s a Palestinian.” Apparently for Trump, the very word “Palestinian” is a slur.

Israeli Violence Is “Stunning,” While Palestinians Are “Barbaric”

The American media and officials of both parties have generally celebrated Israeli violence. In September 2024, The New York Times referred to Israel’s “two days of stunning attacks that detonated pagers and handheld radios across Lebanon” that killed dozens and maimed thousands. A Washington Post headline called “Israel’s pager attack an intelligence triumph.” Former President Joe Biden then lauded Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah in September as “a measure of justice” and called its assassination of Hamas’s Yahya Sinwar a month later “a good day for Israel, for the United States, and for the world.” On Israel’s murder of the chief Hamas negotiator, Ismael Haniyeh, in the midst of U.S.-sponsored cease-fire negotiations in August, Biden could only lament that it was “not helpful.”

Compare this to the outrage professed when Columbia Middle East Studies professor Joseph Massad wrote, in an article on Arab world reactions to Hamas’s October 7 attack, that “the sight of the Palestinian resistance fighters storming Israeli checkpoints separating Gaza from Israel was astounding.” For that simple reflection of those Arab reactions, Columbia’s then-President Minouche Shafik denounced him before Congress, announcing that she was “appalled” and that Massad was being investigated because his language was “unacceptable.” He never would have gotten tenure had she known of his views, she insisted. Apparently only Israeli violence can be “stunning” or a “triumph.”

In reality, however, the United States, Israel, and white South Africa exist as colonial anachronisms in what President Joe Biden, echoing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, described (with respect to Israel) as an “incredibly dangerous neighborhood.”

Meanwhile, at Harvard on October 9, Palestine solidarity student groups quoted Israeli officials who promised to “open the gates of hell” on Gaza. “We hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence,” they wrote. Despite the fact that multiple Israeli sources were saying similar things, Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik posted: “It is abhorrent and heinous that Harvard students are blaming Israel for Hamas’ barbaric attacks.” Note the use of the word “barbaric” from the slave code, repeatedly invoked by journalists, intellectuals, and politicians when it came to Hamas or Palestinians, but not Israelis.

In November 2024, when the U.S. vetoed (for the fourth time) a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza, the world was aghast. The U.N. warned that, after a year of Israel’s intensive bombardment and 40 days of the complete blockade of humanitarian supplies, 2 million Palestinians were “facing diminishing conditions of survival.” The U.N. director of Human Rights Watch accused the U.S. of acting “to ensure impunity for Israel as its forces continue to commit crimes against Palestinians in Gaza.” The American ambassador, however, defended the veto, arguing that, although the resolution called for the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza, it did not provide enough “linkage.” And of course, U.S. arms, including staggeringly destructive 2,000-pound bombs, have continued to flow to Israel in striking quantities as the genocide continues.

Connecting Immigrants, Palestinians, and South Africa

Closer to home, Trump’s full-throated attack on immigrants has revived the worst of colonial language. The Marshall Project has, for instance, tracked some of his major claims and how often he’s repeated them: “Unauthorized immigrants are criminals [said 575+ times], snakes that bite [35+ times], eating pets, coming from jails and mental institutions [560+ times], causing crime in sanctuary cities [185+ times], and a group of isolated, tragic cases prove they are killing Americans en masse [235+ times].” Clearly, draconian laws are needed to control such monsters!

Trump has also promised to deport millions of immigrants and issued a series of executive orders meant to greatly expand the detention and deportation of those living in the United States without legal authorization—“undocumented people.” Another set of orders is meant to strip the status of millions of immigrants who are currently here with legal authorization, revoking Temporary Protected Status, work authorizations, student visas, and even green cards. One reason for this is to expand the number of people who can be deported since, despite all the rhetoric and the spectacle, the administration has struggled so far to achieve anything faintly like the rates it has promised.

This anti-immigrant drive harmonizes with Trump’s affection for Jewish Israel and white South Africa in obvious ways. White South Africans are being welcomed with open arms (though few are coming), while other immigrants are targeted. Noncitizen students and others have been particularly singled out for supposedly “celebrating Hamas’ mass rape, kidnapping, and murder.” The cases of Mahmoud Khalil, Rasha Alawieh, Momodou Taal, Badar Khan Suri, Yunseo Chung, and Rumeysa Ozturk (and perhaps others by the time this article is published) stand out in this regard. The Trump administration repeatedly denigrates movements for Palestinian rights and immigrants as violent threats that must be contained.

There are some deeper connections as well. Immigrants from what Trump once termed “shit-hole countries” are, in his view, not only prone to violence and criminality themselves but also inclined to anti-American and anti-Israel views, leaving this country supposedly at risk. Included in his executive order on South Africa was the accusation that its government “has taken aggressive positions toward the United States and its allies, including accusing Israel… of genocide in the International Court of Justice” and is “undermining United States foreign policy, which poses national security threats to our Nation”—almost identical wording to that used to justify the revocation of visas for Khalil and others. In other words, threats are everywhere.

Trump and his associates weaponize antisemitism to attack student protesters, progressive Jewish organizations, freedom of speech, immigrants, higher education, and other threats to his colonizer’s view of the world.

In reality, however, the United States, Israel, and white South Africa exist as colonial anachronisms in what President Joe Biden, echoing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, described (with respect to Israel) as an “incredibly dangerous neighborhood.” And Trump has only doubled down on that view.

