Did the working class, especially its white members, elect Donald Trump again because they are basically racist, sexist, homophobic, and xenophobic? Are they craving a strongman who can protect white supremacy from a flood of immigrants and put the woke liberals in their place? Didn’t Harris lose primarily because she’s a woman of color?

More than a few progressives, as well as the New York Times, believe these are plausible explanations for Harris’s defeat. I’m not so sure.

The working class started abandoning the Democrats long before Trump became a political figure, let alone a candidate. In 1976, Jimmy Carter received 52.3 percent of the working-class vote; In 1996, Clinton 50 percent; In 2012, Obama 40.6 percent; and in 2020, Biden received only 36.2 percent.

This decline has little to do with illiberalism on social issues. Since Carter’s victory, these workers have become more liberal on race, gender, immigration and gay rights, as I detail in my book, Wall Street’s War on Workers.

These voters of color don’t fit comfortably into that basket of deplorables Hillary Clinton described, but they are a part of the working class that’s been laid off time and again because of corporate greed.

Furthermore, my research shows that mass layoffs, not illiberalism, best explains the decline of worker support for the Democrats. In the former Blue Wall states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, for example, as the county mass layoff rate went up the Democratic vote went down. The statistical causation, of course, may be off, but the linkage here between economic dissatisfaction and flight from the Democratic Party is straightforward.

Did the Working Class Give Trump 1.9 Million More Votes?

Trump improved his vote total from 74.2 million in 2020 to 76.1 in 2024, an increase of 1.9 million. Did the white working class support him more strongly this year?

No. According to the Edison exit polls, Trump’s share of the non-college white vote dropped from 67 percent in 2020 to 66 percent in 2024. (For 2020 exit polls see here. For 2024 see here.)

In fact, the largest increase for Trump this year came from non-white voters without a college degree. Trump’s percentage of these voters jumped from 26 percent in 2020 to 33 percent in 2024. These voters of color don’t fit comfortably into that basket of deplorables Hillary Clinton described, but they are a part of the working class that’s been laid off time and again because of corporate greed.

The Defection of the Border Democrats

Perhaps the most astonishing collapse of the Democratic vote is found in the Texas counties along the Rio Grande. Take Starr County, population 65,000, most of whom are Hispanic. Hillary Clinton won that county by 60 percent in 2016. Trump won it this year by 16 percentage points, a massive shift of 76 percentage points, almost unheard of in electoral politics. Trump won 12 of the 14 border counties in 2024, up from only five in 2016. Interviews suggest that these voters are very concerned by uncontrolled border crossings, inflation, and uncertainly in finding and maintaining jobs in the oil industry.

(I hear whispers among progressives that Hispanic men just don’t like women in leadership positions. Yet just across the Mexican border, Hispanic men seemed quite comfortable recently electing a female president.)

The Big Story Is the Overall Decline of the Harris Vote

Harris received 73.1 million votes in 2024, a drop of 8.3 million compared with Biden’s 81.3 million votes in 2020. That’s an extraordinary decline. Who are these voters who decided to sit it out?

So far, while the final votes are tallied and exit polls are compiled, it looks like they are a very diverse group—from young people upset about the administration’s failure to restrain Israel to liberals who didn’t like watching Harris go after suburban Republicans by palling around with arch-conservatives Liz and Dick Cheney.

Personally, I think many working-class voters of all shades sat on their hands because Harris really had so little to offer them. Harris was viewed as both a member of the establishment and a defender of it, and the establishment hasn’t been too considerate of working-class issues in recent decades.

Many working-class voters of all shades sat on their hands because Harris really had so little to offer them.

Harris’ highly publicized fundraising visit to Wall Street certainly made that clear. And in case we missed that signal, her staff told the New York Times that Wall Street was helping to shape her agenda. It’s very hard to excite working people by arguing, in effect, that what’s good for Wall Street is also good for working people.

The John Deere Fiasco

For me, the symbolic turning point was the Harris campaign’s pathetic response to the John Deere company’s announcement about shipping 1,000 jobs from the Midwest to Mexico. Trump jumped on it right away, saying that if Deere made that move, he would slap a 200-percent tariff on all its imports from Mexico. If I were a soon-to-be-replaced Deere worker, that would have gotten my attention.

The Harris campaign responded as well, but not in a way that would convince workers that she really cared about their jobs. The campaign sent billionaire Mark Cuban to the press to claim such a tariff would be “insanity.” He and the campaign said not one word about the jobs that would soon be lost. Trump promised to intervene. Harris promised nothing.

The sad part is that the Biden-Harris campaign could have at least tried. They had the power of the entire federal government. They could have cajoled and bullied, waved carrots and sticks. In short, they could have easily made a visible public effort to prevent the export of those good-paying jobs by a highly profitable corporation that was spending billions of dollars on stock buybacks to enrich Wall Street and it’s CEO. Here was a chance to defend jobs against overt greed. Instead, they essentially told working people that Harris wasn’t willing to fight for those jobs.

But Didn’t the Working-Class Abandon Sherrod Brown?

I haven’t yet found any comprehensive demographic data about Brown and his working-class support. We do know, however, that he ran well ahead of Harris. Brown lost his Senate race by 3.6 percent in Ohio compared to a Harris loss by 11.5 percent.

Rather than blaming working-class voters for not rejecting Trump out of hand, the Democrats should reflect on the failure of their brand and their failure of nerve.

Brown knew that he was carrying a heavy load as a Democrat, especially because of the passage of NAFTA, which was finalized during Bill Clinton’s presidency. As Brown put it: “The Democratic brand has suffered again, starting with NAFTA…. But, what really mattered is: I still heard it in the Mahoning Valley, in the Miami Valley, I still heard during the campaign about NAFTA.”

Brown, as a loyal Democrat, was stuck with that dubious brand, and with Harris, as she was clobbered in Ohio. Tom Osborne, the former local labor leader and a refreshing political newcomer, shed the Democratic Party burden by running as an independent in Nebraska. He lost his Senate race by 6.8 percent compared to 10.9 percent for Harris. Brown did better than Osborne but it’s highly likely that both did much better than Harris with working-class voters.

Maybe the Democratic Party Has Become Deplorable to the Working Class

Rather than blaming working-class voters for not rejecting Trump out of hand, the Democrats should reflect on the failure of their brand and their failure of nerve.

• Biden’s ego kept him in the race at least a year past his sell-by date and the Democratic leadership did not have the nerve to act until he completely lost it in the June debate with Trump. (A few of us urged Biden to step aside in November 2023).
• Harris was anointed without going through a rigorous primary process. She failed miserably at that in 2020, and she probably was not the strongest potential Democratic candidate this time around either.
• Refusing to run on a strong progressive populist platform pushed much of the working-class to Trump. The Center for Working Class Politics survey of Pennsylvania showed that a strong populist message was the most popular among working class voters, and that the Harris focus on democracy was the weakest issue for that group. But the Harris campaign doubled down on the democracy issues late in the campaign and paid the price.
• The failure to say anything at all about mass layoffs and stock buybacks was nothing short of political malpractice.
• And placating Wall Street was flat out deplorable.

Will the Democrats learn from this debacle and change their ways? I’m not optimistic. They are the defenders of the liberal elite establishment and have grown very comfortable (and prosperous) in that role.

We may not have all the data we desire or need as yet, but we know this much: something has to change. And that change is not going to come from the old guard of this deplorable Democratic Party establishment.

You could see this one coming.

It seems like about five years ago—in this crazy, mixed-up world of ours—but it was just last April when student protests over Israel’s post-October 7 attacks on Gaza and the deaths of Palestinian civilians roiled dozens of college campuses from coast-to-coast.

The tent encampments and student-led marches, from the Penn campus here in Philly to UCLA some 3,000 miles away, hearkened back to the youth unrest of the 1960s, but things were a little different this time. In an overheated election year, with some leading politicians accusing the protesters of antisemitism, university leaders were quicker to call in the police, who didn’t hesitate to make arrests or use force.

it’s hard to know much reluctance to take to the streets is also driven by the fresh memories of the riot cops on campus last spring and their aggressive tactics, which led to more than 3,100 arrests.

At the time, a few pundits warned that the aggressive police-state tactics felt like a grim foreshadowing of what could await all protesters—not just those in opposition to Israel’s far-right government and its war tactics—if an authoritarian Donald Trump won the November election. One wrote: “By the time a returned-to-the-White-House Trump makes good on his vow to send out troops and tanks to put down any January 20, 2025, inauguration protesters, America might be numb to such images.”

OK, I cheated: That pundit was me. But now that Trump is indeed the president-elect, with a vow of retribution against his political enemies, there’s growing concern that the incoming administration will clamp down hard on the right of dissent that is supposed to be guaranteed in the First Amendment. In a 4:00 am posting to his Truth Social website, the 45th and soon-to-be 47th POTUS confirmed that he plans to use the U.S. military for his sweeping mass-deportation agenda, which did little to calm fears that troops could also put down protests.

Meanwhile, and even more urgently, a bipartisan bill is racing through the current lame-duck session of Congress that—in an echo of the police-state style crackdown against the Gaza protests, which were often in Democratic-run jurisdictions—could have a much more sweeping impact.

The Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act—also known as H.R. 9495—emerged from the uproar over the Gaza protests to give an administration’s treasury secretary, without further input from Congress, the ability to potentially devastate nonprofit groups by stripping their nonprofit status if they determine the group is “a terrorist supporting organization.” The bill’s bipartisan backers proposed the measure with more radical pro-Palestinian groups in mind, and also tied the bill to an understandably popular second measure that removes the threat of tax penalties for Americans held hostage overseas, including as many as four to seven now in Gaza.

Some 52 Democrats, including the staunchest supporters of Israel’s conduct, joined the GOP House majority last week in an effort to fast-track the bill that needed a two-thirds majority and fell just short. This week, the bill is moving toward final House approval that would only require a simple majority—even as progressive Democrats are increasingly alarmed that the incoming Trump administration will use to measure to punish other left-leaning groups that have nothing to do with Palestine.

“I think in view of Trump’s election, this bill basically authorizes him to impose a death penalty on any nonprofit in America or any civil society group that happens to be on his enemies list and claim that they’re a terrorist,” Rep. Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat, told The Washington Post in voicing the growing liberal alarm over the measure. The congressman said those fears would apply to “a hospital performing an abortion, a community news outlet that he doesn’t think is giving him sufficient attention—or basically anyone, certainly groups that might be trying to assist migrants in this country.”

The measure is also opposed by groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the international anti-famine organization Oxfam International, which chillingly compared H.R. 9495 to what it’s confronted around the globe trying to function in authoritarian regimes. “This bill follows the same playbook Oxfam has seen other governments around the world use to crush dissent,” its American CEO said last week in a statement. “Now we are seeing it here at home.”

Mother Jones also notes in a new piece that the anti-Gaza-protest playbook will likely inspire a Trump regime in other ways, including following through on his campaign threats to deport campus protesters. Cornell University grad student Momodou Taal—a protester whose student visa was revoked but has dodged deportation, for now—told the magazine that last spring’s crackdown set an awful precedent, saying: “I think what [President Joe] Biden has allowed for is that the clampdown is made easier for Trump now because the groundwork has already been laid.”

Indeed, Cornell’s moves to suspend Taal and other pro-Palestinian students who disrupted a job fair in September is just one part of a campus crusade against dissent and, arguably, free speech that seems to have succeeded in sharply reducing protests against the killing of civilians in Gaza—or against anything else for that matter.

In the two weeks since Trump’s election to another term, protests have been—with a handful of exceptions involving the socialist far left—a dog that hasn’t barked, in sharp contrast to Trump’s initial victory in 2016. Mostly that’s because many who formed a “Trump Resistance” eight years ago have concluded that mass protest isn’t the most effective tactic, but it’s hard to know much reluctance to take to the streets is also driven by the fresh memories of the riot cops on campus last spring and their aggressive tactics, which led to more than 3,100 arrests.

But this much is clear: If Democrats are serious about serving as the last line of defense against Trump’s most monarchical tendencies, the last thing they should be doing right now should be giving the incoming president a tool to quash protest groups he doesn’t like, using dictatorial fiat. Over the last 14 days, I’ve received a ton of reader emails asking what they can do to make a difference and not surrender to the end of American democracy as we’ve known it. Here’s one simple and easy thing: Call your member of Congress and urge them to oppose an un-American piece of legislation called H.R. 9495.

Tens of millions of Americans voted against Donald Trump and the cruelty he celebrates. None of us have to see the election as a vindication of his contempt for democracy, basic decency, and anyone who disagrees with him. In our constitutional democracy, there is never a final election, there is always another day, and it is indisputably legitimate to speak up and criticize those in elected office, including the president.

Today, we doubt these basic truths because we know Trump seeks to undo them. He has made clear that he wants to rule as an American Putin. That is certainly his goal, and we cannot pretend otherwise. But we need not accept this or conclude it is inevitable. There is no guarantee he succeeds, and we must use all legal and peaceful means available to us in order to stand in his way and to insist on the enduring primacy of our democratic values and our constitutional system.

The fact that most voters preferred Trump does not mean what is immoral is now moral, what is obscene is now respectable.

Trump sneers at the cherished principles that truly make the United States great—the rule of law, racial equality, equality of men and women, constitutional rights like freedom of speech and due process, free and fair elections, and the notion of limits on power that make government officials public servants advancing the national interest rather than kleptocrats seeking to line their own pockets. Those who reject what Trump stands for must defend these principles and insist on the centrality of distinctions between right and wrong, even as Trump seeks to eviscerate the very notion of morality.

Consider the basic moral concepts we learned as children. Bullies are bad. Lying is wrong. You don’t insult someone else, and especially not because of how they look or where they come from. Trump embodies each and every one of these immoral traits. He is a schoolyard bully who delights in crude insults, which I will not repeat but which we have all heard so many times that we may have become desensitized to these outrages. Yet we know what he has said, and we know who he is. We know that he degrades and demeans women, immigrants, people of color, people with disabilities—indeed, anyone who is different from him and anyone who dares to disagree with him. No elementary school teacher would tolerate such behavior from a student, and we can never accept such moral failure from a person placed in a position of public trust.

Those who Trump insults, mocks, and derides are human beings, although he smears them as “vermin,” “dogs,” and “animals,” words that are obviously intended to dehumanize. Indeed, he has quite literally said that some immigrants are “not people.” He will not extend to others the basic courtesies and respect that decent people instinctively extend to co-workers, members of the community, and indeed all human beings. Trump’s goal is to mark us as second-class citizens—at best. He does not have this power unless we cede it to him or unless others, especially other government officials, defer to him. There is very little Trump can accomplish on his own and, although he feels no sense of shame, some of those he will ask to carry out his plans may. We must remind them that there is a difference between right and wrong, and that morality matters. We must remember that, even if some of us do not seem to be the initial targets of Trump’s wrath, we must stand with those who are most vulnerable, recognizing that when cruelty singles out one group, we do not know where it will end.

We have lived with all of this for nearly a decade, and we are tired. We are sick of Trump’s bullying, his lack of decency, his preening egotism and constant demand for adulation. We hoped that all of this could be placed in our past. Instead, it continues to be our reality. Some will ask us to reconcile with this, to accept it. We need not do either. This is what it means to be free. We certainly should not adopt Trump’s own tactics. We must refuse to embrace the politics of personal insults, bullying, and hatred. Yet we must continue to insist it is wrong when Trump does these things, and that, even though it has now become normal, making cruelty normal is a rejection of our most fundamental principles that we can never accept. Trump won an election—an election where nearly half of voters rejected his tired, blustering act. The fact that most voters preferred Trump does not mean what is immoral is now moral, what is obscene is now respectable. The celebration of disrespect and indecency will never be right. No election can change that.

