“Any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals.” —Donald Trump Dec. 10, 2024

The 1986 American Heritage Dictionary defines fascism as:

“fascism (făsh'ĩz'am) n. A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism.”

We’re about to be there.

The power of government to both reward and punish is awesome. No other entity can legally take money away from citizens at gunpoint and hand it to others it favors. No other entity has the power to deprive people of their freedom and even their lives. No other entity can use both of those powers to regulate how business must be conducted.

Any company so willing to engage with such tainted government leadership should alarm us all

When Disney, a $248 billion dollar company, decided to give a $15 million donation to Donald Trump’s presidential library slush fund, they didn’t do so because they were worried about losing a defamation lawsuit.

To the contrary, they would have easily won the case. The judge in Trump’s New York trial came right out and said, in front of God and the whole world:

“The finding Ms. Carroll failed to prove she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the N.Y. Penal Law does not mean she failed to prove Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape’. Indeed, as the evidence at trial… makes clear, the jury found Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”

It’s also extraordinarily difficult for a public figure to sue for defamation, per the Supreme Court’s 1964 Times v Sullivan case, which requires proof of “actual malice,” a very, very high legal standard.

An article in The New York Times this past weekend added this gem of a paragraph, although ABC insists the meeting wasn’t arranged to discuss the defamation claim:

“Debra OConnell, the Disney executive who directly oversees ABC News, dined with Mr. Trump’s incoming chief of staff, Susie Wiles, in Palm Beach last Monday, according to two people briefed on their interaction. The dinner was part of a visit by several ABC News executives to Florida to meet with Mr. Trump’s transition team.”

Whether OConnell and Wiles discussed the defamation case or not is almost beside the point; the reasonable assumption is that Disney didn’t decide to pay off Trump because they were concerned about the lawsuit but, instead, because they wanted to be on the inside, rather than the outside, of the group of corporations that will make up the “friends of Trump” as he takes over the reins of government. Disney has already gotten their nose bloody by trying to stand up to Trump’s Mini-Me, Ron DeSantis; they’ve learned their lesson well.

This is, classically, how fascists work. In fascist states, corporations and wealthy individuals fall all over themselves to gain the favor of the fascist strongman leader or they lose out big.

When Putin took over Russia, he essentially said to the richest of the Russian oligarchs, “You can be with me or against me, but there is no middle ground.” Ditto for Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán (who met with Trump in Florida last week), Turkey’s dictator Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (who Trump praised this week), and history’s fascist strongmen from Tojo, Franco, Hitler, and Mussolini to more recent versions like Pinochet, el-Sisi, and Ceaușescu.

And now America. Soon to be the newest fascist state in the world.

This goes way beyond ignoring fascism’s chronicler Timothy Snyder’s warning not to “obey in advance”: The companies whose CEOs are making the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago right now are actively trying to get on the inside with Trump by nakedly supporting him.

They both fear his punishments (he’d called for ABC to lose its broadcast licenses, for example) and hope for his largess when he instructs his federal agencies to start cutting regulations and going easy on corporate mergers and tax evasion.

For over 240 years, America was administered by presidents who adhered to the idea that they should govern, as then-New York Times publisher Adolph S. Ochs wrote in 1896, “without fear or favor.”

Not only did they not direct the government to help or harm any specific companies or industries, those elected to the White House over the past century or so even put their own personal wealth into blind trusts to avoid even the appearance of using government to enrich themselves.

All of that came to a screeching halt when the most corrupt (and richest) president in American history came into office in 2017. Now, empowered by having gotten away with encouraging outright sedition (among other crimes), Trump is doubling down as he accepts million-dollar “donations” from corporate CEOs.

While it’s unlikely oligarchs who refuse to go along with Trump will begin to fall out of 14th floor windows like in Russia, Trump has already made it clear he’ll use regulatory agencies and the courts to punish them like Orbán does.

This is not the American way. It is, instead, how fascist nations that inevitably morph into dictatorships work. It’s a huge warning signal to us and the world.

It also sets a terrible example for other republics around the world that aspire to our (former) ideals of democracy and fair play in business and government. And it sets our country up to become a sleazy tinpot dictatorship, descending to the ethics and credibility standards of Third World caricatures.

History is taking careful note of those CEOs who are energetically brown-nosing Trump, just as it did with Thyssen and Krupp, who were prosecuted for war crimes in the 1940s.

And to compound this evil, these businesses are adding to the power that Trump is rapidly accumulating as, one after another, they, politicians of both parties, and people across the media bow their heads and bend their knees.

Any company so willing to engage with such tainted government leadership should alarm us all: Going forward, the honesty, reliability, and safety of their products may well be corrupted by their praetorian relationship with Trump’s regulators, rather than responding to the competitive forces of the actual marketplace.

Which is also why, going forward, we’d all do best to avoid their programs, products, and services.

Gaza, Haiti, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Russia, Syria, Ukraine, and Venezuela: President-elect Donald Trump will face no shortage of foreign-policy challenges when he assumes office in January. None, however, comes close to China in scope, scale, or complexity. No other country has the capacity to resist his predictable antagonism with the same degree of strength and tenacity, and none arouses more hostility and outrage among MAGA Republicans.

In short, China is guaranteed to put President Trump in a difficult bind the second time around: He can either choose to cut deals with Beijing and risk being branded an appeaser by the China hawks in his party, or he can punish and further encircle Beijing, risking a potentially violent clash and possibly even nuclear escalation. How he chooses to resolve this quandary will surely prove the most important foreign test of his second term in office.

Make no mistake: China truly is considered The Big One by those in Trump’s entourage responsible for devising foreign policy. While they imagine many international challenges to their “America First” strategy, only China, they believe, poses a true threat to the continued global dominance of this country.

Trump will enter office in January with a toolkit of punitive measures for fighting China ready to roll along with strong support among his appointees for making them the law of the land.

“I feel strongly that the Chinese Communist Party has entered into a Cold War with the United States and is explicit in its aim to replace the liberal, Western-led world order that has been in place since World War II,” Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.), Trump’s choice as national security adviser, declared at a 2023 event hosted by the Atlantic Council. “We’re in a global arms race with an adversary that, unlike any in American history, has the economic and the military capability to truly supplant and replace us.”

As Waltz and others around Trump see it, China poses a multi-dimensional threat to this country’s global supremacy. In the military domain, by building up its air force and navy, installing military bases on reclaimed islands in the South China Sea, and challenging Taiwan through increasingly aggressive air and naval maneuvers, it is challenging continued American dominance of the Western Pacific. Diplomatically, it’s now bolstering or repairing ties with key U.S. allies, including India, Indonesia, Japan, and the members of NATO. Meanwhile, it’s already close to replicating this country’s most advanced technologies, especially its ability to produce advanced microchips. And despite Washington’s efforts to diminish a U.S. reliance on vital Chinese goods, including critical minerals and pharmaceuticals, it remains a primary supplier of just such products to this country.

Fight or Strike Bargains?

For many in the Trumpian inner circle, the only correct, patriotic response to the China challenge is to fight back hard. Both Rep. Waltz, Trump’s pick as national security adviser, and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), his choice as secretary of state, have sponsored or supported legislation to curb what they view as “malign” Chinese endeavors in the United States and abroad.

Waltz, for example, introduced the American Critical Mineral Exploration and Innovation Act of 2020, which was intended, as he explained, “to reduce America’s dependence on foreign sources of critical minerals and bring the U.S. supply chain from China back to America.” Sen. Rubio has been equally combative in the legislative arena. In 2021, he authored the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which banned goods produced in forced labor encampments in Xinjiang Province from entering the United States. He also sponsored several pieces of legislation aimed at curbing Chinese access to U.S. technology. Although these, as well as similar measures introduced by Waltz, haven’t always obtained the necessary congressional approval, they have sometimes been successfully bundled into other legislation.

In short, Trump will enter office in January with a toolkit of punitive measures for fighting China ready to roll along with strong support among his appointees for making them the law of the land. But of course, we’re talking about Donald Trump, so nothing is a given. Some analysts believe that his penchant for dealmaking and his professed admiration for Chinese strongman President Xi Jinping may lead him to pursue a far more transactional approach, increasing economic and military pressure on Beijing to produce concessions on, for example, curbing the export of fentanyl precursors to Mexico, but when he gets what he wants letting them lapse. Howard Lutnick, the billionaire investor from Cantor Fitzgerald whom he chose as Commerce secretary, claims that Trump actually “wants to make a deal with China,” and will use the imposition of tariffs selectively as a bargaining tool to do so.

What such a deal might look like is anyone’s guess, but it’s hard to see how Trump could win significant concessions from Beijing without abandoning some of the punitive measures advocated by the China hawks in his entourage. Count on one thing: This complicated and confusing dynamic will play out in each of the major problem areas in U.S.-China relations, forcing Trump to make critical choices between his transactional instincts and the harsh ideological bent of his advisers.

Trump, China, and Taiwan

Of all the China-related issues in his second term in office, none is likely to prove more challenging or consequential than the future status of the island of Taiwan. At issue are Taiwan’s gradual moves toward full independence and the risk that China will invade the island to prevent such an outcome, possibly triggering U.S. military intervention as well. Of all the potential crises facing Trump, this is the one that could most easily lead to a great-power conflict with nuclear undertones.

When Washington granted diplomatic recognition to China in 1979, it “acknowledged” that Taiwan and the mainland were both part of “one China” and that the two parts could eventually choose to reunite. The U.S. also agreed to cease diplomatic relations with Taiwan and terminate its military presence there. However, under the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, Washington was also empowered to cooperate with a quasi-governmental Taiwanese diplomatic agency, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States, and provide Taiwan with the weapons needed for its defense. Moreover, in what came to be known as “strategic ambiguity,” U.S. officials insisted that any effort by China to alter Taiwan’s status by force would constitute “a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area” and would be viewed as a matter “of grave concern to the United States,” although not necessarily one requiring a military response.

If, however, he chooses to act “crazy” by embracing “strategic clarity” and stepping up military pressure on China, he would likely receive accolades from many of his supporters, while provoking a (potentially nuclear) war with China.

For decades, one president after another reaffirmed the “one China” policy while also providing Taiwan with increasingly powerful weaponry. For their part, Chinese officials repeatedly declared that Taiwan was a renegade province that should be reunited with the mainland, preferably by peaceful means. The Taiwanese, however, have never expressed a desire for reunification and instead have moved steadily toward a declaration of independence, which Beijing has insisted would justify armed intervention.

As such threats became more frequent and menacing, leaders in Washington continued to debate the validity of “strategic ambiguity,” with some insisting it should be replaced by a policy of “strategic clarity” involving an ironclad commitment to assist Taiwan should it be invaded by China. President Joe Biden seemed to embrace this view, repeatedly affirming that the U.S. was obligated to defend Taiwan under such circumstances. However, each time he said so, his aides walked back his words, insisting the U.S. was under no legal obligation to do so.

The Biden administration also boosted its military support for the island while increasing American air and naval patrols in the area, which only heightened the possibility of a future U.S. intervention should China invade. Some of these moves, including expedited arms transfers to Taiwan, were adopted in response to prodding from China hawks in Congress. All, however, fit with an overarching administration strategy of encircling China with a constellation of American military installations and U.S.-armed allies and partners.

From Beijing’s perspective, then, Washington is already putting extreme military and geopolitical pressure on China. The question is: Will the Trump administration increase or decrease those pressures, especially when it comes to Taiwan?

That Trump will approve increased arms sales to and military cooperation with Taiwan essentially goes without saying (as much, at least, as anything involving him does). The Chinese have experienced upticks in U.S. aid to Taiwan before and can probably live through another round of the same. But that leaves far more volatile issues up for grabs: Will he embrace “strategic clarity,” guaranteeing Washington’s automatic intervention should China invade Taiwan, and will he approve a substantial expansion of the American military presence in the region? Both moves have been advocated by some of the China hawks in Trump’s entourage, and both are certain to provoke fierce, hard-to-predict responses from Beijing.

Many of Trump’s closest advisers have, in fact, insisted on “strategic clarity” and increased military cooperation with Taiwan. Michael Waltz, for example, has asserted that the U.S. must “be clear we’ll defend Taiwan as a deterrent measure.” He has also called for an increased military presence in the Western Pacific. Similarly, last June, Robert C. O’Brien, Trump’s national security adviser from 2019 to 2021, wrote that the U.S. “should make clear” its “commitment” to “help defend” Taiwan, while expanding military cooperation with the island.

Trump himself has made no such commitments, suggesting instead a more ambivalent stance. In his typical fashion, in fact, he’s called on Taiwan to spend more on its own defense and expressed anger at the concentration of advanced chip-making on the island, claiming that the Taiwanese “did take about 100% of our chip business.” But he’s also warned of harsh economic measures were China to impose a blockade of the island, telling the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal, “I would say [to President Xi]: if you go into Taiwan, I’m sorry to do this, I’m going to tax you at 150% to 200%.” He wouldn’t need to threaten the use of force to prevent a blockade, he added, because President Xi “respects me and he knows I’m [expletive] crazy.”

Such comments reveal the bind Trump will inevitably find himself in when it comes to Taiwan this time around. He could, of course, try to persuade Beijing to throttle back its military pressure on the island in return for a reduction in U.S. tariffs—a move that would reduce the risk of war in the Pacific but leave China in a stronger economic position and disappoint many of his top advisers. If, however, he chooses to act “crazy” by embracing “strategic clarity” and stepping up military pressure on China, he would likely receive accolades from many of his supporters, while provoking a (potentially nuclear) war with China.

Trade War or Economic Coexistence?

The question of tariffs represents another way in which Trump will face a crucial choice between punitive action and transactional options in his second term—or, to be more precise, in deciding how severe to make those tariffs and other economic hardships he will try to impose on China.

