After weeks of following the news about the systematic dismantling of the federal government by U.S. President Donald Trump and his appointed and ad hoc acolytes, I have been driven to outrage and the realization of the need for a clarion call to action. However, this week, after listening to an hour-long interview with a leading researcher and journalist who studies the manifestations and damage wrought by plutocrats and authoritarians, for the first time I felt fear.

Not specifically fear of what is happening to our great nation per se, but fear that this well-respected expert repeated several times during the interview that what we are observing is unprecedented in our nation’s history and that they had few if any recommendations on what can be done to wrestle back this beast.

To that end, action is what I put forward in this letter. Steve Bannon coined the now much used phrase “flood the zone,“ for the strategy that the Trump administration is employing with their phalanx of executive orders and invasions of executive agencies and secure databases by individuals without requisite security clearances. While many of these actions are apparently unenforceable and unconstitutional, the intent of the strategy is to overwhelm the opposition with far too much to act upon—akin to encouraging the proverbial cat to chase a laser light.

Unlike the early days of the American union, where citizen soldiers were freezing in the winter woods without boots and bullets, those opposed to the current takeover of our government and democratic institutions have many arrows in their quivers.

I suggest, as a countervailing strategy, that we employ the same technique against them. Truly patriotic Democrats and Republicans must now borrow Steve Bannon’s “flooding of the zone” in a different context. Generate so many lawsuits to in effect flood the Supreme Court docket. As a result, most cases brought against Trump administration actions will be forced to stay within the purview of the lower courts where some semblance of democracy and due process still remains.

While I certainly understand that the Supreme Court has the power to stay the decisions of lower courts and place cases on their docket that are consolidations of multiple lower-court decisions on cases with similarly limited legal questions; nonetheless, the strategy will indeed keep them jumping.

It is also important to note that this barrage of legal actions must be based on solid legal grounds. Any hint at frivolity in any of these lawsuits will rapidly reinforce right-wing outcry against such actions. I am particularly sensitized to this risk after watching a video of federal employee protesters decrying Elon Musk’s dismantling of the federal government. The protesters were challenging Musk’s actions while counterprotesters were asserting that their protests were misguided as they were opposing Musk’s so-called efforts toward “transparency and government efficiency.”

At the outset of the American Revolution, many considered it absurd that a ragtag bunch of colonists could actually weave together a nation while at the same time fighting a war against one of the most powerful nations on Earth. But that is exactly what America succeeded in doing. This was the result of vision, commitment, innovative strategies, and the juxtaposition of global events beyond the scope of the American Revolution that served to distract Britain from their intention to quell this colonial discontent.

However, unlike the early days of the American union, where citizen soldiers were freezing in the winter woods without boots and bullets, those opposed to the current takeover of our government and democratic institutions have many arrows in their quivers. We have legal scholars, state attorneys general, engaged NGOs, skilled lawyers who can crank out 200 page legal briefs overnight, the majority of the American public who have some understanding of civics and the critical importance of the American experiment, and many powerful corporations who understand that their business interests lie in producing products and services that not only create profitability, but also benefit people and the natural world. This capacity, effectively marshaled, without qualification cannot be stopped.

On Inauguration Day, I was flying home from India, where I had attended Gandhi 3.0, a retreat that brought together 40 people from around the world to explore how Gandhian principles can be meaningful in today's world. I returned to the U.S. just as my country was erupting in turmoil.

My emotions were all over the place. Having just experienced the most heart-expanding nine days of my life, where I witnessed the most extraordinary acts of generosity and heard some of the wisest of voices, I felt strangely grounded with a deep sense of love for, well, everyone. But I was also aghast, frightened for so many, and startled by those who were delighted by the sledgehammer upheavals, the head-spinning international proclamations, and the unconstitutional decrees.

I certainly understand the desire to upend “the system”—something I’ve been trying to do with multiple unjust, unsustainable, and inhumane systems my entire adult life—but what was unfolding was inchoate, cruel, and chaotic destruction rather than carefully considered interventions that would reduce waste and corruption.