Some 15 years ago, on December 5, 2010, a historian writing for TomDispatch made a prediction that may yet prove prescient. Rejecting the consensus of that moment that U.S. global hegemony would persist to 2040 or 2050, he argued that “the demise of the United States as the global superpower could come... in 2025, just 15 years from now.”

To make that forecast, the historian conducted what he called “a more realistic assessment of domestic and global trends.” Starting with the global context, he argued that, “faced with a fading superpower,” China, India, Iran, and Russia would all start to “provocatively challenge U.S. dominion over the oceans, space, and cyberspace.” At home in the United States, domestic divisions would “widen into violent clashes and divisive debates… Riding a political tide of disillusionment and despair, a far-right patriot captures the presidency with thundering rhetoric, demanding respect for American authority and threatening military retaliation or economic reprisal.” But, that historian concluded, “the world pays next to no attention as the American Century ends in silence.”

Now that a “far-right patriot,” one Donald J. Trump, has indeed captured (or rather recaptured) the presidency “with thundering rhetoric,” let’s explore the likelihood that a second Trump term in office, starting in the fateful year 2025, might actually bring a hasty end, silent or otherwise, to an “American Century” of global dominion.

Making the Original Prediction

Let’s begin by examining the reasoning underlying my original prediction. (Yes, of course, that historian was me.) Back in 2010, when I picked a specific date for a rising tide of American decline, this country looked unassailably strong both at home and abroad. The presidency of Barack Obama was producing a “post-racial” society. After recovering from the 2008 financial crisis, the U.S. was on track for a decade of dynamic growth—the auto industry saved, oil and gas production booming, the tech sector thriving, the stock market soaring, and employment solid. Internationally, Washington was the world’s preeminent leader, with an unchallenged military, formidable diplomatic clout, unchecked economic globalization, and its democratic governance still the global norm.

Looking forward, leading historians of empire agreed that America would remain the world’s sole superpower for the foreseeable future. Writing in the Financial Times in 2002, for instance, Yale professor Paul Kennedy, author of a widely read book on imperial decline, argued that “America’s array of force is staggering,” with a mix of economic, diplomatic, and technological dominance that made it the globe’s “single superpower” without peer in the entire history of the world. Russia’s defense budget had “collapsed” and its economy was “less than that of the Netherlands.” Should China’s high growth rates continue for another 30 years, it “might be a serious challenger to U.S. predominance”—but that wouldn’t be true until 2032, if then. While America’s “unipolar moment” would surely not “continue for centuries,” its end, he predicted, “seems a long way off for now.”

Writing in a similar vein in The New York Times in February 2010, Piers Brendon, a historian of Britain’s imperial decline, dismissed the “doom mongers” who “conjure with Roman and British analogies in order to trace the decay of American hegemony.” While Rome was riven by “internecine strife” and Britain ran its empire on a shoestring budget, the U.S. was “constitutionally stable” with “an enormous industrial base.” Taking a few “relatively simple steps,” he concluded, Washington should be able to overcome current budgetary problems and perpetuate its global power indefinitely.

After the steady erosion of its global power for several decades, America is no longer the—or perhaps even an—“exceptional” nation floating above the deep global currents that shape the politics of most countries.

When I made my very different prediction nine months later, I was coordinating a network of 140 historians from universities on three continents who were studying the decline of earlier empires, particularly those of Britain, France, and Spain. Beneath the surface of this country’s seeming strength, we could already see the telltale signs of decline that had led to the collapse of those earlier empires.

By 2010, economic globalization was cutting good-paying factory jobs here, income inequality was widening, and corporate bailouts were booming—all essential ingredients for rising working-class resentment and deepening domestic divisions. Foolhardy military misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, pushed by Washington elites trying to deny any sense of decline, stoked simmering anger among ordinary Americans, slowly discrediting the very idea of international commitments. And the erosion of America’s relative economic strength from half the world’s output in 1950 to a quarter in 2010 meant the wherewithal for its unipolar power was fading fast.

Only a “near-peer” competitor was needed to turn that attenuating U.S. global hegemony into accelerating imperial decline. With rapid economic growth, a vast population, and the world’s longest imperial tradition, China seemed primed to become just such a country. But back then, Washington’s foreign policy elites thought not and even admitted China to the World Trade Organization (WTO), fully confident, according to two Beltway insiders, that “U.S. power and hegemony could readily mold China to the United States’ liking.”

Our group of historians, mindful of the frequent imperial wars fought when near-peer competitors finally confronted the reigning hegemon of their moment—think Germany versus Great Britain in World War I—fully expected China’s challenge would not be long in coming. Indeed, in 2012, just two years after my prediction, the U.S. National Intelligence Council warned that “China alone will probably have the largest economy, surpassing that of the United States a few years before 2030” and this country would no longer be “a hegemonic power.”

Just a year after that, China’s president, Xi Jinping, drawing on a massive $4 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves accumulated in the decade after joining the WTO, announced his bid for global power through what he called “the Belt and Road Initiative,” history’s largest development program. It was designed to make Beijing the center of the global economy.

In the following decade, the U.S.-China rivalry would become so intense that, last September, Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall warned: “I’ve been closely watching the evolution of [China’s] military for 15 years. China is not a future threat; China is a threat today.”

The Global Rise of the Strongman

Another major setback for Washington’s world order, long legitimated by its promotion of democracy (whatever its own dominating tendencies), came from the rise of populist strongmen worldwide. Consider them part of a nationalist reaction to the West’s aggressive economic globalization.

At the close of the Cold War in 1991, Washington became the planet’s sole superpower, using its hegemony to forcefully promote a wide-open global economy—forming the World Trade Organization in 1995, pressing open-market “reforms” on developing economies, and knocking down tariff barriers worldwide. It also built a global communications grid by laying 700,000 miles of fiber-optic submarine cables and then launching 1,300 satellites (now 4,700).

By exploiting that very globalized economy, however, China’s industrial output soared to $3.2 trillion by 2016, surpassing both the U.S. and Japan, while simultaneously eliminating 2.4 million American jobs between 1999 and 2011, ensuring the closure of factories in countless towns across the South and Midwest. By fraying social safety nets while eroding protection for labor unions and local businesses in both the U.S. and Europe, globalization reduced the quality of life for many, while creating inequality on a staggering scale and stoking a working-class reaction that would crest in a global wave of angry populism.

Riding that wave, right-wing populists have been winning a steady succession of elections—in Russia (2000), Israel (2009), Hungary (2010), China (2012), Turkey (2014), the Philippines (2016), the U.S. (2016), Brazil (2018), Italy (2022), the Netherlands (2023), Indonesia (2024), and the U.S. again (2024).

Set aside their incendiary us-versus-them rhetoric, however, and look at their actual achievements and those right-wing demagogues turn out to have a record that can only be described as dismal. In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro ravaged the vast Amazon rainforest and left office amid an abortive coup. In Russia, Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, sacrificing his country’s economy to capture some more land (which it hardly lacked). In Turkey, Recep Erdogan caused a crippling debt crisis, while jailing 50,000 suspected opponents. In the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte murdered 30,000 suspected drug users and courted China by giving up his country’s claims in the resource-rich South China Sea. In Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu has wreaked havoc on Gaza and neighboring lands, in part to stay in office and stay out of prison.

Prospects for Donald Trump’s Second Term

After the steady erosion of its global power for several decades, America is no longer the—or perhaps even an—“exceptional” nation floating above the deep global currents that shape the politics of most countries. And as it has become more of an ordinary country, it has also felt the full force of the worldwide move toward strongman rule. Not only does that global trend help explain Trump’s election and his recent reelection, but it provides some clues as to what he’s likely to do with that office the second time around.

In the globalized world America made, there is now an intimate interaction between domestic and international policy. That will soon be apparent in a second Trump administration whose policies are likely to simultaneously damage the country’s economy and further degrade Washington’s world leadership.

As the world shifts to renewable energy and all-electric vehicles, Trump’s policies will undoubtedly do lasting damage to the American economy.

Let’s start with the clearest of his commitments: environmental policy. During the recent election campaign, Trump called climate change “a scam” and his transition team has already drawn up executive orders to exit from the Paris climate accords. By quitting that agreement, the U.S. will abdicate any leadership role when it comes to the most consequential issue facing the international community while reducing pressure on China to curb its greenhouse gas emissions. Since these two countries now account for nearly half (45%) of global carbon emissions, such a move will ensure that the world blows past the target of keeping this planet’s temperature rise to 1.5°C until the end of the century. Instead, on a planet that’s already had 12 recent months of just such a temperature rise, that mark is expected to be permanently reached by perhaps 2029, the year Trump finishes his second term.

On the domestic side of climate policy, Trump promised last September that he would “terminate the Green New Deal, which I call the Green New Scam, and rescind all unspent funds under the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act.” On the day after his election, he committed himself to increasing the country’s oil and gas production, telling a celebratory crowd, “We have more liquid gold than any country in the world.” He will undoubtedly also block wind farm leases on Federal lands and cancel the $7,500 tax credit for purchasing an electrical vehicle.

As the world shifts to renewable energy and all-electric vehicles, Trump’s policies will undoubtedly do lasting damage to the American economy. In 2023, the International Renewable Energy Agency reported that, amid continuing price decreases, wind and solar power now generate electricity for less than half the cost of fossil fuels. Any attempt to slow the conversion of this country’s utilities to the most cost-effective form of energy runs a serious risk of ensuring that American-made products will be ever less competitive.

To put it bluntly, he seems to be proposing that electricity users here should pay twice as much for their power as those in other advanced nations. Similarly, as relentless engineering innovation makes electric vehicles cheaper and more reliable than petrol-powered ones, attempting to slow such an energy transition is likely to make the U.S. auto industry uncompetitive, at home and abroad.

Calling tariffs “the greatest thing ever invented,” Trump has proposed slapping a 20% duty on all foreign goods and 60% on those from China. In another instance of domestic-foreign synergy, such duties will undoubtedly end up crippling American farm exports, thanks to retaliatory overseas tariffs, while dramatically raising the cost of consumer goods for Americans, stoking inflation, and slowing consumer spending.

Reflecting his aversion to alliances and military commitments, Trump’s first foreign policy initiative will likely be an attempt to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine. During a CNN town hall in May 2023, he claimed he could stop the fighting “in 24 hours.” Last July, he added: “I would tell [Ukraine’s president] Zelenskyy, no more. You got to make a deal.”

Just two days after the November election, according to The Washington Post, Trump reputedly told Russian President Vladimir Putin in a telephone call, “not to escalate the war in Ukraine and reminded him of Washington’s sizable military presence in Europe.” Drawing on sources inside the Trump transition team, The Wall Street Journal reported that the new administration is considering “cementing Russia’s seizure of 20% of Ukraine” and forcing Kyiv to forego its bid to join NATO, perhaps for as long as 20 years.

With Russia drained of manpower and its economy pummeled by three years of bloody warfare, a competent negotiator (should Trump actually appoint one) might indeed be able to bring a tenuous peace to a ravaged Ukraine. Since it has been Europe’s frontline of defense against a revanchist Russia, the continent’s major powers would be expected to play a significant role. But Germany’s coalition government has just collapsed; French president Emmanuel Macron is crippled by recent electoral reverses; and the NATO alliance, after three years of a shared commitment to Ukraine, faces real uncertainty with the advent of a Trump presidency.

America’s Allies

Those impending negotiations over Ukraine highlight the paramount importance of alliances for U.S. global power. For 80 years, from World War II through the Cold War and beyond, Washington relied on bilateral and multilateral alliances as a critical force multiplier. With China and Russia both rearmed and increasingly closely aligned, reliable allies have become even more important to maintaining Washington’s global presence. With 32 member nations representing a billion people and a commitment to mutual defense that has lasted 75 years, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is arguably the most powerful military alliance in all of modern history.

Yet Trump has long been sharply critical of it. As a candidate in 2016, he called the alliance “obsolete.” As president, he mocked the treaty’s mutual-defense clause, claiming even “tiny” Montenegro could drag the U.S. into war. While campaigning last February, he announced that he would tell Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to a NATO ally that didn’t pay what he considered its fair share.

Right after Trump’s election, caught between what one analyst called “an aggressively advancing Russia and an aggressively withdrawing America,” French President Macron insisted that the continent needed to be a “more united, stronger, more sovereign Europe in this new context.” Even if the new administration doesn’t formally withdraw from NATO, Trump’s repeated hostility, particularly toward its crucial mutual-defense clause, may yet serve to eviscerate the alliance.

In the Asia-Pacific region, the American presence rests on three sets of overlapping alliances: the AUKUS entente with Australia and Britain, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (with Australia, India, and Japan), and a chain of bilateral defense pacts stretching along the Pacific littoral from Japan through Taiwan to the Philippines. Via careful diplomacy, the Biden administration strengthened those alliances, bringing two wayward allies, Australia and the Philippines that had drifted Beijing-wards, back into the Western fold. Trump’s penchant for abusing allies and, as in his first term, withdrawing from multilateral pacts is likely to weaken such ties and so American power in the region.

Although his first administration famously waged a trade war with Beijing, Trump’s attitude toward the island of Taiwan is bluntly transactional. “I think, Taiwan should pay us for defense,” he said last June, adding: “You know, we’re no different than an insurance company. Taiwan doesn’t give us anything.” In October, he told The Wall Street Journal that he would not have to use military force to defend Taiwan because China’s President Xi “respects me and he knows I’m f—— crazy.” Bluster aside, Trump, unlike his predecessor Joe Biden, has never committed himself to defend Taiwan from a Chinese attack.

Should Beijing indeed attack Taiwan outright or, as appears more likely, impose a crippling economic blockade on the island, Trump seems unlikely to risk a war with China. The loss of Taiwan would break the U.S. position along the Pacific littoral, for 80 years the fulcrum of its global imperial posture, pushing its naval forces back to a “second island chain” running from Japan to Guam. Such a retreat would represent a major blow to America’s imperial role in the Pacific, potentially making it no longer a significant player in the security of its Asia-Pacific allies.

A Silent U.S. Recessional

Adding up the likely impact of Donald Trump’s policies in this country, Asia, Europe, and the international community generally, his second term will almost certainly be one of imperial decline, increasing internal chaos, and a further loss of global leadership. As “respect for American authority” fades, Trump may yet resort to “threatening military retaliation or economic reprisal.” But as I predicted back in 2010, it seems quite likely that “the world pays next to no attention as the American Century ends in silence.”

As a physicist and concerned citizen, I find myself outraged every time I scroll through social media and encounter tweets from the Department of Energy, or DOE, and the Office of Nuclear Energy, or ONE, touting nuclear power as “clean, safe, and carbon-free.”

This narrative not only misrepresents the dirty reality of nuclear power but also obscures the significant environmental and health risks associated with its production and waste. It’s infuriating to see government agencies knowingly lie and promote such misleading information, while ignoring the pressing issues faced by communities affected by the toxic reality of the nuclear power industry—propaganda paid for by U.S. taxpayers!

Oh, Canada! Leading the Charge Against Nuclear Greenwashing

Finally, someone is doing something about it—but not in the U.S., where you’d expect it. In Canada, a coalition of seven environmental organizations recently filed a formal complaint with the Competition Bureau against the Canadian Nuclear Association (CNA), accusing it of misleading the public by marketing nuclear power as “clean” and “emissions-free.” Based on Canada’s Competition Act, the complaint challenges the CNA for violating provisions related to false or misleading advertising, similar to greenwashing regulations in other countries, where deceptive environmental claims distort market competition and misinform consumers.

