On October 9, only hours after the announcement of the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Navi Pillay, a former judge on the International Criminal Court, the Trump administration imposed its latest sanctions on the global judicial body. According to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, “we will ban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling its ability to operate.”

When the ICC became operational in 2002, it represented a major breakthrough for the human rights groups that had campaigned for it. The new organization had the mandate to prosecute individuals for genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and, after 2018, the crime of aggression. Once nations ratified the ICC’s authorizing document, the Rome Statute, they took responsibility for arresting these individuals and submitting them to the court for trial. Designed to complement, rather than to replace, national criminal justice systems, the ICC could prosecute cases only when countries were unwilling or unable to do so. A total of 125 countries―nearly two-thirds of the world’s nations―have ratified the Rome Statute.

Since its founding, the ICC (headquartered in The Hague, the Netherlands) has acted to hold individual perpetrators accountable for the world’s gravest atrocities. Its actions included opening 34 cases (some with more than one suspect), holding 17 different investigations across four continents, issuing 61 arrest warrants, and, thus far, issuing 13 convictions and four acquittals.

Nevertheless, the campaign against the ICC is having a serious impact. In late July, thanks to US government pressure, Venezuela and Chad announced their withdrawal from the court’s Rome Statute.From its inception, however, US officials were wary of the ICC.

In the United States, President Bill Clinton signed the Rome Statute, but refused to present it to the US Senate for ratification, warning that it had “significant flaws,” including the inability to “protect US officials.” His successor, George W. Bush, “unsigned” the treaty in 2002 and signed US legislation authorizing military force to liberate any American nationals it held for crimes. During Donald Trump’s first term as president, he denounced the ICC before the United Nations General Assembly and imposed economic sanctions and visa restrictions on top ICC officials for any effort to investigate the behavior of US personnel in Afghanistan.

Russian officials, too, soon realized that enforcement of international law threatened them. Although, initially, the Russian government signed the Rome Statute and participated constructively in the ICC, it withdrew its signature after Ukraine appealed to the ICC in 2014 and 2015 to investigate Russian war crimes in Ukraine. The ICC did initiate a preliminary inquiry that, after the full-scale Russian invasion of 2022 and Russia’s murder of Ukrainian civilians and prisoners of war in Bucha, expanded into a formal investigation. In 2023, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova for the kidnapping of thousands of Ukrainian children.

Denying any wrongdoing in Bucha, the Russian government also dismissed the charge of kidnapping as “outrageous.” Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chair of the Russian Security Council, threatened a Russian hypersonic missile attack upon the ICC headquarters.

Meanwhile, the assault on the ICC escalated. Although US President Joseph Biden scrapped Trump’s sanctions on the court and authorized sharing information with it during investigations of Russian atrocities in Ukraine, he and numerous officials of other nations denounced the ICC’s November 2024 war crimes arrest warrant for top Israeli officials. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assailed what he called “the antisemitic decision” of the ICC and said that Israel refused to comply with it.

With Trump’s reelection, the campaign to destroy the ICC went into high gear. In February 2025, he imposed sanctions on the ICC prosecutor. That August, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, labeling the court “a national security threat,” added ICC judges to the sanctions list. In late 2025, a top Trump administration official told Reuters that there was “growing concern” that “the ICC will turn its attention to the president, to the vice president, to the secretary of war and others, and pursue prosecutions against them.” That was “unacceptable, and we will not allow it to happen.” The ICC, he said, had been informed that, unless it amended its founding document to ensure that it would not investigate the Republican president and his top officials, new, very punishing US sanctions would be imposed on the court.

The Russian government also ramped up its attack. In December 2025, a Russian court, retaliating for the ICC’s arrest warrants for Putin and Lvova-Belova, convicted the ICC prosecutor and eight ICC judges, in absentia, of “unlawful prosecution,” sentencing them to terms of imprisonment ranging from three and a half to 15 years.

In July 2026, Rubio announced what the US State Department called “a sweeping campaign to dismantle the threat posed by the International Criminal Court to US sovereignty.” It would “feature a whole-of-government response to systematically disable the ICC’s ability to operate” and destroy the court “brick by brick.” That August, imposing additional sanctions on court officials, Rubio proclaimed “our unwavering mission to protect Americans from this sham of a court.” Meanwhile, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called on Latin American and Caribbean governments to sever their ties with the ICC.

Many observers, of course, were appalled by the Trump administration’s behavior. The European Union immediately expressed its backing for the ICC, while Germany’s foreign minister declared that the court made the world “safer and more just.” In a biting article, Kenneth Roth, a former executive director of Human Rights Watch, argued that “the administration’s real goal is to secure impunity for war crimes.”

Nevertheless, the campaign against the ICC is having a serious impact. In late July, thanks to US government pressure, Venezuela and Chad announced their withdrawal from the court’s Rome Statute. The number of withdrawals now stands at five, including Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger. The latter three are ruled by military juntas allied with Russia.

As the Nobel committee warned when announcing the Peace Prize, the “judges and institutions of international law are under political attack.”

If the attack succeeds, it will produce a disaster not only for the rule of law, but for the cause of human rights.

As a first-generation Mexican American, the first time I ever connected with a book and felt genuinely excited to write a book report was when we were assigned to read Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan by Pam Muñoz Ryan in sixth grade. The story, which follows a girl learning to navigate her new life inside a labor camp in California after being forced to move there following the tragic death of her father in Mexico, included themes that really resonated with me.

Up until then, I had never read a book like that. It spoke to me in a way I never imagined a book would, and it made me want to read more. Sixth grade became the year I started considering myself an avid reader because I was pursuing that “special feeling” Esperanza Rising gave me in other books. I was chasing the feeling of being seen.

Today, Esperanza Rising is being challenged in states like Texas and North Carolina because parents feel uncomfortable with its themes of racism and immigration, and I can’t help but think back to my 11-year-old self. If this book had been banned before I got the opportunity to read it, I’m not sure that I would have discovered that “special feeling,” at least not in sixth grade. It would have taken me longer to discover it, if I discovered it at all.

There must be a collective understanding among the gatekeepers of children’s literature that these stories matter, and a commitment to protecting them from being removed from shelves.

This is what makes book bans incredibly dangerous, especially at a time of declining literacy rates, and parents struggling to get their kids to pick up a book instead of their tablets or devices. In October 2026, PEN America reported nearly 12,000 book bans involving more than 7,300 individual titles in US schools during the 2025-2026 school year, which the organization says is the largest censorship case numbers it had ever recorded.

There have been multiple studies reporting on the negative impact book bans are having on teacher morale and student learning, with marginalized young readers especially bearing the brunt of these decisions. The American Library Association reports that a significant proportion of contested books center on LGBTQ+ experiences, racial identity, or themes of systemic inequality, essentially sending the message that those themes should be censored.

When I wrote the first book in my middle-grade magic school series featuring the daughter of undocumented immigrants as the protagonist, Chloe Vega and the Agents of Magic, my goal was to educate young readers about immigration in a way that is digestible and age appropriate. It follows Chloe, who is terrified that Immigration and Customs Enforcement will take her undocumented parents from her. She’s unaware magic exists until a sorcerer disguised as an immigration officer takes her parents, forcing her to embark on a journey to harness her abilities at a magical academy so she can reunite her family.

Despite its fantasy elements, the book is essentially about a little girl fighting to reunite with her family. It’s a heavy message for many young readers, but the magical elements make it easier for them to process. The book has been out for a year, and many parents have reported that it served as an excellent gateway to serious conversations with their children about immigration and the times we’re living in.

The sequel to Chloe’s story, Chloe Vega and the Missing Unseen, was published on October 6, 2026, and both books could be challenged or banned in many states because they address immigration, despite their age appropriateness.

When we ban books for young readers that tackle topics surrounding marginalized people, we lose a critical avenue for parents, educators, and librarians to educate children on these serious topics and help them develop understanding and empathy. We also strip marginalized young readers of the opportunity to feel seen when they are already painfully underrepresented. In the times that we’re living in, this can be extremely harmful.

It also puts these authors at a significant disadvantage, making it harder to get their books into the hands of the readers who need them most. Many have had school visits canceled because educators and administrators fear repercussions from lawmakers and increasingly restrictive book-banning policies. These challenges create greater financial risk for both authors and publishers, which can make publishers more hesitant to invest in books by marginalized authors and further limit the diversity of stories available to young readers.

So far, many efforts have been made to combat book bans. In 2024, a group of authors banded together to launch Authors Against Book Bans, whose mission is to stand united against the unconstitutional movement to limit the freedom to read and to unequivocally support the availability of diverse voices in schools, libraries, and culture. Organizations such as PEN America are actively filing lawsuits against school boards, arguing that these bans violate the First Amendment.

But more needs to be done. There must be a collective understanding among the gatekeepers of children’s literature that these stories matter, and a commitment to protecting them from being removed from shelves. Books have long been celebrated for their ability to build empathy and compassion by inviting readers into lives and experiences different from their own. But when the books being challenged and removed are disproportionately about marginalized people, it does more than limit what children can read. It erases the experiences and identities of the very people whose voices deserve to be heard.

Let’s start with the good news. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has added 61 companies to its database of businesses involved in activities linked to illegal Israeli settlements, expanding the list from 158 to 214 companies.

Why is this good news? Because it further illustrates a degree of seriousness within the international community to move its position on Israel from the realm of language to that of action.

Yet more good news: Five previously listed companies were removed after the office determined that their involvement in the relevant activities had ended.

For the Israeli mindset to change, the consequences of occupation, annexation, and genocide must become unmistakable.

This matters because it suggests that the mechanism can work: Sustained scrutiny can influence corporate behavior, and supporting Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine can carry a price.

Expectedly, the updated list has been welcomed by Palestinian and international human rights organizations, though, rightly so, they insist that such lists are not enough unless followed by direct government action and expanded to other facets of the Israeli military and economy.

But before focusing on what else needs to be done, we must acknowledge the significance of such reports, especially when placed within the larger context of global initiatives aimed at isolating Israel and its extremist leadership.

First, the 2026 update demonstrates continuing institutional commitment by the UN Human Rights Office. The database was not a one-off initiative issued under temporary political pressure. Its continued expansion and revision show that corporate involvement in Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise remains subject to international scrutiny.

Second, the addition of 61 companies reflects extensive research and follow-up by the UN, supported by information from Palestinian civil society and human rights organizations. The database is therefore not simply symbolic: It documents the international corporate networks that sustain and profit from Israel’s settlement project.

Third, the removal of five companies suggests that the mechanism can produce results. Its impact remains far below what Palestinians need, but the removals indicate that companies can end relevant activities and subsequently be removed from the database.

The list also provides civil society with credible material for accountability and boycott campaigns. More importantly, it can help move such efforts beyond individual consumer choices toward action by governments, financial institutions, and regulatory bodies.

This is particularly relevant as Western governments begin taking measures of their own.

On September 8, 12 countries—Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom—announced their intention either to introduce national restrictions or support European restrictions on trade with illegal Israeli settlements. Britain went further, banning settlement goods and moving against companies involved in settlement construction.

The significance was difficult to miss. Heavyweights such as Britain, France, and Canada were no longer merely condemning settlement expansion; they were beginning to attach economic consequences to it.

But here lies the challenge: Reports, databases, and sanctions remain insufficient—and risk becoming meaningless—unless they are followed by sustained monitoring and practical action.

What is the worth of sanctions if they are not enforced, expanded, and accompanied by political pressure capable of changing Israeli behavior?

Decisions, lists, and threats are double-edged swords. They can become launchpads for sustained and meaningful political action. Or they can be used to mollify civil society, allowing politicians to buy time and votes while avoiding any fundamental policy change.

However, there is a way to help distinguish between the two.

An independent international monitoring group, composed of and supported by civil society figures with recognized moral authority, could systematically track governments that have committed to sanctions, boycotts, or trade restrictions: What was promised, what was implemented, what loopholes remain, and whether measures are producing tangible consequences.

Monitoring these governments is becoming almost as important as monitoring Israel itself.

The same principle applies to UN reports. Palestinian and international civil society organizations must incorporate their findings into the growing global boycott and accountability movement, while governments must ensure that companies under their jurisdiction are not contributing to illegal settlement activities.

Considering that Israel continues its genocidal assault on Gaza while accelerating settlement expansion and annexation measures in the West Bank, none of these steps can ever be sufficient on their own. They are, however, meaningful steps in the right direction.

Palestinians expect—and deserve—far more than the bare minimum. The situation in the occupied territories is simply too urgent for symbolic politics. Every passing day should bring another measure of accountability: another restriction, another divestment, another sanction, another political or economic consequence.

Israel has operated for decades on the assumption that it is effectively untouchable—that condemnation will remain rhetorical, reports will gather dust, and Western governments will ultimately retreat when meaningful pressure becomes politically costly.

That assumption must end.

For the Israeli mindset to change, the consequences of occupation, annexation, and genocide must become unmistakable. Sanctions cannot merely be announced; they must be enforced. Boycotts cannot remain symbolic; they must carry an economic cost. International law cannot simply be invoked; it must have consequences.

