Kamala Harris must win the former Blue Wall states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, which are now up for grabs. And winning those battleground states requires reaching working-class voters who have been economically harmed and left behind by Wall Street’s insatiable greed.

The Harris campaign has not been courting these voters the way you would expect from the party of working people. Instead, she has managed both to kiss up to Wall Street and to allow Trump to appear as the savior of working-class jobs. Those advising her on this strategy are either politically tone deaf or worse, blinded by potential Wall Street employment opportunities after the election.

The Vice-President’s first big gaffe was going to Wall Street for a highly publicized fundraising event saying she “would encourage innovative technologies like AI.” Doesn’t her team understand that Artificial Intelligence is not a term of endearment to working people who fear automation will kill their jobs?

The Harris campaign has not been courting these voters the way you would expect from the party of working people. Instead, she has managed both to kiss up to Wall Street and to allow Trump to appear as the savior of working-class jobs.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that behind the scenes her advisors have been moderating her proposals to please Wall Street. (“How Wall St. Is Subtly Shaping the Harris Economic Agenda”.) How is this the party of working people?

Fantasy Finance

The Harris team is suffering from several debilitating illusions. They seem to believe that if Wall Street approves of her economic agenda, it will close the economic-approval ratings gap with Trump. That certainly isn’t the case in the more industrialized states where most working people see Wall Street as the destroyer of jobs.

There also is no lost love there for the big banks that are too big to fail and get bailed out whenever they rape and pillage the economy into disaster. If you ask the average worker in the Midwest to pick the one word that they associate with Wall Street, nearly all will say “greed.”

The Harris team clearly believes that we live in a win-win economy—that when Wall Street does well, we all do well. They seem oblivious to the ways in which Wall Street’s leveraged buyouts and stock buybacks have robbed millions of working people of their livelihoods.

These workers are not stupid. When a private equity company buys up the facility where they work, they know layoffs are coming to service the new debt load. When a company pours corporate funds into buying back their own stock to artificially boost the stock price, they know that layoffs will be used to pay for shoveling all this money to the richest stock owners and executives. (Please see Wall Street’s War on Workers for all the gory details.)

Blowing Off the John Deere Workers

The Harris team, however, has the perfect chance to show that they understand how important it is for the government to save jobs from rapacious corporations. The opportunity came when John Deere announced that it would send 1,000 jobs to Mexico, crying competitive pressure while in 2023 earning $10 billion in profits, paying its CEO $26.7 million, and conducting $12.2 billion in stock buybacks.

Donald Trump saw a big opening and called for a 200 percent tariff on Deere’s imports if it shipped those jobs to Mexico. That threat, idle or not, certainly caught the attention of the workers who were about to see their jobs evaporate. And it certainly resonated with economically precarious workers all through the industrial heartland who could care less about whether tariffs are good or bad macroeconomic policy.

What did the Harris team do? Exactly the wrong thing. It wheeled out Mark Cuban, the celebrity billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks, to attack the tariff as “insanity…ridiculously bad and destructive,” on macroeconomic grounds Not a word said by Cuban or the Harris campaign about those 1,000 jobs that are about to be destroyed. That shows “ridiculously bad and destructive” political campaigning.

I’m starting to wonder about the smarts of the Harris advisors. They seem willfully oblivious to the fact that Trump’s 2017 intervention to save jobs at the Carrier air conditioning company in Indiana was wildly popular among voters of all political persuasions. Guess what? Having the government step in to save your job is what people want the government to do. Why can’t Harris say she will do the same?

I’ve been begging, pleading, jumping up and down to get the Harris campaign to say she will stop corporations from taking our tax dollars, pouring it into stock buybacks, and then laying off millions of workers each year. The proposal is really simple. Add this one sentence to every federal contract:

“No taxpayer money in the form of federal grants, contracts, and purchases, shall go to corporations that layoff taxpayers and conduct stock buybacks.”

But my message is not penetrating the dense Democratic Party ecosystem distorted by Wall Street’s cash and future lucrative job opportunities.

The Harris campaign clearly believes they are doing more than enough to attract working people in the key battleground states, and that it is wiser to placate rather than offend Wall Street.

I sure hope they are right and, come election night, that my analysis is dead wrong.

Each new week brings new calamities for people in the countries neighboring Israel, as its leaders try to bomb their way to the promised land of an ever-expanding Greater Israel.

In Gaza, Israel appears to be launching its “Generals’ Plan” to drive the most devastated and traumatized 2.2 million people in the world into the southern half of their open-air prison. Under this plan, Israel would hand the northern half over to greedy developers and settlers who, after decades of U.S. encouragement, have become a dominant force in Israeli politics and society. The redoubled slaughter of those who cannot move or refuse to move south has already begun.

In Lebanon, millions are fleeing for their lives and thousands are being blown to pieces in a repeat of the first phase of the genocide in Gaza. For Israel’s leaders, every person killed or forced to flee and every demolished building in a neighboring country opens the way for future Israeli settlements. The people of Iran, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia ask themselves which of them will be next.

Israel is not only attacking its neighbors. It is at war with the entire world. Israel is especially threatened when the governments of the world come together at the United Nations and in international courts to try to enforce the rule of international law, under which Israel is legally bound by the same rules that all countries have signed up to in the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions.

Israel is especially threatened when the governments of the world come together at the United Nations and in international courts to try to enforce the rule of international law

In July, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem since 1967 is illegal, and that it must withdraw its military forces and settlers from all those territories. In September, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution giving Israel one year to complete that withdrawal. If, as expected, Israel fails to comply, the UN Security Council or the General Assembly may take stronger measures, such as an international arms embargo, economic sanctions or even the use of force.

Now, amid the escalating violence of Israel’s latest bombing and invasion of Lebanon, Israel is attacking the UNIFIL UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon, whose thankless job is to monitor and mitigate the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.

On October 10 and 11, Israeli forces fired on three UNIFIL positions in Lebanon. At least five peacekeepers were injured. UNIFIL also accused Israeli soldiers of deliberately firing at and disabling the monitoring cameras at its headquarters, before two Israeli tanks later drove through and destroyed its gates. On October 15th, an Israeli tank fired at a UNIFIL watchtower in what it described as “direct and apparently deliberate fire on a UNIFIL position.” Deliberately targeting UN missions is a war crime.

This is far from the first time the soldiers of UNIFIL have come under attack by Israel. Since UNIFIL took up its positions in southern Lebanon in 1978, Israel has killed blue-helmeted UN peacekeepers from Ireland, Norway, Nepal, France, Finland, Austria and China.

Emboldened by its growing military and diplomatic alliance with the United States, Israel has only expanded its territorial ambitions.

The South Lebanon Army, Israel’s Christian militia proxy in Lebanon from 1984 to 2000, killed many more, and other Palestinian and Lebanese groups have also killed peacekeepers. Three hundred and thirty-seven UN peacekeepers from all over the world have given their lives trying to keep the peace in southern Lebanon, which is sovereign Lebanese territory and should not be subject to repeated invasions by Israel in the first place. UNIFIL has the worst death toll of any of the 52 peacekeeping missions conducted by the UN around the world since 1948.

Fifty countries currently contribute to the 10,000-strong UNIFIL peacekeeping mission, anchored by battalions from France, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Italy, Nepal and Spain. All those governments have strongly and unanimously condemned Israel’s latest attacks, and insisted that "such actions must stop immediately and should be adequately investigated."

Israel’s assault on UN agencies is not confined to attacking its peacekeepers in Lebanon. The even more vulnerable, unarmed, civilian agency, UNRWA (UN Relief and Works Agency), is under even more vicious assault by Israel in Gaza. In the past year alone, Israel has killed a horrifying number of UNRWA workers, about 230, as it has bombed and fired at UNRWA schools, warehouses, aid convoys and UN personnel.

UNRWA was created in 1949 by the UN General Assembly to provide relief to some 700,000 Palestinian refugees after the 1948 “Nakba,” or catastrophe. The Zionist militias that later became the Israeli army violently expelled over 700,000 Palestinians from their homes and homeland, ignoring the UN partition plan and seizing by force much of the land the UN plan had allocated to form a Palestinian state.

When the UN recognized all that Zionist-occupied territory as the new state of Israel in 1949, Israel’s most aggressive and racist leaders concluded that they could get away with making and remaking their own borders by force, and that the world would not lift a finger to stop them. Emboldened by its growing military and diplomatic alliance with the United States, Israel has only expanded its territorial ambitions.

Netanyahu now brazenly stands before the whole world and displays maps of a Greater Israel that includes all the land it illegally occupies, while Israelis openly talk of annexing parts of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

The rest of the world is looking on in horror, and many world leaders are making sincere efforts to activate the collective mechanisms of the UN system.

Dismantling UNRWA has been a long-standing Israeli goal. In 2017, Netanyahu accused the agency of inciting anti-Israeli sentiment. He blamed UNRWA for "perpetuating the Palestinian refugee problem" instead of solving it and called for it to be eliminated.

After October 7, 2023, Israel accused 12 of UNRWA’s 13,000 staff of being involved in Hamas’s attack on Israel. UNRWA immediately suspended those workers, and many countries suspended their funding of UNRWA. Since a UN report found that Israeli authorities had not provided "any supporting evidence" to back up their allegations, every country that funds UNRWA has restored its funding, with the sole exception of the United States.

Israel’s assault on the refugee agency has only continued. There are now three anti-UNRWA bills in the Israeli Knesset: one to ban the organization from operating in Israel; another to strip UNRWA’s staff of legal protections afforded to UN workers under Israeli law; and a third that would brand the agency as a terrorist organization. In addition, Israeli members of parliament are proposing legislation to confiscate UNRWA’s headquarters in Jerusalem and use the land for new settlements.

UN Secretary General Guterres warned that, if these bills become law and UNRWA is unable to deliver aid to the people of Gaza, “it would be a catastrophe in what is already an unmitigated disaster.”

Israel’s relationship with the UN and the rest of the world is at a breaking point. When Netanyahu addressed the General Assembly in New York in September, he called the UN a “swamp of antisemitic bile.” But the UN is not an alien body from another planet. It is simply the nations of the world coming together to try to solve our most serious common problems, including the endless crisis that Israel is causing for its neighbors and, increasingly, for the whole world.

Now Israel wants to ban the secretary general of the UN from even entering the country. On October 1st, Israel invaded Lebanon, and Iran launched 180 missiles at Israel, in response to a whole series of Israeli attacks and assassinations. Secretary General Antonio Guterres put out a statement deploring the “broadening conflict in the Middle East,” but did not specifically mention Iran. Israel responded by declaring the UN Secretary General persona non grata in Israel, a new low in relations between Israel and UN officials.

Over the years, the U.S. has partnered with Israel in its attacks on the UN, using its veto in the Security Council 40 times to obstruct the world’s efforts to force Israel to comply with international law.

American obstruction offers no solution to this crisis. It can only fuel it, as the violence and chaos grows and spreads and the United States’ unconditional support for Israel gradually draws it into a more direct role in the conflict.

The rest of the world is looking on in horror, and many world leaders are making sincere efforts to activate the collective mechanisms of the UN system. These mechanisms were built, with American leadership, after the Second World War ended in 1945, so that the world would “never again” be consumed by world war and genocide.

A U.S. arms embargo against Israel and an end to U.S. obstruction in the UN Security Council could tip the political balance of power in favor of the world’s collective efforts to resolve the crisis.

In 2022, Russian propagandists spread fear across Europe, playing on the "fear of the cold" by pushing narratives like "Europe will freeze without Russian gas." Now, in 2024, we are still witnessing the devastating effects of this hybrid warfare, with energy playing a central role in Russia's aggression against Ukraine.

Hybrid warfare is more than just conventional military aggression. It involves a strategic blend of economic, informational, and cyber tactics designed to disrupt societies and weaken the Kremlin's targets. Russia's hybrid warfare against Ukraine, particularly in the energy sector, illustrates this perfectly. By combining direct military assaults with cyberattacks, energy blockades, and unprecedented widespread disinformation campaigns, Russia aims not only to destroy Ukraine's physical infrastructure but also to erode confidence in its government, undermine international support, and exploit the world's dependence on fossil fuels.

Russia has weaponized energy exports as a critical element in its war on Ukraine. Today, Ukraine's energy infrastructure is under relentless attack, with over 50% damaged, often leaving millions of Ukrainians without reliable power. While missiles and drones visibly ravage Ukrainian cities, another, less visible battle rages in cyberspace and through the media, targeting the energy sector.

Renewable energy is the path to a safer, more just world in the battle against Russian aggression and climate change

In 2024 alone, the Kremlin-backed hacker group Sandworm launched numerous cyberattacks on Ukrainian energy facilities. These assaults, timed to coincide with Russian missile strikes, are part of a broader campaign to cripple Ukraine's ability to generate and distribute energy. A report from Ukraine's computer emergency response team (CERT-UA) confirmed that Sandworm infected energy, water, and heating suppliers in at least 10 regions of Ukraine this year. Cyberattacks like these are designed to paralyze Ukraine's recovery, create chaos, and force the government to divert critical resources away from the front lines.

In parallel, Russia's disinformation campaigns have relentlessly targeted Ukraine's energy independence. False narratives about new power projects, like the construction of additional reactors at the Khmelnytskyi Nuclear Power Plant (KhNPP), are intended to spread fear and uncertainty. Russian propagandists claim that the project will lead to a "nuclear disaster, comparable to Chernobyl" and that Ukraine is incapable of safely managing its nuclear energy sector. These lies are designed to erode public trust and cast doubt on the country's capacity to modernize its energy infrastructure.

Disinformation spreads through pro-Kremlin Telegram channels and foreign media outlets, suggesting that Ukraine is unprepared for the responsibilities of managing its energy sector. The goal is to sow doubt among Ukraine's international allies, reduce foreign investment in critical energy projects, and delay Ukraine's shift toward renewable energy.

Such disinformation campaigns do not stop at Ukraine's door. Russia has also employed similar tactics in Western nations, influencing public discourse and policy on energy. In 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice uncovered a large-scale Russian disinformation campaign designed to interfere in the U.S. presidential race. These operations use unsuspecting PR firms and social media channels to spread narratives beneficial to Russia, further demonstrating the global reach of Russia's hybrid warfare strategy.

The consequences of these campaigns are far-reaching. Disinformation can:

• Erode public trust: False narratives about energy projects create skepticism among citizens, making it harder for governments to implement necessary reforms or infrastructure projects.
• Deter international support: Potential investors and foreign governments may be discouraged from supporting Ukraine's energy sector if they believe that projects are mismanaged or dangerous.
• Complicate decision-making: Policymakers may feel pressure to alter or abandon important energy projects due to public sentiment influenced by disinformation. This can delay Ukraine's energy independence and leave it vulnerable to further attacks.
• Increase vulnerability: As confusion and distrust grow, Ukraine becomes more susceptible to external manipulation. Russia can exploit this environment to disrupt energy supply chains or infrastructure further. As public morale weakens and trust in the government diminishes, the country may become more susceptible to external pressures and manipulation, potentially leading to energy crises during critical periods.

