You may not have heard but Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) planted a covert informant within a migrant rights organization, engaged in widespread electronic and physical surveillance of its members, and utilized other government agencies to collect information about them, which led to the detentions, and at times deportations, of some of its key members. They did this to freeze the organization’s political speech and put an end to their organizing.

You may or may not be surprised that this started during the Obama administration and ending during Trump’s first term—well before the onslaught of constitutional and human rights abuses against politically active immigrants (and others) that we have seen over the last several weeks.

The use of immigration enforcement to freeze political speech is not new; in fact, it’s a practice that dates far back in the country’s history.

However, it’s possible the current administration is pushing the practice to a breaking point and waking the U.S. public up to its gross and extreme injustices. And we just may have seen one of the first signs of this breaking point with the release of Palestinian rights activist and green card holder Mohsen Mahdawi on Wednesday.

To start, the organization mentioned above is a powerful and internationally recognized migrant rights group, Migrant Justice, which has been organizing migrant workers in the state of Vermont’s dairy industry since 2009. Migrant Justice is perhaps best known for its work improving conditions for migrant workers on farms sourced by the ice cream brand Ben & Jerry’s (now owned by Unilever) but out of necessity expanded its organizing to include fighting for protections from police and ICE collaborations, winning access to drivers’ licenses for undocumented residents in Vermont, successfully organizing workers in the construction industry, expanding access to in-state tuition and financial aid for undocumented residents in the state, and fighting to keep many immigrants out of detention (among other ongoing campaigns and programs).

For its successes, however, the group garnered much attention from the country’s increasingly belligerent and internally focused immigration enforcement agencies.

“I've brought you a famous person,” an ICE officer boasted when he brought Enrique Balcazar, one of the organization’s lead organizers, into detention, mockingly referring to the national recognition Balcazar had gained for his work.

The depth to which ICE knew the details of Migrant Justice members’ lives, references to colleagues and friends and family, and a specific refusal for those detained to contact other Migrant Justice members, whom the officers specified by name, all revealed that ICE had been surveilling the group down to the minute details of their lives through what Migrant Justice has since shown were illegal means and reasons.

However, Migrant Justice, being who they are, sent the Trump administration back to their corner.

In a subsequent lawsuit filed by the group in 2018 against the Department of Homeland Security, they argued that ICE did not have probable cause to go after its members, and none of them fit the high priority ‘criminal’ profile of immigration cases that ICE claims to focus on. Instead, Migrant Justice argued, they had been targeted specifically for their successful organizing and that the federal government was attempting to retaliate and freeze their speech by harassing, intimidating, and deporting them. In so doing, ICE infringed on their First Amendment rights.

Migrant Justice went on to engage in an ongoing public campaign in support of their case, with large support in the state of Vermont including rallies at the Federal courthouses in Burlington, garnering national attention.

ICE eventually said uncle. By 2020 DHS settled outside of court with Migrant Justice. As a part of the stipulations of the settlement, ICE implemented a policy in which employees are obligated to act “in accordance with the First amendment, including its commitment to not profile, target on account of, or discriminate against any individual or group for exercising First Amendment rights.” This new wording clarified that all migrants (regardless of status) are protected under this constitutional right.

However, several years later, the Trump administration is at it again, as we have seen with the detention and attempted disappearance of Palestinian rights activists and other organizers of various backgrounds and immigration statuses. Once again, we see an executive branch using immigration enforcement in attempts to freeze speech. A few of those recently detained for their speech include Georgetown Professor Badar Khan Suri; Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi, Tufts University Student Rumeysa Ozturk; Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil; Aditya Wahyu Harsono; Farmworker union leader Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez Zeferino; and 37 workers at a roofing company in Washington state who had not too long ago attempted to unionize.

This is not to mention the more than 1,000 international students across 160 colleges that had their visas or legal status revoked or the countless others taken from their homes, places of worship, schools, vehicles, you name it, and detained or deported without due process—another constitutionally protected right.

And just last Monday evening, Border Patrol agents detained eight farmworkers associated with Migrant Justice on a dairy farm in Northern Vermont, in addition to one other who was on his way to deliver groceries to farm workers on that very same farm. Migrant Justice is now rallying for their release.

The connection between Migrant Justice’s ongoing struggle and what is happening to Palestinian rights activists today is not lost on the group.

In fact, these farmworkers were held in the same room as Mohsen Mahdawi prior to his release.

In an earlier speech at a rally for Palestinian rights activist Mahmoud Khalil, Balcazar, stated:

“…for this organizing, the struggle in which we find ourselves, we have faced persecution from immigration authorities. Immigration uses the threat of detention and deportation to keep us silent, just as they do with Mahmoud Khalil and all the immigrant students who are fighting against the genocide in Gaza.”

He continued:

“I went through what Mahmoud Khalil is going through today…but thanks to the brave and powerful solidarity of the community, [we] won back our freedom. We fought our case to stay in this country and denounced ICE’s abuse of power. It was a long fight, but we won. And we are going to win the freedom of Mahmoud Khalil. We demand that this government respect the constitutional right of freedom of expression! Free Mahmoud Khalil now!”

In their case, Migrant Justice and their legal representation (ACLU, Center for Constitutional Rights, and others) had followed in a long line of court cases that have proven that immigrants, of all statuses, are protected under the U.S. constitution; and thus the U.S. government cannot use immigration enforcement to retaliate for political reasons.

The history of case law in the U.S. is quite clear:

• Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886) - Supreme Court unanimously ruled biased enforcement of the law against non-citizens is in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment
• Bridges v. Wixon (1945) - Supreme Court ruled in favor of an immigrant’s First Amendment right to free speech: “Freedom of speech and of press is accorded aliens residing in this country”
• Chew v. Colding (1953) - Supreme Court ruled in favor of an immigrant’s First and Fifth amendments
• Almeida-Sanchez v. United States (1973) - found that all persons accused of a crime on U.S. soil, no matter their immigration status, are guaranteed due process
• Zadvydas v. Davis (2001) - Supreme Court ruled due process, a Constitutional right, applies to everybody in the U.S. even if their presence is “unlawful, involuntary, or transitory”
• In 2014 several federal district courts found ICE detainer requests that kept noncitizens in custody longer than citizens was unconstitutional, e.g., Miranda-Olivares v. Clackamas Cty. (2014).
• For a more comprehensive review of this history check out Migrant Justice in the Age of Removal.

And Migrant Justice’s case influenced coinciding cases that had similarly dealt with the question of First Amendment rights for immigrant organizers. Notably, shortly after the settlement, migrant rights activists Maru Mora-Villalpando and Ravi Ragbir won their respective cases against ICE and the right to remain in the country.

The U.S. Department of Justice has, throughout history, repeatedly attempted to deny constitutional rights for documented and undocumented immigrants alike. And, of course, there are cases that have not fallen in favor of immigrant plaintiffs, often due to abstract (and arguably unconstitutional) legal practices such as the Plenary Power doctrine, in which the court has at times deferred jurisdictional authority over matters of immigration to the Executive branch.

Despite some legal setbacks for immigrant rights over time, however, the federal court system has increasingly taken up immigrant rights cases, and despite some cases to the contrary, have mostly shown in undeniable ways that immigrants are included within the U.S. Constitution’s protections. I argue that this has happened in tandem with public protest, immigrant rights campaigns, and a shift in public opinion.

At this point, any case against the federal government on the grounds of constitutional rights for immigrants in the U.S. should be cut and dry. But it’s painfully obvious we should not feel comfortable resting on those laurels. We know this administration is breaking the law – denying rights that they have no authority to take away. So, what is to be done?

As history has shown us, rights aren’t won or protected in the courts alone, in a vacuum. Any legal scholar will tell you; it is the timbre of public opinion, and protest, that the courts often react to when making these decisions. Public opinion, can certainly affect the way the federal courts lean, as was seen in the civil rights movement and its relationship to the massive gains made during the years of the Warren Court era (1953-1969). While rights won through civil rights movements are latent within the constitutional expression “we the people,” those words only come into fruition when people challenge the forms of power within American democracy that seek to border, territorialize, and limit inclusion of those rights to just a select few.

The same is possible for all persons present in this country regardless of immigration status. While mass public outrage increased during Trump’s first term, it is building arguably to new heights today, particularly against its most publicly visible acts like the disappearance of Palestinian rights activists and the mass deportation of immigrants to a prison known for its torturous conditions in El Salvador.

Last weekend saw another round of mass protests across the country against the Trump administration’s extra-judicial actions. Last weekend also saw the U.S. Supreme Court block the Trump administration from sending another group of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador with no due process. And we saw a federal judge order the Trump administration to transfer Rumeysa Ozturk to Vermont, stating, "The government cannot undermine the justice system and attempt to manipulate a case's jurisdiction by secretly transporting and imprisoning someone over a thousand miles from home." And after a considerable amount of pushback, including 65 lawsuits, the Trump administration appears to be reversing its attempts to strip thousands international students of their visas through the SEVIS system.

The Supreme Court is today stacked with judges implanted by Trump in his first term. And yet, today, they appear to be, in some cases, holding him accountable to the law, in what I might argue is in lockstep with immigrant rights activists and the supporting public opinion that is only made known by those growing crowds of protesters who dare to continue speaking out.

For the last two weeks I have attended morning rallies outside of the Federal courthouses in Burlington for the release of Mohsen, the same place we rallied for in support for Migrant Justice’s case against ICE almost 7 years ago. The crowd last Wednesday was big. The crowd Wednesday was even bigger. One can assume that the chants of “Free Mohsen!” and “Free them all!” could be heard inside the court room.

And the whole world heard that same crowd burst out when Mohsen walked free from building, peace signs in the air.

What history tells us is that we must continue showing up in protest in the streets, outside of court rooms, outside of detention centers, in our public spaces, and show the courts, and all of our branches of government for that matter, where our alliance lies: not with some rogue executive branch bent on ruling at will, but in the principles laid out in the U.S. constitution, those of equal dignity and rights for all.

As Mohsen said today: “From this place, in front of this court, me standing here with you, among you, it sends a message that is loud and clear not only to Vermont but to the rest of America: We the people will hold the constitution accountable to the principles and values we believe in.”

The Trump administration has shown it is willing to defy court orders, and has now detained a judge for refusing to comply with an extrajudicial action by the Trump administration. Mohsen has court dates ahead of him yet. And there is a long road ahead for any of the current cases mentioned here. As some have suggested, the country may by on the brink of a constitutional crisis.

That is one reason why we all need to continue to protest and make our voices heard. Today, at your local May 1 rally is a great time to do so.

Today we remember (again) that together, working in tandem and in support of migrant activists from all backgrounds, we can all actually affect these processes.

I write this from the chilly state of Vermont one month into Spring. If you listen closely, you can hear a great thawing, as protesters continue to speak out in favor of the inalienable human, civil, and constitutional rights of all persons in the U.S. As the movement grows, perhaps we could be witnessing an American Spring in the name of human dignity, at least if we continue to fight for it. Its mud season in Vermont. Our boots are still laced up, but the heavy coats are being put away for the year. There is still some snow in the mountains, but the ice is sure to melt.

*A small portion of this article is excerpted from my book, Migrant Justice in the Age of Removal, recently published by University of Georgia Press.

Dear “Cesar,”

This May Day, as I march with my union, the Berkeley Federation of Teachers, I will thank them for their role in making Berkeley Unified a sanctuary school district and Berkeley, a sanctuary city, but above all, I would like to thank you.

It’s been over 18 years since your last day in our second grade class—a heartbreaking Valentine’s Day in 2007—just before your family succumbed to a deportation order forcing you to leave the country, despite your U.S. citizenship.

This year, convicted felon and twice-impeached President Donald Trump’s Valentine’s Day present was to threaten all public schools and universities to desist in teaching about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) or lose funding. He also issued executive orders illegally revoking visas, work permits, and even facilitating the arrest and detention of immigrants and their allies.

ICE tried to banish the family of one 7-year-old citizen, and the union and community came together in a powerful fist of defiance, protecting hundreds and inspiring other cities that followed our example.

Do you remember the now-censored “DEI” book about Cesar Chavez that I read to your class, Harvesting Hope by Kathleen Krull? She told the story of how the huge Chavez family lost their farm to the depression and drought that scourged Arizona in 1937. Some of you cried when you learned that the Chavez family was forced to trade their productive 80-acre finca for the life of migrant farm workers, developing lesions, blisters, knotted backs, and burning eyes and lungs.

But I reassured you: “No hay mal que por bien no venga.—There is nothing so bad that good can’t come of it.” Were it not for the Cesar family’s displacement, he might not have co-founded the United Farm Workers, a union that has saved countless farm workers’ lives, improved working conditions, and inspired multitudes internationally. Similarly, your family’s suffering gave birth to change and hope in the city you were forced to abandon and beyond.

For years I’ve waited until you were old enough to understand my recounting of the resistance leading to the safeguards you inspired. After you left, your classmates and I would tear up looking at your name on your mailbox and your empty seat. I fought against tears every time we said the Rosa Parks Pledge: “to make this world a better place for ALL people to enjoy freedom,” because ALL didn’t include you.

Your mother wrote from Mexico that you had transformed from my cheerful, round-cheeked model student into a sullen malnourished child who refused to do his school work or eat. I could not stop crying.