The real measure of these initiatives, therefore, is not how many companies appear on a list or how many governments announce sanctions. The real measure is whether these actions can finally impose a political and economic price on Israel high enough to make occupation, annexation, and genocide unsustainable.

Here’s today’s trivia question (which may turn out to be not at trivial at all when all the facts emerge): Who solicited money from a presidential donor in return for access to the head of the IRS over the donor’s taxes, was a Fox News host, was engaged to the son of the US president, was the former wife of someone who wants to be the next US president, who raised money for and spoke at a rally that led to an attack on the US Capitol, and now is a US ambassador?

If you guessed Kimberly Guilfoyle, you’d be correct on all counts.

Rarely has a person been so enmeshed in the workings (or one might say, dysfunctions) of our current political-economic-media-influence system as Guilfoyle.

From 2001 to 2005, Guilfoyle was married to Gavin Newsom, now governor of California. In 2018, she began dating Donald Trump Jr., became engaged to him in 2020, and emerged as one of his father’s most outspoken defenders and a MAGA icon.

After Trump’s 2020 defeat, Guilfoyle sought to turn her status into a profitable business ventures including lines of hair care and fragrance products and a medspa. She also launched a political consulting firm and sought work in public relations.

In 2022, she launched what she termed an upscale vodka and champagne brand, American Dream, organizing a dinner for Mar-a-Lago guests that participants realized halfway through was an investment pitch.

According to a report in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal by Dana Mattioli, Drew Hinshaw, Rebecca Ballhaus, and Joe Parkinson, Trump grew frustrated with Guilfoyle for soliciting investments from Mar-a-Lago members for her companies, and complained that Guilfoyle was supposed to be raising money for him but instead was at his club raising money for herself.

The Journal reports that after Trump won the 2024 election, Eric Deters—a Trump donor and former co-owner of Snappy Tomato Pizza, a regional restaurant chain, who had mounted unsuccessful runs for Congress and governor—began soliciting Guilfoyle’s help on several matters, including gaining access to incoming Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Billy Long, to discuss an IRS probe into Deters’s tax deductions.

Guilfoyle offered to use her sway as Donald Jr.’s former fiancée. Deters promised to pay her as much as $1 million if she were successful.

Her engagement to Trump Jr. ended in December 2024. On December 10, 2024, Trump nominated Guilfoyle to be the US ambassador to Greece.

After Billy Long was confirmed IRS commissioner, Guilfoyle sent him a congratulatory note, attaching a letter Deters had written outlining his tax dispute: “Don Jr. and I are very close with Eric Deters and his wife and I know he sent you a letter,” she wrote. “I am hoping I know how busy you are that you could give some time and attention to it.”

She assured Deters that “I wrote him a very nice message. Told him how important it was that you’re close to me and to don.”

The Journal reports that as her confirmation hearing approached, Guilfoyle complained to friends that she was broke.

She reached out to Deters with an urgent request: She needed $100,000 that she said she owed American Express—and needed Deters to give it to her in a way that wouldn’t leave a paper trail. “It won’t show up anywhere if you wire money to American Express,” she wrote on Signal, according to messages reviewed by the Journal.

“Honey please I need you to get this done for me today,” she texted Deters, adding a prayer hands emoji and a PDF with bill payment instructions from American Express. “You could just send it here,” she wrote on July 3, 2025, just days before her July 9 confirmation hearing.

Deters ultimately did not make the payment, but the set of transactions illuminates the casual pay-to-play world in which Trump, his family, appointees, and donors all operate.

The Senate confirmed Guilfoyle as ambassador to Greece on September 18, 2025.

Billy Long is now the US ambassador to Iceland.

The top two Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs and Senate Foreign Relations committees have now called for an investigation into Guilfoyle.

Congressional Democrats are already looking into claims reported last month by the Journal that Guilfoyle told guests at a reception that the US could undermine the Greek government if it chose to, that she promoted the business interests of one particular Greek construction and energy company, and allowed its lobbyist into private diplomatic meetings.

In Trump world, being close to power creates a special economy of getting and giving. The arenas include Fox News, Mar-a-Lago, the White House, Capitol Hill, and extend even to our foreign embassies. All relationships within these arenas—personal, romantic, political, diplomatic—are transactional.

In a nationwide poll conducted a few weeks ago and reported on by Axios, the majority of all registered voters surveyed said the number one word to describe Donald Trump is “corrupt.” This represents a massive opportunity for Democrats both now and for the next two years.

And the experience of candidates in today’s Democrats’ position around the world validates the argument that this is the best way to both campaign and win elections and political power.

Péter Magyar defeated Viktor Orbán in the Hungarian elections because he ran a Navalny-style playbook, calling Orbán’s and his billionaire buddies’ capture of the media and most other aspects of Hungarian life a “state capture system” grounded in good old-fashioned “corruption.”

From Orban’s son-in-law pulling a Jared and using his government position to become one of the richest men in the country, to his billionaire cronies buying up the media like the billionaire Ellisons are doing here now, corruption was Magyar’s singular through-line message. And it worked, producing an overwhelming turnout and undeniable victory.

It will work here, too!

Democrats are (continuously, it seems) debating what should be their campaign strategy, their main through-line message, for the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential election. Every faction and special interest group in the country is pushing their own idea, but there’s one overarching concept — one word — that can encompass most all of them and do so with a proven political punch: “Corruption.”

At every level, ever since the Reagan Revolution, the heart of Republican policies has been the naked corruption of our American political and economic systems. Since the 1980s, Republicans have sold their corruption with slogans like, “Government is the problem, not the solution,” and “Let the market decide,” but their real message is, “Turn it all over to the billionaires and their corporations.” The result has been:

— Tax cuts and loopholes for billionaires and big corporations that, in aggregate since 1981, add up to more than our total national debt of $40 trillion (in other words, Republicans borrowed $40 trillion in our names that our kids will repay and gave all of it to the morbidly rich).
— Reagan’s 1983 suspension of enforcement of the anti-trust laws that has caused every industry in America to become a form of monopoly dominated by five or fewer massive corporations, gutting competition and raising prices.
— Five on-the-take Republicans on the Supreme Court ruling that corporations are persons and money is the same thing as “free speech,” handing our elections over to the highest bidders.
— Virtually every legacy federal regulatory agency being run by industry insiders working on a revolving-door basis.
— Members of Congress and the corrupt Trump regime engaging in insider trading with impunity.
— A GOP-aligned military-industrial complex that’s essentially taken over Pentagon procurement.
— An anti-labor Labor Department; an anti-education Education department; an anti-civil rights Civil Rights enforcement agency; an anti-environment Environmental Protection Agency; etc…
— Trump’s mysterious pardons that always seem to go to people who’ve given him millions of dollars (after Giuliani claimed he and Trump were selling pardons for two million each and splitting the money).
— The wholesale gutting of the Internal Revenue Service enforcement budget and staffing that’s largely ended audits of morbidly rich people and increased audits of working-class people instead.
— The systematic sabotage and privatization of public institutions — from the US Postal Service to public schools to prisons — with virtually every one of the for-profit replacements becoming big GOP donors.
— The explosion of dark money after Citizens United so we don’t even know who’s buying our elections.
— The weaponization of the Federal Communications Commission to loosen media ownership rules while threatening outlets that dare criticize Trump or the GOP.
— Red-state-level voter suppression laws including strict ID requirements, purges of voter rolls, and reduced polling access all to discourage voting by people in demographic groups associated with Democrats.
— The Republican refusal to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices for years and they’re still blocking most efforts.
— The systematic dismantling of campaign finance enforcement, turning the Federal Election Commission into a deadlocked, do-nothing body.
— The use of tax havens and trade policy to encourage offshoring American jobs.
— The Republican normalization of lobbyists literally writing legislation via groups like the Koch-funded ALEC.
— The rewriting of environmental and labor rules to favor polluting industries by GOP appointees who often came from those very industries.
— The strategic packing of the federal judiciary with hardcore rightwing/neofascist judges.
— And now Trump’s pathetic attempts to bribe voters with his $5000 offer backed up by $80 and $500 checks going out this week to people on Medicare and the Affordable Care Act.

Even Republicans understand the power of mobilizing the public’s outrage against the corruption that they themselves have participated in for over 40 years. Astonishingly, cynically, that’s the meta-message to Trump’s main campaign slogan each of the three times he’s run for president:

“Drain the swamp.”

It worked, even though it was an outrageous lie. Democrats, who have actually been trying to do something about corruption for years, need to appropriate the anti-corruption theme as their main message. Because, universally, it works.

— When working in Russia, I witnessed the way Alexi Navalny came so close to taking down Putin that the Russian dictator ordered him murdered; it was done via Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation. It systematically and relentlessly exposed the ways Putin and his cronies were looting their nation’s government while passing out favors to oligarchs willing to align themselves with them.

— In the 1980s, I was working for a German international relief organization in The Philippines when Cory Aquino mobilized an anti-corruption message against the Marcos dynasty; the week Marcos and his wife fled the country I was bumped off Philippine Airlines flights five days in a row because so many of their cronies were appropriating all the seats (the airline was run by a crony).

— When Jair Bolsonaro first successfully ran for president of Brazil it was on a campaign against the corruption “Operation Car Wash” had exposed in the Lula administration. When elected, Bolsonaro, instead of ending the corruption, slid right into the system and expanded it, leading to his own ultimate downfall and current imprisonment.

— In Delhi, activist Anna Hazare’s 2011 anti-corruption hunger strike ignited a nationwide movement that helped spur passage of India’s Lokpal anti-corruption law and led his former allies to found the “clean government” Aam Aadmi Party.

— And, of course, it was the anti-corruption message of the EuroMaidan “Revolution of Dignity” in 2014 that lifted then-comedian and TV star Volodymyr Zelenskyy into the presidency of Ukraine.

From Teddy Roosevelt’s Progressive Era of the early 20th century to the present, anti-corruption messages have repeatedly proven to be one of the most potent forces in American politics, too.

— In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt built a foundation of mass support by casting monopolies as a “corrupt alliance” between the morbidly rich and our government, while the exposure of William M. “Boss” Tweed’s graft by Thomas Nast’s biting cartoons helped bring down New York’s Tammany Hall by converting complex examples of corruption into the simple story of “stolen public money.”

— The Watergate scandal turned corrupt abuse of power into a national reckoning that forced Richard Nixon from office and fueled sweeping electoral gains for reformers like Jimmy Carter, while more recent scandals like George Santos’ reinforced “clean government” as a winning local message.

— At the national level, Donald Trump’s “drain the swamp” campaign and the “rigged system” critiques advanced by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren show that, across the ideological spectrum, framing political battles as struggle against entrenched, self-dealing elites remains one of the most consistently reliable ways to get energized voters to the polls and win power.

It makes perfect sense that this should be the Democrats’ main strategy: the core philosophy of the GOP that was first made explicit by the Reagan administration — “greed is good” — openly invites corruption. As we’ve seen in virtually every congressional vote over the past decade, Republican politicians are entirely in the pockets of the fossil fuel, health insurance, tax preparation, and weapons industries, among others.

Whether it’s the corrupt collusion between the Kushner and Netanyahu families that helped lead us into an illegal war against Iran, the billions Trump’s family has made in crypto and other schemes, the insider trading on the war, putting industry insiders in charge of regulatory agencies, the DeSantis and Paxton/Abbott corruption scandals, there are vivid examples of Republican corruption laying on the public ground all over the country in plain sight.

There’s a whole panoply of issues Democrats can and should seize on, from privatization to deregulation to climate change to affordability to healthcare and education, but the core — the foundation — of every one of them is corruption.

Every Democrat in America should scan their local horizon for examples of corruption they can use against Republicans. The words “Republican corruption” should be continuously on their lips, whether campaigning, speaking to constituents, or making media appearances.

Hammer these corrupt SOBs with their own crimes against democracy and the middle class, and Democrats will see results like Magyar, Zelenskyy, Aquino, and so many others have achieved.

It’s simple, easy, and powerful: “It’s the corruption, stupid!”

US President Donald Trump’s Latin America policy has seemed, at times, detached from genuine US national interests in the region and increasingly driven by his personal preferences. He now appears determined to transform Brazil into a “political laboratory” where a right-wing triumph would serve as definitive proof of the superiority of his authoritarian worldview.

Ambition Rules

If anyone doubted the scope of Donald Trump’s ambitions, they need only look at his attempts to dictate terms to the largest economy in Latin America. To Trump, Brazil isn’t a sovereign nation with a rich culture and complex history. It’s merely a convenient staging ground for expanding his ideological influence.

In his worldview, the Brazilian political landscape largely mirrors that of the United States. This makes it a suitable "testing ground" for the geopolitical and domestic policies Trump and his supporters will try to adapt and apply to the United States.

It’s not hard to see how Trump is trying to install his own personally loyal "king" in Brazil. With surgical precision, he's attempting to remove anything progressive from Brazilian politics. He's striving to reshape Brazilian politics so that the voice of the people is drowned out by the noise of right-wing populism, and democratic institutions merely serve as window dressing for one man’s will.