In January 2018, the first Trump administration imposed tariffs of 30% on imported solar panels and 20%-50% on imported washing machines, many sourced from China. Two months later, the administration added tariffs on imported steel (25%) and aluminum (10%), again aimed above all at China. And despite his many criticisms of Trump’s foreign and economic policies, President Biden chose to retain those tariffs, even adding new ones, notably on electric cars and other high-tech products. The Biden administration has also banned the export of advanced computer chips and chip-making technology to China in a bid to slow that country’s technological progress.

Accordingly, when Trump reassumes office on January 20, China will already be under stringent economic pressures from Washington. But he and his associates insist that those won’t be faintly enough to constrain China’s rise. The president-elect has said that, on day one of his new term, he will impose a 10% tariff on all Chinese imports and follow that with other harsh measures. Among such moves, the Trump team has announced plans to raise tariffs on Chinese imports to 60%, revoke China’s Permanent Normal Trade Relations (also known as “most favored nation”) status, and ban the transshipment of Chinese imports through third countries.

Most of Trump’s advisers have espoused such measures strongly. “Trump Is Right: We Should Raise Tariffs on China,” Marco Rubio wrote last May. “China’s anticompetitive tactics,” he argued, “give Chinese companies an unfair cost advantage over American companies… Tariffs that respond to these tactics prevent or reverse offshoring, preserving America’s economic might and promoting domestic investment.”

But Trump will also face possible pushback from other advisers who are warning of severe economic perturbations if such measures were to be enacted. China, they suggest, has tools of its own to use in any trade war with the U.S., including tariffs on American imports and restrictions on American firms doing business in China, including Elon Musk’s Tesla, which produces half of its cars there. For these and other reasons, the U.S.-China Business Council has warned that additional tariffs and other trade restrictions could prove disastrous, inviting “retaliatory measures from China, causing additional U.S. jobs and output losses.”

As in the case of Taiwan, Trump will face some genuinely daunting decisions when it comes to economic relations with China. If, in fact, he follows the advice of the ideologues in his circle and pursues a strategy of maximum pressure on Beijing, specifically designed to hobble China’s growth and curb its geopolitical ambitions, he could precipitate nothing short of a global economic meltdown that would negatively affect the lives of so many of his supporters, while significantly diminishing America’s own geopolitical clout. He might therefore follow the inclinations of certain of his key economic advisers like transition leader Howard Lutnick, who favor a more pragmatic, businesslike relationship with China. How Trump chooses to address this issue will likely determine whether the future involves increasing economic tumult and uncertainty or relative stability. And it’s always important to remember that a decision to play hardball with China on the economic front could also increase the risk of a military confrontation leading to full-scale war, even to World War III.

And while Taiwan and trade are undoubtedly the most obvious and challenging issues Trump will face in managing (mismanaging?) U.S.-China relations in the years ahead, they are by no means the only ones. He will also have to decide how to deal with increasing Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea; continued Chinese economic and military-technological support for Russia in its war against Ukraine; and growing Chinese investments in Africa, Latin America, and elsewhere.

In these, and other aspects of the U.S.-China rivalry, Trump will be pulled toward both increased militancy and combativeness and a more pragmatic, transactional approach. During the campaign, he backed each approach, sometimes in the very same verbal outburst. Once in power, however, he will have to choose between them—and his decisions will have a profound impact on this country, China, and everyone living on this planet.

For all that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump trashed renewable energy on the stump, much of his ranting may very well become a murmur when he returns to the Oval Office.

Obscured by his “green new scam” rhetoric is a mad scramble by his supporters in Congress to reap the economic benefits of green industry for their states and districts. The increasing investments, precisely in the places that voted for him, make President-elect Trump’s pledge to “terminate” many green programs political wolf talk. That is because the renewable energy industry is growing jobs more than twice as fast as the overall economy.

This acknowledgement from conservative lawmakers that clean energy and electric vehicles are good business makes it reasonable to bet that the investments they’ve secured for their districts will survive the president-elect’s rhetoric of a “green new scam.”

A lasting irony of the outgoing Biden administration will be how no Republican in Congress voted for the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Yet 85% of the announced clean energy projects and 68% of the jobs triggered by the IRA, such as those related to electric vehicles, wind power, solar power, and battery storage, have gone to Republican-held congressional districts, according to E2, a nonpartisan group that monitors the clean energy industry.

The representatives of those districts see no apparent contradiction in touting the attractiveness of their areas for clean energy investments, while publicly supporting the president-elect’s rhetoric and proposals to end clean energy programs.

Love-Hate Relationships Abound

For instance, Texas Congressmember Jodey Arrington, who represents a House district that includes Lubbock and Abilene, called the IRA a “failed liberal spending spree that crippled our economy and left working American families worse off.” The Washington Post reported in October that Arrington’s district is the nation’s fifth-highest recipient of investments for clean energy and manufacturing, receiving nearly $5 billion.

Then there is Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn: a climate skeptic who says infrastructure projects that fight climate change are a “gateway to socialism.” She told the Republican National Convention this summer that the “green new scam” was “destroying small businesses.”

Huh? Relative to the size of the state’s economy (as measured by gross domestic product), Tennessee ranks first in the nation in clean technology manufacturing investment from the IRA, according to the Clean Investment Monitor, maintained by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research and the Rhodium Group.

Senator Blackburn seems well aware of it. Even before the IRA, when vehicle maker Ford cut the ribbon on a $5.6 billion electric battery plant in her state in 2021, she boasted how Tennessee is “leading the way for innovation” with a “historic project” that would directly create 5,800 jobs and create “countless opportunities in supporting industries.”

The champion of hypocrisy is Representative Richard Hudson, congressman for North Carolina’s Ninth District, nestled in the center of the state. In voting against the IRA, he blasted clean energy programs as “woke climate and social programs that won’t work.”

Hudson was wide awake for the money coming to his district to expand a massive Toyota battery plant for electric vehicles and hybrids. According to E2, Hudson’s district is top in the nation both for clean energy investment and for clean energy job growth triggered by the IRA. The Toyota plant alone promises more than 5,000 jobs. Estimates of investment in his district range from nearly $10 billion to nearly $13 billion.

Selective Cuts Desired

If the next Trump administration is serious about pulling the plug on clean energy, that will add up to a lot of jobs and investments to undo in states and districts where the president-elect handily won the election. North Carolina Representative Hudson hinted he agrees. When CNN asked him in June if he would vote to repeal the IRA if the Republicans won control of the federal government in the election—which they did—he responded, “Rather than try to repeal one big bill with another big bill, we ought to look at the individual policies.”

Another sign that Republicans ultimately won’t scrap all the benefits of the Inflation Reduction Act came in an August letter by 18 Republicans to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.). The lawmakers asked Johnson to preserve clean energy tax credits in any effort to repeal or reform the IRA. The letter acknowledged that energy tax credits “have spurred innovation, incentivized investment, and created good jobs in many parts of the country—including many districts represented by members of our conference.”

The letter warned that repealing energy tax credits, especially those for projects that have already broken ground “would undermine private investments and stop development that is already ongoing.”

This acknowledgement from conservative lawmakers that clean energy and electric vehicles are good business makes it reasonable to bet that the investments they’ve secured for their districts will survive the president-elect’s rhetoric of a “green new scam.”

Risks to Offshore Wind Loom

Much less clear is the near-term future for offshore wind.

While campaigning, President-elect Trump promised to sign an executive order on the first day of his return to bring a halt to the offshore wind industry. Never mind that onshore wind is booming in red states in the windy, rural middle of the United States, providing 130,000 jobs. The fastest growing occupation in the nation is wind turbine service technician, paying an average of nearly $62,000 a year according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

According to the Energy Information Agency, the top four states for electricity generation from wind in 2023 were the red states of Texas, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Kansas.

In even more serious doubt is a just transition, where communities that suffer the most from fossil fuel production and pollution can get jobs, lower energy costs, and cleaner air from a move to renewables.

The offshore wind industry, a staple of energy generation in northern Europe, is still in its infancy in the United States. It remains highly vulnerable to price shocks, supply-chain issues, local opposition to siting, and being a political dartboard. The industry is currently centered in more liberal Northeastern states thanks to ideal water depths off the Atlantic coastline and forward-looking governors from Massachusetts to Virginia who have been competing the last two decades for ports and projects.

The U.S. has the technical capacity to harness three times more electricity from offshore wind than it currently uses today, with the Atlantic Ocean off the Northeast coast possessing some of the strongest wind speeds in the country.

Surprisingly, despite its “Drill, Baby, Drill” mantra for oil, the first Trump administration promoted offshore wind when it found out how much money the leases could put into federal coffers. It conducted a then-record auction for waters off Massachusetts to site off-shore wind projects. Ports and manufacturing facilities as far south as Louisiana, home state of House Speaker Mike Johnson, helped launch the nation’s first offshore wind farm in Rhode Island.

But that has not stopped oil and gas companies from continuing to conduct disinformation campaigns to stir up opposition to offshore wind. It is clear they have a lot to lose from a full-blown offshore wind industry in the Northeast. For example, gas accounts for at least half of the electricity generation in New England and New Jersey. New York City generates between 85% and 90% of its electricity from fossil fuels. The Northeast Gas Association boasts that about half the entire region gets its electricity from gas.

On the campaign trail, President-elect Trump elected to play off that disinformation. He attacked offshore wind with gale force lies about its impact on whales and the environment, claims which have zero science behind them as NOAA and others explain.

The unending verbal assault makes it reasonable to worry that under this second administration President-elect Trump may truly try to score political points by directing the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to slow permitting of new projects and telling the Justice Department to side with opponents of incomplete projects. Many experts say that just the slowing of the permitting process risks making construction more expensive and may scare off investors.

Then There’s the Issue of Equity

In even more serious doubt is a just transition, where communities that suffer the most from fossil fuel production and pollution can get jobs, lower energy costs, and cleaner air from a move to renewables.

Almost by definition, the growth of clean energy industries in more sparsely populated, majority white, Republican-held districts may exacerbate the existing structural racism in the energy sector’s workforce, which has been a driver of the Biden administration’s goal of directing 40% of federal climate and clean energy investments to disadvantaged communities.

For instance, Black people are 13% of the nation’s workforce and account for only 8% of the solar and wind workforce, according to the Department of Energy. The Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC) says the percentage of Black solar workers has not budged since 2022. Yet, the second-fastest growing job in the nation, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, are solar panel installers, making on average $48,000 a year.

The percentage of people of color in leadership positions in the renewable energy supply chain is currently infinitesimally small. A 2022 report by the American Council on Renewable Energy found that of 658 manufacturers involved in utility-scale wind, solar, and battery storage, 1.8% were owned by people of color or women. And while there is one bright spot in diversity, with 33% of new clean energy jobs last year being filled by Latinos, 88% of solar industry executives are white and 80% are male, according to the IREC.

Only a quarter of solar firms in the IREC’s annual National Solar Jobs Census reported that they had strategies to hire more people of color or women.

With the return of President-elect Trump, accompanied now by Vice President-elect JD Vance, it will take maverick clean energy companies to improve diversity. Just this past June, Vance co-introduced (along with Senator Blackburn) a bill in the Senate to eliminate all federal diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and funding for any entities that receive federal funding. Representatives Arrington and Hudson co-sponsored the measure in the House. Cynically twisting the purpose of DEI to ensure fair opportunities for people from historically excluded groups, Vice President-elect Vance claims DEI “breeds hatred and racial division.”

President-elect Trump himself has already begun to nominate members of his cabinet with direct ties to Project 2025, the de facto Republican Party platform that also calls for the elimination of DEI throughout government. Project 2025 explicitly calls for the end of DEI in the Energy Department and eliminating the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights in the Environmental Protection Agency.

The pall placed over the nation is already being felt even before Inauguration Day, as Walmart recently announced it was rolling back DEI policies or dismantling DEI teams, joining companies like Ford, Boeing, Toyota, Lowe’s, Harley Davidson, Molson Coors, John Deere, and Tractor Supply. That follows the scores of universities that are eliminating DEI in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2023 striking down of affirmative action. It was a ruling virtually assured by President Trump’s packing of the court in his first term.

In a blog last year on this flood of renewable money flowing into Republican districts from a Democratic-inspired law, I wrote that the nation would be so much stronger in the fight against climate change and the effort to clean up communities and boost the economy if conservatives would “drop the two-faced charade of climate denial while diving unabashedly into the pot of federal renewable incentives and tax breaks.” Now that the forces of climate denial have regained the White House and control of both chambers of Congress, they don’t even need two faces. They can just be bald-faced aggrandizers.

The renewable energy industry will indeed have a strong expansion in the U.S. It’s just that it will be heavily driven by a real green scam—an expansion being led by politicians who harness and hoard solar power, wind power, and electric vehicles for their own constituents, but deny it for everyone else.

This month, the FTC opened an investigation into tech giant Microsoft, which some have called Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan’s “last swing” at Big Tech before her term concludes. But if you think Khan is slowing down, think again. Pencils-down orders be damned, Khan is sprinting through the tape, continuing her fearless crusade to rein in Silicon Valley’s excesses.

But who says her term is over? There are no laws requiring an agency Chair to resign from her post—it’s tradition. While her term expired this fall, she can remain on the Commission until her replacement is confirmed. After President-elect Trump’s norm-shattering run for president, followed by an array of questionable cabinet appointments, why are Democrats so obsessed with tradition? During this transition, it feels like we’re playing checkers when we should be playing chess. Here’s where we start.

We need a warrior like her to continue this fight, and we hope she does.

Given the uncertainty about what’s ahead, we strongly encourage FTC Chair Lina Khan to remain on the Commission. By staying, she could prevent Republicans from gaining a majority for months and help ensure she remains a bulwark against any rollbacks to the FTC’s tough-on Big Tech approach. And if you listen to the rhetoric from Republicans and the president-elect himself, they would be lucky to have her.

Most consider it wildly out of the realm of possibility. They’ll say that the president-elect has already named FTC Commissioner Andrew Ferguson as Chair and nominated Mark Meador to fill Khan’s seat. Both have expressed concerns about market power, but will they be as aggressive?