What could Gandhi teach me and us?

Like Gandhi, ask yourself how you can tend your time carefully knowing that ineffective—and potentially destructive—efforts will waste your precious energy and could also backfire.

Studying Gandhi helps me put my country into perspective. Gandhi spent decades endeavoring to free his country from British rule using only nonviolent methods. He worked to end the evil of untouchability embedded in India’s caste system. He led a movement toward Indian self-reliance. And all along the way he made inner work—the cultivation of love and wisdom; inquiry, introspection, and integrity; and meditation—foundational to everything he did.

Gandhi once said:

I hold myself incapable of hating any being on Earth. By a long course of prayerful discipline, I have ceased for over 40 years to hate anybody. I know this is a big claim. Nevertheless, I make it in all humility. But I can and do hate evil wherever it exists. I hate the systems of government that the British people have set up in India. I hate the ruthless exploitation of India even as I hate from the bottom of my heart the hideous system of untouchability for which millions of Hindus have made themselves responsible. But I do not hate the domineering Englishmen as I refuse to hate the domineering Hindus. I seek to reform them in all the loving ways that are open to me. My noncooperation has its roots not in hatred, but in love.

I posted this quote shortly after my return to the U.S., and a friend commented: “Waiting for your solution? Do we just be still without any action to what is happening in this country?”

Gandhi would hardly want us to keep still. After all, he worked tirelessly. He also worked strategically, wisely, and forcefully, with force embedded in his guiding principle of satyagraha, often translated as “nonviolent resistance.” But satyagraha means so much more than this. The word combines satya, meaning truth, and agraha, meaning insistence, firmness, and adherence. In other words, Gandhi’s force for change was an unshakeable commitment to opposing injustice with truth. And truth for Gandhi meant never doing evil to combat evil; never using violence to oppose violence; and never succumbing to hate to resist hate. It meant no less than living, acting, and teaching with an abiding core of love.

Gandhi is famous for responding to a reporter’s question about his message by jotting down, “My life is my message.” Those five words aren’t just one man’s story. They represent a universal truth. Each of our lives is our message. The question thus becomes: Am I modeling the message I most want to convey?

None of us is or will be Gandhi. Nor will we have the megaphone to the world that he came to have through the power of his character, his resolve, and his at the time unique nonviolent approach to resistance. If you or I declared, as Gandhi did on several occasions, that we were fasting until and unless violence among our citizenry ended, we would surely die of starvation, and that violence would persist after we were gone. But that doesn’t mean that Gandhian principles have nothing to teach us today. They absolutely do.

Here are Gandhian teachings I am taking to heart right now:

1. Avoid rash acts and angry outbursts; these will not bring about any positive change.
2. Learn from the changemakers who have brought about greater peace and justice and built more compassionate, sustainable systems against all odds.
3. Embrace satyagraha, recognizing that this requires cultivating the inner resolve to continually pursue justice through nonviolent, loving means.
4. Work toward systemic change, understanding that this takes profound dedication, deep thinking, careful strategizing, and patience.
5. Do the inner work as tirelessly as the outer work to achieve all of the above.

If you were hoping for more specific strategies to address your current concerns, this may be a disappointing list, but let’s not forget that most people across the political spectrum care about others and want a future where their fellow citizens can thrive. Rather than consider those with different political views one’s enemies, we can perceive them as fellow participants and even potential friends with whom we can communicate, and maybe collaborate, as we identify better ways forward upon which we can agree.

Gandhi devoted years to readying himself and his followers for nonviolent resistance. He spent nearly two decades in preparation for the Salt March that led to India’s independence. Just ponder that as you consider the role you will play in achieving your vision for a sustainable, peaceful, just world.

Please don’t interpret this as meaning that we should only cultivate inner strength and love, or that we should do nothing now other than plan and strategize for an indefinite future. Rather, like Gandhi, ask yourself how you can tend your time carefully knowing that ineffective—and potentially destructive—efforts will waste your precious energy and could also backfire.

