California voters are clearly hungry for change. The real question now is whether Democrats are willing to confront the corporate interests and entrenched systems standing in the way of it.

That is one reason a growing number of progressives, labor organizers, climate activists, and anti-corporate advocates are rallying behind Tom Steyer despite longstanding discomfort with billionaire politics.

At first glance, that coalition can feel contradictory. Progressives have spent years warning, correctly, about the dangers of concentrated wealth and billionaire influence in American politics. Many still believe that billionaires should not exist in a healthy democracy.

So why are so many anti-corporate organizers increasingly rallying behind one now?

The question is not whether candidates are perfect vessels for progressive ideals. The question is whether they are willing to pick the right fights.

Because politics is ultimately about conflict. It is about who is willing to challenge concentrated power, which interests candidates are willing to confront, and whether they are prepared to pursue structural change instead of simply managing decline.

The question is not whether someone benefited from broken systems. The question is whether they are willing to confront the systems that produced their own power in the first place.

And increasingly, Tom Steyer appears to be the only major candidate in California's governor race openly escalating conflict with the monopolies, corporate interests, and institutional failures driving the state's affordability crisis.

That matters because California is not entering a traditional election environment.

Recent polling suggests Xavier Becerra is increasingly likely to secure one of the two spots in California's top-two primary. Whether voters like it or not, that reality changes the strategic conversation.

At a moment when voters are demanding structural change, Becerra increasingly represents continuity politics. He has struggled to articulate a meaningful critique of the status quo or explain what he would fundamentally do differently than Gavin Newsom.

The question facing many progressive voters is no longer simply which candidate they prefer. It is whether a candidate willing to challenge concentrated power, monopoly interests, and entrenched systems will make it into the general election at all.

That matters because Steve Hilton is running aggressively as an anti-establishment change candidate. If Democrats allow this race to become a contest between a candidate associated with continuity and a Republican claiming the mantle of disruption, they risk ceding the language of change to the right.

You cannot defeat a change candidate with a status quo candidate.

You need a competing change agent.

Steyer is increasingly positioning himself as one.

What makes this politically significant is not simply that he uses progressive rhetoric. Plenty of candidates do that. What matters is that he is embracing policies that directly confront concentrated wealth and monopoly power, including support for single-payer healthcare, a billionaire tax, breaking up utility monopolies, lowering energy costs, expanding public education, and building affordable housing at scale.

Those are not symbolic positions. They are direct challenges to entrenched systems of political and economic power.

And increasingly, many progressives believe the clearest indicator of that conflict is not who Steyer is. It is who is lining up against him.

When utility monopolies, fossil fuel interests, anti-tax billionaires, and major corporations begin mobilizing against the same candidate, voters should pay attention.

That does not mean progressives suddenly agree with everything about Tom Steyer or billionaire politics generally. It means many recognize that political alignment matters more than biography alone.

The question is not whether candidates are perfect vessels for progressive ideals. The question is whether they are willing to pick the right fights.

For many progressives, supporting Steyer is not about abandoning skepticism toward wealth or power. It is about recognizing that in moments of deep public frustration, the most important political question becomes who is actually willing to confront the forces making life increasingly unaffordable, unstable, and unequal.

That is the uncomfortable reality reshaping this race.

The question facing California voters is no longer whether the state needs change.

It is whether a candidate willing to fight for that change will still be standing when the general election begins.

As the American Israel Public Affairs Committee confronts a changing political landscape, one in which support for Israel has become a liability, powerful voices are coming to the defense of AIPAC and its hold on American democracy.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro is one such voice. He addressed the issue in an interview with Politico. Questioned whether the pro-Israel lobby had become a dividing line in the Democratic Party, Shapiro lamented what he described as the "weaponization" of criticism directed at AIPAC, saying it was being "used cynically by some to try and silence certain voices." Pressed on whether he meant critics were erasing the distinction between opposition to AIPAC and opposition to Jewish donors, he said yes. Shapiro is recasting the lobby's scorched-earth tactics against politicians who do not toe the line on Israel as an attack on Jews and their right to political participation. That framing makes criticism of AIPAC appear suspect before the substance of the criticism is addressed.

He is not alone. Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), confronted at a town hall over $4.5 million she had taken from "pro-Israel lobbies," objected that the figure lumped ordinary Jewish donors in with the lobby. This was problematic, she said, "Not just as an elected official," but "as a Jew." In The Washington Post, the columnist Matthew Schmitz gathered statements like these into a thesis: that criticism of Israel has curdled into hostility toward Jews themselves, and that the Democratic Party is turning on a community that has been part of its coalition for a century.

Although a problematic charge, it is deserving of a serious answer. The charge conflates criticizing a political lobby with attacking the Jewish people. This conflation is convenient for the defenders of AIPAC. To see why, start with what AIPAC does.

The existence of antisemitism does not make AIPAC immune from criticism, any more than the existence of anti-Muslim bigotry would make Saudi lobbying immune from scrutiny.

AIPAC does not have to single-handedly decide an election to shape its outcome. Its power lies in changing the conditions under which the election is fought. The organization describes itself as working to "help elect Democrats and Republicans" who support the US-Israel relationship and to "defeat detractors" of that relationship. Its formal PAC gives directly to candidates, while its affiliated super PAC, United Democracy Project, can raise and spend unlimited sums through independent expenditures. In the 2024 cycle, AIPAC and United Democracy Project spent $95.1 million, more than double their 2022 spending. United Democracy Project spent almost $9.9 million to defeat Jamaal Bowman and nearly $4.8 million to install George Latimer in his place, a level of outside money The New York Times called unprecedented for a single House race. It spent more than $5.2 million against Cori Bush and another $3.3 million for Wesley Bell, who beat her.

By 2026 the same machinery had crossed party lines, and this time it left no doubt about what it was for. In May, Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie, a seven-term incumbent, lost his primary after pro-Israel groups spent roughly $9 million to defeat him, part of more than $32 million that made it the most expensive House primary in American history, surpassing the record set against Bowman two years before. AIPAC did not hide its hand. It congratulated the winner for "defeating anti-Israel incumbent Thomas Massie" and declared that "being pro-Israel is good policy and good politics." An organization whose stated mission is to silence dissent over Israel policy took a victory lap after defeating a dissenter. This is not representation but political enforcement.

That is the record the conflation obscures, because it points to a distinction Shapiro and Slotkin would rather we not draw. There is a difference between a lobby that advances an industry or community's interests and a lobby whose signature work is to destroy the people who dissent from it. The first is ordinary democracy; every group does it, and every group should be free to. The second is something else. A lobby that asks for its community to have a voice is making a claim every American can make. A lobby that vows to end any candidacy which crosses its red line on Israel is not asking for a voice—it is enforcing obedience and silence. AIPAC is the second kind, and no amount of talk about Jewish participation changes what its money does.

Here Slotkin's objection deserves a fair hearing, and then a harder look. She is right about one thing, and it matters: The $4.5 million figure she was confronted with came from a group that counts individual Jewish donors as lobby money. That is a crude metric, and her instinct to reject it is correct. Treating every Jewish donor as AIPAC is exactly the conflation worth refusing. However, she used the softness of that one number to wave away the entire subject, and the subject does not depend on that number. United Democracy Project's independent expenditures are not estimates pulled from a donor tally. They are filed with the Federal Election Commission. Nearly $10 million to defeat a single congressman is not a Jewish donor being smeared. It is a documented political operation, and in a democracy, it is fair game.

Slotkin then offered her own analogy, and it is more revealing than she intended. Plenty of groups do the same thing, she said—"a Pakistani-American group, or whatever group." Exactly so. And if a Pakistani-American group spent $95 million in a single cycle to end the careers of politicians who crossed it, that spending would be criticized too, loudly and by name—and no one would call the criticism anti-Pakistani bigotry. That is the tell. The objection to AIPAC was never that Jews organize, donate, or advocate; Americans of every background do, and should. The objection is to what this particular organization spends its money to accomplish. AIPAC is not being challenged because it is Jewish. It is being challenged because it uses organized money to enforce a narrow pro-Israel line in American politics. Strip away the identity framing and you are left with a plain question about political power—which is the question its defenders are working so hard to avoid.

The conflation cuts both ways, and the second cut is the dangerous one. Slotkin is right that lumping every Jewish donor into "the pro-Israel lobby" is crude and potentially ugly; Jewish donors are not AIPAC by definition. But the reverse move is just as serious, and it is the one AIPAC defenders rely on: treating any criticism of AIPAC's political spending as though it were an attack on Jewish identity itself. The first error mistakes ordinary Jews for the lobby. The second dresses the lobby up as ordinary Jews. That second move gives AIPAC an exemption no other lobby receives—it lets a bare-knuckle political operation spend like a political operation and then, the moment it is criticized, takes cover as a vulnerable civic organization.

The pro-AIPAC defense generally leans on ugly examples—candidates who have made reckless comments, activists who slide from criticism of Israel into something darker, a political culture where antisemitism plainly exists. None of that should be denied, and a thesis about an entire party should not be built on a handful of fringe figures either. But none of it answers the central question. The existence of antisemitism does not make AIPAC immune from criticism, any more than the existence of anti-Muslim bigotry would make Saudi lobbying immune from scrutiny.

Bigotry is real. So is political power. A serious argument must be able to recognize both at once. AIPAC is not merely participating in democracy; it is using concentrated money to discipline the boundaries of acceptable speech on Israel, while its defenders try to collapse that political critique into ethnic or religious hostility.

After a new scientific paper advanced a climate modeling framework that replaced an old extreme climate scenario with a less severe one, President Donald Trump posted to social media that climate scientists had admitted to being “WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!” But it wasn’t a science mistake. It was a communication one.

Climate scenarios are not predictions. They are tools to understand how the climate would respond to different human actions, from rapid emissions cuts to current policies to backsliding into more fossil fuels. The most extreme widely-used pathway, called RCP8.5, studied a world with no climate policy and exceptionally high fossil fuel use through the rest of the century. Though always meant as an unlikely outlier, RCP8.5 has become far less plausible after a decade of accelerated clean energy deployment, to the point that this new paper proposed replacing it in future research. That should have been a climate win: Humans avoided the worst pathway and scientists revised models accordingly.

That this story could be so easily recast as scientific failure should be a wake-up call for science communicators. For years, journalists have favored alarm over nuance and problems over solutions, leaving the public poorly equipped to understand how uncertainty works or how climate action has improved future prospects. Without that context, every averted disaster can be mistaken for proof that the danger was made up at the outset.

Contrary to the president’s post, this pathway revision did not originate at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It came from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP), which convened an international group of scientists to devise an updated set of climate scenarios for future study. The group didn’t just toss RCP8.5. It published a new framework that removes implausible outliers at both extremes, includes more pathways where the world uses carbon removal technologies, and centers human emissions decisions more explicitly. In a news release, the IPCC clarified that CMIP is not under their umbrella, though the research will likely appear among the tens of thousands of studies analyzed for the IPCC’s next major report.

RCP8.5 is not wrong science. Rather, science provided a map of perilous futures, people changed course, and the map refreshed accordingly.

Yet in addition to Trump, the New York Post and Daily Caller falsely presented this shift as an IPCC scandal. The New York Times and Washington Post also implied in their headlines that scientists got something wrong. These framings defy the logic of climate scenarios. Scenarios are not future predictions. Rather, they consider several possible human actions and study how the climate system would respond to each.

The uncertainty in these scenarios is a feature, not a bug. To scientists, uncertainty does not mean knowing or not knowing, but rather how well something is known. In the case of a climate model, scientists know pumping more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere will warm the planet, but they cannot know exactly how much humans will emit; how strongly clouds, water vapor, surface reflectivity, and other feedbacks will amplify or dampen additional warming; or how oceans, forests, permafrost, and other natural systems will absorb or release carbon as the planet changes. Knowing this, scientists use ranges, error bars, assumptions, and confidence levels to communicate what a model can and can’t assert.

Like scientists, journalists seek the truth. However, journalists must hit far shorter word counts with far tighter deadlines. As such, they prefer hard facts and snappy quotes from authorities to convey information. They may see “uncertainty” as describing something unknown and thus irrelevant, not realizing how this thought process diverges from scientists'. Editors even less familiar with the topic may use the most conflict-charged framing or the scariest number in a range when they write headlines, favoring clicks over accuracy.

Typically, these issues are not nefarious. But when articles imply a scientific model was wrong when it was merely updated to reflect new data, they sow unfounded distrust in science and create space for climate disinformation.

In this case, changed human behavior is the new data point. When the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015, the world was projected to warm by nearly 4°C, not much better than the RCP8.5 nightmare scenario. Today, based only on current policies, that projection is down to 2.6°C. While that trajectory still presents major cause for concern, these improvements are substantial, drastically reducing the risk of reaching several tipping points this century including East Antarctic glacier collapse, northern permafrost collapse, and a West African monsoon shift.

If journalists want audiences to trust science, they must tell the whole story: the danger, the uncertainty, the progress, and the paths forward.

That progress comes largely from the fact that solar costs have fallen about 90%, onshore wind about 70%, and batteries by more than 90% in the last decade, now routinely besting fossil fuels on price. Several other clean technologies have emerged and scaled, many businesses have adopted more sustainable practices, and thousands of climate policies have been enacted globally. With these achievements, what was once a plausible outlier in RCP8.5 no longer makes sense as the upper bound for climate scenarios.

Had Americans encountered frequent climate solutions reporting over the past decade, scientists setting aside RCP8.5 would have made complete sense. Yet solutions journalism remains a growing but still niche practice. Many editors worry solutions stories could look like advocacy, garner less readership, or fail to qualify as news. Evidence demonstrates the opposite: Audiences view, share, and trust solutions stories more than problem stories, and climate solutions stories specifically increase readers’ self-efficacy relative to problem-oriented alternatives.

Journalists play an essential role in showing which solutions are driving progress, where they fall short, and how best practices can be replicated. Without that news, audiences are more likely to believe climate deniers were right than understand that substantial climate progress has been happening for years, just without the sustained attention it merited.

None of this reduces the urgency of climate change. A 2.6°C world would still be incredibly costly, unjust, and catastrophic. But urgency without context leaves communities unable to assess risk and recognize which actions work. RCP8.5 is not wrong science. Rather, science provided a map of perilous futures, people changed course, and the map refreshed accordingly.

If journalists want audiences to trust science, they must tell the whole story: the danger, the uncertainty, the progress, and the paths forward. Otherwise, every hard-earned climate win risks being twisted into a scandal.

Within national mythology, California is understood to be a progressive haven—with a ruling Democratic Party passing strong regulations, ever-higher taxes on the wealthy, and supporting unions to its heart’s desire.

Unfortunately, this is far from accurate. The Democratic Party may dominate California politics, but the wealthiest state in the union no longer leads the way with innovative laws and regulations, let alone serving the interests of working people, the poor, and the middle class.