Strange to imagine, but the planters of Barbados would undoubtedly be proud to see their ideological descendants continuing to impose violent control on our world, while invoking the racist ideas they proposed in the 1600s.

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On “The TMI Show,” hosts Ted Rall and Manila Chan dive into the escalating controversy surrounding President Trump’s push to place Columbia University under federal oversight, citing unsubstantiated claims of rampant anti-Semitism. Ted, a Columbia alumnus, reports live from the university’s Morningside Heights campus, where tensions are high following last year’s Gaza solidarity encampments. Despite the participation of many Jewish students in those protests and no concrete evidence of anti-Semitic incidents, the administration has since clamped down on free speech, suspending students and restricting demonstrations.

Is this a targeted attack on academic freedom, or the first step in a broader assault on higher education? The hosts unpack the implications, questioning whether an Ivy League institution like Columbia could be just the beginning.

Later, the show shifts gears to the volatile financial markets, rattled by President Trump’s erratic tariff policies. Manila and Ted welcome financial analyst Bubba Horwitz, who breaks down the economic fallout from the president’s on-again, off-again trade maneuvers. Horwitz offers insights into how investors are grappling with uncertainty, from spiking commodity prices to stock market jitters. The discussion highlights the real-world impacts on businesses and consumers, cutting through the noise of political posturing.

The TMI Show remains a viewer-supported platform, streaming live Monday through Friday at 10 a.m. ET on YouTube and Rumble, where no topic is too hot to handle.

The post TMI Show Ep 116: “Trump vs. Columbia University” appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Below are excerpts from letters sent to me by my friend, Hudia, of Rafah. I have saved everything she has sent me since October 2023. The entries below are taken from messages she has sent since Israel's resumption of bombing on March 18, 2025. Hudia writes to me in Arabic. I have translated and edited them for style and clarity with her permission.

March 21, 2025

The war is more terrifying than before. It seems to have reached a level of savagery and madness we've never experienced before. The bombing doesn't stop; it goes on relentlessly day and night. Some days I want to scream when I hear it. Every day there are more home demolitions, and we hear missile sounds that are new to us. Israel is testing out its newest weapons on us to see how well they blast us into pieces of flesh or vaporize us altogether; to see, perhaps, if one bomb can turn a concrete building into dust faster than another. The power of the explosions is enormous and can be heard in Jerusalem and its environs. This time around—since Israel began its war on us again—my fear has doubled—for myself, my children, my family, for everyone. The bombing is everywhere; the killing and the places being bombed are entirely arbitrary and unpredictable. Our fate lies in the hands of chance.

March 22, 2025

One of the most devastating things about this madness is that we no longer recognize the places where we used to live. We might see a video clip of a street in Gaza—a street whose markets and shops, colors, flavors, and scents we had memorized; a street that had witnessed thousands of our memories in the city. But that video clip is all that is left. Now that street has become so unrecognizable it's as if they have taken away our ability to remember. They did not leave behind a single marker to remind us of where we are. Even the trees are gone. Perhaps they think by erasing our memories they will have erased our identity. They are wrong: It just makes us swallow our past whole until we become one and the same with it.

Every day we stand ankle deep in the remains of our people, in streams of blood and debris. What tears my heart the most are the bodies of dead children. They haunt me in my dreams. I need a truce with myself to force me away from the news; a temporary truce so I can embrace what is still living after death rains down from the skies. I need to smell air without the putrid smell of rotting flesh and gunpowder. I need to see scenes other than corpses and skeletons spread everywhere; other than people with amputated limbs moving about on some violent stage where the theme is destruction.

Do you want to know how I feel? Look at the miles of rubble and debris. That's how I feel.

By God, I am so tired of seeing tents everywhere, and little children gathering in queues for food and water. I can no longer bear seeing all these things and the sickly faces of people in the streets. I want to run away from this pain. But, let me tell you honestly that in many ways the bitterness of betrayal is even harsher than the pain of this aggression—the slaughter, displacement, and starvation. We have been completely abandoned. No one is going to step in and help us. We are alone.

March 23, 2025

[NOTE: On March 23, news of Israel's execution of 15 Red Crescent and Civil Defense workers in the Tel al-Sultan area of Rafah had not yet reached the U.S. Hudia wrote in her letters to me what she heard from people in Tel al-Sultan on the day it happened and thereafter. Much that she describes was never reported in the news. Outlets such as Middle East Eye and Al Jazeera; and human rights organizations such as Al Mezan, with whose fieldworker I spoke, collected eyewitness reports and documented as much as possible.]

POEM

They buried them alive with bullets.
They stood over the hole,
piling the bodies on top of each other.
There was barely time to scream.
the spray silenced everything in seconds.
The earth swallowed them up
leaving only the sky as a witness.

The reports are terrible. The Israelis ordered the residents of Tel al-Sultan to evacuate, but didn't give them any time to pack up or coordinate plans. They had to leave immediately. Within minutes, they were fired upon by quadcopters, drones, and tanks. It was chaos.

Soldiers set up a makeshift checkpoint for people to pass through. Most were able to pass, but some were detained in a muddy area off to the side. We don't know what happened to them. We heard that somewhere they separated the men, put them in pits, and executed them. But we didn't know exactly who they meant. The ambulance crews that came to help have vanished.