Mirror in the Tropics

At the core of this strategy lies Trump's profound fixation on the Bolsonaro family: former President Jair Bolsonaro, presently incarcerated for his role in a coup attempt, and his son Flavio, a prominent right-wing candidate who emerged victorious in the first round of elections on October 4th and is set to compete against current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

To the occupant of the Oval Office, Bolsonaro isn’t just an ally; he's Trump’s political reflection, his "tropical doppelgänger." Through this troubling narcissism, Trump sees confirmation that his tactics of intimidation, aggressive rhetoric, and disregard for the truth are a universal recipe for power.

Trump and MAGA Republicans' drive to promote conservative supremacy is turning US foreign policy into an instrument of ideological dominance. They are intent on proving to the world once again that conservative ideology is the only correct path. To this end, Brazil must become the main trophy—a living testament to the idea that authoritarianism equals efficiency and everything else is a mistake.

Attacking Lula: A Contest of Hope

In this context, Trump's criticism of Lula does not appear as political debate, but as blatant aggression. Trump rejects the Brazilian leader precisely because he champions everything his American counterpart disdains: empathy, social justice, and faith in the greater good.

This ignores the fact that Lula has become a beacon of hope for millions of Brazilians while Trump sows discord. For this reason, Lula’s return to power in 2022 was not just a political victory, but a triumph of humanity over cynicism.

It’s difficult to remain indifferent when witnessing Lula's consistent defense of the Amazon rainforest—the “lungs of the planet”—which was brutally exploited under right-wing governments at the behest of corporate interests. While Brazilian right-wing politicians and their supporter Trump see nature merely as a resource for enrichment, Lula fights for humanity's ecological survival.

The Brazilian president's unwavering support for the LGBTQ+ community and minorities in the face of aggressive conservatism is an act of true democratic leadership, in contrast to the narrow vision of "right-wing supremacy."

The Destructive Influence of the Right

Under these circumstances, it’s no surprise that issues such as confronting extremism in politics, combating electoral violence, and bolstering communities against disinformation have come to the forefront of US-Brazil relations.However, as events surrounding Brazil's election campaign show, Trump and his allies, such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, are hardly concerned with regional stability. By promoting right-wing popolism supremacy, Trump is attempting to blur the lines between governance and his personal ambitions through his reflection in Bolsonaro.

This has already prompted a response from Democratic members of Congress, who sent Rubio a letter criticizing the White House’s blatant attempts at interfering with and potentially undermining Brazil's elections. The administration must stop using economic and political pressure to weaken Brazil’s democratic institutions. Such activity is seriously damaging the bilateral partnership.

Cautious Optimism

Brazil's election campaign clearly demonstrates a clash between two worlds. One world is embodied by Trump, Bolsonaro, and right-wing conservatives. It is a world of cold calculation, hierarchy, and dominance. The other world is championed by Lula. It is a world of equality, ecology, and democracy. Republicans who want to see democracy thrive must recognize that turning Brazil into a "political laboratory" for the Trump era is a dead end.

On October 8, Oscar Belgal was shot in his car by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent. According to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and NYC Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, agents surrounded the man’s car, which had a 5-year-old child in the backseat, before firing seven rounds. A photograph taken a few hours after the shooting showed the car crashed into a concrete barrier, with a bullet hole in the windshield, two holes in the rear side window, and one in the rear panel.

Belgal was reportedly struck in the neck and taken to the hospital. While the child miraculously sustained no physical injuries, as Mamdani notes, this experience will leave him “traumatized and terrified.” Mamdani further remarked, “Tonight, millions of our neighbors are wondering whether they will be safe on our streets, in our schools, at their work sites.”

Those words are far from hyperbole. Additional photos obtained The Intercept show a federal agent in a high visibility safety vest wielding an assault rifle. An eyewitness said that the man was posing as a construction worker before the incident. This would not be the first time Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents disguised themselves to surveil targets. In 2025, ICE admitted that their agents were posing as construction workers in New York as part of an ongoing operation. Earlier this year in Minneapolis, ICE agents were caught disguising themselves as utility workers using fake license plates in clear violation of state law.

The sad reality is that Trump does not need to taunt Iran into attacking American cities—ICE is already doing that.

Not only do these secret police tactics undermine public trust and accountability, they also create additional risks. Since the start of President Donald Trump’s mass immigration agenda, people have impersonated masked ICE agents to commit robberies, kidnappings, scams, sexual assaults, and to terrorize immigrant communities across the country.

All of which raises several questions: Did ICE agents properly identify themselves to Belgal? Or did he just see a construction worker with an assault rifle pointed at his car and child? Did the officers try to deescalate the situation? Or did they take advantage of the confusion their own disguises created to justify unwarranted violence?

Importantly, Wired reports that one of the ICE agents present at the scene has been identified as Brenden Cuni, an ICE supervisor who has been involved in several illegal street arrests:

Court filings accuse him of using a Taser on a handcuffed man, while activists have alleged he is one of the agents seen forcing a pregnant woman to the ground during a Minneapolis operation. In recent months, federal judges have repeatedly found arrests involving Cuni unlawful. One judge called an arrest warrant he signed ‘fraudulent,’ while another said that video evidence contradicts his sworn account of an arrest; in a third case, the government withdrew his sworn statements as inaccurate.

Given the circumstances, as well as ICE’s track record of unprovoked violence and the string of ICE impersonations, Belgal would have had every right to fear for the safety of himself and the child. While ICE blames sanctuary policies and undocumented immigrants for endangering the public, it is their fascist tactics and the incompetence of their officers that are actively making the country less safe.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) immediately responded to this latest violent incident by blaming the victim. They claimed that federal agents were conducting “a targeted enforcement operation […] to arrest a criminal illegal alien” who had been arrested in 2023, “but was released into the community a few days later by reckless Democrat sanctuary policies that put American lives at risk.”

Notably, their statement offers no justification whatsoever for the use of deadly force. Even if we accept DHS’ framing of Belgal as a dangerous criminal, that is not a legitimate reason for a federal agent to shoot a civilian—let alone to fire indiscriminately at a car with a child onboard. Within a rule-based democracy, prior arrests are not a license for extrajudicial violence.

This, however, is part of the problem. ICE operates as if simply being undocumented or having a criminal record nullifies any legal protections that immigrants are constitutionally afforded. In doing so, they openly violate and betray the very principles they purportedly wish to defend, while simultaneously breaking the very laws they supposedly want to uphold.

The sad reality is that Trump does not need to taunt Iran into attacking American cities—ICE is already doing that.

Importantly, this latest incident comes less than two weeks after DHS announced that ICE had “initiated a nationwide public safety surge in sanctuary cities.” On October 8, the same day Belgal was shot, the Trump administration reportedly launched “Operation Safe California”—a 45-day immigration enforcement surge across the state beginning in San Diego.

While the Trump administration has repeatedly targeted sanctuary cities and policies, these specific efforts are about the midterms. By targeting blue states like New York and California, Trump is hoping to sow enough fear and chaos to suppress Democrat turnout, while rallying Republicans who continue to overwhelmingly support his administration’s immigration policies. This, alongside his attempts to undermine mail-in voting and use a controversial database to check the citizenship status of voters, are part of his administration’s multipronged strategy to remain in power. As Trump himself has noted, if Republicans lose the midterms, he’ll “get impeached.” It is that fear—not public safety or concern for the American people—that is driving this latest round of ICE violence. In the end, Trump only cares about one thing: himself.

Ultimately, ICE must be abolished, but in the short term we must do everything we can to defend our communities against Trump’s armed gestapo and his attempt to steal the midterms. This includes pushing our elected officials to pass and enforce meaningful checks on ICE activities, supporting journalists and media outlets documenting ICE abuses, as well as creating community support networks to help victims of ICE’s brutality.

Yesterday it was Belgal. Three weeks ago, it was Wilber Rafael Garces Perez. Tomorrow, it could be any one of us. For everyone’s sake, we must put an end to ICE’s violence once and for all.

For the third week in a row, high school students across France are taking to the streets demanding more investment in their education. They want more teachers, smaller classes, decent school buildings, and a public education system that works for poor and working-class students.

But their struggle comes at a moment when France faces mounting pressure to cut public spending while dramatically increasing its military budget. The question at the heart of this uprising goes far beyond education: Will France invest in its young people—or in missiles, weapons, and war? Books or bombs?

What began in the Paris suburbs has spread to more than a thousand schools. On October 6, more than 250,000 people reportedly took to the streets in demonstrations supporting the students.

An entire generation is being asked to accept austerity while Europe embarks on one of its largest military buildups since the Cold War.

The government's response has only deepened the anger. Instead of addressing students' demands, authorities have unleashed riot police, tear gas, grenades, and mass arrests. More than 6,500 people have reportedly been arrested since the protests began, most of them minors. Some young protesters have suffered horrific injuries, including a 15-year-old who lost his hand after a police grenade exploded. Amnesty International has condemned what it calls the "disproportionate" use of force against young people peacefully demanding their right to education.

The contrast is striking: Students are asking for teachers and decent schools, while the government deploys riot police against them—and finds billions more for its military.

The student movement is unfolding just as NATO is pressuring European governments to massively increase military spending. Under intense pressure from Washington, NATO leaders agreed in 2025 to a staggering new target: 5% of each member country's GDP by 2035. At least 3.5% is supposed to go directly to military expenditures, with another 1.5% devoted to military-related infrastructure, cybersecurity, and "resilience."

This represents an enormous shift from NATO's previous 2% target, which many members already struggled to meet. For countries facing growing deficits, heavy debt, and deteriorating public services, such an increase comes at a steep price.

France provides a glaring example. The country has nearly $4 trillion in public debt—roughly 119% of GDP, one of the highest levels in Europe. To tackle its deficit, the government has proposed approximately $48 billion in spending cuts and tax increases, putting already strained public services under even greater pressure.

Yet even as the government demands belt-tightening, its proposed 2027 budget increases military spending by approximately $7.2 billion in a single year, compared with just $1.2 billion more for education. The education budget would also eliminate 1,588 permanent teaching positions.

Imagine being a 16-year-old sitting in an overcrowded classroom, with a leaking ceiling and no regular teacher, hearing that your government cannot afford better schools—but can somehow find billions more for weapons.

France's own fiscal watchdog has pointed out that increases in central government spending are being driven largely by rising interest payments, contributions to the European Union, and increased military expenditures.

NATO officials insist that this massive military buildup is necessary to protect Europe from Russia and other threats. But the notion that Russia is poised to invade France is absurd, and the push for ever-greater military spending raises a fundamental question: What kind of security is the French government actually providing if their schools, hospitals, and other public services are left to deteriorate?

France is not alone. Students and teachers in Belgium, Spain, and Portugal have also taken to the streets over education funding and working conditions, reflecting growing frustration across Europe with governments that claim there is not enough money for basic public services.

An entire generation is being asked to accept austerity while Europe embarks on one of its largest military buildups since the Cold War. Political leaders may insist that education and military spending are separate issues. But they compete for the same limited public resources.

And some French students are already making that connection themselves. Protest signs have declared, "Money for schools, not war" and "Fund high schools, not genocide," linking their immediate demands to the broader question of what—and whom—the government chooses to fund.

These young people are challenging the very definition of security. NATO measures security in tanks, missiles, drones, and ammunition. The students are demanding another kind of security: decent schools, equal opportunity, and a society that invests in their future instead of sacrificing it to an endless arms buildup.

Their demands should resonate throughout the NATO alliance, including in the United States, where public services are under attack while President Donald Trump seeks a staggering 54% increase in the military budget.

That's why CODEPINK and allied groups are organizing a Taxpayer Uprising in Washington, DC, November 10-12, bringing people into the halls of Congress to demand a fundamental reorientation of our national priorities. Instead of funneling ever more tax dollars into war and weapons manufacturers, our government should invest in healthcare, education, affordable housing, green energy, and a sustainable future.

From the classrooms of France to the halls of Congress, the question is the same: Will our governments invest in life—or in war? Books or bombs?

House Democrats can stand with college athletes, or they can help Donald Trump score a win at those athletes' expense. There isn't much middle ground here.

The Senate has passed the Protect College Sports Act, a bill that would make it harder for college athletes to set the terms of their own endorsement deals. Now the president wants Congress to put it on his desk.

Democrats should say no. Passing it hands him a win and gives powerful schools even more control over the young people whose labor keeps college sports running in the first place.

There's still time for Democrats to hold out for a better bill. They should keep the scholarship and health protections, protect women's and Olympic sports, and give athletes real bargaining rights and a way to fight unfair restrictions.

In its September 28 statement, the White House cast Trump as a champion of college athletes and pushed lawmakers to bring stability to the system. It's a tidy story. Democrats ought to ask the obvious follow-up, though. Stability for whom?

For decades, college sports ran on the idea of amateurism. The rivalries got the headlines, and players were told they were out there for the love of the game. Funny how that love never kept the schools from cashing in. By 1952, college football was already a TV property. That year, NBC paid the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) $1.14 million for the rights to broadcast one game a week.

Then came 1984, when individual schools and conferences won the right to cut their own TV deals, and the value went through the roof. That's a big part of how college sports grew into the multibillion-dollar business it is today. Schools and conferences fought each other for TV money, all while capping what the athletes bringing in that money could make. Nobody turned on the TV to watch an athletic director. They tuned in for the players.