To counter Russia's hybrid warfare, Ukraine and its allies must not only defend against missile strikes and cyberattacks but also combat the disinformation campaigns that erode public trust and international support. The best response to Russia's weaponization of energy is to weaken its dominance in the sector altogether.

Ukraine's shift toward cheaper renewable energy offers a clear path to energy security and independence. Renewables—wind, solar, and hydropower—are not only crucial for Ukraine's recovery and economic security but also harder to target, making them more resilient to future threats. Ukraine's shift to renewables is pivotal for its security, global energy stability, and the fight against climate change.

Ukraine's future—and indeed the future of global security—depends on breaking free from the grip of fossil fuels that fuel both war and disinformation. Russia's energy dominance has not only bankrolled its military but has also been a tool of manipulation, distorting public perception and sowing distrust. Ukraine can secure its independence by accelerating the transition to renewable energy while setting an example for the world. Global support for Ukraine's energy revolution is not just a step toward rebuilding the country—it is a decisive blow against the disinformation networks and economic strangleholds that empower petro-dictatorships.

Renewable energy is the path to a safer, more just world in the battle against Russian aggression and climate change. The time to act is now.

Assuming they haven’t been vacationing on Mars for the last decade or so, every American must be aware that it has been the relentless ambition of Republican politicians to repeal, roll back, or weaken the Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA), otherwise known as Obamacare.

ACA is a major government safety-net project alongside Social Security and Medicare. As of February 2024, 20.8 million persons were enrolled in the program, the highest number at any one time, and since Obamacare’s passage, almost 50 million people have received coverage at some point. The health care program has literally been a lifesaver for countless Americans.

Up until the culmination of their repeal efforts in mid-2017 (at a time the GOP controlled both houses and the presidency), when the program only survived because Sen. John McCain left treatment for terminal cancer to vote “no,” Newsweek “found at least 70 Republican-led attempts to repeal, modify or otherwise curb the Affordable Care Act since its inception as law on March 23, 2010.”

GOP attempts to wreck the program, although more sporadic since, have continued. This year, House Republicans reported a budget that would have defunded ACA as well as Medicaid expansion while hiking Medicare premiums and prescription drug prices. They “balanced” these cuts with giveaways to Big Pharma and allowing insurers to sell “junk” policies with minimal-to-no coverage.

His ostentatious religiosity is largely phony and used as a vehicle for his ambition to rise in the Republican Party.

With that history in mind, picture the surreal moment in the vice-presidential debate between Tim Walz and JD Vance, when the latter said “Members of my family actually got private health insurance, at least, for the first time . . . under Donald Trump’s leadership.” Vance said that his family members switched from Medicaid to Obamacare between 2017 and 2021.

The Ohio senator has frequently tried to characterize Trump’s actions while president as having preserved or stabilized ACA, when in fact he did no such thing. Enrollments in the ACA exchange in Ohio, where Vance’s family lived, fell during Trump’s presidency, while the uninsured rate increased. Obamacare survived simply because congressional Republicans couldn’t quite muster the votes to kill it, but not for want of trying. Candidate Trump is still angling to get rid of it, although he only has “concepts of a plan” to replace it.

How does Vance get away with such lies? Undoubtedly for the same reason Republicans get away with all their lies. “All politicians lie” is the cynical American’s appraisal of the officials he or she elects, and this is of course true to the extent that all human beings lie, or at least shade the facts to place themselves in a favorable light. But Republicans have catapulted the lie to another category altogether.

They lie because they dare not reveal their actual agenda. They cannot very well tell the general public, “We intend to kick you off your health care and provide a huge payday to the drug companies who give us campaign donations.” Neither could they characterize Trump’s intended revenue policy as “We plan to get rid of income taxes for our rich contributors and use tariffs to shift the entire tax burden onto consumers in an extremely regressive fashion.”

Instead, they concoct a lie that foreign countries exporting to the United States will somehow pay the tariff that the U.S. government under Trump’s policy would levy on the product, rather than tell the truth that the consumer would pay it as the end user of the product. As a lie, it isn’t even plausible, but Republicans count on the fact that the general public doesn’t bother to fact check in real time.

As for the narrower Republican base (the only people Republican politicians take trouble to appeal to, aside from billionaires), they are confident they could tell them the moon is made of green cheese and they’d believe it. All the politicians have to do is season the concoction with a few choice culture wars clichés and the base will swallow it like a swarm of barracudas. They are either too uneducated, too intellectually incurious, or too ideologically rigid to apply “critical thinking skills” (a heuristic method which has not coincidentally been condemned by the Texas Republican Party).

The irony in this regard is that millions of Republican voters are covered by ACA, including in Ohio, where Vance’s family lives. Hence, the Ohio Republican has to perform his little rhetorical dance to anesthetize the base and puzzle the rest of us. That said, there is still little doubt that if Vance were to become part of a Trump administration presiding over a Republican-controlled House and Senate, the GOP would take another run at repealing Obamacare.

There is another sordid lie laid bare by Vance’s revelation about his family’s enrollment in ACA. The entire focus of Republicans’ culture wars obsessions over many decades has ostensibly been the family. The family is sacred; the basic, indivisible unit without which civilization collapses.

Big government is reviled for allegedly usurping the responsibility of the family to look out for one another’s needs; since the 1960s Republicans have shed crocodile tears over welfare programs because, supposedly, they cruelly destroyed the black family. Children are the rationale for heaving books out of libraries; families have a right to protect their children from becoming less ignorant and bigoted than their parents. Vance himself has mused that no-fault divorce should be abolished for the sake of keeping the precious family together, and his ranting about childless cat ladies shows a similar familial obsession.

As it turns out, it’s all another lie. Vance told us on national TV that his own mother, and presumably other family members, too (since he used the plural) were subsisting on Medicaid until they met the qualifications to enroll in ACA. But all that time, JD, the erstwhile hillbilly, had pulled himself up by the bootstraps of his buddy, Silicon Valley oligarch Peter Thiel, and made quite a handsome pile of money. It didn’t hurt that he married an attorney. His recent federal financial disclosure reveals assets between $4 million and $11 million.

Isn’t it the Christian thing to do to help those in need, especially as they are your own family, and even more so when they are bedeviled by addiction and other problems?

Why did someone a good deal wealthier than most of us abandon his own mother as a public charge on Medicaid? And even when she got off Medicaid, couldn’t he have bought her a health insurance policy, rather than relying on Obamacare? In his autohagiography, Vance made sure the reader got the message that his was a difficult, dysfunction-ridden family. But there is an answer to that.

Vance has also made sure everyone knows he is a pious Catholic of a very strict, antimodernist type, holding that theological precepts should guide secular government (his professed belief is responsible for his frankly idiotic opinions about cat ladies and childless people not deserving the same voting rights as people with children). This should of course make us wary of anyone holding such views getting his hands on executive power; these people have already wrecked the Supreme Court. It also suggests his ostentatious religiosity is largely phony and used as a vehicle for his ambition to rise in the Republican Party.

Isn’t it the Christian thing to do to help those in need, especially as they are your own family, and even more so when they are bedeviled by addiction and other problems? Jesus did not scorn the beggar and the lepers. And don’t the Ten Commandments (which Republican state governments want to make a mandatory part of the public school curriculum) tell us to “honor thy father and thy mother?”

Vance is a 24-karat fraud, the eternal rogue in the human poker deck. How appropriate that he is now the consort, as it were, of Donald Trump, the pathological liar. How fitting that he rose so quickly, after a mere two years, to the very top of the morally bankrupt party I left, more than a dozen years ago, in disgust.

The racist lies against Haitian immigrants in the United States that have been dominating the news cycle are being delivered by Republicans, but they are built on bipartisan—and often racist—U.S. policies that drive Haitians from their home country to our borders.

While we are justifiably condemning the hateful and dangerous attacks against Haitians, we need to equally condemn U.S. government support for repressive and corrupt Haitian leaders, and insist on supporting Haitians’ efforts to reestablish a stable, prosperous homeland where they can live in peace and security.

Haitian migrants seeking refuge in the United States and elsewhere are fleeing a deep crisis generated by actors associated with the U.S.-backed Pati Ayisyen Tèt Kale (PHTK). PHTK founder President Michel Martelly came to power in 2011, after the Obama administration pressured Haiti’s electoral council to change the results of the 2010 preliminary elections. U.S. support continued for Martelly’s hand-picked successor, President Jovenel Moïse, who came to power through flawed elections, overstayed his constitutionally mandated presidential term, and tried to push forward self-serving, illegal constitutional reform. The Biden administration installed and then continued to prop up Moïse’s successor, de facto Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who ruled for nearly three years without a constitutional or popular mandate. Martelly, Moïse, and Henry—all three of whom are affiliated with the PHTK—enjoyed consistent U.S. support despite being responsible for spectacular corruption, state-sanctioned massacres, and the dismantling of Haiti’s democratic structures and accountability mechanisms.

The Biden administration consistently preaches the importance of addressing root causes of migration, even as it continues to support corrupt and repressive Haitian actors that stifle democracy and drive Haitians to flee.

This persistent U.S. support has already undermined Haiti’s transition—which hopes to lead the country out of crisis and toward stability and democracy—by placing many of the same PHTK-affiliated actors responsible for Haiti’s crisis at its center. For example, through a process overseen by the State Department, PHTK-affiliated groups were granted 3 of the 7 voting seats on Haiti’s Transitional Presidential Council. Although an early attempt by those members to co-opt the transitional process ultimately failed, it left Haitians even more skeptical that the crisis could be resolved by the same U.S.-backed actors who created it.

The pattern of U.S. support for corrupt and repressive actors in Haiti follows a history of persistent destabilization ever since Haiti won its independence from France in 1804. The United States was afraid then that a stable and prosperous free Black republic would undermine the white supremacy upon which the U.S. system of enslavement—and attendant political and economic power—rested, and would inspire other Black people to fight for their freedom. Consequently, the U.S. government took steps early on to undermine Haiti’s development. These included refusing to recognize Haiti’s sovereignty until 1864 and occupying the country for nearly 20 years, from 1915 to 1934. During that time, marines stole gold from Haiti’s national reserves, took control of its financial and political institutions, and reinstated a system of forced labor akin to enslavement.

Significant Haitian migration to the United States began in the 1960s in response to the horrors inflicted by the U.S.-backed Duvalier dictatorships. For nearly 30 years, the United States supported Francois “Papa Doc” and Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier despite their well-documented disregard for human rights and democracy, because they were a reliable vote against Cuba at the United Nations and the Organization of American States. The U.S. government labeled Haitians fleeing the brutality of the Duvaliers’ secret police “economic migrants” and detained and removed them, even as it welcomed those fleeing communist Cuba and Vietnam as “political refugees.”

Emigration from Haiti spiked when Haitians fled the brutal U.S.-backed military regime that took power after the 1991 coup d’état—also allegedly supported by the CIA—that overthrew Haiti’s first democratically-elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. It spiked again in 2004 after a U.S.-backed coup ousted Aristide a second time. The U.S. government used the period of extreme violence that predictably followed the coup it had orchestrated to justify sending in a U.N. peacekeeping operation, MINUSTAH. The peacekeeping mission lasted 13 years, cost over $7 billion, and was responsible for countless violations of Haitian rights and dignity. Meanwhile, the United States installed a series of undemocratic U.S.-backed regimes, including the PHTK-affiliated regimes described above.

The Biden administration consistently preaches the importance of addressing root causes of migration, even as it continues to support corrupt and repressive Haitian actors that stifle democracy and drive Haitians to flee. A recent resolution put forth by members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus calling for legislation that directly addresses U.S. policies contributing to forced migration—including the failure to stop the flow of weapons trafficking from the United States to Haiti—is an important step toward aligning U.S. practices with its rhetoric.

But truly addressing the root causes of migration will require the United States to seriously reevaluate its own centuries-long role in the crisis of forced displacement in Haiti. As long as we keep supporting the corrupt, repressive actors whose policies force Haitians to flee, they are going to keep arriving at our borders.

The impacts of climate change are all around us—hurricanes battering Florida and Appalachia, extreme heat in October baking the West, and a continual stream of new temperature records. It’s pretty clear what needs to happen. We need to rapidly move away from fossil fuels. But for some reason, rather than taking on the fossil fuel companies driving the climate crisis, Vice President Harris’s team has determined that it's good politics to tout fracking and increased oil and gas production. This is not a winning approach, and it could actually cost Harris an election we desperately need her to win.

Embracing fracking and fossil fuel production is bad politics in addition to bad policy. D.C. conventional wisdom holds that in order to win Pennsylvania, candidates need to embrace fracking—but like much of D.C. conventional wisdom, this is wrong. Food & Water Action has worked on the ground in Pennsylvania for years. We’ve seen up close the dark underside of fracking - polluted water and air, cancer, and other social ills. Working with impacted communities, we have passed dozens of local measures restricting the practice in the state. Pennsylvanians don’t love fracking. In fact, they want to see it reined in rather than further unleashed.

The science is clear: We need to leave the vast majority of fossil fuels in the ground. No amount of investment in renewable energy by itself will avert worsening climate change as long as we are simultaneously continuing to increase fossil fuel production.

Polling reflects this deep concern. A recent survey from the Ohio River Valley Institute showed that 74% of Pennsylvanians support stricter regulations on fracking due to concern about health risks, while 90% or more want expanded setbacks from schools and hospitals, stronger air monitoring, and more rigorous regulation on transportation of fracking waste. Ignoring these concerns and instead framing fracking as a virtue makes little political sense in the Keystone state.

Further, in Pennsylvania and beyond, Harris needs a groundswell of support from young and progressive voters—people most likely to care deeply about climate change and preventing it. In a recent survey of young people in swing states from the Environmental Voter Project, 40% said that “a candidate must prioritize ‘addressing climate change’ or else it is a ‘deal breaker.’” More significantly, 16% said they would definitely not support a candidate that talks about “increasing U.S. use of fossil fuels like oil, gas, and coal,” yet this is exactly what Harris has been bragging about. This election will be decided at the margins, and these are the type of hesitant voters we need to be motivated and engaged to put Harris over the line..

When she ran for president in 2019, Harris advocated for a much different agenda. She was one of several major candidates to call for an outright ban on fracking, she embraced a Green New Deal, and she championed a quick transition to a clean energy economy. These are the policies that would give her a great platform to address the climate crisis and talk about building a new energy economy based on good, unionized clean energy jobs.