Inspired by the ironic letters of my parents’ close friend Blacklist-breaking screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, I wrote an Open Letter to an Immigration Judge:

Dear Honorable Immigration Judge,

…how can I go on teaching about equal rights and freedom of speech and all the things our Constitution is supposed to defend, and that the very name of our school is supposed to represent, when the father of my students is deported simply because his skin is darker? Both my Latine and white students are U.S. citizens. So how do I explain to the class that one has the right to a family in the United States and the other citizen does not?

The letter went viral. A community faith organization called BOCA helped my student teacher and me organize an informational event April 26 with cafeteria tables full of lawyers offering free advice. Rosa Parks’ families pressured the superintendent and police to protect immigrant students. With BOCA’s assistance, as a BFT union representative, I wrote and presented a resolution to the BFT executive board to make BUSD a sanctuary district and it passed overwhelmingly.

Meanwhile your classmates heroically transformed their grief into actions by writing their own “Without You” poems based on Los Panchos’ “Sin Ti” song and read them on an Univision TV special about you.

Next, my spouse and I pulled the best elements of sanctuary ordinances around the country together into a local ordinance and presented it to Berkeley’s Peace and Justice Commission. It won unanimous support and was recommended to the City Council. On May 22, 2007 we organized a rally outside city hall in favor of our beefed up sanctuary ordinance. Aided by the BFT, many of BFT’s Spanish two-way immersion teachers, KPFA host Larry Bensky, LeConte’s principal, and the Berkeley community, the rally reverberated through the City Council chambers. Berkeley Resolution City of Refuge 63711-N.S. was adopted that night (5-22-07) giving a previously symbolic resolution the teeth of law. Berkeley’s spark of an example ignited other cities that adopted similar ordinances throughout the nation. Months later, BFT president Cathy Campbell got our School Board to adopt our sanctuary District resolution as board policy.

Over the years, this work has only gained strength.This January 21, Berkeley School Board Member Jen Corn submitted an even stronger resolution to the City Council reaffirming Berkeley’s status as a sanctuary city and it passed overwhelmingly again. And in February, teachers, principals, office workers, and support staff received a two hour training on how to safeguard the rights of our immigrant students. This whole sequence of events began when you, “Cesar,” my polite, photogenic, straight-A, bilingual 7-year-old student, became the poster child of a renewed movement to protect immigrant rights in Berkeley.

So today, as Donald Trump outdoes predecessors in figuratively defiling our Statue of Liberty, Mother of Exiles, thanks to you,“Cesar,” so many more of us are able to defend her call for our “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” ICE tried to banish the family of one 7-year-old citizen, and the union and community came together in a powerful fist of defiance, protecting hundreds and inspiring other cities that followed our example. Fear feeds tyranny, but you and our union showed us how community and courage can construct democracy. And no matter what challenges we may face now, there is no going back.

As Cesar Chavez (1927-1993) said,

Once social change begins it cannot be reversed.
One cannot make illiterate those who have learned to read.
One cannot uneducate those who have learned to think.
One cannot humiliate those who feel pride.
One cannot oppress those who are no longer are afraid.

Thank you, to our Rosa Parks’ Cesar Chavez.

Love,

Maestra Margot

My student’s name has been changed to protect his privacy. He responded with a very moving note of gratitude, giving me permission to publish this letter.

It was a cold, gray morning in Oklahoma when the government came crashing through the wrong door.

Without warning, ICE agents clad in black tactical gear burst into a quiet family home. Guns drawn, boots pounding on hardwood, they moved like soldiers in hostile territory — except this wasn’t a war zone. It was a suburban neighborhood. A home where children did homework, parents made dinner, and everyone believed, until that moment, that living in America meant having rights.

They were wrong.

In the chaos, the teenage daughter — still in her underwear — was yanked from her bedroom and forced to stand, exposed and terrified, while armed strangers rifled through her belongings. Her screams went unanswered. The agents refused to let her or the rest of the family get dressed. They didn’t explain why they were there, didn’t ask questions, didn’t seem to care that the person they were looking for didn’t live at that address.

Then they started taking things: cell phones, tablets, laptops — anything that might contain information or, perhaps more to the point, value. They seized all the family’s cash, their passports, their children’s devices. When the family demanded answers, they were met with silence and threats. No warrant was ever shown. No charges were filed. No receipts left behind.

ICE simply vanished, leaving the family humiliated, traumatized, and stripped of the basic tools of modern life. The agency has since refused to return the electronics or the money. There has been no apology, no accountability, no restitution — just a void where justice is supposed to live.

What happened to that family wasn’t an accident. It was a symptom — a glimpse behind the curtain of what the Trump administration has built: an unaccountable, increasingly lawless deportation regime that functions more like a secret police force than a branch of a democratic government.

If we let this continue — if we fail to act — we are complicit in the unraveling of the very idea of America.

And the targets aren’t just undocumented immigrants or criminal suspects anymore. They’re legal residents. College students. People born and raised in this country. Their only “crime” is voicing dissent, having the wrong skin color, or being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

But some are pushing back, bringing us big news from the ACLU on Tuesday:

“The U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey ruled today that Mahmoud Khalil, a lawful permanent resident and recent Columbia graduate student, can move forward with his lawsuit claiming the government is unlawfully detaining him for his political views. The court rejected the government’s attempt to shut down Mr. Khalil’s case before it could be heard.”

Khalil has committed no crime. He was in the U.S. legally. His only offense — in the eyes of the Trump administration — was participating in peaceful protests criticizing Israeli policy in Gaza. For that, ICE agents stormed his university housing and locked him in a detention facility, citing a vague national security justification that amounts to little more than “we don’t like what he said.”

This is not how a constitutional republic behaves. It is how authoritarian regimes operate: by making examples out of those who speak up, and terrifying the rest into silence.

To understand how dangerous this moment is — how far we’ve drifted from our foundational values — we have to reach back nearly two centuries. Because this is not the first time American leaders have had to grapple with whether the protections of our laws apply to those without political power, to people who aren’t citizens but are still human beings.

In February 1841, 73-year-old former President John Quincy Adams stood before the Supreme Court to defend 53 African men who had been kidnapped from Sierra Leone, sold into slavery, and transported aboard the Spanish slave ship La Amistad. These men, having seized the ship and attempted to return home, were captured off the coast of Long Island and jailed as property, their fates debated not as individuals but as commodities.

Adams — the son of a founding father and one of the last living links to the American Revolution — didn’t argue their case as a matter of political favor or foreign diplomacy. He invoked something deeper: the principle that all people, regardless of citizenship, nationality, or status, are entitled to the protection of the law when they are on American soil.

“By what right was it denied to the men who had restored themselves to freedom,” Adams thundered, “and why was it extended to the perpetrators of those acts of violence themselves?”

He insisted that justice must be blind to nationality or legal status; that due process, as encoded in the Constitution, must apply to persons, not just citizens. If the government could arbitrarily decide who deserved rights and who didn’t, then no rights were truly secure.

It was a radical argument for the time, but the Supreme Court agreed. Adams won. And in doing so, he helped define a cornerstone of American jurisprudence: that the rule of law exists to constrain the state, not to be selectively applied at the whim of those in power.

Fast forward to 2025, and that principle is now under direct assault.

The Trump administration, enabled by allies in Congress and the judiciary, has weaponized immigration law and executive authority in ways that Adams would have recognized and condemned. They are now detaining legal permanent residents, like Mahmoud Khalil, not for crimes, but for speech. They are targeting foreign students and legal residents — often young people of color — for deportation based on political views, often under the thinnest pretexts of “national security.”

The administration’s justification in Khalil’s case? That his presence in the U.S. could cause “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.” That’s the legal equivalent of saying, “We’re deporting him because we want to.” It’s not just unconstitutional: it’s tyrannical.

And this isn’t isolated. Turkish graduate student Rumeysa Öztürk was grabbed off the street by masked agents for writing an op-ed critical of Israeli policy in a student newspaper over a year ago. In both cases, there were no warrants, no hearings, no evidence of criminal activity. Just black-bag operations targeting people for using their First Amendment rights.

Meanwhile, pro-Netanyahu political groups — many with direct ties to Trumpworld — are openly compiling lists of student activists and professors to target for deportation. And the administration appears to be acting on those lists.

John Quincy Adams would be horrified, but not surprised.

Because once the government claims the right to strip anyone of due process, rights cease to be rights and become privileges, granted or revoked at the whim of those in power. That is not a constitutional democracy. That is the scaffolding of fascism.

And sure enough, what began with undocumented immigrants is now creeping toward legal residents, foreign students, and even American citizens. The Trump administration recently floated the idea — with a straight face — of deporting certain American citizens to El Salvador.

Let that sink in.

The very notion should be constitutionally absurd. But like so many authoritarian moves, it’s being normalized through repetition.

First they came for the undocumented. Then they came for the legal immigrants. Then the student visa holders. Now, they’re signaling plans to come after naturalized citizens — and even people born here — if they hold the “wrong” political beliefs.

Trump’s January executive order made this shift brutally clear:

“To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you... I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses.”

But who gets to decide what constitutes a “pro-jihadist protest” or who counts as a “Hamas sympathizer”? The Trump administration does. No court. No jury. No evidence required. Just guilt by association — and punishment without due process.

This is precisely how autocrats consolidate power: they redefine dissent as treason, criminalize speech, and strip away rights piecemeal until there’s nothing left to defend. It happened in Turkey under Erdoğan. It happened in Hungary under Orbán. It happened in Putin’s Russia. And now it’s happening here.

The echoes of the Amistad case are unmistakable. Back then, the federal government sought to hand kidnapped Africans over to foreign governments to appease diplomatic partners. Today, we are handing peaceful student protesters over to ICE and DHS to appease political donors and right-wing pressure groups.

The same disregard for humanity. The same corruption of justice. The same weaponization of government to serve ideology instead of law.

But just as Adams turned the tide in 1841 by reminding America of its founding principles, we must do the same today.

Because this isn’t about immigration policy. It’s not about border security. It’s about the foundational principle that all people — all people — have the right to due process, the right to protest, and the right to be free from government persecution.

John Quincy Adams knew in 1841 what we must remember today: a government that can deny due process to anyone can eventually deny it to everyone. The rule of law either protects us all, or it ultimately protects none of us.

That family in Oklahoma, whose lives were shattered by an ICE raid on the wrong house? They weren’t caught in the gears of bureaucracy. They were deliberately crushed by a system designed to instill fear, to dehumanize, and to render justice optional.

Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Öztürk are not threats to national security; they’re reminders of what democracy is supposed to look like: people using their voices to speak uncomfortable truths. That’s what authoritarians fear most.

And if we let this continue — if we fail to act — we are complicit in the unraveling of the very idea of America.

We must fight this on every front:

First, we need immediate legal challenges to every deportation that lacks due process. Constitutional rights don’t depend on citizenship: they apply to every person on American soil.

Second, we need massive public protest against these policies. Universities should, within the law, refuse to cooperate with ICE and protect their students. Communities should establish sanctuary policies. Legal organizations should provide pro bono representation to those targeted.

And finally, we need to reclaim the narrative. This isn’t about immigration policy or national security; it’s about the most fundamental American principle: that all people possess inalienable rights, even those who aren’t citizens or are accused of a crime.

John Quincy Adams knew in 1841 what we must remember today: a government that can deny due process to anyone can eventually deny it to everyone. The rule of law either protects us all, or it ultimately protects none of us.

The time for action is now. Contact your representatives. Support legal defense funds. Share this story. Join the fight.

Because if we don’t stand up for them today, there may be no one left to stand up for us tomorrow.

May Day has two meanings, both of which are directly applicable to today. It commemorates the solidarity of the labor movement (139 years ago today, workers gathered in the streets of Chicago to demand an eight-hour day).

“Mayday!” is also a distress signal used by pilots to indicate imminent danger or a life-threatening emergency (derived from the French phrase “m’aider,” meaning “help me”).

That about sums it up: Our solidarity is necessary to overcome the imminent dangers we now face — all from Donald J. Trump.

I doubt we can wait until the midterm elections to contain him. Unless we stop the damage he’s doing to both our democracy and our economy before then, much of it will be irreversible. It’s not even clear what sort of election we’ll be able to have 18 months from now.

Demonstrations are planned today in more than 900 cities against both the Trump regime and the oligarchy that supports and benefits from it. The official banner under which people will march today is, appropriately, “For the Workers, Not the Billionaires.”

Our solidarity is necessary to overcome the imminent dangers we now face — all from Donald J. Trump.

Under Trump, Americans are relearning the lesson we learned about the oligarchy during the Gilded Age of the late 1890s, when robber barons ran the government and the economy for their own benefit: Oligarchy is incompatible with the common good.

The Republican Party and Elon Musk’s efforts to cut veterans’ benefits, Medicaid, Social Security, food safety, food stamps, and much else that Americans depend on — all to create room in the budget for another big tax cut mostly benefiting the wealthy — is the latest and clearest example of oligarchic muscle-flexing in the Trump regime.

This is forcing the Democratic Party to move toward economic populism. Despite recent discussion in The New York Times among former leaders of the Democratic Leadership Council attributing Bill Clinton’s electoral victories to his neoliberal stances, the energy in today’s Party lies in 83-year-old Bernie Sanders and 35-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — who are explicitly taking on the oligarchy.

Meanwhile, Trump’s polls are plummeting. Almost all now show him underwater, with approval ratings hovering around 42 percent and disapprovals at over 55 percent.