Many people are still trapped in Tel al-Sultan, and no one knows anything about their fate yet either. As people were running to escape the area, anyone trying to help them was also shot so the dead and wounded were left in the streets.

Tonight, they bombed Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. An Israeli airstrike killed a Hamas member and 16-year-old boy. This dirty war is as dirty as the world itself for allowing Israel to violate everything.

March 27, 2025

Good morning, my friend. What happened in Rafah is horrific and beyond comprehension. I don't know if we'll ever have the full truth of what the Israelis did. What is now coming out about the executed Paramedics and Civil Defense members is just the tip of the iceberg. We have reached the peak of madness. Nobody cares what's happening here. I think we are going into the unknown.

I can no longer sleep, day or night. It is after 3:00 am, and I am up writing this to you. Tomorrow I will flee again with my son's family to the Khan Younis area. I will take my tent and put it directly on the sea. Maybe there I will fall asleep. I am so tired of everything.

March 30, 2025

Yes, I am now living in one of those tents you've been seeing again and again on the open beach area of al-Mawasi. Life here is very difficult. Water trucks come, and we carry water from the street to the tents so we can clean the dishes and wash the clothes by hand. This doesn't solve the problem of sand and dust, our two constant companions. Of course, there is no gas. We cook everything over a fire, including bread.

The crossings have been closed for about a month. Nothing is entering Gaza. The markets are completely empty of almost everything, and the agricultural areas east of the strip are under Israeli control. It is possible to find only a few vegetables and fruit at food stands here and there along the streets, and most cannot afford to buy them because the prices are so high. We mostly rely on canned food when it is available. People here are hungry, scared, and sick. The general health of the people has declined because there is so little nutritious food to eat. This makes people less able to endure the hardships. So many will die with this added weakness. I am sure this is one of Israel's goals in the overall scheme to wipe us out.

April 1, 2025

I can't stand to listen to the news reports any longer. They sound like reels of dry statistics, one after another. They don't mention the empty chair at the dining table, the best friend who has disappeared, or the parents searching for their child's limbs in the rubble. They don't tell you about the families going with less and less each day, trying to keep up brave faces for their children; or how a mother feels when she passes by children playing football, which her child loved, but who died without fulfilling his share of dreams.

That news "ticker tape" at the bottom of your screen doesn't mention how many men here pretend to be strong before weeping at night from pain and longing. It lists numbers of dead, dying, wounded, and forever incapacitated, but it is those who keep going who are the future's story. They are beyond exhausted but go about their daily tasks like automatons except that they are absorbing this reality, this world of pure violence and expedited trauma, in which we are supposed to live like human beings. It is these people, plodding along half-dazed through this giant cemetery, who have internalized the reality of what Gaza has become.

April 5, 2025

Yesterday, my uncle was martyred after his tent was bombed in the Mawasi area of Khan Younis. He succumbed to his wounds. I am suffering from severe depression this time, fear and anxiety for everyone. I cannot sleep at all.

April 8, 2025

The plan to expel us is taking a serious turn, especially after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's recent visit to America. I don't know what I will do. With the new "Morag corridor," Israel has completely separated Rafah from Khan Younis and I believe after they've completed the destruction of Rafah, they will force us there, close to the Egyptian border, in preparation for mass expulsion. Then Rafah will be merged with the "buffer zone" around the strip and taken over by Jewish settlers. My city will have disappeared into history. This is the only logical conclusion I can come up with given the demolition of the remaining buildings in Rafah.

I spoke to my brother yesterday in Amsterdam. I informed him about our uncle Muhammad's martyrdom. I haven't spoken to him for a while, but I know how he is from the tone of his voice. He always tries to make me think he's fine and that everything is normal, but I know it's not—and I know he's not. He's panicking, I can feel it, and afraid for everyone, and so am I. The situation is terrifying, suffocating, and worrying. I always tell him everyone is still fine, and that I hope everyone will remain "fine." I speak to everyone in my family here daily, hoping that we and the others here will survive this holocaust, but I no longer know if we will.

You know, I used to love the sea and would sit out by it at night on the beach, drinking coffee and smoking my cigarettes. Now the sea is in front of me, but I can barely stand to look at it. It has become ominous, as if waiting to swallow us whole. The beautiful Mediterranean now terrifies me. What a strange paradox.

My friend, I know you're always thinking of me, and I always read our conversations, old and new. I'm so grateful for your continued support.

April 9, 2025

A hundred tents here, 50 more over there—in every corner there are more tents, and each one tells a story of pain.

I've asked myself a million times how people can live like this; how do they sleep, how do they endure the heat and cold, the oppressiveness of these "homes," the utter lack of privacy? Where is humanity? Does anyone still see us? Has the world really become this cold and dispassionate, or has it always been that way?

These are not just tents. These are souls, shattered families, and shattered dreams all under a thin fabric that conceals neither the pain nor the indignity of what we have become. Do you want to know how I feel? Look at the miles of rubble and debris. That's how I feel; you just can't take a picture of my soul.

The Trump administration is organizing a network of energy-producing states in the Caribbean to provide the region with a steady supply of fossil fuels, despite the environmental risks.