They’ll point to Trump confidant and billionaire Elon Musk’s tweet that Khan “will be fired soon.” But that’s the beauty of an independent agency. Khan can’t be fired or forced to resign without cause. Does that matter to the incoming president-elect? Probably not, but the courts could be an important backstop. In the meantime, she can continue to serve until Mr. Meador is confirmed.

My question to the American public is this: why change the driver in the middle of the proverbial antitrust highway? During Khan’s tenure, the FTC has faced down tech giants like Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft, banned almost all noncompetes, sued to prevent grocery heavyweight Kroger from acquiring Albertsons, and stopped Nvidia from attempting a bloated merger. Under her leadership, the FTC has investigated and sued more than three dozen merger proposals and racked up a long list of accomplishments.

This isn’t to suggest that Khan’s achievements are only popular on one side of the aisle.

Vice President-elect JD Vance has not been shy about his approval of Khan’s leadership, previously saying, “I look at Lina Khan as one of the few people in the Biden administration that I think is doing a pretty good job.” While pro-business conservatives have accused her of “overstepping,” those Republicans are out of touch with the voters who put the president-elect back in power. Even some liberals have called her a “dope.” But as the saying goes, you know you’re making an impact when you’re challenging the status quo and ruffling feathers on both sides of the aisle.

There’s a real threat that the new administration’s anti-Big Tech rhetoric from the campaign trail will fizzle out, and CEOs will work quickly to rebuild bridges with the president-elect. It’s rare for a new administration to alter the course of ongoing antitrust cases significantly. However, what could change significantly are the remedies the government seeks for companies found guilty. If you agree that the only remedy for companies like Apple and Google is to be broken up, we need Lina Khan to stay.

She deserves to finish the job she started. Her work has benefited consumers, competition, and the country at large. We need a warrior like her to continue this fight, and we hope she does.

Chair Khan, your move.

The overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad by Islamist rebels in Syria has outside factions scrambling for influence with the new rulers, HTS, who are former members of Al Qaeda and ISIS. The United States is among the suitors, offering to work with the Islamists. But these love affairs tend to have an expiration date.q

The post Let’s Go Steady Until I Kill You first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The post Let’s Go Steady Until I Kill You appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Earlier this year President Biden signed a rare law that passed Congress with overwhelming bipartisan approval: by January 19th, TikTok must be sold to an American company or shut down its American operations. Democrats and Republicans alike were concerned that the Chinese-owned company might be pressured by the Chinese government to turn over Americans’ private user data. However, there’s no evidence that this has ever occurred. Now ByteDance, TikTok’s parent, is asking the United States Supreme Court for a reprieve. What’s more important, the First Amendment or a theoretical threat to national security?

The TMI Show’s Ted Rall discusses the issue with Manila Chan, who is back on the air after an illness.

The post TMI Show Ep 40: “Tick, Tock, Time Running Out for TikTok” first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The post TMI Show Ep 40: “Tick, Tock, Time Running Out for TikTok” appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

ABC shouldn’t have agreed to settle the defamation case Trump brought against it — handing him $15 million for his presidential “library” (whatever monument that turns out to be) and another million for his legal fees, along with an apology.

It shouldn’t have, first, because the standard for defamation of a public figure requires that a plaintiff prove that the defendant acted with “actual malice” — that is, knew their statement was false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth.

But when on March 10, ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos asserted that Trump had been found civilly liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll, there’s zero evidence that Stephanopoulos knew it to be false or was acting with reckless disregard for the truth.

At Trump’s civil trial for defaming Carroll, she testified that he pushed her against a dressing room wall, forced his mouth onto hers, yanked down her tights, and shoved his hand and then his penis inside her while she struggled against him. She said she finally kneed him off her and fled.

A very big corporation that worries about all the ways the upcoming Trump administration might hurt its bottom line.

In upholding the civil judgment for Carroll and against Trump, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote that the unanimous jury verdict was almost entirely in favor of Carroll, except that the jury concluded she had failed to prove that Trump raped her “within the narrow, technical meaning of a particular section of the New York Penal Law,” which requires vaginal penetration by a penis.

The judge said that jury verdict did not mean that Carroll “failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’ Indeed ... the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”

After a federal judge says that the jury under his purview found that Trump “exactly” raped her, as rape is commonly understood, isn’t it understandable that Stephanopoulos concluded that Trump had been found civilly liable for raping her?

By caving into Trump with this $15 million settlement, ABC didn’t just signal that Trump was correct and Stephanopoulos wrong about whether Trump had in fact raped Carroll.

ABC also signaled that Trump might be correct about a lot of other things he has accused ABC and the rest of the mainstream media of reporting falsely about him — that he lied when he said the 2020 election was stolen from him, for example, or that he lied when he claimed he did not provoke the rioters on January 6, 2021, or when he characterized it as a “peaceful” protest, or said President Biden was behind his prosecutions for trying to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election and making off with classified documents.

ABC’s cave to Trump has even larger implications.

Trump has already used legal threats to intimidate the media and anyone brazen enough to criticize or question him — saying he’ll prosecute journalists and their sources, eliminate funding for public radio and television, subpoena news organizations, revoke networks’ broadcast licenses, and use libel lawsuits.

In the wake of ABC’s surrender, Trump is already expanding his threats of legal action against the news media, stating he wants to “straighten out the press.”

On Monday, Trump said that “today or tomorrow” he would sue the Des-Moines Register newspaper over its final poll of Iowa voters that showed him losing the November election to Vice President Kamala Harris, because he believed the poll “was fraud and it was election interference.”

The Register’s final poll before Election Day, conducted by legendary pollster J. Ann Selzer, showed Harris leading Trump 47-44 percent among likely voters in the state. The poll was a bombshell that suggested Harris might pull an upset in a state Trump won in 2016 and 2020.

Trump went on to win the state by a 13-point margin.

“She’s a very good pollster,” Trump said of Selzer. “She knows what she was doing.”

Selzer said she was “mystified” by allegations she was politically motivated or had engaged in election interference. “To suggest without a single shred of evidence that I was in cahoots with somebody, that I was being paid by somebody, it’s hard to pay too much attention to it except that they are accusing me of a crime.”

Trump’s comments about the Register were in response to a reporter’s question about whether Trump planned to file more lawsuits following the settlement with ABC, including against social media influencers and other independent figures. Trump responded, “I think you have to do it because they’re very dishonest. We need a great media. We need a fair media.”

Some news organizations are already warning their reporters to prepare: Axios recently told its staff to expect an increased number of lawsuits from the Trump administration, Semafor reported.

At one point, Trump suggested that the U.S. government should be taking up these lawsuits against the news media. “I feel I have to do this. I shouldn’t really be the one to do it. It should have been the Justice Department or somebody else. But I have to do it. It costs a lot of money to do it, but we have to straighten out the press.”

So, why didn’t ABC stand by Stephanopoulos and stand up to Trump?

Media lawyers say it’s rare to see a settlement at this stage of a legal dispute.

After Trump filed the lawsuit accusing Stephanopoulos of “actual malice,” ABC filed a motion to dismiss the case, claiming Trump could not prove actual malice. In July, the judge assigned to the case rejected ABC’s motion and allowed the case to move forward. This subjected the network to the pretrial discovery process, meaning that Stephanopoulos would have his emails and other work materials scrutinized.

The curious thing here is that when media defendants are unsuccessful at the dismissal stage of a trial, they typically move on to preparing for summary judgment and challenge the legal sufficiency of a plaintiff’s claim. Four media lawyers I checked with told me they didn’t understand why ABC would settle before trying for summary judgment, especially when it had such a strong case.

Conservative radio host Erick Erickson, who used to practice law, says ABC and Stephanopoulos wanted to avoid discovery. The “$15 million settlement is not the cost of doing business. It is avoiding discovery.”

I don’t think it’s a cover-up. I know George Stephanopoulos well (we worked together in the Clinton administration), and I have utter confidence in his integrity.

But I don’t have nearly as much confidence in the Walt Disney Company — which, along with its ownership of ABC, owns the Disney Channel, ESPN Wide World of Sports, Freeform, FX, Hulu, Hotstar, and National Geographic. It also owns the properties Disneyland Resort, Walt Disney World Resort, and Disneyland Paris. It owns the studios Pixar Animation, Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm, and 20th Century Studios. It owns the brands Star Wars, The Muppets, Disney Princesses, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Winnie the Pooh. It owns a publishing company, a cruise line, a venture capital firm, and a host of international media networks.

In other words: A very big corporation with its hands in all sorts of places. A very big corporation that worries about all the ways the upcoming Trump administration might hurt its bottom line.

No large American corporation wants to be actively litigating against a sitting president, especially one as vindictive as Trump. A $15 million settlement is chickenfeed compared to the myriad ways Trump could penalize Disney, a $205.25 billion corporation.

We are beginning to see this all over the American political-economic system — giant corporations and hugely wealthy people going out of their way to appease King Trump even in advance of his coronation. They are paying him off to maintain or enlarge their profits.

Which is why Disney’s control over ABC — like Jeff Bezos’s control over The Washington Post, Elon Musk’s control over what we used to call Twitter, and Patrick Soon-Shiong’s control over the Los Angeles Times — and every other wealthy individual’s or big corporation’s control over the news we get, poses such a challenge to American democracy in the age of Trump.

Late Monday afternoon Politico, and then The New York Times, reported that the Department of Energy is ready to release the report of it’s nearly year-long study on LNG exports—a study mandated by a large-scale campaign (that very much included this newsletter) which persuaded U.S. President Joe Biden to halt new permits for new terminals along the Gulf of Mexico.

The report, and the equally important statement that came with it, won’t necessarily bind anything—it may complicate somewhat the Trump administration’s plans to approve new export terminals, but probably not fatally. But it does something almost as important. Finally a Democratic administration has been straightforward and honest about natural gas. That may actually matter, both in the short and long-term.

The continued growth of gas exports was “neither sustainable nor advisable,” Granholm said.

The background here is that, ever since the onset of fracking in the ‘oughts, Democrats have embraced the surge in natural gas. The GOP was still in love with coal, but climate change concerns were making that uncomfortable for anyone this side of Joe Manchin (D-Flammable Black Rocks). Along came the sudden surge in natural gas, which allowed the Obama administration both a path toward reviving the post-financial-crisis economy, and a way to cut carbon emissions. If you doubt me, read almost any of former President Barack Obama’s State of the Union addresses, which each contain a paragraph-long paean to the fracking boom.

In 2013, for instance, he enthused:

We produce more natural gas than ever before—and nearly everyone’s energy bill is lower because of it. And over the last four years, our emissions of the dangerous carbon pollution that threatens our planet have actually fallen…

The natural gas boom has led to cleaner power and greater energy independence. We need to encourage that. And that’s why my administration will keep cutting red tape and speeding up new oil and gas permits.

The shift from coal to gas-fired power plants, which was basically the sum of Obama’s climate policy, dropped carbon emissions, something he (and the fossil fuel industry) boasted about endlessly. But the problem was physics: As Cornell professor Bob Howarth started noisily pointing out, carbon dioxide isn’t the only greenhouse gas. CH4, or methane, traps heat even more effectively, and Howarth and others insisted it was escaping into the atmosphere from fracking fields and pipelines in large enough quantity to cancel out the progress on carbon.

They won the scientific battle—study after study has now demonstrated that indeed leak rates are very high. But the political struggle was much harder: No one wanted to give up the idea that there was a pain-free way out of the climate dilemma.

There was so much natural gas in the Permian Basin that America couldn’t soak it up, and in the Trump years we started to export it—that quickly grew to the point where America was the largest source of gas in the world. Both the Biden and Trump administrations approved one export terminal after another, over the outcry of local residents along the Louisiana and Texas coasts who had to deal with these monstrosities. It finally reached the point where environmentalists had to make a stand, and that’s what happened in the fall of 2023—after another Howarth study, this one demonstrating that so much methane leaked from the giant LNG carriers that it was worse than exporting coal.

Hence the pause, and hence the angry outcry from the oil industry (which worked harder than ever to elect a Republican in November), and hence today’s report. The language is truly strong: Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, in her letter that accompanies the report, stresses that it would be bad news for American consumers who still depend on gas (supply and demand being what it is). But the more important part is what she says about natural gas and climate. According to the Times, she says that any few facilities should face “rigorous question”

“especially in a world that needs to quickly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” Under a scenario in which more than the current level of gas exports was approved, the report finds that the additional emissions would be 1.5 gigatons per year by 2050. That’s about a quarter of annual emissions generated by the United States, the world’s second-biggest polluter.

The fossil fuel industry always insists that LNG exports will replace coal, but crucially Granholm and the report made clear that’s not true.

She noted that the study found increased LNG exports would displace more wind, solar, and other renewable energy than coal. The study modeled five scenarios, and in every one, global greenhouse gases were projected to rise, even when researchers assumed aggressive use of technologies to capture and store carbon emissions.

This, in turn, sends a signal to Malaysia and Vietnam and the other Asian countries that would be the main recipients of gas from new terminals. I am guardedly hopeful that the year’s delay—which allowed solar and windpower to drop in price and gain in momentum—may be enough to convince those nations that they don’t want to sign up for 40 years of dependency on imported gas. I sure hope so, in part because of the heroes that led this fight—people like Roishetta Ozane who are defending not just the whole planet but their particular part of it.

The continued growth of gas exports was “neither sustainable nor advisable,” Granholm said. That’s the closest that prominent American politicians have come to telling the truth about the most important component of the climate crisis. If Vice President Kamala Harris had won the election, this might have meant a real sea change. In our current reality it’s at least honest, and honesty is a lot better than its opposite.

COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan has come and gone, leaving behind a sense of cautious reflection rather than the transformative shift many had hoped for. While the summit certainly brought some progress, it has left us with the bittersweet feeling that the climate crisis, with its urgent and pervasive impacts, still seems to be an issue addressed by small steps rather than bold, immediate action. In this sense, COP29 could be seen as both a missed opportunity and a call to rethink our approach to climate change.