Trump’s trade war is choking off supply chains and threatening to push up prices and create shortages of critical components and products.

It’s already causing the economy to contract — by 0.3 percent in the first quarter, according to a Commerce Department report out yesterday. That’s a huge reversal from the strong 2.4 percent expansion in the final full quarter of Biden’s presidency. Wall Street has chalked up the worst performance at the start of a new presidential term in almost half a century.

At the same time, Trump is edging ever closer to defying the Supreme Court. In a unanimous ruling on April 10, the court ordered Trump to “facilitate” the release of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia — a Maryland man the regime wrongly deported to El Salvador last month.

In a Tuesday interview on ABC, Trump acknowledged that he “could” secure Abrego Garcia’s release — contradicting Attorney General Bondi’s assertion that the U.S. doesn’t have the power to do so — but said he won’t. “If he were the gentleman that you say he is, I would do that, but he is not.”

Hopefully, today’s May Day demonstrations will lead to larger ones (I’m still counting on a “national civic uprising” that even conservatives like columnist David Brooks support).

But what’s the goal of such displays of solidarity? How do they fight the imminent dangers?

Mark my words: If the economy continues to deteriorate, if the regime cuts services that the public depends on in order to give the oligarchy a huge tax cut, and if Trump ever more openly defies the Supreme Court — the solidarity will pay off in such a huge outpouring of national anger that Congress impeaches and convicts the orange menace before the midterm elections.

Mayday! And Happy May Day.

It’s such a tempting storyline: UPS announces that it will lay off 20,000 workers, citing “changes in the global trade policy and new or increased tariffs.”

There you have it. A perfect example of how Trump’s tariffs are screwing working people, many of whom voted for him.

Or is it?

UPS, like every major U.S. corporation, is in business to extract as much wealth as possible and shovel it to its shareholders and top executives in the form of stock buybacks and dividends. And like every major corporation, UPS will pay for that wealth extraction by laying off as many workers as possible. That may reduce the production of goods and services, but so be it, if it generates more money for shareholders and executives. In big business today, wealth extraction always comes first.

This is not a company struggling to make ends meet.

Let’s look at some of UPS’s numbers. In 2023, the company authorized $5 billion in stock buybacks, starting in 2024 with $500 million and another $5.5 billion in dividends. In 2025, UPS plans to spend another $1 billion on stock buybacks, as well as $5.5 billion more in dividends. In 2024, not incidentally, UPS posted $8.5 billion in profits. This is not a company struggling to make ends meet.

(Stock buybacks are when a corporation uses its own funds to repurchase shares and thereby raise the price of those shares, which greatly pleases its largest shareholders. Before deregulation in 1982, a company buying its own shares was considered illegal stock manipulation.)

To maintain this wealth pump for its investors and top officers, who are primarily compensated with stock incentives, cash needs to be generated and replenished. The simplest way to do that without acquiring more debt is to lay off workers.

Before the deregulation of Wall Street that came with the Reagan and Clinton administrations, no corporate manager would dare to lay off workers during profitable periods. To do so was a sign of poor management, a blemish on the CEO and his/her team. Workers and their communities were considered corporate stakeholders, right along with shareholders.

But after deregulation, the only stakeholder that mattered was the shareholder. The hell with workers and their communities. Companies began moving corporate headquarters to the sites of the highest governmental bidders, and in short order layoffs during good times became a symbol of smart management. Greed is good reigned supreme. (Please see Wall Street’s War on Workers for the gory details.)

Do not lend any credibility to corporate PR announcements. Their job is to do all they can to obscure how much they are shoveling to Wall Street.

The Teamsters union, which represents 300,000 UPS hourly workers, will fight these recently announced layoffs. Sean O’Brian, who spoke at the Republican national convention in 2024, sees any Teamsters layoffs as a violation of the contract:

United Parcel Service is contractually obligated to create 30,000 Teamsters jobs under our current national master agreement. If UPS wants to continue to downsize corporate management, the Teamsters won’t stand in its way. But if the company intends to violate our contract or makes any attempt to go after hard-fought, good-paying Teamsters jobs, UPS will be in for a hell of a fight.

We can be sure that the Teamsters will be looking closely at UPS’s finances, especially the large amounts going to stock buybacks and dividends. They will not sacrifice their members’ jobs on the altar of obscene wealth extraction.

Will the Trump tariffs have a major impact on UPS jobs?

We just don’t know that yet. But one thing we know for sure: Do not lend any credibility to corporate PR announcements. Their job is to do all they can to obscure how much they are shoveling to Wall Street. Their credo: The extent and consequences of the wealth extraction machine must never be revealed.

Blaming the Trump tariffs for every sin imaginable may be emotionally satisfying. But letting larger corporations and their Wall Street handlers off the hook when it comes to job destruction, which the Democrats have done for more than a generation, is in large part why we have Trump in the first place.

On April 24, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order to fast-track deep-sea mining in U.S. and international waters that sidelines international law and puts fragile ocean ecosystems, Indigenous rights, and millions of lives that depend on a healthy ocean at risk.

While this is being sold to the American public as a bold move to secure America's mineral supply chain, address climate change, or boost the clean energy transition, science and the tech and auto industries have already debunked that ruse. In the current climate, it will surprise very few that this is instead another giveaway to well-heeled corporate interests that will gamble away the health of our oceans and future for the short-term profit of a few corporations.

Once destroyed, deep-sea ecosystems are likely gone forever, taking with them species and processes vital to planetary health.

The Broligarchy is not just burning fossil fuels and sending rockets into space or dismantling American institutions. They are also gearing up to mine the depths of our last great wilderness in the deep sea. And as we've seen, they won't let details like the well-founded concerns about the cost to people, the climate, or our shared future get in their way.

Breaking the Rules of the Global Commons

For decades, the international community has worked through the United Nation's International Seabed Authority (ISA) to regulate whether and how deep-sea mining might proceed, recognizing the deep sea as the "common heritage of humankind," not a resource to be plundered by any one country or corporation.

Trump's executive order tramples that principle of shared stewardship, reviving a Cold War-era U.S. law that bypasses the U.N. framework and green-lights corporate plunder of the seafloor. This reckless move undermines global legal norms, threatens to unravel international cooperation, and could trigger an unregulated race for the ocean's resources at a time when stronger protections are most needed. As ISA Secretary General Leticia Carvalho warns, dismantling multilateral ocean governance threatens the very foundations of global cooperation, setting a dangerous precedent for the future of all shared global commons.

A Business Model Built on Sand

The economic case for deep-sea mining is collapsing. There is no current shortage of minerals like cobalt or nickel, and advances in battery chemistry, recycling, circular economy models, and alternative materials are rapidly reducing projected future demands for deep-sea minerals. Even if mining started today, it would likely take more than a decade for the industry to bring deep-sea minerals to market at scale.

Early ventures like Nautilus Minerals and Loke Marine Minerals have already failed, exposing the financial risks. On Tuesday, The Metals Company (TMC) upped the ante on its risky bet to fast-track deep-sea mining when it submitted its application under the U.S. Seabed Mining Code to begin commercial mining in areas licensed by the International Seabed Authority. For the president, with his track record on casinos, backing a company like TMC is a gamble whose cost will be borne by coastal communities, Indigenous rights, and investors alike.

Americans already face $150 billion annually in costs from climate change. And our children and grandchildren born in 2024 may have to bear the weight of $500,000 over their lifetime. We can't afford to absorb the cost of another failed venture while the billionaire class does not even pay their fair share of taxes and does little to fix the problems their corporations have created.

A New Colonialism in the Pacific

Perhaps most shamefully, Trump's executive order green-lights a new wave of colonialism, opening the deep sea of Pacific waters to corporate plunder without the consent of Pacific Peoples—communities whose lives, cultures, and economies are deeply intertwined with the ocean.

Trump's executive order shows exactly why the world needs a strong, binding global moratorium on deep-sea mining.

The Pacific has already spoken: American Samoa, Hawai'i, and several Pacific Island nations have called for moratoriums to protect their fisheries and heritage. Indigenous leaders have made it clear—the deep sea is not a sacrifice zone. Yet TMC, which leveraged its partnership with Nauru to fast-track negotiations at the ISA, is now looking to shift its strategy and cut deals under U.S. law, sidelining Pacific voices.

By moving to open adjacent U.S. federal waters for mining, without meaningful consultation, the United States perpetuates a familiar and painful pattern of resource extraction without consent. We cannot allow history to repeat itself in the deep sea.

No Science. No Safeguards. No Justification.

Despite industry assurances, we still know remarkably little about the deep ocean. In mining target zones such as the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, over 90% of species have yet to be formally described by science, and essential life-sustaining ecosystem functions like carbon sequestration and nutrient cycling are barely understood.

There is no credible scientific evidence demonstrating that deep-sea mining can be conducted without causing irreversible harm, nor any proven way to prevent, mitigate, or repair it. Once destroyed, deep-sea ecosystems are likely gone forever, taking with them species and processes vital to planetary health.

This week's congressional hearing on deep-sea mining underscores the urgent need for democratic oversight of an industry advancing without sufficient scientific, legal, or public scrutiny. Congress must act to protect the public interest, not hand over our oceans to private companies chasing speculative profits.

The Path Forward: A Global Moratorium

With a dearth of independent science, no enforceable global safeguards, and no justification, deep-sea mining isn't just risky--it's reckless.

Trump's executive order shows exactly why the world needs a strong, binding global moratorium on deep-sea mining.

We must defend international law. We must defend the oceans. And we must reject a broken economic model that gambles our planet's future for corporate gain.

The deep sea belongs to all of us, and we have a duty to protect it, not destroy it. The future of the oceans—and the future stability of global commons governance—demands nothing less.

Eight years before the U.S.-backed regime in South Vietnam collapsed, I stood with high school friends at Manhattan’s Penn Station on the night of April 15, 1967, waiting for a train back to Washington after attending the era’s largest anti-war protest so far. An early edition of the next day’s New York Times arrived on newsstands with a big headline at the top of the front page that said “100,000 Rally at U.N. Against Vietnam War.” I heard someone say, “Johnson will have to listen to us now.”

But President Lyndon Johnson dashed the hopes of those who marched from Central Park to the United Nations that day (with an actual turnout later estimated at 400,000). He kept escalating the war in Vietnam, while secretly also bombing Laos and Cambodia.

During the years that followed, anti-war demonstrations grew in thousands of communities across the United States. The decentralized Moratorium Day events on October 15, 1969 drew upward of 2 million people. But all forms of protest fell on deaf official ears. A song by the folksinger Donovan, recorded midway through the decade, became more accurate and powerful with each passing year: “The War Drags On.”

By remaining faithful to the war policies of the president they served, while discounting the opinions of young voters, two Democratic vice presidents—Hubert Humphrey and Kamala Harris—damaged their efforts to win the White House.

As the war continued, so did the fading of trust in the wisdom and morality of Johnson and his successor, Richard Nixon. Gallup polls gauged the steep credibility drop. In 1965, just 24% of Americans said involvement in the Vietnam War had been a mistake. By the spring of 1971, the figure was 61%.

The number of U.S. troops in Vietnam gradually diminished from the peak of 536,100 in 1968, but ground operations and massive U.S. bombing persisted until the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in late January 1973. American forces withdrew from Vietnam, but the war went on with U.S. support for 27 more months, until—on April 30, 1975—the final helicopter liftoff from the roof of the U.S. embassy in Saigon signaled that the Vietnam War was indeed over.

By then, most Americans were majorly disillusioned. Optimism that public opinion would sway their government’s leaders on matters of war and peace had been steadily crushed while carnage in Southeast Asia continued. To many citizens, democracy had failed—and the failure seemed especially acute to students, whose views on the war had evolved way ahead of overall opinion.

At the end of the 1960s, Gallup found “significantly more opposition to President Richard Nixon’s Vietnam policies” among students at public and private colleges than in “a parallel survey of the U.S. general public: 44% vs. 25%, respectively.” The same poll “showed 69% of students in favor of slowing down or halting the fighting in Vietnam, while only 20% favored escalation. This was a sharp change from 1967, when more students favored escalation (49%) than deescalation (35%).”

Six decades later, it took much less time for young Americans to turn decisively against their government’s key role of arming Israel’s war on Gaza. By a wide margin, continuous huge shipments of weapons to the Israeli military swiftly convinced most young adults that the U.S. government was complicit in a relentless siege taking the lives of Palestinian civilians on a large scale.

A CBS News/YouGov poll in June 2024 found that Americans opposed sending “weapons and supplies to Israel” by 61-39%. Opposition to the arms shipments was even higher among young people. For adults under age 30, the ratio was 77-23.

Emerging generations learned that moral concerns about their country’s engagement in faraway wars meant little to policymakers in Washington. No civics textbook could prepare students for the realities of power that kept the nation’s war machine on a rampage, taking several million lives in Southeast Asia or supplying weapons making possible genocide in Gaza.

For vast numbers of Americans, disproportionately young, the monstrous warfare overseen by Presidents Johnson and Nixon caused the scales to fall from their eyes about the character of U.S. leadership. And like President Donald Trump now, President Joe Biden showed that nice-sounding rhetoric could serve as a tidy cover story for choosing to enable nonstop horrors without letup.