Hoping to sideline Venezuela, the oil-rich country that once provided the Caribbean with affordable supplies of oil, the Trump administration is working to position other oil-rich countries as the region’s primary suppliers of energy. Administration officials are particularly focused on Guyana and Suriname, two oil-rich countries that they hope the region’s leaders will embrace as alternatives to Venezuela.

“The fact that now their own countries—Guyana, Suriname—are able to have and really surpass Venezuela in its oil production and be able to work with its neighbors there in the region is a huge opportunity for the Caribbean,” U.S. Special Envoy for Latin America Mauricio Claver-Carone said at a March 25 press briefing.

The Geopolitics of Oil in the Caribbean

Over the past two decades, the United States has engaged in a major rivalry with Venezuela for influence in the Caribbean. The U.S.-Venezuela rivalry has centered on oil, a fossil fuel that many Caribbean nations import to meet their energy needs.

Early in the 21st century, Venezuela took advantage of its vast oil reserves to become a major supplier of oil for the Caribbean. Under a program called Petrocaribe, Venezuela shared its oil wealth by providing Caribbean countries with shipments at low rates.

Many Caribbean countries embraced Petrocaribe. Not only did the Venezuelan program enable them to meet their energy needs, but it empowered them to begin developing their economies more independently of the United States, which has long been the dominant power in the region.

Rather than fully embracing environmentally friendly alternatives to Petrocaribe, however, U.S. officials quietly engaged in a geopolitical game over oil.

For many years, the United States failed to offer alternatives to Petrocaribe. While Venezuela emerged as a powerful counterweight to U.S. power in the Caribbean, officials in Washington faced the possibility that formerly dependent countries would break free from the U.S. orbit.

With its influence waning, the United States eventually developed its own energy program. In 2014, the Obama administration introduced the Caribbean Energy Security Initiative, which offered Caribbean countries technical assistance, financing for energy projects, and political support for regional energy planning.

U.S. officials presented the initiative as a way of bringing clean energy to the Caribbean. The program, they said, would empower Caribbean countries to transition away from fossil fuels and reduce their dependence on oil imports.

“You, the countries of the Caribbean, have a chance at the supply of energy that’s more resilient, more sustainable, cleaner, more affordable than you have ever, ever had,” Joe Biden told Caribbean leaders in 2015, when he was vice president in the Obama administration.

Rather than fully embracing environmentally friendly alternatives to Petrocaribe, however, U.S. officials quietly engaged in a geopolitical game over oil. Believing that the United States could outmatch Venezuela on fossil fuels, they set out to find ways of achieving regional dominance in oil and natural gas.

One tactic was to promote U.S. fossil fuel exports to the Caribbean. “We have more oil and gas rigs running in the United States than all the rest of the world combined,” Biden boasted in 2015, when he was promoting the Caribbean Energy Security Initiative.

Another tactic focused on finding new sources of fossil fuels in the Caribbean. Several U.S. officials developed high hopes for Guyana, a South American country with large offshore oil deposits. In 2015, ExxonMobil announced significant discoveries, raising expectations that the country would become one of the region’s largest suppliers of oil.

As U.S. officials pushed alternative sources of fossil fuels, they also sought to end Venezuelan influence altogether. Acting consistently with the long history of U.S. coups and interventions in Latin America, the United States sought to bring down the Venezuelan government.

The first Trump administration made some of the most audacious moves, openly embracing regime change. From 2017 to 2019, it imposed severe sanctions on the country’s finances and oil industry to facilitate the collapse of the Venezuelan government.

Although the Venezuelan government survived the challenges, which continued into the Biden administration, the country experienced an unprecedented economic collapse. With its oil industry in decline and under restrictions by U.S. sanctions, Venezuela could no longer maintain Petrocaribe, diminishing its efforts to be a major supplier of oil for the Caribbean.

Trump Administration’s New Approach

Since the second Trump administration entered office in January, it has faced a new power dynamic in the Caribbean. With Venezuela having undergone one of the worst economic collapses for a country not at war, including a major decline in its oil industry, the administration finds itself in a position to restore U.S. supremacy in the Caribbean.

Moving to take advantage of the situation, the Trump administration has added a new dimension to the geopolitics of oil. Hoping to permanently sideline Venezuela and exclude it from the Caribbean altogether, it has begun to create a network of oil-producing countries that will provide the region with oil under U.S. direction.

“This is an opportunity,” Claver-Carone said at the March 25 press briefing. Caribbean countries “are going to be able to support each other, to be able to create an energy security framework, which has already changed the geopolitics of the region.”

Administration officials are trying to create a security agreement with Guyana that will provide the country with the same kinds of military protections that the United States extends to its energy-rich partners in the Middle East.

In recent weeks, the Trump administration has made several moves in pursuit of its goals. On March 24, President Trump issued an executive order that threatened to impose a tariff of 25% on any country that imports oil from Venezuela. Trump’s order put strong pressure on Caribbean leaders who have been hoping to revive Petrocaribe.

Second, the Trump administration has organized U.S. diplomatic visits to Caribbean nations. At the end of March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio traveled to Guyana and Suriname, where he praised their leaders for embracing oil production and encouraged them to work together in a new network under U.S. leadership.

Surinamese President Chandrikapersad Santokhi said that he anticipated that Guyana and Suriname “will become important partners for the Caribbean and the Western Hemisphere.”