A key discussion centered on mobilizing $300 billion annually by 2035 for climate mitigation efforts in vulnerable countries. While this figure might seem substantial, experts argue that at least $1.3 trillion is needed to address the crisis effectively. Even more concerning, however, is the lack of clarity about the sources of this funding; whether public or private, and how it will be allocated. While the commitments made are modest, they underscore a greater issue: the need for a radical shift in how climate finance is understood and structured.

Despite reservations, COP29 provided space for relevant debates about how to create a more inclusive and just financial system. The mobilisation of resources for the Global South is undoubtedly pressing, and the conversation is really just getting started. What is increasingly clear is that we must rethink the economic structures we have inherited, which often fail to address the systemic inequalities that underpin the climate crisis. Financial solutions must be holistic, incorporating the needs of vulnerable populations and the environment in ways that go beyond traditional market-driven approaches.

The environmental crisis cannot be solved by perpetuating existing power dynamics but requires finding solutions rooted in equity, justice, and a deep respect for the interconnectedness of all life.

Meanwhile, at the G20 summit, which ran in parallel to COP29, discussions on Universal Basic Income (UBI) for countries most affected by climate change gained traction. Countries in Latin America, including Brazil and Colombia, championed this idea, seeing it as a preventive measure against the growing polycrisis. UBI could offer a crucial safety net for populations already feeling the severe impacts of climate disruption. Despite its growing relevance and the goals set for COP30, UBI was sidelined at COP29, with market-based solutions taking center stage—solutions that largely overlook the root causes of the climate emergency.

The insistence on market-driven solutions, such as carbon credits, remains a central feature of international climate discussions. These mechanisms, which allow wealthy countries and corporations to offset emissions by purchasing credits from poorer nations, have yet to deliver the necessary reductions in global emissions. What is more concerning is that these market-based solutions reinforce a narrative of economic growth over environmental sustainability. Until the global conversation shifts away from this paradigm, meaningful progress will remain elusive.

The focus on market mechanisms at COP29 underscores the persistent power imbalances that shape climate action. Current international decision-making continues to rely on "realpolitik"—power dynamics that have failed to address both environmental and peace crises. This approach reinforces the dominance of wealthier nations and multinational corporations, while the voices of the Global South remain marginalized.

Although COP29 did not embrace the bold ideas needed to tackle the climate crisis, it has made one thing clear: The future of climate action lies in transforming how we relate to the planet and to each other. Climate change is a social justice issue that disproportionately affects vulnerable populations, yet their voices continue to be overlooked in global decision-making. The environmental crisis cannot be solved by perpetuating existing power dynamics but requires finding solutions rooted in equity, justice, and a deep respect for the interconnectedness of all life.

One potential avenue for transformative action underrepresented at COP29 is the Cap and Share model. This proposal advocates for a carbon tax on the largest polluters, with the revenue redistributed to support vulnerable populations. By holding major emitters accountable and ensuring the most affected communities are supported, Cap and Share challenges the economic systems that have exacerbated both environmental degradation and social inequality. Such an approach would lay the foundations for a fairer and more sustainable global response to the climate crisis.

Looking ahead to COP30, there is an opportunity to break the cycle and center discussions on a more profound philosophical reimagining of our relationship with nature. It is time to ask ourselves: What does a "good life" mean in the context of the climate crisis, and how can we redefine it in a way that prioritizes ecological harmony over economic interests? COP30 could be the moment to rediscover the wisdom that reminds us that humanity is not separate from nature, but an integral part of the web of life that sustains the planet.

To make this shift a reality, we must draw inspiration from initiatives that can empower local communities, particularly in regions most affected by climate change. The principles of Cap and Share can materialise not just through international policy but by supporting initiatives in local territories that engage communities who have suffered the consequences of climate change while also playing a critical role in preserving biodiversity. These initiatives could provide the foundation for overcoming the structural inequalities that perpetuate social and environmental harm, giving rise to a more just and sustainable world.

COP30 must, therefore, be the summit that moves beyond the transactional nature of past negotiations. It should be the moment when we embrace ideas that recognize the intrinsic value of nature and the need for global solidarity in protecting it. But for that to happen, we must first ask: Are we prepared to rethink the way we relate to the planet and each other in order to build a more just and sustainable future?

“A new study has found that almost half of children in Gaza wish to die, as a result of the trauma they have been forced to endure. Every single supplier of arms to Israel has blood on its hands—and the world will never forgive them.”

—Jeremy Corbyn, MP (Dec. 12, 2024)

The election of former President Donald Trump to another term as U.S. president has been cause for profound despair among millions of Democratic voters. Certainly anyone who cares about human and democratic rights can only feel dismay about the return of this notorious megalomaniac to the White House.

But worse than the election results is another deflating reality. Neither major party candidate represented a challenge to U.S. complicity in Israel’s horrific war on the people and land of Gaza. The presidential election proved to be a choice between two electable candidates, manifestly different on the surface, yet neither of whom was capable of taking a principled stand against the worst crime imaginable—genocide.

Consider that reality for a moment. While the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris campaigned as the defender of democracy, our only hope against the fascist predations of Republican Trump, the current vice president refused to consider even the slightest change in course from the Biden administration’s staunch support for Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. In fact, for more than a year the supply of U.S. weapons has enabled Israel to carry out one of the most concentrated and deadly military assaults on a population in modern times.

As for Trump and the GOP, this is a party of unabashed cheerleaders for genocide, who embrace Israel’s depraved war without any moral reservations.

Is what the Israeli military (IDF) doing in Gaza under the auspices of the Biden administration somehow less of a fascist horror show than the threat of Trump’s dystopian vision for the United States? What kind of democracy was it exactly that the Harris campaign stood for, if it excluded the most basic right of the Palestinian people not to be annihilated?

Ultimately, the Harris campaign was nothing more than a glossy marketing machine, a high-paid commercial for more of the same old war and Wall Street politics. Months of nationwide campus and street protests for a permanent Gaza cease-fire, and the growing unpopularity of the U.S. role as Israel’s chief arms supplier, resonated little in the end with the Harris campaign’s supposedly savvy advisors. Better instead to highlight the support of anti-Trump Republicans like Liz Cheney than allow a Palestinian-American campaign supporter even five minutes at the Democratic National Convention to speak about the plight of Gaza. Better to demonstrate loyalty to President Joe Biden, a leader whose legacy is now forever stained with the blood of the Palestinian people.

As for Trump and the GOP, this is a party of unabashed cheerleaders for genocide, who embrace Israel’s depraved war without any moral reservations. With near unanimity this past July, GOP members repeatedly stood and cheered Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bellicose address to a joint session of Congress. It was an indelible display of shameless idolatry for a mass murderer, as Netanyahu denounced American cease-fire protestors as “useful idiots” and otherwise sought to justify his war crimes.

Notably, the decision to welcome Netanyahu to Congress was a bipartisan one, an invitation whose political optics were so bad several dozen congressional Democrats chose to boycott the address. One who did not was Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), who with quiet dignity sat through Netanyahu’s remarks displaying a sign with the words “war criminal” and “guilty of genocide” written on either side. “It is utterly disgraceful that leaders from both parties have invited him to address Congress,” said Tlaib. “He should be arrested and sent to the International Criminal Court [ICC]."

How Many People Have to Die?

Since Tlaib’s protest the ICC has issued formal arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, along with Hamas leader Ibrahim Al-Masri. Doggedly loyal to the Zionist state, Biden called the ICC decision to seek the Israeli leaders arrests “outrageous.”

What is wrong with Biden? How many people have to be bombed, shot, slaughtered, and starved, their homes, schools, hospitals, and shelters destroyed, before he says enough? Biden’s outrage at the ICC decision is driven by his claim that there is no equivalence between Israel and Hamas. Actually, in terms of sheer killing power, he is right. According to Al Jazeera’s live tracker of war data, the death toll in the Israel-Gaza war (October 7, 2023 to December 15, 2024) stands at 44,976 Palestinians and 1,139 Israelis killed.

Unbearably, the IDF has also killed 17,492 children in Gaza. Another 106,759 people have been injured and more than 11,000 are missing. In the Occupied West Bank, at least 812 people, including 169 children, have been killed and another 6,250 injured over the past year by Israeli police, military, and settlers.

In modern politics, murdering thousands of children and other innocents in an obliterating campaign of state-sponsored terrorism is just business as usual, one more geopolitical “controversy” for our esteemed leaders to do nothing about.

Further, the IDF has killed 3,823 people in Lebanon (October 8, 2023 to November 27, 2024), according to Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. Another 15,859 residents of Lebanon are reported injured as a result of Israeli military action. The IDF has also partially or completely destroyed over 100,000 housing units across Lebanon.

No matter. For Netanyahu’s supporters in the U.S. political establishment, no lessons are ever learned nor red lines crossed, even as Israel’s war rage continues unabated. Instead, the Senate majority recently voted to approve another $61 million in high explosive mortar rounds to Israel. Only 19 senators (all Democrats except for Vermont independent Bernie sanders) voted no.

In late November, the United States also vetoed a new U.N. Security Council resolution calling for an immediate, permanent cease-fire in Gaza and release of remaining Israeli hostages. This was the fourth time the U.S. has vetoed a Gaza cease-fire resolution! The U.S. ambassador claimed the resolution didn’t adequately link a cease-fire to the necessity of releasing hostages, a concern rejected by every other member nation of the Security Council. What was it again Harris said during her campaign about the White House working tirelessly for a Gaza cease-fire?

Why is the United States still Israel’s key ally? In January 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), in response to the case brought by South Africa, issued a preliminary determination that the genocide case was plausibly brought and ordered Israel to “take all measures within its power” to uphold its obligations under Article II of the Genocide Convention. In a newly released report. Amnesty International has also concluded that Israel has and is continuing to commit genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. “Israel has unleashed hell and destruction on Palestinians in Gaza brazenly, continuously, and with total impunity,” states the Amnesty report.

But nothing has changed since the ICJ warning to Israel. In modern politics, murdering thousands of children and other innocents in an obliterating campaign of state-sponsored terrorism is just business as usual, one more geopolitical “controversy” for our esteemed leaders to do nothing about.

Gaza and Trump’s Victory

The Biden administration’s complicity in Israel’s war differs from the incoming Trump administration only in the latter’s unabashed embrace of Israel’s war crimes. Consider only Trump’s selection for the next U.S. ambassador to Israel: former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, a man who believes there is no such person as a Palestinian.

Trump himself now says there will be “hell to pay” if the Israeli hostages still in Gaza are not released prior to his January inauguration. You have to wonder what hell he is referring to that has not already occurred. With his usual fidelity to reality, Trump further ignores Netanyahu’s repeated obstruction of efforts to negotiate the release of hostages held in Gaza, to the upset of other Israeli leaders and public.

The guiding lights of the Democratic Party were apparently confident enough voters wouldn’t care that the Harris campaign remained full on with the politics of “Genocide Joe.” It was a poor gamble.

All this does not bode well for a peaceful and just future in the region. When the October 7 Hamas raids into southern Israel occurred, leading to hundreds of deaths and 254 people taken hostage, President Biden and others described the assault as “unprovoked.” It was a revealing response, a reflection of just how little Western leaders care about the modern history of Israel’s oppression of the indigenous Palestinian population. News flash to Biden: History did not begin on October 7.

Of course, to defend the basic human rights of the Palestinian people, including just the right to survive, does not constitute a political endorsement of Hamas, or any particular leadership or group. If any individual or group has committed atrocities against innocent civilians, those responsible should be held legally accountable. But isn’t it necessary to try to understand the deeper historic roots of the violence, to see beyond the layers of Western and Zionist propaganda designed to obscure Israel’s long occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people and their lands? All this began long before Hamas even existed.

It’s obvious Israel’s far-right leaders do not view the Palestinian people as human beings who deserve justice, as a people with whom they should live in peace. In fact, Israel’s destruction of Gaza over the past 14 months represents less an aberration than an acceleration of the Zionist state’s historic relationship since 1948 with the Palestinian people, which is one of oppressor and oppressed.

The Failure of the Democrats

The guiding lights of the Democratic Party were apparently confident enough voters wouldn’t care that the Harris campaign remained full on with the politics of “Genocide Joe.” It was a poor gamble. The dramatic fall in voter turnout for the Democratic candidate proved decisive to Trump’s victory, which he won over Harris by only 1.6% of the popular vote. The unwillingness of Harris to campaign as an anti-war candidate, to even appear to separate herself from Biden’s demoralizing fealty to Israel, did nothing to get out the vote. Many people understandably draw a moral line at supporting genocide.

The White House was not unaware of how unpopular its support for Israel had become. In June a CBS News poll showed 61% of Americans opposed to sending U.S. weapons to Israel. Among Democrats and people under 30 years of age, 77% were in opposition to continued arms deliveries to Israel. Prior to the Democratic Party convention, one poll showed approximately one-third of U.S. voters in Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania more likely to vote for Harris if she agreed to stop arming Israel, or if an Israel-Hamas cease-fire was achieved before election day. Yet the Harris-Walz campaign remained opposed to an arms embargo, which ultimately rendered all their cease-fire rhetoric empty theatrics.

Trump also won just because he was not in office. A vote for Trump was likely perceived by many as somehow just shaking up the system.

The latter was no doubt what was involved in the Biden administration’s 30-day ultimatum to Israel three weeks before the election to improve Gaza’s access to humanitarian aid or risk delivery of future arms supplies. Not surprisingly, post-election the U.S. State Department announced, much to the disbelief of some members of Congress and several international aid groups, that Israel had made “limited progress” toward improving delivery of humanitarian aid, and thus was not in violation of U.S. law.