No campaign-trail platitudes about caring and joy could make up for a lack of decency. By remaining faithful to the war policies of the president they served, while discounting the opinions of young voters, two Democratic vice presidents—Hubert Humphrey and Kamala Harris—damaged their efforts to win the White House.

A pair of exchanges on network television, 56 years apart, are eerily similar.

In August 1968, appearing on the NBC program “Meet the Press,” Humphrey was asked, “On what points, if any, do you disagree with the Vietnam policies of President Johnson?”

“I think that the policies that the president has pursued are basically sound,” Humphrey replied.

In October 2024, appearing on the ABC program “The View,” Harris was asked: “Would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?”

“There is not a thing that comes to mind,” Harris replied.

Young people’s votes for Harris last fall were just 54%, compared with 60% that they provided to Biden four years earlier.

Many young eyes recognized the war policy positions of Hubert Humphrey and Kamala Harris as immoral. Their decisions to stay on a war train clashed with youthful idealism. And while hardboiled political strategists opted to discount such idealism as beside the electoral point, the consequences have been truly tragic—and largely foreseeable.

For nearly 250 years, the American system of government has been built to guard against an authoritarian leader. Our Constitution created a careful balance of powers among the branches of government to ward off tyranny. But just 100 days into President Donald Trump’s second term, we are seeing this system bend to the point of breaking under the weight of a willful disregard for the rule of law.

We must take this moment to finally install more concrete guardrails against corruption and abuse of power.

America’s system of checks and balances was never meant to depend on trust alone. It was designed to be tested and strengthened. We have relied on key tools to rein in executive overreach: a vigilant Congress, a strong judiciary, an engaged citizenry informed by public interest groups, an apolitical civil service, independent inspectors general, meaningful whistleblower protections, and ethics laws, to name several.

Some of these safeguards are holding. Right now, civil society is carrying much of the burden. Investigative journalists, watchdog groups, academic institutions, and advocacy organizations are doing the work that too many public officials have abandoned. They are shining lights into corners where the government prefers darkness, informing the public and pressuring institutions to act.

The problem isn’t just that guardrails are being destroyed; some have always been missing.

The courts, too, have shown signs of resilience. Despite last year’s Supreme Court ruling expanding presidential immunity, which chipped away at the judiciary’s role as a check on executive power, judges have issued rulings that uphold our basic constitutional principles. That said, recent moves from the judicial branch are alarming. They have done so even in the face of hostile rhetoric and open defiance.

These bright spots are important, but they are the exception, not the rule. We must confront a harsh reality: Many safeguards have proven extremely fragile. If we hope to emerge from this crisis with our democracy intact, we must also confront what has failed and what we must change.

Congressional oversight has become theatrical at best and nonexistent at worst. This is especially true when the president’s party holds power. And the legislative branch has let the executive branch encroach on its power of the purse and diminish its role in the policymaking process. That dynamic must change. Members of Congress need to remember they work for their constituents. That means scrutinizing the executive branch regardless of which party controls it, holding more hearings back in members’ districts, and creating more accessible public forums.

An apolitical and secure civil service has long been a stabilizing force in our government, ensuring that laws are implemented faithfully and without bias. But mass firings and politically motivated purges are dismantling this safeguard. When loyalty to the president is prized over competence or integrity, the system begins to collapse from within. To protect their essential work, we must strengthen legal safeguards for civil servants and insulate them from political retaliation.

Inspectors general — the independent watchdogs tasked with rooting out misconduct across federal agencies — have been fundamentally disempowered. President Trump has removed many of them without explanation or cause, threatening a critical line of oversight. Congress must not only rebuild but strengthen the independence of inspectors general. That may look like moving them to the legislative branch, where they could be protected from executive interference.

The work of everyone who cares about democracy... matters more than ever. Not just for today’s crisis, but also to ensure this doesn’t happen again.

Whistleblowers, another bedrock of internal accountability, are often our first and best defense against corruption. But their protections are increasingly toothless after the president illegally fired the head of the very office designed to uphold them. This move costs us the information we need to root out corruption and abuse.

The problem isn’t just that guardrails are being destroyed; some have always been missing. Ethics laws for the most powerful people in government are far too weak. Both the president and vice president are exempt from the conflict-of-interest rules that apply to the federal workforce. Members of Congress can buy and trade stocks even though their decisions often move markets. And Elon Musk’s role in the White House demonstrates how glaring financial conflicts can sow deep distrust in government actions. We need stronger laws at the highest levels so the public can be confident their government is working in their interest.

None of these failures exist in isolation. Each one enables the other. Without consequences, the last abuse of power is just practice for the next.

But here’s the good news: the reverse is also true. Strengthen any of these pillars, and you strengthen the whole system. That’s why our work — the work of everyone who cares about democracy — matters more than ever. Not just for today’s crisis, but also to ensure this doesn’t happen again.

We can make our democracy work — and for the first time in our country’s history, make it work for everyone. But only if we fight for it.

The International Finance Corporation’s website brands many of the well-founded criticisms of industrial animal production as “myths.” This reflects the regrettably polarized debate between those who believe that industrial agriculture is needed to feed the growing world population and those who, like me, argue that a far-reaching transformation of our food system is needed.

The International Finance Corporation (IFC) website states that it is a myth that industrial animal production is bad for food security. The truth, however, is that factory farming diverts food away from people; it is dependent on feeding grain—corn, wheat, barley—to animals who convert these crops very inefficiently into meat and milk. For every 100 calories of human-edible cereals fed to animals, just 7-27 calories (depending on the species) enter the human food chain as meat. And for every 100 grams of protein in human-edible cereals fed to animals, only 13-37 grams of protein enter the human food chain as meat.

The scale of this is massive. International Grains Council data show that 45% of global grain production is used as animal feed, while 76% of world soy production is used to feed animals. The inefficiency of doing this is recognized by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), which states that it is “essential to fight food insecurity and malnutrition… Reducing the use of much of the world's grain production to feed animals and producing more food for direct human consumption can significantly contribute to this objective.” I calculate that if the use of cereals as animal feed were ended, an extra 2 billion people could be fed even allowing for the fact that if we reared fewer animals we would need to grow more crops for direct human consumption. My figure is very cautious; other studies calculate that ending the use of grains as animal feed would enable an extra 3.5-4 billion people to be fed. Moreover, industrial livestock’s huge demand for these cereals pushes up their price, potentially placing them out of reach of poor populations in the Global South. So, sorry IFC, but it really is not a myth to say that industrial animal production is bad for food security.

To dismiss the harsh suffering endured by industrially farmed animals as a myth is extraordinary

The IFC website dismisses as a myth the argument that industrial animal production is bad for the environment. However, factory farms disgorge large amounts of manure, slurry, and ammonia that pollute air and watercourses. When ammonia mixes with other gases it can form particulate matter; this is a key component of air pollution, which can lead to heart and pulmonary disease, respiratory problems including asthma, and lung cancer.

Industrial livestock’s huge demand for cereals as feed has been a key factor fuelling the intensification of crop production. This pivotal link between the livestock and arable sectors is often not recognized. With its monocultures and high use of chemical pesticides and nitrogen fertilizers, intensive crop production leads to soil degradation, biodiversity loss, and overuse and pollution of water. In short, it erodes the key fundamentals—soils, water, and biodiversity—on which our future ability to feed ourselves depends.

Arjem Hoekstra (2020) calculates that animals fed on cereals and soy (industrially farmed animals) use 43 times as much surface- and groundwater and are 61 times as polluting of water as animals fed on grass and other roughages. Its adherents claim that factory farming saves land by cramming animals into crowded sheds. But in reality it eats up huge amounts of cropland for feed. European Union studies show that feed production accounts for 99% of the land use of the pig and broiler sectors. It is feed production—not the tiny amount of space given to animals on the farm—that makes factory farming so land-hungry.

The contention that industrial systems undermine the socioeconomic potential of small-scale farmers in the developing world is also branded a myth by the IFC. The World Bank, however, takes a different view. Its 2024 report Recipe for a Liveable Planet states, “The global agrifood system disproportionately and detrimentally affects poor communities and smallholder farmers who cannot compete with industrial agriculture, thereby exacerbating rural poverty and increasing landlessness.” Instead of funding industrial agriculture the IFC should help small-scale farmers move to agroecology and regenerative farming which can boost yields, reduce the use of expensive inputs, and improve livelihoods.

Also swatted aside as a myth is the mountain of scientific evidence that industrial livestock production results in poor animal welfare. To dismiss the harsh suffering endured by industrially farmed animals as a myth is extraordinary. In its own Good Practice Note on animal welfare the IFC lists what are commonly recognized to be the key characteristics of factory farming—confinement in narrow stalls, overcrowding, barren environments, painful procedures, hunger, and breeding for high yields leading to health disorders—and identifies them as “welfare risks” that need to be tackled. But now, in a remarkable volte-face, the IFC airily dismisses these problems as a myth.

IFC’s position stands in sharp contrast to UNEP, which states that “intensive systems deprive animals of some of their most basic physical and psychological needs.” World Bank economist Berk Özler has written about the value of policies under which low-income countries can grow without causing massive increases in suffering among farmed animals. He writes, “Perhaps many low-income countries can leapfrog the stage of industrial animal farming, towards something more sensible.”

I urge the IFC to recognize that industrial animal agriculture is destructive—destructive of food security, the environment, small-scale farmer livelihoods, and the well-being of animals.

The American promise rests on a profound yet simple idea: We are governed by laws, not by the whims of individuals. This bedrock principle—that impartial rules apply equally to all—faces an unprecedented assault. On May 1, state and local bar associations, civil rights organizations, and lawyers nationwide will unite in an unprecedented mobilization to defend this cornerstone of American justice.

As lawyers, we take a solemn oath: to support the Constitution of the United States. "Support" in this context implies a more proactive stance than mere defense. This oath compels us to take affirmative steps to uphold the principle that law, not personal power, reigns supreme. Today, fulfilling this obligation has never been more critical.

This Thursday, lawyers in over 40 cities will stand shoulder to shoulder, collectively raising their right hands to publicly recommit to their sacred oath for the National Law Day of Action. This act isn't mere symbolism—it's an alarm bell in a moment of genuine peril for our justice system.

Our message is simple but urgent: If we allow the independence of courts and lawyers to be compromised today, our other rights will become negotiable tomorrow.

The threats to judicial independence have become impossible to ignore. When a federal judge faces impeachment threats simply for upholding the law—as Judge James Boasberg did after halting deportation flights—we've crossed a dangerous threshold. We've witnessed instances where judicial directives are contested not through proper legal channels but through public disparagement and apparent noncompliance. Alarmingly, the arrest of Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan by federal authorities represents an unprecedented escalation, sending a chilling message to judges across the country. When court orders are treated as optional suggestions rather than binding mandates, and when attorneys face intimidation for representing unpopular clients, our constitutional foundations are actively eroding.

A nation of laws requires an independent judiciary. Judges must be able to rule based on law rather than political pressure. Lawyers must be free to zealously advocate without fear of retribution. Without these, equal justice becomes hollow rhetoric. This is starkly illustrated by recent events where law firms representing clients who oppose administration policies have faced executive orders suspending their employees' security clearances and barring them from federal buildings—actions that one judge noted send "chills down my spine" for the "extraordinary power" they represent.

Our judges and courts have no militias. As Alexander Hamilton warned in Federalist 78, courts depend entirely on their institutional legitimacy and the bar's commitment to uphold their authority. When that authority is undermined through defiance or delegitimized through partisan attacks, we approach a system where power, not principle, determines outcomes. A judge intimidated today means justice denied tomorrow.

This national mobilization on Law Day transcends partisan divides because the rule of law transcends politics. We all lose in a system where legal outcomes depend on who holds power rather than what the law requires. The growing pattern of attempts to circumvent judicial authority—from ignoring court orders to demanding recusal after unfavorable rulings to demonizing "activist" judges—represents an assault on constitutional safeguards that protect us all.

The attacks on judges and lawyers form a two-pronged assault on the constitutional order we pledged to defend. An intimidated bar cannot check government overreach; a weakened judiciary cannot enforce accountability. These essential guardians of liberty now face unprecedented threats.

The oath we took upon joining the bar wasn't a one-time ceremony but a lifelong commitment. On May 1, we renew our promise to the Constitution en masse. We will be a visible reminder that the legal profession stands united against forces that would replace the rule of law with the rule of the powerful.

Our message is simple but urgent: If we allow the independence of courts and lawyers to be compromised today, our other rights will become negotiable tomorrow. No freedom survives when those who defend it are silenced or controlled.

We call on every member of the bar—and indeed every person who values constitutional government—to join this historic stand for democracy. Find your local event at LawDayofAction.org. When we stand together, recommitting to our oath with one voice, we send an unmistakable message: The legal profession will defend our nation of laws and ensure justice remains equal for all.

April 30th marks the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War's end when Vietnamese tanks rolled into Saigon, soon to be renamed Ho Chi Minh City. The war was a terrible experience for the United States, but even more so for the people of Vietnam and much of the rest of Southeast Asia. Estimates are that up to 3 million Vietnamese perished, as well many many thousands of Cambodians and Laotians. Fifty-eight thousand American died, and a trillion American tax dollars were wasted.

Many of us who were there are still trying to understand and come to grips with it. Based on years of study, here is what I think people still get wrong about the war. What I write will be controversial, but it is based on what I saw and learned. If I seem angry, it is because I still am.