The complaint argues that the CNA omits critical information about the environmental damage and health risks associated with the nuclear fuel cycle, including uranium mining, radioactive waste management, and the impacts on communities near nuclear facilities. By selectively framing nuclear power as a climate solution, the CNA diverts attention and resources away from truly sustainable alternatives like solar and wind energy.

In confronting the extremism of a potential Trump administration, it’s more vital than ever to collaborate with Canada and other nations committed to challenging nuclear misinformation.

In the U.S., similar deceptive practices could be challenged under the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Act, which includes the FTC’s Green Guides. These guidelines require that any environmental claims be substantiated, transparent, and not misleading about the overall environmental impact. Yet, organizations like the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) and the American Nuclear Society (ANS) continue to promote nuclear power as a “clean” energy solution while conveniently ignoring the lifecycle emissions, radioactive waste, and long-term environmental costs.

Leading the charge in Canada are groups such as the Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA), Environmental Defence Canada, and the Sierra Club Canada Foundation. Here in the U.S., organizations like the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and the Sierra Club could take similar action against the NEI and ANS by leveraging the FTC’s guidelines to expose deceptive marketing practices in the nuclear sector.

Let’s Be Real: Nuclear Power is Not Clean or Green

Sure, nuclear fission may not produce direct carbon emissions, but the nuclear fuel cycle—including uranium mining, reactor construction, radioactive waste management, and decommissioning—creates significant greenhouse gas emissions. In places like the Navajo Nation, uranium mining has already caused immeasurable harm. Over 523 abandoned uranium mines and mills continue to contaminate the land and water with radioactive waste, leading to severe health problems that affect multiple generations. The DOE’s failure to address these ongoing harms while simultaneously promoting the narrative of “clean, safe, carbon-free” nuclear power is not just unethical—it’s a dangerous distraction from real solutions for our energy needs and the fight against climate change.

Small Modular Reactors: A Costly and Dangerous Gamble

The Biden administration has funneled billions into developing Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), touting them as the future of “clean” energy. This renewed investment includes funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act, which together allocate substantial financial support to accelerate the deployment of next-generation nuclear technologies. The push for SMRs is also bolstered by private sector investments, particularly from tech companies looking to power energy-intensive AI applications.

However, this push for nuclear expansion is not happening in isolation. At the recent COP29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, a declaration was endorsed by 31 countries—including the U.S.—to triple global nuclear capacity by 2050. The declaration emphasized nuclear energy’s crucial role in achieving net-zero emissions, aligning with the U.S. strategy to secure a low-carbon future. The international momentum behind nuclear power reflects a coordinated global effort to promote nuclear as a solution to climate change, despite ongoing concerns about radioactive waste, environmental risks, and the diversion of resources from renewable energy.

The Peak Uranium Crisis

In addition to the delayed deployment of SMRs, high-grade uranium resources are finite, with estimates suggesting they may only last another 10 to 15 years at current consumption rates. This means that SMRs could face fuel shortages before they even become widespread. As high-grade deposits run dry, the industry may turn to in-situ leaching (ISL) methods, which pose severe environmental risks, particularly groundwater contamination. Furthermore, reprocessing nuclear waste—an extremely hazardous and costly endeavor—is not currently practiced in the U.S. due to its dangers. However, as peak uranium approaches, reprocessing may be reconsidered as a necessary but risky solution.

Better Use of Funds: Investing in Renewables

Instead of funneling billions into new unproven nuclear projects, those funds should be redirected to renewable energy sources that are ready for deployment today to reduce carbon emissions. The $4 billion allocated for SMRs could fund solar panels on rooftops for every house in a city the size of Las Vegas.

• Investments in wind farms and solar plants can achieve far greater reductions in CO2 emissions without the risks of radioactive waste.
• Congress has the power to reprogram funds from nuclear projects to support wind, solar, and energy storage, providing immediate climate benefits.

The Way Forward: Taking Action While We Can

People concerned about the DOE’s misleading promotion of nuclear power and SMRs can take meaningful action by contacting the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources to advocate for oversight of nuclear greenwashing. Additionally, individuals can request the reprogramming of funds from SMR development to renewable energy initiatives, and they can file complaints with the DOE Office of Inspector General for industry and government greenwashing. We can also support nonprofit environmental groups and ask that they follow Canada’s lead to try to hold the nuclear industry and government agencies accountable. With the Trump administration poised to make sweeping cuts to federal agencies, reduced public oversight could embolden the nuclear industry to expand greenwashing efforts unchecked. Advocacy is more crucial than ever before.

We don’t need to face this challenge alone. In confronting the extremism of a potential Trump administration, it’s more vital than ever to collaborate with Canada and other nations committed to challenging nuclear misinformation. By working together across borders, we can expose the truth, resist industry propaganda, and push for real, sustainable energy solutions that prioritize our planet over corporate interests.

Action Contact Information

• Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources—Phone: (202) 224-4971 / Website: https://www.energy.senate.gov
• FTC fraud reporting—https://reportfraud.ftc.gov
• Union of Concerned Scientists—Website: https://www.ucsusa.org / Email: ucs@ucsusa.org
• Natural Resources Defense Council—Website: https://www.nrdc.org
• Sierra Club—Website: https://www.sierraclub.org

As delegates enter the final days of negotiations in Baku, Azerbaijan for the 29th seating of the Conference of the Parties—COP29—one thing is certain: These discussions happen under circumstances far different from the early 1990s. At that time, it was an absolute novelty that climate activists were highlighting the consequences of a Euro-North American notion of modernity and civilization rooted in extraction and overconsumption. Today, delegates meet within the framework of a global recognition that colonialism exacerbated climate change and that decolonisation is critical in reversing its effects on humankind.

In its 2022 report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change made a clear connection between climate change and colonialism, stating that colonialism not only caused climate change but continues to exacerbate the impact of the climate crisis on the most vulnerable around the world. This acknowledgement sent a strong message to the global community and fired up the debate around the need to decolonize our mindsets, economic systems, and definition of modernity and civilization if we are to adequately deal with the climate crisis.

Climate change has inadvertently exposed the inferiority of modern civilization, characterized by a neocolonial economic model rooted in extraction, exploitation, and destruction of nature

2024 has given humanity a foretaste of the apocalypse that awaits us all if we do not rethink our approach to development and make true commitments toward staying below 1.5°C and attaining net-zero carbon dioxide emissions globally by 2050.

With record-high temperatures in several parts of the world this year, the reality of climate change has dawned on even the hardest denialists. Climate change is a lived experience for billions around the world, as floods continue to ravage cities, droughts threaten villages and communities, and wildfires scorch through lives and livelihoods.

Can We Afford to Continue With Business as Usual?

Science tells us we must immediately halt all new investment in fossil fuels. Many countries are making significant strides in the right direction—the U.K. recently announced that it was closing the last of its coal plants following Portugal, Greece, and many others making the switch away from the most polluting fossil fuel. Despite these gains, threats still loom. Trumpism and its “drill baby drill” narrative might have left climate activists feeling despondent, while news reports expose unsettling conversations between the COP29 chair and fossil fuel corporations. The fact of the matter is that no one can truly deny that the world is facing one of its greatest challenges yet and human-made climate change is at the center of it all.

There’s no room for fossil fuels, even though capitalist greed, individualism, and desire for profits over people and the rest of nature still drive the fossil fuel industry. But this industry is well aware of the devastation it has and continues to cause humanity.

COP28 gave a glimpse of hope with terminology to transition away from fossil fuels. COP29 must be more audacious in calling for a full phase out of fossil fuels if we are to reverse the harms of the last 100 years.

Climate Change as a Gift

Unlike many other human-made disasters facing the world—wars, conflicts, economic crises, and political rivalries—climate change has no borders or boundaries. It affects the wealthy and the less privileged, even if the wealthy can adapt better to its damages. The heatwaves, droughts, and the ferocity of the wildfires which science directly link to human activity have cast a dark cloud on the credibility of the Western civilization that has driven global systems in the last 100 years.

this reality calls on every one of us who is confronted with climate change to challenge the Euro-North American notion of a good life, of well-being, of development, of wealth, that has driven us to a climate apocalypse.

Climate change has inadvertently exposed the inferiority of modern civilization, characterised by a neocolonial economic model rooted in extraction, exploitation, and destruction of nature. A civilization that has destroyed the Earth, polarised society, driven individualism and greed, and left our very existence hanging on a thread if we do not act fast to reverse the speed at which the Earth is heating.

Beyond the horrors and misery bestowed on us by extreme weather events, collapsing food systems, and negative health impacts, there may also be a gift in climate change. If we are to safeguard our very existence, climate change will challenge us to rethink, review, and reinvent the very notion of civilization and modernity.

The Imperative of Decolonial Thinking and Decolonisation

Climate talks today should prioritize the need for a decolonial mindset, focusing on an alternative economic model rooted in our relationship with nature, our relationship with self, with each other, and rethinking growth and development.

Wisdom guarded by Indigenous African communities, and other Indigenous communities around the world, shows that it is possible to live great lives, build great empires and kingdoms, while maintaining peace with nature.

Whether world leaders commit to what must be done at COP29 is yet to be seen. However, the reality of a world ravaged by extreme weather events is indisputable. And this reality calls on every one of us who is confronted with climate change to challenge the Euro-North American notion of a good life, of well-being, of development, of wealth, that has driven us to a climate apocalypse.

Whether we like it or not, we will not save ourselves unless we treat the tragedy of climate change as a gift that compels us to do things differently and ultimately to live better lives.

The world desperately needs to pull the plug on fossil fuels. So agree most of the official delegates from nearly 200 nations who have gathered this month by the Caspian Sea for the 29th annual global “Conference of the Parties” on climate change—COP29 for short—in Azerbaijan’s capital city Baku.

But not all the estimated 70,000 attendees at this year’s COP are practicing what they should be preaching. Private jet arrivals at Baku’s international airport, news reports note, have just doubled.

What makes that such a big deal? Practically nothing symbolizes wanton disregard for our Earth’s environment more dramatically than private jet travel. A corporate executive taking a single long-haul private jet flight, points out the Travel Smart Campaign’s Denise Auclair, “will burn more CO2 than several normal people do in an entire year.”

Instead of taxing the world’s wealthiest at higher levels, rich nations want to give their richest more opportunities to become ever richer.

Researchers at Oxfam have just gone through the flight records of 23 global billionaires. Those airborne souls averaged 184 private jet flights each over a recent single year. They each essentially circumnavigated the globe 10 times over. Their flights averaged 2,074 tons of carbon emissions, an outlay an average person globally would take 300 years to emit.

Extravagances like private jets help explain why global carbon emissions last year expanded by 1.3%. To get climate anywhere near under control, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres noted on the eve of this month’s COP29 extravaganza, the world’s nations ought to be reducing carbon emissions by at least 9% a year.

“The world is still underestimating climate risks,” Guterres added. “It’s absolutely essential to reduce emissions drastically now.”

And that reducing will only unfold, the U.N. secretary-general emphasized in his COP29 opening remarks, if the world’s nations address the pivotal contribution to climate catastrophe that our world’s wealthiest are making.

“The rich cause the problem,” as Guterres explained, “the poor pay the highest price.”

Observers have tagged this year’s global environmental gathering the “climate finance COP.” The key question before all the official government delegates gathered in Baku: Who will actually pay the bill for addressing the climate change crisis?

Back in 2009, national delegations to that year’s COP gathering pledged to raise an overall annual $100 billion over the next 15 years. The world’s nations have since then met that target only once. Any new annual target for the next 15 years, most researchers and activists agree, needs to run considerably higher, anywhere from $500 billion to $5 trillion higher.

No one can reasonably expect governments alone, COP principals from rich nations counter, to come up with anywhere near that level of support. These rich-nation COP delegations want to encourage private investors to get more involved in financing new climate initiatives.

In other words, instead of taxing the world’s wealthiest at higher levels, rich nations want to give their richest more opportunities to become ever richer.

Nations rich with fossil fuels most heartily agree. The “onus” for financing moves to counter the climate crisis, COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev from Azerbaijan is arguing, “cannot fall entirely on government purses.”

Our globe’s richest nations would also like to expand the trading of “carbon credits,” transactions that let wealthy developed nations delay making costly emissions cuts at home by underwriting much less costly climate actions in poor nations.

But the offset projects that developed nations underwrite, The Guardian notes, have regularly overpromised and underdelivered, leaving “wildfires burning through forests that were supposed to be protected and emissions from renewable energy projects being counted on balance books even though they would probably have been built anyway.”

This year’s CO29 conference will wrap up on November 22, and no serious climate change analyst is predicting any consensus that could significantly slow our globe’s ever more perilous progress to climate collapse. Developed nations, Bloomberg’s Mark Gongloff observes, remain “loath to pitch in more than $100 billion a year.”

“Transitioning the world to clean energy alone,” counters Gongloff, could actually cost $215 trillion by 2050.

How could the world make real progress toward those trillions? Guardian environmental editor Fiona Harvey earlier this week ran down some promising options.

Nations could for starters, Harvey notes, put a serious tax bite on the “unprecedented” profit bonanza that fossil fuel companies have enjoyed ever since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Those companies have pocketed well over a quarter-trillion dollars in profits in the two years since.

Nations could also place new taxes on the jet flights our richest so enjoy or move to end the more than $650 billion spent annually in the developing world on subsidies for fossil fuels and polluting industries. Better yet, in a world where our five richest billionaires have more than doubled their wealth since 2020, we could adopt the 2% annual tax on billionaire wealth that Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has proposed.

A global tax along that line could raise $250 billion per year from just the world’s 100 richest families.

The only sure thing about initiatives like these: No proposals that could make a real climate difference will get any serious attention at COP29, as the prime minister of Albania, Edi Rama, observed in his brief and biting remarks to conference-goers. Rama opened his address to COP29 by noting that he had decided to ditch his prepared remarks after spending some time in the conference’s leaders lounge.

The global notables in that lounge, Rama continued, had all gathered to “eat, drink, meet, and take photos together, while images of voiceless speeches from leaders play on and on and on in the background.”

“To me, this seems exactly like what happens in the real world every day,” he went on to explain. “Life goes on with its old habits, and our speeches, filled with good words about fighting climate change, change nothing.”

Concluded Rama, a former artist and the current chair of his nation’s Socialist Party: “What on Earth are we doing in this gathering, over and over and over, if there is no common political will on the horizon to go beyond words and unite for meaningful action?”

That inaction—in the face of overwhelming global public support for greater pro-climate action—continues to comfort our world’s most fantastically wealthy.

Francesca Albanese did not mince her words. In a strongly worded speech at the United Nations General Assembly Third Committee on October 29, the U.N. special rapporteur deviated from the typical line of other U.N. officials. She directed her statements to those in attendance.

“Is it possible that after 42,000 people killed, you cannot empathize with the Palestinians?” Albanese said in her statement about the need to “recognize (Israel’s war on Gaza) as a genocide.” “Those of you who have not uttered a word about what is happening in Gaza demonstrate that empathy has evaporated from this room,” she added.

Was Albanese too idealistic when she chose to appeal to empathy, which, in her words, represents “the glue that makes us stand united as humanity”?

Now that the Global South is finally rising with its own political, economic, and legal initiatives, it is time for these new bodies to either offer a complete alternative to the U.N. or push for serious and irreversible reforms in the organization.

The answer largely depends on how we wish to define the role being played by the U.N. and its various institutions, whether its global platform was established as a guarantor of peace, or as a political club for those with military might and political power to impose their agendas on the rest of the world?

Albanese is not the first person to express deep frustration with the institutional, let alone the moral, collapse of the U.N., or the inability of the institution to affect any kind of tangible change, especially during times of great crises.