There’s a pattern here. In May, the Biden administration had even acknowledged Israel’s use of U.S. arms likely violated international humanitarian law, but claimed it lacked confirmatory evidence. It was at this time that the administration paused delivery of a shipment of 500-pound and 2,000-pound bombs, as the Israeli military threatened to assault densely populated Rafah in southern Gaza. A military offensive there was supposedly a “red line” for the Biden administration. But it was one Netanyahu ignored as the IDF soon swept through central Rafah and air strikes hit people sheltering in tents.

For the White House all this constituted only an “uptick” in military action, not the “full-scale” assault on Rafah their floating red line was intended to oppose. Tellingly, the United States decided in July to resume shipments of 500-pound bombs to Israel. Apparently, U.S. officials were no longer concerned about the threat to the population from the 65-foot blast radius of 500-pound bombs, compared to the 115-foot radius of 2,000-pound bombs.

That’s par for the course for the Biden State Department, with the exception of the several department staff who resigned their positions in protest of the administration’s complicity in Israeli war crimes. Otherwise neither Biden, Harris, nor Trump have wanted to end, reduce, or put any meaningful conditions whatsoever on arms deliveries to Israel.

Time for New Mass Movement Politics

Certainly there are multiple factors at play in Trump’s election victory. The pressures of the inflationary state of the economy, combined with historic wage stagnation and growing wealth inequality, are obviously factors. But it’s more than that. Trump also cynically manipulated base appeals to racism. His demonizing rhetoric about migrant floods “poisoning the blood of America” was classic divide-and-conquer politics, a tactic long used by capitalist elites to redirect working-class discontent away from their rule and power. These racist appeals were persuasive to many of the Trump faithful.

But perhaps Trump also won just because he was not in office. A vote for Trump was likely perceived by many as somehow just shaking up the system. The operative word here is somehow. In Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Bronx congressional district, for example, Trump won 33% of the vote, an 11-point improvement from 2020. Yet the left progressive Ocasio-Cortez also won a decisive victory, returning to Congress for a fourth term with 68.9% of the vote. A minority of others also cast protest votes for Green Party candidate Jill Stein or independent Cornel West, both of whom campaigned on anti-war platforms in solidarity with Palestine.

Tellingly, the CEO of BlackRock, Larry Fink, who oversees the investment firm’s management of $11.5 trillion in assets, downplayed the election’s significance for Wall Street investors. “I’m tired of hearing this is the biggest election in your lifetime,” Fink remarked in October at a securities industry event. “The reality is over time it doesn’t matter.” In other words, as long as capital accumulation proceeds unimpeded, as long as the billionaires and corporate elites continue to profit and prosper, any Democratic or Republican administration is fine.

The pretense of civilized, democratic Israel has now fallen away to reveal the ignominy of an oppressor state in all its furious depravity.

The prospect of another four years with Trump in the White House is bleak. But Trump and his entourage of power-hungry hustlers, grifters, far-right ideologues, and other low-flying opportunists are hardly invincible. They can be defeated.

Of course, those who oppose the warmongers and right-wing authoritarians will surely face many challenges in the new year. But perhaps we should despair less and organize more.

From Democratic Socialists of America to Jewish Voice for Peace, the activism of the United Auto Workers and other labor ranks, to the organizers for women’s reproductive rights and the human rights of migrants, the voices who continue to speak up for humanity are many. We need to continue to mobilize these voices for the cause of peace with new resonance and power. We need political action not beholden to the Washington status quo or enfeebled Democratic electoral politics, but movement politics that embraces the larger anti-capitalist vision of what Dr. King once described as the “radical reconstruction of society itself.”

People are tired of endless wars. However justified Ukrainian resistance to Russia’s military aggression, the Russia-Ukraine war also just grinds on, costing tens of billions in U.S. military aid with no prospects for a fair negotiated settlement. For the Biden administration, the war appears to be more about strategically weakening Russia and providing a bonanza for arms manufacturers than defending democratic Ukrainian sovereignty.

In October 2023, the Deputy Speaker of the Knesset in Israel, Nissim Vaturi, said: “Now we all have one common goal—erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the Earth.” Other Israeli leaders have expressed similar genocidal aspirations. To the shame of the world, this nightmare story has continued unabated for more than a year.

A new study conducted by the Community Training Center for Crisis Management (CTCCM) with support from the War Child Alliance finds deep psychological trauma now prevalent among the children of Gaza. Surrounded by death, destruction, and displacement, their homes, schools, and communities destroyed by IDF air strikes and military assaults, 96% of the most vulnerable children in Gaza live with the feeling of imminent death. With loved ones often dead or wounded, nearly half of the children also describe just wishing to die.

Why is U.S. foreign policy committed to support a rogue Israeli state led by unrepentant war criminals? We should recognize the essential justice of the vision of a democratic, secular Palestine, based on respect for the human rights of all people, not an exclusionary and violent Zionist settler-colonial project armed to excess by Western imperialism. The pretense of civilized, democratic Israel has now fallen away to reveal the ignominy of an oppressor state in all its furious depravity. Tragically, this failed state is leading Gaza to obliteration and ruin.

The whole world needs to rise up against this terrible imperial violence and the social system that creates it.

As Congress negotiates a bill for federal funding during the lame-duck session, lawmakers would be wise to remember that stripping funds from the Internal Revenue Service costs more than it saves. On the table in the appropriations bill is a $20 billion recission of funds to the nation’s tax administration. While this may look like a spending cut, it will increase deficits by $46 billion due to a drop in the agency’s capacity to enforce taxes on wealthy individuals owed under existing federal law.

At the same time, congressional Republicans are calling on the incoming Trump administration to end the popular program that allows taxpayers to file their returns for free directly through the IRS. This will ultimately lead to more costs for taxpayers as they pay private services such as Intuit or H&R Block to carry out paperwork that they are required by law to file each year.

Regular taxpayers benefit from a competent and well-funded IRS. Most people do their best to pay their taxes accurately and on time, and slashes to funding that leave the agency understaffed and underequipped only create headaches for compliant taxpayers. Until recently, the IRS was not given the funding and capacity to pursue the high-income taxpayers who have the most complex returns but who also account for a hugely disproportionate share of the tax avoidance, which unfairly shifted the agency’s scrutiny to everyone else.

The arguments against an improved IRS are motivated by private corporations worried about their profit margins and by anti-government activists seeking to undermine the public’s trust in the agency.

Upcoming Appropriations Bill Will Cut Billions from the Agency if Congress Does Not Act

Congress must appropriate funding to each federal agency every year, even when that funding has already been authorized through prior legislation. When Congress cannot come to an agreement on funding levels, they frequently pass “continuing resolutions,” which generally keep funding at its current level to prevent a government shutdown.

To help rebuild the agency after a decade of cuts in its annual appropriations, Congress provided an additional $80 billion in the Inflation Reduction Act to supplement its annual appropriations for 10 years. Most of this money is for tax enforcement targeting profitable corporations and the wealthy. That was unpopular among congressional Republicans, who sought to eliminate the additional funding during 2023’s debt ceiling negotiations.

Filing tax returns is required by federal law, and taxpayers should not need to pay money to a private company to hand over their private information to complete the service for them.

U.S. President Joe Biden signed the IRA into law but shortly after compromised with then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and agreed to rescind $20 billion in funds over the upcoming two years as part of a deal to prevent the Republican-controlled House from driving the United States to default on its debts. The provision to cut those funds was included in the next year’s spending bill, negotiated between Republican and Democratic lawmakers. But rather than spreading the cuts over two years, all $20 billion was included in the first year—fiscal year 2024.

Now, Congress is likely to pass a continuing resolution that would extend funding levels from 2024. Without an agreement between lawmakers, this would include an additional $20 billion funding cut to the IRS that was not included in the initial Biden and McCarthy agreement.

This is bad for the federal deficit and bad for average taxpayers.

Congressional Republicans Also Want to Make it More Expensive to File Tax Returns

This year, for the first time ever, many taxpayers were able to file their taxes for free directly through the IRS as part of the Direct File pilot program. In past years, taxpayers were forced to either file by hand themselves or to use paid tax preparers like TurboTax, H&R Block, or Jackson Hewitt.

Taxpayers who used the Direct File program (which was only available in 12 states during its first year) were pleased with the results. The pilot program exceeded its goal for the number of users, and 90% of users rated their experience with the program as excellent or above average.

State governments were excited about the opportunity as well. Thirteen additional states are cooperating with the IRS to expand Direct File to include their state income taxes.

It makes sense. Filing tax returns is required by federal law, and taxpayers should not need to pay money to a private company to hand over their private information to complete the service for them.

But that is exactly what many congressional Republicans are now asking the incoming Trump administration to require of honest taxpayers. Twenty-nine Republican lawmakers signed a letter to the incoming administration asking them to end the popular program on “day one.”

Previously, the IRS attempted to persuade private companies to offer free filing services for taxpayers with relatively simple returns through a program called the Free File Alliance, and the companies participated for some time. But this arrangement did not always go as planned.

Some companies hid the free services from search engine results, and in TurboTax’s case, their parent company Intuit was eventually sued for deceptively leading taxpayers into paid services rather than the free services. Intuit eventually settled for $141 million.

Decade of Austerity Diminished the IRS’ Ability to Serve its Mission

Between 2010 and 2021, the agency’s budget was cut by a fifth and the number of revenue agents dropped by 35%. Meanwhile, the amount of tax returns filed grew by 13%, and the amount of tax returns filed by individuals making more than $500,000 grew by 70% from 2011 to 2019. As a result, the audit rate on these wealthy individuals dropped by more than 76%.

Although the IRS budget cuts were part of a larger campaign of government austerity following the Great Recession, the cuts put the federal budget in a worse position. The gap between the taxes that people legally owed and what they actually paid grew as high as $600 billion annually by 2021, more than half of that due to unpaid taxes from the top 5% of income earners.

Every hour spent auditing the returns of the most well-off families found $13,000 in unpaid taxes.

It wasn’t just the country’s fiscal situation that suffered from the assault on the IRS. Regular taxpayers trying to file accurate and timely tax returns found themselves dealing with an agency unable to meet the needs of the public. In 2022, The Washington Post reported on outdated and understaffed IRS processing facilities. IRS employees were in many cases using 70s-era technology and business processes. The Austin, Texas facility was so strained that its cafeteria became an impromptu document storage room.

The result was that the agency was failing. It was simply unable to answer calls, respond to letters, and issue swift tax refunds.

Recent Improvements to the IRS are Delivering Immediate Results for Taxpayers

The Inflation Reduction Act passed in 2022 reversed the decades of funding cuts to the IRS. The bill allocated $80 billion (now reduced to $60 billion and potentially even further) in funding to the agency to return its workforce to adequate levels, modernize its business systems and technology, and increase tax enforcement on big businesses and people making more than $400,000 a year.

The results were immediate. In prior years, the IRS had satisfactorily answered just 15% of phone calls. In 2023—the first tax year with the new funding—they answered 85%. That’s still too low by most standards, but a remarkable improvement. The agency also opened or re-opened 54 in-person centers to assist taxpayers across the country.

Positive Results for the Federal Budget, Too

The improvements to the IRS have delivered progress toward closing the tax gap as well. In 2023, the agency released a comprehensive strategic operating plan. In addition to improving taxpayer services, the document laid out the agency’s strategy for increasing audit rates on high-income individuals and complex business structures. While it may only take one auditor a few hours to review the tax return of a family claiming the Child Tax Credit, dissecting the tax return of a large S-corporation could be a years-long project for an entire team of auditors. So, the first step was to hire highly-skilled staffers and provide them with the best training and technology available.

This year, the IRS announced that it had collected $1.3 billion in unpaid taxes from millionaire households. In many cases, these were individuals simply not even bothering to file their tax returns. The agency had also begun leveraging modern technology like artificial intelligence to identify the most suspicious returns from large, complex partnerships.

If these funding cuts are passed, there will be thousands of fewer audits of wealthy individuals and large corporations. The latest estimates from the Congressional Budget Office show that an additional $20 billion recission in IRS funds will result in $66 billion in lost revenue, creating a $46 billion rise in deficits. That estimate tracks with a recent Government Accountability Office report that found every hour spent auditing the returns of the most well-off families found $13,000 in unpaid taxes. Cutting this funding is costly, not just for the honest taxpayers who will spend more hours waiting on the phone, but with direct increases in the federal deficit.

In 1937 after establishing the Estado Novo, or New State, socialist President Getúlio Vargas, faced with 500,000 fascists, the Integralists, on his doorstep, took radical action to prevent a fascist takeover, eventually leading to a democratic transition in 1945. Less than three decades later, socialist President João Goulart faced a resurgence of fascist sentiment, and after failing to take action, was promptly toppled, with American help.

Today, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Brazilian democracy face the same threats as Vargas and Goulart. Once again, radical action is the only thing standing between progress, and fascism.

Recent events in Brazil underscore the existential threat facing an increasingly fragile democracy. The indictment of former President Jair Bolsonaro and 36 military leaders, including former ministers, by the Polícia Federal, for an alleged coup and assassination plot, reveals a coordinated and escalating strategy by the fascist right. Bolsonaro and his movement venerate the military dictatorship, and the core tenets of fascist ideology, including militarism, destroying leftist opposition and “decadence,” hyper-masculinity, and authoritarianism. This is a dangerous insurgency against democracy, freedom, and progress.

Lula must take inspiration from Vargas’ bold action and learn from Goulart’s demise, leveraging the full weight of the state to dismantle the fascist infrastructure that threatens the country.

The insurgency’s leaders have shown themselves willing to use their supporters for violent anti-democratic action. Just last month, a failed terrorist attack in Brasília underscored the lengths to which these extremists are willing to go. The incident echoes the January 8 insurrection, where thousands of rioters, incited by Bolsonaro and his government, stormed the headquarters of all three branches of government, laying siege to Brazil’s democratic institutions. In Rio de Janeiro, militias backed by the Bolsonaro family have killed leftist politicians, and fascist supporters have attacked and intimidated Workers’ Party voters. These are not isolated incidents of political violence, but a clear signal that the threat is boiling over.