In nearly all wars, the other side is demonized and made into evil caricatures of human beings; doing so makes it easier to kill them. From the U.S. perspective, the Vietnam War was no exception. Even the Vietnamese who were supposedly on our side were commonly referred to as gooks, zips (Zero Intelligence Personnel), slants, slopes and more, often to their faces. In my experience, the U.S. military chain of command made no effort to correct this. Given the pervasive racism among American troops, it should come as no surprise that violence against Vietnamese civilians was common. It is hard to understand how anyone thought the Vietnamese people would rally to the U.S. side while being badly treated.

The lesson to be learned is that U.S. military leaders, if they care about the troops at all, should do all they can to prevent war crimes through training, clear orders, and prosecutions.

In Vietnam many of us learned to be quite skeptical of the media and the U.S. government. To cite just one example out of hundreds, as the advancing NVA/VC forces began to overrun the South (mid-1970's), U.S. officials and media warned of a bloodbath to come. Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger warned that 200,000 would be killed if the communists won. The American armed forces newspaper Stars and Stripes, in one of the last issues to arrive in Saigon, carried a headline: "At Least a Million Vietnamese Will Be Slaughtered." But that never happened. When it came to allegations of massacres, whether by the enemy in Hue during Tet, or the Americans at My Lai, the truth was regularly mangled by the U.S. government and media.

The leak of the Pentagon Papers, which so infuriated then-President Richard Nixon, revealed many other falsehoods, even as to when the war started. The Papers show that it was in 1945 that the French government decided to reclaim its Vietnam colony from the Japanese occupiers. Then the U.S. got involved under President Harry Truman. From that time the U.S. provided air transport, weapons, advisers, and funding without which the French reoccupation would not have been possible. So the Vietnamese are correct in calling it the Ten Thousand Day War—the 30 years from 1945 to 1975.

The Pentagon Papers also reveal that U.S. leaders all the way from Truman to Nixon and Gerald Ford were advised that the U.S. could not win the war. They all knew that defeat was on the horizon, or perhaps just over the horizon. But except for Ford, all the presidents decided that, while the war was a lost cause, it would not be lost on their watch—so they kept it going by kicking the can down the road to the next president. So the death and destruction continued.

In 1968, Richard Nixon ran for president declaring that he had a "secret plan" to end the war. In actuality, his secret was to covertly sabotage ongoing peace talks to prolong the war. It went on for four more years, and another 25,000 U.S. soldiers died in a war Nixon knew could not be won.

During and after the war we learned a good deal about war-related post traumatic stress. Tens of thousands of returning Vietnam veterans began showing alarming signs of acute mental distress, often leading to harming others or themselves. Thanks to cutting edge research by Veterans Affairs, we learned that troops serving in support roles (which is most of them) had rates of PTSD about the same as the general population, around 6%. On the other hand, troops who were involved in abusing civilians or prisoners had rates of PTSD of over 50%. There are treatments available, but none seem to be especially effective. The lesson to be learned is that U.S. military leaders, if they care about the troops at all, should do all they can to prevent war crimes through training, clear orders, and prosecutions.

Today, most Americans think of the anti-war movement as mostly long-haired, pot-smoking hippies—with a Doctor Spock or a Jane Fonda occasionally thrown in. But that was not the reality. Instead, by 1967 thousands of veterans who had served in Vietnam returned home and eagerly joined the anti-war movement, especially on college campuses, quickly taking leadership positions. Tom Grace, in his book on the Kent State shootings, carefully documents that the leadership of the campus protesters there was almost entirely made up of returned working class veterans. This was typical. The largest of the veteran anti-war groups was the Vietnam Veterans Against the War with 20,000 to 50,000 members at its height. They were active in colleges and universities across the country.

There were also protests and some sabotage from within the active duty forces. In the face of widespread refusals to obey, ships could not put to sea, and aircraft could not fly. Racial tensions ran high.

Even with a half million troops in Vietnam, the U.S. could not prevail against a rising tide of nationalism in Vietnam, or even control most of the country. As the Pentagon Papers explained, the U.S. never had a chance.

Based on subsequent events, sadly it appears that America did not learn much from the Vietnam experience.

Anger alone solves little. If you want peace, you will have to organize to get it.

President Trump has given many contradictory reasons for his recent tariff spree, including claiming tariffs will “create jobs like we have never seen before.”

Yet research shows that tariffs don’t increase employment and instead are likely to cost jobs due to increased input prices and retaliatory tariffs. Economist Michael Strain at the conservative American Enterprise Institute expects Trump’s tariffs will lead to "recessionary levels" of unemployment. Ironically, analysts expect the rural and Heartland communities that voted for Trump will be disproportionately negatively impacted by retaliatory tariffs. Given how this Administration has cavalierly forced tens of thousands of federal workers out of good jobs and destroyed just as many research and nonprofit jobs supported by federal grants, it’s clear that employing Americans has never been the true priority.

A federal job guarantee is a public option for a good job—with living wages, full benefits, and union protections—on projects that meet community needs for physical and human infrastructure that are often long-overlooked.

But it should be a national priority. And we have a much better solution than tariffs: a job guarantee.

A federal job guarantee is a public option for a good job—with living wages, full benefits, and union protections—on projects that meet community needs for physical and human infrastructure that are often long-overlooked. Repairing bridges, helping communities recover from disasters, providing quality care for children and the elderly, fixing potholes, and expanding tree canopy to mitigate extreme heat are just a few examples of the community-building work that would become possible with a job guarantee.

A job guarantee would address the failure of our economy to provide good jobs for all. Even during times of relatively low unemployment, millions of Americans—currently 7.9 million—want full-time work but cannot find it. This is a chronic crisis that disproportionately burdens rural communities and communities of color. Another 39 million American workers are stuck in jobs that pay below $17 per hour, often with precarious, unhealthy, and undignified working conditions. Guaranteed jobs would provide these workers with the option of stable employment and real economic security.

Tariffs may grab headlines, but they don’t build communities or deliver good jobs.

A job guarantee is not a new idea. The right to a “useful and remunerative” job was the number one item on the Economic Bill of Rights proposed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944. Guaranteed jobs were a central demand of the civil rights movement, from the 1963 March on Washington to Coretta Scott King’s advocacy throughout the 1970s. And it nearly became law: the original Humphrey Hawkins Full Employment Act of 1978 included a legally enforceable right to a job with the federal government acting as employer of last resort, though that provision was stripped from the watered-down version that eventually passed. In recent years, congressional leaders including senators Cory Booker and Bernie Sanders have supported versions of a job guarantee, and representative Ayanna Pressley introduced a Congressional resolution outlining a modernized federal job guarantee that would pay $25 per hour.

While we’ve never had a true federal job guarantee, successful public employment efforts demonstrate its practicality and potential. In the 1930’s, the Works Progress Administration employed 8.5 million people building physical infrastructure and artistic works that strengthened our economy and culture for decades. Smaller-scale “subsidized employment” programs that provide the on-the-job training and wraparound supports for workers facing barriers to employment (similar to what would be provided by a job guarantee) also have a strong track record of success.

A job guarantee is not a new idea. The right to a “useful and remunerative” job was the number one item on the Economic Bill of Rights proposed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944.

By producing not only good jobs but also vital infrastructure and services, a job guarantee bolsters families and the neighborhoods where they live. Moreover, it would generate “trickle-up” economic effects. Money would begin circulating in persistently-disinvested communities, creating opportunities for grocery stores, small businesses, and local entrepreneurship. And a public option for good jobs would put healthy pressure on private employers to better compensate their workers—elevating wages and benefits across the board.

Funded by the federal government and implemented locally, a job guarantee would create new opportunities for civic engagement, with communities suggesting new public investments that meet their needs and manifest their aspirations. This partnership could strengthen democracy and rebuild trust that government can work for working people.

Ultimately, a job guarantee would create a more stable, resilient, and equitable economy. By immediately providing jobs and income at the first sign of an economic downturn, it would act as an automatic stabilizer—maintaining consumer spending and preventing prolonged recessions and jobless recoveries. This would benefit the economy as a whole and protect marginalized Black workers who are the “last hired and first fired” when the economy sours. It would enable a “just transition” away from unsustainable industries and address the threat of job displacement posed by AI, creating new jobs protecting the environment and mitigating climate change.

And for those who would dismiss this as socialism, it’s worth emphasizing: the job guarantee simply ensures there is an available job. If the more “productive” private sector can offer something better, all the better—workers will have the freedom to choose.

As we confront what some are expecting to be the third once-in-a-generation economic downturn in less than two decades, we need to be ready with real solutions. Tariffs may grab headlines, but they don’t build communities or deliver good jobs. Instead, this administration’s chaotic policies are creating widespread economic uncertainty and strain. A federal job guarantee, by contrast, is a bold economic policy rooted in American history and grounded in the needs of workers who’ve been sidelined by our economic policies. If we want to empower workers and build a more resilient economy, we should start investing in real solutions—starting with a job guarantee.

I have held public meetings all over Vermont and in many parts of the country. At these gatherings I almost always ask a very simple question: is our healthcare system broken? And the answer I always receive is: Yes! The American healthcare system is broken. It is outrageously expensive. It is horrifically cruel.

Today, we spend almost twice as much per capita on healthcare as any other country on Earth. According to the most recent data, the United States spends $14,570 per person on healthcare compared with just $5,640 in Japan, $6,023 in the United Kingdom, $6,931 in Australia, $7,013 in Canada and $7,136 in France. And yet, despite our huge expenditures, we remain the only major country on Earth not to guarantee healthcare to all people as a human right.

While the insurance companies and drug companies continue to make huge profits, over 85 million Americans are either uninsured or under-insured. The result: some 68,000 people in our country die each year because they can’t afford to go to a doctor when they should, and more than half a million Americans go bankrupt due to medically related debt. In the US today, 42% of cancer patients deplete their entire life savings within the first two years of their diagnosis while one out of every four declared bankruptcy or lost their homes to foreclosure or eviction in 2022.

The time is NOW to stand up to the greed and power of special interests who make huge profits off of a cruel and broken system. The time is NOW to pass Medicare for All.

That is insane and unspeakable. Getting cancer in the US should not lead to financial ruin.

In terms of life expectancy, we live four years shorter, on average, than people in other wealthy countries, while the typical working-class person in the US lives seven fewer years than the wealthy. We also have the dubious distinction of having, by far, the highest infant mortality rate of any other wealthy country on Earth.

As bad as our overall healthcare system is, our primary care system is even worse. Today, tens of millions of people live in communities where they cannot find a doctor, a dentist or a psychologist even when they have insurance, while others have to wait months to get seen. Despite our massive healthcare expenditures, we don’t have enough doctors, dentists, nurses, mental health practitioners, pharmacists or home healthcare workers – and one out of four Americans cannot afford to purchase the medicine their doctors prescribe.

For all of these reasons and many more, I am proud to be re-introducing Medicare for All in the Senate this week. My colleague, the representative Pramila Jayapal, is introducing this same bill in the House.

Our legislation would provide comprehensive healthcare coverage to all without out-of-pocket expenses and, unlike the current system, it would provide full freedom of choice regarding healthcare providers.

No more insurance premiums, no more deductibles, no more co-payments, no more filling out endless forms and fighting with insurance companies.

And comprehensive means the coverage of dental care, vision, hearing aids, prescription drugs and home and community-based healthcare.

Importantly, Medicare for All would give Americans the freedom to switch jobs without losing their health insurance. Under our legislation, healthcare becomes a human right, guaranteed to all, and not a job benefit.

Would a Medicare-for-all healthcare system be expensive? Yes. But, while providing comprehensive healthcare for all, it would be significantly LESS expensive than our current dysfunctional system because it would eliminate an enormous amount of the bureaucracy, profiteering, administrative costs and misplaced priorities inherent in our current for-profit system. In fact, the congressional budget office has estimated that Medicare for All would save Americans $650 billion a year.

Under Medicare for All there would no longer be armies of insurance employees billing us, telling us what is covered and what is not covered and hounding us to pay our hospital bills. This simplicity not only substantially reduces administrative costs, but it would make life a lot easier for patients, doctors and nurses who would never again have to fight their way through the nightmare of insurance company bureaucracy.

As we speak, Republicans are working overtime to make a bad healthcare situation even worse. They want to pass a “reconciliation bill” that would decimate Medicaid and throw millions of Americans off the healthcare they have in order to give huge tax breaks to billionaires.

Obviously, we must defeat that terrible legislation. But we must do much more. We cannot simply defend the status quo in healthcare and the Affordable Care Act – legislation that has provided massive amounts of corporate welfare to the big insurance companies and big drug companies – while premiums, deductibles, co-payments and the price of medicine has soared.

The time is NOW to rethink healthcare in America. The time is NOW to declare that healthcare in our country is a right and not a privilege. The time is NOW to stand up to the greed and power of special interests who make huge profits off of a cruel and broken system. The time is NOW to pass Medicare for All.

Enacting Medicare for All would be a transformative moment for our country.

It would not only keep people healthier, happier and increase life expectancy, it would be a major step forward in creating a more vibrant democracy. Imagine what it would mean for the people of our country if we had a government that represented the needs of ordinary people and not just powerful corporate interests and billionaire campaign donors.

This is America. We can do it.

I want to tell you today about two potential bright spots.