Whatever injustices, cruelties, and evils you seek to end, Gandhi’s life and message are worth studying and emulating. He demonstrated that satyagraha is not only a profound strategy; it is fueled by the most powerful of human capacities: love. Given that Gandhi was perhaps the greatest changemaker in history, it’s worth deeply considering his approach as a model for today’s world. And lest we think we somehow need to dispense with our anger to follow in Gandhi’s footsteps, he also said this:

“I have learnt through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmuted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power which can move the world.”

Good followers of U.S. President Donald Trump have to believe an increasingly large collection of ridiculous lies. First and foremost, they have to believe that the 2020 election was stolen. Then they have the corollary, that January 6 was an inside job pulled off for some reason by the FBI. Of course, they have to believe global warming isn’t happening and apparently now that that Ukraine started its war with Russia.

However, this week Elon Musk and Donald Trump added another big lie to the list: There are tens of millions of dead people getting Social Security. As with all Trump lies it is hard to know what the guy really believes and what is being thrown out to advance a larger goal, but this lie definitely ranks alongside the others for both its craziness and potential importance.

It seems the origins of the Social Security zombie story is Elon Musk’s misunderstanding of a Social Security file on the ages of people getting Social Security. He immediately began tweeting to his hundreds of millions of followers that tens of millions of dead people are getting Social Security. This line was quickly picked up by various right-wing influencers as yet another example of government incompetence and corruption.

It might have been helpful to Elon Musk’s “super-high IQ” DOGE boys if they had taken a few minutes to review some of these audits to understand how Social Security works and the problems it faces.

Then Donald Trump made the claim about millions of dead people getting Social Security himself. And under MAGA rules, once the “king” makes a pronouncement, everyone has to say it’s true no matter how utterly absurd it might be. This means all good Republicans have to insist that tens of millions of dead people are getting Social Security, or at least millions.

This claim is absurd on its face. Social Security actually keeps very good track of who is getting benefits, as numerous audits over the years have found. Yes, Social Security is in fact regularly audited by its inspector general and also the Government Accountability Office. It might have been helpful to Elon Musk’s “super-high IQ” DOGE boys if they had taken a few minutes to review some of these audits to understand how Social Security works and the problems it faces.

And the system does have problems, most of which are widely known to those familiar with the program. The two most obvious ones are the country’s method of tracking deaths and the age of the Social Security computer system.

The first problem is that there is no national death registry. We could compile this nationally, but this has been a big states’ rights issue, with many people, mostly Republicans, complaining that a national system of registering deaths would be a dangerous step toward totalitarianism. Therefore, the Social Security Administration (SSA) has to rely on getting data on deaths from states.

The other problem is that SSA is relying on an antiquated computer system that is using a computer language from the sixties. Musk and the DOGE boys may well want to ridicule SSA for using a computer system that is 50 or even 60 years old, but an analysis of the problem would again require looking in the mirror.

It would cost billions of dollars to put in place a new system, while maintaining the operation of the current system and ensuring that the privacy of workers’ earnings and benefit records are not compromised. Cost-conscious Republicans in Congress, along with many Democrats, have not wanted to fork over the money. If Elon Musk and the DOGE boys can arrange for the funding for modernizing the system, they would be widely applauded by supporters of Social Security, but that doesn’t seem the direction they are taking.

In fact, SSA has been pretty ingenuous in working around these obstacles to ensure that the overwhelming majority of its payments are accurate. And when overpayments are made, such as when benefits go to a dead person for a couple of months after death, they often are able to get the money back.

Mr. Arithmetic Exposes the Lie

Anyhow, when it comes to the claim that the zombie hordes are getting Social Security, a quick visit with Mr. Arithmetic should put this nonsense to rest. Social Security gives us very good data (it’s even available to Elon Musk and the DOGE boys) on payments to beneficiaries by age.

We can add this up and calculate the total amount of payments that SSA can identify. That came to $1,227 billion at the end of 2024. We can also go to the Social Security Trustees Report and find out the total amount the program paid out in retiree benefits last year. Interestingly, that also came out to $1,227 billion. So where is the money that is going to the millions of Musk-Trump Social Security beneficiary zombies?