To navigate this moment, Lula must consider the lessons of Brazil’s history.

Brazil’s history provides two starkly contrasting examples of how leaders have faced fascist threats: Getúlio Vargas’ campaign against the Integralists and João Goulart’s failure to confront a brewing coup. These lessons are not merely academic—they offer a blueprint for President Lula as he navigates the current crisis.

In the 1930s, Vargas faced a powerful and organized threat from the Brazilian Integralist Action (AIB) front, a fascist movement inspired by European models like Benito Mussolini’s Italy and Adolf Hitler’s Germany. The Integralists were highly organized, funded, armed, and bolstered by significant public support, even gaining some seats in government and support in the armed forces.

Yet Vargas, after attempting to bring them into a big-tent state—similar to Lula welcoming anti-coup conservatives after his 2022 victory—recognized the threat Brazil faced. When the Integralists went to the Guanabara Palace and attempted to kill Vargas and take over the government in 1938, Vargas responded decisively, crushing their rebellion and ensuring that Brazil’s institutions would not be undermined by fascism. Despite first attempting to integrate the Integralists into a big-tent democracy, Vargas understood that in the face of an existential threat, bold action was necessary to safeguard the nation. Vargas’ actions were informed by his own socialist ideological roots—which manifested in his popular armed struggle which he led against the preceding military dictatorship and oligarchy.

Contrast Vargas’ actions with those of President João Goulart, also a socialist, who, in the early 1960s, faced a growing movement of reactionary military and political elites intent on removing him from power. Goulart hesitated, seeking compromise and reconciliation with forces that had no interest in negotiating in good faith. His inaction and failure to consolidate power allowed the right-wing military coup of 1964, with American support, to unfold, plunging Brazil into two decades of military dictatorship. Goulart’s downfall is a cautionary tale for Lula.

Lula must take inspiration from Vargas’ bold action and learn from Goulart’s demise, leveraging the full weight of the state to dismantle the fascist infrastructure that threatens the country. This is not a time for half-measures or concessions but for strategic and decisive leadership. The stakes could not be higher, and history is watching.

To neutralize the fascist threat, President Lula must first employ a two-pronged approach: holding the architects of the Brazilian fascist movement accountable while offering a path to redemption for those willing to abandon extremism. The message is simple: Support democracy, or get crushed.

The January 8 insurrection revealed the spectrum of actors involved in the coup attempt. Figures like Anderson Torres, Bolsonaro’s former justice and public security minister, were arrested for their roles in facilitating the attack. Torres’ failure to act on intelligence of impending violence—and the shocking discovery of a draft decree in his home to overturn the 2022 election results—made him a clear target for prosecution.

Meanwhile, many of the rioters, such as those who voluntarily turned themselves in and cooperated with authorities, were given opportunities to negotiate reduced penalties. This demonstrated that the government could balance accountability with reconciliation, dividing hardline extremists from those susceptible to redemption.

A similar carrot-and-stick approach is now needed on a larger scale. The masterminds behind the current wave of anti-democratic activities—military leaders plotting coups, politicians like Bolsonaro who fan the flames of extremism, and financiers who enable violence—must face swift and uncompromising justice. Their actions represent a clear and present danger to Brazil’s democracy and cannot go unpunished.

However, for the millions of Bolsonaro supporters and lower-level participants who may have been misled or coerced into action, unless they resort to violence, no action should be taken against them. The goal is to go after those spinning the wheels of fascism for their own gain, rather than the millions of victims, ordinary people, who fall prey to manipulative propaganda, mostly a byproduct of their own socio-economic and material conditions.

This would not be the first time a democracy has taken radical action to protect itself from existential threats. History is replete with examples of governments in advanced democracies acting decisively against internal dangers. Post-war Germany dismantled Nazi influence through denazification while offering paths to reintegration for lesser participants and followers, creating the Federal Republic of Germany. Spain transitioned to democracy after Francisco Franco’s death by implementing reforms, appointing a democratic head of government, and negotiating peace to stabilize the nation. France, similarly, purged Vichy collaborators before facilitating national republican unity. In post-dictatorship South Korea, democratic accountability was reinforced by prosecuting former fascist leaders while balancing this with pardons to promote reconciliation.

Similarly, in late 2022 in Peru, President Pedro Castillo’s attempt to dissolve Congress and establish autocratic rule was quashed Although Castillo’s power grab was less coordinated and less dangerous than the ongoing fascist threat in Brazil, Peruvian democratic authorities acted decisively, removing him from office and arresting him within hours.

These cases demonstrate that democracies can survive and overcome the rise of authoritarian threats when they employ comprehensive and bold actions that balance justice with pathways for societal reintegration.

After an appropriate targeting of coup plotters and insurrectionists is conducted, Lula can then use his democratic powers to engender key reforms to prevent a fascist coup from ever happening again.

While holding Jair Bolsonaro and his allies accountable is essential, the true force potential behind a coup lies with Brazil’s military leaders. Bolsonaro’s rhetoric and actions have long exploited military sympathies, and the January 8 insurrection demonstrated how quickly fascist elements can pivot to using violence against the state. Without addressing the military’s role in enabling these threats, any attempt to neutralize the fascist movement will fall short.

A critical step in this process is reforming Brazil’s Constitution, particularly Article 142. Bolsonaro and his supporters have misused this article, which ambiguously outlines the military’s role in ensuring “the defense of the country, for the guarantee of the constitutional powers, and, on the initiative of any of these, of law and order,” to justify anti-democratic actions. Bolsonaro himself has discussed the invocation of Article 142 to justify a military coup, including with his own cabinet and supporters. Reforming Article 142 is essential to removing this tool of democratic sabotage. The 1988 Constitution allows for these changes to be introduced by the president, and passed through Congress—though a public referendum could help circumvent this process.

Brazil must bring the military fully under civilian control to eliminate the persistent threat of coups. Currently, over 6,000 military officers hold office in the Brazilian state, and hold significant sway over the country’s democratic affairs, going against the very foundation of the Brazilian republic.

Democracies with politically influential militaries—such as Thailand and Pakistan—offer stark warnings. In both countries, military interference has led to repeated political instability, undermining democratic governance and creating cycles of authoritarianism. Both countries have faced repeated military coups, despite operating as democracies.

Thailand’s 2017 Constitution was almost entirely written by the military, reserving seats for officers in the Senate and including military support as a necessary sign-on for any legislation. Kemalist Turkey, Egypt and Myanmar are also powerful reminders that weak democracies can be brought back into dictatorship easily when military forces hold significant democratic power, performing coups whenever the military does not like democratic outcomes. Diminishing the military’s political power and promoting civilian oversight is essential to prevent these outcomes.

Implementing these principles does not weaken democracy; it merely strengthens it.

As the possibility of jail time looms for Jair Bolsonaro and other far-right leaders, their followers may become even more desperate, deciding to enact their violent plan for fascism. The arrest of Bolsonaro’s minister of defense, Walter Braga Neto, only solidifies this urgency. Time is not on Lula’s side. The longer he delays, the greater the likelihood that these actors will strike, pushing Brazil further into instability.

To preserve democracy and protect the progress Brazil has achieved, Lula must learn from his countrymen’s past failures and act swiftly to neutralize this fascist threat before it metastasizes into a full-blown fascist entity.

The good times—for America’s super wealthy—are now rolling way past good. Our richest have in 2024 enjoyed their best year ever. No other nation’s deepest pockets have watched their fortunes grow as large or as fast.

Elon Musk, of course, perfectly embodies this unprecedented surge in the personal wealth of America’s wealthiest. Musk has entered 2024’s last two weeks with a net worth spilling past $450 billion, nearly half a trillion dollars. Over the last 12 months, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index neatly notes, Musk’s wealth has doubled.

But Musk’s good fortune hardly rates as unique. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos is sitting on a quarter-trillion personal fortune, and the Facebook-driven net worth of Mark Zuckerburg has jumped comfortably over $200 billion as well.

In the 2024 U.S. presidential election, a Guardian analysis points out, the super rich of Silicon Valley alone spent almost $400 million to elect their favored candidate.

Of the world’s 15 largest personal fortunes, 14 currently belong to Americans. All these 14 will be stepping into 2025 with at least $100 billion in personal assets.

Amid the ranks of America’s up-and-coming ultra-rich, in other words, $100-billion fortunes have suddenly become eminently imaginable. For the rest of us, a personal fortune of a mere single billion remains utterly unimaginable. An American with a job annually paying $75,000 would have to labor over 13,000 years to amass enough pay stubs to equal that singular billion.

This past September, analysts at the London-based Informa research group predicted that Elon Musk, based on his then-current wealth trajectory, would hit trillionaire status sometime in 2027. Three other Americans, the researchers added, would likely join the trillion-dollar club before 2030. All these numbers, with this fall’s personal fortune figures now almost all in, appear to make for a severe underestimate.

Numbers, of course, can only paint part of America’s top-heavy picture. Where the riches of our richest end up going tells an even more disturbing story.

In the 2024 U.S. presidential election, a Guardian analysis points out, the super rich of Silicon Valley alone spent almost $400 million to elect their favored candidate. Some $243 million of that total came from Elon Musk’s effort to elect Donald Trump. That huge outlay—the largest personal investment ever in a single American political campaign—amounted to a pinprick on Musk’s overall fortune.

Back in the old days—before the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizen’s United decision in 2010—America’s wealthiest faced restrictions on how much money they could invest in electing their political pals to office. Today those rich can essentially spend whatever they want on political campaigns.

Or on anything else. Take housing, for instance. In the first half of this year, elevated mortgage rates had U.S. home sales overall down 12.9%. But the luxury housing market has remained notably robust. Luxury sales rose 5.2% during this year’s first half—even in the face of a 14.2% rise in typical luxury home prices.

Elon Musk, not surprisingly, is leading the luxury way. Mansion Global is reporting that Musk may soon be buying a $100-million condo in Florida’s West Palm Beach, a little home away from home right across the bridge from Donald Trump’s spread at Mar-a-Lago. A Musk acquisition at that level would more than double the $42.6-million existing purchase-price record for a West Palm condo.

Plenty of ultra-high-net-worth individuals have of late been rushing into Donald Trump’s Greater Miami environs, and this rush has created at least one major problem these rich never envisioned: Teachers in the local elite private schools that cater to their kids can’t find affordable places to live in America’s new “Wall Street South.”

Local housing prices overall have jumped about 75% over the last five years, Bloomberg notes, “bid up by thousands of affluent families moving south with jobs at firms like billionaire financier Ken Griffin’s Citadel.” Miami now ranks as America’s least affordable metro area for housing.

At Ransom Everglades, a private secondary school that charges over $50,000 a year for tuition, wealthy parents think they’ve come up with a teacher housing solution. They’ve created a $30-million endowment that will offer each of the school’s 132 teachers a housing stipend worth at least $11,000 a year.

Public school teachers in Florida, meanwhile, are facing their own tough times. Only one other state in the nation pays teachers in public school less than Florida. The main reason? The state has no income tax and depends overwhelmingly instead on sales taxes and excise tax levies on motor fuel, alcohol, and tobacco. This rich-people-friendly approach to financing public services has Florida’s working families paying in taxes over triple, as a share of their income, what the state’s richest 1% pay.

Is Florida going to define America’s future? Could be—if Donald Trump gets his way. He’s filling his new administration, Politico notes, “with people who learned how to throw elbows in Florida first.”

Those elbows, once in Washington, most certainly won’t be hitting too many rich people’s chins.

Democrats are still reeling from the shock of losing to Donald Trump for the second time in the past three elections. There’s quite a bit of finger-pointing and soul-searching taking place, with both journalists and activists writing “autopsies” to understand both the reasons for the defeat and what lessons can be learned moving forward.

I would be more supportive and less skeptical about the merits of some of these exercises were it not for two reasons. In the first place, most of these autopsies will be focused too narrowly on this election, as if the problems we are facing just emerged this year. Secondly, if past is prologue, these “studies” will most likely be read by a few, then shelved and forgotten.

In fact, any serious analysis seeking to understand what happened on November 5 must begin with the recognition that the seeds of this year’s Democratic defeat were planted decades ago and are now bearing fruit.

The problem with the Democratic consultants is that they are the same cast of characters who’ve been running and ruining politics for decades.

A few weeks ago, I wrote my own finger-pointing exercise, but now want to look more deeply into the forces that have come to shape the contours of our political landscape. Here are some of these factors:

1. Profound political, social, cultural, and economic changes in American life have left millions of voters unsettled, insecure, and angry. Unmoored, they are looking for certainty. In other similar moments in history, populations shaken by such dislocations have turned to forms of fundamentalism—finding certainty in a mythic glorious past—or to “strong leaders” who they felt understood their plight.

2. In addition to these societal changes, deep scars have been left on Americans’ psyche by dramatic transformative events. The terror attacks of 9/11 and failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan left Americans feeling vulnerable and seeing our stature in the world diminished. Add to this the economic collapse of 2008-2009 that shattered confidence in the American dream, all-too-frequent horrific mass shootings, and traumatic impacts of Covid-19, and you have a society on edge waiting for “the other shoe to drop.

3. Given this context, political leadership’s response to the unsettled electorate is important. For their part, Republicans have had some success in exploiting and expanding the fear. From Richard Nixon’s presidency until today, a constant thread in the Republican playbook has been preying on voters’ fears and insecurities. Early targets were “Black” welfare recipients or criminals. Donald Trump has expanded the list to include immigrants, particularly Mexicans and Muslims; the “deep state;” and pretty much any group who challenges him. Trump has wielded the “fear of ‘them’” as a potent weapon to supercharge his campaign against opponents.

Democrats, on the other hand, have appeared disconnected from the challenges faced by most voters. Instead of speaking directly to their pain, Democrats talked about the programs they’ve launched, the progress they’ve made in creating jobs, saving the environment, protecting women’s healthcare choices, and advocating for a balanced approach to immigration. While all true, these discourses on policy have sounded “wonky,” making Democrats sound out of touch, dismissive, or even patronizing.