The U.N.’s own Secretary-General Antonio Guterres himself had accused the executive branch of the U.N., the Security Council, of being “outdated,” “unfair,” and an “ineffective system.”

“The truth is that the Security Council has systematically failed in relation to the capacity to put an end to the most dramatic conflicts that we face today,” he said, referring to “Sudan, Gaza, Ukraine.” Also, although noting that “the U.N. is not the Security Council,” Guterres acknowledged that all U.N. bodies “suffer from the fact that the people look at them and think, ‘Well, but the Security Council has failed us.’”

Some U.N. officials, however, are mainly concerned about how the U.N.’s failure is compromising the standing of the international system, thus whatever remains of their own credibility. But some, like Albanese, are indeed driven by an overriding sense of humanity.

On October 28, 2023, mere weeks after the start of the war, the director of the New York office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights left his post because he could no longer find any room to reconcile between the failure to stop the war in Gaza and the credibility of the institution.

“This will be my last communication to you,” Craig Mokhiber wrote to the U.N. high commissioner in Geneva, Volker Turk. “Once again we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes, and the organization we serve appears powerless to stop it,” Mokhiber added.

The phrase “once again” may explain why the U.N. official made his decision to leave shortly after the start of the war. He felt that history was repeating itself, in all its gory details, while the international community remained divided between powerlessness and apathy.

The problem is multilayered, complicated by the fact that U.N. officials and employees do not have the power to alter the very skewed structure of the world’s largest political institution. That power lies in the hands of those who wield political, military, financial, and veto power.

Within that context, countries like Israel can do whatever they want, including outlawing the very U.N. organizations that have been commissioned to uphold international law, as the Israeli Knesset did on October 28 when it passed a law banning UNRWA from conducting “any activity” or providing services in Israel and the occupied territories.

But is there a way out?

Many, especially in the Global South, believe that the U.N. has outlived its usefulness or needs serious reforms.

These assessments are valid, based on this simple maxim: The U.N. was established in 1945 with the main objectives of the “maintenance of international peace and security, the promotion of the well-being of the peoples of the world, and international cooperation to these ends.”

Very little of the above commitment has been achieved. In fact, not only has the U.N. failed at that primary mission, but it has become a manifestation of the unequaled distribution of power among its members.

Though the U.N. was formed following the atrocities of WWII, now it stands largely useless in its inability to stop similar atrocities in Palestine, Lebanon, Sudan, and elsewhere.

In her speech, Albanese pointed out that if the U.N.’s failures continue, its mandate will become even “more and more irrelevant to the rest of the world,” especially during these times of turmoil.

Albanese is right, of course, but considering the irreversible damage that has already taken place, one can hardly find a moral, let alone rational, justification of why the U.N., at least in its current form, should continue to exist.

Now that the Global South is finally rising with its own political, economic, and legal initiatives, it is time for these new bodies to either offer a complete alternative to the U.N. or push for serious and irreversible reforms in the organization.

Either that or the international system will continue to be defined by nothing but apathy and self-interest.

What do card sharks, magicians, pickpockets, and tyrants do to hide their tricks? They deflect your attention. “Look over here!” they say, as they create a commotion that preoccupies your mind while they bamboozle you.

At first, I thought U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s gonzo nominations were intended to flood the zone—overwhelm us, demoralize us, cause us to lose our minds.

Alternatively, I thought, they had a strategic purpose: Smoke out Senate Republicans who might stand in Trump’s way on other issues—such as allying with Russian President Vladimir Putin and destroying NATO—so Trump could purge the holdouts through primary challengers and angry MAGAs.

Musk has vowed to cut at least $2 trillion from the federal budget. The richest man in the world explains that “we have to reduce spending to live within our means. And, you know, that necessarily involves some temporary hardship.”

But while flooding the zone and purging recalcitrant Senate Republicans may be part of it, I’ve come to think there’s a larger plan at work.

Trump wants to deflect our attention while he and his fellow billionaires loot America.

As he consolidates power, Trump is on his way to creating a government of billionaires, by billionaires, for billionaires.

Trump intuitively knows that the most powerful and insidious of all alliances is between rich oligarchs and authoritarian strongmen.

Two billionaires are leading his transition team. The richest person in the world and another billionaire will run a new department of “efficiency.” Other billionaires are waiting in the wings to be anointed to various positions.

America is now home to 813 billionaires whose cumulative wealth has grown a staggering 50% since before the pandemic.

Apologists for these mind-boggling amounts argue they’re not a zero-sum game where the rest of us must lose ground in order for billionaires to prosper. Quite the contrary, they say: The billionaires’ achievements expand the economic pie for everyone.

But the apologists overlook one important thing. Power is a zero-sum game. The more power in billionaire hands, the less power in everyone else’s. And power cannot be separated from wealth, or wealth from power.

The shameless feeding frenzy that has already begun at the troughs of Trump—planning for more tax cuts for the wealthy, regulatory rollbacks to make the wealthy and their corporations even wealthier, subsidies for the wealthy and their enterprises—constitute a zero-sum power game that will hurt average Americans.

The pending tax cuts will explode the national debt. As a result, the rest of America will have to pay more in interest payments to the holders of that debt—who, not incidentally, are wealthy Americans.

This will require that the middle and working classes either pay higher taxes or sacrifice some benefits they rely on (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act).

Meanwhile, regulatory rollbacks will make workplaces less safe, products more dangerous, our air and water more polluted, national parks less welcoming, travel more hazardous, and financial transactions riskier for average people.

Trump has tapped Elon Musk, who invested some $130 million to get Trump elected (not to mention in-kind gifts of support from X and a swing-state operation to register right-leaning voters) and former pharmaceutical executive Vivek Ramaswamy, to run a “Department of Government Efficiency.”

Musk calls it DOGE, named after Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency—whose value, not incidentally, has soared since Musk began using its name for his incipient department.

It now appears that DOGE won’t be an actual “Department” but a powerful advisory group outside the official government yet inside the Trump White House. It will announce—presumably posted with great fanfare on X—what Musk allies describe as “slash-and-burn business ideologies to the U.S. government.”

Musk has vowed to cut at least $2 trillion from the federal budget. The richest man in the world explains that “we have to reduce spending to live within our means. And, you know, that necessarily involves some temporary hardship.”

Hardship for whom? Not for Musk. Not for Trump. Not for the billionaires heading Trump’s transition team. Not for all the billionaires who will profit from the planned tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks.

And not for people responding to Musk’s recent X post calling for “super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting. If that’s you, DM this account…. Elon & Vivek will review the top 1% of applicants.”

Musk says we have to reduce spending “to live within our means?” Whose means?

Since Trump’s election victory on November 5, Musk himself has become $70 billion richer due to the rising value of his enterprises.

Why have Musk’s companies—Tesla, SpaceX, and X—risen so much in value? Because investors expect some or all of the 19 known ongoing federal investigations and lawsuits against Musk’s companies to wind down. (Lawsuits involving alleged securities law violations, workplace safety, labor and civil rights violations, violations of environmental laws, consumer fraud, and vehicle safety defects.)

Investors also expect SpaceX to become more profitable from more multibillion-dollar contracts. Musk’s xAI could also reap vast rewards as the new administration considers AI regulations.

Other billionaires who invested in Trump have also been raking it in.

Oracle founder Larry Ellison, the world’s second-richest person—a close friend of Musk’s and a former Tesla board member—is a longtime Republican donor who’s enjoying his own Trump bump. Since the election, Oracle’s share value has increased 10%, increasing Ellison’s own wealth by some $20 billion.

Venture capital billionaire Marc Andreessen, who donated at least $4.5 million to a super PAC that supported Trump, expects to cash in by having Trump ease the antitrust crackdown on Big Tech, in which Andreessen has invested heavily. Andreessen’s wish has already been partly monetized: Big Tech has reaped most of the stock market gains since Election Day.

There’s also crypto. Since the election, the price of bitcoin has surged to record levels. The crypto exchange Coinbase, a major contributor to candidates friendly to crypto, expects regulators to keep their hands off it. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has become about $4.5 billion richer since Trump’s victory, as Coinbase shares soared 67%.

Oh, there are also the private prison corporations. George Zoley, a top executive at GEO Group and another major donor to Trump, expects Trump’s reelection to drive up demand for empty beds at detention centers the company runs for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Since the election, GEO Group has had the largest surge in its stock price since 2016, after Trump was elected the first time.

GEO Group executives told Wall Street analysts on a recent earnings call that Trump’s election could help GEO Group fill as many as 18,000 empty beds at its facilities, which would generate as much as $400 million in annual business.

Venture capitalists and investors in new military technologies are now swarming around the Defense Department like bees over a vast flower bed. They also donated to Trump and expect a big quid pro quo.

The fossil fuels CEOs who plunked down millions of dollars for Trump in the expectation they’d get a fat return in the form of rollbacks of environmental regulations are also celebrating.

The list of wealthy beneficiaries from Trump’s election goes on and on.

So who will suffer the “hardship” Musk predicts?

I doubt that Musk will recommend cutting the billions of dollars in government contracts Musk’s corporations receive, or the GEO Group’s contracts for private prison space, or the military budget. Quite the contrary: Government spending on all these will increase.

If history is any guide, there is no limit to how greedy the greedy will get when the guardrails are lifted.

Instead, Musk will want to cut the enforcement of antitrust laws, securities laws, workplace safety laws, labor laws, civil rights laws, laws against consumer fraud, laws mandating vehicle safety, tax laws, and environmental laws.

And because there’s no other place to find anything close to the $2 trillion he’s promising to cut from the federal budget, I expect Musk will turn to cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits.

Here’s where the trick comes in. We’ll all be so distracted by what Gaetz is doing at the Justice Department, Gabbard to national intelligence, and RFK Jr. to public health, that we may not notice.

After all, the next months will be filled with Trump theatrics—a major fight in the Senate over the Gaetz nomination, another fight over recess appointments, another over RFK Jr. and his plans for destroying public health.

Meanwhile, Musk and company will be recommending all sorts budget cuts that cause hardship for hardworking Americans but almost no one will notice because of the distractions.

I prefer to end this post on a hopeful note, so here goes.

There has always been a close relationship in America between wealth and power, but it has usually been thought slightly shameful—something to be hidden or elided—because it contradicts the basic tenets of democracy.

Recall the admonition credited to Justice Louis Brandeis that America has a choice: either great wealth in the hands of a few, or democracy—but we cannot have both.

Hence, American politicians typically play up their humble origins. CEOs and bankers minimize their political clout. The wealthy refrain from overt displays of power.

But in Gilded Ages—such as the one that dominated the turn of the 20th century and the one we’re now in—the ultra-rich abandon such humility. The linkages between wealth and power becomes apparent for all to see. Conspicuous consumption becomes the handmaiden of conspicuous clout.

In such times, the wealthy brag about their access to politicians, talk openly about how many tens of millions of dollars they’ve donated to campaigns and about the “return” on these “investments,” and want everyone to know how they’ve turned their affluence into influence and their influence into even more affluence.

Ultimately, these insults to democracy—delivered by the new oligarchs shamelessly, openly, and arrogantly—go too far. They invite a backlash.

If history is any guide, at some point the public will become revolted by the stench of legalized bribery. It will not abide the quid pro quos of billionaire campaign donations for tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks.

The public will also become fed up with brazen billionaire propaganda delivered through billionaire ownership of key media, such as Musk’s X, right-wing radio, and Murdoch’s Fox News, New York Post, and editorial pages of the The Wall Street Journal.

More than a century ago, this sort of revulsion generated what historians refer to as the “Progressive Era.” It was responsible for pushing Teddy Roosevelt to break up the monopolies, institute the nation’s first income tax, stop corporations from funding candidates for president and Congress, and create the Food and Drug Administration.

And when the excesses finally caused the economy to collapse, another upsurge in progressivism prompted Teddy’s fifth cousin, Franklin D., to raise taxes even further on the affluent, create the 40-hour workweek with time-and-a-half for overtime, force corporations to negotiate with unions, institute unemployment insurance, create a minimum wage, and establish Social Security.

If history is any guide, there is no limit to how greedy the greedy will get when the guardrails are lifted. So Gilded Age excesses are almost guaranteed.

And when the corruption and ensuing hardship become so blatant that they offend the values of the majority of Americans, that majority will once again demand systematic reforms that bring us closer to those values.

Donald Trump’s return to the White House poses an existential threat to the climate movement’s goal of a livable future. In the face of this magnitude and multitude of threats, it is imperative that we resist the impulse to retreat into our niche issue silos and limit our vision. If we hope to preserve a stable climate, we must prevail in the fight of our lives against authoritarianism. And to do that, climate movement leaders must commit to an unprecedented level of solidarity with the communities targeted by Trump, in particular immigrants and refugees.

For a number of years now, we have taken part in, and led, conversations between immigrant and climate leaders aligning our movements for this moment. To meet it, the U.S. Climate Movement must grapple with the connections between climate disruption, migration, and rising authoritarianism; commit to the fight against mass detention and deportation of migrants; and help build a narrative and vision of climate resilience that includes protections for displaced people.

Trump’s electoral victory comes in the midst of a global wave of authoritarian politics stretching across Western democracies. These movements share a worldview of scarcity in a chaotic, disrupted world, and their politics are defined by brutal scapegoating of migrants and displaced people. Wherever they win power these authoritarians are climate disasters, expanding the fossil fuel economy, and delaying action. The threat of eco-fascism lurks in authoritarian ideology like the great replacement theory and has motivated terrible acts of individual violence. The authoritarian movements gaining political power by demonizing migrants and refugees are firmly aligned with fossil fuel billionaires and their interests. Climate and immigrant rights movements succeed or fail together; our political fortunes are inextricably bound.

Climate advocates can deploy the legal and political tactics that blocked tar sands pipelines and new coal-fired power plants to challenge the construction of the vast network of detention centers, camps, and militarized sites essential for the administration’s agenda.

As climate-disruption accelerates it creates the conditions these authoritarian movements thrive on. More frequent and severe domestic disasters, like back-to-back hurricanes Helene and Milton, feed the psychological sense of scarcity of disruption. Globally, increasing climate impacts intensify factors like persecution, conflict, and economic desperation, driving internal displacement and forcing some to cross borders to seek safety. Authoritarians like Trump prey on these conditions, falsely blaming asylum seekers for stealing FEMA funds from hurricane survivors in a calculated attempt to pit the victims of the climate crisis against vulnerable immigrants instead of billionaires.

One reason these manipulative tactics have been so effective is that they go unchallenged. On both sides of the Atlantic, climate and other progressive organizations have seen defense of immigrants and refugees as a political third rail, remained silent in the face of growing attacks, and ceded the narrative to the worst political actors. In advance of June’s European elections where parties advancing anti-immigrant ideology made significant gains, advocates were advised to avoid “being distracted” by engaging with anti-immigrant rhetoric and focus on mobilizing voters with a message of climate action. American climate groups took a similar approach in the recent election, with similar results. As climate disasters continue to rise, so will the fear-mongering, finger-pointing, and manipulation. We cannot afford to let it go unchallenged.

With the incoming administration’s imminent threat of mass detention and deportation, the first step for climate organizations must be to actively and materially join the defense of immigrant communities. This means participating in the political resistance to the program, including mass marches and strikes, but also directing chapters and members to join ICE raid rapid-response networks, immigration court accompaniment projects, mutual aid efforts, and the like. These actions will go a long way in building needed trust with immigrant rights leaders, who can be wary of the environmental movement’s checkered past and recent silence on this issue.