Okay, but maybe these are fake numbers that the geniuses at SSA have put together to trick real tax-paying Americans. But which numbers would be fake?

It could be paranoid to imagine that Trump will take away the Social Security benefits that people worked for over many decades, but those who think the worst about Donald Trump are rarely wrong.

We know the total amount Social Security pays out in benefits each year. There are dozens of records kept on this that are regularly published. Even Elon Musk and the “super-high IQ” DOGE boys can find this out.

Furthermore, if we want to venture into the Twilight Zone and imagine that there are actually hundreds of billions of dollars secretly being paid out to the Musk-Trump zombies every year, we wouldn’t have to worry about this money contributing to the deficit. If the zombie payments are never recorded anywhere, they can’t be a factor in the official deficit that we all know and love.

Maybe the SSA tricksters did it on the other side. They are hugely exaggerating what we are paying as benefits to real working people. All those numbers on people in their 60s, 70s, and 80s are hugely inflated so that they have extra money to pay to the Musk-Trump zombies.

While that would be a very clever trick by the SSA fraudsters, it would also be pretty hard to pull off. We do have very good data on births. We know how many people were born in 1940, 1950, 1960, and every other year. We also know roughly how many of these people are dying. Anyone interested could examine whether, for example, the number of 90-year-olds SSA says are getting benefits makes sense.

The same applies on the benefit side. Social Security has a very well-defined benefit formula, which is readily available to anyone who wants to look. We have good data from a wide variety of sources on the wages people earned during their working years, so we can know roughly what they should be getting in Social Security benefits. We also have data from both public and private sources on what Social Security beneficiaries are actually getting from the program.

If the SSA bureaucrats are able to find ways to exaggerate their proper payments to living people, to hide hundreds of billions of dollars being paid out to dead people each year, they are way more clever than anyone gives them credit for. I’m not sure that fits the story that Elon Musk and the DOGE boys want to tell.

Is There Method to the Madness?

It is always dangerous to try to get into the head of someone who is not making any sense, but it is worth asking if there can be any purpose served by Musk-Trump spewing nonsense about tens of millions of dead people getting Social Security benefits. This could just be another absurd Trump power play where he forces his MAGA followers to accept an absurd lie just to show he can. He did this when he released a huge volume of water in California, ostensibly to help contain the Los Angeles fires, even though the areas getting the water were nowhere near LA.

There is another more pernicious possibility. Musk-Trump may want to foster the belief that there are large numbers of dead people getting Social Security benefit so that they can justify a purge of the rolls. The purge will not be directed at the dead people who are not there, but at their political opponents. This is obviously completely illegal, but if Trump gets decide the law, as he insists, it’s all fine.

It could be paranoid to imagine that Trump will take away the Social Security benefits that people worked for over many decades, but those who think the worst about Donald Trump are rarely wrong. I guess we will eventually find out his intentions with this idiocy. We have to hope that it’s just Trump’s dementia.

If you are experiencing rage and despair about what is happening in America and the world right now because of the Trump-Vance-Musk regime, you are hardly alone. A groundswell of opposition is growing—not as loud and boisterous as the resistance to Tump 1.0, but just as, if not more, committed to ending the scourge.

Here’s a partial summary—10 reasons for modest optimism.

1. Boycotts Are Taking Hold

Americans are changing shopping habits in a backlash against corporations that have shifted their public policies to align with Trump.

Millions are pledging to halt discretionary spending for 24 hours on February 28 in protest against major retailers—chiefly Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy—for scaling back diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in response to President Donald Trump.

Four out of 10 Americans have already shifted their spending over the last few months to be more consistent with their moral views, according to the Harris poll. (Far more Democrats—50%—are changing their spending habits compared with Republicans—41%.)

We will prevail because we are relearning the basic truth—that we are the leaders we’ve been waiting for.

Calls to boycott Tesla apparently are having an effect. After a disappointing 2024, Tesla sales declined further in January. In California, a key market for Tesla, nearly 12% fewer Teslas were registered in January 2025 than in January 2024. An analysis by Electrek points to even more trouble for Tesla in Europe, where Tesla sales have dropped in every market.