They also have the advantage of being in line with what scientists are telling us is necessary to avert worse and escalating climate chaos. The science is clear: We need to leave the vast majority of fossil fuels in the ground. No amount of investment in renewable energy by itself will avert worsening climate change as long as we are simultaneously continuing to increase fossil fuel production.

Based on her prior statements and record (she went after fossil fuel companies as California attorney general) Harris knows this. And, she has an opportunity to draw a stark contrast with Donald Trump, whose record is the epitome of climate denial and fossil fuel industry pandering. But now, if she is elected, Harris will face tremendous pressure to work with the fossil fuel industry and support its pet projects. It will be up to all of us to provide a loud and clear message from day one that this approach is unacceptable.

The stakes in this election could not be higher. Trump’s agenda poses a severe threat to our environment and our climate, as well as our democracy. It is imperative that Kamala Harris wins this election. But to do that, she would be well-advised to stop embracing fracking and fossil fuels, and return to her roots of confronting the oil and gas industry head-on. A large and powerful movement is ready to back her if she does, or hold her accountable if she doesn’t.

“Your lives will continue. With new events and new faces. They are the faces of your children, who will fill your homes with noise and laughter.”

These were the last words written by my sister in a text message to one of her daughters.

Dr. Soma Baroud was murdered on October 9 when Israeli warplanes bombed a taxi that carried her and other tired Gazans somewhere near the Bani Suhaila roundabout near Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip.

I am still unable to understand whether she was on her way to the hospital, where she worked, or leaving the hospital to go home. Does it even matter?

The news of her murder—or, more accurately assassination, as Israel has deliberately targeted and killed 986 medical workers, including 165 doctors—arrived through a screenshot copied from a Facebook page.

“Update: these are the names of the martyrs of the latest Israeli bombing of two taxis in the Khan Yunis area ..,” the post read.

It was followed by a list of names. “Soma Mohammed Mohammed Baroud” was the fifth name on the list, and the 42,010th on Gaza’s ever-growing list of martyrs.

I refused to believe the news, even when more posts began popping up everywhere on social media, listing her as number five, and sometimes six in the list of martyrs of the Khan Yunis strike.

For us, Soma was a larger-than-life figure. This is precisely why her sudden absence has shocked us to the point of disbelief. Her children, though grown up, felt orphaned. But her brothers, me included, felt the same way.

I kept calling her, over and over again, hoping that the line would crackle a bit, followed by a brief silence, and then her kind, motherly voice would say, “Marhaba Abu Sammy. How are you, brother?” But she never picked up.

I had told her repeatedly that she does not need to bother with elaborate text or audio messages due to the unreliable internet connection and electricity. “Every morning,” I said, “just type: ‘we are fine’.” That’s all I asked of her.

But she would skip several days without writing, often due to the lack of an internet connection. Then, a message would arrive, though never brief. She wrote with a torrent of thoughts, linking up her daily struggle to survive, to her fears for her children, to poetry, to a Qur’anic verse, to one of her favorite novels, and so on.

“You know, what you said last time reminds me of Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude,” she said on more than one occasion, before she would take the conversation into the most complex philosophical spins. I would listen, and just repeat, “Yes .. totally .. I agree .. one hundred percent.”

For us, Soma was a larger-than-life figure. This is precisely why her sudden absence has shocked us to the point of disbelief. Her children, though grown up, felt orphaned. But her brothers, me included, felt the same way.

I wrote about Soma as a central character in my book “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter”, because she was indeed central to our lives, and to our very survival in a Gaza refugee camp.

The first born, and only daughter, she had to carry a much greater share of work and expectations than the rest of us.

She was just a child, when my eldest brother Anwar, still a toddler, died in an UNRWA clinic at the Nuseirat refugee camp due to the lack of medicine. Then, she was introduced to pain, the kind of pain that with time turned into a permanent state of grief that would never abandon her until her murder by a U.S.-supplied Israeli bomb in Khan Yunis.

Two years after the death of the first Anwar, another boy was born. They also called him Anwar, so that the legacy of the first boy may carry on. Soma cherished the newcomer, maintaining a special friendship with him for decades to come.

My father began his life as a child laborer, then a fighter in the Palestine Liberation Army, then a police officer during the Egyptian administration of Gaza, then, once again a laborer; that’s because he refused to join the Israeli-funded Gaza police force after the war of 1967, known as the Naksa.

A clever, principled man, and a self-taught intellectual, my Dad did everything he could to provide a measure of dignity for his small family; and Soma, a child, often barefoot, stood by him every step of the way.

She did not charge the poor and did all she could to heal those victimized by war.

When he decided to become a merchant, as in buying discarded and odd items in Israel and repackaging them to sell in the refugee camp, Soma was his main helper. Though her skin healed, cuts on her fingers, due to individually wrapping thousands of razors, remained a testament to the difficult life she lived.

“Soma’s little finger is worth more than a thousand men,” my father would often repeat, to remind us, ultimately five boys, that our sister will always be the main heroine in the family’s story. Now that she is a martyr, that legacy has been secured for eternity.

Years later, my parents would send her to Aleppo to obtain a medical degree. She returned to Gaza, where she spent over three decades healing the pain of others, though never her own.

She worked at Al-Shifa Hospital, at Nasser Hospital among other medical centers. Later, she obtained another certificate in family medicine, opening a clinic of her own. She did not charge the poor and did all she could to heal those victimized by war.

Soma was a member of a generation of female doctors in Gaza that truly changed the face of medicine, collectively putting great emphasis on the rights of women to medical care and expanding the understanding of family medicine to include psychological trauma with particular emphasis on the centrality, but also the vulnerability of women in a war-torn society.

When my daughter Zarefah managed to visit her in Gaza shortly before the war, she told me that “when Aunt Soma walked into the hospital, an entourage of women—doctors, nurses, and other medical staff—would surround her in total adoration.”

At one point, it felt that all of Soma’s suffering was finally paying off: a nice family home in Khan Yunis, with a small olive orchard, and a few palm trees; a loving husband, himself a professor of law, and eventually the dean of law school at a reputable Gaza university; three daughters and two sons, whose educational specialties ranged from dentistry to pharmacy, to law to engineering.

Life, even under siege, at least for Soma and her family, seemed manageable. True, she was not allowed to leave the Strip for many years due to the blockade, and thus we were denied the chance to see her for years on end. True, she was tormented by loneliness and seclusion, thus her love affair and constant citation from García Márquez’s seminal novel. But at least her husband was not killed or went missing. Her beautiful house and clinic were still standing. And she was living and breathing, communicating her philosophical nuggets about life, death, memories and hope.

“If I could only find the remains of Hamdi, so that we can give him a proper burial,” she wrote to me last January, when the news circulated that her husband was executed by an Israeli quadcopter in Khan Yunis.

But since the body remained missing, she held on to some faint hope that he was still alive. Her boys, on the other hand, kept digging in the wreckage and debris of the area where Hamdi was shot, hoping to find him and to give him a proper burial. They would often be attacked by Israeli drones in the process of trying to unearth their father’s body. They would run away, and return with their shovels to carry on with the grim task.

To maximize their chances of survival, my sister’s family decided to split up between displacement camps and other family homes in southern Gaza.

This meant that Soma had to be in a constant state of moving, traveling, often long distances on foot, between towns, villages and refugee camps, just to check on her children, following every incursion, and every massacre.

“I am exhausted,” she kept telling me. “All I want from life is for this war to end, for new cozy pajamas, my favorite book, and a comfortable bed.”

These simple and reasonable expectations looked like a mirage, especially when her home in the Qarara area, in Khan Yunis, was demolished by the Israeli army last month.

“I am exhausted. All I want from life is for this war to end, for new cozy pajamas, my favorite book, and a comfortable bed.”

“My heart aches. Everything is gone. Three decades of life, of memories, of achievement, all turned into rubble,” she wrote.

“This is not a story about stones and concrete. It is much bigger. It is a story that cannot be fully told, however long I wrote or spoke. Seven souls had lived here. We ate, drank, laughed, quarreled, and despite all the challenges of living in Gaza, we managed to carve out a happy life for our family,” she continued.

A few days before she was killed, she told me that she had been sleeping in a half-destroyed building belonging to her neighbors in Qarara. She sent me a photo taken by her son, as she sat on a makeshift chair, on which she also slept amidst the ruins. She looked tired, so very tired.

There was nothing I could say or do to convince her to leave. She insisted that she wanted to keep an eye on the rubble of what remained of her home. Her logic made no sense to me. I pleaded with her to leave. She ignored me, and instead kept sending me photos of what she had salvaged from the rubble, an old photo, a small olive tree, a birth certificate.

My last message to her, hours before she was killed, was a promise that when the war is over, I will do everything in my power to compensate her for all of this. That the whole family would meet in Egypt, or Türkiye, and that we will shower her with gifts, and boundless family love. I finished with, “let’s start planning now. Whatever you want. You just say it. Awaiting your instructions…” She never saw the message.

Even when her name, as yet another casualty of the Israeli genocide in Gaza was mentioned in local Palestinian news, I refused to believe it. I continued to call. “Please pick up, Soma, please pick up,” I pleaded with her.

I refuse to see her but in the way that she wanted to be seen, a strong person, a manifestation of love, kindness and wisdom, whose “little finger is worth more than a thousand men.”

Only when a video emerged of white body bags arriving at Nasser Hospital in the back of an ambulance, I thought maybe my sister was indeed gone.

Some of the bags had the names of the others mentioned in the social media posts. Each bag was pulled out separately and placed on the ground. A group of mourners, bereaved men, women and children would rush to hug the body, screaming the same shouts of agony and despair that accompanied this ongoing genocide from the first day.

Then, another bag, with the name ‘Soma Mohammed Mohammed Baroud’ written across the thick white plastic. Her colleagues carried her body and gently laid it on the ground. They were about to zip the bag open to verify her identity. I looked the other way.

I refuse to see her but in the way that she wanted to be seen, a strong person, a manifestation of love, kindness and wisdom, whose “little finger is worth more than a thousand men.”

But why do I continue to check my messages with the hope that she will text me to tell me that the whole thing was a major, cruel misunderstanding and that she is okay?

My sister Soma was buried under a small mound of dirt, somewhere in Khan Yunis.

No more messages from her.

On the night of November 8th, 2016, the greatest soul singer of all suffered a stroke while watching the presidential election returns. Sharon Jones had, by virtue of her legendary talent, achieved fame despite "some record label" telling her that she was "too short, too fat, Black and old." Jones had one thing going for her—a voice so powerful, subtle and inhumanly flexible that she had no peer in a professional niche blessed with a ridiculous abundance of magnificent singers. She sang in harmony with world class horn players, but Sharon Jones' voice could soar and shame trumpets and saxophones. The brassy, tensile fierceness of her singing sometimes resolved into a whisper—like a virtuoso flautist drifting into silence.

Sharon Jones had held pancreatic cancer to a draw for several rounds, but metastatic cancer was one thing, and Trump's electoral college victory another. One easily imagines that Sharon Jones, the triumphant conqueror of a heartless music industry, came face to face with a terrifying and immovable barrier - the entire world had been swept into an inescapable vortex. I am not simply speculating—Jones' election night stroke did not kill her on the spot. She died ten days later, but not before identifying her assailant to her friends and bandmates. It was Donald Trump.

Sharon Jones death provides something of a blank slate - a place for the projection of our own anxiety. She may arguably be the first person to pass through the invisible threshold separating the misery and dislocation of life in neoliberal America from the fascist uncertainty to follow. You might think of her as American fascism's first casualty.

We can only speculate about what she endured on November 8th eight years ago, as we prepare to relive her trauma in a few weeks. Sharon Jones, because she did not meet the superficial standards—the image—of a peerless singer, once worked a day job. Before she achieved the big time she supported herself by working at the “correctional facility” on Rikers Island. Did she anticipate that Donald Trump would turn all of creation into an enormous Rikers Island? Sharon Jones, as both a legendary singer and a former prison guard (in one of the most notorious outposts within the prison industrial complex) had access to the whole continuum of human curses and virtues.

She only stood 4’11” but somehow survived the proximity of men at their worst. She must have seen beatings, threats, blood and humiliation until it all congealed into an existential blur. Rikers Island might have hardened Sharon Jones’s heart like a stone, but it did not. When Trump's apparition came to her on November 8th she might have stared him down like he was just one more Rikers inmate. We know that Sharon Jones had a full range of human emotions and vulnerabilities. You can hear it in her voice, and we know her story. Trump and death converged, and she went with them before anyone else.

But it wasn't just Sharon Jones—a suicide hotline serving the LGBTQ community experienced an enormous spike in calls on November 8th, 2016 as the election results imposed a cascading profusion of fearful thoughts. An awful world had suddenly morphed into something improbably worse. Millions of the most ordinary people looked into the abyss eight years ago—suicide hotlines everywhere received a glut of anxious calls. I am not Black, not gay, not Trans, not Central American, not poor, and not at all a supporter of Hillary “neoliberal stooge” Clinton, but my wife and I stared with stricken, numbed, abrupt distress at the 2016 computer screen. A nation that had been destined to drift toward fascism since a collection of white, male slave-owners signed The Declaration of Independence had bizarrely been shocked at how quickly it finally happened.

Neoliberalism has conditioned us to accept abraded environmental protections, minimal health care, defunded schools, human rights abuses, horrific military violence inflicted far away and supported by local propaganda, arbitrary police power, and expanding, privatized prisons. But fascism adds something new...

As a mental health outreach worker in small town Franklin County, Massachusetts, I expected that my poor clients (Franklin County is a collection of mostly decaying mill towns) would have responded to Trump’s 2016 victory with barely an indifferent shrug, but I was wrong. Poor people generally believe that voting is a waste of time—they rather conclude that no nexus exists to connect their struggles with the political theatrics that occasionally murmur as background noise on their TV screens. One of my clients, let's call her Alicia, caught me by surprise on November 9th when she asked, "Phil, can he send me back to Puerto Rico?" No, I told her, Puerto Rico is part of the US. That makes you a US citizen. Alicia may not have heard me at all. Her ex-husband had moved back to the Island. "If I get sent out my ex is going to kill me.”

Neoliberalism has conditioned us to accept abraded environmental protections, minimal health care, defunded schools, human rights abuses, horrific military violence inflicted far away and supported by local propaganda, arbitrary police power, and expanding, privatized prisons. But fascism adds something new—the performance of violence as a public spectacle. George Monbiot has deemed both neoliberalism and fascism as corporate responses to the problem of democracy. A society driven by the collective power of the public will inevitably collide with corporate hegemony. Whereas neoliberalism depends on an oblivious citizenry, lobotomized by the surgical blade of corporate media, fascists have less faith in brain washing alone. Fascism requires a stronger incentive for public obedience—naked fear.