Yes, California still has a progressive income tax, the nation’s highest gas taxes, relatively strong environmental regulations, and the world’s greatest public university system—but these are legacies of bygone eras. The story of the last 20 years of single-party Democratic rule is far less inspiring (unless you’re a Silicon Valley oligarch).

Now, as progressives are making significant gains across the country, revitalizing the Democratic Party in the process, the California party remains dominated by a caste of perennial incumbents committed to neoliberal centrism that, at best, generates incremental change.

Rest assured that progressives on the ballot are part of a national movement that understands that the Democratic Party has bifurcated into a vibrant progressive wing and an increasingly sclerotic moderate establishment.

Perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising. Once Democrats started winning supermajorities in both houses of the state legislature, corporations and big money interests stopped wasting their time courting Republicans. They focused their lobbying on Democrats, and to great effect. California’s Democratic Party, and its leading figures, are more beholden to big business and wealthy donors than almost any state Democratic Party. This, in turn, means Democratic incumbents accrue huge campaign war chests for their re-election.

The result is a more conservative party, one that is out of sync with the electorate. Want evidence? Ask yourself how many members of the Squad have come from California? The answer, of course, is zero. Yet all public opinion polling shows that the California electorate is decisively more progressive than the national average.

It’s true that Reps. Ro Khanna and Lateefah Simon are Squad adjacent, and a few others are solid progressives—but given that California represents about 20% of the Democratic Caucus in the US House, the state’s delegation is on balance middle-of-the-road.

This disconnect—between the political beliefs of Californians and the policies supported by their elected representatives at the national, state, and even local levels—is a major barrier to the necessary transformation of the Democratic Party into a force able to vanquish the fascist-authoritarian GOP before it consolidates power and brings down the curtain on American democracy.

Simply put, the American public increasingly understands that the status quo ante of neoliberal policy, which has organized the country’s economy since the 1980s, produces one result: ever-increasing wealth inequality. The Democratic Party must break from the economics of the Clinton and Obama administrations. The Democratic base and the general public want policies that boost the lives of working Americans, just as they want a sane foreign policy and an honest democracy. They want progressive policies.

Today June 2, 2026, in California, voters have an opportunity to alter American history by electing progressives up and down the ballot. This will transform the largest state Democratic Party, bringing it back in sync with the sentiment of the state’s population so that it can lead in the development of a new 21st century social justice compact.

There are many progressive champions with a real chance of victory today—and in the general election runoff on November 3. To start, there is a clear choice at the top of the ticket: Tom Steyer for governor.

Steyer is one of three viable candidates, two of which will make the runoff. In the best circumstance, the two democrats, Steyer and Xaiver Beccera, will take first and second—a result that will translate into more Democratic victories across the state in November. However, MAGA-supporting Republican Steve Hilton still looks likely to disrupt that result. So, it’s essential to vote, and get everyone you know to vote for Steyer by 8:00 pm PT today.

Admittedly, it sticks in the throat to be supporting a billionaire, but the simple truth is that Steyer will pursue a transformative progressive policy agenda. In contrast, Xavier Beccera, who 20 years ago seemed a sincere progressive, long ago redefined himself as an establishment Democrat. Becerra is committed to maintaining Gov. Gavin Newsom’s policies that have left California stranded with the nation’s co-equal highest poverty rate, an affordability crisis that makes New York City residents blush, and a pronounced failure to lead on environmental and social policies in the manner the world expects of California.

Tom Steyer, by contrast, supports a billionaire’s tax, meaningful living wage legislation, aggressive incentives to re-boost green energy production (and film production too), and, most tellingly, a single-payer universal healthcare system for everyone in the state. A top-two finish by Steyer will guarantee a powerful debate about the direction of the state over the next five months

Beyond the governor’s race, in nearly every US house district, state assembly, and senate race, and significant city and local elections, there are strong progressive candidates challenging the dominant California Democratic Party mainstream—many of whom are poised to advance to the November runoff. Still, it’s worth noting that this has been a very confusing election season due to redistricting (and the chaos of the governor’s race), such that down-ballot candidates have had a difficult time attracting adequate attention. But rest assured that progressives on the ballot are part of a national movement that understands that the Democratic Party has bifurcated into a vibrant progressive wing and an increasingly sclerotic moderate establishment. Please do the necessary research to learn who the progressives are in your district.

So far, it’s been a very good year for progressives—let’s continue the momentum tomorrow in New Jersey, Montana, Iowa, New Mexico, South Carolina, and the largest state and soon-to-be truest bastion of progressive public policy, California.

The results that began to surface around 5:30 pm Sunday May 31 of this year in the first round of the Colombian presidential elections left many perplexed, as Abelardo “El Tigre” de la Espriella, won an uncanny number of votes, 10,359,902 as of this writing, over 670,000 votes above the front-runner Ivan Cepeda and his vice-presidential partner Aida Quilcué, with 9,687,508 votes. Paloma Valencia and her running mate Daniel Oviedo came in a distant third, much weaker than expected with 1,639,421 votes. Sergio Fajardo, the perennial symbolic centrist candidate, came in with 1,008,864 votes. The blank vote came in fifth with 406,955 votes, while Claudia Lopez, the neoliberal former Bogotá mayor, scrounged 225,480 votes, just above Santiago Botero’s 206,128. Mauricio Lizcano came in eigth with a handsome 53,839 votes. The remaining 50,000 votes were shared among a handful of remaining candidates.

Ivan Cepeda questioned the results shortly after the first round was called: “There is a discrepancy that we want to verify with respect to the electoral results. This isn’t just any old discrepancy. We are talking about 885,000 people or ID numbers.” He added, “There is information that indicates atypical votes from an undetermined number of tables. [...] Let us emphasize that only when the commission analysts clarify this discrepancy clearly and rigorously, will we share our conclusions on the results of this election.”

The electoral commission is required to clarify the situation within 72 hours. Similar concerns were raised after the March primaries and congressional elections, when 600,000 votes were recovered by Cepeda's party after they flagged irregularities, leading to 20 additional congressional seats.

Out of approximately 24,000,000 votes cast in the first round, the challenge will be how to get the 3 million or so votes in play, while also mobilizing new voters for the second round. Paloma Valencia, formerly the chosen successor of Alvaro Uribe, has already endorsed Uribe’s new horse (tiger?) Abelardo de la Espriella for the second round of the race, presumably giving him close to 11,000,000 votes for the second round. However, Valencia’s running mate, Daniel Oviedo, has indicated he will not support de la Espriella. Where his nearly 1,000,000 voters from the march primaries will align remains uncertain. He was a kind of neoliberal semi-progressive centrist before aligning with the heiress of the paramilitary political tradition in Colombia. Ironically, Valencia, in her attempt to appear centrist, seems to have lost more votes to de la Espriella than she gained from Oviedo. In the immediate aftermath of the first round results, Sergio Fajardo was coy about where he would try to direct his million-plus votes. If they were to go to Cepeda, he would be in striking distance of de la Espriella. Claudia Lopez’s votes would be an additional boost to whomever she endorses, while Santiago Botero’s 200,000 votes will likely go to de la Espriella, due to his narrow political profile as a businessman accused of domestic violence.

In the background, questions lurk about US intrusion, after threats made by President Trump and Colombian-born Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) toward Colombia as a whole if they vote the left back into office.

In 2022 Gustavo Petro won 8,542,000 votes in the first round, more than 2,000,000 votes behind the combined right-wing frontrunners, Rodolfo Hernández and Federico Gutiérrez. In the second round, he increased his vote count to 11,281,013, an increase of more than 2,700,000 votes from the first round. This means the focus over the next three weeks will be on turnout, beyond the jostling and backroom negotiations for support from the rest of the first-round candidates. Whoever can increase their turnout more dramatically will be the victor, assuming a clean election.

Abelardo de la Espriella is a Jekyll and Hyde character construction: imagine Alan Dershowitz wrapped up in the Batman comic book version of The Joker, in a bipolar bind with billionaire Bruce Wayne.

Of the current right-wing authoritarian archetypes, de la Espriella fits neatly between the evil clown, represented by President Donald Trump and Argentinian President Javier Milei, and the sadistic heir represented by presidents Nayib Bukele and Daniel Noboa (and Trump) in El Salvador and Ecuador (and the US), respectively. You could also say he is a non-senile version of Rodolfo Hernandez, the “outsider” right-wing real estate tycoon candidate who “surprised” the right-wing establishment by coming in second for the first round of the 2022 elections, which Petro ultimately won.

De la Espriella became wealthy while representing the dregs of Colombian high society, paramilitaries, cocaine capos, money launderers, pyramid schemers, mass murderers, and the like. In the carefully produced image de la Espriella has cultivated over the course of the campaign, he flaunts his lavish lifestyle, always with a twist of misogyny, while promising Nayeb Bukele-style policies, including persecution of the left, 10 new maximum security prisons, and Mileiean cuts of 40% of the public sector.

The pattern set by Trump in the US, Milei in Argentina, Bukele in El Salvador, Noboa in Ecuador, and now Asfura in Honduras, seeks to replicate itself with de la Espriella in Colombia.

Ivan Cepeda is a philosopher and politician, whose father was assassinated in 1994 as a senator for the Union Patriotica during a genocidal purge of the left-leaning political party by the same mafia elite that de la Espriella made his name defending. Cepeda has spent much of his time as a congressman, revealing the crimes of de la Espriella’s forebear, ex-president and paramilitary boss Alvaro Uribe, and aligning with popular President Gustavo Petro’s political economic program, which has initiated the process of land restitution to victims of Colombia’s decades-long civil war, and raised minimum wages in a country with the fifth most extreme wealth disparity on the planet. That is down from the third most extreme wealth disparity Colombia claimed leading out of the previous (Uribista) Duque administration into the Petro administration.

Cepeda recognizes that the road out of extreme wealth inequality requires the long-term continuity of a political project that makes solving this most fundamental of socioeconomic problems its top priority. Cepeda’s proposals build on the groundwork laid by the Petro coalition, seeking to expand public education and healthcare, while continuing the redistribution of land to millions of Colombians displaced by decades of the armed conflict promoted for so many years by Uribe and his mafia.

In the background, questions lurk about US intrusion, after threats made by President Trump and Colombian-born Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) toward Colombia as a whole if they vote the left back into office. The recordings released by HONDURASGATE and Red Diario of former Honduran president and convicted drug and weapons trafficker, Juan Orlando Hernandez, paint a picture of a US-Israel backed plan to topple left-wing governments in the region, with a particular focus on Colombia and Mexico, to pave the way for mafia states to ensure easy access by US and Israeli multinational corporations to oil and gas and key minerals for the construction of their rapidly expanding techno-fascist infrastructure.

On May 26, Department of Homeland Security General Counsel James Percival issued a memo directing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, attorneys within the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor to develop “anti-fraud policies” designed for “robust enforcement.” This effort “should include enforcement against immigration attorneys filing false asylum claims in immigration courts.”

In a press release, Percival further added: “Protection claims like asylum are intended to cover unique and narrow circumstances, but it is standard practice for immigration attorneys representing illegal aliens to assert that virtually every illegal alien is going to be persecuted or tortured in his or her home country. Historically, ICE has depended on the discipline of immigration judges and the enforcement of criminal fraud laws to deter this conduct, but ICE has its own tools. Now, thanks to this directive, ICE attorneys have greater authority to enforce the law and stop the abuse of our asylum system by illegal aliens and attorneys.”

Despite these accusations, however, there is no evidence of widespread asylum fraud occurring. As the National Immigration Forum explains, there are two departments responsible for adjudicating asylum cases: the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR). While each department has a dedicated fraud detection and prevention division, neither releases regular data on the number of cases terminated or investigated for fraud.

What limited data is available does not support the Trump administration’s case whatsoever. For instance, according to a 2015 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, “The number of USCIS asylum terminations for fraud has decreased in recent years, from 103 in fiscal year 2010 to 34 in fiscal year 2014.” During that span, USCIS terminated asylum for a total of 374 individuals due to fraud, while granting asylum to 76,122 individuals.

Going after immigration attorneys is another step toward dismantling the immigration court system and stripping noncitizens of any legal protection.

The Catholic Legal Immigration Network reports that USCIS issued 892 Notices of Intent to Terminate (NOITs) asylum status between 2009 and 2020, according to data they obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Of those issued NOITs, Notices of Continuation of Status were granted in 231 cases. Only 562 cases were terminated due to “fraud in the application.”

It is also worth noting that most asylum requests are denied. This does not mean, however, that those people did not have a legitimate fear of being persecuted or harmed in their home country. Because of regulations imposed by the Trump administration and other precedents, it is incredibly difficult for those fleeing domestic abuse, gender-based violence, police violence, and gang violence to win asylum. Even cases that would have been approved in the past are now ending with deportation orders.

What is occurring here is simply another instance of President Donald Trump weaponizing allegations of fraud to target and undermine an institution he dislikes. Whether it’s elections, Medicaid, Social Security, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Democrat-run cities, or immigration, Trump insists, without evidence, that widespread fraud is occurring at unprecedented levels. That baseless accusation then becomes the pretext for a wildly illegal abuse of power. All the while, the actual rampant fraud being committed by the Trump administration is swept under the rug.

Going after immigration attorneys is another step toward dismantling the immigration court system and stripping noncitizens of any legal protection.

Already in the past year, Trump has fired over 100 immigration judges out of roughly 750 that were in place when he returned to power. The majority of those fired were appointed under Democratic administrations, had previously worked as attorneys defending immigrants, and granted asylum at higher rates than those who kept their jobs (46% compared with 15%). The administration’s new hires, by contrast, have granted asylum in approximately 6% of cases.

Notably, in August 2025, the Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a rule allowing “any attorney,” including those with no prior experience in immigration law, to serve as temporary immigration judges. The same week, the Pentagon authorized 600 military lawyers to serve six-month terms as temporary judges. As Kyra Lilien, a former immigration judge who was abruptly terminated in July 2025, noted: “Firing expert, high-performing, effective judges and replacing them with inexperienced temps does not make the courts more efficient or achieve any goals of systemic reform. It is simply destructive.”

Amid this purge of immigration judges, San Francisco’s immigration court, which handled the third-largest number of asylum cases in the nation, was forced to close on May 1, 2026. This is no accident. Between 2019 to 2024, almost 75% of petitioners were granted some form of relief by that court compared with 43% nationwide. This disparity, however, is not due to fraud, but rather reflects the incredible work of California’s vast pro-immigrant organizations and pro bono or low-cost legal services. Their efforts continue to ensure that most noncitizens across the state have access to legal representation at their hearings.

More than 117,000 cases previously handled by the San Francisco court are now being relocated to a courthouse in Concord, about 30 miles away from the city. However, because of firings, the Concord court is, at the time of this writing, down to four immigration judges and one supervisor.