What voters have wanted is to know that candidates understand their insecurities and anger. The Democrats who’ve been effective at doing this have been those to whom voters could relate. Barack Obama was able to turn voters from fear to hope. Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden were successful because they showed voters that they too were angry at income inequality and loss of jobs and promised to fight for them.

The bottom line has been that voters needed to know that those who would lead them understand their situation.

4. For the first three-quarters of the last century, Democrats operated according to a simple philosophy. As the party that supported economic justice for workers, they believed government had a role to play, as my mother would say, “to lend a helping hand to those who can’t lift themselves up.” Republicans, on the other hand, were the party that protected the rich. Their motto was “lower taxes, less government.”

This has changed. As a Republican Senator recently boasted, “We have become the party of the working class, while Democrats are the party of the elites.” They aren’t, but that’s the perception they’ve successfully created.

How did it happen? Ask a Democrat today what the party stands for and you won’t get my mother’s bumper sticker answer. Instead, you’ll get a lecture on a range of social issues with no thread connecting them or making them relevant to working-class voters. Republicans, on the other hand, when asked them they stand for, won’t say lower taxes. Instead, they’ll pull out Trump’s list of “boogiemen” and Democrats’ cultural issues they hate. Or they’ll simply say: “Make America Great Again”—a catch-all phrase evoking a return to past “glory” (with all that it implies), or fighting against the social ills of culture change for which Democrats advocate, or simply a defense of Mr. Trump against his foes. As one of the more successful Republican TV ads said, “She fights for them [meaning transgender folk and the undocumented], he fights for us.”

5. There was a time when political parties drove politics and were real organizations from the local, to the state, to the national level. People belonged to a party. That is no longer the case. Today, parties are fundraising vehicles, amassing fortunes to pay for consultants who run the campaigns and oftentimes the parties as well. While many voters contribute small amounts, major donors contribute seven- and eight-figure amounts.

The problem with the Democratic consultants is that they are the same cast of characters who’ve been running and ruining politics for decades—following the same playbook and lacking any appreciation for changes in the electorate. They lack imagination and are risk averse, tying candidates up in knots with cautions about what they can and shouldn’t say. Trump, on the other hand, freed himself from the Republicans’ consultant class, sidelining them and instead acting on gut instinct. Voters have read this as authentic.

What played out in this election were themes and behaviors that have been brewing for decades. Unless Democrats take a long hard look at how and why they’ve lost connection with working-class voters and allowed consultants to take control of the party’s and their candidates’ messaging and outreach, the defeat of November 5 may well be repeated.

Like many roads that cut through Wyoming, the highway into the town of Rawlins is a long, winding one surrounded by rolling hills, barbed wire fences, and cattle ranches. I’d traveled this stretch of Wyoming many times. Once during a dangerous blizzard, another time during a car-rattling thunderstorm, the rain so heavy my windshield wipers couldn’t keep pace with the deluge. The weather might be wild and unpredictable in Wyoming’s outback, but the people are friendly and welcoming as long as you don’t talk politics or mention that you live in a place like California.

One late summer afternoon on a trip at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, I stopped off in Rawlins for lunch. There wasn’t a mask in sight, never mind any attempt at social distancing. Two men sat in a booth right behind me, one in a dark suit and the other in overalls, who struck me as a bit of an odd couple. Across from them were an older gentleman and his wife, clearly Rawlins locals. They wondered what those two were up to.

“Are you guys here to work on that massive wind farm?” asked the husband, who clearly had spent decades in the sun. He directed his question to the clean-cut guy in the suit with a straight mustache. His truck, shiny and spotless, was visible out the window, a hardhat and clipboard sitting on the dashboard.

“Yes, we’ll be in and out of town for a few years if things go right. There’s a lot of work to be done before it’s in working order. We’re mapping it all out,” the man replied.

“Well, at least we’ll have some clean energy around here,” the old man said, chuckling. “Finally, putting all of this damned wind to work for once!”

I ate my sandwich silently, already uncomfortable in a restaurant for the first time in months.

“There will sure be a lot of wind energy,” the worker in overalls replied. “But none of it’s for Wyoming.” He added that it would all be directed to California.

“What?!” exclaimed the man as his wife shook her head in frustration. “Commiefornia?! That’s nuts!”

Should Wyoming really be supplying California with wind energy when that state already has plenty of windy options?

Right-wing hyperbole aside, he had a point: It was pretty crazy. Projected to be the largest wind farm in the country, it would indeed make a bundle of electricity, just not for transmission to any homes in Rawlins. The power produced by that future 600-turbine, 3,000 MW Chokecherry and Sierra Madre wind farm, with its $5-billion price tag, won’t, in fact, flow anywhere in Colorado, even though it’s owned by the Denver-based Anschutz Corporation. Instead, its electricity will travel 1,000 miles southwest to exclusively supply residents in Southern California.

The project, 17 years in the making and spanning 1,500 acres, hasn’t sparked a whole lot of opposition despite its mammoth size. This might be because the turbines aren’t located near homes, but on privately owned cattle ranches and federal lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management. Aside from a few raised eyebrows and that one shocked couple, not many people in Rawlins seemed all that bothered. Then again, Rawlins doesn’t have too many folks to bother (population 8,203).

Wyoming was once this country’s coal-mining capital. Now, with the development of wind farms, it’s becoming a major player in clean energy, part of a significant energy transition aimed at reducing our reliance on fossil fuels.

Even so, Phil Anschutz, whose company is behind the Chokecherry and Sierra Madre wind farms, didn’t get into the green energy game just to save the climate. “We’re doing it to make money,” admits Anschutz, who got the bulk of his billion-dollar fortune from the oil industry. With California’s mandate to end its reliance on fossil fuels by 2045, he now sees a profitable opportunity, and he’s pulling Wyoming along for the ride.

Since 1988, Wyoming has been the country’s top coal-producing state, but its mining has declined steeply over the past 15 years, as has coal mining more generally in the U.S. where 40% of coal plants are set to be shuttered by 2030. In addition to the closed plants, the downturn in coal output has resulted largely from cheap natural gas prices and the influx of utility-scale renewable energy projects. Wyoming’s coal production peaked in 2008, churning out more than 466 million short tons. Today, its mines produce around 288 million short tons of coal, accounting for 40% of America’s total coal mining and supplying around 25% of its power generation. Coal plants are also responsible for more than 60% of carbon dioxide emissions from the country’s power sector. As far as the climate is concerned, that’s still way too much.

The good news is that the U.S. has witnessed a dramatic drop in daily coal use, down 62% since 2008, and few places have felt coal’s rapid decline more than Wyoming, where a green shift is distinctly afoot. Despite being one of the country’s most conservative states (71% of its voters backed U.S. President-elect Donald Trump this year), Wyoming is going all in on wind energy. In 2023, wind comprised 21% of Wyoming’s net energy generation, with 3,100 megawatts, or enough energy to power more than 2.5 million homes. That’s up from 9.4% in 2007.

The Winds of Change

On the surface, Wyoming’s transition from coal to wind is laudable and entirely necessary. When it comes to carbon emissions, coal is by far the nastiest of the fossil fuels. If climate chaos is to be mitigated in any way, coal will have to become a thing of the past and wind will provide a far cleaner alternative. Even so, wind energy has faced its fair share of pushback. A major criticism is that wind farms, like the one outside Rawlins, are blights on the landscape. Even if folks in Rawlins aren’t outraged by the huge wind farm on the outskirts of town, not everyone is on board with Wyoming’s wind rush.

“We don’t want to ruin where we live,” says Sue Jones, a Republican commissioner of Carbon County. “We can call it renewable, we can call it green, but green still has a downside. With wind, it’s visual. We don’t want to destroy one environment to save another.”

Energy from the Chokecherry and Sierra Madre wind farms will also reach California via a 732-mile transmission line known as the “TransWest Express,” which will feed solar and wind energy to parts of Arizona and Nevada as well. To be completed by 2029, the $3-billion line will travel through four states on public and private land and has been subject to approval by property owners; tribes; and state, federal, and local agencies. The TransWest Express passed the final review process in April 2023 and will become the most extensive interstate transmission line built in the U.S. in decades. As one might imagine, the infrastructure and land required to construct the TransWest Express will considerably impact local ecology. As for the Chokecherry and Sierra Madre wind farm, it might not encroach on residential neighborhoods, but it does risk destroying some of the best natural wildlife habitats in Wyoming.

Transmission towers connecting thick high-voltage power lines will stand 180 feet tall, slicing through prime sage-grouse, elk, and mule deer habitat and Colorado’s largest concentration of low-elevation wildlands. The TransWest Express will pass over rivers and streams, chop through forests, stretch over hills, and bulldoze its way through scenic valleys. Many believe this is just the price that must be paid to combat our warming climate and that the impact of the Chokecherry and Sierra Madre projects, and the TransWest Express, will be nothing compared to what unmitigated climate chaos will otherwise reap. Some disagree, however, and wonder if such expansive wind farms are really the best we can come up with in the face of climate change.

“This question puts a fine point on the twin looming disasters that humanity has brought upon the Earth: the climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis,” argues Erik Molvar, a wildlife biologist and executive director of the Western Watersheds Project, a Hailey, Idaho-based environmental group. “The climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis are of equal importance to humans and every other species with which we share this globe, and it would be foolhardy to ignore either in pursuit of solutions for the other.”

Molver is onto something often overlooked in discussions and debates around our much-needed energy transition: What consequences will these massive renewable energy projects have on biodiversity and the wild creatures that depend on these lands for survival?

Is It Really Clean If It Kills?

Biologists like Mike Lockhart, who worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) for more than 30 years, claim that these large wind farms are more than just an eyesore and will negatively affect wildlife in Wyoming. Raptors, eagles, passerines, bats, and various migrating birds frequently collide with the blades, which typically span 165 feet.

“Most of the [Wyoming wind energy] development is just going off like a rocket right now, and we already have eagles that are getting killed by wind turbines—a hell of a lot more than people really understand,” warns Lockhart, a highly respected expert on golden eagles.

In a recent conversation with Dustin Bleizeffer, a writer for WyoFile, Lockhart warned that wind energy development in Wyoming, in particular, is occurring at a higher rate than environmental assessments can keep up with, which means it could be having damning effects on wild animals. Places with consistent winds, as Lockhart explains, also happen to be prime wildlife habitats, and most of the big wind farms in Wyoming are being built before we know enough about what their impact could be on bird populations.

The Department of Energy projects that wind will generate an impressive 35% of the country’s electricity generation by 2050. If so, upwards of 5 million birds could be killed by wind turbines every year.

In February 2024, FWS updated its permitting process under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, hoping it would help offset some of wind energy’s effects on eagles. The new rules, however, will still allow eagles to die. The new permits for wind turbines won’t even specify the number of eagles allowed to be killed and companies won’t, in fact, be out of compliance even if their wind turbines are responsible for injuring or killing significant numbers of them.

Teton Raptor Center Conservation Director Bryan Bedrosian believes that golden eagle populations in Wyoming are indeed on the decline as such projects only grow and habitats are destroyed—and the boom in wind energy, he adds, isn’t helping matters. “We have some of the best golden eagle populations in Wyoming, but it doesn’t mean the population is not at risk,” he says. “As we increase wind development across the U.S., that risk is increasing.”

It appears that a few politicians in Washington are listening. In October, Reps. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Penn.) introduced a bipartisan bill updating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. The legislation would authorize penalties of up to $10,000 per violation for harm to birds. Still, congressional staffers tell me it’s unlikely to pass, given the quiet lobbying efforts behind the scenes by a motley crew of oil, gas, and wind energy developers.

The Department of Energy projects that wind will generate an impressive 35% of the country’s electricity generation by 2050. If so, upwards of 5 million birds could be killed by wind turbines every year. In addition to golden eagles, the American Bird Conservancy notes that “Yellow-billed Cuckoos, Golden-winged Warblers, and Kirtland’s Warblers are particularly vulnerable. Wind energy poses special risks to endangered or threatened species such as Whooping Cranes and California Condors, since the loss of even a few individuals can have population-level effects.”

And bird kills aren’t the only problem either. The constant drone of the turbines can also impact migration patterns, and the larger the wind farm, the more habitat is likely to be wrecked. The key to reducing such horrors is to try to locate wind farms as far away from areas used as migratory corridors as possible. But as Lockhart points out, that’s easier said than done, as places with steady winds also tend to be environments that traveling birds utilize.

Even though onshore wind farms kill birds and can disrupt habitats, most scientists believe that wind energy must play a role in the world’s much-needed energy transition. Mark Z. Jacobson, author of No Miracles Needed and director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program at Stanford University, notes that the minimal carbon emissions in the life-cycle of onshore wind energy are only outmatched by the carbon footprint of rooftop solar. It would be extremely difficult, he points out, to curtail the world’s use of fossil fuels without embracing wind energy.

Scientists are, however, devising novel ways to reduce the collisions that cause such deaths. One method is to paint the blades of the wind turbines black to increase their visibility. A recent study showed that doing so instantly reduces bird fatalities by 70%.

Such possibilities are promising, but shouldn’t wind project creators also do as much as possible to site their energy projects as close to their consumers as they can? Should Wyoming really be supplying California with wind energy when that state already has plenty of windy options—in and around Los Angeles, for example, on thousands of acres of oil and brownfield sites that are quite suitable for wind or solar farms and don’t risk destroying animal habitats by constructing hundreds of miles of power lines?

Wind energy from Wyoming will not finally reach California until the end of the decade. As Phil Anschutz reminds us, it’s all about money, and land in Los Angeles, however battered and bruised, would still be a far cheaper and less destructive way to go than parceling out open space in Wyoming.

Wind Is Still a Resource

In that roadside cafe in Rawlins, the two workers paid their bill and left. I sat there quietly, wondering what that couple made of the revelation that the wind farm nearby wasn’t going to benefit them. Finally, nodding toward the men’s truck as it drove away, I asked, “What do you think of that?”