A society driven by the collective power of the public will inevitably collide with corporate hegemony.

One cannot weigh and measure aggregate levels of anxiety, depression, hopelessness or fear. Some of the worst suffering that fascism inflicts takes place in the private spaces inside of our skulls. Sharon Jones was not struck in the head with a truncheon—she had been assaulted by an inevitable and widely shared vision, a sense that Donald Trump was not just another ghoul in the long line of presidential succession, but something even more rapaciously hostile, violent and unstoppable.

It is a tribute to Trump’s cultural power that he entered the awareness of my poorest clients in ways that no other political figure ever did. Over and over again I was asked if Trump’s election would end rent subsidies, Mass Health medical insurance and food stamps. I had no way to honestly reassure my clients and I resorted to platitudes about the rule of law and protections in the constitution.

Poor people are the only category of the public having the ability to experience unrestricted state violence—even within a nominally functioning democracy. Think of poverty as a paradoxical privilege—the power to see beneath the opaque curtain of capitalism. You might also think of the public housing project is an experiment in fascism—a laboratory where force and intimidation can be refined and honed for expanded use as society collapses. People in housing projects witness police beatings, local crime, evictions, arrests and child protective services taking custody of children. My poor clients had a sophisticated intuitive sense of what Trump might do. Anyone with daily exposure to arbitrary and capricious power knows that things can get worse.

Trump, if we consider him as a peculiar human/political specimen—apart from his convenient label as a fascist or authoritarian – rather stymies our efforts to analyze him. He is inarticulate, notably stupid, illogical and self-oblivious, and yet there he is – plain as a granite boulder, centered eternally within the public eye. His prominence in the media forced the invention of the term “sane-washing.” Any serious discussion of Trump leads to one conclusion—something terrible, vast and irredeemable has befallen us and we have no language to describe our predicament. Few things highlight our depths of decay more aptly than our upright, formal, straight faced, intellectualized reflections on utter madness. We talk about Trump as if he were a math equation with a correct answer. Imagine three or four pundits in free fall from atop the Grand Canyon discussing their dinner plans—that conveys the Trump-centered discourse on the nightly news.

Think of poverty as a paradoxical privilege—the power to see beneath the opaque curtain of capitalism. You might also think of the public housing project is an experiment in fascism—a laboratory where force and intimidation can be refined and honed for expanded use as society collapses.

It is as likely as not that Trump will be president within a few months. On election night there will be strokes, heart attacks and suicides in the wake of Trump’s election as people anticipate the expansion of Trump’s fascist death cult. Last time Trump occupied the throne, suicides spiked to unprecedented levels in 2017 1nd 2018. Fascism will unleash a mental health catastrophe. Obviously, the most targeted victims, sexual minorities and people without U.S. citizenship, or citizens related to those without citizenship, will be overwhelmed with anxiety.

Paradoxically, Trump’s own base will be prominent death cult victims. White men living in rural areas kill themselves at a rate higher than any other demographic, and more often than not they employ an iconic symbol of Republican Party violence —fire arms. We never know if deaths of despair involve a disproportionate contingent of Trump’s acolytes, but the COVID contrarian death event that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives defined Trump’s legacy. A death cult propaganda empire, largely funded by the oil industry (that lost profits during Covid-19 economic slowdowns) urged the public to fight back against the “emasculating” decrees of public health agencies. Research conducted by Dr. Ryon McDermott, a psychiatrist from South Alabama has linked anti-vax beliefs to fanatic masculine tropes:

“What we find is that men who endorse these beliefs are much less likely to engage in proactive health behaviors, like getting a vaccine, because it’s somehow seen as being feminine, or being weak.”

Dan Patrick, the elderly lieutenant governor of Texas, said the quiet part out loud during a COVID spike when he offered himself, and all elderly people, as a sacrifice to the greater cause of the US economy. His COVID death would be well worth the economic benefits, he argued. Patrick’s alleged bravery was nothing more than narcissistic prancing. But the strident, bellicose, confrontational display of performative anti-vax voices on social media demonstrated that macho contempt for the "decadent," fearful, feminine voices of public health drove the movement. Picture Donald Trump, the bone spur, draft dodger of the Vietnam War era, preening without a mask and boasting about it. Trump, the bone spur coward had achieved death cult redemption via Covid-19.

In the 1932 German film “The Blue Light” by Leni Riefenstahl—who would later gain fame as Hitler’s propaganda videographer— played a strange young girl with almost mystical mountain climbing skills (scaling sheer rock faces wearing cloth slippers). High on a rocky cliff, she discovers a grotto filled with magnificent crystals that glow with an ethereal brilliance. The movie juxtaposes Riefenstahl’s pristine, innocent and courageous character with the greedy townspeople who view the sacred crystals as a mere commodity. At the film’s end, the young mountain climber falls to her death after discovering that the crystals have been appropriated by ambitious town’s people. The fascist world view pivots around the eternal battle between heroism and decadence. The hero, according to the Italian philosopher Umberto Eco, seeks death fearlessly and avidly, as a means of fascist consecration. Susan Sontag noted that Riefenstahl, at every juncture of her long career, channeled a fascist aesthetic.

One might argue that the doddering figure of a maskless Trump hardly equals the youthful Riefenstahl scaling mountains. But a death cult is still a death cult, even if it teeters precariously close to self-parody.

A death cult is still a death cult, even if it teeters precariously close to self-parody.

It may not be easy to accurately imagine all the details of the Trump death cult in its enhanced 2025 version. To be sure, some of the horrors seem almost certain—the continued Gazan genocide with the Democratic Party blessing for instance. Then there is the anticipated, murderous orgy of roundups, mass transfers to concentration camps and deportations of those without legal status. This will, in and of itself, meet the criterion for genocide. But the most critical consequence will be the obliteration of public mental well being. We should all anticipate the racing heart rates, the suicides, the spiking blood pressures, the strokes and heart attacks as the soul of the American people is mobilized for mere survival.

The public is the last barrier between the U.S. military machine and a dead Gaza. We are the last stand to turn back a planned extermination of our “undocumented” people. That may sound rather dramatic, as we don’t yet know if we can even save ourselves. We would be in slightly better shape if Sharon Jones’ voice still provided refuge. It doesn’t, and she was only the first to fall.

Women's Marches are being planned across the country ahead of Election Day to "show the strength of our feminist movement." However, curiously missing from the talking points around the strength of the feminist movement is the women of Palestine—women and girls who have endured the brutality of anti-feminist policies for decades under the illegal occupation by Israel.

Nour, CodePink’s Palestinian-American organizer, shares a story of her grandmother's sacrifice to take care of her children under occupation:

In Palestine, Israeli forces routinely impose curfews on Palestinian villages, forcing Palestinians to stay confined in their homes after dusk. The penalty for the slightest movement outside—or even within their homes—can mean immediate arrest or being shot on sight. My mother often recounts a story of my grandmother risking her life during curfew one night. My uncle, who was an infant at the time, was crying for milk, and my grandmother, with no other choice, had to slip out into the night. She moved silently through the shadows, hiding from Israeli soldiers as she crossed the village to find milk for her baby. My mother still remembers the fear she felt, thinking it might be the last time she'd see her mother alive. But my grandmother returned safely because Palestinian women, shaped by decades of occupation and resistance, have learned to navigate the militarized reality that surrounds them, finding ways to perform even the most basic acts of care under unimaginable conditions.

This story is not new or singular; Palestinian families have faced it on a daily basis for decades. It sparked our reflection on the co-option of feminism in the belly of the beast—where we're writing from.

Feminism may not be definitive, but at its heart is a commitment to family and community care—a stark contrast to militarism, which injects itself into every aspect of human life and erodes these fundamental values.

Nadia Alia wrote about the 2014 Israeli invasion in Gaza, citing many reporters detailing the "disproportionate" number of women and children victims during this violent attack. She then begged the question, what is a proportionate amount of women and children harmed during war and conflict? When did gender-based violence and violence towards the oppressed become an inevitable part of world relations? And if simply men were killed, would the crime scream quieter? When did we start weighing the scale of a tragedy based on gender—and when did we decide Palestinian men being murdered and imprisoned doesn't impact their entire community?

Feminism may not be definitive, but at its heart is a commitment to family and community care—a stark contrast to militarism, which injects itself into every aspect of human life and erodes these fundamental values. Palestinian women embody this incompatible relationship between feminism and militarism through their constant resistance to the occupation's infringement on their health, education, and ability to provide for their families. When the women of Palestine are forced to become breadwinners and protectors because Israel has murdered or imprisoned every man in their family, the necessity for feminism to include the women of Palestine is undeniable.

To narrowly define feminism is to be inherently anti-feminist, as we are building new ways to be just, to be equitable, and to show up for our community every day—just as the women of Palestine do. However, co-opting feminism to enact harm and bring destruction to people and the planet is against all feminist principles and praxis. And to further assume a false sense of superiority over the communities that have been harmed by imperialism is not only inherently anti-feminist, it's anti-human. Feminism, at its core, is antithetical to all forms of oppression, exploitation, and violence. Feminism devoid of intersectionality becomes a weapon for imperialists by depriving it of its otherwise inherently liberatory nature.

Alia's writing from 2014 still rings clear today. We just passed a year marker of the October 7 act of resistance from Gazans defending their homeland and 76 years of Palestinians living in an open-air prison inside their own homes. Meanwhile, we head into an election season using feminism as a gateway towards further surveillance, policing, and genocide, both at home and in all corners of the earth. Women's marches throughout the country won't even utter the names of the hundreds of thousands of women killed in Palestine to date. What is feminist about wanting to be the most lethal force in the world? What is feminist about continuing to arm a genocidal war against Palestine and Lebanon? What is feminist about using our tax dollars that should go towards natural disaster relief and healthcare to fund murder? Supplying militarism under the guise of women's empowerment is again not new. Still, the complacency and ignorance we see from elected officials here in the U.S. and those who appear to care for the well-being of women is always horrific and devastating. It cannot be overstated: there are no feminist bombs, feminist prisons, feminist cops, or feminist wars. There are only paid actors who have convinced people that their eventual demise and the demise of the planet is what will empower their lives today.

Israel's occupation of Palestine creates a constant state of fear and instability, eroding the rights, safety, and dignity of millions, particularly Palestinian women who bear the weight of war and imperial feminism in devastating ways. CODEPINK started as an immediate reaction to the 2002 Bush Administration creeping closer to invading Iraq based on 'saving women and children' only to cause over 15,000 women in Iraq to be killed. The 'rescue' narrative we have seen play out in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Palestine, and all across the globe from imperial players like the U.S., Great Britain, and Israel has truly shown the lengths that liberal, western feminism will go to justify the oppression of the women and children it claims to save.

To support Palestinian liberation means embracing a vision of feminism that stands firmly against militarism, imperialism, and colonialism.

This destructive narrative reveals the true intent this movement has for feminism: to keep the status quo and to keep marginalized lives, as Marc Lemont Hill describes it, "directly tied to the needs and interests of the powerful." Feminist education, activism, and community care must always come from a place of love and understanding but must also be in steadfast values of abolition and divestment. We cannot let ourselves be co-opted to kill Palestinians. We cannot allow our work to be undermined to kill the people of the Congo, of Sudan, of Yemen, of Ukraine, or of Russia. And we must not let our lives and choices be tied to a small group of people reaping the benefits of war.

To support Palestinian liberation means embracing a vision of feminism that stands firmly against militarism, imperialism, and colonialism. It means committing to fight for the rights of Palestinian women and all women who are oppressed in the name of advancing imperialist interests. Feminism calls us to see the connection between the liberties we fight for at home and the rights denied to women and girls across the globe. A genuinely feminist stance fights for a world where no woman, no child, and no community live under the constant threat of violence. Supporting Palestine is about embodying this vision, standing in solidarity, and fighting for a world where imperialism and colonialism are universally resisted.

“But there'll be men enough, the scum that we used for overseers, the trash that bought and sold slaves and bred them, the kind who were men with bullwhip and filth without one, the kind who have only one virtue, a white skin. Gentlemen, we'll play a symphony on that white skin, we'll make it a badge of honor. We'll put a premium on that white skin. We'll dredge the sewers and the swamps for candidates, and we'll give them their white skin - and in return, gentlemen, they will give us back what we lost through this insane [civil] war, yes, all of it." —From "Freedom Road" by Howard Fast, a novel about Reconstruction)

The idea of “race” has always been used to divide, control, and exploit. It is not a biological category. Eugenicists and White supremacists have spent generations trying to prove that it is, and they have failed. If each of us was able to banish the carefully indoctrinated idea of biological race from our minds, the world would be better off—starting with Donald Trump.

For those supporting Trump, it’s time to face up to the fact that he really is a biological racist. He is unable or unwilling to stop using racist arguments against groups that don’t have, he thinks, the same blood and breeding that he has.

Trump is into genes. There are good genes and bad genes, he says, smart genes and dumb genes, white genes and immigrant genes. Some of those good genes he finds in the white people of Minnesota.

“You have good genes, you know that, right? You have good genes. A lot of it is about the genes, isn’t it, don’t you believe? The racehorse theory, you think we’re so different? You have good genes in Minnesota.”

Like racehorses, according to Trump, some of us are bred for comfort, some for speed, some for crime, and still others for stupidity. According to his new ally, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who hopes to become a high-ranking U.S. health official, some of us also are bred to get Covid -- or not to get it. Kennedy said:

“Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”

For Trump and Kennedy, the world is littered with races that form a lovely hierarchy, and their white “race,” conveniently is at the very top. Their skin color, they say, makes them most fit to rule in a ruthless Darwinian world. In this belief they join the defenders of slavery, segregation, and the builders of the gas ovens.

Their view of the world also has much in common with that of the industrialists of the early 20th century who used “race” as a tool to divide the workforce. Trump and Kennedy might value the 1926 race chart created by the Pittsburgh Central Tube Company, which shows the skills that are found in each so-called “race.” Nationality was a race, back then. Religion was a race, too. And, of course, color was a race. Each potential worker, the chart claimed, had built-in talents that could be objectively determined by industrial “race science.”

Since the 19th century, scientists have tried to prove the validity of racial categorization. Yet each claim has later been shown to be grounded in cultural beliefs, not physical science. Biological race, as a category, does not exist, science says. Like it or not, according to the best evidence, there is only one biological race, the human race, and we’re all stuck in it.