Still, Venezuela remains in a position to challenge the United States. It is continuing to produce more oil than Guyana and Suriname combined, enabling it to maintain some exports to countries in the Caribbean. It is also claiming sovereignty over Essequibo, the western part of Guyana that includes the country’s offshore oil deposits.

The Trump administration has responded aggressively to Venezuela’s territorial claims, signaling that the U.S. military will intervene if Venezuela attempts to seize any of Guyana’s territory. Administration officials are trying to create a security agreement with Guyana that will provide the country with the same kinds of military protections that the United States extends to its energy-rich partners in the Middle East.

Claver-Carone envisioned “a greater security cooperation agreement with Guyana—almost akin to what we’re working on with some of the Gulf states.”

The Trump administration’s strategy marks a major turning point for the Caribbean. Whereas the United States had once presented the region with options for shifting away from fossil fuels, it has now abandoned that approach. The new U.S. goal is to lock the region into permanent reliance on fossil fuels, only now under a network of energy-rich countries overseen by the United States.

What the Trump administration is doing, in other words, is implementing a far more dangerous geopolitics of oil. As it moves to isolate Venezuela, it is pushing energy-dependent nations to embrace fossil fuels, regardless of the environmental consequences for the region and the world.

With Tax Day rapidly approaching, taxpayers who haven’t yet filed could have a great option available to them this year. Half the states in the nation now have access to a zero-cost tool created by the Internal Revenue Service called Direct File that allows people to file taxes online directly to the government using a question-based software.

Direct File is a much better option than paying for expensive corporate-owned software or hiring a private tax-prep company. The typical taxpayer ends up spending an average of eight hours each year completing their tax returns in addition to shelling out $160 a year to pay for a service that should be—and is now—free of charge.

Last year, Direct File software was made available through a pilot program to those with relatively simple tax situations living in Arizona, California, Florida, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, Texas, Tennessee, South Dakota, Washington, and Wyoming.

The user testimonials speak for themselves. “It was the fastest I’ve ever done my taxes,” said one user. “I wish everyone could do their taxes that easily,” said another.

This year, in addition to the 12 states from last year’s pilot program, all of which are participating again, Direct File has been expanded to include Alaska, Connecticut, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Approximately 30 million people across the 25 participating states are eligible to use Direct File. And there are many reasons to welcome this new e-file tool created by the IRS.

Direct File was designed to make it as easy as possible for people to file taxes. In addition to being free of charge, the tool is mobile-friendly, available in both English and Spanish, and has live chat assistance from the IRS. What’s more, the tool now pre-populates some information that the IRS already has in its records to make the process even quicker and error-free, which is a huge improvement over its original version.

What’s more, Direct File is intended to help people claim credits like the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which around one in five eligible filers don’t currently claim.

Research shows that when Direct File is fully scaled up, Americans could collectively save up to $11 billion in filing costs alone, while low and moderate-income families could recoup $12 billion in tax credits like the EITC and Child Tax Credit that they’re currently missing out on. That money could come in handy for families struggling to make ends meet in these times of rising costs.

Predictably, Direct File is overwhelmingly popular with the American public. More than 90% of people who used Direct File last year said that the tool is “Excellent” or “Above average.”

The user testimonials speak for themselves. “It was the fastest I’ve ever done my taxes,” said one user. “I wish everyone could do their taxes that easily,” said another.

It’s not just popular with those who’ve used it. Direct File has been cheered by more than 140 members of Congress; 16 attorneys general; 134 leading experts on the U.S. tax system; and more than 250 national, state, and local organizations representing all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.

During his confirmation hearing, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he would commit to keeping Direct File in 2025. However, amid the current chaos happening in the federal government, its future in 2026 and beyond is less certain. Big tax prep corporations have been handing out cash to opponents of Direct File in Congress in the hopes of gutting the program.

For Direct File to remain an option in future years, it’s critical that taxpayers take advantage of the tool right now. Widespread participation will help solidify the future of this important service.

So if you haven’t filed your taxes yet, go to directfile.irs.gov to see if you’re eligible.

Imagine, if you will, the United States on January 1, 2028. President Donald Trump and his gang of MAGA goons have been drawing from the well of right-wing nativism for the past three years, generating spectacle after spectacle without managing to improve material circumstances for any but the wealthiest Americans. That well has now run dry, and the American public is getting restless. The United States has repeatedly skirted the edge of an economic recession; inflation remains high and unemployment is ticking up. The malaise of stagflation pervades every aspect of American life. Eggs and milk prices remain high, the stock market hasn’t really rallied again since the GOP pushed through its latest cut on taxes for the wealthy, and the big ticket items—homes, vehicles, education—are all more expensive than when Trump first took office, for the second time.

Amidst the chaos, Democrats have kicked their campaigning into high gear, with primary season nearly upon them. This is a primary without an heir apparent, and every Democrat within arm’s reach of a well-funded PAC has thrown their hat into the ring. At the top of the list are familiar names like Gavin Newsom, full of “I feel your pain” empathy for the right and spite for the left. He’s spent the second Trump administration honing his performance of antipathy for progressive social issues and rubbing elbows with the right-wing glitterati. Now he’s ready to convert on his “moderate” bona fides. There’s also Pete Buttigieg, here to remind us that no planes crashed on his watch as Transportation Secretary. Amy Klobuchar is back too although no one, including herself, can articulate exactly why.