A lot of the athletes shut out of that money came from families without much wealth to pass down. Black athletes, in particular, filled the rosters of the football and basketball programs that drew the biggest TV checks. Colleges and networks made money off every game, yet the players couldn't earn a dime from their own names or faces. Their work built wealth for just about everyone but them.

That began to change in 2021, when the Supreme Court ruled in NCAA v. Alston that the NCAA couldn't cap certain education-related benefits for athletes. Days later, state name, image, and likeness (NIL) laws took effect, and the NCAA set aside the rules that had kept athletes from profiting off their names, images, and likenesses. For the first time, a player could get paid for an endorsement or a video game appearance and still keep their eligibility.

To Democrats, this ought to read as a labor fight, plain and simple. Athletes finally got some room to negotiate what their names and talents are worth. Coaches, networks, and universities have been doing that forever. Yes, a scholarship is worth something. So is the work of the person who earns it. We can't champion workers' bargaining power in every other industry and then act like it's a problem once it shows up on a football field.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who has spent years preaching about free markets, is now one of the people leading the charge to limit what athletes can earn. So I guess competition only becomes a crisis when the young people doing the work finally have some leverage over the schools paying them. Nick Saban insisted last month that player pay and coach pay are "totally different markets," but when the Senate had a chance to cap coaches' salaries, that amendment failed, so apparently the only market that needs a ceiling is the one where the players get paid.

Congress has no business giving schools more power over the terms of players' endorsement deals. Athletes deserve protections, and they shouldn't have to give up their leverage to get them.

Collective bargaining belongs at the center of this fight. Athletes need to be able to negotiate as a group over pay, working conditions, and medical care for injuries that can stick with them for years after their eligibility runs out. Giving them a seat on some committee doesn't come close. Democrats should insist on a bargaining framework with real teeth, not punt the question to some future commission.

For Black athletes, the stakes are even higher. An NIL deal might cover a family's bills, chip away at debt, or start a savings account. Cap what players can earn or where they can go, and you shrink those chances during a career that's short to begin with. The NAACP has opposed this legislation, warning that it puts institutional interests ahead of athletes' economic rights. Democrats would be smart to listen.

And now Trump wants his name on it. Why would Democrats help him market limits on athletes' bargaining power as a win for the same people those limits hold back? We tell voters we'll fight for workers and help Black families build wealth. We should remember that when rich universities and conferences show up asking for protection.

There's still time for Democrats to hold out for a better bill. They should keep the scholarship and health protections, protect women's and Olympic sports, and give athletes real bargaining rights and a way to fight unfair restrictions. What they shouldn't do is give Trump a win paid for with Black athletes' economic freedom. The people doing the work have earned a win of their own.

Looking across the devastated landscape of the Gaza Strip, where surviving generations now carry the permanent physical and psychological scars of war, the ultimate indictment of our era is damning: The world watched the horror unfold in real time, possessed all the legal, political, and institutional mechanisms to stop it, and did nothing.

For months, then years, the catastrophe in Gaza tested the fabric of international law, the integrity of global governance, and the moral conscience of humanity. From the halls of the United Nations to the high courts of The Hague, what followed was not information failure, but a shameful surrender of political and moral will.

Rarely does history deliver such swift and scathing hindsight. Three years after October 7, 2023, the real horror of Gaza is that this barbarity was never hidden; it was broadcast live in high definition to a global audience that watched, debated, proceduralized, and allowed it to continue.

There was never any doubt about the genocide, nor a dearth of international laws to end it. Instead, the failure lies entirely with Western institutional gatekeepers who have lacked the courage to act.

Israel’s war on Palestinians continues uninterrupted. Despite having the influence to halt the crisis, major international powers have not intervened, allowing the regime and its colonizers to increase their violence across both Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

As time lifts the fog of war, the systemic breakdown of global institutions and governments becomes unmistakably apparent. The world failed to stop the genocide in Gaza not because it lacked awareness or warning. It faltered because the “rules-based” international order (aka Western order) is structurally and morally bankrupt, paralyzed by complicity, cowardice, and double standards.

The war exposed international humanitarian law as a selective tool of the West—applied swiftly to some, but suspended when it inconveniences the powerful. Governments that traditionally postured as champions of human rights have prioritized strategic alignments over universal legal and humanitarian obligations.

During the initial months of the onslaught, as the number killed rose into the tens of thousands and entire neighborhoods were flattened with their residents inside, global diplomats did what they do best: Use bureaucratic delays to stall for time.

While hospitals were besieged and children underwent amputations without anesthesia, on blood-soaked floors, the UN Security Council degenerated into a theater of deadlock. The world’s premier body for collective security rendered global consensus impotent and buckled under superpower threats.

Repeated resolutions calling for an immediate ceasefire were either vetoed or watered down into toothless rhetoric. Meanwhile, international courts meticulously deliberated over the legal nuances of genocide while graves multiplied and atrocities continued uninterrupted.

Today, as the International Court of Justice unhurriedly considers its final ruling on South Africa’s 2023 genocide case against Israel, tangible memories of Palestine are being erased; centuries of history, culture, and ancestral lineages are being obliterated. For Palestine, justice delayed is not justice denied; it is genocide completed.

Three years of impunity, of unprosecuted genocide, reveal that the value of human life is being measured on a sliding scale; that it is weighed based on race, geography, and political utility.

In retrospect, these procedural and administrative delays look less like structural gridlock and more like an active cover-up. Every month spent debating the semantics of humanitarian corridors or compliance with international law gave carte blanche to Israel’s military onslaught.

The harshest criticism of the last three years falls on Western powers. Governments that never tire of lecturing the world on human rights, rules-based order, and international jurisprudence performed moral gymnastics to justify the unjustifiable.

We watched as world leaders converged on Israel with blank checks of allegiance, supplying an uninterrupted stream of munitions that reduced universities, schools, hospitals, markets, bookstores, bakeries, places of worship, and apartment blocks to rubble.

While publicly wringing their hands, in private, these same leaders approved the weapon shipments. And, in a cruel theatrical act of humanitarian absolution, they authorized the aerial dropping of meager sacks of flour into the very zones in Gaza they helped leave in ruins.

Failure was not restricted to the halls of power; the entire mainstream media landscape failed alongside it. For months, reporters on the ground in Gaza—those who were not among the hundreds systematically targeted and killed—fought to pierce a wall of severe censorship and dehumanization.

In the West, corporate media tied itself in knots trying to sanitize language in order to obscure Israel’s direct responsibility for the ongoing violence. Outlets downplayed Palestinian deaths by using passive language like "died" to treat mass casualties as collateral damage, all while elevating voices that defended the legitimacy of the war.

The public response, however, revealed a deeper fracture. Millions marched in cities worldwide, launching one of the largest sustained anti-war mobilizations in a generation. Yet, the disconnect between the governed and the governing remained absolute. Western democracies proved entirely immune to the moral demands of their own citizens.

The silence of the last three years has been deafening. There was never any doubt about the genocide, nor a dearth of international laws to end it. Instead, the failure lies entirely with Western institutional gatekeepers who have lacked the courage to act.

Allowing genocide to go unpunished creates a dangerous precedent for global security. If international law and justice are buried in the rubble of Gaza, the global community will ultimately be digging its own grave.

In Guaíba, in southern Brazil, the effects of CMPC’s pulp mill enter people’s homes. Residents living nearby describe a rotten-egg smell from reduced sulfur compounds that irritates the eyes and nose and causes headaches and nausea. They live with noise and powerful vibrations, in some areas around the clock. Residents report cracks in their homes and disrupted sleep while sawdust and even foam from the mill’s effluent treatment plant fall on their houses. Soot and dust cover laundry hanging on clotheslines and cars parked in driveways, making it standard practice for the company to pay for the washing of neighborhood vehicles.

And then there are the accidents.

Workers have suffered poisoning and injuries, including fatal incidents. Chlorine leaks have affected residents living nearby, while communities still do not have an adequate emergency plan for a major accident.

Now CMPC Wants to Build Another Pulp Mill

Chilean pulp and paper company and monoculture tree plantation CMPC plans to build the so-called Natureza Project in Barra do Ribeiro, Rio Grande do Sul. The project isn’t simply a factory. It encompasses the expansion of massive eucalyptus monoculture plantations, roads, port infrastructure, dredging, transmission lines, and increased transportation, with production projected at millions of metric ton of pulp annually.

Indigenous and environmental organisations therefore question why the territorial, social, water-related, and ecological impacts of this tree monoculture expansion are not fully incorporated into the project’s assessment process.

And this is all happening as the industry continues to utilize an intense corporate lobby, leading to serious legal setbacks in corporate environmental regulation at the state and national levels. In 2023, environmental zoning regulations for forestry in Rio Grande do Sul were relaxed, allowing for the expansion of plantations from 1.2 million hectares to 4 million. And in 2024, forestry was excluded from the list of potentially polluting activities that consume environmental resources in Brazil, exempting tree monocultures from any type of environmental permit.

CMPC also actively greenwashes their activities, going as far as to fund local football tournaments. We see this as a broader scheme by corporations to mitigate pushback against their operations.

The Impact Assessment Can’t Stop at the Pulp Mill

The proposed mill would discharge industrial effluent into Lake Guaíba, a crucial water body near Porto Alegre and other municipalities with a population of around 1.3 million people. Among the issues raised publicly are water quality; cumulative effects on a watershed already under pressure; and impacts related to dredging and navigation, mining, and the discharge of wastewater and industrial effluents (including those from the company’s existing factory). The volume of water consumed by the company and the pollutants discharged into Lake Guaíba would be equivalent to the water consumption and wastewater production of the entire population of the region. Possible contaminants include dioxins, extremely toxic chemical compounds that can enter the food chain and reach humans through the consumption of fish.

Lake Guaíba also supports fishing communities, contributes to drinking-water supplies, and is already under enormous ecological pressure. Asking whether a new factory complies with the technical conditions of a permit is therefore a narrower question than asking whether the entire corporate project is compatible with the rights of the people and ecosystems that are forced to absorb its consequences.

The Natureza Project presents a practical test for a global principle: Corporate human rights regulation must reflect the reality of corporate power.

The Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office says at least eight Mbyá Guarani villages fall within the project’s direct area of influence and 18 within its indirect area. As a result, its recommendations stress that consultation under International Labor Organization Convention 169 cannot be replaced by informal meetings or an Indigenous component study. Consultation must be free, prior, and informed and must respect the communities’ own protocols and decision-making processes. But the struggle goes beyond the consultation; it is about ensuring that communities have the right to say NO to the project.

That distinction is fundamental. Consultation is not a box to tick after the project has effectively been decided.

The proposed mill is also inseparable from a longer history. CMPC has been linked to the Laja-San Rosendo massacre, in which 19 people were murdered following Augusto Pinochet’s military coup. In 2021, the Concepción Court of Appeals convicted a former CMPC employee as an accomplice in the killings, finding coordination between state agents and company personnel. That history underscores why corporate accountability cannot be reduced to whether a company publishes sustainability reports or complies with a narrow administrative procedure.

The UN Binding Treaty

The proposed legally binding instrument is intended to address precisely the gaps that arise when corporate impacts cross borders, jurisdictions, and stages of production. A meaningful treaty should require companies to identify, prevent, mitigate, and address human rights risks associated with the entire chain of activities under its control or linked to its project.

For a project like Natureza, that would mean assessing the mill alongside plantations, roads, ports, dredging, water use, emissions, and affected communities. It would mean treating Indigenous consultation as a substantive right rather than a procedural obstacle. It would mean ensuring access to information, participation, justice, and effective remedy.

Most importantly, it would clarify that responsibility cannot disappear simply because an impact occurs several steps away from the factory itself. That is the accountability gap the UN negotiations must confront.

The Natureza Project presents a practical test for a global principle: Corporate human rights regulation must reflect the reality of corporate power.

If a company’s business model transforms land, water, livelihoods, and Indigenous territories across an entire region, then the law must be capable of seeing that whole picture.

Anything less leaves the people bearing the consequences to carry the burden of a business model they never designed.

As we approach the midterm elections, our country's most prominent voting concerns are back on the frontline. The US is experiencing historically high voter turnouts, yet voters are expressing record levels of dissatisfaction. Perhaps it is because one of the most salient topics across party lines is missing from the conversation: campaign finance reform.

The upcoming midterm election cycle is projected to be the most expensive in American history. Analysis by The New York Times found that 20 donors have already spent $1.2 billion on this year's campaigns to push candidates in battleground states and integrate corporate agendas into public policy. Special interest groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and Musk’s America PAC are spending big to elect allies friendly to their political and economic interests. Not only do AI groups fund candidates, but increasingly dishonest and weird deepfake AI videos circulate online. Further analysis by Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) Action Fund found that 172 billionaire families spent $1.7 billion. Over $1 billion in untraceable dark money is corrupting American democracy.