These firings will continue. Any judge who resists Trump’s mass deportation regime will be removed and replaced with someone who won’t. In recruitment ads, the DOJ and DHS openly encourage applicants to “become a deportation judge.”

At the same time, Trump is taking additional steps to maximize the number of removal orders being issued by the courts. As part of removal proceedings, individuals are required to attend “master calendar hearings”—these are brief, preliminary hearings wherein a judge formally notifies the person of the charges against them and provides them with a schedule for future hearings.

Noncitizens are now being scheduled for master calendar hearings consisting of 100 or more people at a time. These “mega masters” are largely made up of people without any form of legal representation whose original hearing was scheduled for 2027, 2028, or 2029. In February 2026, dozens of Somali migrants also had their hearings abruptly rescheduled for later that month and the next.

The goal here is simple: When someone does not appear for their hearing, regardless of the reason, a judge can issue an in absentia removal order that allows ICE agents to detain and deport them. The Trump administration is fast-tracking these cases, providing immigrants and their attorneys little to no notice, in the hopes that most will miss their hearings and a judge—whether out of fear of losing their job or loyalty to Trump—will move to deport them.

In short, the Trump administration’s overhaul of the immigration court system prioritizes cruelty and deportations over justice and the people’s right to due process.

This must end. Immigration judges should not fear losing their job for doing the right thing. Immigration attorneys should not be subject to federal investigations for helping their clients. Meaningful reforms must be implemented both to solve the problems Trump has created and the ones that predated him.

Such reforms include: first, guaranteeing that every noncitizen has access to a publicly funded attorney.

Second, ensuring that the asylum process is fair and consistent across the nation. As it stands, asylum acceptance and denial rates vary significantly from judge to judge and from court to court, effectively making the asylum process into a lottery. For instance, a 2017 Reuters report documented the nearly identical stories of two Honduran women who were targeted by gang violence due to their activism. One was granted asylum by the now-closed San Francisco court, while the other was denied their request by a court in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, immigration courts must be removed from the executive branch. This is a necessary step to protect due process and stop the abuses being enacted by the Trump administration.

Ultimately, everyone, regardless of immigration status or whatever Trump believes, deserves to be treated with dignity and have their rights respected.

America’s farmers are in big trouble. Despite the recent politically timed purchase of 12 million metric tons of US soybeans by China, after months of cancelled or stalled sales, the market remains volatile and uncertain. China now publicly favors cheaper Brazilian soybeans, and US soy exports to China have fallen to their lowest level in more than two decades.

The decline of this important market compounds other struggles farmers like me are facing, including falling commodity prices and rising costs. The number of farm bankruptcies remains troublingly high.

But there’s a solution that can help farmers lower their costs and reduce dependence on volatile foreign markets, while producing cheaper, cleaner energy for all Americans. It’s called agri-energy, and it offers a viable pathway to both food and energy independence.

American farmers were hurting long before the tariffs were put in place. Despite record yields, farming accounts for less than 1% of the American GDP and we have now entered an agricultural trade deficit.

When small farmers are forced to “get out,” our land is typically sold to large farm corporations, to real estate developers, or, God forbid, to the Dollar General corporation.

Any healthy economy relies on diversity, but we put all of our eggs into the corn and soy baskets long ago. Corn and soy are the top two agricultural commodities produced in the United States. This means that any shift in global markets—like the current trade war—can leave farmers with full silos and empty bank accounts.

Now, we’re scrambling to figure out how to recover our investments when we’ve already put so much money, time, and generational resources into these monocultures. Our yields might be excellent, but with corn and soy prices declining sharply relative to production costs, that may not matter much.

The Trump administration’s “solution” is to provide assistance to farmers in the form of relief checks and subsidies, which is akin to putting a Band-Aid on a bleeding femoral artery. Might look okay for a minute, but it’s not going to stop the flow (in this case, the flow of bankruptcies and foreclosures).

What we need to do is start focusing on whole-systems approaches. That’s where agri-energy comes into play.

Agri-energy, also known as agrivoltaics or dual-use solar, involves growing crops or grazing livestock under solar panels, allowing farmers to double dip on their land. By leasing their land for solar energy production, farmers get a nice bumper crop each year—with lease payments averaging $1,000 or more per acre. It’s consistent, reliable income that’s not dependent on the global commodity market.

Because solar leases are long—20 to 30 years or more—there’s more predictability and stability in this kind of setup than perhaps any other agricultural model. If a farmer is ready to lease his land and get out of farming entirely, agri-energy allows for another farmer to manage that land in his place. That’s the case for our family farm—we receive payment from the solar company for vegetation management services on other sites.

On a broader scale, practices like rotational grazing (typically the go-to on solar farms) improve soil quality and leave the land healthier than it was prior to the solar farm’s installation. The animals benefit, too, from improved forage and shade, reaching heavier finishing and weaning weights at a lower cost to the farmer. This, too, we’ve seen firsthand on the solar farms we graze.

Rethinking how we use the land means American farms can stay in business, producing food and energy that remains local while we invest back into our communities.

Some worry that agri-energy will take good land out of agriculture. But the reliable income from solar leases can actually keep farmers on the land. This is especially important for small farmers like me who were once told to “get big or get out.”

When small farmers are forced to “get out,” our land is typically sold to large farm corporations, to real estate developers, or, God forbid, to the Dollar General corporation. Remember: Prime farmland doesn’t remain farmland if it’s not farmed.

If we really want to reduce our reliance on global trade, agri-energy—not tariffs—may be the silver bullet we’re looking for.

This is my last article for TomDispatch. For over a decade, Tom Engelhardt has given me a platform to write about pretty much anything that grabs my—I’ll admit it, easily attracted—attention. It’s been a wonderful partnership for me, offering not just a place to publish, but a chance to think, talk, and often argue with the best editor I’ve ever worked with.

A rarity in the age of Internet insta-publishing, TomDispatch subjects every article to the scrutiny of three separate proofreaders. Not for Tom the misplaced apostrophe or the confusion between “their” and “they’re.” Unlike The New York Times in a May 12, 2026 headline, no article appearing in TomDispatch would ever go rogue and ask the question, “Did the Fifth Circuit Go Rouge With Its Abortion Pills Ruling?” (The face of the copyeditor who let that one pass should have looked as if some blusher had been applied.)

While over the last 12 years, I’ve written about a wide variety of subjects, a number of themes stand out to me for their recurrence: racial justice, war (and US military misadventures), and the insistence of women on claiming our humanity. Mostly, I’ve tried to reflect the many ways that we human beings continue to struggle for a good life in a just world, despite all the forces ranged against us. More than once I’ve had recourse to a sentiment frequently attributed to the Reverend Martin Luther King (though it didn’t originate with him): the idea that the arc of the moral universe is long, but invariably bends toward justice.

One Recurrent Theme

A couple of weeks ago, I had a conversation with a woman I’d met a few times before. She’s a Black veteran in her 90s, the newish lover of an old friend of mine. We were reflecting on the fact that so much of what we’ve fought for in our lifetimes—civil rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights—has been all but demolished in the first year of Donald Trump’s second term. “People died for those victories,” she said to me, “and now they’ve been undone so fast.”

After all these years, it feels like the arc of the moral universe is bending not toward justice, but in the opposite direction, toward inequality and fascism, nationally and globally.

It was the Sunday after the Supreme Court finished dismembering the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) with its decision in Louisiana v. Callais. That prolonged judicial murder by the Roberts court began with its 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which snuffed out a key provision of the VRA. Prior to Shelby County, jurisdictions identified in the VRA as having a history of suppressing the vote in Black, Latino, or Native American communities had to obtain federal “preclearance” before changing their voting laws. In the Shelby decision, however, the court’s conservative majority held that the passage of time had made such preclearance unnecessary, because voter suppression was no longer a problem in such places. In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg famously described that position as “throwing out your umbrella in a rainstorm because you’re not getting wet.”

As the Brennan Center for Justice put it 10 years later, it was clear that Ginsberg had been right—that it was still raining in the Southern states. “The effects of the ruling were immediate. The same day, Texas officials announced that they would implement the nation’s most restrictive voter ID law, which had previously been blocked in the preclearance process.” In fact, “without that ‘preclearance’ regime, the revival of discriminatory tactics was immediate: In the last 10 years, at least 29 states have passed 94 laws that make it more difficult to vote, particularly for communities of color.”

Then, in its next major attack on the VRA, the court gave two of Arizona’s laws its stamp of approval. As I wrote in 2022, a year earlier, a court that was by then already significantly shaped by Donald Trump “issued a ruling in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee upholding Arizona’s right to pass laws requiring people to vote only in precincts where they live, while prohibiting anyone who wasn’t a relative of the voter from hand delivering mail-in ballots to the polls. The court held that, even though in practice such measures would have a disproportionate effect on non-White voters, as long as a law was technically the same for all voters, it didn’t matter that, in practice, it would become harder for some groups to vote.”

Now, in 2026, the court has essentially finished the job with its decision in Callais, which allows states to redraw their voting maps to eliminate majority-minority districts. Not a month later, Southern states (including Alabama, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Tennessee) have rushed to redistrict. Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, and Texas are likely to follow suit between now and the 2028 general election. As The Guardian reports, Michael Li, a redistricting expert at the Brennan Center, observed that “this is a five-alarm fire for Black representation in the south.”

I’m glad that congressman and civil rights hero John Lewis didn’t live to see this day.

It turns out that white racism has been a consistent theme of my writing for TomDispatch, which is hardly surprising, given what a constant reality it’s proven to be in 21st-century America (especially in the Trump years). In 2025, I described how the Department of Government Efficiency’s decimation of the federal workforce constituted a direct attack on the Black middle class, and especially Black women. In “No More Dog Whistles,” I wrote that, under Trump, “racism isn’t just the subtext, it’s the text.” A decade earlier, I was examining race and police violence in my home city of San Francisco, which had seen a spate of police murders of Black and Latino residents. And so it went, and so it still goes.

The Ethics of War, Torture, and Terrorism

That subhead is actually the title of a college course I used to teach. It’s also been the focus of my “scholarly” work since the 9/11 attacks shocked the world and pushed the George W. Bush-Dick Cheney administration over to “the dark side.” My first piece for TomDispatch described how, a decade and a half after the 9/11 attacks and the launching of the Global War on Terror, the United States was still torturing people. President Barack Obama might have closed the CIA’s infamous black sites—its global chain of secret torture bases—but the practice continued, including at the US prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Subsequent articles of mine covered torture here at home, including at police stations and in our jails and prisons.

Now, we’re seeing a new kind of black site: hundreds of Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers, many already established, some still in the planning stage, strung out across the country as our own American gulag archipelago. And like the Soviet gulag, some of those sites are intended not just as holding pens, but as labor camps. As Public Citizen reported this month, “Working for $1 a day in the government’s so-called Voluntary Work Program (VWP) while detained is the only option available to earn any money for the more than 60,000 immigrants held in hundreds of active detention centers across the United States by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.” It seems that the program is “voluntary” in name only, as it’s the only way detainees can get money for basic hygiene items like toothpaste, and because refusal risks retaliation, such as being placed in solitary confinement.

I’ve labeled such centers “black sites” because, like the ones run by the CIA during the “war on terror,” they remain opaque to ordinary US citizens—or even many members of our federal and local governments. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which administers the ICE detention camps nationwide, has made a show of not permitting local officials or members of Congress to enter them. Like the CIA’s black sites, those camps represent an elaborate version of homeland security theater, designed to remind Americans of just how dangerous unauthorized immigrants supposedly are, as evidenced by how harshly DHS must treat them. They function both as a direct form of repression and as a warning to the rest of us about what could happen to anyone who resists the Trump regime. In that sense, such concentration camps (for that’s indeed what they are and what I’ve called them) are very much like another tool of repression, institutionalized state torture, about which (some years ago) I wrote a book called Mainstreaming Torture.

Another continuity between the Bush torture program and today’s ICE concentration camps is the outsourcing of the work of imprisonment and interrogation to private contractors. In the “war on terror,” private contractors—operatives from private outfits like Erik Prince’s oft-renamed Blackwater—engaged in such “interrogations.” Today’s ICE centers are also run by private contractors: the country’s two main for-profit prison companies, the GEO Group and CORE-Civic. The latter is responsible for the infamous Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas. ICE cemented its status as a public-private partnership in May 2026 when David Venturella was appointed its acting director. He left a job at GEO Group to take the post (after leaving ICE to join GEO in the first place). Some things are beyond irony.

War! What Is It Good For?

Other war-related themes have recurred in my writing for TomDispatch. I’ve written about US military interventions in Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa. And now we’ve witnessed perhaps the ultimate pointless intervention—Trump’s war on Iran, which, if it doesn’t end up frying us all, seems likely to wreck the world economy and plunge millions into starvation.

When unpiloted aircraft were still new, I wrote about how the Obama administration had used drones for assassinations in places like Yemen. Today, we’ve become jaded by their use—and by extrajudicial killings in general. Now, there’s hardly a journalistic ripple when the Trump administration sinks yet another tiny boat allegedly carrying drugs—and occasionally just carrying fish—in the Caribbean Sea or Eastern Pacific Ocean. Almost 200 people had died that way by the first week of May 2026.

I’ve long thought that liberation is sort of like an imprisoned genie: Once it escapes, it’s awfully hard to get back in the bottle.

The exponential rise of artificial intelligence has refueled a discussion I entered back in 2022 with an article on LAWS (lethal autonomous weapons systems). The United States has been pursuing its dream of deploying an “automated battlefield” since the Vietnam War. One major AI company, Anthropic, seems to have taken itself out of the running to assist the Department of Defense (still its name, despite Trump’s proclamations to the contrary) in fully automated kill decisions. However, Peter Thiel’s Palantir will undoubtedly be happy to step in to fill the spot. It has, after all, already been helping Israel in its genocide in Gaza. Palantir will likely be ready as well to assist in another realm Anthropic refused to enter: using AI for mass domestic surveillance. After all, this is what its flagship program, Gotham, is for.

It’s All About Hatred of Women

I didn’t grow up in a religious household. My father, though raised in an Orthodox Jewish home, had abandoned most religious practice by the time he and my mother got together. She was a lapsed Episcopalian, so I suppose it’s not entirely weird that I call myself a nice Jewish girl who goes to an Episcopal church. The point is, there was no reason for me to be praying as a six-year-old, but I often did, asking God to let me wake up the next morning as a boy. As second-wave feminists used to say, I didn’t envy the penis. I envied what it could get you: opportunity, freedom, and most of all, respect.