X users are shifting over to Bluesky at a rapid rate, even as Musk adds more advertisers to his ongoing lawsuit against those that have justifiably boycotted X after he turned it into a cesspool of lies and hate (this week, he added Lego, Nestle, Tyson Foods, and Shell).

2. International Resistance Is Rising

Canada has helped lead the way: A grassroots boycott of American products and tourism is underway there. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has in effect become a “wartime prime minister” as he stands up to Trump’s bullying.

Jean Chrétien, who served as prime minister of Canada from 1993 to 2003, is urging Canada to join with leaders in Denmark, Panama, and Mexico, as well as with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, to fight back against Trump’s threats.

Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum is standing up to Trump. She has defended not just Mexico but also the sovereignty of Latin American countries Trump has threatened and insulted.

In the wake of JD Vance’s offensive speech at the Munich security conference last week, European democracies are standing together—condemning his speech and making it clear they will support Ukraine and never capitulate to Russian President Vladimir Putin, as Trump has done.

3. Independent and Alternative Media Are Growing

Trump and Elon Musk’s “shock and awe” strategy was premised on their control of all major information outlets—not just Fox News and its right-wing imitators but the mainstream corporate media as well.

It hasn’t worked. The New York Times has done sharp and accurate reporting on what’s happening. Even the non-editorial side of The Wall Street Journal has shown some gumption.

The biggest news, though, is the increasing role now being played by independent and alternative media. Subscriptions have surged at Democracy Now, The American Prospect, Americans for Tax Fairness, Economic Policy Institute, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, The Guardian, ProPublica, Labor Notes, The Lever, Popular Information, Heather Cox Richardson, and, of course, this and other Substacks.

As a result, although Trump and Musk continue to flood the zone with lies, Americans aren’t as readily falling for their scams.

4. Musk’s Popularity Is Plunging

Elon Musk is underwater in public opinion, according to polls published Wednesday.

Surveys by Quinnipiac University and Pew Research Center—coming just after Trump and Musk were interviewed together by Fox News’ Sean Hannity, with Trump calling Musk a “great guy” who “really cares for the country”—show a growing majority of Americans holding an unfavorable view of Musk.

In Pew’s findings, 54% report disliking Musk compared to 42% with a positive view; 36% report a very unfavorable view of Musk. Quinnipiac’s results show 55% believe Musk has too big a role in the government.

5. Musk’s Doge Is Losing Credibility

On Monday, DOGE listed government contracts it has canceled, claiming that they amount to some $16 billion in savings—itemized on a new “wall of receipts” on its website.

Almost half were attributed to a single $8 billion contract for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency—but that contract was for $8 million, not $8 billion. A larger total savings number published on the site, $55 billion, lacked specific documentation.

In addition, Musk and Trump say tens of millions of “dead people” may be receiving fraudulent Social Security payments from the government. The table Musk shared on social media over the weekend showed about 20 million people in the Social Security Administration’s database over the age of 100 and with no known death.

But as the agency’s inspector general found in 2023, “almost none” of them were receiving payments; most had died before the advent of electronic records.

These kinds of rudimentary errors are destroying DOGE’s credibility and causing even more to question allowing Musk’s muskrats unfettered access to personal data on Americans.

6. The Federal Courts Are Hitting Back

So far, at least 74 lawsuits have been filed by state attorneys general, nonprofits, and unions against the Trump regime. And at least 17 judges—including several appointed by Republicans—already have issued orders blocking or temporarily halting actions by the Trump regime.

The blocking orders include Trump initiatives to restrict birthright citizenship, suspend or cut off domestic and foreign U.S. spending, shrink the federal workforce, oust independent agency heads, and roll back legal protections and medical care for transgender adults and youths.

In other cases, the Trump regime has agreed to a pause to give judges time to rule, another way that legal fights are forcing a slowdown.