“Same old, same old,” the guy eventually replied. “Reminds me of the coal industry, the oil industry, you name it. The big city boys come and take our resources and we end up having little to show for it.”

Shortly after lunch, I left Rawlins and made my way two hours north to the Pioneer Wind Farm near the little town of Glenrock that began operating in 2011. I pulled over to get some fresh air and stretch my legs. As I exited the car, I could hear the steady hum of turbines slicing through the air above me and I didn’t have to walk very far before I nearly stepped on a dead hawk in the early stages of decay. I had no way of knowing how the poor critter was killed, but it was hard to imagine that the hulking blade swirling overhead didn’t have something to do with it.

The United States is among the 32 countries, mostly in the Americas, that have birthright citizenship. If you are born here, you get a US passport. Conservatives have long complained that the 14th Amendment provides a loophole for so-called “anchor babies,” of whom there are at least 4 million born to illegal immigrants. But those numbers are dropping annually. Jus soli, or the right of the soil, is in the crosshairs of the incoming second Trump Administration, with the president-elect threatening to eliminate it by executive order. Without it, however, hundreds of thousands if not millions of people could be forced back into the shadows, refusing to call the police or the fire department for fear of deportation, and become stateless. In France, there are second and even third-generation stateless people who couldn’t go back “home” even if they wanted to.

The TMI Show’s Ted Rall debates the issue with guest co-host Robby West, filling in for Manila Chan.

The post TMI Show Ep 38: “Citizenship for All?” first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The post TMI Show Ep 38: “Citizenship for All?” appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

It gives us no pleasure in saying this, for we definitely wanted it to go differently, but the Democrats deserved to lose. We, however, did not. They ceased to be the party of the people—the party of working people—years ago and they hardly seemed bothered by what was happening. Apparently the Democratic leaders were not listening to what working people were saying. Or, if they were listening, they failed to hear what was being said.

Embracing neoliberalism, the party’s leaders and presidents cultivated the affections of their billionaire donors; rationalized the widening inequalities and intensifying concentration of wealth and power; joined in the assaults upon the democratic achievements of the Greatest Generation and the Long Age of Roosevelt; distanced themselves from the resistance expressed in the Wisconsin Rising of 2011 and the anger and hopes of Occupy Wall Street; failed the Fight for $15; and made nothing of the polling which showed that Americans wanted not just change—indeed, radical change—but also jobs at living wages, guaranteed healthcare, decent affordable housing for all, and free public higher education (all of which would have amounted to what the greatest of Democratic Presidents, Franklin Roosevelt, projected as an Economic Bill of Rights in 1944).

In fact, even as workers began to organize anew and started demanding better deals from their bosses, the Democrats failed to act seriously to bolster their initiatives. Then, truly proving they had not been listening, they ran a 2024 presidential campaign that avoided calling out the billionaire bosses whose billions are growing ever greater and made little of the voiced needs and wants of the working class.

Situating our new comic in the Holiday season, we seek not only to remind liberals, progressives, radicals, and socialists to listen to and empower the voices of working people, but also to push the Democrats to do so as they/we work to rebuild the party in favor of taking back and democratically transforming America.

'We Need to Be Heard'
'We Shouldn't Even Have Billionaires'
'Trump Exploited People's Anxiety'

We close this installment of our comic-strip series with a portrait of FDR, the Democratic President who—for all of his tragic faults and failings—not only listened to and actually heard working people, but also encouraged them to progressively push him further than he might otherwise have gone and determinedly engaged their labors and energies to dramatically transform the nation and radically enhance freedom, equality, and democracy.

In upcoming comics for Common Dreams we intend to recount that history in hopes of inspiring and propelling Democrats and working people alike to take action.

The upcoming Trump presidency poses an existential threat to our already fragile climate. Trump has appointed a cabinet filled with climate deniers, and promised to ramp up oil drilling and gut industry regulations. In response, Governor Gavin Newsom has promised to fight Trump and advance climate progress in California.

Gov. Newsom has a national profile and has aspirations for national office. He has a chance to provide much-needed national climate leadership, but to effectively battle Trump and advance a bold agenda; he’ll need to walk back some of his prior positions and fulfill promises that are at odds with the wishes of some of his biggest corporate backers. His first early test will be to fulfill his commitment to shut down Aliso Canyon, site of the largest gas blowout in U.S. history.

No issue more strongly illustrates Newsom’s allegiance to the utility industry than the ongoing saga of Aliso Canyon.

In many ways, Newsom has indeed led on climate. Under his watch the state instituted a 3,200-foot setback between new oil wells and homes, schools and hospitals. Overall new drilling permits have declined, the legislature passed a measure to take on price gouging, and California has finally instituted a fracking ban—something that communities had demanded for years. He has also been outspoken on the national stage, challenging Florida Governor DeSantis over climate policy and generally challenging the oil and gas industry in the press.

Yet Newsom has also taken a number of positions that undermine climate progress. His Public Utilities Commission voted unanimously, for example, to gut incentives for rooftop solar. These incentives are critical for encouraging the deployment of solar across the state. This move has undermined the state’s solar industry and stalled its buildout. Pushing this action were major utilities like PG&E that are undermined by distributed energy generation. Meanwhile, he extended the life of three gas-fired power plants.

Newsom has also embraced a number of projects and programs advanced by the fossil fuel industry that masquerade as climate solutions. These include carbon capture, hydrogen and biogas (gas produced from filthy factory farm waste). The latter was recently a topic of debate before the California Air Resources Board, the vast majority of which were appointed by Newsom. The board voted to continue the state policy of incentivizing biogas under the low-carbon fuel standard program despite strong opposition from environmental groups and frontline communities.

But no issue more strongly illustrates Newsom’s allegiance to the utility industry than the ongoing saga of Aliso Canyon. The 2015 blowout there spewed more than 100,000 tons of methane and toxic chemicals over nearby Los Angeles communities, forcing thousands to temporarily relocate and making many sick. Shortly after being elected, Governor Newsom promised community members that he would “fast track” the closure of Aliso, after former Governor Brown said it should be shuttered by 2027.

Yet Aliso Canyon is operated by SoGalGas, a subsidiary of Sempra Energy, which has been a big backer of Governor Newsom. In all, utilities have donated $241,200 to Newsom’s political campaigns, including $31,200 from Sempra. Despite coming in on a promise to shut down Aliso, Newsom’s Public Utilities Commission has continually expanded its use. On December 19 the commission will be considering a proposal that could keep Aliso Canyon open indefinitely. The CPUC must either continue the proceeding for additional consideration or reject this proposal outright. The only just solution is to shut down Aliso Canyon by 2027.

Trump and his “drill baby, drill” agenda poses an existential threat to our climate. We need governors to step up, lead the opposition, and advance bold policies at the state level to protect our people and planet. Gov. Newsom has a chance to be that leader, but only if he’s able to advance a policy agenda that directly takes on fossil fuel interests and big utilities at all levels, and provides a clear counterweight to what Trump is pushing. This will mean reversing course on rooftop solar, rejecting industry plans like biogas and carbon capture, and—in his next big test—shutting down the dirty and dangerous Aliso Canyon gas storage facility.

The quote in this cartoon is adapted from an employee of United Healthcare interviewed by the New York Times. It is remarkable for its lack of self-awareness. If the system is the problem, it’s immoral to work for the system.

The post Doing Your Best Within an Evil System first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The post Doing Your Best Within an Evil System appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Anyone recall the time in the late summer of 2017 when prominent CEOs resigned from U.S. President Donald Trump’s business councils in protest at his defense of white nationalists who marched in Charlottesville, after Trump called them “very fine people”?

At the time, I thought America’s CEOs might become a bulwark against Trump’s extremism. But I was wrong. Within months, the CEOs were seeking to get back into Trump’s good graces.

After the insurrection unleashed by Trump against the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, many CEOs announced they wouldn’t be financing the campaigns of election deniers. CEOs of prominent social media banned Trump from appearing.

Tump is getting nothing but fawning encouragement to do anything he wants to do. That makes him even more dangerous.

I hoped their actions would limit Trump’s fanaticism and Trump’s growing MAGA movement. I was wrong again. Within two years, the CEOs were financing the campaigns of election deniers. Within three years, prominent social media were allowing Trump to return to their platforms and retell his lies.

I confess to having had a moment’s thought during the last eight months that Trump’s conviction on 34 criminal counts in Manhattan, his civil conviction for defamation in connection with what a judge termed “rape,” and his disgraceful nativism—describing poorer nations as “shit holes,” using terms redolent of Nazism to describe foreigners as “poisoning the blood” of Americans, and baselessly accusing Haitian immigrants of “eating our pets”—might force CEOs to rethink their willingness to give Trump a pass.

No such luck.

Amazon’s founder and chief, Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post, had a rocky relationship with Trump in the first Trump administration. Angry with Bezos over unfavorable reporting in the Post, Trump questioned whether Amazon got a sweetheart deal with the U.S. Postal Service. Amazon, in turn, accused Trump of improperly pressuring the Pentagon to deny the company a major cloud computing contract.

Bezos apparently learned his lesson. After Trump was shot at a campaign event, Bezos called him, and on social media praised Trump’s “grace and courage under literal fire.”

Bezos didn’t allow the Post’s editorial board to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for president.

Now, Bezos says he’s “very optimistic” about the incoming Trump administration, and that Trump “seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation. And my point of view is, if I can help him do that, I’m going to help him, because we do have too much regulation in this country.”

Amazon is donating $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund, and said it will livestream the inauguration next month.

Not to be outdone in the groveling department, Meta’s (Facebook’s) CEO Mark Zuckerberg got a dinner invitation at Mar-a-Lago.

Meta is also putting $1 million into Trump’s inaugural fund.

“It’s an important time for the future of American innovation,” Meta said in a statement. “Mark was grateful for the invitation to join President Trump for dinner [Zuckerberg sought it] and the opportunity to meet with members of his team about the incoming administration.”

Stephen Miller, Trump’s incoming deputy chief of staff for policy, told Fox News that Zuckerberg “has been very clear about his desire to be a supporter of, and a participant in, this change we’re seeing all around America and the world, with this reform movement that Donald Trump is leading.”

In his first administration, Trump accused Facebook of filtering out views favorable to him. He even called for Zuckerberg to be jailed in retaliation for “plotting against” him during the 2020 election.

Now, like Bezos, Zuckerberg has turned to fawning. During the campaign, he had several private phone calls with Trump. After the assassination attempt, Zuckerberg told Trump he was “praying” for him, and told an interviewer Trump looked like a “badass” after pumping his fist to the crowd.

The suck-up list goes on and on. OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman also plans to donate $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund. “President Trump will lead our country into the age of AI, and I am eager to support his efforts to ensure America stays ahead,” Altman says.

Elon Musk and half of Silicon Valley is kissing Trump’s derrier.

Last January, speaking from the World Economic Forum’s confab in Davos, Jamie Dimon—chair and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, the largest and most profitable bank in the United States, and one of the most influential CEOs in the world—heaped praise on Trump’s policies while president the first time.

“Take a step back, be honest,” Dimon said. Trump “was kind of right about NATO, kind of right on immigration. He grew the economy quite well. Tax reform worked.”

Kind of right about NATO? Trump wanted the U.S. to withdraw from the pact—and may get his way after January 20. This would open Europe further to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression.

Kind of right on immigration? Even the conservative Cato Institute found that Trump reduced legal immigration but not illegal immigration. Trump refused to grant legal status to children of immigrants born in the United States or who grew up here, and tried to ban Muslims from the U.S.

Grew the economy quite well? In fact, under Trump the economy lost 2.9 million jobs. Even before the pandemic, job growth was slower than it’s been under Biden. The unemployment rate increased by 1.6 percentage points to 6.3%. The international trade deficit that Trump promised to reduce increased. The number of Americans lacking health insurance rose by 3 million.

Tax reform worked? Trump’s tax cut conferred most of its benefits on big corporations and the rich, while exploding the federal debt from $14.4 trillion to $21.6 trillion.

Why did Dimon—the most influential CEO in America—spout these lies in favor of Trump? Because he thought Trump had a good chance of becoming president, and Dimon wanted to be in his good graces.

Also, Dimon’s support for Nikki Haley had irked Trump. In a post on Truth Social in late November, Trump said “Highly overrated Globalist Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMORGAN, is quietly pushing another non-MAGA person, Nikki Haley, for president,” and “I’ve never been a big Jamie Dimon fan, but had to live with this guy when he came begging to the White House. I guess I don’t have to live with him anymore, and that’s a really good thing.”

Dimon felt it necessary to lick Trump’s backside. When Dimon did this, it was a signal to other CEOs to abase themselves, too.

The CEOs are all sucking up to Trump.

At a time in American history when the most influential leaders of the U.S. need to stand up loudly and clearly for the rule of law, democracy, and decency, they are leading the charge in the opposite direction—fawning over the most dangerous authoritarian America has ever had in the Oval Office.

Tump is getting nothing but fawning encouragement to do anything he wants to do. That makes him even more dangerous.

Other tech executives, like Elon Musk, who has stumped for the conservative movement and gave hundreds of millions of dollars to the Trump campaign, have forged a closer relationship with Mr. Trump. (Mr. Musk and Mr. Zuckerberg have developed such a tense relationship that the two spent 2023 challenging one another to a physical fight.) But executives at Meta hope that Mr. Zuckerberg can launch a new relationship with Mr. Trump by taking a softer touch with the incoming administration.

Gifts to inaugural committees, which do not have contribution limits, are popular among businesses and individuals eager to curry favor with an incoming administration. Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee is offering top-tier benefits to donors who contribute $1 million.

Amazon gave $57,746 to Mr. Trump’s 2017 inaugural committee, according to OpenSecrets, which tracks political donations. The company said the Biden campaign did not accept donations from tech companies in 2020.