I lived through the movement for women’s liberation, which saved my life. It brought me the right to control my own body; to decide if and when I would have sex; to decide if and when I would have children; to decide if and when—and whom—I would marry. In truth, I never wanted to do that last one, but the vagaries of US tax law made married life much easier than a California domestic partnership. Still, I used to wonder why my gay leaders thought the two things I wanted most in the world were to join the army and get married.

So, it’s not surprising that I’ve used my TomDispatch platform to write about feminist concerns like abortion rights, my own experience of abortion, and staring down misogyny in the aftermath of Trump’s second election victory. Now, of course, his administration is advised by men who want to repeal women’s suffrage and follow up on the Supreme Court’s rollback of Roe v. Wade with white natalist dreams like an end to no-fault divorce and restrictions on birth control.

A Simple Arc?

So much of what I’ve written about over the last 12 years is now at least as bad as it ever was and possibly significantly worse. We’ve lost so much with the rise of Trump. After all these years, it feels like the arc of the moral universe is bending not toward justice, but in the opposite direction, toward inequality and fascism, nationally and globally. And yet…

All over the country, people are indeed fighting back. Minnesotans inspired a nation with their resistance to an occupying ICE army. Local communities are mobilizing to try to keep energy-eating AI data centers and detention camps out. (Just recently, ordinary people in Florida forced the closure of the notorious Alligator Alcatraz detention center.) Millions have turned out for No Kings demonstrations. And maybe it was fear of a growing backlash that kept the Supreme Court from allowing Louisiana to outlaw the abortion medication Mifepristone. I’ve long thought that liberation is sort of like an imprisoned genie: Once it escapes, it’s awfully hard to get back in the bottle.

So, about that arc of the moral universe: Maybe it’s not a single curve but something more like a river winding its way toward a great ocean. Or maybe it’s like a sine wave on a slant. It has both peaks and valleys, and we’re definitely sitting in one of those valleys right now. Nonetheless, despite Donald Trump and all the other horrors of this century, I still believe that the essential human trajectory is upwards. We continue to widen the circle of beings that matter. We continue to become braver, and maybe even a bit wiser.

That’s been my story all these years and, dire as things seem today, I’m sticking to it.

There are moments when it feels like the president’s attention (as occasionally happens when we age) just keeps getting narrower and narrower—the things he really cares about (arch, reflecting pool, Kennedy Center, gilded horse statues) are all within a few miles of his home. He can barely be bothered to stay interested in the war he started in Iran; he’s more concerned with giving pretend tours of his imaginary ballroom. (“You come in, you have cocktails,” he explained to his daughter in law, interviewing him for Fox in true dear-leader fashion. “They they go through the door, in for dinner.”)

But the momentum behind the truly dangerous Project 2025 reordering of our society continues apace, even if—without Elon Musk to give it a face—we aren’t noticing. Late last week the White House announced plans for a major tightening of political control over research grants. Instead of relying on the advice of expert panels as to which research should be funded, as Kevin Bogardus explains:

One or more senior political appointees designated by their agency head must conduct “a pre-issuance review” of all discretionary grants, making sure they follow several principles, including to “demonstrably advance the President’s policy priorities.”

Since I enjoy making up new words (though surely someone has beaten me to this?) I’m going to call it “scilencing.”

The danger inherent in this should be entirely obvious. Jeff Mervis at Science interviewed a number of observers:

“What OMB [Office of Management and Budget] is proposing is not a reform of grants management,” Elizabeth Ginexi, a former program officer at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), writes in a Substack post. “It is a vehicle for complete political control of science… over every stage of the federal science funding lifecycle.” Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), a leading critic of the Trump administration’s research policies, calls the proposal “a dystopian move that would destroy what remains of merit-based review.”

This would be a bad idea in a reason-based administration. In one that believes medieval nonsense about public health and that is eager to deregulate chemicals and end efforts to clean the air, it’s downright lethal.

And there is no doubt where the impulse really originated. The science the Trump administration really hates is climate science, because it threatens the “energy dominance” that the White House has made its basic foreign and economic policy, not to mention the profits of the fossil fuel industry that has been such an attentive donor. It’s not the first time that GOP administrations have tried to stymie climate science. Everyone remembers James Hansen’s crucial 1988 congressional testimony that global warming was underway; fewer recall that when he returned to Congress the next year the White House tried to rewrite and soften the conclusions in his testimony. That was under George H.W. Bush; under his son, in 2006, the White House tried again to rein him in. As he told Andy Revkin, NASA officials

ordered the public affairs staff to review his coming lectures, papers, postings on the Goddard Web site, and requests for interviews from journalists.

Dr. Hansen said he would ignore the restrictions. “They feel their job is to be this censor of information going out to the public,” he said.

Hansen was crucial enough—the Paul Revere of climate change—and senior enough that he was able to keep working and speaking. And the scientific research money kept more or less flowing. But now, in this new bureaucratic play, the Office of Management and Budget is trying to make sure that such independence (the single most obvious requirement for scientific advance) is a thing of the past. As John Timmer wrote at Ars Technica:

The result is a horror show for US science research. Not only is peer review made a secondary consideration, but the new rules would allow any federal agency to cancel any grant at any time based on the vague assertion that it isn’t in the “national interest.” The document would also ban any grants on a number of culture war topics, limit international collaborations, and block spending on things like publishing papers and attending conferences.

It is, in short, a recipe for how the government can finish the job of crippling American science.

This is not yet a done deal. There is a 45-day comment period for letting the government know what you think of their plan, and 41 of those days remain. Here’s the place to have your say.

I’m not, I must say, convinced they’ll pay great attention to the comments, so it’s also crucial to be letting your congresspeople know what you think about this attack on science. Congress has so far been able to save at least some of the things Russell Vought has sought to kill: indeed, word came this week that the NOAA budget will include money to keep the carbon dioxide observatory at Mauna Loa (aka the world’s most important scientific instrument) up and running. That’s a direct result of Congress hearing outcry, so let’s keep it up.

Remind them that real leaders actually want to know what science can tell them—case in point, the remarkable new movie, Pressure, which tells the story of how General Eisenhower listened to the new and unorthodox science of meteorology to guide his D-Day decision making (95% on Rotten Tomatoes, for those of you who like numbers).

That changes on this scale are possible is precisely what terrifies the fossil fuel industry, and in turn the Trump administration.

The good news, I suppose, is that on climate and energy the cat has largely escaped the bag. We do know what the problem is, even if the ramifications become more dire with each passing week. (Here’s a somewhat terrifying update on the prospects for this year’s wildfire season; meanwhile, Tom Harris has the new numbers on Antarctic melt.). And we know where the solution lies. Indeed, it too comes into clearer focus with each passing week. As I wrote earlier this year, the action in the next few years is going to be about batteries, and boy is that proving true. Bloomberg confirmed last month that 2025 was the first year the world installed more than a hundred gigawatts of battery storage, up 48% from the year before, and expected to grow another 46% this year.

South Australia held a big auction last month for “firm supply” across the territory’s electric grid. This is supposed to be the last place where fossil fuel is superior: always-on power. But all the low bids came from companies that wanted to (and now will) install big batteries. As Giles Parkinson reported:

It is yet another sign of the growing dominance of battery storage technology in Australia’s main grids (and off grid).

Big batteries have dominated other long duration storage tenders, particularly in NSW [New South Wales], were it has sidelined pumped hydro projects, and battery storage has been steadily sending gas peakers to the sidelines, particularly in the demand peaks they used to dominate.

Indeed, Australia is emerging as the test case for just how fast and furiously you can switch a grid to clean renewables. Even as its government continues to mine huge amounts of coal to send abroad, it’s providing a generous domestic subsidy for Aussies who want to put smaller batteries in their homes. And that, in turn, is underwriting a revolution on the grid. As Adam Morton and Petra Stock wrote this past week:

Nearly 60% of the household-scale battery capacity installed across almost 200 other countries this financial year will be in the southern continent, according to a recent analysis. Since July, about 415,000 have been connected—roughly 1 unit for every 25 Australian homes.

Previously, power prices would rocket in the evenings as gas-fired power—the most expensive form of energy generation on the Australian grid—was turned on to meet peak demand. With solar and wind now providing nearly half the electricity, and coal-fired power plants gradually closing, gas has been used to fill gaps after the sun sets.

But batteries are increasingly taking over that role. Total gas-fired generation was 24% lower across three months this summer compared with the year before. Tennant Reed, the climate change and energy director with the Australian Industry Group, representing more than 60,000 businesses, says it has “completely changed how electricity prices are formed.”

I hope you’ll go back and read the sentence I italicized in the last paragraph: the use of gas to create electricity dropped 23% in a year. This is much like what’s happened in California, where Mark Jacobson reports that the world’s fourth largest economy is using 60% less gas to produce electricity than it did three years ago. That changes on this scale are possible is precisely what terrifies the fossil fuel industry, and in turn the Trump administration.

Beginning one month from tomorrow, Australians, whether they have solar panels or batteries or none of the above, will get three free hours of electricity every afternoon from noon to 3:00 pm.

And the possibilities are everywhere. Canary Media’s Julian Spector wrote last week, a new global report shows that these so-called “firm renewables” (wind and sun coupled with batteries)

“has crossed the threshold of cost competitiveness with new fossil fuel generation,” in areas with plenty of sun or wind. “The central question is no longer whether firm renewables can compete on cost, but how quickly the structural conditions needed to realise their potential can be put in place across the diversity of markets and institutional contexts prevailing globally.”

China sets the bar with its shockingly low cost of firm renewables today.

IRENA [International Renewable Energy Agency] looked at 252 solar projects that went online there in 2024 and found that many of them could be augmented with extra solar capacity and batteries to deliver power cheaper than the $100-per-megawatt-hour benchmark for new gas-fired plants. Almost all the modeled solar-battery plants could beat that cost for firm clean power 90% of the time; even at the higher reliability threshold of 99%, nearly half the projects remained competitive, and the lowest cost was $46 per megawatt-hour.

And would any of this be, I don’t know, politically popular?

Beginning one month from tomorrow, Australians, whether they have solar panels or batteries or none of the above, will get three free hours of electricity every afternoon from noon to 3:00 pm. If you want to know why our government needs to shut up scientists and ward off engineers, that’s why.

Oh, they’re also trying to shut down the world’s central archive of disasters, which lets us learn from the past. I predict that will not slow the pace of trouble.

Donald Trump looked at America’s 250th birthday and neurotically concluded that he’s the main attraction.

A celebration intended to honor the founding of the United States is rapidly being repackaged as a celebration of Trump himself: his movement, his grievances, his white supremacy, his misogyny, and his power.

Every new announcement, from the MAGA rallies to the vanity projects to the carefully choreographed spectacles on the National Mall and White House lawn, reinforces the same message: this is no longer about America turning 250. It’s about Trump making sure America spends its 250th birthday talking about Trump and the power of white men.

And if that sounds familiar, it should. Washington has seen this kind of political pageantry before.

The misogynists, racists, and fascists are taking over Washington, D.C. this summer, and the parallel to the massive Klan rally of August 1925, staged under another Republican president who declined to denounce it is the script.

On that August day a hundred and one summers ago, somewhere between thirty- and forty-thousand Ku Klux Klan members marched down Pennsylvania Avenue twenty-two abreast and fourteen rows deep, ending at the base of the Washington Monument. President Calvin Coolidge refused to condemn them.

Their version of America was defined entirely by exclusion: not Black Americans, not Catholics, not Jews, not immigrants, not organized labor, not anyone outside their narrow tribal vision of who counted. That night they burned crosses in Arlington while the band played “Onward, Christian Soldiers” and “America.”

A century later, the same Mall is being prepared for the same kind of show, and the artists scheduled to perform are figuring it out and getting out as fast as they can.

Within forty-eight hours of the lineup announcement for what Trump’s people are calling the “Great American State Fair” on the National Mall, the Commodores, Martina McBride, Morris Day and the Time, Bret Michaels of Poison, Young MC, and Jodie Rocco of Milli Vanilli all put out statements saying they’d been misled, that nobody told them the event was a Trump-branded MAGA operation.

Young MC told Rolling Stone it was a bait-and-switch. The Commodores said their music has always been their voice and they wouldn’t lend it to a single political party.

Trump’s response was telling. He didn’t try to recruit new acts or apologize for the confusion. He went on his failing Nazi-infested social media site and demanded the whole concert series be scrapped, replaced with what he called “a giant MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN RALLY, for 250.”

Then he announced he’d personally headline the June 24 opening ceremony himself. The mask came off in about seventy-two hours. The 250th anniversary of American independence has been openly converted into a Trump fascist-fest, and only white MAGA who love to see gladiators beat each other bloody and senseless need apply.

Louise and I lived in Washington during the Obama years, and we visited just about every monument the city has, sometimes more than once. We were invited to the White House, and walking up that long drive past the East Wing (which is now rubble) always felt like walking into something larger than any single president.

The Lincoln Memorial at dusk, when the reflecting pool went dark and the seated figure of Lincoln doubled itself on that still water, was the kind of place where Americans of every stripe stood quietly together and remembered who we were supposed to be.

That reflecting pool, finished in 1923, has held the gravity of Marian Anderson’s 1939 Easter Sunday concert when she’d been denied the stage at Constitution Hall because she was Black, and the gravity of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963, and every quiet sunset visit by every family who came to the Mall to feel something solemn about this country.

Trump has now had that pool painted blue at a cost he claims is around two million dollars, the same shade you’d find at the kid’s pool in a discount motel. He calls it “American flag blue.” Right. He drove his motorcade across the wet coating before it set, climbed out, and held a press conference standing in the middle of the pool with his cabinet secretaries around him, and now we’re paying to repair that damage, too.

He told reporters the old gray stone was “never good.” That dark surface that turned itself into a mirror for Lincoln’s face for over a century, he claimed, was “never good.” The Cultural Landscape Foundation has sued to stop his desecration because the project skipped the federal review process that exists precisely to prevent a president from treating a national memorial like the patio renovation at one of his gaudy golf motels.

The June 24 event will be Trump in front of a crowd at the National Mall, hand-picked artists who didn’t pull out, and a brand of “patriotism” carefully scrubbed of anyone who might complicate the picture.

The “State Fair” will run sixteen days. Vanilla Ice and Flo Rida are still on the bill. Behind it all, Trump is preparing to host a UFC fight on the South Lawn of the White House on July 4, the actual anniversary, with up to twenty-five thousand spectators watching men beat each other senseless in a cage on the same grounds where Lincoln walked. Dana White is producing. Ivanka is helping organize.

The Roman emperors understood the deal they were making with the public: bread and circuses, panem et circenses, the cheap grain and the gladiator games delivered together, because if you fed them and entertained them they wouldn’t ask awkward questions about the empire. Trump has inverted the formula. He’s keeping the circus and taking away the bread.

On July 4, 2025 — exactly one year before this 250th celebration he’s calling a birthday party — Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates will cut at the end of this year federal Medicaid spending by roughly $911 billion, along with $186 billion in cuts to SNAP, to fund their tax cuts.