Americans are unhappy with the state of campaign finance in the US. But how did we end up here? In 1976, the Supreme Court’s Buckley v. Valeo paved the way for campaign finance laws by equating campaign donations to “free speech,” protected as a First Amendment right. In, 2010, the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. FEC ruling enabled the creation of “super PACs,” allowing unlimited corporate donations beyond the previous $5,000 limit. As a result, US elections are dominated by corporate interests and lobbyists, increasing the cost and accessibility of running for office.

The For Our Freedom Amendment is here, and campaign spending limits are not far behind.

Several polls confirm Americans’ discontent. Many in both parties and in all regions of the country have lost faith in our system, feeling elected officials cater to lobbyists rather than constituents. Nearly 80% of voters believe big donations are linked to corruption, while merely 4% of American voters believe the United States’ current political system works well. This pattern is similarly present in congressional elections;8 out of every 10 adults in the US believe that people who donate money to political campaigns have too much of an influence over congressional decisions.

However, while many remain dissatisfied with the state of campaign finance, large majorities are optimistic about reform. Approximately 60% of Americans believe in the possibility of adopting laws that limit spending on political campaigns. An even greater majority desire doing so, with 72% of Americans believing in imposing spending limits on campaigns. All around the country, Americans support enforcing limits by margins of 3-to-1 or even greater.

Although many may be skeptical, wondering how campaign finance reform can take place when unlimited spending is protected under the First Amendment, change is already underway. The pathway lies in the very foundation of the American democratic system: the United States’ Constitution. Supermajorities up to 80% across the country support an amendment to limit campaign spending. Already, the cross-partisan nonprofit American Promise has drafted and is proposing the amendment.

The For Our Freedom Amendment was developed meticulously through the collaboration of citizens, lawmakers, and scholars from all parties. Its text gets straight to the point: It empowers the government by granting it constitutional authority to enforce campaign spending limits. The full text of the amendment is as follows:

Section 1. We the People have compelling sovereign interests in the freedom of speech, representative self-government, federalism, the integrity of the electoral process, and the political equality of natural persons.

Section 2. Nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to forbid Congress or the States, within their respective jurisdictions, from reasonably regulating and limiting contributions and spending in campaigns, elections, or ballot measures.

Section 3. Congress and the States shall have the power to implement and enforce this article by appropriate legislation and may distinguish between natural persons and artificial entities, including by prohibiting artificial entities from raising and spending money in campaigns, elections, or ballot measures.

Its concise and clear language makes it accessible to the average American. It conveys a refreshing honesty and constituent-first sentiment recently missing from political debate, placing it at the heart of political and individual dignity.

Not only is it drafted, but support for the amendment is significant. Twenty-three states have passed official resolutions calling on Congress, meaning it has garnered nearly half of the three-quarters majority required for Congress to propose the amendment.

While a constitutional amendment may feel beyond reach, we must keep constitutional change at the forefront of our political imagination. The seeds of reform have already been planted by the electorate. Electing proactive candidates enables conversations and reform in Congress. Rep. Tom Barrett (R-Mich.) proposed the House Joint Resolution 191, Constitutional Campaign Finance Reform Amendment, in collaboration with American Promise. With this, Rep. Barrett expressed unwavering American democratic spirit, and this is just the beginning.

It is now our job as citizens in this election cycle to keep the pressure on, which means greater voter participation. Congressional leaders are in charge of the Committee on Appropriations, which oversees and enforces campaign finance laws. Participating in the election of competent leaders can lead to higher standards of regulation; but beyond that, it may very well be a key stepping stone on the road to ratification.

Unequivocally, the facts do not lie: Americans want change. So, call your friends and family, or chat with your neighbors, and let them know: The For Our Freedom Amendment is here, and campaign spending limits are not far behind. We can make this happen

Washington’s political discourse on the war with Iran took a revealing turn during President Donald Trump’s recent campaign remarks. Having originally sold the confrontation as a rapid, low-cost campaign destined to conclude within weeks, the administration abruptly reset its threshold of acceptable sacrifice. Trump declared that even if Iranian retaliatory strikes were to “take out” Los Angeles or San Diego, such catastrophic damage would remain “a small price” for American security. While the remarks drew immediate backlash across California leadership, the strategic implication runs far deeper. It marks the collapse of the Pentagon’s short-war doctrine, signaling that the conflict’s costs have migrated from West Asia directly to the American homeland.

At the onset of hostilities, the White House’s logic rested on absolute military preeminence. Superior firepower was supposed to impose a swift resolution, sparing Washington an attritional quagmire. But as weeks turned into months, the gap between promise and operational reality became unbridgeable. Rather than compelling capitulation, Washington met Iran’s resilient deterrence and asymmetric depth. Instead of seeing military burdens recede, the administration must now explain to voters why they must shoulder costs never accounted for in initial war plans.

Hawks defend this shift by claiming that conditioning the public for pain signals resolve and escalation dominance. Yet this justification collapses under scrutiny. Effective deterrence requires achievable political aims, not normalizing homeland destruction to obscure planning failures. Far from projecting strength, accepting strikes on major domestic metropolises reveals an inability to dictate terms militarily. It is the posture of an overextended power that has lost escalation control and is retroactively negotiating the price of strategic deadlock with its own electorate.

Dismissing devastation to these hubs as a “small price” reveals the transactional ethos of the ruling elite: Ordinary citizens and domestic infrastructure are treated as war livestock—herded to absorb the fallout of elite adventurism while their safety is traded away for unattainable geopolitical goals.

The dismissal of potential damage to California brings this cynicism into sharp relief. Los Angeles and San Diego are not incidental collateral; they anchor America’s defense architecture. San Diego serves as the premier home port of the Pacific Fleet Surface Navy, housing dozens of combatants and major Marine Corps installations, while Los Angeles anchors the nation’s primary aerospace and defense manufacturing cluster. Dismissing devastation to these hubs as a “small price” reveals the transactional ethos of the ruling elite: Ordinary citizens and domestic infrastructure are treated as war livestock—herded to absorb the fallout of elite adventurism while their safety is traded away for unattainable geopolitical goals.

This domestic vulnerability mirrors Washington’s strategic miscalculation in the Strait of Hormuz. Planners envisioned the waterway as a pressure point where naval coercion would rapidly force compliance. Instead, it became an economic trap. Protracted uncertainty across maritime routes, compounded by crisis-level war-risk insurance surcharges—premiums have surged from 0.10-0.25% of hull and machinery value pre-conflict to 3.5-7.5% per transit—and severe disruptions documented in the US Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) assessments of vital transit chokepoints, turned a tactical blitz into structural inflation. The EIA assumes the strait will remain effectively closed through late May before traffic gradually resumes. The very levers intended to force a rapid settlement have prolonged the conflict, imposing compounding penalties on American consumers.

The crisis extends beyond an elongated timeline; the political logic of the war has been inverted. Initially, military force was justified as a way to avert protracted costs. Today, that framework has become an exercise in retroactive justification. When the White House argues that metropolitan destruction is acceptable against abstract security objectives, the debate ceases to be about preventing the burdens of conflict. It becomes about forcing citizens to accept homeland vulnerability as the price of foreign policy failure.

The central question is no longer simply when Trump can announce that the war is over. The more important question is whether he can explain to the American public the gap between the promise of a “two-week war” and the reality of a protracted crisis. A war that was supposed to end with a rapid victory has instead become a conflict whose continuation requires explanations about fuel prices, the Strait of Hormuz, and even the security of American cities.

This shift exposes an irreconcilable contradiction in official messaging. Trump insists the conflict will end “very soon,” yet simultaneously prepares the public for catastrophic domestic losses. If the war were genuinely nearing a favorable conclusion, preparing the homeland for devastation would be irrational. If the destruction of major cities is a realistic possibility, the promise of a swift, contained campaign was fundamentally illusory. Washington cannot maintain both assertions: one is a fiction, the other an admission of failure.

Where did the two-week war go? The answer lies in Washington’s altered vocabulary: from promising minimal costs to declaring destruction at the heart of America tolerable. When leadership stops preventing the burdens of conflict and instead demands that citizens absorb them at home, the illusion of hegemonic control shatters. The two-week war collapsed against strategic overreach, leaving an administration trying to sell the sacrifice of its own cities as an acceptable price of power.

In much of the country, there is an enormous vacuum for working people seeking political representation. In 2024, 132 Republican House victories were by 25 percentage points or more.

In nine Great Plains and central states—Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Iowa, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, and Idaho—Democrats did not even field candidates in approximately 40 percent of the roughly 1,400 state legislative races, according to my own rough count.

Here’s what one 2026 projection looks like:

The above map shows all too clearly that in vast areas of the country working-class voters have no realistic alternative-party representation—the Republican is the only viable major-party choice, while the Democratic Party has largely abandoned many of these races.

But nature, as well as politics, abhors a vacuum, which is why we’re starting to see the emergence of progressive populist independents trying to take hold in this desert.

Here are a few worth noting:

Dan Osborn, a mechanic, Navy veteran, and former labor union president, is running for US Senate in Nebraska against incumbent Republican Pete Ricketts, the former governor and son of billionaire Joe Ricketts. Osborn came within seven points of defeating Republican Sen. Deb Fischer in 2024, running 16 points ahead of Kamala Harris, and the 2026 race has again attracted national attention.

The current polling picture is close. The average of three recent Nebraska polls has Ricketts at 46.3 percent and Osborn at 44.7 percent, within the margin of error, with a substantial share of voters undecided or supporting other candidates. The latest polls that meet the New York Times criteria for worthiness show Osborn slightly ahead, a virtual toss-up pitting an incumbent Republican with deep pockets against an independent.

We can expect an inordinate amount of money to flood into the race to attack Osborn. A Republican super PAC has already put more than $3 million into advertising targeting him.

Osborn is running on his Nebraska Growth & Fairness Plan, which he says is “not a party’s platform or written by consultants. It’s written for the people who punch a clock and wonder why nobody in Washington is fighting for them.”

He explicitly disavows a connection to the Democratic Party, though the Republicans try to link the two at every turn.

If Osborn can overcome the Republican financial advantage, it would be an enormous boost to working-class candidates who have given up on the Democrats.

Unfortunately, Osborn faces the fallout from a leaked audio recording in which he made disparaging remarks about some of Trump’s voters. The recording was obtained by the Omaha World-Herald, and Osborn subsequently said that the voice “sure sounds like me” and apologized for the remarks.

He was recorded saying:

“Billy Bob in f—— Red Cloud, Nebraska, who lives next to the f—— Trump store as you pull into town and is waving the flag, all he knows is that he’s on the winning team. (Trump has) been so effective at taking Billy Bob and his wife Mary Jane or Mary Jo and telling them … you’re on the winning team. And that’s all they care about, because their lives probably suck so f—— bad.”

November will tell us whether his campaign against the two parties can overcome both the Republican financial advantage and the political damage from his choice of words.

Todd Achilles is running as an independent for US Senate in Idaho. He says:

“The two-party system has failed America. Both parties increase the national debt, keep us in endless wars, and favor big corporations, harming our families in the process…I reject the left-right divide because the challenge ahead of us is those at the top versus those at the bottom — those in power against the people. I will fight for all Idahoans, not billionaires or extremists.”

Achilles, a former Democratic member of the Idaho House of Representatives, is not a traditional working-class candidate. He is an Army veteran and technology executive who is running on a populist, anti-corporate platform.

The polling picture in Idaho is complicated. Recent surveys have produced very different results depending on the sample and whether voters are shown a two-candidate or multi-candidate race. One recent rather optimistic average of polls shows Achilles trailing by about 3 to 5 percent.

Whatever the polling, Idaho remains an overwhelmingly Republican state: Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris there by 36.5 percentage points in 2024, winning 66.9 percent to Harris’s 30.4 percent.

Brian Bengs, a US Navy and Air Force veteran, former JAG officer, and lawyer, is running as an independent for the US Senate from South Dakota. In 2022, he ran for Senate as a Democrat and lost by more than 40 points. He’s running as a member of the Independent Veterans of America.

He is attacking the billionaire class:

“who buy politicians to rig the system so they can pay a lower tax rate than their secretaries & condition us to see only through red or blue-colored glasses disguising how they pick our pockets.”

His campaign’s current platform indeed emphasizes getting big money out of politics, eliminating corruption, banning congressional stock trading, unrigging the tax code, and reducing the national debt.

Like Achilles, Bengs faces a formidable Republican political environment. Trump carried South Dakota by 29.2 percentage points in 2024.

Bill Hill, a commercial fisherman, construction worker, teacher, principal, and former superintendent, is running as an independent for Alaska’s sole congressional seat. He spent more than two decades in education and was named Alaska Superintendent of the Year in 2023.

Hill is calling for:

“a total ban on congressional stock trading. Billionaires and corporations need to pay their share like the rest of us. And we need to get big money out of our elections…I’m a lifelong independent running to do what’s right by Alaskans, not what’s right by billionaires, corporations, or party bosses in DC.”

Political analysts repeatedly warn that third-party candidates can serve as spoilers, potentially helping the candidate they least support. But Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system makes the situation more complicated.

The Democrat, Eric Hafner, remains on the November ballot, along with Republican incumbent Nick Begich, Hill, and Libertarian Jim McDermott. In the latest New York Times/Siena poll, the first-choice results were Begich 47 percent, Hill 35 percent, Hafner 8 percent, and McDermott 5 percent. After ranked-choice tabulation, Begich led Hill 53 percent to 47 percent.