“By the Blood of our Fathers”

Trump also is into blood. Mixing all these lowly immigrants into America’s white blood, supposedly leads to “poisoning the blood of our country.” In this Trump connects with the “one drop rule” used during Jim Crow to identify who did or didn’t have certain rights. Who could use which bathroom, who could drink from which fountain, and who could go to which school. If you had one drop of Black blood, you were designated Black and consigned to the path of second-class citizenship.

The “stable genius” seems blissfully ignorant of the fact that each and every one of us has more than a few drops of Black blood. Our common genetic ancestors came out of Africa about 60,000 years ago. Yes, by the definition of the one drop rule, we all are Black.

How the New York Times Perpetuates Race Science

Every time someone, and especially a major media outlet, uses the word “race” it triggers the idea that there is something biological involved besides skin shades. Throughout the 20th Century, “race” conjured up critical differences in pain thresholds, propensity to crime, intelligence, strength, and even lust, none of which is true.

For “races” to be equal, they must first exist as separate “races.” But they don’t. To repeat, there are no separate biological races.

Why is a Black resident of African descent in Minnesota categorically different from a white Minnesota resident of Norwegian descent? Why is one considered to be a member of a “race” and the other of an ethnic group?

Journalists would surely say that they are only using race as a social convention, that “race” is not about biology. Rather, they would explain, it is a way of describing the group of Black people in the U.S. who have formed as a result of the after effects of slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and on-going discrimination based on skin color.

To most people, however, the word “race” carries more weight than the more nuanced and accurate word “ethnicity.” The latter is viewed as benignly connected to culture and tradition. “Race,” however, after more than a century of propaganda, implies biology. If you think skin color signals a different “race,” you are more likely to think that other differences between groups are biological as well.

The commonly accepted liberal statement that “all races are created equal” also falls into the racialist trap. For “races” to be equal, they must first exist as separate “races.” But they don’t. To repeat, there are no separate biological races.

The media is very careful with words. Conventions are established in every era to describe different groups. For example, “Negro” is no longer used, nor is “Indian.” This would be a very good moment to replace the word “race” with “ethnicity,” or at least put quotations marks around it. That might help eliminate race as biology.

For those supporting Trump, it’s time to face up to the fact that he really is a biological racist. He is unable or unwilling to stop using racist arguments against groups that don’t have, he thinks, the same blood and breeding that he has. He believes in a hierarchy of races and views himself the commander-in-chief of the fictitious superior white race, the master race.

History warns us that such beliefs never work out well.

Do you know that you’re in good hands with Allstate? Or how about State Farm? Do you know that, like a good neighbor, State Farm is there? Of course you do. Insurance companies have been blasting slogans like these at us for years now. In 2022 alone, Allstate spent $617 million on advertising. State Farm spent an even more whopping $1.05 billion.

But if insurance giants like State Farm truly rated as our “good neighbors,” they’d be behaving—in real life—quite a bit differently than their award-winning advertising suggests.

In hurricane-plagued Florida, for instance, State Farm last year denied 46.4% of homeowner claims, refusals that directly impacted over 76,000 households.

Another reform approach might more quickly catch the attention of top insurance industry boards of directors: tying an insurance company’s tax rate to the ratio between that company’s CEO pay and the paychecks of the firm’s workers.

“Property insurers who deny legitimate claims,” notes Martin Weiss, the founder of the nation’s only independent insurer rating agency, “are sending the implicit message, ‘If you don’t like it, sue us.’”

To add injury to that insult, Weiss adds, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had just before last year signed into law new legislation that makes policyholder lawsuits against insurers “far more difficult.”

For recently retired State Farm CEO Michael Tipsord, insurance industry lobbying victories along that Florida line have helped him pocket some stunning personal rewards. Tipsord pulled down $24.4 million in compensation two years ago, almost $4 million more than his industry’s second-highest 2022 CEO pay total. Tipsord had pocketed even more, $24.5 million, in 2021.

“CEOs are living high on the hog while increasing insurance premiums for people living paycheck to paycheck,” the Consumer Federation of America’s Michael DeLong charged last October. “Insurers are telling regulators that ordinary consumers have to pay much more for auto and home insurance because the companies are struggling with inflation and climate change, but they are quietly handing CEOs gigantic bonuses.”

Overall, DeLong’s Consumer Federation reports, the chief execs at America’s ten largest personal insurance lines collected over a quarter-billion dollars in CEO compensation for their services in 2021 and 2022.

If we really had a “good neighbor” at State Farm—or any other insurance giant—those companies wouldn’t have been spending recent years denying relief to the victims of climate change. They would have been insisting instead that lawmakers crack down on the fossil-fuel corporate giants doing so much to foul our planet.

Top insurers did make an early feint in that direction over a half-century ago. Way back in 1973, notes Peter Bosshard, the global coordinator of the U.S.-based Insure Our Future campaign, “the insurance industry first warned about climate risks.” But that warning, in the years to come, wouldn’t stop insurers from “underwriting and investing in the expansion of fossil fuels.”

Giant insurance companies that actually took climate science seriously, Bosshard observes, would have been “suing fossil fuel companies, to make polluters pay for the growing costs of climate disasters and keep insurance affordable for climate-affected communities.”

Insurers haven’t been doing any of that.

”Insurers talk a lot about their climate commitments and supporting their clients through the energy transition, but this is plain greenwashing,” charges Ariel Le Bourdonnec, a Reclaim Finance insurance activist. “They are still profiting from providing cover that allows companies to develop new fossil fuel projects. Insurers could be a force for change, but instead they are undermining climate action.”

Other critics are emphasizing that insurance industry execs have gone beyond “greenwashing” to “bluelining,” as Lilith Fellowes-Granda, a Center for American Progress associate director, points out. These execs are increasing prices and withdrawing services “from regions they perceive to be at high environmental risk.” These moves typically hit hardest on the “communities most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.”

Climate activists are advocating for a variety of policy changes to reverse these dynamics, everything from making sure property insurers must share the risks they cover to ensuring underserved communities access to affordable insurance.

Another reform approach might more quickly catch the attention of top insurance industry boards of directors: tying an insurance company’s tax rate to the ratio between that company’s CEO pay and the paychecks of the firm’s workers.

Inside the insurance industry, as in every other major U.S. economic sector, that ratio between CEO and worker has soared over recent decades.

In 2023, the chief executive at Chubb Ltd., Evan Greenberg, took home $27.7 million, enough to make him that year’s top-paid American property and casualty insurer. Those millions added up to 452 times more than the annual pay of the typical Chubb employee. In 2022, Greenberg pocketed a mere 346 times his company’s typical employee pay.

Back in 1965, the Economic Policy Institute noted last month in its latest annual CEO pay report, the top execs at major U.S. corporations only averaged 21 times what typical American workers earned. Nearly a quarter-century later, in 1989, CEOs were still only averaging 61 times worker pay.

How could we restore greater equity to corporate compensation and, at the same time, give top corporate executives an incentive to care about more than simply maximizing their own personal compensation? Lawmakers at the state and federal levels have over recent years advanced dozens of proposals that tie corporate tax rates to the size of the gap between top executive and worker pay.

In all these proposals, the higher a corporation’s CEO-worker pay ratio, the higher that corporation’s tax rate.

The Institute for Policy Studies has compiled an exhaustive guide to these CEO-worker pay gap proposals. Maybe the winds of Hurricane Milton will help give these moves the momentum they need to turn into law—and give top execs a reason to care about something more than the size of their own personal pay.

While the world looks on with trepidation at regional wars in Israel and Ukraine, a far more dangerous global crisis is quietly building at the other end of Eurasia, along an island chain that has served as the front line for America’s national defense for endless decades. Just as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has revitalized the NATO alliance, so China’s increasingly aggressive behavior and a sustained U.S. military buildup in the region have strengthened Washington’s position on the Pacific littoral, bringing several wavering allies back into the Western fold. Yet such seeming strength contains both a heightened risk of great power conflict and possible political pressures that could fracture America’s Asia-Pacific alliance relatively soon.

Recent events illustrate the rising tensions of the new Cold War in the Pacific. From June to September of this year, for instance, the Chinese and Russian militaries conducted joint maneuvers that ranged from live-fire naval drills in the South China Sea to air patrols circling Japan and even penetrating American airspace in Alaska. To respond to what Moscow called “rising geopolitical tension around the world,” such actions culminated last month in a joint Chinese-Russian “Ocean-24” exercise that mobilized 400 ships, 120 aircraft, and 90,000 troops in a vast arc from the Baltic Sea across the Arctic to the northern Pacific Ocean. While kicking off such monumental maneuvers with China, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the United States of “trying to maintain its global military and political dominance at any cost” by “increasing [its] military presence… in the Asia-Pacific region.”

“China is not a future threat,” the U.S. Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall responded in September. “China is a threat today.” Over the past 15 years, Beijing’s ability to project power in the Western Pacific, he claimed, had risen to alarming levels, with the likelihood of war “increasing” and, he predicted, it will only “continue to do so.” An anonymous senior Pentagon official added that China “continues to be the only U.S. competitor with the intent and… the capability to overturn the rules-based infrastructure that has kept peace in the Indo-Pacific since the end of the Second World War.”

After a decade of fighting misbegotten wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Washington was stunned when a rising China began to turn its economic gains into a serious bid for global power.

Indeed, regional tensions in the Pacific have profound global implications. For the past 80 years, an island chain of military bastions running from Japan to Australia has served as a crucial fulcrum for American global power. To ensure that it will be able to continue to anchor its “defense” on that strategic shoal, Washington has recently added new overlapping alliances while encouraging a massive militarization of the Indo-Pacific region. Though bristling with armaments and seemingly strong, this ad hoc Western coalition may yet prove, like NATO in Europe, vulnerable to sudden setbacks from rising partisan pressures, both in the United States and among its allies.

Building a Pacific Bastion

For well over a century, the U.S. has struggled to secure its vulnerable western frontier from Pacific threats. During the early decades of the 20th century, Washington maneuvered against a rising Japanese presence in the region, producing geopolitical tensions that led to Tokyo’s attack on the American naval bastion at Pearl Harbor that began World War II in the Pacific. After fighting for four years and suffering nearly 300,000 casualties, the U.S. defeated Japan and won unchallenged control of the entire region.

Aware that the advent of the long-range bomber and the future possibility of atomic warfare had rendered the historic concept of coastal defense remarkably irrelevant, in the post-war years Washington extended its North American “defenses” deep into the Western Pacific. Starting with the expropriation of 100 Japanese military bases, the U.S. built its initial postwar Pacific naval bastions at Okinawa and, thanks to a 1947 agreement, at Subic Bay in the Philippines. As the Cold War engulfed Asia in 1950 with the beginning of the Korean conflict, the U.S. extended those bases for 5,000 miles along the entire Pacific littoral through mutual-defense agreements with five Asia-Pacific allies—Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Australia.

For the next 40 years to the very end of the Cold War, the Pacific littoral remained the geopolitical fulcrum of American global power, allowing it to defend one continent (North America) and dominate another (Eurasia). In many ways, in fact, the U.S. geopolitical position astride the axial ends of Eurasia would prove the key to its ultimate victory in the Cold War.

After the Cold War

Once the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and the Cold War ended, Washington cashed in its peace dividend, weakening that once-strong island chain. Between 1998 and 2014, the U.S. Navy declined from 333 ships to 271. That 20% reduction, combined with a shift to long-term deployments in the Middle East, degraded the Navy’s position in the Pacific. Even so, for the 20 years following the Cold War, the U.S. would enjoy what the Pentagon called “uncontested or dominant superiority in every operating domain. We could generally deploy our forces when we wanted, assemble them where we wanted, operate how we wanted.”

After the September 2001 terrorist attack on the U.S., Washington turned from heavy-metal strategic forces to mobile infantry readily deployed for counterterror operations against lightly armed guerrillas. After a decade of fighting misbegotten wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Washington was stunned when a rising China began to turn its economic gains into a serious bid for global power. As its opening gambit, Beijing started building bases in the South China Sea, where oil and natural gas deposits are rife, and expanding its navy, an unexpected challenge that the once-all-powerful American Pacific command was remarkably ill-prepared to meet.

In response, in 2011, President Barack Obama proclaimed a strategic “pivot to Asia” before the Australian parliament and began rebuilding the American military position on the Pacific littoral. After withdrawing some U.S. forces from Iraq in 2012 and refusing to commit significant numbers of troops for regime change in Syria, the Obama White House deployed a battalion of Marines to Darwin in northern Australia in 2014. In quick succession, Washington gained access to five Philippine bases near the South China Sea and a new South Korean naval base at Jeju Island on the Yellow Sea. According to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, to operate those installations, the Pentagon planned to “forward base 60% of our naval assets in the Pacific by 2020.” Nonetheless, the unending insurgency in Iraq continued to slow the pace of that strategic pivot to the Pacific.

Growing Chinese aggressiveness in the region and an American urge to strengthen a military alliance ominously encircling that country could threaten to turn the latest Cold War ever hotter, transforming the Pacific into a genuine powder keg.

Despite such setbacks, senior diplomatic and military officials, working under three different administrations, launched a long-term effort to slowly rebuild the U.S. military posture in the Asia-Pacific region. After proclaiming “a return to great power competition” in 2016, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson reported that China’s “growing and modernized fleet” was “shrinking” the traditional American advantage in the region. “The competition is on,” the admiral warned, adding, “We must shake off any vestiges of comfort or complacency.”

Responding to such pressure, the Trump administration added the construction of 46 new ships to the Pentagon budget, which was to raise the total fleet to 326 vessels by 2023. Still, setting aside support ships, when it came to an actual “fighting force,” by 2024 China had the world’s largest navy with 234 “warships,” while the U.S. deployed 219—with Chinese combat capacity, according to American Naval Intelligence, “increasingly of comparable quality to U.S. ships.”

Paralleling the military buildup, the State Department reinforced the U.S. position on the Pacific littoral by negotiating three relatively new diplomatic agreements with Asia-Pacific allies Australia, Britain, India, and the Philippines. Though those ententes added some depth and resilience to the U.S. posture, the truth is that this Pacific network may ultimately prove more susceptible to political rupture than a formal multilateral alliance like NATO.

Military Cooperation with the Philippines

After nearly a century as close allies through decades of colonial rule, two world wars, and the Cold War, American relations with the Philippines suffered a severe setback in 1991 when that country’s senate refused to renew a long-term military bases agreement, forcing the U.S. 7th Fleet out of its massive naval base at Subic Bay.

After just three years, however, China occupied some shoals also claimed by the Philippines in the South China Sea during a raging typhoon. Within a decade, the Chinese had started transforming them into a network of military bases, while pressing their claims to most of the rest of the South China Sea. Manila’s only response was to ground a rusting World War II naval vessel on Ayungin shoal in the Spratly Islands, where Filipino soldiers had to fish for their supper. With its external defense in tatters, in April 2014 the Philippines signed an Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement with Washington, allowing the U.S. military quasi-permanent facilities at five Filipino bases, including two on the shores of the South China Sea.