— The American Medical Association estimates that 11.8 million people will directly lose health coverage.
— The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities projects that up to 14.9 million people could be put at risk by the byzantine work requirements alone.
— The Joint Economic Committee found that under the proposed cuts, 10 million children could lose their health insurance, one in eight kids in this country.
— At least two million children are estimated to lose food assistance under the SNAP changes.

All to pay for another massive tax cut for Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and the 13 billionaires in his cabinet.

Set those numbers against what Trump’s spending on the spectacle. The ballroom built atop the rubble of the East Wing has now climbed to $300 to $400 million and Republicans in Congress are trying to appropriate a billion dollars for it, presumably so Trump can keep all those “donations.”

The “Independence Arch” — what Washington has already nicknamed the “Arc de Trump,” planted at Memorial Bridge to block the view of the Arlington National Cemetery where American soldiers are buried — is projected at around $100 million, with $15 million of that already pulled from a taxpayer-funded endowment through the Office of Management and Budget.

The pool job is at least $2 million. The UFC fight on the South Lawn is whatever it costs to host twenty-five thousand people for a brutal cage match at the President’s residence.

We’re talking, conservatively, half a billion dollars or more in personal vanity projects from a president who just stripped a trillion dollars from the medical care of poor Americans and a couple hundred billion more from their food. All to glorify himself.

— At the end of this year, a single father in Ohio is going to watch his SNAP benefits drop by an average of $146 a month so Trump can paint a memorial pool the color of a Mar-a-Lago hot tub.
— A grandmother in Kentucky will lose Medicaid coverage so Trump can build a French-style triumphal arch with his name nicknamed onto it.
— A kid in Louisiana — one of the states hardest hit by the Medicaid cuts — will lose her health insurance so Dana White can promote a cage fight on the White House lawn.

Panem et circenses without the panem. Just the circus, paid for by the bread he ripped out of their hands.

The Founders fought a war to be done with this sort of obscenity. They fought to be done with kings who put their names on buildings, with sovereigns who treated national wealth as personal decoration, with rulers who staged spectacles to glorify themselves while the poor lined up at almshouses.

The whole point of the experiment that began 250 years ago this summer was that we wouldn’t have a man who lived in a palace and stamped his initials on the country.

The arch wasn’t supposed to happen. The ballroom wasn’t supposed to happen. The triumphal procession down a repainted Mall, with the music acts replaced by the leader himself in front of a hand-picked crowd, wasn’t supposed to happen.

The 1925 Klan marchers thought they’d reclaimed the country for the Confederacy. They had a Republican president who looked the other way, a sympathetic press in many regions, governors in their pocket from Florida to Oregon, and a self-image as the only “real Americans.”

Their movement collapsed within a couple of years because Grand Dragon David Stephenson was convicted of rape and murder and the scandal pulled the curtain back on what they really were. Epstein files, anybody?

The lesson wasn’t that fascist movements collapse on their own; it was that ordinary Americans, when they finally saw clearly what was being done in their name, refused to keep going along with it.

Call your representatives at the Capitol Switchboard, 202-224-3121, and tell them you want the Medicaid and SNAP cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act reversed before the scam “work requirements” hit on December 31.

Support the food banks in your community: they’re about to be overwhelmed when the SNAP cuts take effect this winter. And if you live anywhere near Washington this June, you can decide for yourself whether to be on the Mall while Trump turns the 250th anniversary of American independence into a MAGA pep rally with a cage fight chaser.

If this piece spoke to you, please share it widely and consider subscribing to the Hartmann Report. The work of pushing back against the spectacle, the silence, and the slow normalization of all of this depends entirely on readers who refuse to look away and who keep passing the word along.

The 1925 Klan marchers thought the Mall belonged to them. It didn’t then and it doesn’t belong to their heirs now.

The right to strike is under attack throughout the world, including in the United States. Labor strikes are currently forbidden or restricted in the majority of countries.

Now, in a landmark 43-page advisory opinion issued May 21, the International Court of Justice (ICJ, or World Court) has determined that the right to strike is protected under the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Convention No. 87 on Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise.

“At a moment when workers’ organizations face sustained attacks around the world, this opinion reaffirms that the freedom to withhold one’s labor is not a privilege granted by the powerful, but a fundamental human right grounded in international law,” AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said in a statement.

The ILO is the United Nations agency that sets global labor standards. It has 187 member states and has adopted 191 conventions since its founding in 1919. The ILO considers Convention No. 87 to be one of its 11 fundamental conventions.

In 2023, the ILO asked the ICJ to settle an internal dispute about whether Convention No. 87 gives workers the right to strike, which is not specifically addressed in the convention. Although advisory opinions of the ICJ are not legally binding, many courts accept them as authoritative legal decisions.

The ICJ ruled in its 10-4 opinion that a strike “is one of the main activities engaged in and tools used by workers and their organizations to promote their interests and improve conditions of labour, thereby ensuring the effective exercise of the freedom of association protected under Convention No. 87.”

The Court found “that protection of the right to strike is encompassed in the protection of the freedom of association provided for in Convention No. 87.”

In reaching that conclusion, the Court considered provisions in two 1996 Covenants that contain relevant rules of international law regarding the right to strike. Both refer to Convention No. 87.

Article 8, paragraph 1 (d) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) expressly protects the right to strike, if it is exercised in conformity with domestic laws.

Article 22, paragraph 1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) provides for the right to freedom of association. The ICJ noted that for more than 25 years, the Human Rights Committee — which monitors the implementation of the ICCPR — has considered the right to strike to be encompassed in the protection of freedom of association.

Due to the high degree of overlap between the states parties to the ICESCR and ICCPR, and Convention No. 87, the ICJ determined there was a common understanding among them on the right to strike. The Court thus concluded “that an interpretation taking into account the relevant rules of international law contained in the ICESCR and the ICCPR indicates that the protection of the right to strike is encompassed in the protection of the freedom of association provided by Convention No. 87.”

No Right to Organize Without the Right to Strike

“For generations, working people have understood a simple truth: The freedom to join a union means nothing if you cannot withhold your labor when bosses refuse to listen. Now, the world’s highest court has affirmed that truth,” said Jeffrey Vogt, director of the International Lawyers Assisting Workers (ILAW) Network, which issued the call for the ILO referral of this case to the ICJ.

The ICJ decision “affirms decades of judicial precedent and what workers around the world know: there is no right to organize and bargain collectively without the right to strike,” Shuler said in her statement. “When workers are barred from taking collective action on the job, they cannot defend their rights and demand the workplace conditions and contracts they are owed. The freedom to join a union becomes an empty formality.”

“This is an important day for the International Labor Organization [ILO], and for its continued relevance in the world of work. However, the significance of this opinion extends well beyond the institutional context in Geneva,” the ILAW Network wrote in a statement.

The ICJ advisory opinion came “at a moment of acute pressure on the international labour rights system,” ILAW stated. “Across the world, the right to strike is under sustained attack — through restrictive legislation, expansive judicial interpretation of essential services, the criminalisation of trade union activity, and the use of dismissals, injunctions, and damages claims to deter collective action.”

Legal restrictions on the right to strike are increasing. In 2022, strikes were outlawed or stringently restricted in 129 of the 148 countries tallied by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), one of the six organizations with consultative status at the ILO Governing Body.

The ITUC, which represents 191 million workers in 169 countries and territories, is dedicated to trade union democracy and independence. It has regional organizations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The ICJ decision “is important not only for workers and trade unions, but also for governments and responsible businesses,” ITUC stressed.

This decision “will serve as a powerful interpretive tool before national constitutional and labour courts, before regional human rights bodies, and before the ILO’s own supervisory bodies,” ILAW noted. “It strengthens the hand of every worker and union challenging strike bans, broad essential-services designations, criminal sanctions against strikers, prohibitions on solidarity and political strikes, and the dismissal and blacklisting of workers who exercise this right.”

Ruling Will Affect Tens of Millions of Workers

In October, 18 countries and five international organizations, including the ILO, presented oral testimony before the ICJ, and other nations filed written contributions. The majority of participants supported the right to strike, which is guaranteed in most European countries.

Harold Koh, who represented the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) before the ICJ, told the judges that the case would “affect the real rights of tens of millions of working people around the world.” If the Court ruled that the Convention didn’t protect the right to strike, Koh warned, “National employer groups would contest the right to strike country by country, focusing first on nations with compliant courts, weak civil societies and ineffective media.”

Jeffrey Vogt worked with the legal team of the ITUC on the briefs and oral arguments presented to the ICJ. Vogt’s co-authored book, The Right to Strike in International Law, provided a legal roadmap for the case.

Vogt told Truthout that “the written view of the US (under the Biden administration) was to support the right to strike, albeit on narrower grounds than what we had argued. When the Trump administration came in, they withdrew the Biden era brief but fortunately did not appear for oral arguments and take a contrary view.”

“The decision deals with the right to strike in the abstract — does the convention protect it — but does not go into the modalities,” Vogt added. The Court wrote that its “conclusion that the right to strike is protected by Convention No. 87 does not entail any determination on the precise content, scope, or conditions for the exercise of that right.”

“That was a conscious decision,” Vogt noted. “We did not want the court to attempt to define the scope, especially since we believe that is the proper role of the ILO supervisory system.” Vogt said that “the ICJ gave ‘great weight’ to the views of the supervisory system, which is helpful.” And although “the ILO has supported secondary strikes,” in which workers strike in solidarity with other workers at a different employer, the ICJ decision didn’t opine on that specific issue.

The Right to Strike in the US

“The right to withhold one’s labor, inherent in the right to strike, belongs to all workers, but it has been restricted,” Jeanne Mirer, a labor lawyer in private practice working with the International Commission for Labor Rights, told Truthout. “Many unions have agreed never to strike while a collective bargaining agreement is in effect.”

Most private sector workers in the US have the right to strike under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Employees, including international and undocumented workers, cannot be fired or disciplined for participating in a lawful strike.

“Those exempted from the NLRA, such as agricultural and domestic workers, are not restricted in the right to strike but have no protections against discharge if they strike and do not have the power to prevent such retaliation,” Mirer added.

Some states have their own laws granting protection to domestic workers and 14 states guarantee farmworkers collective bargaining rights.

Railroad and airline workers are not covered by the NLRA, but they come under the Railway Labor Act, which has several limitations on the right to strike.

In recent years, Congress and the courts have narrowed the definition of “protected concerted activity” under the NLRA. Union membership is dropping. Nevertheless, strike actions in the US increased by almost 50 percent in 2022, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

In 2023, the US Supreme Court weakened the legal protections for striking in Glacier Northwest, Inc. v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters, making it easier for employers to sue unions in state courts. Only Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, writing, “The right to strike is fundamental to American labor law.” She noted:

Workers are not indentured servants, bound to continue laboring until any planned work stoppage would be as painless as possible for their masters. They are employees whose collective and peaceful decision to withhold their labor is protected by the [National Labor Relations Act] even if economic injury results.

The NLRA’s protections for private sector workers don’t extend to public sector employees. “Public employees in the United States have been restricted in many ways from striking,” Mirer said.

Federal workers are legally prohibited from striking. Thirty-six states prohibit public sector workers from striking. Three other states that haven’t addressed the issue would likely outlaw public sector strikes as well. In the 12 states where strikes are not per se unlawful, various preconditions must be met before workers can engage in strikes.

The World Federation of Trade Unions, which played a decisive role in the creation of Convention No. 87 in 1948, applauded the ICJ’s decision:

[I]t is clear that the existence of a class-oriented and militant trade union movement is the essential, decisive, and irreplaceable factor to ensure that the right to strike, as well as conventions, collective bargaining, labor laws, and workers’ achievements, are not merely empty words on paper but are implemented in practice. The WFTU reiterates its call for struggle in every country, sector, and workplace to safeguard the sacred right to strike in practice.

“It is up to workers and their organizations to build on the ICJ decision to ensure the right to strike can be an effective tool to build worker power,” Mirer said.

This article was originally published at Truthout

At a time when the American public is expressing unprecedented levels of distrust in the Israeli government, Congress just proposed tying the US to the Israeli military more than ever before.

Buried in the House's version of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) released on Tuesday, is section 224, entitled “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative.” The provision would arguably do more to intertwine the US military with the Israeli military than the more than $200 billion (inflation adjusted) in military assistance Israel has received from the US since its founding in 1948.

Section 224 lays the groundwork for bilateral research and development, co-production of weapons, joint ventures, licensing agreements, and seemingly every manner of US-Israeli military-industrial complex cooperation. The US and Israel already work together heavily on missile defense, but this provision would greatly expand coordination to seemingly every area of defense tech, including AI, quantum, autonomous systems, directed energy, cyber, biotech, and many more. It also proposes “network integration” and “data fusion.” In other words, the US military’s data could soon be the Israeli military’s data.

If fully enacted, this proposal would provide a higher level of military-industrial integration than the US has with any other country in the world. To be sure, the US has worked closely with its NATO partners on co-production and shared supply chains, most notably via the Defence Production Action Plan. And, as the No. 1 arms dealer in the world, the US provides weapons to militaries across the globe. But that is mostly a one-way street, with the US providing weapons to foreign buyers who only occasionally make parts for those weapons themselves, as in the case of the F-35’s global supply chain.

The enormous gulf between what most Americans want and what the president is doing when it comes to Israel and what Congress is proposing here should not be ignored.

Section 224 would be a different beast entirely. It would fuse the US and Israeli defense sectors in multiple areas vital to the battlefields of the future, like autonomous systems and cyber. It would also bring extraordinary Israeli influence to the US beyond what it already has through the Israel lobby and its robust network of social media influencers. It would give the Israeli government the opportunity to greatly expand one of the most powerful levers of influence in US politics: jobs in the US. By expanding or starting new co-production facilities like it already has in Mississippi and Arkansas, the Israeli government could boast of providing jobs on US soil, thereby securing allies among members of Congress who represent the districts where those jobs lie.

The result could well be a US political system even more susceptible to the whims of an Israeli government that seemingly has no qualms about drawing the US into military conflicts in the Middle East.

This unprecedented level of US-Israeli military integration stands in stark contrast to the traditional aid model of defense cooperation, in which Israel already stood out as the top recipient of US military assistance. As laid out in a recent Quincy Institute brief, authored by Steven Simon, this shift from an aid model to a military integration model has troubling implications, namely:

The shift will strip away the political and diplomatic oversight mechanisms that make the relationship publicly accountable, moving it from a visible annual aid vote into the opaque machinery of defense acquisition, where oversight is limited and political accountability is minimal. The result would be a defense relationship that is simultaneously deeper and less transparent.

This all comes at a time when the Israeli military has repeatedly used US weapons in strikes that have violated international humanitarian laws in Gaza, and as Israel has repeatedly violated ceasefires (as has the US itself) in the Trump administration’s unnecessary war with Iran.