Climate and environmental organizations also bring a critical skillset to the table—their experience stopping the construction of fossil fuel infrastructure. Climate advocates can deploy the legal and political tactics that blocked tar sands pipelines and new coal-fired power plants to challenge the construction of the vast network of detention centers, camps, and militarized sites essential for the administration’s agenda. Groups like the Prison Ecology Project and the Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons have experimented with using these strategies to challenge the construction of new jails, with some success. If the climate movement applied the same grassroots, legal, and inside political coordination that brought down the Keystone XL pipeline, we could challenge every new building, airstrip, and cage linked to mass deportation. In this fight every delay will be valuable in preventing measures of suffering and cruelty.

Second, climate organizations need to launch a massive program of popular education to help their members and leaders understand the connections between climate and migrant justice and reject authoritarianism. It’s time for a movement-wide reckoning around climate and migration similar to those around racial justice and Indigenous rights that have already transformed the movement’s language, analysis, and agenda. Pre-election polling shows alarming support for the concept of mass deportation and the militarized internment of undocumented people—including among Democrats. Our conversations about climate and migration with a wide swath of environmental leaders and activists showed us that these sentiments are more pervasive in the climate movement than many would like to admit. Luckily research shows support for deportation programs collapses when respondents better understand the details of who is targeted, pointing to an opening for popular education.

Part of this project will need to be confronting the damaging narratives the movement has used, which too often cast increased migration as a threat comparable to storms, fires, and heatwaves. Some research shows that these kinds of stories, often highlighting unreliable numerical predictions of mass climate displacement, actually increase anti-immigrant sentiment, even among highly motivated climate activists. Both of our organizations have worked to shift these narratives in recent years, and see elevating the complex stories of displaced people in our communities as the key.

Lastly, we need to work together to forge a bold vision to protect displaced people in a climate-disrupted world. For too long the climate movement, and the progressive movement writ large, have ceded this issue to those who offer guns, walls, and cages as their solution. In the absence of an alternative, these have become the only solutions in our discourse. Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned on one of the most restrictive border bills in the modern age, while President Joe Biden’s climate negotiators fought the creation of tools for global climate reparations, like the United Nations Loss and Damage Fund.

The authoritarian narrative paints climate disruption as a competition for survival, and tries to pit vulnerable people against each other. But this is a lie, crafted to protect the fossil fuel billionaires. The truth is that the climate crisis can only be solved through cooperation and interdependence. It profoundly illustrates how our fates are bound together, and demands an expansive vision of safety and resilience. The climate and migrant justice movements need to bring a new urgency to calls for global investments to protect vulnerable people’s ability to stay in their community and thrive, and safe and orderly pathways for them to leave if and when necessary, as a counter to the militarized borders currently on offer.

Taking this path will require real commitment, resources, and dedication. But our opponents want us divided because the world we deserve can only be won together.

On November 7, the First Committee of the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly supported a resolution to help victims of nuclear weapons use and testing. Brought forward by the Republics of Kazakhstan and Kiribati, and co-sponsored by 39 additional U.N. Member States, the resolution received 169 votes in favor, with only four nuclear weapon possessors—Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, France, Russia, and the United Kingdom—voting against it. The remaining five nuclear armed states (China, India, Israel, Pakistan, and the United States), plus Poland, all abstained.

The vote is a resounding affirmation that nuclear justice efforts are here to stay. The states that have caused harm to peoples around the planet, including their own citizens and those whose care they were entrusted with, can finally stop pretending that such harms are either nonexistent or that they have done enough to address them. The nuclear weapon possessors, most especially the five nuclear weapon states—China, France, Russia, United States, and the United Kingdom—recognized as such by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, must engage in earnest.

Ultimately, nuclear justice must also include elimination of all nuclear weapon arsenals. This would ensure that the suffering of those impacted by nuclear weapons has not been in vain.

Ever-growing understanding of the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapon attacks by the United States on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as the testing of nuclear weapons that lasted for decades and reached numerous corners of the globe, provided a huge impetus behind the Humanitarian Initiative, a successful effort started in the early 2010s by a group of states in collaboration with civil society, all motivated to change the nuclear weapons status quo. Coupled with the growing appreciation of what nuclear war would bring today or tomorrow (subject of another U.N. resolution that passed this month with 141 in favor votes, 30 abstentions, and France, Russia, and the United Kingdom voting no), as well as the research on the risk of nuclear weapon use and the recognition that no adequate response could be devised for such a possibility, the Humanitarian Initiative led to successful efforts to bring into the U.N. system a treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons (Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons or TPNW).

When the TPNW was drafted in 2017, the diplomats recognized that it wasn’t enough to prohibit nuclear weapon activities, but that the past and present consequences for people and the environment had to be addressed head-on. This led to the Articles 6 and 7 of the TPNW on victim assistance, environmental remediation, and international cooperation, which are collectively referred to as the humanitarian provisions of the treaty. The goal is not just to make these ongoing harms integral to the effort to prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons, but to address them directly and provide tangible results for the communities that have suffered from adverse health and socioeconomic impacts for decades and whose environments may still be radiologically contaminated. Having entered into force in 2021, the TPNW is now faced with the implementation of these provisions for two states that are already parties to the treaty, Republics of Kazakhstan and Kiribati. Kazakhstan was the site of 456 Soviet nuclear tests from 1949 to 1991, while Kiribati was home from 1957 to 1962 to United States and United Kingdom tests whose cumulative yield was equivalent to more than 2,000 Hiroshima bombs.

The humanitarian provisions of the TPNW have led to the broadening of conversations about these harms and the new norm arising from the treaty of the obligation to address them. While the United States had a Radiation Exposure Compensation Act from the early 1990s until its expiration earlier this year, and France introduced its Loi Morin law in 2010, these efforts have been severely limited in their scope and impact. In both cases, the definition of a victim was restricted in such a way as to prevent many of those harmed from qualifying for the compensation. Even for the people who have qualified, the assistance has been inadequate. Worse yet is the case of all of the communities that have been completely disregarded and excluded from such compensation schemes.

What is particularly powerful about the nuclear justice resolution is that, with the exception of Poland this year, it has left the nuclear weapon possessors totally alone. Even their closest friends and allies have now voted in favor of the resolution for the second year in a row. More than 70 states that have not yet joined the TPNW have now affirmed that nuclear justice is a worthwhile effort they are ready to stand behind. In this way, the resolution is a powerful example of the way in which the TPNW Is already having an impact on international norms and policies even as nearly half of U.N. Members States have yet to join the treaty.

The road to nuclear justice is long. It will include acknowledgment, compensation, and the promise to never cause such harms again. The next phase must consist of genuine and independent assessment of needs both for victim assistance and environmental remediation in all impacted areas, with the international community coming together to offer help, including technical and financial assistance. How much remains to be done will in many ways depend on what the assessments demonstrate.

Ultimately, nuclear justice must also include elimination of all nuclear weapon arsenals. This would ensure that the suffering of those impacted by nuclear weapons has not been in vain. Instead, future generations will see it as the rallying call that brought the international community together to guarantee the right of survival to humanity and our fellow Earth inhabitants for the foreseeable future.

When the election results came in on November 5th, I felt a pain in the pit of my stomach, similar to what I experienced when Ronald Reagan rode to power in 1980, or with George W. Bush’s tainted victory over Al Gore in 2000. After some grieving, the first question that came to my mind was: What will a Trump presidency mean for the movements for peace and social justice? I offer what follows as just one person’s view, knowing that a genuine strategy for coping in this new era will have to be a distinctly collective process.

As a start, history offers some inspiration. On issues of war and peace, the trajectory of the Reagan administration suggests how surprising hope can prove to be. The man who joked that “we begin bombing [Russia] in five minutes,” and hired a Pentagon official who told journalist Robert Scheer that America would survive a nuclear war if it had “enough shovels” to build makeshift shelters, ended up claiming that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” He even came tantalizingly close to an agreement with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to abolish nuclear weapons altogether.

To his credit, Reagan developed a visceral opposition to such weaponry, while his wife, Nancy, urged him to reduce nuclear weapons as a way to burnish his legacy. A Washington Post account of her role noted that “[s]he made no secret of her dream that a man once branded as a cowboy and a jingoist might even win the Nobel Peace Prize.” Such personal factors did come into play, but the primary driver of Reagan’s change of heart was the same thing that undergirds so many significant changes in public policy — dedicated organizing and public pressure.

Reagan’s presidency coincided with the rise of the largest, most mainstream anti-nuclear movement in American history, the nuclear freeze campaign.

Along the way, in June 1982, one million people rallied for disarmament in New York’s Central Park. And that movement had an impact. As Reagan National Security Advisor Robert MacFarlane pointed out at the time, “We took it [the freeze campaign] as a serious movement that could undermine congressional support for the [nuclear] modernization program, and potentially… a serious partisan political threat that could affect the election in `84.”

Reagan’s response was twofold. He proposed a technical solution, pledging to build an impenetrable shield against incoming missiles called the Strategic Defense Initiative (more popularly known as the Star Wars program). That impenetrable shield never came to be, but the quest to develop it deposited tens of billions of dollars in the coffers of major weapons contractors like Lockheed and Raytheon.

The second prong of Reagan’s response was a series of nuclear arms control proposals, welcomed by reformist Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, including a discussion of the possibility of eliminating the two sides’ nuclear arsenals altogether. The idea of abolishing nuclear weapons didn’t come to fruition, but the Reagan administration and its successor, that of George H.W. Bush, did at least end up implementing substantial cuts to the American nuclear arsenal.

So, in a few short years, Reagan, the nuclear hawk, was transformed into Reagan, the arms-control-supporter, largely due to concerted public pressure. All of which goes to show that organizing does matter and that, given enough political will and public engagement, dark times can be turned around.

Trump at Peace (and War)

Donald Trump is nothing if not a top-flight marketeer — a walking, talking brand. And his brand is as a tough guy and a deal maker, even if the only time he’s truly lived up to that image was as an imaginary businessman on television.

But because Trump, lacking a fixed ideology — unless you count narcissism — is largely transactional, his positions on war and peace remain remarkably unpredictable. His first run for office was marked by his relentless criticism of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, a rhetorical weapon he deployed with great skill against both Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton. That he failed to oppose the war when it mattered — during the conflict — didn’t change the fact that many of his supporters thought of him as the anti-interventionist candidate.

To his credit, Trump didn’t add any major boots-on-the-ground conflicts to the conflicts he inherited. But he did serious damage as an arms dealer, staunchly supporting Saudi Arabia’s brutal war in Yemen, even after that regime murdered U.S.-resident and Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. In a statement after the murder, Trump bluntly said that he didn’t want to cut off arms to the Saudi regime because it would take business away from “Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and many other great U.S. defense contractors.”

Trump also did great damage to the architecture of international arms control by withdrawing from a treaty with Russia on intermediate-range nuclear forces and the Iran nuclear deal, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. If those agreements were still in place, the risks posed by the current conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East would be lower, and they might have served as building blocks in efforts to step back from such conflicts and return to a world of greater cooperation.

But there is another side to Trump, too. There’s the figure who periodically trashes the big weapons makers and their allies as greedy predators trying to line their own pockets at taxpayer expense. For example, in a September speech in Wisconsin, after a long rant about how he was being unfairly treated by the legal system, Trump announced that “I will expel warmongers. We have these people, they want to go to war all the time. You know why? Missiles are $2 million apiece. That’s why. They love to drop missiles all over the place.” And then he added, referring to his previous presidency, “I had no wars.” If past practice is any indication, Trump will not follow through on such a pledge. But the fact that he felt compelled to say it is at least instructive. There is clearly a portion of Trump’s base that’s tired of endless wars and skeptical of the machinations of the nation’s major defense contractors.

Trump has also said that he will end the war in Ukraine on day one. If so, it may be the peace of the graveyard, in the sense that he’ll cut off all U.S. support for Ukraine and let Russia roll over them. But his support for peace in Ukraine, if one can call it that, is not replicated in his other strategic views, which include a confrontational stance towards China, a pledge to further militarize the U.S.-Mexican border, and a call for Benjamin Netanyahu to “finish the job” in Gaza.

The last thing to consider in assessing what Trump’s military policies might look like is his administration’s close association with the most unhinged representatives of Silicon Valley’s military tech surge. For instance, Peter Thiel, founder of the emerging military tech firm Palantir, gave J.D. Vance, Trump’s vice president, a job at one of his companies and later donated large sums to his successful run for the Senate from Ohio. The new-age militarists of Silicon Valley loudly applauded the choice of Vance, whom they see as their man in the White House.

All of this adds up to what might be thought of as the Trump conundrum when it comes to war and peace and, to deal with it, a peace movement is truly needed.

Peace Resistance

For any peace movement, figuring out how to approach Trump will be like shadow boxing — trying to imagine what position he’s likely to take next.

The biggest problem in working for peace under a Trump presidency may involve whether groups are even allowed to organize without facing systematic government repression. After all, in the past, Trump has labeled his opponents with the Hitlerian-style insult “vermin” and threatened to jail any number of those he’s designated as his enemies.

Of course, the first job of any future peace movement (which would have applied as well had the Democrats taken the White House) will simply be to grow into a viable political force in such a difficult political climate.

The best way forward would undoubtedly be to knit together a coalition of organizations already opposing some aspect of American militarism — from the Gaza ceasefire movement and antinuclear groups to unions seeking to reduce the roles their members play in arms production, progressive veterans, big-tent organizations like the Poor People’s Campaign, groups opposed to the militarization of the Mexican border, organizations against the further militarization of the police, and climate activists concerned with the Pentagon’s striking role in pouring greenhouse gasses into our atmosphere. A coordinated effort by such movements could generate real political clout, even if it didn’t involve forming a new mega-organization. Rather, it could be a flexible, resilient network capable of focusing its power on issues of mutual concern at key moments. Such a network would, however, require a deeper kind of relationship-building among individuals and organizations than currently exists, based on truly listening to one another’s perspectives and respecting differences on what end state we’re ultimately aiming for.

Even as peace and justice organizations paint a picture of what a better world might look like, they may be able to win some short-term reforms, including some that could even garner bipartisan mainstream support. One thing that the American roles in the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza and plans to arm up for a potential conflict with China have demonstrated is that the American system for developing and purchasing weapons is, at the very least, broken. The weapons are far too costly, take too long to produce, are too complex to maintain, and are often so loaded with unnecessary bells and whistles that they never work as advertised.

A revival of something along the lines of the bipartisan military reform caucus of the 1980s, a group that included powerful Republicans like former Georgia representative Newt Gingrich, is in order. The goal would be to produce cheaper, simpler weapons that can be turned out quickly and maintained effectively. Add to that the kinds of measures for curbing price gouging, holding contractors responsible for cost overruns, and preventing arms makers from bidding up their own stock prices (as advocated relentlessly by Senator Elizabeth Warren), and a left-right coalition might be conceivable even in today’s bitterly divided Congress and the Trump era.

After all, the most hawkish of hawks shouldn’t be in favor of wasting increasingly scarce tax dollars on weapons of little value to troops in the field. And even the Pentagon has tired of the practice of letting the military services submit “wish lists” to Congress for items that didn’t make it into the department’s official budget submission. Such measures, of course, would hardly end war in our time, but they could start a necessary process of reducing the increasingly unchecked power of the Lockheed Martins and Raytheons of our world.

There are also issues that impact all progressive movements like voter suppression, money in politics, political corruption, crackdowns on free speech and the right of political assembly, and so much more that will have to be addressed for groups to work on virtually any issue of importance. So, an all-hands-on-deck approach to the coming world of Donald Trump and crew is distinctly in order.