Since the resurgence of the New New Left in the last decade, there has never been a wider gulf between the appeal of left-wing politicians and distaste for the Democratic Party establishment.

Despite the typical pomp that attends any party primary season, this campaign looks different than those in recent memory. For the first time in 12 years, more than a decade, Democrats do not have Donald Trump to run against. Whoever the Republican primary process churns out will surely promise to continue whatever erosion of democracy and civil rights Trump has accomplished in his second term. But that nominee is unlikely to carry the same boogeyman-like narrative weight that Trump has wielded to captivate the media for years. Democrats, then, will face a disconcerting prospect: They must run with a positive, projective vision for the country.

What Do the Democrats Believe?

Over the last few election cycles, the Democratic Party has struggled to present a cohesive vision of what it stands for in the 21st century. This is partly due to Donald Trump; the party has, in some sense, overdeveloped its anti-Trump messaging while neglecting the rest of its platform, like a tennis player with an oversized racket arm. Democrats have been saved from having to more carefully cultivate policy messaging because, for the last three cycles, they have simply run as the opposition to Donald Trump. This strategy has a 33% success rate.

The platform problems go much deeper than this, though. The party’s multi-decade pivot away from working class voters toward suburban, college-educated ones has failed to grow a winning coalition for the Democrats. It has, though, paralyzed the party on policy questions relating to income inequality and redistribution of wealth, arguably the most pressing of our present moment. The party cannot serve the interests of wealthy and upper-middle income suburbanites and the working class, simultaneously. Instead of striving to resolve this tension, the party has grasped at social issues in an attempt to trail the prevailing popular opinion of the moment. Where the party was “woke” and all in on ameliorating issues of racial injustice in 2020, just a few years later, some of the most prominent Democrats have joined right-wing Republicans in attacking trans people and migrants.

All this vacillation has run the party aground. Recent polling reveals that the party has reached its lowest point in popularity in at least the last three decades. Constituents do not trust congressional Democrats to stand up to Donald Trump and the GOP. We are only a few months into Donald Trump’s second term, and the Democratic Party already appears to be out of ideas. Leadership is at pains to point out how hamstrung they are by their minority positions in the House and Senate, but they have so far shrunk from any opportunity to use leverage they have against the Trump administration.

The last few months have made two things about the Democratic Party and its supporters abundantly clear: First, there is a real appetite among the party’s constituents to take a radically new tack in combatting Trumpism and, second, there is no inclination among party leadership to do so.

2028 Will Be the Left’s Best Opportunity

Against this backdrop, left electeds and candidates are once again garnering attention and enthusiasm. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) have drawn crowds of tens of thousands for their “Fighting Oligarchy” tour, an astounding turnout in an off-election year for two politicians already firmly entrenched in their respective seats. Elsewhere, Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist running for mayor of New York City, has surged to take second place in recent polling, trailing only the disgraced, but universally known, Andrew Cuomo. Mamdani’s fundraising has been so robust that he recently implored would-be donors to canvass for him instead, becoming likely the only U.S. candidate for office ever to ask people to stop sending money.

Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are the most well-known representatives of the left within the sphere of electoral politics. That they are driving massive turnout to their rallies amidst Democrats’ cratering popularity is a testament not just to the durability of their individual fandoms but to the appeal of left policy as well. (It’s also worth recalling that Sanders has long enjoyed some of the highest favorability ratings of any living U.S. politician.) Since the resurgence of the New New Left in the last decade, there has never been a wider gulf between the appeal of left-wing politicians and distaste for the Democratic Party establishment. This is why it’s critical for the left to seize on this imbalance well ahead of 2028.

A Path to Winning the Nomination in 2028

Since its resurgence in 2016, the left has now had the opportunity to observe the primary process (or lack thereof) in three presidential cycles. We should no longer harbor any illusions about how stridently the corporatist wing of the party will oppose a left candidate who appears poised to grab the Democratic nomination. Therefore, it’s critical that the left unites, well ahead of schedule, behind one, single candidate.

Established practice recommends that candidates wait until at least after the dust from the midterm elections has settled. However, the risks to a left candidate declaring before this point are minimal—if Republicans further cement their hold on Congress, it’s proof of the ineptitude of the current party leadership; if Democrats make advances, that’s evidence that the electorate (still) desires change. It’s true that a declaration of intent so far out from the primary contest would be a radical departure from the established modus operandi. But what would a left candidate actually lose in making their intentions known so early? For an established name it would give that person runway to flesh out their platform and expand on their existing base of supporters; for an up-and-comer, it would allow enough time for that person to introduce themselves to the American public and drive up their name recognition. In the era of total digital saturation, media could be had easily—and cheaply—via an infinite number of social media platforms, podcasts, YouTube channels, and so on.

Despite the fierce headwinds a left candidate is sure to face from the party leaders, the left does have one significant advantage: we already have an established political program. Whereas the Kamala Harris campaign was characterized by its almost total lack of prescriptive policy, a left candidate has a tested-and-true platform to run on. The basic tenets of this platform were established by the Sanders presidential campaigns in 2016 and 2020 and have been elaborated on through a series of federal, state, and local campaigns over the ensuing years. They have also been informed by the social movement struggles of the last decade, beginning especially with the Black Lives Matter uprisings after George Floyd’s murder and continuing through the ongoing Cease-Fire Now protests over U.S. complicity in the genocide in Gaza.