The most obvious joy, of course, came last night in Canada, where citizens of the not-51st-state rejected a Trump-lite figure named Pierre Poilievre (who had been leading by 23 points on January 20!) and instead elected Mark Carney to lead their country. This has been correctly interpreted by all as a reaction to the ham-handed bullying of the canned ham currently resident in the White House. But though he was elected a little by accident (albeit after a brilliant campaign) it means something far more: in Carney we now have the world leader who knows more than any of his peers about climate change. And who knows roughly twenty times as much about climate and energy economics as anyone else in power. He may turn out to be a truly crucial figure in the fight to turn the climate tide.

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I’ve been watching Carney for a long time. A graduate, of course, of both Harvard and Goldman Sachs, he was governor of the Bank of Canada during the 2008 financial crisis and performed admirably enough that the queen asked him over to run the Bank of England. (It’s probably not quite how that works, but close enough). While in that job, he had the fun of trying to deal with the UK’s Brexit decision, and by all accounts again performed better than one might have expected. So now he gets the task of cleaning up after Trump’s insane tariffs.

But actually it’s the much bigger mess—the one in the atmosphere—that I suspect has long interested him most. In 2014, at a World Bank panel, he quite forthrightly pointed out that we would need to leave the “vast majority” of fossil fuel reserves in the ground if we were at all serious about holding the increase in the temperature of the planet below two degrees. This was, on the one hand, clearly obvious to anyone who had looked at the physics, but on the other hand not something that most leaders were willing to say at the time, or to this day. Those of us who had recently launched the fossil fuel divestment campaign found it to be a great boost—one of three or four crucial moments that turned this into one of the largest anti-corporate campaigns in history.

A year later, wearing a tux and speaking at an opulent dinner to the “names” who run the premier insurance brokerage Lloyds of London, Carney went further, giving one of the most important speeches of the climate era. It is well worth reading in its entirety, but here is the crucial section

Climate change is the Tragedy of the Horizon.

We don’t need an army of actuaries to tell us that the catastrophic impacts of climate change will be felt beyond the traditional horizons of most actors – imposing a cost on future generations that the current generation has no direct incentive to fix.

That means beyond: - the business cycle; - the political cycle; and - the horizon of technocratic authorities, like central banks, who are bound by their mandates.

The horizon for monetary policy extends out to 2-3 years. For financial stability it is a bit longer, but typically only to the outer boundaries of the credit cycle – about a decade.

In other words, once climate change becomes a defining issue for financial stability, it may already be too late.

This talk came in the run-up to the Paris climate talks, and it was one important reason they succeeded; Carney’s sober warning, and his insistence on the need for disclosure by countries and companies of their emissions, helped smooth the way for what is still the high water mark of climate progress.

And the next year, in 2016, he gave the Arthur Burns Memorial Lecture in Berlin. Again, it is worth reading in its entirety, but for a man who is now fully a politician, here is an important passage.

Underpinning the Paris Agreement is recognition that the stock of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere should not exceed the remaining carbon budget, which according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) amounts to 1000 gigatonnes of CO2 from 2011 onwards.
Countries have set their ambitions by submitting their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). At present, these commitments are of varying degrees of specificity, and most still need to be fleshed out to be consistent with the aggregate carbon budget. The Paris Agreement requires that NDCs be updated regularly and that each should be a progression on the last.
Crucially, the Paris Agreement provided an objective assessment that, even if all of the policies implied by the Agreement were implemented, global temperatures would rise by at least 2.7 degrees by 2100. In other words, the world has committed to do something, but not yet enough to meet its stated goals.

The man who said those clear and bold words now finds himself leading a nation hard hit by climate change: Canada has a front row seat the melt of the Arctic, which is the fastest-heating part of the earth; it has watched its boreal forests burn like never before in recent years.

But the man who said those bold words also finds himself leading a nation that contains Alberta, whose vast pool of tarsands makes its one of the biggest carbon deposits on planet earth.

His predecessor Justin Trudeau could never figure out how to square those facts, because they are not easy to square (and also because Trudeau was a nepo baby to the max). But also because he came into power at a moment when fossil fuel was still cheaper than renewable energy, and hence clearly valuable. Carney comes into power when that equation has flipped: we now live on a planet where wind and sun provide energy more cheaply than gas and oil (and where the sane if brutal superpower, China, has clearly figured that out). That fact may give him room to move his country decisively in the right direction.

So here’s the second good thing I wanted to talk about, one that underscores the point I’m trying to make about Carney’s opportunity.

Over the weekend, American officials were in London as part of a large International Energy Agency Summit on the Future of Energy Security. It wasn’t about climate, really, though it did begin with a letter from the King pointing out that “events over recent years have shown that, when well-managed, the transition to more sustainable energy systems can lead itself to more resilient and secure energy systems.”

The U.S. was having none of that. Our man—someone named Tommy Joyce whose biography points out that he has sailed his monohull across the Pacific ocean with his wife, so that’s good—used the occasion to criticize renewables because they depended on China. He recommended that everyone buy a lot of American LNG to power their countries instead. As he put it:

“A typical offshore wind turbine requires four tonnes of a permanent magnet made in the form of rare earth elements and, since China, the supplier of nearly all of them, restricted their sale, there are no wind turbines without concessions or coercion from China.”

Which, true enough. But if your point is that countries don’t want to rely on undependable foreign nations for their energy supply, have you noticed that America has gone crazy in the last hundred days? China is ruthless, but they’re not erratic. (And they’re busy shoring up their climate bona fides). No one was going to say so to his face, but Joyce was describing last year’s world.

More to the point, even if you need to rely on China to build your wind turbine or your solar panel, you need to rely on them once. Because once it’s up, then you’re relying on the wind, the sun, and your stock of batteries, all of which seem eminently more dependable than Donald Trump or J.D. Vance.

And so, as Politico put it, Joyce received a “shrug.”

Joyce’s speech was met with silence. The “awkward but unanimous” moment was “telling,” said one European official who was in the room.

Responding to Joyce’s comments, U.K. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband told POLITICO: “I think overall, I would say that the general tenor of these discussions indicates where people are going, which is toward a clean energy transition.”

The U.S. won’t want to hear that—Trump’s plan is all about “energy dominance” through our control of hydrocarbons. And he’s still got people buying into it: LNG exporter Woodside today announced a $17.5 billion investment in new export terminals, with its CEO exulting over its “asset lifespan of more tha forty years.” Trump will do his best to help—he’s essentially compelling Asian nations to sign up for more LNG contracts on the threat of being tariffed. But my guess is that countries will look to buy as little as they can get away with, while they build up their renewable portfolios as fast as they can. For instance, here’s what Barbados’ energy minister Lisa Cummins explained to the London summit:

She added that, as well as suffering from fossil fuels through the climate crisis, Barbados spent over $1 billion importing fossil fuels to generate electricity in 2024. The Caribbean country’s biggest fossil fuel suppliers are Trinidad and Tobago and the US, but it aims to generate all of its electricity from renewables in 2030, using solar, wind and battery storage.

In the very short run, Trump’s insanity may help Alberta—if I had no choice but to depend on LNG, I’d rather buy it from Carney’s Canada, confident that a longtime central banker realizes a deal is a deal. (He seems unlikely, say, to put judges in jail when they disagree with him). But over the slightly longer term the same logic applies to Canada as the U.S., and it all complements Carney’s original 2014 insight: this stuff needs to stay in the ground. It will wreck the climate, and now it will wreck your economy.

I’d say that the rest of the world is going to recognize Carney as the most likely person to midwife us through this transition. I think he’s not done playing a world-historical role, and for that if nothing else we can thank Donald Trump.

Unless something goes awry, both Rumeysa Ozturk and Mohsen Mahdawi will be in a Vermont courtroom in the next few weeks. Both will contest the government’s right to abduct and imprison people with no due process, because they exercised their constitutionally protected freedom of speech. Both prisoners ask for the ancient right of habeas corpus, a remedy for wrongful detention which prevented kings of England from throwing people in jail arbitrarily. The courts will decide whether freedom of speech and due process for everyone are still the law of the land.

But you and I will decide whether we, the people, will allow illegal arrests like these, or whether we will protest so loudly that the government dare not continue them. Why should we be concerned? What happened here? In the crush of so many outrages, it’s easy to lose track how these two cases involve the same core issues and yet are different in some important respects.

One contrast is that Mahdawi had a public role in organizing and protesting with a Columbia Palestinian students’ union until March 2024, when he withdrew because he advocated for Palestine as a safe place for Jews and Palestinians alike. Ozturk’s only “crime” is co-authoring a column in the Tufts University newspaper asking that the University acknowledge the genocide of more than 50,000 of the Palestinian people, and act accordingly. A State Department investigation before her arrest found no link at all to terrorism or antisemitism. Ozturk literally has been locked up only because of her written words, while Mahdawi was out on the streets exercising his right to free speech.

Can anyone really believe that a column in a university newspaper or demonstrations on a college campus could have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States” under the Immigration and Nationality Act?

Another contrast is that Mahdawi reacted to doxxing and false accusations by going underground, and was interviewed by CBS News the day before his arrest. He was prepared. Ozturk was fearful but continued her private life. When Mahdawi reported at the “honey trap” of a long-awaited citizenship interview, he was accompanied by allies who videoed him being taken away in handcuffs. He knew what he was walking into, and decided it was worth the risk because the interview might fulfill his dream: U.S. citizenship. He had the immediate attention of his lawyers, his neighbors, and the press.

The contrast with Rumeysa Ozturk’s arrest and abduction could not be greater. The unsuspecting 30-year-old woman was walking in broad daylight to an interfaith center when six masked agents swooped down on her, grabbed her phone, handcuffed her, and marched her to an unmarked vehicle. For 24 nightmarish hours, Ozturk was whisked across state lines to New Hampshire and then Vermont where she was held overnight, and at dawn flown to Louisiana where she has been imprisoned ever since. Her statement says that she initially thought she was in the hands of killers, not police. Ozturk’s repeated requests to call her lawyer were refused.

While Mahdawi says he is “in good hands” in a Vermont prison, Ozturk has described a nightmarish situation at the detention center in Louisiana. Both in her written statement to the court, and in her conversations with the senator and representatives who visited her, she described 24 women and a mouse in a cell meant for 14. In sum, “unsanitary, unsafe, and inhumane.” Ozturk has also been deprived of asthma medication and healthcare, and her hijab was removed without consent.

For all these differences, the cases have some similarities apart from involving the Palestinian cause. Both people have extensive support from their communities. The classic white-steepled church in Hartland, Vermont was packed with Mahdawi’s neighbors who wanted to help him any way they could. The District judge had never seen so many letters of support (almost 100). Ozturk is also highly regarded. In addition to letters from the President of Tufts University (whom her column criticized) and many colleagues and faculty, 27 national Jewish organizations supported her in an amicus brief. They of all people should understand the dangers of abducting people on the street because of what they say, with no due process.

In both landmark cases, judges specifically ordered that the prisoners not be moved from the state where they were arrested. Mahdawi is still in Vermont because the judge’s order was sought and granted immediately. The agents who abducted Ozturk hurtled across the Massachusetts border and crossed three state lines before 24 hours had passed. The Trump administration contends that Ozturk’s petition is invalid because it wasn’t filed in the right state—despite the fact that they prevented her from communicating until she was in Louisiana.

Both Ozturk and Mahdawi were the victims of doxxing, and false information spread through networks of extremists who targeted them. Ozturk’s column was her only public statement on the Palestinian issue, and the Trump administration had to stretch to find something amiss—that her words were in sympathy with a group that was later temporarily banned on campus. Far from being an antisemite as charged, Mahdawi was the leader of a protest where he led the whole group in chanting, “Shame on you” at a demonstrator who cursed the Jewish people.

The basis for the Trump administration’s action in both situations is vague and alarming. Can anyone really believe that a column in a university newspaper or demonstrations on a college campus could have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States” under the Immigration and Nationality Act?

Rumeysa Ozturk and Mohsen Mahdawi are petitioning for one of the oldest rights in our common law, because their rights under the U.S. Constitution—to speak and to have due process of law—have been violated in numerous ways. Whether you are in Vermont with its traditions of free speech and direct democracy, or in any of the other 49 states where the Bill of Rights is still alive, speak for them. Speak to your president who has jailed them and his officials, your senators and representative, every form of media you read or see, your state and local government. Stand by the road with a sign, and invite your neighbors to join you. Talk to all the organizations you belong to and connect with people, regardless of their political beliefs. Most people feel that no one in our country should be abducted and jailed arbitrarily.

The rights you save might be your own. In fact, they are—at least for now.

On the evening of November 5, 2024, I sat at a gathering of organizers and volunteers from the campaign to pass Proposition 139, a citizen-driven initiative in Arizona seeking to enshrine abortion access in the state constitution.

After an hour or so of waiting with bated breath, the bulk of Arizona’s ballot initiative results had been counted and posted online. Our hard work had paid off! Prop 139 had amassed 66% voter support (a number that would decrease to a still impressive 61% by the final tally.) After a significant round of applause and the shedding of a few tears, the party settled into a pleasant thrum.

At first I expected shouting, screaming, and crying—we had won a massive victory! But I quickly understood that the celebration was more subdued than expected because the results were exactly what the lead organizers of the campaign hadanticipated: a win.

Healthcare Rising and Prop 139 won because they refused to partake in party politics and instead tailored their campaign toward fighting for issues that were resonant and supported in their constituency and across the political spectrum.