The enormous gulf between what most Americans want and what the president is doing when it comes to Israel and what Congress is proposing here should not be ignored. Just 30% of respondents to a New York Times-Sienna poll from mid-May believe President Donald Trump made “the right decision” to go to war with Iran, with 64% saying it was wrong. An Institute for Global Affairs poll released earlier this week dove even deeper into the American psyche when it comes to arming Israel, finding that “just 16% say the United States should keep supplying Israel with weapons without new restrictions. Thirty-eight percent want to stop supplying weapons entirely, and another 24% want weapons conditioned on how they’re used.”

Yet, mainstream leadership in both parties remains largely pro-Israel and continues to shape the base legislative text before amendments and broader congressional debate open it to the full body, as is the case with this NDAA provision.

Though slowly, tides within both parties are shifting as more and more members speak out against the growing divide between Israel’s actions and America’s interests. For example, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) wrote in The New York Times on Tuesday that, “the Democratic Party has provided reflexive and unconditional support to Israeli governments, even as their actions have increasingly undermined American interests and values.” On the Republican side of the aisle, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green (R-Ga.) have openly decried the Israel lobby’s corrosive influence—a stance that may have, at least partially, cost both of them their seats in Congress.

What can other members of Congress who are concerned about Israel’s destabilizing actions do right now? Stop the Israeli-US military-industrial merger in its tracks. Lawmakers should reject Section 224 from the NDAA to avoid deep integration with Israel's military at a time when a growing number of Americans oppose Israel's actions in the region.

In response to recent developments in Venezuela under imperialist siege, international solidarity activists should adopt a stance that does not inadvertently reinforce Washington’s drive for domination. Our central responsibility is not to adjudicate every tactical decision made under siege conditions, but to oppose the imperialist aggression that creates those conditions.

The overwhelming structure of US hybrid warfare against Venezuela remains intact, continuing to suffocate the country’s economic recovery and undermine its sovereignty. Washington continues to exert decisive pressure over the country’s principal source of national revenue, the oil sector. It uses sanctions, financial coercion, and domination of global banking systems, as it has against other targeted states such as Iraq and Syria.

At the same time, the threat of direct military escalation remains ever present, a danger underscored by continuing military deployments, aggressive rhetoric, and repeated threats.

What some may regard as unjustifiable compromises by the Venezuelan government pale in comparison with our obligations as international solidarity activists: defending Venezuela and Cuba against the policies of imperialism. The US continues to intensify blockades, sanctions, destabilization efforts, and military threats against these revolutionary processes while simultaneously waging disinformation campaigns against the Chavista leadership and the Cuban Revolution.

The role of internationalists is to oppose imperialism at home, not to instruct Venezuelans on how to defend their revolution.

Both Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez identified US imperialism as the principal enemy of humanity. Our primary political focus should therefore remain opposition to imperialist domination, rather than allowing secondary disagreements to obscure the central contradiction.

The Responsibilities of Internationalists

First and foremost, the main blow must be directed against US imperialism. Any discussion of shortcomings, compromises, or concessions should be understood within the context of relentless external aggression, destabilization efforts, and military threats.

That is why internationals vigorously campaign both for the safe return to Venezuela of President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores and for the immediate and unconditional lifting of all sanctions.

The political choices made by the Venezuelan leadership must ultimately be resolved within Venezuela itself. The role of internationalists is to oppose imperialism at home, not to instruct Venezuelans on how to defend their revolution.

Support for Venezuela against US imperialism does not require agreement with every decision taken under conditions of coercion. Understanding political decisions made under such circumstances is to situate them within the realities imposed by imperialist military power. This includes the extradition of Alex Saab.

A longstanding objective of US policy has been to fracture the unity of the Chavista leadership, military, and popular base. Despite immense pressure, that unity has largely held. Attempts to counterpose solidarity with the popular base against solidarity with the leadership, however well intentioned, objectively strengthen imperialist aims.

The Conditions Facing Venezuela

We do not know the full extent of the pressures exerted on the Venezuelan government, nor the range of alternatives realistically available under present conditions. The Venezuelan leadership operates under severe geopolitical constraints. The US openly threatens Libya- or Iran-style retaliation. Another major military escalation remains entirely possible.

Unlike in earlier periods, Venezuela today lacks strong regional allies, while in the context of the ongoing Gaza genocide, so-called “international law” offers little meaningful restraint on US power.

In conclusion, under conditions of economic warfare, military threat, diplomatic isolation, and perpetual destabilization efforts, Venezuela’s contradictions cannot be analyzed abstractly or outside the realities of imperialist power.

Given the vast military asymmetry between the two countries, the consequences of direct military confrontation would be catastrophic for Venezuela, potentially including the destruction of vital infrastructure and long-term devastation of the oil industry upon which the country depends.

If the US succeeds in placing the extreme right-wing opposition in power, the likely result would be devastating political repression directed against Chavismo and the popular sectors.

Strategic Realities and Political Continuity

While continuing to rely upon the Chavista base, the government also recognizes the necessity of building a broader patriotic bloc capable of resisting imperialist pressure more effectively.

Even amid forced compromises, the central achievements of the Bolivarian process remain significant: preservation of the revolutionary leadership, survival against destabilization efforts, and avoidance of a full-scale invasion.

Years of sanctions and economic warfare severely degraded Venezuela’s oil infrastructure. Restoring productive capacity, reestablishing trade, and attracting investment have therefore become vital imperatives.

The political transitions from Chávez to Maduro to Delcy Rodríguez largely reflect changes in the international geopolitical landscape. Yet there has remained substantial political continuity within Chavismo, evident in continued solidarity with Cuba, the vitality of the communal system, and the endurance of the revolutionary mass movement.

In conclusion, under conditions of economic warfare, military threat, diplomatic isolation, and perpetual destabilization efforts, Venezuela’s contradictions cannot be analyzed abstractly or outside the realities of imperialist power. The primary task of solidarity movements within the imperial centers remains what it has always been: opposing the aggression of our own ruling classes.

As a long-time death penalty abolitionist, I’ve often compared the death penalty in America to a train with no brakes: Once the machinery starts moving, it becomes extraordinarily difficult to stop.

But the real problem is that the train should never have been built.

Today, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Arkansas are experimenting with nitrogen gas executions, a method officials claim is more humane. But from noose to needle to nitrogen, our constant search for a more acceptable way to kill is a story of failure—not moral progress.

There’s no acceptable way to practice a form of state killing that, for Black Americans especially, has long been intertwined with terror.

History should make us skeptical whenever governments begin searching for new technologies to make killing appear more acceptable.

Take my home state of Arkansas. Within a year of becoming a state in 1836, Arkansas adopted laws establishing a racial hierarchy by which even civilian whites could dispossess or punish a Black person. These codes even designated certain offenses as capital crimes when committed by Black people but lesser crimes when committed by white people.

The message was clear: Some lives were worth less than others.

That message echoed through the decades that followed. Between 1877 and 1950, Arkansas recorded 493 documented lynchings—the highest per capita rate in the nation. In Arkansas and throughout the South, these killings were not hidden crimes. They were public spectacles—acts of terror meant to reinforce social hierarchy.

Eventually, lynching became politically unacceptable. But state killing did not disappear—it simply changed form. The spectacle moved behind prison walls, and the language became more clinical. But the act of killing remained the same.

George Hays, who served two terms as governor of Arkansas, wrote in 1927 that “if the death penalty were to be removed from our statute-books, the tendency to commit deeds of violence would be heightened owing to the Negro problem. The greater number of the race do not maintain the same ideals as the whites.”

Since the Civil War, Arkansas has executed nearly 500 people—and 68% of those executed were Black or Native American. This is not distant history. Black inmates make up about 50% or more of the state’s death row today, despite Black Arkansans comprising less than 16% of the state’s total population.

Nor is Arkansas an outlier. Nationally, over half the people on death row today are Black or Hispanic.

Modern executions are often carried out by lethal injection, presented as sterile and humane. The condemned is strapped to a gurney while witnesses sit behind glass and chemicals stop the heart. But as these chemicals become less available, Arkansas and some other states have replaced lethal injection with nitrogen gas executions.

They claim the method is painless, but it is death by suffocation. Even veterinarians are forbidden from euthanizing cats and dogs with nitrogen hypoxia because it takes too long to lose consciousness and amounts to torture.

History should make us skeptical whenever governments begin searching for new technologies to make killing appear more acceptable. During the Holocaust, Nazi Germany constructed gas chambers designed to turn mass death into a technical process. This process was bureaucratic, hidden from public view, and deemed “efficient.”

Today, the death penalty follows a disturbingly similar logic. Each generation promises that the newest method will finally make execution humane. The noose. The electric chair. The gas chamber. Lethal injection. Now nitrogen gas.

Yet the fundamental act has never changed. The state still kills. The train keeps moving. Even when jurors change their minds. Even when victims’ families plead for mercy. Stopping the train requires courage—especially from elected leaders who have the power to do it.

Our history tells us what happens when a society accepts killing as justice. The death penalty has evolved for nearly two centuries, but there is only one real measure of moral progress: not how we kill, but whether we finally choose to stop.

This month, the world watched as US President Donald Trump wrangled up his bro-squad of capitalist billionaires and chartered them across the world to China. We watched in disbelief as the China-hating Trump administration paraded around Beijing gawking at beautiful ceilings and giant rose bushes. “China is beautiful,” Trump said.

All the while, the top US oligarchs met with Chinese officials, hoping to find openings they could us to slither into China’s large, booming markets and siphon off even more wealth that they most definitely don’t need. Fortunately, China just wasn’t that interested.

Even though nothing much came of the meetings, all the China hawks in Washington were on the edge of their seats, anxious that better relations with China would risk their favorite justification for raising the military budget to an unprecedented $1.5 trillion. But we need to prepare for war with China by 2025… no, 2027… wait, maybe 2030? Forever?

Mainstream media had a lot to say about the meeting. The Guardian was especially deceptive, with one article titled:

This is the kind of headline we’ve come to expect from outlets like the New York Post, whose credibility is on par with a spam email. In fact, they did have a similar article:

It’s not a huge surprise that Western media is trying to make it sound like war was China’s idea, when it’s the US that has been actively preparing for it for the last decade. It’s part of their strategy to use misleading headlines to stoke fear about China, so nobody pays attention to the war-antagonizing behavior of the United States.

When President Xi Jinping speaks about the “Thucydides Trap,” he is warning the US against treating war with China as inevitable and instead urging it to pursue diplomacy and cooperation. Many US policymakers, however, continue to frame China’s rise primarily as a military threat, expanding military posturing across the Asia-Pacific in an effort to preserve US dominance even at the risk of escalation.

It’s reported that Trump and Xi also talked at length about the US war on Iran. This conflict—as well as US military actions in Venezuela—is also tied to the broader US confrontation with China. Both countries possess major oil, gas, and critical mineral reserves and have become important economic partners to China. By targeting two of China’s key energy suppliers, the US is attempting to limit China’s access to the resources, while hoarding them for itself (and Israel).

The US war on Iran has been a disaster, which is one of the reasons Trump is in China, hoping for concessions. It’s not just energy dominance the US is worried about. While oil and gas prices are skyrocketing around the world, Iran has made an exception for Chinese oil tankers, which trade with Iran using the Chinese yuan. For decades, US global power has depended on the petrodollar system, which keeps global energy trade tied to the US dollar and gives the US enormous economic warfare abilities. But China’s continued purchase of Iranian oil using the yuan, along with growing efforts by countries across the Global South to trade outside the dollar system, threatens to weaken that dominance.

The global order is clearly shifting toward a more multipolar world. The question is whether the US will respond with diplomacy or attempt to preserve unipolar dominance through military confrontation with China. To prevent escalation, we must reject the idea that war between great powers is inevitable. And we must also demand media coverage that accurately and credibly covers the role the United States is playing in escalating tensions. That includes news outlets like The Guardian, which clearly prioritize painting China as the villain over credible and in-depth reporting.

The advent of generative AI has made it even harder to distinguish between what’s real and what isn’t, and also easy to claim what is real is fake. This threatens to undermine the very idea of "evidence," which traditionally has been used to enforce accountability, by fracturing shared, verifiable reality.

For example, in Iran authorities attempted to dismiss protest footage as edited or artificially manufactured after AI was used to enhance long-distance footage of someone confronting the military, effectively turning this doubt into a propaganda weapon. Doubt was also a feature in the aftermath of the recent bombing of a girls' school which killed 168 people—mostly children—in Minab, Iran. And in the midst of an already distorted information ecosystem, methods developed to detect AI fakes are now being weaponized to falsely discredit authentic evidence.

This affirms that the emergence of generative AI is not simply a technological issue, but is creating a visual evidence problem. The consequences are already being felt not only by those chronicling and exposing injustice.

Historically, visual media has been an important tool to document injustice. In South Africa, for instance, a generation of photographers used the camera to challenge the prevailing power structures of apartheid. By exposing the apartheid’s injustices and delegitimizing the system, as well as documenting resistance and everyday life, photographers had a huge impact on the liberation struggle in South Africa. So much so, that the camera would be “seen as an instrument of insurrection” by the apartheid regime, resulting in a ban on foreign journalists and documentary photography.

What would have happened if the apartheid regime had claimed that photographs like Nzima’s were faked or AI generated? Would this have created doubt for the audiences who saw it, impacting international support for South Africa’s liberation struggle?

Although they were not the sole targets of apartheid repression, those photographing or filming were often targeted by the regime. Security forces regularly exposed films, confiscated equipment, conducted raids, and banned publications, as well as people. For example, photographer Sam Nzima was harassed by police and placed under house arrest for months following the publication of his iconic photo of the dying 13-year-old Hector Pieterson who was shot by police during the youth uprising on June 16, 1976. The photo not only fueled the liberation movement within South Africa, but also galvanized stronger international condemnation of apartheid. Apartheid Minister Stoffel Botha even referred to those documenting what was unfolding in the country as "media terrorists."

While there have been attempts to deny or downplay apartheid, including from the now late last apartheid president F. W. de Klerk, systemic denial has not been possible owing to the evidence available. This underscores the role of documentation in defending truth, even if incomplete.

What would have happened if the apartheid regime had claimed that photographs like Nzima’s were faked or AI generated? Would this have created doubt for the audiences who saw it, impacting international support for South Africa’s liberation struggle? Today these questions are not rhetorical, owing to the emergence of generative AI.

To be sure for most of the world, the saying, “The camera never lies” has never been true. Visual media was vital to the Nazi regime's propaganda efforts. Before that, it played “a critical role in propagating colonialist myths about Africa,” with colonial states using photographic imagery to cement white supremacy. It would also become a tool for apartheid in South Africa, used to not only legitimize and validate itself, but to also attempt to shape global perceptions of what was happening in the country.