7. Demonstrations Are on the Rise

We haven’t seen anything like the January 2017 Women’s March, the day after Trump 1.0 began, but over the past weeks, demonstrations have been increasing across the country. Last Monday, on Presidents Day, demonstrators descended upon state capitol buildings.

In Washington, D.C., thousands gathered at the Capitol Reflecting Pool, chanting “Where is Congress?” and urging members of Congress to “Do your job!” despite nearly 40°F temperatures and 20-mile-per-hour wind gusts.

The nationwide protests are part of the 50501 Movement, which stands for “50 protests. 50 states. 1 movement.” One of its leaders, Potus Black, urged the crowd of protesters in Washington to stand united in order to “uphold the Constitution.”

To oppose tyranny is to stand behind democracy and remind our elected officials that we, the people, are who they’re elected to serve, not themselves. The events over the past month have been built to exhaust us, to break our wills. But we are the American people. We will not break.

I expect that in the coming weeks and months protests will grow larger and louder—and by summer perhaps a “Summer of Democracy” will sweep the nation.

Acts of civil disobedience are also on the rise, as are resignations in protest against the regime. This week, former NFL punter Chris Kluwe was hauled out of a Huntington Beach City Council meeting after speaking out against Trump during public comments against plans to include a MAGA reference in the design of a library plaque.

As cheers erupted from the audience, Kluwe told the council, in words that should be repeated across the land:

MAGA stands for trying to erase trans people from existence. MAGA stands for resegregation and racism. MAGA stands for censorship and book bans. MAGA stands for firing air traffic controllers while planes are crashing. MAGA stands for firing the people overseeing our nuclear arsenal. MAGA stands for firing military veterans and those serving them at the VA, including canceling research on veteran suicide. MAGA stands for cutting funds to education, including for disabled children. MAGA is profoundly corrupt, unmistakably anti-democracy, and most importantly, MAGA is explicitly a Nazi movement. You may have replaced a swastika with a red hat, but that is what it is.

When he was done speaking, Kluwe said he would “engage in the time-honored American tradition of peaceful civil disobedience.”

8. Stock and Bond Markets Are Trembling

Trump has not lowered prices; in fact, inflation is rising under his control.

Trump’s wild talk of 25% tariffs is spooking the market. Yesterday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which measures the performance of 30 large-cap U.S. stocks, dropped by more than 1.40%.

Treasury bonds also dropped after a report showed more U.S. workers applied for unemployment benefits last week than economists expected—an indication the pace of layoffs could be worsening.

Transcripts of the last Fed meeting showed that officials discussed how Trump's proposed tariffs and mass deportations of migrants, as well as strong consumer spending, could push inflation higher this year.

Economic storm clouds like these should be troubling for everyone but especially for a regime that measures its success by stock and bond markets.

9. Trump Is Overreaching—Pretending to Be “King” and Abandoning Ukraine for Putin

Trump’s threats of annexation, conquest, and “unleashing hell” have been exposed as farcical bluffs—and his displays this week of being “king” and siding with Putin have unleashed a new level of public ridicule.

On Wednesday, following his attempt to kill a new congestion pricing program for Manhattan, Trump wrote on Truth Social: “CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!” The White House shared the quote accompanied by a computer-generated image of Trump grinning on a fake Time magazine cover while donning a golden crown.

Negative reaction was swift and overwhelming. Social media has exploded with derision. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said, “We are a nation of laws, not ruled by a king.” Illinois’s Democratic governor, JB Pritzker, said, “My oath is to the Constitution of our state and our nation. We don’t have kings in America, and I won’t bend the knee to one.”

The reaction to Trump’s abandoning Ukraine and siding with Putin has been more devastating, putting congressional Republicans on the defensive. Prominent Republican Sens. Roger Wicker of Mississippi and John Kennedy of Louisiana criticized Putin. Bill Kristol, a former official in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, noted that “Nato and the U.S. commitment to Europe has kept the European peace for 80 years. It’s foolish and reckless to put that at risk. And for what? To get along with Putin?”