An invigorated network for peace, justice, and human rights writ large will also need a new approach to leadership. Old-guard, largely white leaders (like me) need to make room for and elevate voices that have either been vilified or ignored in mainstream discourse all these years. Groups fighting on the front lines against oppression have already faced and survived the kinds of crackdowns that some of us fear but have yet to experience ourselves. Their knowledge will be crucial going forward. In addition, in keeping with the old adage that one should work locally but think globally, it will be important to honor and support local organizing. Groups like the Poor People’s Campaign and the progressive feminist outfit Madre have been working along such lines and can offer crucial lessons in how to link strategies of basic survival with demands for fundamental change.

Last, but not least, while such organizing activities will undoubtedly involve real risks, there must be joy in the struggle, too. I’m reminded of civil rights activists singing freedom songs in jail. My favorite of that era isn’t “We Shall Overcome” — although overcome we must — but “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Round,” which includes the lyric “gonna keep on walkin’, keep on talkin’, gonna build a brand-new world.” That may seem like a distant dream in the wake of the recent elections, but it’s all the more necessary because of that.

Victory is by no means assured, but what alternative do we have other than to continue to fight for a better, more just world? To do so will call for a broad-based, courageous, creative, and committed movement of the kind that has achieved other great transformations in American history, from securing the end of slavery to a woman’s right to vote to beginning the process of giving LGBTQ people full citizenship rights.

Time is short, when it comes to the state of this planet and war, but success is still possible if we act with what Martin Luther King, Jr., once called “the fierce urgency of now.”

Since so much that is bizarre is currently being normalized (Matt Gaetz, in an effort to get out of Congress before it could publish its report on his sex scandals, is taking a new job as… attorney general) let me just say that the strangest thing of all remains in plain view. The incoming president of the richest country on Earth believes climate change—the deepest challenge that our species has faced—is a hoax.

This obviously has endless policy implications, which we’ll spend the next four years working through—but the simple fact is what’s so amazing. Every single one of the structures we’ve built over the centuries to help us understand the world, from the National Academy of Science to the land-grant universities with their huge labs, to NASA with its satellites keeping an eye on planet Earth, have told us the same thing: Fairly simple physics means that burning fossil fuel is warming the Earth, a warming now painfully confirmed in rainfall totals, melting ice, rising sea level, and deadly heatwaves. The entire world is plunging into an inferno.

And yet the person at the putative head of that entire pyramid of reason and evidence, the person with instant access to any scientist on Earth, and the person with the power to do the most to prevent it, simply rejects it. Jaded as we are, that should stun us.

Oil companies are a scam, pushing antiquated technology to keep you hooked. They don’t care if you breathe dirty air as long as it makes them money.

It’s not news, of course. President-elect Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate accords last time around, and he will soon do so again. He’s busy finding allies—the first foreign leader to visit Mar-a-Lago post election was Argentina’s Javier Milei, a libertarian beloved by far-right leaders around the world, who joined Trump in doing the YMCA dance (the picture of authoritarian leaders bouncing to a gay anthem is one of the few saving graces of the moment). Milei announced that he too thought climate change was a “socialist lie” and hinted that Argentina too would soon be leaving the Paris pact. Even the host of the current global climate talks, Azerbaijan’s Ilham Aliyev (named as “Corruption’s Person of the Year” in 2012 by a global NGO) used his opening address last week to explain that fossil fuels were “a gift from the god.” (Climate activists, an unpopular species in Azerbaijan, were prevented from chanting at the global talks, so they hummed)

Obviously the underlying motive for all of this is the wealth and power associated with fossil fuels. (The country of Fossil Fuel Lobbyists sent more representatives to the climate talks than almost any other). Trump on Friday appointed a fracking executive, Christopher Wright, as his new energy secretary, surprising absolutely no one. Wright of course rejects the idea that there is a climate crisis, that we need an energy transition, or that there is any such thing as clean energy.

But he goes further, and in a way that I think helps illuminate how the right gets away with its denial. He tweeted recently that following the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the “left” needed a new “north star.”

Enter climate change. The solution to top-down control’s existential challenge came in the form of problem. The climate “problem” fit the bill perfectly. It was global and centered on the two core industries of society, energy and agriculture. It was crowned “existential” by alarmist activists, and left-of-center politicians fell in line.

And here, for me, is the key part. Wright says that the core view of the left is that

those uneducated rubes (the citizenry) surely can’t be left free to exercise their own preferences through purchasing and employment decisions.

I have no idea how Argentine politics works, and I imagine that Azerbaijani politics mainly involves staying on the right side of Mr. Corruption, but I get American politics well enough to recognize the power of Wright’s worldview. There’s always been in our character a strain of “You’re Not the Boss of Me.” (Indeed, I spent my boyhood giving tours of Lexington Green where this attitude had its first real expression). But for much of my life it was a fairly fringe part of our discourse: Long before RFK Jr, for instance, there were oddball right-wing opponents of fluoride in our water supply, or of making motorcyclists wear helmets.

But most of us aren’t motorcyclists interested in traumatic brain injury, nor conspiracy theorists eager to increase our dental bills. So things like that stayed on the fringe—the changes demanded by, say, seatbelts were so small and so obviously beneficial that we just got used to them, and there was no real cost to any industry big enough to matter.

Climate change was a different matter. Taking it seriously would require enormous change from one group of people—those who made fortunes in coal and oil and gas. (Wright’s aptly-named Liberty Energy fracks one-fifth of the onshore wells in America). So the mere fact that science has demonstrated we’re wrecking the Earth with fossil fuel couldn’t be allowed to dictate policy—something that became more likely as the alternatives became cheaper and easier.

The easiest way to marshal opposition was to lean on this tired trope: Someone who thought you were a ‘rube’ was trying to tell you what to do. Trump, of course, goes on repeated diatribes about people being forced to use windpower and then being unable to watch tv because the breeze has dropped, or forced to buy an electric car that only runs when the sun has shining. Though no one has ever proposed banning gas stoves, the mere fact that scientists were pointing out its dangers to the lungs of children was enough to turn on the machine. The Texas representative Ronny Jackson tweeted, with his usual restraint:

I'll NEVER give up my gas stove. If the maniacs in the White House come for my stove, they can pry it from my cold dead hands. COME AND TAKE IT!!

and his Senate colleague Ted Cruz chimed in

The Biden administration is waging a multifaceted attack on popular appliances.

This kind of ‘thinking’ was supercharged by Covid-19—instead of appreciating the difficulties posed by a novel virus (or remembering the piles of dead bodies in the early months), lots of Americans pouted. Someone was telling them not to do something (eat in a crowded restaurant) or to do something (cover their mouths). So they rebelled; absent that anger, I doubt a January 6 could have happened.

I think this strain in our national character is wrongheaded—the danger of authoritarianism in America has always come from the right, not the left, and never more so than now. I devoutly wish that affection for one’s neighbors and a love of the generations that will come after us would persuade us to make the not-very-hard changes required of us. But I don’t think those reasons will be sufficient—they’re not strong enough to override the constant chatter about “mandates” pressed by the fossil fuel industry and its media and political harem.

So we have to broaden the appeal of the things that could save us. In the next few years the main task of the environmental movement in America (because so many other options are foreclosed) is going to involve pushing for a rapid transition to clean and renewable energy. We’re going to have to persuade people that solar and wind energy, and the devices that go with it, are what we want. And it won’t do sufficient good to argue on environmental grounds—“you’re not the boss of me” is a teenager’s argument, and teenagers are focused on themselves. So we better be too.

Here’s some of the arguments, then, that we can spend more time on. (And this is not theoretical—we’ll be rolling out the plans to make these arguments scale, as movements adjust to the new political reality).

Solar power is cheaper. (and those who oppose it know so, and are conspiring to make sure you keep paying them for energy when the sun provides it for free)

It’s more reliable. (and you can plug your EV to your house after a hurricane and run everything for a week).

It’s the ultimate liberty to have your own powerplant on your roof.

It’s far better to have a wind farm in your county than to rely on Saudi Arabia (or Chris Wright).

An electric car goes zero to 60 far faster than your antiquated gas model, and it costs half as much to run. (Rich guys in their Teslas are laughing at you)

Because it has fewer moving parts, you don’t have to visit your mechanic nearly as often. You can drive right by the gas station.

Oil companies are a scam, pushing antiquated technology to keep you hooked. They don’t care if you breathe dirty air as long as it makes them money.

Their shareholders are getting rich while you pay for repairing roads and bridges everytime there’s a new climate disaster.

We’ve already reached the percentage of the population that cares deeply about carbon emissions, and we obviously need more. We need to understand the darker sides of the American brain as well as the lighter ones, and we need to play to them.

So remember: If you have some solar panels and a heat pump and an EV, you’re the boss of you. Pass it on.

While votes are still being counted in some states, turnout for the 2024 general election continues to near (although not quite yet reach) 2020 records, despite our country’s incredibly polarized voting landscape. In our current environment, these levels of participation are a testament to the tenacity of organizers to overcome voter suppression and ensure all voters can fully participate in our democracy.

However, this success cannot lull us into a false sense of security in our push to make voting more accessible. The fight to protect unrestricted access to the ballot box is a year-round effort and responsibility. And now, given the results of this election, future political contests in our country face heightened threat levels that demand our vigilance and action.

The fight for voting rights is one of the greatest litmus tests for the health of U.S. democracy.

Over the last four years, anti-voting rights extremists have made their mission clear: to turn back the hands of time and further disenfranchise Black and brown communities and other historically targeted groups to ensure their continued grip on power. In nearly half of the country, it is now harder for people in Black and brown communities to vote compared with the most recent midterm elections. Yet, Black and brown voters persist. However, as the new administration prepares to reenter the White House for a second term, anti-democratic forces are, once more, being given an opportunity to radically dismantle and change election administration in our country.

And Project 2025 is their blueprint to do just that.

Project 2025 is the extremist playbook laying out the tactics to dismantle critical democratic infrastructures and rights, including the right to vote. Among its multi-pronged approach to accomplish this, Project 2025 would criminalize the voting process, shifting the responsibility for prosecuting election-related offenses from the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division to the Criminal Division. This move would allow for ill-intentioned individuals and leaders to intimidate state and local election workers, and cobble up sham investigations that could lead to the prosecution of voters and election officials.

Policing voters to this magnitude would transform our elections into a system of fear and oppression, severely weakening our country’s electoral integrity.

Yet, that’s not all.

Speaking of lowered electoral integrity, another key provision of Project 2025 would end all federal-level measures to combat misinformation and disinformation campaigns online. These toxic narratives, meant to discourage voter participation, are already widespread and known to target Black and Latino communities disproportionately. By choosing to abandon any federal responsibility to protect these groups from falsehoods, extremists are choosing to make the truth an option rather than a right in election cycles so the outcomes can favor their camp.

Lastly, and perhaps most insidiously, Project 2025 would allow the federal government to access voter rolls by creating stipulations of eligibility that would force state and local recipients of Department of Homeland Security funding to turn over DMV and voter registration databases. This tactic would open the door to justifying aggressive voter roll purges that would further target Black and brown communities. Furthermore, based on the Supreme Court’s increasingly conservative and extreme ideology, we cannot rely on the court to hold the line and protect voters from such an egregious move.

In addition to federal rollbacks, we can also anticipate a flood of anti-voter bills to be introduced as soon as legislative cycles commence. Fueled by misinformation and this recent electoral win, these bills will more than likely work to chip away at voter access among the youth, people of color, those in rural areas, and those living with disabilities. These bills, like Project 2025 itself, aim to limit who can cast a ballot to dictate who has a say in the future of this country.

Both State Voices and Common Cause are proud members of the Election Protection Coalition, a national coalition working year-round to ensure that all voters, regardless of their race, sex, and location, have an equal opportunity to vote and their ballots are counted. Our coalition is made up of more than 300 local, state, and national groups united under one profound belief: Democracy requires constant, committed protection. We understand that our democratic systems do not come under attack every four years, but every day there’s an opportunity to weaken them.

Now, with Project 2025, we have an opportunity to not only identify the threats but begin to mobilize against them. It is imperative that we remain vigilant in our fight against anti-voter legislation and work together to combat any proposed administrative changes designed to undermine how elections are conducted and how votes are certified.

The fight for voting rights is one of the greatest litmus tests for the health of U.S. democracy. We are only as strong as our willingness to protect the rights of all people and not just a few. This moment calls us to action—we cannot afford paralysis in any shape or form. We are called to stand on the shoulders of the activists who came before us so that the elections of the future remain fair and free. We know that Black and brown communities will, once again, lead the charge to protect this precious right, but the moment will call for all of us to do our part to push back against anti-democratic extremism. The future and everything we hold dear depends on it.

One century ago, when Western European powers were planning to carve up the Arab East, the US attempted to convince them to take a different path. Supporting the belief that the peoples recently freed from colonial rule should have the right to self-determination, the US sent a commission of prominent Americans to survey Arab public opinion to discover what they did and did not want for their future. The commission concluded that the overwhelming majority of Arabs rejected division or partition of their region, European mandates over them, and the establishment of a Zionist state in Palestine. What they hoped for was a unitary Arab state.

The commission report also warned of conflict if the planned partition moved forward. The British Lord Balfour rejected these findings saying that the attitudes of the indigenous Arab population meant little to him, especially when weighed against the importance of the Zionist movement.

In the end, Lord Balfour got his way, and the dire prediction of the US commission has been borne out. The Arab East was partitioned, and a Mandate was established in Palestine, which the British used to foster Jewish immigration leading to the establishment of Israel. Since then, Palestinians have been dispossessed, displaced, and subjected to unceasing violence. Because they have resisted, the last century has been one continuous conflict culminating in the unfolding genocide in Gaza and crushing repression on the West Bank.

At present, the problem faced by the Palestinian people is that during the past three decades they have lost even more control over the circumstances of their lives. Since signing the Oslo Accords, Israel has taken steps to make impossible the establishment of a unified Palestinian state in the territories they occupied in 1967. The Israelis have severed what they call East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank, distorting its economy and forcing its population to become dependent on Israel for employment and services. In the West Bank, the Israelis followed a plan to expand settlements and use “Jewish only” roads, infrastructure, checkpoints, and security zones to divide the Palestinian territory into small controlled areas. Gaza has been de-developed and subjected to economic strangulation for decades. It too has been cut off from the rest of Palestine. The dream of what had been hoped for after Oslo has been crushed.

Still, the Western world pays little attention to the needs and aspirations of the Palestinian people. Instead, led by the US, plans are being put forward to govern the future of the Palestinians without the consent of the governed. What is being proposed is a Gaza ruled by a “reformed” Palestinian Authority, with security provided by an Arab-Islamic force, and nothing more than a commitment to negotiate a future two-state solution. The proposal is a non-starter for two reasons.

Despite being designed to meet Israel’s needs, Israelis themselves have rejected the terms of this “day after” concept. They refuse to leave Gaza or allow Palestinians to return to areas of Gaza from which they have been “cleansed.” The Israelis also reject the role of outside forces to provide security. And they are refusing to entertain any discussion of a Palestinian state that involves connecting the divided Palestinian areas, especially if that includes ceding land, removing settlers, surrendering security control, or expanding the role of the Palestinian Authority.

More importantly the “day after” plans fail to take into account Palestinian views.

Instead of prioritizing what Israel (or the US) wants or requires and imposing plans on the Palestinians to meet Israel’s security needs, a shift is needed to an approach that challenges those Israeli policies that have led to Palestinian displacement and anger; distorted Palestinian political and economic development; and made it impossible to build Palestinian institutions that can earn respect.

The place to start is to demand a cease-fire and end the crippling occupation. Palestinian views should be heard. The burden should be placed on Israel and its policies that created this mess and not on victims.