But the story did not end there. Visual media would also become a tool for liberation movements in South Africa and beyond, because documentation impacts how the world is perceived, meaning is made, and reality is verified.

For example, Human Rights Watch recently used geolocated images to verify the Israeli military’s unlawful use of white phosphorus, a highly reactive chemical which ignites when exposed to oxygen, in residential areas in Lebanon. This offers a pathway for accountability in the future. Similarly, the Syrian Archive, which tracks and preserves videos of war crimes in Syria, has used documentation to pursue accountability for the deadly use of chemical weapons in the country.

Documentation is critical in the pursuit of justice, as well as the need to preserve the past to confirm reality. Not only for these worthy ideals, but also so that those who are left to pick up the pieces know that their experiences of injustices are documented, even in the face of denial and propaganda aimed at persuading people otherwise.

Of course the risks and harms are heightened in conflict situations, which does not need to be inevitable. For example, Meta’s Oversight Board recently called for new rules on how deceptive AI content is managed by the platform to enable users to distinguish between what is real and fake. This follows Meta’s failure to appropriately designate an AI-generated video that purported to show significant damage caused by Iranian soldiers in Haifa, Israel. While the board’s recommendations are not binding, should Meta fail to urgently implement these, it will be yet another example of a platform knowing how to address harms but failing to do so. This must change.

To this end, pushing back against the assault on verifiable reality is a crucial undertaking. This includes protecting people's ability to safely document and preserve their documentation; accessible and effective detection tools, alongside transparency for AI-generated content; and democratic policies, laws, and regulations that center human rights considerations.

As history has repeatedly shown us, secrecy is a shield that protects injustice and emboldens bad actors. So, bearing witness, exposing truth, and insisting on justice remains as important now as it was for South Africa’s liberation movement and beyond— even in the age of generative AI.

Dear Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche,

I am writing to formally submit my application to your newly established federal “Anti-Weaponization Fund” for compensation in the form of a cash payment for damages incurred at the hands of the United States government.

As you stated while announcing President Trump’s new $1.776 billion fund, “The machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American, and it is this Department’s intention to make right the wrongs that were previously done while ensuring this never happens again.”

Todd, if I may, I saw your former client — President Trump, for whom you previously provided legal representation — backed you up, saying, “This is reimbursing people who were horribly treated.”

Additionally, Todd, I read an Associated Press report noting that during congressional testimony you stated that you “wouldn’t rule out the possibility that rioters who assaulted police on Jan. 6 would be eligible for fund payouts.” After hearing your remarkably broad interpretation of governmental victimization, I felt compelled to share with you what the government has done to me and my family by writing the letter below — which reveals several forms of government abuse my family and I have endured which, while you may not find as severe as the temporary loss of access to the U.S. Capitol experienced by individuals convicted of felonies related to January 6, nonetheless caused considerable hardship for us.

I was initially reassured that my request was reasonable after learning that Adam Johnson — best known for carrying Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s lectern through the Capitol during the January 6 attack — is reportedly considering a claim of up to $5 million himself.

However, after learning that Brandon Fellows — another January 6 defendant pardoned by President Trump — reportedly plans to seek $30 million from the fund, including $21.5 million for what he described as “wrongful imprisonment,” I realized that the harms experienced by my family and me may in fact fall closer to Mr. Fellows’s compensation range.

So, after reviewing your department’s stated principles, apparent standards, and anticipated applicant pool, I believe I am highly qualified for compensation and would like to make a modest request of $30 million.

In fact, Todd, I believe I possess two major qualifications that should place me among the strongest candidates for compensation, which I will detail below.

Claim One: Descendant of Enslaved People

First, since this appears to function as a reparations program for people harmed by state injustice, I should begin by saying that I come from a family with a long legacy of being brutalized by the United States. And if you think the January 6 defendants have a compelling claim for compensation due to governmental mistreatment, wait until you hear about this historical episode called slavery.

My great-great-grandparents, Laura and Thomas Lenoir, were enslaved in Marion County, Mississippi, and spent their lives laboring without compensation in a nation loudly proclaiming “liberty” while designating Black people as property. After decades spent tracing our family history, my father recently discovered the very plantation where they were enslaved— a breakthrough that finally allowed our family to identify the precise location where generations of uncompensated labor helped build this country’s wealth.

My ancestors worked this land they did not own, built wealth they could not keep, and endured violence they could not legally resist. No compensation was ever provided for the stolen labor, stolen children, stolen wages, stolen land, stolen futures, or the generations of poverty and discrimination that followed emancipation. Stories of Laura’s beatings and brutal treatment have been passed down through my family for generations.

In explaining why she believed January 6 defendants deserved compensation, Rachel Powell — who prosecutors identified as one of the first rioters to breach Capitol grounds and who was filmed using a battering ram to smash a Capitol window — recently stated: “We endured a lot. Our lives are still not the same. I don’t know what kind of price you can put on that.”

Todd, I must admit I found Ms. Powell’s reflections unexpectedly relatable. Indeed, many descendants of slavery have similarly struggled to determine what monetary figure might adequately compensate for generations of forced labor and legally sanctioned terror.

For many years, I was informed that reparations for descendants of slavery were unrealistic, unaffordable, divisive, or simply impossible. Republican and Democratic leaders alike repeatedly explained that while slavery was unfortunate, there was no practical mechanism for compensating descendants in the present day. However, your department’s new fund has helped me understand that no sum of money is too large for the government to produce once it decides that a great injustice has been perpetrated.

And then there is the symbolism of the fund’s exact amount — $1.776 billion — which is especially moving. President Trump, with his trademark subtlety and keen sense of gravitas, must have chosen this specific figure for providing reparations to people claiming mistreatment by the government as a fitting tribute to a nation founded by those who declared liberty for all in 1776 while simultaneously enslaving and brutalizing Black people.

Claim Two: My Arrest at a Capitol Building During Political Protest

My second major qualification is that, like many of the fund’s anticipated beneficiaries who stormed the capitol building on January 6, I was also arrested at a capitol building during a political protest.

In 2012, Washington state announced a special legislative session to determine how to slash education and healthcare budgets by some $2 Billion during the aftermath of the Great Recession. At the time, I was helping organize with the Social Equity Educators (SEE), a group of educators fighting against austerity and for educational justice.

We joined a much larger mass protest at the Washington State Capitol in Olympia to oppose billions of dollars in cuts to public services. Just before lawmakers gaveled in the special budget cutting session inside the House Ways and Means Committee meeting room, several of us managed to enter the chamber before they locked the door to the many protestors surrounding the building. The moment the session began, we mic-checked the room and read aloud the Washington State Constitution language that explicitly specifies funding education is the “paramount duty” of the state, and we declared therefore the state not only had a moral obligation but also a legal obligation to fully fund public education.

After finishing the statement, I produced a pair of plastic handcuffs I got at the dollar store and invited the legislators into my custody for what I announced was citizen’s arrest.

As I approached the legislators’ benches carrying self-made citizen’s arrest warrants to issue to each member, a police officer apparently arrived at a somewhat different interpretation of the law than I had. In an astonishing twist, he arrested me instead of the legislators.

He grabbed my arm, forced it behind my back, and cinched the handcuffs tightly around my wrists. Officers then moved me into a back room while they attempted to figure out how to remove me from the building as hundreds of protesters outside chanted, “Let the teacher go!”

Eventually, police whisked me out and pushed me into the back of a squad car and repeatedly questioned me about my actions even after I informed them that I wished to speak only in the presence of legal counsel. I was transported to a nearby jail, had my mugshot taken, ordered to exchange my clothes for a jail-issued orange jumpsuit, and placed in a jail cell with several other people for the evening.

While I was in jail, unbeknownst to me, my students at Garfield High School created a Facebook page titled “Free Mr. Hagopian.” When I returned to school the next day, students had changed the page into “Seattle Student Walkout for Education.”

Within twenty-four hours of my arrest, more than 500 Garfield students organized a mass walkout protesting the education cuts, carrying signs reading “Fund Our Future” and chanting, “We’re the future of our nation, no more cuts to education!” Students later formed a coalition called Students of Washington for Change to pressure the legislature through protests and letter-writing campaigns.

Importantly, Todd, not long afterward the Washington State Supreme Court ruled that the legislature actually was violating the constitution in what became known as the McCleary decision, so I trust that my legal vindication strengthens my application considerably. And if generations of slavery fall short in qualifying me for compensation, I trust my arrest at a capitol while protesting government lawbreaking will place me in strong standing under your department’s standards.

A Possible Weakness in My Application

Now Todd, in the interest of full transparency, I should acknowledge one possible weakness in my case. The Department of Justice fact sheet explaining your fund notes that “Claims are awarded on a case-by-case basis, and the Commissioners must consider a claimant’s personal conduct and character when making a determination.”

I must admit, Todd, this language gave me some pause.

While I was arrested at a capitol building during a large political protest — something I understand may weigh heavily in my favor given your department’s apparent sympathy for January 6 defendants — I did not use a battering ram to breach the Capitol building, assault police officers, carry Confederate flags through the halls of government, or attempt to overturn the results of a presidential election.

In retrospect, I recognize this may complicate my claim.

Still, I would respectfully submit that my application remains highly competitive. Unlike many January 6 defendants, when I protested at a capitol, the court later ruled that the government I was protesting had actually broken the law.

Instructions for Disbursement of Funds

Todd, thank you for taking the time to read and consider my formal application for compensation from the Anti-Weaponization Fund.

Once my claim has been approved, you may issue a direct payment in the form of a contribution to Where I Got My Name: Down in Mississippi — a documentary film project about my father discovering the plantation where our family had been enslaved and our journey to Mississippi to recover our family’s history — or to Rethinking Schools and the Zinn Education Project, organizations that have spent decades supporting honest education about the history of this country and the people who were truly “horribly treated” by their government (as President Trump put it).

Todd, I appreciate your department’s newfound commitment to reparative justice, and I look forward to receiving confirmation of my $30 million award soon.

Sincerely,

Jesse Hagopian

Although the 2026 midterm elections present the most immediate opportunity for Democrats to capitalize on widespread public discontent with the current Republican-controlled Congress, unofficial preparation for the 2028 presidential race has already started to take shape.

Gavin Newsom is rallying Democrats in Texas; Josh Shapiro is flexing his battleground state bona fides across Pennsylvania; Pete Buttigieg is headlining town halls in Iowa; while Ro Khanna and AOC are jockeying to consolidate the progressive lane.

Whatever their differences on policy and posture, these candidates share a common blind spot: they are not talking nearly enough about Russell Vought.

Whether we’re recounting the Department of Government Efficiency’s infiltration of the federal government or tracking the day-to-day material harms created by Trump administration policymaking, RDP has urgently sought to classify Vought as Trump 2.0’s top villain.

Democrats, however, have badly underinvested in making Vought as infamous as Elon Musk, his former DOGE co-lead. Our Kenny Stancil recently examined this reality in a Talking Points Memo op-ed, where he observed that:

“Democrats sent 478 unique emails mentioning Musk from January 27 to March 31, 2025—including 91 sent during the week of January 31 to February 7, the zenith of Musk’s D.C. rampage when DOGE infiltrated the Treasury Department and shuttered the U.S. Agency for International Development. In comparison, Democrats mentioned Vought in just 28 emails between October 1 and November 12, 2025, even as the OMB director used the government shutdown to intensify his longstanding efforts to gut federal agencies and block the disbursement of congressionally appropriated funds [...] In all, Democratic lawmakers mentioned Vought in just 78 e-newsletters sent between January 20, 2025 and April 30, 2026. Musk, by contrast, was invoked in 858 emails during the same period—11 times more often.”

The ambitious politicians quietly auditioning for the Democratic presidential nomination have no reason to continue making this mistake. Any candidate serious about their presidential bid has both a strategic and moral imperative to build a coherent narrative against Vought—the main engineer behind the GOP’s government power grab.

Why Vought?

The case for candidates to make Vought a central villain in their 2028 campaigns is not merely because he deserves the attention. It’s also a political layup hiding in plain sight.

Presidential campaigns are, at their core, exercises in narrative construction. The most durable campaigns provide a compelling explanation of what went wrong and—most importantly—who’s at fault. FDR had his “economic royalists;” Obama had the financial industry that cratered the economy; and Biden had the chaotic Trump 1.0 administration and its lethal mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic and economic crisis.

The 2028 Democratic presidential nominee will need a similarly coherent villain. Vought embodies that role more completely than any other figure in the Trump administration, including Trump himself.

What makes Vought so uniquely suited for this role is his position as both the connective tissue between Trump’s two terms and the architect of a right-wing political project that will outlast Trump. Vought was a principal architect of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation-led blueprint for restructuring the executive branch around (Trump’s) unchecked presidential power. Vought’s fingerprints are on the document’s most radical chapters, including the one laying out a strategy to dismantle the administrative state. When Trump is gone, the devastation Vought wrought—gutted agencies, traumatized civil servants, impounded funds, weakened congressional oversight—will remain.

The 2028 Democratic nominee will be running, in part, on a platform of de-Trumpification and pro-democracy reconstruction. To make that transformative project tangible, voters need to understand what was destroyed, how systematically it was destroyed, and by whom. Vought is the answer to all three questions.

Moreover, the Republican nominee will be able to point to the fact that they are (presumably!) not Trump and seek to distance themselves from Trump. But Vought, the glue that binds each of the disparate elements of the GOP together, and Voughtism will still be around. The Republican party is not going to disavow corporate funded right wing think tanks, Christian nationalism, or boring but incredibly powerful white guys. Vought and Voughtism, unlike Trump, will not be disavowed.

The Record Is There. Use It

One advantage that 2028 candidates have over their counterparts in prior cycles is that the evidence against Vought is not abstract or speculative; it is documented, voluminous, and in many cases already adjudicated as illegal.

Consider the impoundment campaign alone. Since the start of Trump’s second term, the Government Accountability Office has identified at least six instances in which the administration committed clear violations of the Impoundment Control Act—the post-Nixon law passed specifically to prevent presidents from unilaterally withholding congressionally approved spending.

When Vought isn’t handwaving away these violations as “non-events with no consequence,” he’s blatantly lying to the American public about his illegal activity. At his April 2026 Senate Budget Committee testimony, Vought flatly denied having impounded any funds.

2028 hopefuls should be rallying around the negative consequences of Vought’s efforts to veto socially useful spending and harm government workers:

• At least $410 billion in funding owed to communities nationwide has been blocked or delayed under Vought’s watch.
• There are 278,000 fewer federal civil servants than there were at the start of Trump’s second term.
• Medicaid payment portals in at least 20 states went dark in the opening weeks of the administration’s funding freeze, leaving doctors and hospitals unable to access reimbursement systems.
• NOAA’s capacity to warn communities about severe weather has been degraded—a fact with life-and-death implications that any candidate running in a hurricane- or tornado-prone state would be wise to amplify.