10. The Trump-Vance-Musk “Shock and Awe” Plan Is Faltering

In all these ways and for all of these reasons, the regime’s efforts to overwhelm us are failing.

Make no mistake: Trump, Vance, and Musk continue to be an indiscriminate wrecking ball that has already caused major destruction and will continue to weaken and isolate America. But their takeover has been slowed.

Their plan was based on doing so much, so fast that the rest of us would give in to negativity and despair. They want a dictatorship built on hopelessness and fear.

That may have been the case initially, but we can take courage from the green shoots of rebellion now appearing across America and the world.

As several of you have pointed out, successful resistance movements maintain hope and a positive vision of the future, no matter how dark the present.

More than 55 years ago, I participated in the resistance to the Vietnam War—a resistance that ultimately ended the war and caused a once powerful president to resign. That resistance gave us courage we didn’t even know we had. It changed American culture, inspiring songs such as “The Times They Are A Changing,” and “Blowin’ In The Wind.”

No one person led that anti-war movement. It was an amalgam of groups and leaders spanning more than six years of mobilization and organization, at all levels of society.

The civil rights movement that culminated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 required over 18 years of organizing, demonstrating, and mobilizing.

The current coup is less than five weeks old, and resistance has only begun. The Trump-Vance-Musk regime will fail. Even so, the Democracy Movement now emerging will require at least a decade, if not a generation, to rebuild and strengthen what has been destroyed, and to fix the raging inequalities, injustices, and corruption that led so many to vote for Trump for a second time.

Those of you who want the leaders of the Democratic Party to step up and be heard are right, of course. But political parties do not lead. The anti-war movement and the Civil Rights Movement didn’t depend on the Democratic Party for their successes. They depended on a mass mobilization of all of us who accepted the responsibilities of being American.

We will prevail because we are relearning the basic truth—that we are the leaders we’ve been waiting for.

As the mass murder that took the lives of 10 innocent people in Sweden disappears from the international news map, there remains a debt to the dead that will likely go unpaid.

The majority of those who died were immigrants to Sweden, and the debt is simple: telling their stories and placing their lives in a context that pushes back against the common stereotypes about immigrants and refugees in Sweden, and across Europe.

Details are now beginning to emerge about the victims in Örebro. Of the 10 who died in Örebro, seven were women and three were men. Eight were born outside the country. But there is so much more. There are details that speak to the mundane, everyday lives of immigrants and refugees—stories that are largely ignored by the media in favor of more sensational topics such as crime, terrorism, and failed integration. Topics that do not reflect the overwhelming majority of people who have immigrated to Sweden and Europe. People who have often fled violence and persecution in search of a quiet, ordinary, and anonymous life.

To not recognize their everyday lives or to refuse to acknowledge their efforts to integrate into their new societies is to subject them to a second form of violence: the symbolic murder of their humanity.

Let’s be honest. The decision to present immigrants and refugees in one way rather than another is both deliberate and conscious. And let’s not deny the cruel irony that immigrants, routinely smeared as “lazy,” “violent,” and “incapable of integrating,” were murdered by an "ethnic Swede" who himself lived an unintegrated life as a “loner.”

Immigrants like Bassam, a father of two who came to Sweden from Syria. He worked making bread and preparing food, and on days when he had Swedish language classes, he would start work at 4:00 or 5:00 am, attend his language class, then return to work and stay late.

Immigrants like Salim, a refugee from Syria who had become a Swedish citizen and was studying to become a healthcare worker. He was engaged and had just bought a house. His last act, as he lay dying after being shot, was to call his mother and ask her to take care of his fiancée.

Immigrants like Elsa, who arrived in Sweden in 2015 from Eritrea and was also studying to become an assistant nurse. She was already employed at a nursing home and worked as a contact person for disabled residents in the municipality. She wanted to have two jobs to earn enough money for her husband to get a residence permit. They had four children.