So, in Alaska, the spoiler question is not simply a matter of who finishes ahead in the first round. The ranked-choice system makes the ultimate effect of Hafner’s candidacy dependent on how his supporters’ second choices are distributed.

Candidates Without a Party?

Currently, there is no unified effort to build a party of independents to run in deep-red America. Instead, the effort is largely driven by the candidates themselves. It’s unclear if this will be the best long-term approach.

The word “independent” does fit nicely with the idea of independent candidates, free from any broader party or political organization. But independence has its downside in terms of accumulating and sharing campaign expertise, funding, and building a unified platform.

To find out more about the viability of independent candidates, we will be conducting a new survey of 5,000 voters in red America. One question we will ask respondents is whether a new organization of independents should be formed and what to call it.

Will a New Political Formation Emerge?

The political logic of the Democratic Party’s abandonment of its working class roots, which led to the very red map of America, and the Republican Party’s failure to support workers and their issues while having control of the government, suggests strongly that something new could emerge. There are just too many working people with no political home. But it remains to be seen how this vacuum will be filled—and by whom.

There is some chance that the Democrats, responding to the independents, will address the void by running many more working-class and progressive populist candidates. But the Democratic brand is extremely tarnished.

As John Tester, the former Democratic Montana US Senator, put it in a leaked text attributed to him:

“Every race I ran as Montana Senator and US Senator it was about distancing myself from the Democratic Party…. During my last two races the Democratic Party was poison in my attempts to get re-elected.”

For those of us who want to end MAGA’s grip on national politics this November, let’s hope that an enormous blue (and independent) wave will serve, for now, as the antidote.

For more information, see A Party of Our Own.

The views, analysis, and opinions expressed in this article belong solely to the author. They do not represent the official stance, policy, or position of Berkeley Independent Study, the Berkeley Federation of Teachers, the Berkeley Unified School District, or any affiliated organization.

Colorful, progressive posters fill the walls in Room 202 of Berkeley High School's Independent Study Program. A Rainbow Coalition poster features Fred Hampton with the phrase, "In Unity, there is survival." The Black Panther Party, IWW Local 8, Somos El 99%, Louise Olivereau, Marie Equi, environmental justice, and other progressive causes are represented.

Palestine posters fit in with the milieu of the room. "Berkeley Educators for Palestine," "Stop the Bombing, Free Free Palestine," and "Stop the Israeli-US Genocide in Palestine" are included.

What is uncommon is to bypass teachers and administrators and go straight to a civil rights complaint, unless the complaint is about Palestine, and the people making the complaint are connected to the Brandeis Center.

These posters, along with one titled "Standing with Muslims Against Islamophobia and Racism," resulted in an official complaint filed through the District Civil Rights and Compliance Office of the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD). No teachers or staff were aware of any concerns surrounding the posters until they were contacted by a district-hired attorney.

Jonas LaMattery-Brownell, Berkeley Federation of Teachers (BFT) co-site representative at Berkeley Independent Study (BIS), told me in an interview, "Some colleagues of mine who were most targeted by the investigation were Jewish, and were horrified that support for Palestine was getting weaponized against them and the school."

Public schools are accustomed to resolving issues in-house. It's not uncommon for students to feel discomfort, and for parents to voice their concerns with teachers and administrators. These concerns often result in meaningful discussions and a better educational environment for everyone.

What is uncommon is to bypass teachers and administrators and go straight to a civil rights complaint, unless the complaint is about Palestine, and the people making the complaint are connected to the Brandeis Center.

Antisemitism Charges

Kenneth Marcus, former Trump official and founder of the Brandeis Center, wrote openly about filing “high-profile cases alleging unlawful antisemitic harassment” in "Standing up for Jewish Students" (Jerusalem Post, 2013). Marcus writes, “These cases—even when rejected—expose administrators to bad publicity... The only way to win these cases is to file them, even when we see some or most rejected.”

The Brandeis Center filed a 41-page complaint in 2024 with the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights against BUSD, alleging that “BUSD teachers are using BUSD resources to teach anti-Israel propaganda and promote walkouts demeaning Israelis and calling for the elimination of Jews."

BUSD Superintendent Enikia Ford Morthel testified before Congress that "antisemitism is not pervasive in [the] Berkeley Unified School District" after conducting 12 investigations of complaints filed through the District Civil Rights and Compliance Office. In Berkeleyside, the Berkeley Jewish Parents for Collective Liberation called the Brandeis Center claims "tired, fully investigated, and determined to be baseless."

Liz Jackson, director of K-12 Legal Defense and former senior attorney at Palestine Legal, interviewed multiple witnesses to determine the veracity of the Brandeis Center complaints. Addressing the claim that students during the walkout were screaming "Kill the Jews," Jackson told me in an interview, "I've talked to a lot of students and teachers who were supervising or participating in the walkout and no one can verify that. There was definitely not a chant that was loud that students were chanting in unison. I think it's probably fabricated based on what else they fabricate."

Jackson is aware of about 20 complaints filed over the last two years, all of which involve Palestine. The allegations typically fall into the following categories:

1. True, but not antisemitic;
2. Fabricated; and
3. A grain of truth, but grossly exaggerated.

Jackson states: "They paint a picture by blurring a mix of 1, 2, and 3 to create a picture of rampant, systematic antisemitism. They are manufacturing a curriculum causation theory, which is that teaching about Palestine causes antisemitic bullying."

According to Jackson, the small group of "parents who are pushing this stuff are largely from abundantly resourced, owning class families, while the children who are targeted are largely working class refugees." In 2024, the Brandeis Center tax forms reported $18 million in grants following the Hamas attacks when many official complaints were launched.

The norm is that complaints are filed, usually by parents or external organizations, citing Palestine and claiming antisemitism, then BUSD hires its own attorneys to investigate.

The Palestine posters at BIS were found by BUSD to be one-sided, but not discriminatory, citing insufficient evidence that any student expressed discomfort. The complainants appealed to the California Department of Education (CDE), which overruled the district and found the posters discriminatory, mandating antisemitism training for all BIS staff.

CDE Intervention—Assembly Bill 715

The game-changer is Assembly Bill 715, which passed in October 2025 despite "overwhelming opposition from educators, students, and civil rights advocates," including the American Civil Liberties Union, California Teachers Association, Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, and Jewish Voice For Peace. AB 715 states:

This bill would establish that discriminatory bias in instruction and school-sponsored activities does not require a showing of direct harm to members of a protected group and would not require members of a protected group to be present while the discriminatory bias is occurring for the act to be considered discriminatory bias. If the governing board or body of the local educational agency finds that instruction or school-sponsored activities are discriminatory, as provided, the bill would require corrective action to be taken, as provided.

The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism brought together hundreds of scholars from Holocaust history, Jewish studies, and Middle East studies to provide the following definition of antisemitism: "Antisemitism is discrimination, prejudice, hostility,or violence against Jews as Jews (or Jewish institutions as Jewish)." Additional guidelines include that antisemitism is not "supporting the Palestinian demand for justice and the full grant of their political, national, civil, and human rights, as encapsulated in international law."

According to Mr. LaMattery-Brownell: "It's basic humanity to say that we stand for Palestinian self-determination. Free Palestine is talking about freedom for a people. That's not discrimination. Unless you think that freedom for some people is unfair to everyone else."

CDE Case 2026-0259 found the BIS Palestine posters discriminatory for two reasons

1. Conveying a "pro-Palestinian/Muslim message with no corresponding expression of support for Israel/Jews," ignoring the Holocaust posters mentioned elsewhere in the letter; and
2. Conveying "an anti-Israel/Jewish message referencing 'genocide' in Palestine without any corresponding negative reference to the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023."

The Hamas attack on October 7 took the lives of approximately 1,200 Israelis. Since then, according to the United Nations, the Israeli military has taken the lives of approximately 72,000 Palestinians. There is a 60-fold discrepancy here. The imbalance lies in the facts.

The term "genocide" is explicitly referenced by the CDE as "an anti-Israeli/Jewish message." This assumption is unsubstantiated. Many Jewish students, parents, and staff have spoken out in Berkeley in support of Palestine and against the US and Israeli-led genocide, and over 1,400 Israeli academics signed a petition calling for an end to the war in Gaza in 2024. Critiquing genocide and wars is an act of civic responsibility for all citizens, Israelis and Jewish Americans included.

Following October 7, the Brandeis Center claimed that "Jewish and Israeli students have since been subjected to nonstop antisemitic bullying and harassment by their teachers and peers, in hallways, in classrooms, and in school yards." BUSD investigations have found otherwise. And BUSD teachers have experienced the opposite.

Teacher Harassment

Candiss Youngblood, an art teacher at Berkeley High School (BHS) interviewed for this article, was the subject of five different civil rights complaints. Her offense? She wears a patch, approved by administrators, with a heart and rose that states, "Free Palestine."

Students organized a Grief Circle that Ms. Youngblood participated in following the casualties after October 7. The students made a template poster that read, "My hope for Israel and Palestine," followed by open space to communicate their wishes. The posters were hung up for display at BHS, but "late that night, after hours," Ms. Youngblood reported, "admin went and took them all down." Ms. Youngblood was told that the Grief Circle was a "misuse of district funds."

Investigations and disciplinary action followed. Ms. Youngblood was written up for purchasing art supplies from a dollar store that were never used. Harassment followed as parents accused her of antisemitism in mass emails and students hid behind bushes outside her windows to photograph her classroom. "It was scary to be here," said Ms. Youngblood. "Admin wasn't saying we couldn't wear stuff, but they also weren't preventing any harassment from the community."

Weaponizing support for Palestine as antisemitic is coming not just from extremists trying to control public education, but from the State of California.

Ms. Youngblood was a witness to a complaint issued against the Berkeley High Safety Committee, of which she was a member, because they added a norm to combat white supremacy. According to Ms. Youngblood, ActNowK12.org charged that "we were using that norm as a way to silence their participation in the meetings." ActNowK12.org is a collaboration of California Jewish Grassroots Groups and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) that offers its website as a means to report antisemitism.

Dan Brownson, a BUSD clerical worker and former Berkeley Council of Classified Employees (BCCE) union rep was asked to defend a BUSD staff member investigated for wearing a keffiyeh. Brownson told me in an interview that the complaint was filed by ActNowK12.org, and the investigation revealed that no specific student or parent actually complained. Brownson said: "They asked how it might make an Israeli or Jewish student feel to see the keffiyeh. I said, are we going to go on feelings now?"

Brownson was asked to represent the staff member on account of his own experience fighting spurious claims of antisemitism and dealing with an administrator who yelled at him for refusing to take down a pro-Palestine poster in his cubicle unless the administrator could show him where he was breaking the law, which she could not. Brownson was fired at the end of the year before obtaining a new position.

Mandated Trainings Across California

The ambiguity of the law surrounding an educator's freedom of political speech gives Assembly Bill 715 unprecedented power. Weaponizing support for Palestine as antisemitic is coming not just from extremists trying to control public education, but from the State of California. Appeals of complaints are underway across the state and corrective actions are being widely dispersed.

The entire staff and student body of King Middle School in BUSD were mandated a training on antisemitism by the CDE following a SSWANA (South Asian, Southwest Asian, North African) assembly due to students wearing Palestinian flags; chanting,"Free Palestine"; and excluding Israel from some maps.

District-wide trainings on antisemitism were mandated in the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) after the CDE overturned multiple cases involving a Palestine teach-in, Palestine posters, a Palestine flag without a corresponding Israeli flag, and Arab American Heritage Month materials omitting Israel from some regional maps.

Conflating support for Palestine with antisemitism sets a dangerous precedent that threatens human rights everywhere.

The Sequoia Union High School District settled a federal lawsuit for $325,000 alleging widespread antisemitism including pro-Hamas propaganda from teachers and discriminatory grading; the settlement included mandatory antisemitism training for all staff. Exhibit A of the settlement mentions "the denial of the Jewish people's right to self-defense" under its expanded definition of antisemitism.

Additional lawsuits in BUSD and the Santa Ana Unified School District over ethnic studies curricula that included Palestine cited antisemitism as did accusations against the Mountain View-Los Altos District who terminated a contract with Acosta Educational Partnerships. All high school teachers and administrators in the Manhattan Beach Unified School District (LA County) were mandated antisemitism training after an AP US History teacher posted slides describing the genocide in Gaza.

Trainings on antisemitism have commenced in BUSD and OUSD with more to come. Authentic teachings on antisemitism are welcome in public education, as are factually relevant discussions on Israel-Palestine. But the systematic pattern that has developed within California school districts is alarming: File complaints citing antisemitism whenever schools, educators, or students show support for Palestine, then appeal at the state level to overrule school districts where the CDE intervenes.

Labeling the BIS Palestine posters discriminatory sends a chilling message of censorship against Palestine throughout BUSD. Conflating support for Palestine with antisemitism sets a dangerous precedent that threatens human rights everywhere. Responding to the CDE decisions, Jackson stated, "They're anti-Arab, they're anti-Palestinian, and they violate our free speech rights and rights to learn."