While individual candidates may riff on this platform a bit, there are some established, bedrock policies that should form the basis of any left campaign. These include support for single-payer, universal healthcare; acknowledgment that climate change is a real, existential threat; and efforts to massively expand union membership, including installing a radically pro-worker National Labor Relations Board. Also critical will be an immigration approach that ends mass deportations, a policy that is quickly coming to define the second Trump administration. In the realm of foreign policy, a left candidate for president would commit to ending arms sales to Israel and putting the U.S.’ diplomatic weight behind an immediate end to any military action against the Palestinian people. The left flank of the party should be prepared to line up behind the candidate who best represents this platform in 2028.

The Prospects

So, where will we find a perfect tribune of the left? Well, we won’t. The key is simply to find a candidate with enough mass appeal to corral the various left constituencies who will need to back the primary campaign. There are a few places to look for such a person:

The Traditional Route

The most obvious place to go looking for this candidate is among already-established career politicians. The advantages to this approach are obvious: These are people who already know how to run campaigns, have large pools of current and former staffers from whom they could build a campaign team, and have long-running connections with members of the political fundraising ecosystem. The startup costs for a member of this group would be substantially less significant than for an outsider.

The names in contention here are well-known among left politicos. Above the title is, of course, Ocasio-Cortez, who has dominated the progressive Democrat sphere since her shock win over Joe Crowley in 2018. AOC, if she entered the race, would be a formidable frontrunner. Recent surveys have shown that a plurality of Americans already believe her to be the de facto leader of the party, ahead of even Kamala Harris. She has also transformed into one of the party’s strongest fundraisers, a critical component of any successful campaign for president. And, she would be just 38 as the primary season kicked off in 2028, and 39 if she were elected, making her easily the youngest person ever elected to the presidency. Comparatively young candidates have easily capitalized on their youth to brand themselves as change candidates in the past, which is likely to be an especially compelling narrative as the then-81 year old Trump presides over his waning days in office.

The left best serves corporatist Democrats when we descend into internecine squabbles and leave the door open for multiple entrants to claim the “progressive” mantle.

AOC has her detractors as well, of course. Her occasionally uneasy relationship with parts of the left has sometimes destabilized her relationship with what would otherwise be her core constituency. As with Sanders in 2016 and 2020, though, it’s likely that a real attempt by Ocasio-Cortez to seize the Democratic nomination would rally many on the left as the prospect of installing a veteran of left-progressivism in the White House would prove too enticing to pass up.

Less well-known nationally in this group, but perhaps more serious about running in 2028, is Ro Khanna, representative from California. Khanna has built many of his progressive bona fides on being the Big Tech-whisperer of the left, someone who can harness the energy of Silicon Valley for good, not evil. (Khanna represents the district that includes much of Silicon Valley; it is the nation’s wealthiest Congressional district.) As such, he has been a strong advocate for digital privacy rights, an issue that is sure to have increasing salience amidst the destruction of personal privacy which the so-called “Department” of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is currently instituting.

But, Khanna has also taken stances that are more controversial among leftists. In the weeks before Trump’s inauguration, Khanna wrote favorably about DOGE, giving fuel to the idea that he is too close to Silicon Valley and its technocrats. He also raised leftists’ ire over his ties to Hindu nationalists and for lobbying for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is a member with the far-right BJP, to address Congress in 2023.

A problem for both Ocasio-Cortez and Khanna is that, if they were to move directly from the House of Representatives to the presidency, they would be the first to do so since James Garfield, in 1880. This isn’t to say that it’s impossible for any candidate to make this jump, just that, over the last century and a half, more presidents have come straight from the ranks of television show hosts than they have from the U.S. House of Representatives.

Labor and Its Allies

A middle ground between recruiting a candidate through the political establishment and a more radical departure from the norm could be to turn to organized labor. Democrats have long counted union members among their most reliable constituencies (although there is some evidence that that association is weakening). Approval for labor unions is also at a high point since the mid-1960s, and labor leaders are becoming more prominent members of the political commentariat, if not quite yet household names.

Most visible among this group is probably Shawn Fain, the president of the United Auto Workers (UAW) since 2023. Fain was one of Trump’s most vocal critics during the presidential campaign, but has substantially moderated his approach toward Trump in the months since the election and has even spoken approvingly of Trump’s tariff policy.

While his occasionally conciliatory attitude toward the Trump administration may rankle some on the left, Fain’s unorthodox approach to the administration may work in his favor. He could use his unique politics to avoid being cleanly labeled as either a Republican or Democrat, and lead with his “pro-worker” brand instead.

Sara Nelson would be another strong contender from the world of labor. Nelson, who has been president of the Association of Flight Attendants since 2014, has been among the most visible and militant labor leaders of the last 10 years. She rose to prominence while advocating for members of her union during the 2019 government shutdown in Trump’s first term, and none other than Bernie Sanders lobbied Joe Biden to name Nelson labor secretary in his administration.

Nelson’s path to achieving widespread name recognition would be much steeper than Fain’s. While Fain is head of one of the most well-known U.S. labor unions with hundreds of thousands of members spread across multiple industries, Nelson heads a much smaller association. And, despite her status as a darling of left organizers, she is still broadly unknown to the wider electorate and, of all the aforementioned candidates, would have to spend the most time driving up her name recognition.