Ultimately, it was unsurprising that this initiative to enshrine abortion access passed in Arizona, despite voters in the state supporting anti-abortion candidate and now U.S. President Donald Trump, because reproductive freedom itself as a policy has proven to be overwhelmingly popular when put to a vote by the electorate.

A recent report from our team at the Center for Work and Democracy uses data from citizen-driven initiatives—ballot initiatives that are drafted, petitioned, and voted on by citizens themselves—from the last 15 years to see where patterns in voting emerge. Put very briefly, we found that people vote for policies that are egalitarian and economically redistributive.

Egalitarian measures—which equalize rights, resources, and decision-making power in society—pass at a rate of 65.63% across blue and red states alike. Initiatives supporting reproductive rights, for example, are considered egalitarian and prove to be extremely successful at the polls. Despite a difficult loss in Florida in the 2024 election and a complicated voting stalemate in Nebraska, abortion access has been protected by voters in 14 out of 17 cases since the fall of Roe v. Wade.

Redistributive measures are a subsect of egalitarian initiatives that specifically focus on the redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor, like raising the minimum wage. With an even greater passage rate than other egalitarian measures, redistributive ballot measures clock in with an impressive win rate of 75%. In red states, this number rises all the way to a whopping 92% compared to 61.29% in blue states. (We found that blue states’ averages are skewed down by California’s initiative results, which are far less progressive than the state’s image.)

When Healthcare Rising Arizona and the other co-organizers of the campaign for Prop 139 set out to get the initiative on the ballot and enshrined in the state constitution, they knew that party politics were not going to help their cause. From day one, the campaign for 139 was clear that their organizing would be strictly nonpartisan because they knew that abortion as a policy was more popular than any individual Democratic candidates, despite those Democrats being vocally pro-choice.

The strategy worked. The Arizona for Abortion Access Act passed with 417,427 more votes than former Vice President Kamala Harris received in Arizona, proving that egalitarian policies like reproductive rights are simply more popular than pro-choice candidates.

Healthcare Rising and Prop 139 won because they refused to partake in party politics and instead tailored their campaign toward fighting for issues that were resonant and supported in their constituency and across the political spectrum.

Our data tells us that egalitarian and redistributive measures are exceedingly popular with red and blue voters alike. So if Republican and Democrat voters both want many of the same things—policies that equalize rights, break down wealth inequality, and support the decision-making power of everyday people—why won’t politicians just give the people what they want?

During the Trump administration’s recent torrent of executive orders, the Navy paused sexual assault and prevention trainings in response to the administration’s demand to remove all DEI initiatives and programs. The U.S. armed forces are plagued by an epidemic of sexual assault, one of the most devastating markers of persistent gender inequality within the military. The Navy’s pause of just a few days signals the tenuous nature of protections for service members, especially women and minorities, who are by far the most numerous victims of assault.

The military’s sexual assault crisis speaks to the violence embedded within miliary institutions. Intimate partner violence, for instance, is disproportionately high among military and veterans populations. SAPRO, the Sexual Assault and Prevention Response Office of the Department of Defense (DOD), is the only resource that provides prevention and trainings on sexual assault and advocacy services to victims. It is the sole database for reporting and prevalence tracking of unwanted sexual contact in the military, making the Navy’s pause all the more alarming.

The U.S. military has been systematically tracking data via SAPRO since 2005 when the National Defense Authorization Act began to require information to be presented to Congress. However, independent reporting and data from organizations assisting sexual assault survivors indicate a spike in assaults immediately following the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. This is the year the United States declared an official “Global War on Terror,” which the U.S. military still carries out operations for in 78 countries as of 2023. Also in 2001, the National Sexual Violence Resource Center officially designated April as Sexual Assault Awareness Month.

In any other workplace, if 1 in 4 women were sexually assaulted by their coworker or superior, there would be a national outrage.

This Sexual Assault Awareness month, we must talk about sexual assault as a disastrous cost of war.

The military’s epidemic of sexual assault is much worse than the DOD is willing to admit. Our Costs of War project research compared the Department of Defense’s data on sexual assault prevalence to independent (non-DOD) data to estimate sexual assault figures within the military from 2001 through 2023. We found that independent data suggest that actual sexual assault prevalence is 2 to 4 times higher than official DOD estimations.

The Trump administration’s policies will only worsen this crisis. Particularly in a hierarchical institution such as the military, the leadership exemplifies the values that the institution expects all members to uphold. It is notable that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was himself accused of sexual assault in 2017 and has a long track record of sexist behavior.

Since 2001, 24% of active-duty women and 1.9% of active-duty men in the U.S. military have experienced sexual assault. That is almost one-fourth of all women in the U.S. military, and given low reporting rates, it is likely even more. Fear of retaliation is one of the primary reasons service members do not report sexual assault, with data showing that service members are 12 times more likely to face retaliation than to see their offender convicted. Nationwide, 81% of women and 43% of men reported experiencing some form of sexual harassment or assault in their lifetime.

Experiences of gender inequality are most pronounced for women of color, who experience intersecting forms of racism and sexism and are one of the fastest-growing populations within the military. Furthermore, independent data also confirm that queer and trans service members face a disproportionately greater risk for sexual assault.

These numbers are staggering. In any other workplace, if 1 in 4 women were sexually assaulted by their coworker or superior, there would be a national outrage.

The sexual assault crisis should draw our attention to the contradiction of military policies aimed at greater gender and racial equity when this institution waged post-9/11 wars that displaced 38 million people, directly killed 929,000 people, and indirectly killed 4.5-4.7 million people worldwide. The wars waged by the U.S. are existentially linked both to the military as an institution and to the persistent racism and sexism within the U.S. Efforts such as the bipartisan, bicameral legislation recently introduced to help survivors of military sexual trauma (MST) more easily access care and benefits, as well as boost MST claims processing, must be resoundingly supported. One of the bill’s sponsors, Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Minn.) said, “This goes far beyond administrative shortcomings at the VA; it’s a fundamental breach of our moral and constitutional duty to those who served.”

Although there have been consistent internal interventions and resources intended to address military sexual assault, this form of violence continues to occur, illustrating that reforms have not meaningfully transformed institutional patterns of abuse. Military officials have themselves described, in retrospect, that the military prioritized training and deploying troops to the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars over confronting a clear institutional problem of sexual assault. In fact, the deliberate cover-up of harassments, assaults, and disappearances of service members to protect sexual predators and their enablers in the U.S. military has been evident in numerous high-profile cases over the years.

The goal is not solely to have higher reporting numbers or more initiatives, but to completely eradicate sexual assault from occuring. Sexual assault in the U.S. military is fundamentally and inextricably linked to fighting wars abroad. Important as they are, better reporting infrastructure or training and prevention programs within the DOD are not enough. This Sexual Assault Awareness Month, we should ask for more—an end to sexual assault and an end to endless wars.

What assurance do any of us have that government agents will not knock at our door, claiming authority to detain us? How do we know that masked agents will not abduct us on the street, taking us somewhere far away?

In ordinary times and places, it would be madness to ask such questions. Rumeysa Ozturk may well have thought so before masked, plainclothes government agents took her off the streets of Somerville, Massachusetts and she ended up in Louisiana. Ms. Ozturk had been studying in the United States on a student visa.

Badar Khan Suri may have thought so before masked agents took him from the street outside his home in Virginia to a federal detention center where he “was issued used underwear and a bright red uniform that is usually reserved for detained individuals who have been classified as ‘high security’ based on their criminal history.” Dr. Suri, like Ms. Ozturk, was in the U.S. legally. Dr. Suri is married to a U.S. citizen; he and his wife have three young children, one of whom “spent days crying uncontrollably following this father’s disappearance, and [then] stopped speaking.”

I don’t know how anyone in the United States sleeps at night.

We are firmly in Martin Niemoller territory, and it may be too late. It is, of course, already too late in an important sense for Ms. Ozturk, Dr. Suri, and many others—some of whom had legal status in the United States, some of whom did not. Some have been taken to federal detention centers within the U.S. Others are in a foreign prison notorious for torture. Trump administration officials brag they are never coming back. President Donald Trump himself speaks openly of sending U.S. citizens there, and publicly asks that country’s dictator to build more prisons to hold those Trump sends.

There is no mystery here, and we cannot say we are surprised as this reign of terror extends further. Trump has openly told us that “homegrowns are next. You [El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele] gotta build about five more places.”

I don’t know how anyone in the United States sleeps at night. Like U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), I am afraid (unlike Sen. Murkowski, I do not have access to much power). FBI agents arrested a judge in Wisconsin last week. This is bone-chilling stuff.

We are always a step or two behind Donald Trump. Those of us who find him abhorrent may have thought of him as a joke when he first ran for president in 2015-16. That is understandable. Trump is a creature of reality television and the New York tabloids, manifestly unfit to hold any position of public trust. Even after a decade in politics, he remains painfully uninformed and incurious. That does not, however, render him innocuous in any way.

He has all the levers of power available to him that he needs to carry out the unspeakable things he has already done and more. All he needs is people willing to carry out his orders and no one capable of stopping him. He has his minions lined up, eager to do his bidding—people like Kash Patel, Pam Bondi, Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, and Tom Homan, as well as rank and file government officials who work for them. The U.S. Congress has rendered itself a nullity, thanks in large part to Republican senators and representatives who have made clear they will do nothing to stop Trump, no matter how far he goes. There are judges, especially lower federal court judges, who are doing the right thing and insisting on constitutional limits, but those limits mean nothing if they are not backed up by the Supreme Court and Congress.

We may like to think that we will have warning before it is too late. I know someone who lives in the northern U.S. and says he is just a couple of hours from Canada if things get too dangerous. How would proximity to the border have helped Ms. Ozturk, Dr. Suri, or others when federal agents descended upon them?

We have descended into darkness and, at the moment—unless and until others take action to stop them—an aspiring dictator and his followers will decide exactly how far we go. The first step in responding is describing precisely what we are experiencing and what it means. If you grew up in the U.S., like me, wondering what it might be like to live in a country where no one is assured of their security, where no one is truly safe, or if you lived in another country where this has already happened, then this will seem familiar. Organized action is needed—I am speaking of peaceful protest, lawful actions, starting with impeachment and removal of Donald Trump and his minions from office. That may sound laughable, and it certainly cannot happen yet. But it must happen if we are to delivered from this waking nightmare.

The Democratic National Committee needs to take a step back and reflect on the moment in which it finds itself. The sense of national anxiety and uncertainty is palpable. Trust in our institutions is staggeringly low. Everyday Americans are scared, and they’re looking for actual leadership. They’re looking for hope. They’re looking for visionaries.

However, for the sake of party unity and integrity, the leaders of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) must remain neutral when it comes to primary challengers.

At least, that’s what the DNC leadership is saying now.

The only way to win back the trust of voters and challenge the proto-authoritarian regime we’re up against is by listening to the demands of working-class people and dropping the paternalistic attitude that insists the elites know best.

That certainly wasn’t the approach taken in 2016 when Hillary Clinton was given insurmountable preference and privilege by the DNC, and again in 2020 when early primary victories for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) sent the party establishment into a panic. Deals were made, and party elites all but sealed the nomination for former President Joe Biden. Neutrality surely wasn’t a priority then.

So what changed? A young, occasionally progressive vice-chair of the DNC with a massive platform announced that his personal grassroots organization, unaffiliated with the DNC, would pledge funds to back primary challengers in democratic strongholds where the running incumbents are failing to rise to the moment we face, and are pompously ignoring the demands for bold change from their constituents. Now, all of a sudden, it would be improper for anyone with real influence in the party infrastructure to pick a side in contested primaries. Interesting. Apparently it’s only improper for party officials to pick a side when the side they pick challenges the status quo.

DNC Vice-Chair David Hogg is right to call out do-nothing Democrats who cling to power while refusing to fight for popular policies like Medicare for All, green jobs, and a wealth tax on the ultra-rich. These corporate-backed incumbents are dead weight on the party, and are more concerned with donor checks than the people they claim to represent. But where Hogg, and too many well-meaning liberals, fall short in their criticism is in their failure to articulate a bold, unapologetically populist vision that names the enemy: a rigged political system in which wealthy donors, corporations, and special interests can buy off politicians of both parties, and subvert the will of the people by simply writing a check.

The party establishment may not have gotten the memo, but the voters certainly have. According to a February Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults of both parties, the role of money in politics is the issue described by the highest percentage of respondents (72%) as “a very big problem,” followed closely by the affordability of healthcare (67%).

We need candidates and a party that refuse to accept dark money in the primaries. We need candidates and a party that draw a sharp distinction on this front. The Democratic Party must be a democratic party, not a plutocratic or oligarchic party.

If the DNC wants to be the vehicle the future requires, it must rally behind candidates who dare to say that healthcare is a human right, and will fight for a single-payer system. The party needs primary challengers who will unapologetically say that our tax dollars should pay for public services, not for bombs that are sent overseas to maim and murder civilians. We need candidates committed to a transformational Green jobs investment. We don’t need lip service and half-measures, but a full-scale mobilization to save our planet from climate catastrophe and corporate greed. We need candidates who will say enough is enough.

The moderate, establishment wing of the Democratic Party would have you believe that these policies are too radical, fringe, and unrealistic to help win elections. These political elites spend so much time convincing the media that they represent the views of the average voter that perhaps they’ve even begun to believe it themselves. The facts tell a different story.