With less than a month before the midterm elections, attempts by President Donald Trump and his administration to keep certain Americans from voting will likely continue.

Voting is how we get an equal say in the decisions that impact our lives, regardless of race, disability, zip code, language, or income. That’s why we need to ensure that every eligible voter can cast their ballot free from fear, intimidation, or unnecessary barriers.

Anti-democratic forces might dominate the headlines, but they have not dominated the outcomes. That’s important.

Our democracy is strongest when voters can fully participate. Our elections are strongest when election officials can do their jobs free from political interference. And our future is strongest when Americans believe that their voice matters.

In the past month, whistleblowers courageously revealed that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may be instructing agents to break laws, and potentially “ensnare eligible voters,” in order to find alleged “proof of mass non-citizen voting—shown in studies to be exceedingly rare,” CNN reports.

In Michigan, an effort to get a “show your papers” measure on the November ballot failed to garner enough signatures. The Department of Justice lost 25 consecutive court cases in their quest to obtain private voter information.

Even the Supreme Court blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to stifle vote-by-mail nationwide by preventing the US Postal Service from implementing a rule that would have disenfranchised millions of voters.

I spent years as a local election official—I can assure you that election administrators nationwide are breathing a collective sigh of relief. The administration’s attempt to rewrite election rules was wrong, and I applaud those state and local officials who rejected political pressure and sued to uphold the law on behalf of voters.

From courtroom victories to successes in state and local communities, these recent wins are not isolated. They are victories for democracy, for the freedom to vote, and for election officials who work tirelessly to make sure our elections run smoothly. They prove democracy can withstand relentless attacks.

And they tell a bigger story: Democracy works when people are willing to defend it by showing up to vote.

Winning for democracy means continuing through the midterms with clear eyes on the multiple attempts to upend the election. These attempts could include deploying federal law enforcement to polling locations and election offices, seizing ballots or voting machines, and further gerrymandering in the future.

From secretaries of state to county clerks in Wisconsin, board of election members in Georgia, supervisors of elections in Florida, and thousands of volunteer poll workers nationwide, election defenders are already working around the clock to protect the freedom to vote. They’re pushing back against demands for our private voter data, resisting federal overreach, safeguarding ballots, and helping voters make plans to vote—whether by mail, drop box, in person during early voting, or at a polling location on Election Day.

This work is not just about ballots and election procedures. It’s about ensuring that every eligible voter can fully participate in our democracy. We cannot sit down. We cannot give up.

As election defenders, voters, and community advocates in this great experiment, we can help ensure free and democratic elections by staying the course. Here’s how:

• Visit your local elections office for voting information. Vote-by-mail remains a reliable way to vote. Early voting remains available. Voters should choose the method that works best for their lives and make a plan to vote as early as possible.
• Promote or participate in upcoming days of action, including National Voter Education Week (October 5-9), Election Hero Day (October 20), and Vote Early Day (October 24).
• Make a plan to vote with your friends and family.

Our democracy is strongest when voters can fully participate. Our elections are strongest when election officials can do their jobs free from political interference. And our future is strongest when Americans believe that their voice matters.

The fight to protect free and democratic elections has always mattered. What happens next is up to us. Let’s keep the momentum going.

A reactionary wave is sweeping Latin America. Since the elections of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro in July 2024 and Uruguay’s Yamandú Orsi in November 2024, all seven of the subsequent direct presidential contests have gone to the right.

The Maduro election is widely assumed by the US-aligned corporate press to have been stolen, although a recently declassified CIA report found no election manipulation. More relevant has been Washington’s role in tipping elections to the right in Colombia, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Peru, and Costa Rica. Most blatant was the Honduran contest in which President Donald Trump pardoned convicted narco-trafficker and former president Juan Orlando Hernández immediately before the election and threatened to cut aid if his candidate lost.

“The Latin American electoral left has reached its limits,” the Peoples Dispatch concludes. If Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva loses the presidential runoff, an orange wave will have inundated the Pink Tide for some time to come.

The New Right

A US-backed reactionary wave of the 1960s-1980s brought the rule of the generals. The current one might be called the reign of the clowns: Colombia’s Abelardo de la Espriella joked about burning cats, Argentina’s Javier Milei communicated with his deceased dog, and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele proclaimed himself the “world’s coolest dictator.”

While the reactionaries of the past posed as nationalists, today’s neo-fascists flaunt their subservience to the White House in what Foreign Policy calls “caudillo courtship.” “Patriotism,” according to Vijay Prashad, “is cast aside for absolute loyalty to Washington and its corporations.”

The US military buildup in the Caribbean surrounding Venezuela has been accompanied by an aggressive penetration into the entire region.

Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez helped initiate regional alliances for Latin American integration and autonomy that deliberately excluded the US and Canada. ALBA and CELAC have survived, though much reduced; UNASUR and Petrocaribe have largely withered. Capitalizing on their decline, Washington has constructed the Shield of the Americas, a hemispheric bloc designed to reintegrate the region into a US-centered political and security architecture.

The US military buildup in the Caribbean surrounding Venezuela has been accompanied by an aggressive penetration into the entire region. The Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere is integrating military capabilities of 17 partner nations with those of the US in the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition.

Decapitation Strike

For a quarter century, the US tried to overthrow the Bolivarian Revolution. The campaign further escalated with the imposition of an oil blockade last December. And still the Venezuelans resisted. Then on January 3, Washington kidnapped Venezuela’s President Maduro and his wife, National Assembly delegate Cilia Flores, leaving over 100 dead. The attack demonstrated, especially to Venezuelans, that Washington could act with impunity.

With a war on Iran looming, the US needed to reassure international oil markets to keep prices down at the gas pump. Maduro had repeatedly offered to negotiate with Washington and even update the hydrocarbon law. The US had demonized Maduro as a narco-terrorist, providing a pretext for abducting the lawful president while leaving intact much of the Chavista system that emerged from the Bolivarian Revolution led by Hugo Chávez.

Washington possibly reasoned that removing Maduro while compelling the existing state to accommodate intervention was more workable than destroying Chavismo and attempting regime change from scratch.

Vice President Delcy Rodríguez was sworn in as acting president. The Chavista party, legislature, judiciary, military, and grassroots organizations united behind her and continue to do so. Venezuela’s access to oil markets and thus its hope for economic recovery and national development was restored, but at a terrific price.

In the face of overwhelming force, Venezuela has been forced into an unprecedented negotiated sovereignty. Washington determines the boundaries within which Venezuela can bargain, although Caracas retains some agency within those boundaries.

Sentiment on the Street

Venezuelans feel alone, a sentiment communicated to me in a February visit and subsequent correspondence. Even some critical voices recognize “the continuing capacity of US imperialism to impose its will when no countervailing power exists, and without new political breakthroughs internationally to come to Venezuela’s aid.”

Venezuelans, regardless of political affiliation in a highly polarized country, feel under attack. They believe, with good reason, that the US could come back at any time with ever more devastating force. The metaphor of a “gun to the head” is a lived reality. Every week or so, a small boat is capriciously incinerated in the eastern Pacific or the Caribbean.

Some online leftists living in the imperial core call Rodríguez “cowardly”—substituting moralism for political analysis. But the “gun” was pointed not just at the leadership but at the whole country: the threat of an asphyxiating blockade, a large-scale invasion, a far-right government, and a bloodbath for Chavistas.

The key is understanding the problem as regional and the solution as uniting against the same enemy. The common denominator is the enormous leverage exercised by US imperial power.

Venezuelans also want peace. While militant currents exist, particularly in some of the more successful communes, there is no appetite for confrontation with the hegemon. The consensus after 26 years of US siege and 11 years of suffocating sanctions is a desire for reconciliation and economic recovery.

The Caracas Chronicles describes the current fatigue in Venezuela: “The timeline for economic relief is slipping away, while the timeline for public demand is accelerating,” resulting in “an exhausted society that has watched both the revolutionary narrative and promises of a swift transition collapse.”

The Oil Deal

The so-called oil deal became a lightning rod for mounting discontent, all the more so because neither Venezuela nor the US released the details; anyone could read anything into it. The long-hostile international corporate press took false umbrage that the Chavistas weren’t Chavista enough.

Everyone found fault, but practically no one discussed what Venezuela’s development path should be. It is easier to criticize the Chavista leadership than to consider a possible economic solution. Nor were comparisons made to other regional oil development agreements.

Venezuela does not have the capacity or investment to undertake major oil projects by itself.

Closer investigation would have shown that the Rodríguez government required negotiations, resisted company demands, and imposed fiscal and operational conditions. In fact, US oil companies complained that the conditions they were getting in Venezuela were too onerous.

But Venezuela did not negotiate from anything approaching equality with a hegemon that controlled sanctions licenses and much of the oil-sales revenue flow. Yet asymmetric bargaining is still bargaining. To think otherwise is to deny agency to the Venezuelans.

“Venezuelan Exceptionalism”

Most left-leaning folks see through American Exceptionalism. Yet a reverse corollary has lately been circulating: that among Latin American states there is something singularly wrong in Venezuela. The danger of “Venezuelan Exceptionalism” is that it downplays a united struggle against US imperialism and undermines building a common defense.

Some online leftists counterpose Cuba’s heroic resistance to Venezuela’s supposedly shameful capitulation. Whatever truth there may be in such a characterization, it obscures important realities. Washington never offered socialist Cuba—whose former ruling and propertied classes had largely left—the option of a negotiated soft landing. Further, holding Cuba’s resistance up against Venezuela is just half of the equation. The other half is the dire condition of the Cuban people under US blockade. Who wishes that on Venezuela?

The situation in Venezuela highlights what the Venezuelans have been telling us in the imperial core: Their predicament is a result of our failure to curb our own imperialists. The periphery will not free the core.

Cuba and Venezuela are particularly intense expressions of a regional struggle for sovereignty in a hemisphere where the US remains the predominant power. The central regional divide is not between governments that make compromises and those that do not. Virtually every Latin American government makes accommodations to international capital.

The key is understanding the problem as regional and the solution as uniting against the same enemy. The common denominator is the enormous leverage exercised by US imperial power.

Has the Bolivarian Revolution Retreated or Been Betrayed?

The Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), among others, concludes that the Chavista leadership has gone from tactical retreat to strategic realignment. PSL points to troubling developments such as the deportation of Alex Saab and the opening of consular relations with Israel.

Whether the retreat over the last 10 months has gone so far that it no longer allows for a reversal remains unresolved. Given incomplete knowledge, however, the greater danger is reaching a premature conclusion rather than erring on the side of Rodríguez’s counsel for “prudence and strategic patience.”

We should not compare the Venezuelan present to a socialist ideal, but to the alternatives actually available under the present balance of forces—including the possibility of a fascist future.

Whether the current forced retreat ultimately proves tactical or strategic remains an important question for Venezuelans and their revolution. But for internationalists, that uncertainty does not change the immediate tasks.

The Tasks Remain the Same

Agreement on the character of the Rodríguez government is not a prerequisite for common action against US imperialism. Debate entails disagreements, sometimes sharp ones. But declaring others outside the movement because they differ over how to assess developments in Venezuela weakens the shared counter-hegemonic struggle.

For internationalists, the focus, as always, is on our own imperialists. Concretely, that means freeing Maduro and Flores, ending sanctions and the military threat, and returning stolen assets. In addition, whatever the future course of the Chavista government, solidarity with the communes and other social advances of the Bolivarian Revolution is still essential.

The situation in Venezuela highlights what the Venezuelans have been telling us in the imperial core: Their predicament is a result of our failure to curb our own imperialists. The periphery will not free the core.

Whatever concessions have been forced upon Venezuela, so long as Venezuelans continue to resist, their struggle calls for international solidarity.

Over the summer, the Supreme Court gave the Trump administration free rein to terminate Temporary Protected Status for Haitian and Syrian immigrants, along with hundreds of thousands of TPS holders from other countries, limiting the accountability any administration will have for making determinations about TPS for the foreseeable future.

Last month, a young pre-med college student named Pierre Damas Bel from Springfield, Ohio was found dead, by an apparent suicide. He was suffering depression brought on by the termination of TPS and being forced to wear an Immigration and Custom Enforcement-issued ankle bracelet.

What happened to Damas Bel represents the real human cost of these inhumane policies. But sadly, I don’t believe we have reached the nadir of this administration’s cruelty.

Those of us who have more legal protections against these violent policies must be resolute in speaking out, and finding ways to shield Haitians and other TPS holders from their cruelty.

Haitians have been here before.

For centuries, we’ve witnessed a similar pattern of using Haitian immigrants as political scapegoats. Haitians know all too well what it feels like to be targeted, and as a result we live with the collective trauma of being treated as less than human.

When I arrived in 1984, I encountered hatred fueled by ignorance, misinformation, and xenophobia. I was bullied relentlessly. I was called "Boat People," "HBO" (Haitian Body Odor), "f***ing Haitian," and "HIV carrier." I was physically assaulted on my way to and from school. Those experiences taught me, at a very young age, how quickly stereotypes and lies can strip someone of their dignity and sense of belonging.