Although Manila won a unanimous ruling from the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague that Beijing’s claims to the South China Sea were “without lawful effect,” China dismissed that decision and continued to build its bases there. And when Rodrigo Duterte became president in 2016, he revealed a new policy that included a “separation” from America and a strategic tilt toward China, which that country rewarded with promises of massive developmental aid. By 2018, however, China’s army was operating anti-aircraft missiles, mobile missile launchers, and military radar on five artificial “islands” in the Spratly archipelago that it had built from sand its dredgers sucked from the seabed.

Once Duterte left office, as China’s Coast Guard harassed Filipino fishermen and blasted Philippine naval vessels with water cannons in their own territory, Manila once again started calling on Washington for help. Soon, U.S. Navy vessels were conducting “freedom of navigation” patrols in Philippine waters and the two nations had staged their biggest military maneuvers ever. In the April 2024 edition of that exercise, the U.S. deployed its mobile Typhon Mid-Range Missile Launcher capable of hitting China’s coast, sparking a bitter complaint from Beijing that such weaponry “intensifies geopolitical confrontation.”

Manila has matched its new commitment to the U.S. alliance with an unprecedented rearmament program of its own. Just last spring, it signed a $400 million deal with Tokyo to purchase five new Coast Guard cutters, started receiving Brahmos cruise missiles from India under a $375 million contract, and continued a billion-dollar deal with South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries that will result in 10 new naval vessels. After the government announced a $35 billion military modernization plan, Manila has been negotiating with Korean suppliers to procure 40 modern jet fighters—a far cry from a decade earlier when it had no operational jets.

Showing the scope of the country’s reintegration into the Western alliance, just last month Manila hosted joint freedom of navigation maneuvers in the South China Sea with ships from five allied nations—Australia, Japan, New Zealand, the Philippines, and the United States.

Quadrilateral Security Dialogue

While the Philippine Defense Agreement renewed U.S. relations with an old Pacific ally, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue involving Australia, India, Japan, and the U.S., first launched in 2007, has now extended American military power into the waters of the Indian Ocean. At the 2017 ASEAN summit in Manila, four conservative national leaders led by Japan’s Shinzo Abe, India’s Narendra Modi, and Donald Trump decided to revive the “Quad” entente (after a decade-long hiatus while Australia’s Labour governments cozied up to China).

Just last month, President Joe Biden hosted a “Quad Summit” where the four leaders agreed to expand joint air operations. In a hot-mike moment, Biden bluntly said: “China continues to behave aggressively, testing us all across the region. It is true in the South China Sea, the East China Sea, South Asia, and the Taiwan Straits.” China’s Foreign Ministry replied: “The U.S. is lying through its teeth” and needs to “get rid of its obsession with perpetuating its supremacy and containing China.”

Since 2020, however, the Quad has made the annual Malabar (India) naval exercise into an elaborate four-power drill in which aircraft carrier battle groups maneuver in waters ranging from the Arabian Sea to the East China Sea. To contest “China’s growing assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific region,” India announced that the latest exercise this October would feature live-fire maneuvers in the Bay of Bengal, led by its flagship aircraft carrier and a complement of MiG-29K all-weather jet fighters. Clearly, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi put it, the Quad is “here to stay.”

AUKUS Alliance

While the Trump administration revived the Quad, the Biden White House has promoted a complementary and controversial AUKUS defense compact between Australia, Great Britain, and the U.S. (part of what Michael Klare has called the “Anglo-Saxonization” of American foreign and military policy). After months of secret negotiations, their leaders announced that agreement in September 2021 as a way to fulfill “a shared ambition to support Australia in acquiring nuclear-powered submarines for the Royal Australian Navy.”

Such a goal sparked howls of diplomatic protests. Angry over the sudden loss of a $90 billion contract to supply 12 French submarines to Australia, France called the decision “a stab in the back” and immediately recalled its ambassadors from both Canberra and Washington. With equal speed, China’s Foreign Ministry condemned the new alliance for “severely damaging regional peace… and intensifying the arms race.” In a pointed remark, Beijing’s official Global Times newspaper said Australia had now “turned itself into an adversary of China.”

To achieve extraordinary prosperity, thanks in significant part to its iron ore and other exports to China, Australia had exited the Quad entente for nearly a decade. Now, through this single defense decision, Australia has allied itself firmly with the United States and will gain access to British submarine designs and top-secret U.S. nuclear propulsion, joining the elite ranks of just six powers with such complex technology.

Not only will Australia spend a monumental $360 billion to build eight nuclear submarines at its Adelaide shipyards over a decade, but it will also host four American Virginia-class nuclear subs at a naval base in Western Australia and buy as many as five of those stealthy submarines from the U.S. in the early 2030s. Under the tripartite alliance with the U.S. and Britain, Canberra will also face additional costs for the joint development of undersea drones, hypersonic missiles, and quantum sensing. Through that stealthy arms deal, Washington has, it seems, won a major geopolitical and military ally in any future conflict with China.

Stand-Off Along the Pacific Littoral

Just as Russia’s aggression in Ukraine strengthened the NATO alliance, so China’s challenge in the fossil-fuel-rich South China Sea and elsewhere has helped the U.S. rebuild its island bastions along the Pacific littoral. Through a sedulous courtship under three successive administrations, Washington has won back two wayward allies, Australia and the Philippines, making them once again anchors for an island chain that remains the geopolitical fulcrum for American global power in the Pacific.

Still, with more than 200 times the ship-building capacity of the United States, China’s advantage in warships will almost certainly continue to grow. In compensating for such a future deficit, America’s four active allies along the Pacific littoral will likely play a critical role. (Japan’s navy has more than 50 warships and South Korea’s 30 more.)

Despite such renewed strength in what is distinctly becoming a new cold war, America’s Asia-Pacific alliances face both immediate challenges and a fraught future. Beijing is already putting relentless pressure on Taiwan’s sovereignty, breaching that island’s airspace and crossing the median line in the Taiwan Straits hundreds of times monthly. If Beijing turns those breaches into a crippling embargo of Taiwan, the U.S. Navy will face a hard choice between losing a carrier or two in a confrontation with China or backing off. Either way, the loss of Taiwan would sever America’s island chain in the Pacific littoral, pushing it back to a “second island chain” in the mid-Pacific.

As for that fraught future, the maintenance of such alliances requires a kind of national political will that is by no means assured in an age of populist nationalism. In the Philippines, the anti-American nationalism that Duterte personified retains its appeal and may well be adopted by some future leader. More immediately in Australia, the current Labour Party government has already faced strong dissent from members blasting the AUKUS entente as a dangerous transgression of their country’s sovereignty. And in the United States, Republican populism, whether Donald Trump’s or that of a future leader like JD Vance could curtail cooperation with such Asia-Pacific allies, simply walk away from a costly conflict over Taiwan, or deal directly with China in a way that would undercut that web of hard-won alliances.

And that, of course, might be the good news (so to speak), given the possibility that a growing Chinese aggressiveness in the region and an American urge to strengthen a military alliance ominously encircling that country could threaten to turn the latest Cold War ever hotter, transforming the Pacific into a genuine powder keg and leading to the possibility of a war that would, in our present world, be almost unimaginably dangerous and destructive.

t’s galling to hear policymakers in the U.S., Israel, and elsewhere suggest that the devastating blows Israel has dealt to Hezbollah and Lebanon have created “an opportunity to put Lebanon on a better path.”

First and foremost, it’s horribly insensitive. There are, to date, thousands dead, major sections of Beirut destroyed, and one-quarter of Lebanon’s people internally displaced without adequate shelter, food, and services. And the toll continues to mount. To suggest that good can from this enormous human tragedy is disgraceful. Such a view not only dishonors the victims, but also is akin to putting “ashes in the mouths” of those who’ve lost loved ones and are in mourning.

This mindset is also dangerously naive as it ignores the lessons of history. Recall how, in the face of similar nightmares in 1982 or 2006, we were told that they would also be opportunities. Each involved Israel’s overwhelming use of force. In each instance, Israel said that its “enemies would be vanquished ushering in a new day.” In the end, each only resulted in a more unsettled situation with a more virulent foe rising from the ashes left behind. This was because at the root of each of these conflicts were real grievances born of injustice, that gave rise to movements of resistance. Instead of addressing and resolving these grievances, Israel, with the full-throated support of the U.S., saw force as the only acceptable solution. What they said, in effect, is, “Once we punish them and pound them into submission, all will be well.” This approach hasn’t worked before, and it won’t work now.

Instead of naive fantasies about opportunities, the only logical step forward is to end this conflict now.

At the heart of these deep grievances is the historical injustice done to the Palestinian people. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton described it eloquently when he told an assembled group of Palestinian leaders that he knew their history of having been “dismembered, dispossessed, and dispersed among the nations.” And for the Lebanese, who have embraced Hezbollah, the grievances include both their abiding fury over Israel’s more than two-decade-long hostile occupation of the south of Lebanon that resulted in the displacement of tens of thousands of Lebanese, and the historical inequities experienced by the Shia community as a result of the country’s sectarian system of governance.

None of this is to say that the Palestinian militia groups or the Shia’s Hezbollah movement haven’t made grave errors as they’ve acted to address the grievances of their constituencies. What it does say is that this effort to violently eliminate these groups is shortsighted, at best, and is no solution, as it does not address the source of the grievances that make them appealing in the first place. This is a recipe for disaster. And finally, to ignore the responsibility that Israel bears for its actions that have created much of the pain at the heart of the problem and then refusing to press them to change direction only ensures that the grievances will metastasize into more virulent forms.

This is where we are today. In an effort to totally eliminate resistance to their occupation and annexation of Palestine, Israel is committing genocide in Gaza coupled with a reign of violent terror across the West Bank. Meanwhile with Hezbollah launching missiles into Israel to back the survival of its “resistance ally” in Palestine, Israel has now turned its attention to methodically eliminating the leadership and cadre of Hezbollah.

In both Lebanon and Gaza, Israel has pursued this effort at “total victory” without regard for civilian casualties or damage to the broader society and its infrastructure. Seeing Iran as the main backer of both Hezbollah and Hamas, Israel has gone a step further by attacking Iranian sites and assassinating Iranian allies in Lebanon, Syria, and Iran itself—bringing the Middle East to the brink of a devastating regional war.

While the U.S. worries aloud about the dangers of expanding this war, it has done nothing to restrain Israel’s behavior. We’ve established red lines that Israel continues to cross; expressed concern with civilian casualties which Israel ignores; and repeatedly put forward cease-fire proposals which Israel rejects. All the while we are flooding Israel with sophisticated deadly weaponry and unlimited diplomatic support. The result is Israeli impunity, more Arab casualties and greater suffering, and a Middle East ever further from addressing the problems at the root of the conflict. When the fighting ends, if anything, the grievances will be even greater.

If history is prologue, in the coming years we’ll most likely see: the emergence of a Hamas 2.0; a reconstituted movement of Lebanese with an ax to grind with both Israel and those whom they feel betrayed them; a bottomless well of anger and bitterness directed at both Israel and the U.S.; and a region more unstable that it has been.

That said, there is no opportunity in this tragedy. In fact, there’s only one thing about which we can be certain. And that is that Israel’s war in Lebanon and Gaza will not end well.

Instead of naive fantasies about opportunities, the only logical step forward is to end this conflict now. For that to happen, the U.S., as we say, “needs to put on its big boy pants,” tell Israel to “stop,” and back this up by suspending arms shipments. At that point, we will need to address the human cost and work to alleviate some of the suffering. Then, and only then, can we begin to assess the steps that must be taken to deal with the grievances at the root of this tragedy. That’s not an opportunity. It’s a responsibility.

Sometimes I hate being right.

Donald Trump is campaigning in Blue states right now, including California, Colorado, and New York. It has pundits scratching their heads: is it just all about his ego? Is he crazy? Or crazy like a fox?

I’d argue the latter: that this is part of a strategy to legally seize the White House after he’s lost both the popular vote and the Electoral College vote, much like Republican Rutherford B. Hayes did in the election of 1876.

Eight months before the 2020 election, I wrote a largely-ridiculed article for Alternet.org predicting that Trump would lose the election but would then use multiple phony slates of swing-state electors to try to get the Electoral College count thrown to the House of Representatives where, under the 12th Amendment, the Republican majority would crown him president.

I noted that I’d first heard of the plan that month from a Republican insider I knew from my days living and doing my radio/TV program from Washington, DC.

And, as we all now know, that’s pretty much exactly what happened.

Fortunately, Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi stopped Trump and his merry band of corrupt lawyers and lawmakers (including Mike Johnson, who led the effort in the House) from executing the plan, but not before five civilians and three police officers lay dead because Trump incited a violent attack on the Capitol in his final, desperate attempt to pull it off.

Now we know, I believe, why Donald Trump thinks it’s so important to call out the military around election day this year. He expects millions of Americans to be in the streets because his plan is for the House, Republicans in the states, and the Supreme Court to hand him the presidency regardless of the election’s outcome.

Last Friday, my SiriusXM colleague Michelangelo Signorile mentioned to me (on his program) that a prominent rightwing hate radio host had claimed Trump is campaigning in Blue states right now so he can help out down-ballot House members in those states. According to that host, it’s all about holding the House so when the time comes for the election to be certified Republicans will be able to deny that still-necessary certification and vote Trump in themselves.

Which is giving me a terrible sense of déjà vu. At the risk of again playing the reluctant role of Cassandra, here are some examples of how Trump and the GOP could try to steal the White House this winter, regardless of how the vote turns out. And how Republicans are today telegraphing this very outcome.

Article II (the Executive Branch), Section I, Clause 2 of the Constitution (and the 12th Amendment, which revises it) gives solely to the legislatures of the states the power to control the electors who will decide the presidential election.

It does not say — and there is no federal law that says — that the people of the states shall vote for their choice of president and then that vote shall be reflected in the states’ electoral votes. It’s entirely up to each state’s legislature (without any input from the governor).

“Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors…” is how it appears in Article II of the Constitution.

As Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote in the 2000 Bush v Gore decision when the US Supreme Court overturned the Florida Supreme Court’s order for a recount that would have given the election to Al Gore:

“The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States… [T]he state legislature’s power to select the manner for appointing electors is plenary; it may, if it so chooses, select the electors itself, which indeed was the manner used by state legislatures in several States for many years after the framing of our Constitution.”