There are some encouraging signs that public opinion in the US is shifting in a more pro-Palestinian direction. Americans are more supportive of Palestinians, and more opposed to Israeli policies that violate Palestinian rights. They are receptive to changing policies that would help Palestinians. But this where the conversation gets stuck, precisely because there is no clear Palestinian vision for the future and no leadership that can articulate it.

With this in mind, a group of Palestinian businessmen commissioned Zogby Research Services to measure the impact of Israeli policies in Gaza, the threats facing those on the West Bank, and to ask Palestinians what they identify as the best path forward to achieve their rights and peace.

What the poll reveals is that despite the different circumstances the Israelis have imposed on the Palestinians in each of the three regions under their control, there remains the common threads of identity, desire for freedom, and unity that continues to bind them together. What they want is that the knee of the Israeli occupation be lifted off their backs so that they can finally have freedom and independence in land of their own. Because they have lost faith, in varying degrees, with the performance of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, they favor: holding a popular referendum to elect a new generation of leadership that can advance a new vision for Palestine; unifying the Palestinian ranks to create a functioning government that can earn respect and recognition; while continuing to hold Israel accountable for its crimes in international bodies.

Of course, all of this must be developed further, but it is the better path to take precisely because it recognizes that instead of continuing to impose “solutions” on Palestinians, the place to begin is to ask them what they want, listen to what they say, and then work to make their aspirations a reality.

Of all U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s choices for his foreign policy team, Marco Rubio is the least controversial to the neoconservative foreign policy establishment in Washington, and the most certain to provide continuity with all that is wrong with U.S. foreign policy, from Cuba to the Middle East to China.

The only area where there might be some hope for ending a war is Ukraine, where Rubio has come close to Trump’s position, praising Ukraine for standing up to Russia, but recognizing that the U.S. is funding a deadly “stalemate war” that needs to be “brought to a conclusion.”

But in all the other hot spots around the world, Rubio is likely to make conflicts even hotter, or start new ones.

1. His Obsession With Regime Change in Cuba Will Sink any Chance of Better Relations With the Island

Like other Cuban-American politicians, Marco Rubio has built his career on vilifying the Cuban Revolution and trying to economically strangle and starve into submission the people of his parents’ homeland.

It is ironic, therefore, that his parents left Cuba before the revolution, during the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, whose executioners, secret police, and death squads killed an estimated 20,000 people, according to the CIA, leading to a wildly popular revolution in 1959.

While Rubio’s virulent anti-leftist stands have served him well in climbing to senior positions in the U.S. government, and now into Trump’s inner circle, his disdain for Latin American sovereignty bodes ill for U.S. relations with the region.

When former President Barack Obama began to restore relations with Cuba in 2014, Rubio swore to do “everything possible” to obstruct and reverse that policy. In May 2024, Rubio reiterated his zero tolerance for any kind of social or economic contacts between the U.S. and Cuba, claiming that any easing of the U.S. blockade will only “strengthen the oppressive regime and undermine the opposition... Until there is freedom in Cuba, the United States must maintain a firm stance.”

In 2024 Rubio also introduced legislation to ensure that Cuba would remain on the U.S. “State Sponsor of Terrorism List,” imposing sanctions that cut Cuba off from the U.S.-dominated Western banking system.

These measures to destroy the Cuban economy have led to a massive wave of migration in the past two years. But when the U.S. Coast Guard tried to coordinate with their Cuban counterparts, Rubio introduced legislation to prohibit such interaction. While Trump has vowed to stem immigration, his secretary of state wants to crush Cuba’s economy, forcing people to abandon the island and set sail for the United States.

2. Applying His Anti-Cuba Template to the Rest of Latin America Will Make Enemies of More of Our Neighbors

Rubio’s disdain for his ancestral home in Cuba has served him so well as an American politician that he has extended it to the rest of Latin America. He has sided with extreme right-wing politicians like Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Javier Milei in Argentina, and rails against progressive ones, from Brazil’s Ignacio Lula da Silva to Mexico’s popular former President Lopez Obrador, whom he called “an apologist for tyranny” for supporting other leftist governments.

In Venezuela, he has promoted brutal sanctions and regime change plots to topple the government of Nicolas Maduro. In 2019 he was one of the architects of Trump’s failed policy of recognizing opposition figure Juan Guaido as president. He has also advocated for sanctions and regime change in Nicaragua.

In March 2023, Rubio urged President Joe Biden to impose sanctions on Bolivia for prosecuting leaders of a 2019 U.S.-backed coup that led to massacres that killed at least 21 people.

Rubio also condemned the government of Honduras for withdrawing from an extradition treaty with the United States this past August, in response to decades of U.S. interference that had turned Honduras into a narco-state riven by poverty, gang violence, and mass emigration, until the election of democratic socialist President Xiomara Castro in 2022.

Rubio’s major concern about Latin America now seems to be the influence of China, which has become the leading trade partner of most Latin American countries. Unlike the U.S., China focuses on economic benefits and not internal politics, while American politicians like Marco Rubio still see Latin America as the U.S. “backyard.”

While Rubio’s virulent anti-leftist stands have served him well in climbing to senior positions in the U.S. government, and now into Trump’s inner circle, his disdain for Latin American sovereignty bodes ill for U.S. relations with the region.

3. He Believes the U.S. and Israel Can Do No Wrong, and That God Has Given Palestine to Israel

Despite the massive death toll in Gaza and global condemnation of Israel’s genocide, Rubio still perpetuates the myth that “Israel takes extraordinary steps to avoid civilian losses” and that innocent people die in Gaza because Hamas has deliberated placed them in the way and used them as human shields. The problem, he says, is “an enemy that doesn’t value human life.”

When asked by CODEPINK in November 2024 if he would support a cease-fire, Rubio replied, “On the contrary. I want them to destroy every element of Hamas they can get their hands on. These people are vicious animals.”

There are few times in this past year that the Biden administration has tried to restrain Israel, but when Biden begged Israel not to send troops into the southern city of Rafah, Rubio said that was like telling the Allied forces in World War II not to attack Berlin to get Hitler.

Marco Rubio expects Americans to believe that it is not genocide itself, but protests against genocide, that are a complete breakdown of law and order.

In a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken in August 2024, Rubio criticized the Biden administration’s decision to sanction Israeli settlers linked to anti-Palestinian violence in the occupied West Bank.

“Israel has consistently sought peace with the Palestinians. It is unfortunate that the Palestinians, whether it be the Palestinian Authority or FTOs [Foreign Terrorist Organisations] such as Hamas, have rejected such overtures,” Rubio wrote. “Israelis rightfully living in their historic homeland are not the impediment to peace; the Palestinians are,” he added.

No country besides Israel subscribes to the idea that its borders should be based on 2,000-year-old religious scriptures, and that it has a God-given right to displace or exterminate people who have lived there since then to reconquer its ancient homeland. The United States will find itself extraordinarily isolated from the rest of the world if Rubio tries to assert that as a matter of U.S. policy.

4. His Deep-Seated Enmity Toward Iran Will Fuel Israel’s War on Its Neighbors, and May Lead to a U.S. War With Iran

Rubio is obsessed with Iran. He claims that the central cause of violence and suffering in the Middle East is not Israeli policy but “Iran’s ambition to be a regional hegemonic power.” He says that Iran’s goal in the Middle East is to “seek to drive America out of the region and then destroy Israel.”

He has been a proponent of maximum pressure on Iran, including a call for more and more sanctions. He believes the U.S. should not reenter the Iran nuclear deal, saying: “We must not trade away U.S. and Israeli security for vague commitments from a terrorist-sponsoring regime that has killed Americans and threatens to annihilate Israel.”

Rubio calls Lebanon’s Hezbollah a “full-blown agent of Iran right on Israel’s border” and that wiping out Hezbollah’s leadership, along with entire neighborhoods full of civilians, is a “service to humanity.” He alleges that Iran has control over Iraq, Syria, the Houthis in Yemen, and is a threat to Jordan. He claims that “Iran has put a noose around Israel,” and says that the goal of U.S. policy should be regime change in Iran, which would set the stage for war.

While there will hopefully be leaders in the Pentagon who will caution Donald Trump about the perils of a war with Iran, Rubio will not be a voice of reason.

5. He Is Beholden to Big Money, From the Weapons Industry to the Israel Lobby

Open Secrets reports that Rubio has received over a million dollars in campaign contributions from pro-Israel groups during his career. The Pro-Israel America PAC was his single largest campaign contributor over the last five years. When he last ran for reelection in 2022, he was the third largest recipient of funding by pro-Israel groups in the Senate, taking in $367,000 from them for that campaign.

Rubio was also the fourth largest recipient of funding from the “defense” industry in the Senate for the 2022 cycle, receiving $196,000. Altogether, the weapons industry has invested $663,000 in his congressional career.

Rubio is clearly beholden to the U.S. arms industry, and even more so to the Israel lobby, which has been one of his largest sources of campaign funding. This has placed him in the vanguard of Congress’s blind, unconditional support for Israel and subservience to Israeli narratives and propaganda, making it unlikely that he will ever challenge the ongoing extermination of the Palestinian people or their expulsion from their homeland.

6. He’s so Antagonistic Toward China That China Has Sanctioned Him—Twice!

Speaking at the Heritage Foundation in 2022, Rubio said: “The gravest threat facing America today, the challenge that will define this century and every generation represented here, is not climate change, the pandemic, or the left's version of social justice. The threat that will define this century is China."

It will be hard for our nation’s “top diplomat” to ease tensions with a country he has so maligned. He antagonized China by co-sponsoring the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which allows the U.S. to bar Chinese imports over alleged Uyghur rights abuses, abuses that China denies and independent researchers question. In fact, Rubio has gone so far as to accuse China of a “grotesque campaign of genocide” against the Uyghurs.

His underlying attitude to foreign relations is, like Trump’s, that the United States must get its way or else, and that other countries who won’t submit must be coerced, threatened, couped, bombed, or invaded.

On Taiwan, he has not only introduced legislation to increase military aid to the island, but actually supports Taiwanese independence—a dangerous deviation from the U.S. government's long-standing One China approach.

The Chinese responded to Rubio by sanctioning him, not once but twice—once regarding the Uyghurs and once for his support of Hong Kong protests. Unless China lifts the sanctions, he would be the first U.S. secretary of state to be banned from even visiting China.

Analysts expect China to try to sidestep Rubio and engage directly with Trump and other senior officials. Steve Tsang, the director of the China Institute at the U.K.’s School of Oriental and African Studies, told Reuters, “If that doesn't work, then I think we're going to get into a much more regular escalation of a bad relationship.”

7. Rubio Knows Sanctions Are a Trap, But He Doesn’t Know How to Escape

Rubio is a leading advocate of unilateral economic sanctions, which are illegal under international law, and which the United Nations and other countries refer to as “unilateral economic coercive measures.”

The United States has used these measures so widely and wildly that they now impact a third of the world’s population. U.S. officials, from Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to Rubio himself, have warned that using the U.S. financial system and the dollar’s reserve currency status as weapons against other countries is driving the rest of the world to conduct trade in other currencies and develop alternative financial systems.

In March 2023, Rubio complained on Fox News, “We won’t have to talk sanctions in five years, because there will be so many countries transacting in currencies other than the dollar, that we won’t have the ability to sanction them.”

And yet Rubio has continued to be a leading sponsor of sanctions bills in the Senate, including new sanctions on Iran in January 2024 and a bill in July to sanction foreign banks that participate in alternative financial systems.

So, while other countries develop new financial and trading systems to escape abusive, illegal U.S. sanctions, the nominee for secretary of state remains caught in the same sanctions trap that he complained about on Fox.

8. He Wants to Crack Down on U.S. Free Speech

Rubio wants to curtail the right to free speech enshrined in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. In May, he described campus protests against Israel as a “complete breakdown of law and order.”

Rubio claimed to be speaking up for other students at American universities. “[They] paid a lot of money to go to these schools, [but are being disrupted by] a few thousand antisemitic zombies who have been brainwashed by two decades of indoctrination in the belief that the world is divided between victimizers and victims, and that the victimizers in this particular case, the ones that are oppressing people, are Jews in Israel,” said Rubio.

The Florida senator has said he supports Trump’s plan to deport foreign students who engage in pro-Palestinian campus protests. In April, he called for punishing supporters of the Israel boycott movement as part of efforts to counter antisemitism, falsely equating any attempt to respond to Israel’s international crimes with antisemitism.

And what about those crimes, which the students are protesting? After visiting Israel in May, Rubio wrote an article for National Review, in which he never mentioned the thousands of civilians Israel has killed, and instead blamed Iran, Biden, and “morally corrupt international institutions” for the crisis.

Marco Rubio expects Americans to believe that it is not genocide itself, but protests against genocide, that are a complete breakdown of law and order. He couldn’t be more wrong if he tried.

Students are not Rubio’s only target. In August 2023, he alleged that certain “far-left and antisemitic entities” may have violated the Foreign Assistance Registration Act by their ties to China. He called for a Justice Department investigation into 18 groups, starting with CODEPINK. These unfounded claims of China connections are only meant to intimidate legitimate groups that are exercising their free speech rights.

Conclusion

On each of these issues, Rubio has shown no sign of understanding the difference between domestic politics and diplomacy. Whether he’s talking about Cuba, Palestine, Iran, or China, or even about CODEPINK, all his supposedly tough positions are based on cynically mischaracterizing the actions and motivations of his enemies and then attacking the “straw man” he has falsely set up.

Unscrupulous politicians often get away with that, and Rubio has made it his signature tactic because it works so well for him in American politics. But that will not work if and when he sits down to negotiate with other world leaders as U.S. secretary of state.

His underlying attitude to foreign relations is, like Trump’s, that the United States must get its way or else, and that other countries who won’t submit must be coerced, threatened, couped, bombed, or invaded. This makes Rubio just as ill-equipped as Antony Blinken to conduct diplomacy, improve U.S. relations with other countries, or resolve disputes and conflicts peacefully, as the U.N. Charter requires.

Dear Secretary Pete Buttigieg,

I understand you and your top-level appointed officials at the U.S. Department of Transportation are preparing to leave their positions given the results of the November 5 elections. Again, I am pleading with you to fully resolve the highway flooding problem and secure the funds for binding commitments to cover flood damages to homes, businesses, and property in Elba, Alabama’s historically Black Shiloh community before the Biden-Harris administration comes to an end on January 20, 2025. We have two months to get justice for the Shiloh community. Let’s not fail them. Remember, they have been flooded for six-plus years.

Again, the matter of highway flooding in my hometown of Elba is no stranger to you and the USDOT. On February 27 this year, the Bullard Center sponsored a small delegation of Shiloh leaders to meet with Assistant Secretary Christopher Coes and high-level USDOT officials in Washington, D.C. And on April 3 of this year, you and several high-ranking members of your staff, including Assistant Secretary Coes and Federal Highway Administrator Shailen Bhatt (who has already left FHWA), participated in our “Journey to Justice” tour of the Shiloh community, talked with flood impacted residents, and saw firsthand the devastation left behind by six-plus years of highway flooding. It’s not a pretty picture—a shameful and dark reminder of misuse and abuse of federal transportation tax dollars.

Yes, racism created the highway flooding problem in Shiloh and it will require environmental justice to fix it.