Fast forward to 2024, I would never have imagined hearing a former president utter the words: "They're eating the cats. They're eating the dogs. They're eating the pets," during a presidential debate. At the time, many people dismissed those comments as absurd, entertaining, or inconsequential. I could not.

As a 52-year-old father of two teenage boys, I wasn't amused. I was triggered. Those words reopened wounds I had buried for decades and forced me to relive the trauma I experienced as a newly arrived Haitian immigrant in New York City.

But by 2024, I was no longer afraid for myself. I was afraid for my sons, who had grown up embracing their Haitian heritage with pride and confidence. I wondered what these renewed attacks on Haitians would mean for them. Would they become targets of ridicule or violence? Would they feel pressured to hide a core part of who they are? Would they experience the same fear and isolation that defined so much of my youth?

Those questions kept me awake at night. Eventually, they compelled me to have "the talk" with my boys. For the first time, I shared the painful experiences I had buried for decades. We discussed what they were seeing and hearing in their social circles, and I tried to prepare them to navigate a climate where hateful rhetoric can quickly lead to real-life consequences. It was a conversation I had hoped I would never have to have. However, it reminded me that every generation must remain vigilant in confronting prejudice and defending the human rights and dignity of those who come after us.

The psychological ramifications of TPS' end have reverberated across the Haitian community in devastating ways. There are those who have already been deported and face an unsafe future, those of us who exist on bated breath, and then there are people like Damas Bel whose mental health has been shattered by the indignity of it all.

When I feel dejected and afraid for my community, I try to remember the Haitian Day of Outrage in 1990 when an estimated 50,000-150,000 Haitians and allies marched across the Brooklyn Bridge, shutting down Lower Manhattan. We were protesting against the US Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) discriminatory designation of Haitians as a high-risk group for HIV/AIDS and its policy of banning Haitian Americans from donating blood. The policy was rooted in racism rather than science, and fueled dangerous stereotypes. That historic demonstration played a significant role in pressuring the FDA to eventually reverse its position.

That memory reminds me that we are a people who will fight for our survival and dignity, but there is also a limit to our resilience. These attacks have not only threatened our physical safety, they are also working to destroy our sense of psychological safety.

We must ask ourselves how we can protect young Haitians like Damas Bel, and all those made vulnerable by the Trump administration and its far-right MAGA supporters. Those of us who have more legal protections against these violent policies must be resolute in speaking out, and finding ways to shield Haitians and other TPS holders from their cruelty.

The best way to know what you can do to stand in solidarity with these communities is to first connect with local organizations taking decisive steps to protect and stand with those who are in the bullseye of the current administration’s attempts to strip all of us of our rights and dignity.

Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees, where I work as a case manager and community organizer, is one of these organizations. We know that people power is the only thing that will protect us. We are using every tool at our disposal to provide care and safety for our community.

Here are some ways that you can join us in supporting Haitian and all TPS holders.

Actions you can take TODAY:

• Call your Senators or email them to urge them to vote yes on S. 4814 to extend TPS for Haitians until 2029;
• Call your US House representatives and demand that they sign the discharge petition and support The Dream and Promise Act (H.R. 1589) which would provide a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers, TPS holders, and Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) holders; and
• Get involved with court accompaniment programs, mutual aid networks, and your local rapid response networks in support and defense of immigrant communities in your neighborhood.

Three years have passed since October 7, 2023, yet much of the world still begins the story on that morning.

As if Palestinians suddenly woke up that day and decided to enter history.

As if Gaza had not already been under blockade. As if the West Bank and East Jerusalem had not already been under occupation. As if settlements, checkpoints, arrests, home demolitions, and land confiscation had not already been part of everyday Palestinian life.

Three years later, what has happened in Gaza can no longer be reduced to the word “response.”

I am not writing today to justify the killing of civilians, Palestinian or Israeli.

A civilian life does not need a nationality to be worthy of protection.

But I refuse to accept October 7 as an eraser—wiping away everything that came before it and becoming an open-ended justification for everything that followed.

When an Israeli is killed, we are told to go back to October 7.

When a Palestinian is killed, we are told: Remember October 7.

When Gaza is destroyed, its people displaced, and its children killed, the answer is the same: October 7.

But if we are asked to remember that day, then we should also be allowed to ask a simple question: What was there on October 6?

There were millions of Palestinians already living under occupation.

More than 2 million Palestinians in Gaza had been living under blockade for years.

In the West Bank, Palestinians lived among checkpoints and settlements, without freedom of movement on their own land, while Israeli settlers moved through the same territory with rights and protection denied to the Palestinians who live there.

There were prisoners in Israeli jails. Homes were being demolished. Land was being confiscated.

None of this began on October 7.

Palestinians carry the memory of the Nakba of 1948, the occupation of 1967, and decades of settlement expansion, displacement, and blockade.

That history does not make the killing of civilians acceptable. But neither does it make acceptable the claim that this conflict began on October 7.

There is a difference between condemning an act and using that act to erase everything that came before it.

Three years later, what has happened in Gaza can no longer be reduced to the word “response.”

A response cannot be a blank check. October 7 cannot become a permanent justification for killing, destruction, displacement, and hunger, or for making an entire people pay the price year after year.

Even the ceasefire announced in October 2025 did not end the tragedy. The devastation remained. Families continued searching beneath the rubble for the bodies of their loved ones. And the killing did not stop entirely.

At the same time, the occupation in the West Bank did not pause and wait for the war in Gaza to end. Land continued to be confiscated. Settlements continued to expand. Checkpoints continued to cut Palestinians off from one another.

And this is where the heart of the matter lies.

Palestinians are not asking for a privilege denied to others.

They want to live freely on their own land. To move through it without needing permission from an occupying soldier. To feel that their homes, their land, and their children’s future are safe.

These are not extraordinary demands.

They are the ordinary conditions of life that most people in the world enjoy without ever having to think about them.

So, three years later, it is not enough to ask: What happened on October 7?

We must also ask: What was done to Palestinians before that day, and what is being done to them now?

The world is not being asked to choose between Palestinian blood and Israeli blood, or to find excuses for the killing of civilians by either side.

It is being asked to stop reversing the relationship between the occupier and the occupied.

Palestinians are not a people occupying another people’s land.

Palestinians are the people living under occupation.

That is not an emotional statement. It is a fact that cannot be removed from any serious reading of what happened before October 7, on October 7, or after it.

Three years have passed. Much has changed, and far more has been destroyed. But the question that existed on October 6 did not disappear on October 7, and all the war that followed has not erased it: When will Palestinians live freely on their own land?

So if the world truly does not want to see another October 7, it is not enough to remember what happened on that day.

It must also remember what existed the day before.

What had existed for decades before that.

And what still exists at this very moment.

The occupation.

Ali Abu al-Ezz, 38, lives with his six children near the “Yellow Line” in Gaza City’s eastern Tuffah neighborhood. His children range in age from 13 to 2 years old. After they were displaced from their land following the demarcation of the Yellow Line, Abu al-Ezz pitched a tent for his family as close to their home in Tuffah as he could, hoping that one day they would be able to return.

The tent they live in is far from their daily needs and necessities. Food is difficult to reach, humanitarian organizations distributing water and meals are scarce, and medical facilities and schools are far away. When the new school year began last December, Abu al-Ezz did not send any of his children to attend. In fact, he rarely ever leaves the area, preferring to stay close to his wife and children.

Before the war, Abu al-Ezz’s children attended nearby schools regularly, while he worked as a taxi driver, heading out in the morning and driving until sunset to support his family. Today, the war has imposed an entirely different reality.

“We live as if we have been cut off from the world,” he said. “As if we do not belong to this modern age. It feels as though we are living in the Stone Age, not 2026.”

“The road to the schools is long and difficult, the streets are not fit for walking, and transportation is also hard to find,” Abu al-Ezz said. “I am afraid that if I send my children to school, a quadcopter will shoot and kill them, or their school will be bombed, and they will die. I decided to postpone all of their education until the war ends, when we can feel safe in our own country again.”

The war has affected families beyond their homes and how they obtain food and water. It has altered the very meaning of family life and the roles that parents and children are expected to play within it.

Despite the blockade and hardships that had long shaped life in Gaza before the war, families could still maintain a semblance of an ordinary social order. Children went to school and played outside together. Even if they made playgrounds and football pitches out of busy streets and lots, they still had space to live their childhood.

That balance has been shattered.

For many fathers, parenthood has become an unending attempt to keep their children alive. Mothers cook over open fires and devise ways to keep rodents out of tents while trying to maintain some measure of cleanliness in conditions that make it nearly impossible. And children, among those most profoundly affected by the war, have been forced into roles that once belonged to adults.

“Some days, I leave in the morning to try to make some money or find some work for the day,” Abu al-Ezz said. “By the time I return with whatever I have earned and some food for my children, my eldest sons will have taken care of other things.”

His sons—Ibrahim, 13, and Hassan, 11—are responsible for finding drinking water for the family.

“These were never my children’s responsibilities,” Abu al-Ezz said. “But the war has forced these children to carry responsibilities far beyond their age, responsibility for the family itself and for finding the things we need to survive.”

The boys fetch water and search the streets and rubble for pieces of wood to burn for cooking. They return during the hottest hours of the day, walking under the sun while carrying jerrycans of water that, their father says, seem to weigh as much as they do after months of hunger.

Before the war, this time of year sounded very different inside Abu al-Ezz’s home. His children would return from school, filling the house with stories about their classmates and teachers. A new school year meant excitement over new books, school bags, and stationery.

“We lived under siege, and our circumstances were difficult, but our lives were beautiful,” he said. “We lived in our homes. We visited our relatives, and they visited us. We went to the sea to relax. Every month, we would have barbecues on the beach or on our roof. We were happy with the little we had, and we thanked God for what He gave us.”

For Abu al-Ezz, deprivation has penetrated almost every aspect of his family’s life. The infants cry from hunger while their parents search for formula, the children suffer as their daily needs cannot be met, and even his wife’s personal necessities have become difficult to obtain.

“We live as if we have been cut off from the world,” he said. “As if we do not belong to this modern age. It feels as though we are living in the Stone Age, not 2026.”

“And the strangest thing of all is that the world watches us and sees this, yet nothing changes in the miserable life we are living,” he continued.

When Children Dream of Food and Shelter

The war has changed not only what children do, but also what they dream about.

For Ibrahim, Abu al-Ezz’s 13-year-old son, aspirations have narrowed to the most basic elements of a livable life.

He dreams of leaving behind the makeshift tent his family assembled from scraps of fabric and wood. Every winter, when heavy rain floods the area, the family risks losing their only shelter. On some nights, they sleep sitting upright on plastic chairs to keep themselves above the water flooding the tent from all sides.

Ibrahim dreams of a Qatari tent, the name Gazans commonly use for the dome-shaped tents that are considered better able to withstand winter rain because of their sturdier fabric and construction.

But his dreams extend beyond shelter, for the simplest things. “I dream that one day we will eat three good meals,” Ibrahim said.

He also dreams of going to his grandfather’s house and playing with his cousins, and of having just one more of the evenings his father once organized on Gaza’s Mediterranean shore: the entire family gathered together for a barbecue by the sea.

Now Abu al-Ezz’s extended family has been scattered. Relatives live far from one another, each in a different tent, each confronting their own conditions of displacement and survival.

A Family Scattered Across Gaza

The transformation of family life in Gaza is not limited to children or their parents. The rituals that once held extended families together, from visiting relatives’ homes to evening gatherings to sharing meals and stories, have all been disrupted.

For older women in particular, the contrast between life before and after the war can be stark.

Before the war, many spent their later years surrounded by children and grandchildren, living in established family homes and enjoying the companionship of nearby relatives of their generation.

Hanan Abu Arab, 63, was one of them.

Everyone, she said, is pushed toward the same calculation: Protect yourself and your children, stay away from danger, leave the tent as little as possible, and hope that, by doing so, death will pass you by.

Displaced from eastern Khan Younis and now living in Deir al-Balah, Abu Arab once had a five-story house where her children and grandchildren gathered. In front of it was a garden where she sometimes received close friends and relatives. They would sit beside rose bushes she had planted herself, spending hours together in the evening, talking and drinking tea.

Today, she hesitates to even name her new home as a tent. “It is more like a room wrapped in cloth,” she said. “It is not properly enclosed.”

During the winter, rain enters from every direction. Sometimes, she said, she has to leave and stand by the roadside, searching for any roof or overhang that might shelter her from the rain.

“My house was a landmark in Bani Suheila because of how beautiful it was,” Abu Arab said. “My relatives who lived nearby would come almost every day. We stayed up together, ate fruit, and talked for hours. Everyone who entered my house would tell me how beautiful it was.”

“All of those traditions are gone,” she added.

Abu Arab sees this fragmentation as one of the less visible consequences of the war. Everyone, she said, is pushed toward the same calculation: Protect yourself and your children, stay away from danger, leave the tent as little as possible, and hope that, by doing so, death will pass you by.

“This is one of the hidden goals of this genocide,” she said. “For the Israeli army to tear apart everything that connects Palestinians, everything that creates a social fabric and solidarity in Gaza, and replace it with this constant, urgent need for individual survival.”