Any candidate who came from organized labor would need to also reckon with whatever labor activity is spinning up as 2028 approaches. Fain and the UAW are gearing up for a potentially massive labor action on May 1, 2028. While the left is sure to support a labor action of this size and scope, presiding over a large-scale strike and the possible months of subsequent negotiations could significantly complicate a labor-aligned candidate’s ability to simultaneously run a presidential campaign.

The Trumpian Tack

Finally, of course, a candidate could come from entirely outside of the political sphere. Since Donald Trump rode his golden escalator into infamy, many entertainers, commentators, and public personalities have toyed with the idea of running for the land’s highest office. The field here, at least for leftists, is a bit thin.

The comedian and host of The Daily Show, Jon Stewart, may be the likeliest pick in an unlikely scenario. Stewart has been propositioned as recently as the last presidential cycle. Although he quickly put that possibility to rest, 2028 will be a different game entirely. In 2024, Stewart was seen as a hail Mary option as Democrats anguished over their unease with keeping former President Joe Biden at the top of the ticket. In 2028, he may be a frontrunner in a wide open primary. Stewart would bring sky-high name recognition and a preexisting base of loyal fans with whom he’s nurtured a connection since the George W. Bush administration. He would also bring the media savvy and knack for comedic timing that Trump himself leveraged to paint his competitors in the 2016 Republican primary as hopeless dullards.

Drafting Stewart into this role is unlikely, and probably best viewed as a fallback, unless he expressed enthusiasm for the job. Assuming he’s not interested, the picture quickly becomes bleak. While the left has a vibrant and expansive ecosystem of podcasters, streamers, content creators, and commentators, growing any individual micro-fandom into a base of supporters large enough to win the Democratic nomination would be a Herculean task, to put it mildly.

A Coalition of the Willing

Finding the right candidate will only be half the battle. Critical, too, will be assembling a coalition of left leaders, organizations, and activists who will form the base of support for that candidate. Conversations among potential members of this group should begin quickly, and aim toward developing a consensus list of preferred candidates. Gaining broad buy-in for this strategy will be essential to getting any effort like this off the ground.

So, who would be part of this group? To be vague and a bit cowardly, I’d say that any person or group who supports the above-described platform should be part of this coalition. More specifically though, this coalition would have to draw together grassroots activists; significant parts of organized labor; and left-leaning, party-adjacent groups who lobby the party on matters of strategy and policy. These different groups would have to set aside interpersonal differences and agree to support whomever the coalition is eventually able to recruit to run, regardless of their personal affinity for, or proximity to, this person. This is a tall order, but members wanting to be part of this network should keep in mind lessons from the past: The left best serves corporatist Democrats when we descend into internecine squabbles and leave the door open for multiple entrants to claim the “progressive” mantle. If we want this effort to be successful, we must be resolute and unambiguous in our promotion of a single person.

We Are Coming to Save Us

The last few months have made it crystal clear that neither our institutions nor the grandees of the old Democratic establishment will save us from encroaching authoritarianism. Neither will appeals to restoring an old, vanished order or promises that nothing, fundamentally, would change with the Democrats in charge.

However, the Democratic Party cannot afford to drift, rudderless, through this Trump administration. It must present a strong counterpoint to the policies of this White House, and soon. One of the surest ways of doing that would be to appoint a new class of leaders who are more prepared to take on the rising fascist tide—a class of leaders who understand how grave, and late, the hour is for our democracy. If the corporatist class of the party will not make this pivot, leftists must do it for them. And, for our part, nothing could be a more concrete statement of the left’s intent for the next four years than to appoint a progressive champion well ahead of schedule.

Fear of ICE arrests is spreading across the United States, reaching beyond migrants and political activists to include everyday citizens. This growing anxiety stems from intensified immigration enforcement, with frequent raids and deportations unsettling communities. The emotional toll is palpable—individuals live with constant uncertainty, while society grapples with the broader implications. Many people wonder whether it’s safe to leave the U.S. on vacation. We are a nation at a crossroads, wrestling with issues of identity, rights, and government overreach.

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Streaming 2:30 PM LIVE and Replaying On Demand Afterward:

DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall dives into two explosive stories that will leave you questioning everything.

First, the shocking massacre of first responders in Gaza by Israel—brave heroes gunned down in cold blood while saving lives, followed by a chilling coverup that’s been buried too long. What really happened, and why won’t the world look?

Then, a jaw-dropping tale from Detroit: a fearless lawyer targeted by BCE, caught in a web of intrigue and retaliation that screams corruption at the highest levels. Why is this advocate being silenced, and who’s pulling the strings?

Hosted by ex-CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou, who exposed torture and paid the price, and fearless cartoonist Ted Rall, no stranger to controversy, this episode rips the lid off hidden truths the powerful want kept quiet.

Will the Gaza atrocities ever see daylight? Can the Detroit lawyer fight back against BCE’s shadowy grip? Tune in to DeProgram for a rollercoaster of revelations that’ll make your blood boil and your mind race. Don’t miss this—click now to uncover the stories they don’t want you to hear!

The post DeProgram: “Israel’s Gaza Slaughter & a Detroit Lawyer’s Fight” appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.