Through no action or fault of their own, Shiloh residents are helpless as their beloved community becomes a small lake after a rainstorm—all due to racism, reckless design, and expansion of U.S. Highway 84 (that began in 2018 by the Alabama Department of Transportation or ALDOT) under the first Trump administration USDOT. And worse, lack of government response to the Shiloh residents’ complaints about flooding and damage to their homes and property add to growing mistrust of government—including restrictive covenants ALDOT attached to residents’ deeds and an unconscionable property settlement agreement that limits the ability of current and future residents to file actions against the state. The persistent flooding is also responsible for causing residents to lose homeowners insurance coverage, making them even more vulnerable to future economic losses due to climate change.

There is an abundance of documentation and irrefutable evidence to show flooding was not a problem in Shiloh before the Alabama DOT (ALDOT) widened U.S. 84 from two lanes to four lanes and elevated it, placing the once-flat land in the Shiloh community in a bowl and forcing stormwater downhill to flood its residents. To understand this highway flooding problem, one need not be a highway planner, engineer, hydrologist, or lawyer. It’s common-sense knowledge that gravity is forcing water downhill—in this case forcing highway stormwater into the Shiloh community.

By applying the widely accepted “polluter pays principle,” it’s clear who caused the problem and where the responsibility for addressing the flooding problem rests. ALDOT caused highway flooding in the Shiloh community and should be tasked with fixing the highway and required to pay for the damages and losses suffered by the Shiloh home, business, and property owners.

The hard-working Shiloh residents deserve better. They should not have their hard-earned tax dollars used to build a highway project that’s destroying their community and stealing their inheritance and intergenerational wealth. It would be shameful and immoral to allow the flooding problem in Shiloh to carry over into the second Trump administration, when it could be fully resolved on your watch under the Biden administration. I doubt you would want your legacy to read, “USDOT Secretary Pete let the Black Shiloh community and homeowners drown.” Yes, racism created the highway flooding problem in Shiloh and it will require environmental justice to fix it.

The October 4 Voluntary Resolution Agreement (VRA) between FHWA and ALDOT was reached on a civil rights discrimination complaint filed by Shiloh homeowners against the tate agency more than two years ago. The VRA represents binding commitments to fix the highway stormwater drainage system. It’s understandable why Shiloh residents see the VRA only as a partial civil rights victory, since the agreement does nothing to resolve or compensate residents for property losses or damaged homes and businesses. This is a textbook example of highway robbery. A just solution requires putting in place binding commitments to fully compensate Shiloh residents for more than six-plus years of flood losses and damages to their homes, businesses, and property, and offering voluntary buyouts and relocation for those who seek it. That’s the just, fair, and equitable thing to do.

Again, it is important the VRA fix the highway stormwater drainage problem. And it is equally important that binding commitments and an agreement to address damaged homes, property, and businesses be reached before this administration ends because it is unlikely the next USDOT under a second Trump administration would be inclined to resolve highway flood damages and losses of Shiloh residents that were caused by ALDOT under the first Trump administration USDOT.

Finally, ALDOT caused the problem and ALDOT should be held accountable to pay for a comprehensive solution—not a “partial fix” as contained in the VRA. The pressure is mounting for Secretary Pete to act as the clock is ticking for you to step up and make the flooded Shiloh community residents whole before this administration’s time runs out for them on your watch. It’s the just thing to do and the right time to do it. And you need to act with the urgency of now! Let’s not have the record show “you left Black people in Shiloh to drown” on your watch.

Congress is once again attempting to silence pro-Palestinian voices and restrict free speech. After failing to secure a two-thirds majority last Tuesday, House leaders are bringing HR 9495 back for a vote today, attempting to pass it with a simple majority. It is deeply concerning that they are doubling down on this dangerous bill—one that would deal a severe blow to free speech and place pro-Palestinian nonprofits and other advocacy organizations in peril. We must unite to defeat this legislation.

Donald Trump has made no secret of his desire for retribution against those he perceives as adversaries. On the campaign trail, he has alluded to taking aggressive actions, joking about being a dictator on "day one" in office, pledging to jail journalists, and threatening to retaliate against political foes. As his return to the White House looms, Congress is moving to hand a Trump administration a powerful tool that could be wielded against ideological opponents in civil society.

Up for a potential new vote as early as today in the House of Representatives, the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, also known as HR 9495, would grant the Secretary of the Treasury unilateral authority to revoke the tax-exempt status of any nonprofit deemed to be a "terrorist-supporting organization." The bill's vague and overreaching language lacks clear definitions and safeguards, effectively empowering the federal government to investigate and penalize nonprofits based solely on their First Amendment-protected advocacy for human rights. This bill is not just a threat to pro-Palestinian organizations; it endangers any group that engages in dissent or challenges government policies.

The ramifications of HR 9495 are clear: if passed, this law could subject countless nonprofit organizations to harassment, investigation, and unjust penalties simply for engaging in lawful, constitutionally protected advocacy.

For me, this fight is deeply personal. Over 113 of my family members have been killed in Gaza by Israeli forces. This tragic loss has driven me to dedicate my life to advocating for peace, justice, and an end to the suffering that plagues the region. Yet, instead of honoring the rights of individuals who have lost loved ones to violence, Congress is attempting to silence us by pushing bills like HR 9495 that effectively criminalize our grief, our commitment to peace, and our calls for justice. Such legislation adds insult to injury and undermines the principles of freedom and democracy that America professes to uphold.

The ramifications of HR 9495 are clear: if passed, this law could subject countless nonprofit organizations to harassment, investigation, and unjust penalties simply for engaging in lawful, constitutionally protected advocacy. It sets a chilling precedent, blurring the line between political dissent and terrorism in ways that erode our democratic freedoms. By threatening to silence voices advocating for Palestinian human rights, Congress is betraying the constitutional values it claims to uphold, including freedom of speech, association, and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Our elected officials must protect the constitutional rights of all citizens and organizations, regardless of political ideology or perspective. Now is the time to defend—not restrict—the essential rights that sustain our democracy.

HR 9495 would be a powerful tool to stifle crucial debate about U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East if enacted. It would discourage honest conversations about our nation's role in impacting human rights abroad and inhibit the exchange of ideas necessary for a healthy democracy. For families like mine, this bill adds another layer of trauma—stripping us of the right to speak out about the suffering we have experienced firsthand. It sends a message that our pain is inconsequential and that advocating for peace and justice is unwelcome or, worse, punishable.

Historically, efforts to suppress dissent have never boded well for democracy. From the Red Scare to the Civil Rights Movement, we have seen the dangers of allowing the government to silence voices under the guise of national security. Such actions often lead to the marginalization of minority communities and the erosion of civil liberties for all. HR 9495 threatens to repeat these dark chapters of our history by giving the Treasury Department unchecked power without adequate oversight or accountability.

From the Red Scare to the Civil Rights Movement, we have seen the dangers of allowing the government to silence voices under the guise of national security.

We must ask ourselves: what kind of nation do we want to be? Do we want to uphold the principles of freedom and justice enshrined in our Constitution, or do we want to drift toward authoritarianism, where dissent is punished and minority voices are suppressed? Advocating for peace should never be a crime, and punishing those who do so only deepens the injustices we strive to confront.

We urge members of Congress to reconsider this dangerous path and vote down HR 9495 and any similar legislation that may arise in the future. Our elected officials must protect the constitutional rights of all citizens and organizations, regardless of political ideology or perspective. Now is the time to defend—not restrict—the essential rights that sustain our democracy. By defeating HR 9495, Congress can reaffirm our nation's commitment to justice, free speech, and the power of peaceful advocacy.

In addition to legislative action, we call upon civil society, community leaders, and everyday citizens to raise their voices against this bill. Contact your representatives, write to your local newspapers, and engage in peaceful demonstrations to show that we will not stand by while our rights are eroded. It is through action and solidarity that we can safeguard our collective freedoms.

The biblical Book of Job chronicles a string of catastrophes relentlessly plaguing the main character, Job, who loses his prosperity, his home, his health, and his children. Eventually, an agonized Job curses his own existence as well as the god that created him. Issues of evil, justice, and divine wisdom are explored, and while the Book of Job surrenders divine wisdom to God, it recognizes that the work to be done here on Earth is our own.

Numerous interpretations of the story exist, and more than one version has circulated through the ancient Near East. One version concludes with Job avowing repentance: “I know that my redeemer liveth, and so I repent in dust and in ashes.”

The Latin root for the word “repent” is pensare—to think. “Repent” suggests an effort to rethink.

Job’s surprising repentance has been on my mind as calls increase, in 2024, for the United Nations to rethink its relation to Israel as a member state. Increasingly, civil society groups are pressuring Permanent Missions to the U.N. to eject Israel as a voting member of the General Assembly.

In a way, Israel has already removed itself from norms maintained by the U.N. Charter as it has consistently flouted U.N. treaties, resolutions, and advisery opinions.

To paraphrase Pankaj Mishra, writing for The New York Review of Books, a stunned world has watched with disbelief as the United States provisions Israel with weapons enabling a mass murder spree across the Middle East.

Palestinians in the West Bank have recently urged all organizations demanding U.N. compliance with the International Court of Justice ruling of July 2024 to sign a letter available at World BEYOND War which urges Member States of the United Nations General Assembly to fulfill their duties.

Following up on the potential of this letter, a new coalition, “Global Solidarity for Peace in Palestine,” has issued a letter to His Excellency Mr. Philemon Yang, the president of the United Nations General Assembly asking him to convene an urgent meeting of the General Assembly to demand an immediate and permanent cease-fire, establish and secure humanitarian aid corridors, and ensure the complete withdrawal of Israel from the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT).

The letter additionally requests:

• The revival of the U.N. Committee Against Apartheid to address systemic violations of international law and human rights in the OPT;
• Consideration of targeted boycotts, sanctions, and divestments, particularly against illegal operations in the OPT;
• The establishment of an arms embargo on Israel; and
• Exploration of suspending Israel from the General Assembly until it complies with international law.

To further support these efforts, the letter calls for the establishment of an unarmed U.N. peacekeeping mission in the OPT under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter to ensure the safety and dignity of all civilians.

In a way, Israel has already removed itself from norms maintained by the U.N. Charter as it has consistently flouted U.N. treaties, resolutions, and advisery opinions. We must not forget that Israel refuses to acknowledge to the U.N. its possession of nuclear weapons.

I felt startled, during an initial planning call held with Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, when one of them spoke of the evacuation he and his family faced, that very day, and said, “We are facing the final solution. Israel is imposing the final solution on us.” Other participants spoke of having shuddered during bombings, day and night.

Journalist Mehdi Hasan, writes movingly in The Guardian of how absurd it is that the United Nations General Assembly agrees to seat Israel as a U.N. member nation.

Israel’s abusive repudiation of the very idea of the United Nations; its escalating and lethal violation of countless international norms; its repeated, deadly attacks on U.N. sanctuaries and peacekeepers all justify its expulsion. Hasan reminds us that Israel’s outgoing ambassador to the United Nations shredded the U.N. Charter while standing at the General Assembly podium. This is the charter that declares the U.N. mission to eradicate the scourge of warfare for future generations.

It is time for the clouds to part above the burning lands of West Asia—for the suffering there to be comforted and their pitiless accusers rebuked by the gathered voice of humanity, by the agent that created Israel and can, when it wishes, “let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” The work here is ours, and so let our United Nations demand, and not beg, humanity from Israel and from its imperial sponsor, the United States.

“America is for Americans—Americans only!”

The words are those of Stephen Miller, speaking last month at the infamous Madison Square Garden rally, but they define Donald Trump. This is the message—the cry from the mountaintop—he brought to the country... at least to approximately half of it. It’s the unifying force behind his campaign, both pragmatically and spiritually. It transcends politics and cuts to people’s deepest values and deepest fears.

It’s why he won: Donald the Outsider, standing up to the Washington status quo, opening the doors of the American government and letting its citizens flow in (legally this time, without breaking doors and windows). America is for Americans—sieg heil!

The irony of Miller’s concern about the fictional deaths of little American girls is the Trump team’s beyond-Biden embrace of the actual U.S.-funded slaughter of Palestinians, including multi-thousands of children.

God save America! Are we on the brink of fascism? There’s a great deal to be concerned about as Trump prepares for his second term—as he prepares to carry out whatever it is that he actually plans to carry out. One obviously looming concern is this: How nutball crazy-serious is he about deporting millions of non-white (allegedly illegal) residents—all those people who are “different from us”?

At the very least, Trump’s focus on emigrants and walling off the American border was his gift of a new “other,” a new enemy, to so many confused Americans who have been uncertain whom to hate and fear ever since the civil rights movement undid Jim Crow and our good old tradition of racial segregation. Trump and his team clearly understand the value of an enemy to unify the base.

Here, for instance, are more words from Miller, the soon-to-be White House chief of staff for policy: Trump, he said, has fought for our right “to live in a country where criminal gangs cannot just cross our border and rape and murder with impunity. Think about how corrupt and hateful and evil a system is that allows gangs to come into this country and rape and murder little girls. I’m not just saying that. You’ve read the stories. It happens every day!”

Be afraid, America! Be very afraid! Our new enemy is still people of color, but now they’re flowing across our porous border. They’re also... fascinatingly, occupying swaths of land God had given to Israel. The irony of Miller’s concern about the fictional deaths of little American girls is the Trump team’s beyond-Biden embrace of the actual U.S.-funded slaughter of Palestinians, including multi-thousands of children.

America is for Americans and Planet Earth is for white people. As Michel Moushabeck wrote at Truthout: “President-elect Trump even went as far as saying President Joe Biden was ‘like a Palestinian,’ using the word as a slur or an insult to prove his greater love of Israel.”

Yeah, the irony is almost beyond comprehension. Biden’s enabling of Israel’s assault on Gaza—and beyond!—is small potatoes compared to what Trump would do. Trump’s anti-Biden rhetoric continued. Acknowledging that Israel has no intention of instituting a cease-fire, he said: “...you should let them go and let them finish the job. (Biden) doesn’t want to do it. He has become like a Palestinian. But they don’t like him because he is a very bad Palestinian. He is a weak one.”

And here we come to the crippling paradox of the Democratic Party. They’re wedded to militarism and the military-industrial complex as much as the Republicans, but they purport to acknowledge both sides of these global issues. They speak with responsible lesser-evilism, you might say. Thus: “Israel has the right to defend itself.” But (unrelatedly): “Too many Palestinians are dying.”

The Dems have trapped themselves in what might amount to a neoliberal cluelessness. In essence, they stand for nothing—or at least for not much, as compared to the Republicans under Trump. As Marianne Williamson put it recently: “There are millions of politically homeless people out there; no, they’re not Trump supporters, but they wouldn’t call themselves Democrats anymore either.”

Can the Democratic Party transcend lesser-evilism? Can it actually present a future to the American public that transcends militarism and endless war, that celebrates multiculturalism, that goes beyond “securing” the border and actually embraces the entirety of Planet Earth, that explores the ecological necessity of saving our planet... and securing our future?

I ask these questions in the wake of Trump’s victory. The takeaway for the rest of us goes well beyond the need for coming up with a better political strategy: leaning further left, learning further right. Trump has offered his base a spiritual sanctuary, a home allegedly secure from perceived (and invented) enemies. I’m not suggesting that the Democrats need to invent a different enemy but, rather, something far, far more complex than that. The Democrats—or whatever political convergence takes shape during the Trump era—must create a political home for Americans who love the whole planet.

This may sound idealistic (i.e., crazy), but the Trump takeover of American politics shows, I believe, that now is the time for serious political change. The Democrats’ strategy of linking economic liberalism to a trillion-dollar annual military budget—especially as the climate crisis manifests itself ever more consequentially every year—has plunged the country into a void of cynicism.

I know that politics is mostly about money, and sheer idealism isn’t going to gain a movement political traction. But all I can do is repeat what I just said: We must create a political home for Americans who love the whole planet.

What do you think? Is this possible?