Every state’s legislature generally directs all their electors to vote for the candidate who won the majority in the state (Maine and Nebraska are the exception, allowing for split decisions), a system we call “winner takes all,” but, as Rehnquist noted, a state’s legislature (its combined house or assembly and senate) can, by simple majority vote, direct its electors to vote for any candidate they want, even over the objection of their governor.

In the 2000 election, for example, when the Florida Supreme Court ordered a complete recount of the vote for president in that state, Jeb Bush and his Republicans knew that a full, statewide recount would give Al Gore the presidency. (It would have discovered the additional 45,599 votes for Al Gore that Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris arbitrarily and illegally chose not to count, as The New York Times noted a year later.)

In other words, had the U.S. Supreme Court not intervened to stop the Florida recount, the Republicans in the Florida legislature were fully prepared to hand the entire Florida electoral college vote — and, thus, the White House — to George W. Bush, even if a recount showed that Al Gore actually won the state. It was, after all, their constitutional right, as Rehnquist later noted in Bush v Gore.

As David Barstow and Somini Sengupta wrote for the New York Times on November 28, 2000, just before the Supreme Court intervened:

“The president of Florida’s Senate said today that Gov. Jeb Bush had indicated his willingness to sign special legislation intended to award Florida’s 25 Electoral College votes to his brother Gov. George W. Bush of Texas even as the election results were being contested.”

“But,” some say, “Kamala Harris is the Vice President, so she won’t refuse to accept the Electoral College votes like Trump wanted Pence to do!”

That’s true, but irrelevant.

While the updated Electoral Count Act explicitly redefines the Vice President’s role as purely ceremonial, it does not — and could not without a constitutional amendment —alter the power of individual Republican-controlled swing states to send Trump electors (claiming that the Harris-winning results in their states are the result of voter fraud) to DC.

Regardless of how transparently dishonest such an effort would be, its primary result would be to throw to the Supreme Court the decision over which electors to count.

Multiple Court observers have noted how light the Court’s docket is this fall because, they speculate, Roberts is fully expecting to play a role in the election similar to what five Republicans on the Court did in 2000 when they stopped the Florida recount, handing the White House to George W. Bush.

The Court could then declare the election flawed because of the alleged voter fraud — Republicans across the country, as well as Trump and Vance, are already preparing the ground for this claim — and, citing the 12th Amendment, throw it to the House of Representatives.

Under that scenario, each state’s House delegation has one single vote for president (the Senate is not involved under the 12th Amendment) and right now there are 26 states controlled by Republicans: the 26-24 vote would put Trump and Vance in the White House for the next four years.

That strategy would require one or more individual states to either refuse to certify their vote, delay certifying their vote, or submit multiple slates of electors.

And we’re already hearing from both local elections officials and state legislators’ rumblings that this is exactly what they intend to do.

Another option to produce the same result would be for a majority vote in the House to refuse to certify a Harris win.

Which brings us back to Trump campaigning in Blue states. As Ed Kilgore wrote for The New Yorker:

“As it happens, there are ten highly competitive House races in California and New York, and a Trump appearance nearby could goose GOP turnout and promote party-organizing efforts in ways that could make a difference in those contests.”

This brings us back to the scenario Michelangelo shared with me. The new, 2025-2026 House is sworn in on January 3rd, whereas the presidential vote is certified on January 6th.

If Democrats win the House in November and are sworn in on January 3rd, it’s unlikely that Speaker Hakeem Jeffries would go along with Trump’s scheme on January 6th, and Republicans wouldn’t have the necessary majority in any case.

But if Republicans can hold the House, there’s a good chance that Speaker Mike Johnson would happily hold the vote to declare Harris’ win as “fraudulent.” After all, he’s the guy who corralled fully 147 votes against certifying the 2020 election in the House; his being the ringleader of that effort is the main reason he’s the speaker right now.

There are multiple razor-tight House races in California, Colorado, and New York. Trump and his co-conspirators may well believe that his holding rallies in those states represents the best bet for helping Republicans win those races, thus insuring Johnson is in charge of the House so they can refuse certification and throw the case to themselves via the Supreme Court.

Seizing control of the Senate would be the icing on the cake for this scheme, as it’s also sworn in on January 3rd and also votes to certify the Electoral College vote, but a deadlock is only necessary in one of the two legislative bodies, and if the 12th Amendment is invoked by six Republicans on the Supreme Court because of that deadlock only the House votes for president.

Keep in mind, JD Vance is still refusing to say that Trump lost the 2020 election, most recently stonewalling the question five times in a podcast interview with Lulu Garcia-Navarro of The New York Times last week. Donald Trump is also still asserting that he won, and is already signaling that he intends to declare victory in November regardless of the “official” outcome.

And, unlike in 2020, there are no longer Mitt Romneys, Adam Kinzingers, or Liz Cheneys in Congress who could gum up the works. The GOP is today unified in its assertion that voter fraud handed Joe Biden the 2020 presidency: this is the perfect setup for the scenarios I’m describing, and Republicans know it. They created it, in fact.

The most likely scenario, though, would involve local election officials gumming up the works by slow-walking counts, challenging counts, or outright refusing to certify counts at the state level long enough that several individual state votes can’t be certified by January 6th, very much like in the election of 1876.

That would provide an easy excuse for the six Republicans on the Supreme Court to intervene, invoke the 12th Amendment, and throwing the election to the House, guaranteeing Trump’s victory.

As Jim Rutenberg and Nick Corasaniti recently wrote for The New York Times:

“The Republican Party and its conservative allies are engaged in an unprecedented legal campaign targeting the American voting system. Their wide-ranging and methodical effort is laying the groundwork to contest an election that they argue, falsely, is already being rigged against former President Donald J. Trump. …
“Even if the cases fail, Mr. Trump’s allies are building excuses to dispute the results, while trying to empower thousands of local election officials to disrupt the process. Already, election board members in several states have moved to block certification of primary election tallies, including in a major swing county in Nevada last week.”

The updated Electoral Count Act sets a hard date of December 11th for states to certify the vote, but doesn’t detail any consequences or outcomes if states fail to meet that date. Thus, in the case of conflict, confusion, or multiple lawsuits the case would, again, end up before the six Republicans who control the Supreme Court.

As the Times’ Rutenberg and Corasaniti note:

“For his part, Mr. Whatley, the co-chair of the Republican National Committee, was noncommittal when reporters recently asked him if his party would seek to block certification in any states this fall.
“‘We’re not going to cross any of those bridges right now,’ he said.”

Gee, ya think? They couldn’t be telegraphing their plans any more clearly if they were skywriting them.

I wrapped up my March 2020 article predicting the GOP’s upcoming fake elector strategy by imploring Democrats and the media to ring the alarm before they tried to pull it off:

“Get it into the media and repeat it over and over again: The GOP plans to claim Democratic voter fraud in this election to steal the election for themselves, and they’re already getting people primed for it!”

It’s worth repeating today.

Pass it along.

For years, linking climate change to the growing destructive power of hurricanes was off limits for mainstream media. Now the connection is undeniable. Massive in size, rapidly intensifying, loaded with unprecedented rainfall, and firing off fatal tornadoes, the link between a warmer world and monster hurricanes like Helene and Milton is impossible to ignore—though too much coverage still does.

But even when news stories tell us that “climate change” is causing these rapidly intensifying storms, they are only telling us half the story. Climate change is not just the fuel for these disasters, it is also the result of the decades of lies from big oil and gas companies that created the climate emergency and are still fueling it today.

Scientists from ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel majors told executives decades ago that unabated use of their products could cause “catastrophic” climate disasters. Instead of sounding the alarm, the oil and gas industry launched the most consequential campaign of lies in human history, on a scale far worse and more damaging than anything before. They funded junk science, polluted our politics, and ran massive advertising campaigns all with the goal of stopping any action that could threaten their bottom line. Our climate crisis is the result of that deception, as are the super-charged hurricanes, deadly heatwaves, and mega wildfires that we now face because Big Oil stole decades from humanity that we can never get back.

The problem with only blaming “climate change” for killer weather events is that it leaves out how exactly we got into this mess—and who is responsible.

If we talk only about “climate change” during these disasters, we forgo a critical teaching moment when millions are open to learning about an issue that typically commands almost no attention at all. As painful as they are, the moments when deadly storms have our attention are precisely the times we need to talk about the elephant in the room: the fossil fuel industry. The longer we avoid the issue, the more violent these storms will become, because the industry has not stopped lying and is doubling down on the products fueling the crisis. Now that climate change is everywhere, fossil fuel companies don’t so much deny the problem as they promote “solutions” they know are bogus, like “natural gas,” which is roughly as bad for the climate as coal, or carbon capture, which is laughable as a solution in the timeframe and scale that is needed, not to mention that to date it has been used primarily to extract even more oil.

The problem with only blaming “climate change” for killer weather events is that it leaves out how exactly we got into this mess—and who is responsible. Climate change doesn’t have lobbyists, doesn’t have executives making decisions, cannot be investigated, and cannot be held accountable in the courts. As long as climate change is seen as the cause of all extreme weather destruction, the oil industry can continue pretending to be part of the solution.

It was the oil and gas industry, not climate change, that created widespread climate denial and turned climate action into a partisan political issue. It was the oil and gas industry, not climate change, that successfully blocked ratification of the Kyoto Treaty in 1998, killed Waxman-Markey in 2009, and watered down the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, ensuring the law would not place limits on climate pollution or in any way slow the expansion of the U.S. oil and gas industry.

This focus on a causal agent that can never be held accountable spawns a spectrum of negative consequences. It shields the true cause, the lying oil and gas majors, from any form of accountability. Instead of the oil and gas majors being forced to pay their fair share for disaster recovery, we hear calls for more FEMA funding, which is merely taxpayers footing the bill. And instead of reckoning with the fact that some of those who died would very likely still be alive were these storms not radically amplified by fossil fuel emissions made possible by companies who have lied about just about every aspect of their role in causing the problem, we act as if there can be no accountability for these deaths.

The question is not, “Did climate change make these two hurricanes more destructive?” We already know that along with climate change comes more powerful and deadly storms. The question is, who and what caused climate change? The answer to that question is right before us.

We have endured 50 years of unrelenting class war and culture war campaigns by corporate elites, conservatives, and neoliberals against the democratic achievements of last century's progress. Following the gains achieved from the 1930's through the end of the end of the 1960's, we've now had five decades of devastating attacks on the rights of workers, women, and people of color. It's been a half-century of creeping authoritarianism. And now, having failed to effectively counter it with truly progressive and radical democratic action, we face the threat of full-throated fascism. Just listen to what the rhetoric of Donald Trump and his MAGA followers in Congress, on-line, and at rallies portends.

So, what is to be done?

However much we may have yearned for a more progressive ticket and platform—the answer to the above question is simple: Work like hell for Harris/Walz, and their fellow Democratic nominees from top-to- bottom, to win in November. If they lose, we lose.

We lose not only the election, but also any chance of redeeming and enhancing American democratic life in the foreseeable future.

But don’t think of November 5th as merely an election to save American democratic life. Because the struggle for us, however much rooted in the long struggle to make real the revolutionary promise of the Declaration—the promise of equality and life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all Americans—will have just begun. Think of it as a vote to empower ourselves anew to take up that fight.

Don’t think of November 5th as merely an election to save American democratic life.

Having recently produced a comic strip recounting FDR’s 1944 call and the continuing fight for an Economic Bill of Rights, Matt "The Letterhack" Strackbein and I have been asking ourselves what we should do now to remind Americans of who we all are and what we need to do to truly save democracy.

To both help us confront the question and inspire us to make history anew, we invited the great radical patriot and pamphleteer Thomas Paine to join us at the bar. This is the Paine whose Common Sense turned a colonial rebellion into a revolution for independence and the making of a democratic republic; the Paine, whose Crisis papers sustained the Revolution in its darkest days; the Paine who not only called for an end to slavery, but also proposed the creation of a social security system.

As we say at the close of this comic: Stay tuned…

Eight years ago, Hillary R. Clinton seemed certain to derail Donald J. Trump’s barely begun political career. Instead, a witch’s brew of misogyny, mistakes, and the Electoral College gave us our second minority-vote president of the early 21st century.

Eight years later, here we are in the final weeks of a second presidential matchup with an equally possible stark and dark outcome, Trump versus Kamala Harris.

Demented Donald would turn America into His Own Special Hell (HOSH, not MAGA). Harris would not lead us to heaven, but she’d take us to a better place and spare us from any of Trump’s shenanigans. If she wins, she’d also finally add the United States to the list of nations together enough to elect a woman to the highest office in the land.

America’s Founding Fathers left us so much to be proud of. The Electoral College, on the other hand, is nothing to be proud of.

Now let’s examine some aspects of Election 2024, starting with the one that tops all the others: the almost laughable axiom that character counts in the race to the White House. This year, in the large, character counts for approximately zero.

The Republican candidate is a convicted felon, a sexual predator, a serial liar, a grifter, a racist, a poster boy for moral bankruptcy (and financial bankruptcy as well). None of which matters: Unfathomably, unbelievably, tens of millions of Americans will vote to put him back in the Oval Office for another four years.

Underlining the point—the irrelevance of character in Election 2024—the best comes last. A 449-page book by Vincent L. Sterling, published this June, argues (seriously) that Donald J. Trump has been chosen by God. Of course, of course; how could any character-conscious voter miss the divine clues that Sterling spies?

The Democrats pulled off a surprise by nominating little-known Tim Walz for vice president, and he returned the favor with a surprise of his own. The headline of one news report summed it up: “Tim Walz’s simple takedown of Republicans goes viral.”

Walz’s plain words, stingingly sharply, gave the Harris-Walz ticket an exhilarating liftoff: “These guys are creepy and yes, just weird as hell.”

When was the last time that major members of a political party openly opposed their chosen presidential nominee? Good for you for remembering it was only four years ago, and the candidate they couldn’t and wouldn’t vote for was Donald Trump. Among the non-Trumpers were marquee names by the scores, headed by former president George W. Bush. The nays also included three former secretaries of defense (William H. Cohen, Chuck Hagel and James Mattis) and Colin Powell, the former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff who went on serve as Bush’s secretary of state.

The number of Republicans repelled by Trump is only half the story in 2024, and it’s the other half that’s rocked and shocked both parties. In addition to opposing The Donald, droves of GOPers have also publicly declared they’ll be voting for Harris. Once again there’s a glittering roster of Republican turncoats, topped off this time by one of the most committed right-wingers ever to occupy the ranks of the right. That would be former Vice President Dick Cheney, who finally showed just a touch of the spine of his daughter Liz.

Cheney not only matched his daughter, he outmatched the man he served as vice president. Former President George W. Bush has no plans to endorse anybody in 2024. According to his office, “President Bush retired from presidential politics years ago.” (Note: Bush the retiree personally revealed that his vote in 2020 went not to Trump but to Condoleeza Rice.)