Not only have progressive policies been proven successes in countless advanced democracies all over the world, but they are also extremely popular among Democratic voters. Let’s first look at who is currently popular among the Democratic base. As of last month, the Democratic Party’s favorability rating stands at just 29%. By contrast, the popularity of bold progressive voices in the party is dwarfing that of establishment moderates. Bernie Sanders, alongside Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), is drawing massive crowds scarcely seen in nonelection years on their Fighting Oligarchy tour, while centrist Democrats are struggling to adequately respond to frustrated crowds at their town halls. According to a CNN poll from March 2025, 1 in 6 voters under 45 describe AOC as “emblematic of the party’s values,” much higher than any other politician listed in the poll.

With 48 years separating them, their popularity has less to do with age, and more to do with progressives’ ability to articulate a vision of the future for America that offers more than returning to business as usual. Working class Americans feel left in the dust in a rapidly changing economy that values quick profit over long-term growth and sustainability. The Biden administration failed to acknowledge and sufficiently address the challenges of struggling Americans, and the Kamala Harris campaign didn’t do enough to convince voters that it would be responsive to their needs..

The citizens of this country want to know that their vote and their voice matters, and that it won’t be drowned out by the overwhelming noise of super PACS and billionaire donors. They want to know that a devastating medical emergency won’t be the cause of their family’s bankruptcy. They don’t want the laws of this country to reinforce the idea that the value of your voice and the value of your life are directly tied to the amount of money in your bank account.

The bottom line is this: You win elections by responding to the needs and the concerns of the voters. When the voters of both parties agree that the electoral system is rigged for the rich and the healthcare system is broken, and yet both parties refuse to do anything meaningful about either of those problems, it inevitably follows that voters will look for leaders who seek to fundamentally change the parties that ignore them.

The DNC and the Democratic Party must recognize that leading into the midterms, we are truly at an inflection point. The playbook of the past has failed. There is no reviving it. The only way to win back the trust of voters and challenge the proto-authoritarian regime we’re up against is by listening to the demands of working-class people and dropping the paternalistic attitude that insists the elites know best. While we may disagree with David Hogg on certain issues and candidates, his commitment to cutting the dead weight from the Democratic Party is commendable. Where his strategy misses the mark, however, is in failing to articulate that what we need is not just young candidates willing to fight against Trump. We need to back young candidates willing to fight for a version of America that lives up to its promise in action, not just rhetoric.

The best way of preventing authoritarian leaders from overthrowing democracies is to make sure that they never get into power in the first place. That’s what the French did last year when parties on the left united and then made a second-round pact with the centrists to prevent Marine Le Pen and her far-right National Rally from winning a parliamentary majority. And now the courts have convicted Le Pen of corruption and barred her from running for office.

Americans have obviously screwed the pooch on that particular method of preventing autocracy. Voted out of office, slapped with multiple suits, convicted of a felony, denounced by dozens of his former appointees, Donald Trump nevertheless managed to use these setbacks as evidence that even a billionaire ex-president can be an “outsider” who’s taking on the “establishment” and sticking up for the “little guy.”

A decade of Trump? That’s a sobering prospect. A 100-year-old president-for-life presiding over the dying embers of American society? A horror story indeed.

On the eve of the first 100 days of Trump’s second term, the challenge has now become infinitely more difficult. America is now living through that horror movie cliché where the call is coming from inside the house. The seemingly indestructible culprit has returned for a more horrifying sequel to destroy U.S. democracy from within. Worse, all the failures of his first term are now helping him craft more successful disruptions in his second.

With a cowboy president shooting from the hip in all directions, what can Americans do to prevent Trump from taking down democracy (not to mention the economy, the international system, and the planet)? Even New York Times columnist David Brooks, who admits in a staggering understatement that “he’s not a movement guy,” has recently declared that “it’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising.”

Alas, America has no history of such uprisings from which to draw, except perhaps the American Revolution and that was a long time ago. With few domestic examples to inspire, everyone is now searching the globe for cases of successful resistance to authoritarianism.

Unfortunately, most examples of such uprisings involved years and years of organizing. It took a decade to get rid of Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia, nearly two decades to oust Augusto Pinochet in Chile, slightly more than two decades to overthrow Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, and more than a half-century to depose the Assad’s father-and-son regime in Syria.

A decade of Trump? That’s a sobering prospect. A 100-year-old president-for-life presiding over the dying embers of American society? A horror story indeed.

But there are other examples of more compressed resistance from which Americans committed to a national civic uprising can take inspiration. In recent years, autocrats have been defeated in Brazil, Poland, and South Korea. What can we learn from the brave people who stood up to the dragon and saved their villages?

Dumping Bolsonaro

Like the United States, Brazil is a deeply divided country, with an even larger wealth gap. As Oxfam reports, “Brazil’s six richest men have the same wealth as the poorest 50% of the population; around 100 million people. The country’s richest 5% have the same income as the remaining 95%.”

The leftist Workers’ Party successfully mobilized the have-nots to win a series of elections in the 2000s. But in 2018, buoyed in part by Donald Trump’s win in 2016, an aggressive, nationalist outsider, Jair Bolsonaro, capitalized on voter frustration with corruption and persistent poverty to become the country’s president. The leading reason for voters to back the sexist, homophobic, religiously conservative Bolsonaro was anti-incumbent sentiment, a profound dissatisfaction with the political status quo.

Once in office, Bolsonaro threatened to pack the Supreme Court with his supporters and, when that failed, to ignore its rulings. He praised the country’s past military dictatorship and threatened to send troops into the streets to restore “order.” He ramped up the disastrous deforestation of the Amazon. Like Trump, he failed to address the Covid-19 pandemic, pushing Brazil to the top of the list of countries with the most fatalities (after the United States and Russia).

There were plenty of protests against Bolsonaro. But his allies in Congress provided a legislative shield against impeachment. Which meant that the most effective form of resistance turned out to be judicial. And that judicial resistance largely boiled down to one person, Alexandre de Moraes, a member of the country’s Supreme Court. As Jon Lee Anderson explains in The New Yorker:

After Bolsonaro took office, in 2019, de Moraes led an ever-expanding series of investigations into him and his family. As Bolsonaro’s supporters formed “digital militias” that flooded the internet with disinformation—claiming that political opponents were pedophiles, spreading blatant lies about their policies, inventing conspiracies—de Moraes fought to force them offline. Granted special powers by the judiciary, he suspended accounts belonging to legislators, business magnates, and political commentators for posts that he described as harmful to Brazilian democracy.

These actions went a long way toward constraining Bolsonaro’s power and reducing his overall popularity, so that by the time the next elections rolled around in 2022, the strongman lost his reelection bid.

U.S. Supreme Court justices don’t have the same kind of power as their Brazilian counterparts. The court as a whole has an even more limited ability to constrain the Trump administration if the latter decides not to implement the decisions it doesn’t like. It’s also going to be difficult to rein in Trump’s digital militias, given Elon Musk’s control of Twitter and Mark Zuckerberg’s capitulation to Trump over at Facebook.

But one lesson from the Brazilian case is the need to launch immediate investigations into government corruption and misconduct. This can be done in the United States by way of congressional requests for reports by the Congressional Research Service, which for instance deemed the defunding of USAID to be unconstitutional, or to the Government Accountability Office, which has been tasked to study the impact of the mass firings of federal workers. Lawmakers can also hold informal hearings on the unconstitutional actions of DOGE and the executive branch.

Don’t wait and play a defensive game. Be as bold as the Brazilians against Bolsonaro and go on the offensive.

Displacing Law and Justice

The right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS) took electoral advantage of the discontent of Polish voters, particularly in the countryside, who had not benefited from the country’s rush to capitalism after 1989. Poland A did well by the liberal reforms; Poland B didn’t and took revenge at the polls by voting for PiS.

Like Donald Trump and his MAGA forces, PiS had a first taste of power when it governed for two years in a coalition government and didn’t accomplish much. When it came roaring back in 2015, PiS knew exactly what to do. First, it went after the courts. PiS was determined to destroy the country’s constitutional order and remake Polish society according to conservative, nationalist, and religious principles.

The first target was the constitutional court, which had blocked PiS initiatives in that first administration. As Christian Davies writes:

The ruling party’s strategy played out in three parts: First, to deny opposition-appointed judges from taking their place on the court. Second, to pass laws designed to paralyze the court and prevent it from functioning effectively. Third, to force through the appointment of judges loyal to the ruling party. All this was done in open defiance of the law, the constitution, and multiple rulings issued by the Tribunal itself.

This attack on the judiciary, which was also accompanied by assaults on the media, free speech, and nonprofit organizations, precipitated a battle with the European Union, which put pressure on the Polish government to reverse its judicial “reforms.” But with the courts now aligned with its agenda, PiS looked as though it would consolidate its power indefinitely. In the 2019 elections, it even expanded its legislative majority in the lower house of parliament.

Four years later, thanks to its control of the media and other methods of rigging political outcomes, PiS again came out on top in the 2023 parliamentary elections with 35% of the vote. But this time, three opposition parties were able to unite to sideline PiS and form a new government. Poland’s constitutional crisis had come to an end.

How did the Polish opposition manage to beat a clearly still-popular party?

Perhaps the E.U. pressuring from the outside might have helped. But part of the PiS base was Euroskeptical, so the party could use E.U. pressure to rally its nationalist supporters.

More influential was the ability of the Polish opposition to overcome its fractiousness and bring together leftists, liberals, Solidarity true believers, traditional conservatives, and interest-group advocates like environmentalists and pro-choice feminists. In 2015, after the PiS government refused to follow a Constitutional Court verdict, major street protests broke out and a journalist called for a new civic movement patterned after the communist-era dissident group, the Committee for the Defense of Workers (KOR). “We have to remember, the goal isn’t to overturn the legally elected authorities of the country, but rather the defense of democracy,” the journalist wrote.

Out of this ferment came the Committee for the Defense of Democracy (KOD), which organized a series of massive protests around the country. Within a few months, it had garnered the support of 40% of the population. Because it wasn’t a party, KOD could appeal to a large segment of the population that had become disgusted with electoral politics. It successfully promoted the message that PiS was no ordinary party pushing for an ordinary platform of policies. Rather, PiS was a threat to the very legacy of the Solidarity movement that had liberated the country.

The United States needs just such a nonpartisan umbrella organization that can appeal to the largest swath of the anti-Trump community. Let’s call it the Society Organized to Save American Democracy (SOSAD). It stands for mom, baseball, apple pie, the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, fairly compensated work, equal rights for all: in short everything that makes America truly great.

Reversing a Coup

To overcome a parliament that blocked his policies, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law on the evening of December 3, 2024. The president ordered police to seal off the parliament and special forces to enter the building.

But the coup lasted for only a few hours. Enough members of parliament managed to get into the building that night and hold a vote to lift martial law. Meanwhile, spurred by news spread rapidly by electronic means, citizens began to gather in public places to protest Yoon’s actions.

South Koreans saved their democracy because of brave legislators and determined civil society activists. The country has a long history of civic engagement, going back to the democratization movement of the 1970s and 1980s and efforts to bring down former President Park Geun-Hye through months of candlelight vigils.

The defense of democracy perhaps feels more urgent in countries where it’s not taken for granted.

“The speed of this latest democratic defense suggests that lessons learned during decades of mobilization have strengthened South Korea’s institutional guardrails and nationwide vigilance against executive abuse,” writes Darcie Draudt-Véjares.

This month, the country’s constitutional court upheld the parliament’s impeachment and officially removed Yoon from office.

The lessons from the South Korean case are clear. U.S. legislators have to step up—as Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) did with his 25-hour filibuster and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) have been doing with their recent rallies. Meanwhile, civil society must organize rapid responses, not just within silos (like the recent letter from university presidents) but across institutions.

One key lesson from the South Korean experience is the role of labor. After Yoon’s martial law announcement, the main trade union confederation immediately called for a general strike until the president stepped down. The prospect of a significant hit to the Korean economy was a wake-up call for many who hadn’t yet made up their minds about Yoon.

U.S. labor has had a love-hate relationship with Trump. Many labor leaders refused to back the candidate even as support among rank-and-file members surged. Several key unions—Teamsters, UAW—have been enthusiastic about Trump’s tariffs.

Any opposition to Trump must appeal to working people who feel ignored and undervalued by politicians and the elite. They are a core part of Trump’s support, but they are certainly persuadable. When the costs of Trump’s actions begin to rise—at the pump, in the grocery store, through reduced checks from Medicare and Medicaid—they may well be ready for a political change.

Why were Poles, Koreans, and Brazilians able to turn back authoritarianism where others have failed? All three have histories of strong civil society engagement in politics. All three had credible leaders—Donald Tusk, Lee Jae-myung, Lula—who could step in as alternatives.

And all three countries have had rather short experiences of democratic rule. In 1981, South Koreans were living in the shadow of martial law, which had been declared the previous year. Poles entered a martial law period in December of that year. And Brazilians were living under a military dictatorship that wouldn’t collapse until 1985.

The defense of democracy perhaps feels more urgent in countries where it’s not taken for granted. So far, America is failing the stress test that Trump is applying to the country’s democratic institutions. But if Americans are willing to learn some lessons from Brazil, Poland, and Korea, maybe we can defeat the dragon as well.