None of this is the product of partisan gridlock or legislative failure. It is the deliberate handiwork of one man operating with a coherent ideological agenda, largely outside public view. Presidential campaigns exist to bring that kind of structural harm into public view.

Another aspect of Vought’s record that has direct implications for 2028 campaign strategy is what historian Colin Gordon calls “vindictive federalism:” the systematic withholding of federal funds from Democratic-led states and cities as a coercive tool to force compliance with the administration’s agenda. Our Aya Dardari explores this topic in detail in a new report.

This is not a peripheral concern for governors like Newsom or Shapiro. It is a direct attack on their executive authority and their constituents’ livelihoods. When Vought’s OMB freezes Medicaid reimbursements in California, or holds up SNAP payments in Pennsylvania, he isn’t engaging in abstract federal policy disputes. Vought’s actions inflict tangible harm upon real communities, which governors eyeing a 2028 run are well-positioned to document, personalize, and prosecute politically.

Any governor in the field should be holding press conferences that connect Vought’s funding maneuvers to closed roads, delayed medical treatments, and disrupted social services in their states. The argument writes itself: this is what a shadow president operating without accountability looks like, and this is what a Democratic administration will undo.

Candidates Need to Start Building an Anti-Vought Narrative Now

The 2026 midterms will consume most of the political oxygen between now and the formal start of the 2028 presidential race. But the pre-campaign period is precisely when narratives get built. Voters aren’t introduced to presidential candidates fresh in a general election; they encounter them having already absorbed years of framing and counter-framing about the state of the country.

The framing that will serve Democrats best in 2028 is one that identifies the damage, names the responsible party, and makes a credible case for restoration—and Vought gives the 2028 field everything they need to construct that framing:

• a paper trail of illegal acts;
• a documented theory of unlimited executive power;
• a catalog of concrete harms affecting voters across the country;
• and an extremist ideological agenda that the majority of Americans do not share.

The political process for building that case is not glamorous. It requires sustained attention to a man who is deliberately uncharismatic and strategically obscure. It also requires candidates to make the OMB directorship feel as urgent as any Cabinet post with a higher public profile.

But the alternative—arriving at the 2028 general election without having made Russell Vought a known, notorious quantity—is a gift to the Republican Party and the man who has spent decades reshaping the federal government in ways that no single election can easily reverse.

The 2028 Democratic nominee will be asking voters to believe that government can work for them again. The most compelling version of that argument starts with explaining, in detail, who broke it.

Corporations can now vote in Delaware. And they’re doing it.

Seriously. Not dystopian science fiction or a new novel by an AI version of George Orwell. Actual corporations — what America’s first Supreme Court Justice, John Marshall, in 1819 called “an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law” — are today voting in elections for everything from the mayor and town council to referendums on corporate taxes and limits on corporate behavior.

What could possibly go wrong?

There are, after all, more corporations than people in Delaware. They can now decide who’s going to run the government, what the laws are, and — through their votes to elect humans who’ll take corporate money to do what corporations want (something else that corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court legalized) — even what regulations companies must follow and what limits there are on their behavior.

In a few weeks, my next book will be coming out, “Who Killed the American Dream: The Greatest Political Crime Ever Told,” and the timing couldn’t be more synchronous.

The book, written like a murder mystery but 100% true, tells the story of how a corrupt Supreme Court clerk conspired with a corrupt Supreme Court justice to hand “corporate personhood” to the railroad corporations that were then among the richest and most powerful in the world.

The decision was handed down in 1886; in it, the Court itself didn’t say a single word about corporate personhood. Back then corporations had the rights of “artificial persons” so they could pay taxes, own land, and execute contracts and lawsuits, but nobody seriously claimed they could assert human rights like free speech, privacy, or the right to vote.

But the clerk of the Court, a wealthy plutocrat named John Chandler Bancroft Davis, slipped into the headnote of the case — a commentary for law students and others wanting a summary of a decision, which carries absolutely no legal weight whatsoever — that the Chief Justice, Morrison Remick Waite, had claimed corporations were “persons,” implying they had rights under the 14th Amendment.

The railroads then hired a few retired members of Congress who were on the committees that wrote the Amendment as frontmen and for the next five years they traveled the country claiming that the “actual intent” of the authors of the 14th Amendment was to grant human rights to corporations, not former slaves.

Their efforts worked; just ten years later, in the Covington & Lexington Turnpike v. Sandford case, the Court cited the Santa Clara decision and ruled:

“[C]orporations are persons within the meaning of the constitutional provisions forbidding the deprivation of property without due process of law as well as a denial of the equal protection of the laws.”

That badly abused Amendment, ratified on July 9, 1868, was written to liberate formerly enslaved people, and its language is pretty clear about that:

“No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” (emphasis added)

The railroad corporations claimed that because they were taxed at different rates on property they owned in Santa Clara and Santa Ana counties in California, they were “persons” being denied the “equal protection of the law.” The Court determined that the California constitution already dealt with tax issues like that, giving the railroad the relief they wanted, but there was no federal action at all.

However, the lie about corporate personhood buried in the headnote took root and lives on to this day. For example, yesterday afternoon I asked DuckDuckGo’s AI the question:

“Who won the 1886 Santa Clara Supreme Court decision?”

And the answer I got back was:

“The Southern Pacific Railroad Company won the 1886 Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad decision. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the railroad, affirming that corporations are considered ‘persons’ under the Fourteenth Amendment.”

None of that is true, but it was nonetheless the basis of the 1978 First National Bank v Bellotti decision written by Lewis Powell himself (of “Powell Memo” fame), claiming that because corporations are “persons” with rights under the Bill of Rights — including the First Amendment right to free speech — they could spend big bucks to swing elections. In that decision, the Court majority footnoted:

“It has been settled for almost a century that corporations are persons within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific R. Co., 118 U. S. 394 (1886); see Covington & Lexington Turnpike R. Co. v. Sandford, 164 U. S. 578 (1896).”

Because corporations don’t have mouths to speak with, Powell reasoned, their money served the same purpose. So they could “speak” freely with millions thrown into elections, corrupting our democracy to their benefit and our detriment.

Two years earlier, in Buckley v Valeo, the Court had struck down the 1970s campaign contribution limits Congress put into law after the Nixon bribery scandals. They ruled that wealthy Senator James Buckley (brother of William F. Buckley) could use his own money to finance his election campaign because his money was functionally the same thing as his First Amendment-protected free speech.

Which led straight to Clarence Thomas — the most corrupt Supreme Court justice in history, then on the take from a Nazi-memorabilia-collecting rightwing billionaire — to cast the deciding vote in Citizens United.

That bizarre decision blew up hundreds of campaign finance and other good-government laws, claiming that there should be virtually no limits on the money morbidly rich individuals, corporations, and even foreign entities could pour into US elections.

Clarence Thomas even cited the Bellotti case and, thus, its reference to Santa Clara to justify handing our democratic processes over to the richest people and biggest companies in the nation.

And now we’ve arrived at terminal insanity. As Reuters reported on Tuesday:

“A judge in Delaware, where many big U.S. companies are incorporated, ruled on Tuesday that a small town that allows corporations to vote in municipal elections was not violating the state’s constitution.
“Delaware Superior Court Judge Craig Karsnitz said the beach town of Fenwick Island was not diluting human votes by allowing companies and other legal entities that own property to cast votes in municipal elections.”

More corporations are incorporated in Delaware than any other state in the nation because of that state’s lax corporate laws and low corporate taxes: there are more corporations in the state than people.

And now they can vote.

I wrote Who Stole the American Dream? to wake people up to the corruption of our democracy by the rich and powerful, particularly the corporate “artificial beings” that keep buying off judges and politicians because of corrupt Supreme Court cases citing that corrupt headnote, starting with Santa Clara and then going to Covington and then straight-lined to Bellotti and Citizens United.

The entire thing is a fraud, a 140-year-long scam, as knowledgeable legislators like Sheldon Whitehouse, Bernie Sanders, Ro Khanna, Mark Pocan, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Pramila Jayapal, and Elizabeth Warren will tell you in a New York minute.

And it needs to be overturned.

There are a few ways to do that, the most effective being a constitutional amendment, but reorganizing the Supreme Court and even strong legislation can take a bite out of it. I detail them all in the book, and good government groups like Move to Amend and Public Citizen have been on this case for years.

The situation, after all, has become so bad that I suggested in my book Rebooting the American Dream (which Bernie read from on the floor of the Senate in his famous filibuster) that members of Congress should be required to wear NASCAR-style patches to let folks know which corporations are “sponsoring” them.

If we don’t get active and take back our democracy for humans, corporations may one day vote one of themselves into office and the Republican majority on the Supreme Court will probably simply nod along.

Give Dangerous Donald credit. Coming off the floor of his 2020 defeat, under several federal and state indictments, a convicted felon, accused by over sixty women of sexual abuse or worse, his endorsed candidates having lost in the 2022 elections, the Trump business brand wilting along with his polls, Trump displayed more vengeful energy and cunning than the entire feeble, defeatist Democratic Party apparatus. He roared back against all odds in 2024 as an elected dictator to implement his declaration that he “can do whatever I want as president.”

Trump’s wrecking, endangering, and weakening of America worsens by the day, as he doubles down and calls his critics “deranged,” “demented,” “wackos,” “weak,” “low-IQ,” “crazy,” and “treasonous.” Moreover, his vicious expletives expand by the day.

However, the tide is finally turning against the failed gambling Czar and Netanyahu dittohead. Trump’s relentless greed is starting to undermine his dwindling support, despite his control of the Republican primaries. The headlines tell the story of his decline, and not just in the polls, with approval ratings down to 35%. The majority of Americans polled—nearing 60%—want him impeached and removed from office. This demand comes without the backing of the Democratic Party leadership, still skittish about mounting an Impeachment Drive. The case for Impeachment is aided and abetted daily by Trump’s outrages.

Let’s go to the revealing Headlines:

“Millions are Expected to Lose ACA Coverage” (Washington Post, May 20, 2026).

Due to Trump’s GOP ending subsidies.

“Fast-Moving Ebola Outbreak May Prove Difficult to Contain” (Washington Post, May 20, 2026). “People Will Die of Ebola Because of U.S. Cuts to Global Health” (New York Times, May 22, 2026).

Significantly due to Trump cutting USAID’s funding, monitoring, and disbanding critical expert teams.

“Mosque killings follow rise in anti-Islam voices” (Washington Post, May 20, 2026).

Led by chief Islamophobe, Donald Trump, from Day One in 2017.

“Trump’s Deal with Trump,” and “Prison to Pardons to Payouts: Rioters Rejoice” (New York Times, May 21, 2026). “I.R.S. Ordered to Drop Audits Against Trump as Part of Payout Deal” (New York Times, May 20, 2026).

Trump uses the government to reward his lawless supporters and wants to put himself above the law.

“Trump’s War is Punishing the Working Class” (New York Times, May 18, 2026).

Trump cares far more about the super-rich than the working class.

“EPA Wants to Repeal Limits on ‘Forever Chemicals’ in drinking water” (Washington Post, May 19, 2026), “Coal’s Comeback Fouls the Air With Resurgent Levels of Toxic Mercury” New York Times, May 13, 2026), “Chemical Board That Trump Wants to Remove Warns on Disaster Rules’ Rollback” (New York Times, May 18, 2026).

While a deadly chemical spill in California forces evacuation of 50,000 residents in Orange County.

“Trump Ramps UP Lawlessness on the Seas” (Washington Post, May 5, 2026).

Speaks for itself.

Now comes the headline, “A tough week for Trump on Capitol Hill, as Republicans deal him setbacks” (Washington Post, May 23, 2026) that must worry Trump. The $1.8 billion slush fund for violent, convicted felons and immunity for Trump and his extended family from IRS audits and enforcement proved too much for Trump lackey Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD). At the same time, Trump endorsed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a crook impeached by his own Party in the Texas House, an adulterer under suit by his wife for divorce (see the Post article of May 19, 2026) over former judge, Sen. John Cornyn, popular with the Senate GOP. Earlier, Trump came out against Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), helping Cassidy lose the primary. To Thune and allies, a president coming out against his own incumbents is treachery.

So, the water in the Senate GOP’s cauldron may be starting to boil. They know about Nixon’s experience in 1974 coming off winning 49 out of 50 states in the 1972 election. With Nixon’s polls sinking after the Watergate scandal (a quaintly modest one-time crime, compared to Trump’s hundreds of continuing scandals), the Congressional GOP saw itself sinking in the 1974 elections. A delegation of GOP Senators went to the White House and told Nixon, “Mr. President, your time is up.” Nixon resigned days later.

One can envision something similar today. Trump is an unstable lame duck outlaw, including violating congressional authorities. Republicans have to face the voters in November. They are likely to lose the House. The Senate has 20 Republican Senators up for election compared to only 12 Democrats. They have a three-vote margin now. Trump, given his economy, his chosen wars, his unrestrained greed and self-enrichment, is making prospects of a Democratic win in the Senate more possible.

Had the Democrats not ceded half the states (the red states) to the Republicans decades ago, leaving behind remnants of their organized presence, almost all the Republican Senators running this year could be at risk. Instead, only about six have competitive races—thank you, obtuse Democratic Party.

In any event, most politicians, however servile they may have been to a President, prefer saving their own political skins to falling on their swords for an unpopular president losing his cognitive grip and voter sensitivity by the day. (See the April 30, 2026 statement from medical professionals in the Congressional Record – “Medical Concerns About President Donald J. Trump and His Fitness For Office.” Do you know any other president who would say “I don’t care about the financial condition of Americans” in the midst of surging inflation, rising food, health care, rental, and gasoline prices? A president who is using the White House to massively enrich himself and his family. (See Cashing in on the presidency: here).

Unless Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer open the Party to input from labor and advocacy groups to help sharpen a stronger, authentically advanced agenda (Compact for America, anyone?), the Democrats may eke out a 51 to 49 win, with erratic John Fetterman (D-PA) playing the role of Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) as the swing vote. This will give the tie-breaking power to Vice President J.D. Vance.

One slim ray of hope: The Washington Post reported on May 17, 2026, that “House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) has directed the chamber’s Democratic policy committee to host listening sessions with members, with voters and with advocacy groups to inform a party-wide agenda…”

Even if you don’t believe Jeffries, rush through that open door with your proposals, as we will with the recommendations of 24 civic leaders (see winningamerica.net). My winning get-out-the-vote agenda is there as well. (See my column: “Somersaulting Voters: Stopping Rabid Gerrymandering,” May 15, 2026).

Contact Rep. Hakeem Jeffries – https://jeffries.house.gov/ / 202-225-5936.