National security officials normally keep their presidential politics to themselves; not so, though, in the abnormal year of 2024.

Hundreds of high-ranking security personnel have not only thrown their support behind Harris, they’ve described Trump as “impulsive and ill-informed.” They see him as lacking in leadership and subject to a “scary authoritarian streak.” There were 741 signers to the letter that lays out their views, including U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Michael Smith, the president of National Security Leaders for America.

Come November 5, none of these ingredients will decide Election 2024; that power lies solely with the Electoral College.

America’s Founding Fathers left us so much to be proud of. The Electoral College, on the other hand, is nothing to be proud of. It’s been with us for our entire history, ever since the country was formed in Philadelphia in 1787. It was a compromise, inserted into the Constitution essentially to appease slaveholders in the colonial South.

Constitutional law expert Wilfred U. Codrington III describes it as a lasting stain: “More than two centuries after it was designed to empower southern white voters, the system continues to do just that.”

Stay tuned for November 5 (or the next day, or the next…)

Lies and rumors about the federal hurricane response serve to build the far-right’s governing power. At the expense of human lives, the far-right—which nowadays includes the Republican party, the Trump campaign, billionaire donors, GOP governors, and the advocates behind Project 2025—deliberately sows distrust in government, specifically targeting federal public administration.

Federal agencies’ roles in a disaster are to issue warnings, provide rescue and relief, and support rebuilding. Across the spectrum of public administration, agencies’ regular jobs involve the things we rely on every single day: ensure our tap water is clean, our food and medicines are safe, our collective bargaining rights are protected, our retirement checks arrive on time, and much more. Yet the far-right peddles a dangerous narrative that casts public agencies and civil servants as the “deep state,” the enemy of the people. By delegitimizing our government, they pave the way for an authoritarian takeover.

As we knock on doors to mobilize voters, we must be prepared to address widespread distrust in government, whether it manifests in anger or apathy. If people give up on government—which we formed to solve problems together that we cannot tackle alone—they retreat or turn to strongmen for answers. How do we debunk the “deep state” conspiracy and shine a light on the essential role of government in delivering on our needs?

There is a bleak logic to gutting public protections and public services: When government is unable to deliver, people become resentful and receptive to authoritarian fixes.

This summer I worked on a new toolkit, recently released by Race Forward, to help shift the narrative and block the far-right’s assault on public administration. It offers ideas for talking about what public administration is, and what it can be. While we know that the federal government produced or maintained many of the inequities and injustices we see today, it can also be part of the solution. Throughout history, movements for civil rights, workers’ rights, women’s rights, and many others taught us how to bend government towards justice.

We must begin by taking people’s affective responses to government seriously. Working class and poor people feel disaffected and disempowered because government hasn’t delivered for them. The class divide is real, the power and wealth gap between the rich and the rest of us is growing, racial injustice remains entrenched, misogyny is on the rise. Decades of neoliberal policies, pushing the commercialization of everything, have produced a full-blown crisis for working class people, disproportionately people of color. Privatization, disinvestment, and corporate capture have hollowed out public institutions and dismantled public goods. Our human rights are violated on a daily basis by unaffordable, commoditized housing and healthcare, food deserts, grocery price gauging, and hazardous workplaces, thereby shortening the lifespans of people pushed to the economic margins. Public administrative agencies are seen as bureaucratic barriers at best, and as controlling, coercing, and policing Black, brown, and poor people at worst.

This crisis has produced a fertile ground for a far-right plan, laid out by Project 2025, to capture the institutions of public administration. By delegitimizing government and setting it up to fail, authoritarians make it easier for themselves to take it over and turn government against communities.

Lying about federal disaster response fits neatly into this strategy. Rumors about the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) seizing people’s property and spending aid dollars on migrants sow distrust, division, and hate and undercut the agency’s ability to deliver. This sets the stage for the far-right’s goal to end any government action to address the climate crisis. Project 2025 plans to drastically shrink federal disaster aid, shift costs to localities, privatize federal flood insurance, and terminate grants for community preparedness. Because climate research and planning are seen as harmful to what Project 2025 calls “prosperity,” the plan is to break up the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), including the National Weather Service that sends out hurricane warnings, and commercialize weather forecasting, likely putting warnings behind paywalls.

There is a bleak logic to gutting public protections and public services: When government is unable to deliver, people become resentful and receptive to authoritarian fixes.

This is particularly painful because it comes at a time when the Biden-Harris administration has taken some steps toward making federal agencies more responsive to people’s needs. This includes not only climate-related investments and jobs, but also new regulations that advance environmental justice, protect workers from heat exposure, increase overtime eligibility, ban non-compete clauses, and limit credit card penalty fees. But such agency actions often remain invisible, obscured by bureaucratic procedures, buried in the tax code, or held up in courts. We can surface these tangible efforts when we talk to potential voters and point to the purpose and possibilities of public administration.

A Trump presidency would reverse both recent progress and systemic protections embedded in the work of federal agencies. Project 2025 is not shy about terminating the enforcement of hard-won civil rights laws and privileging the narrow interests of corporations that price gauge, pollute, and exploit our communities. It would staff agencies with white Christian nationalists who seek to divide and dominate us.

These threats cannot be averted through a merely defensive stance. By calling on people to defend “democracy,” establishment politicians ignore popular anger, rooted in persistent experiences of inequity and injustice. Promoting an “opportunity economy” that relinquishes the goal of equitable outcomes simply doesn’t cut it. We can only block a far-right power grab if we tackle the injustices that fuel resentment. To mobilize people, we must have a compelling vision for turning government into a force for equity and justice. The job of public agencies is to protect our rights and deliver on our needs, and we can make them do just that—as long as we stand together, united.

In this election and beyond, we must contest the far-right narrative that undermines government and public administration. When people are reluctant to engage because the system is not working for them, let’s raise their expectations of government as a protector of rights, a provider of public goods and services, and a site for exercising our collective power.

This summer, with the stunning landscape of the Mongolian steppe as a backdrop, Indigenous Peoples from all corners of the world gathered together around a fire as instrumental music played and animals grazed freely in the fields. At a time of immense social, economic, and environmental upheaval globally, the gathering celebrated Indigenous unity, spirituality, and shared respect for the Earth.

The experience in Mongolia marked a momentary pause from the relentless mistreatment and oppression that Indigenous Peoples' cultures have endured for centuries and that we continue to endure to this day.

Despite the fact that Indigenous Peoples sustain approximately 40% of Earth's remaining intact ecosystems, agribusiness, mining, and extractive companies are driving deforestation across our land, while climate change sets our homes on fire. At the same time, Indigenous Peoples' languages, which represent a deep tie to our cultures and values, are fading out. Every two weeks, an Indigenous language dies. These realities are frightening, but we cannot ignore them. Instead, we must address them head-on and remain resilient.

It's time for the world to recognize that in preserving our way of life, we are also contributing significantly to preserving life on Earth.

The ceremony in Mongolia marked the start of the second in-person gathering of the Wayfinders Circle, a global network of Indigenous Peoples who have successfully kept alive our ways of life, along with our land, languages, traditions, and cultures. The Wayfinders Circle is composed of 15 member groups from across the seven sociocultural regions of the world, protecting 47 million hectares of land and 72 million hectares of oceans. The alliance gathers experts in the care and management of Indigenous territories, marked by guardianship, self-governance, and ancestral knowledge rooted in spirituality and passed down through generations.

Members of the Wayfinders Circle are seeking to address the challenges, threats, and difficulties Indigenous Peoples face and re-empower our communities as a collective by coming together, learning, and exchanging experiences related to ways of life, belief systems, and traditional practices. Together, we are using new mediums and methods to preserve the world in which we live.

I was fortunate to witness the initial formation of the alliance, and last month, I had the honor of sharing welcoming words during the premiere of the new film series, The Wayfinders, which brings attention to our work preserving our cultures and protecting our planet. The series, which premiered at the American Museum of Natural History during Climate Week NYC, allows Indigenous Peoples to tell our story from our perspective. It highlights Indigenous Peoples' deep connection to the environment and our role in protecting our sacred land, from the lush forests of Borneo, to the ancient territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy and the biodiverse Northern Territory of Australia. In each corner of the world, we are connected and fighting together to protect who we are.

Even though Indigenous Peoples have distinct perspectives and experiences, speak different languages, and represent diverse cultures and beliefs, what brings us together now is our profound connection to our homelands, a relationship built across millennia. Through the creation of The Wayfinders, what became abundantly clear is that we are all dedicated to the preservation of Indigenous cultures, from territorial management to the protection of sacred sites and languages.

Language in particular is a core aspect of who we are. It is more than just a means of communication—it is a living and sacred link between our past, present, and future. Language connects Indigenous Peoples' communities to our ancestors, carrying forward our history, beliefs, and traditions. It plays a vital role in preserving culture and ensuring its continuity for future generations.

I am Saami from Norway. As Sámi people, we are considered the only Indigenous Peoples in Europe, including Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Russia. We feel proud that, despite the challenges, we maintain our language. Our rich vocabulary is essential for our traditional livelihoods, such as reindeer herding, as it allows us to describe conditions crucial for navigation and survival in the Arctic landscape. It's estimated that the Sámi languages have more than 300 words specifically for snow and ice. These words capture subtle variations in snow's texture, quality, form, and changes over time, reflecting our people's deep connection to and understanding of our environment.

As Indigenous Peoples around the world continue to face growing threats to our cultures, land, languages, and spirituality, we are thinking expansively and creatively to fight back. Through children's books, modern songs, cultural camps, digital platforms, and more, Indigenous Peoples are preserving our way of life. The success of these efforts is not only a testament to the resilience of Indigenous Peoples but also a profound statement about the importance of our cultural and spiritual identity. It's time for the world to recognize that in preserving our way of life, we are also contributing significantly to preserving life on Earth.

As a lot of places in the U.S. have made the switch from "Columbus Day" to "Indigenous Peoples Day," honoring and recognizing the rich history, cultures, and contributions of Indigenous Peoples, as well as acknowledging the effects of colonialism and the injustices they've faced, I invite you to take a step further. Just changing the name isn't enough. I encourage everyone to look for ways to respect Indigenous Peoples and embrace the wayfinding guiding wisdom of our ancestors as we tackle the global challenges we're facing today.

With Election Day just three weeks off and voting already underway in some states, the race for president is down to the wire. Progressives could make the difference.

While no one in their left mind plans to vote for the fascistic and unhinged former U.S. President Donald Trump, some say they won’t vote for Vice President Kamala Harris because of her loyalty to President Joe Biden’s support for the Israeli war on Gaza. That might enable Trump to win with enough electoral votes from swing states—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Those seven states are where progressives may well hold the future in their voting hands.

If it becomes a reality, the Trump-Vance administration will force progressives back on their heels, necessarily preoccupied with trying to mitigate the onslaught of massive damage being inflicted by right-wing zealots with vast government power.

The policy that Harris has defended for the war on Gaza is despicable. At the same time, she is the only candidate who can spare us from another Trump presidency, which—from all indications—would be far worse than the first one.

The need is urgent for dialectics—“a method of examining and discussing opposing ideas in order to find the truth”—in this case, the truth of what’s most needed at this electoral crossroads of fateful history.

“The harms of the other options” mean that the best course of action is to vote for Harris, 25 Islamic clerics said in a letter released last week. They focused on an overarching truth: “Particularly in swing states, a vote for a third party could enable Trump to win that state and therefore the election.” The U.S. clerics called such a vote “both a moral and a strategic failure.”

Personally, as a resident of solid-blue California, I have no intention of voting for Harris. But if I lived in one of the seven swing states, I wouldn’t hesitate to join in voting for her as the only way to defeat Trump.

Some speak of the need to exercise conscience rather than voting for Harris. Yet in swing states, what kind of “conscience” is so self-focused that it risks doing harm to others as a result of a Trump presidency?

If it becomes a reality, the Trump-Vance administration will force progressives back on their heels, necessarily preoccupied with trying to mitigate the onslaught of massive damage being inflicted by right-wing zealots with vast government power.

On domestic policies—involving racism, reproductive rights, civil liberties, the environment, climate, labor rights, the social safety net, civil rights, voting rights, LGBTQ rights, freedom of speech and the right to organize, the judicial system, and so much more—the differences between the Trump and Harris forces are huge. To claim that those differences are insignificant is a nonsensical version of elitism, no matter how garbed in leftist rhetoric.

On foreign policy, Harris is the vice president in an administration fully on board with bipartisan militarism that keeps boosting the Pentagon budget, bypassing diplomacy for ending the Ukraine war while stoking the cold war, and—with vast arms shipments to Israel—literally making possible the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

At the same time, anyone who thinks that Trump (“finish the job”) wouldn’t be even worse for Palestinian people—hard as that is to imagine—doesn’t grasp why Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is so eager for Trump to win.

The leadership of the Uncommitted Movement has sorted out the political options. The terrain was well described by Uncommitted leader Abbas Alawieh, who said last month: “At this time, our movement opposes a Donald Trump presidency whose agenda includes plans to accelerate the killing in Gaza while intensifying the suppression of anti-war organizing. And our movement is not recommending a third-party vote in the presidential election, especially as third-party votes in key swing states could help inadvertently deliver a Trump presidency, given our country’s broken Electoral College system.”

As his frequent collaborator C.J. Polychroniou noted last month, Noam Chomsky “has repeatedly made the argument that voting for a third-party or independent candidate in a swing state would accomplish nothing but increase the possibility of the most extreme and positively nuts candidate winning the election.”

In an interview with Jacobin a few weeks ago, Alawieh had this to say:

As someone who has family who lives in South Lebanon right now—who are living under the terror of U.S. weapons raining down on them from the Israeli military—I do not have the luxury of giving up on the only one of the two major parties where there is room for this debate. To be clear, there’s room for this debate not because the Democratic Party is friendly to Palestinian human rights. There’s room for this debate because A) the Republican Party is not the party where we can have this conversation; not a single federal elected official on the Republican side even supports a cease-fire as this genocide has raged on, and B) the Democratic Party speaks of being the party of justice and inclusion, and there are more and more of us within the party who are insisting that the party change its immoral and illegal support of sending weapons to harm and kill civilians.

Similarly, another prominent Uncommitted Movement leader, Palestinian American Layla Elabed, said: “We urge Uncommitted voters to register anti-Trump votes and vote up and down the ballot. Our focus remains on building this anti-war coalition, both inside and outside the Democratic Party.”

This is certainly not the presidential election that we want, but it’s the one we have. The immediate task is to prevent a Trump victory. His defeat is essential to keep doors open for progressive change that a new Trump presidency would slam shut with extreme right-wing power.