These were victims of an act of violence that ended their physical presence in this world. To not recognize their everyday lives or to refuse to acknowledge their efforts to integrate into their new societies is to subject them to a second form of violence: the symbolic murder of their humanity. We are regularly told that immigrants to Europe from “other” parts of the world do not share our “values.” Yet, in the case of the mass murder in Sweden, we see victims who worked—often with multiple jobs—to integrate and create a better life. In short, they shattered the stereotype of the isolated, lazy immigrant unwilling to engage with Swedish society.

In the days (and now weeks) after the mass murder in Örebro, media in Sweden have been telling the stories of some of these immigrants and their families. About their lives and their losses. This is important progress in Sweden… while media outside of the country have overwhelmingly ignored the dead. But it also raises the question: Should it really take being killed in a mass murder to have your story told?

There are parts of the world that receive media coverage in Europe and the U.S. almost exclusively when there is war, famine, or natural disasters. This links these regions with crisis in the minds of news consumers, and it is a connection that is hard to break. The very idea that people in these regions have everyday concerns, worries, and joys like we do at home is very rarely addressed. Similarly, in domestic media, there are segments of society that are covered primarily when something negative or terrible happens. This creates a similar mental map for news consumers, overshadowing all other perspectives.

In journalism and media research, the concept of “framing” suggests that how an issue or group is presented (rhetorically or visually) in news affects how that issue or group is perceived and understood. But what is not shown is also part of “framing.” What is omitted in the presentation and analysis of society is also an editorial decision.

This should also be seen as part of the debt owed to many of those killed in Örebro. To recognize the power of media to shape not only what people think about but also how they think about it, and to present the everyday lives of those who come to Sweden and Europe not only when linked to tragedy and violence.

Imagine a world without effective nonprofit advocacy. When a corporation exploits a local community, no one speaks up or resists. Everyone is too afraid of the weaponized legal system, too vulnerable to liability. The ultra-wealthy take whatever they want and leave others to pick up the pieces. Opposition and resistance have been extinguished.

Those are the risks of a lawsuit against Greenpeace, now going to trial in North Dakota after a seven-year legal battle. Energy Transfer, the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline, is seeking $300 million for tort damages, including defamation. Energy Transfer’s previous attempt to sue Greenpeace under federal anti-racketeering laws was blocked by the courts. But the state charges have been upheld, with a trial beginning on February 24, and free-speech advocates are raising alarms about the dangerous precedent that would follow a loss for Greenpeace, or even from the trial proceeding at all.

I recently spoke with Scott W. Badenoch, Jr., a visiting attorney at the Environmental Law Institute. He’s part of a team of distinguished international legal scholars, including Steven Donziger and Jeanne Mirer, who have launched a Trial Monitoring Committee to ensure the case against Greenpeace proceeds fairly and transparently.

While the Trial Monitors and some activists will be on the ground in North Dakota, we need to make noise online and in the media, ensuring that as many people as possible know what’s at stake.

As Badenoch described it, the court is trying to maintain “as much of a black box as you could possibly create in the U.S. court system.” Judge James Gion recently denied a motion to allow live streaming of the trial proceedings.

Instead, Badenoch said the case should be dismissed immediately. The allegations attempt to hold Greenpeace responsible for the actions of activists and volunteers unaffiliated with the group. Legal advocates and climate organizers have called it an unconstitutional SLAPP suit, intended to burden Greenpeace with costly legal fees, shut them down, and restrict the free speech of nonprofits more broadly. “There is absolutely no justification for this trial happening in this court, at this time, with this judge,” Badenoch said. “Just none.”

In a press release from the Trial Monitoring Committee, Steven Donziger pointed to recent trends, writing that “this appears to be part of a broader strategy by the fossil fuel industry to weaponize the courts against activists and weaken organizations like Greenpeace in retaliation for their advocacy.”

While the trial itself presents dangers, the recent actions of Energy Transfer have also brought accusations of jury-tampering. In October, residents of rural Morton County, North Dakota, where the trial will be set, received what appeared to be a legitimate newspaper. However, it contained almost exclusively critical attacks on Greenpeace and the pipeline protests, while praising Energy Transfer. The “newspaper” was actually a political mailer from a company called Metric Media, with links to electioneering and fossil fuel companies, as reported in the North Dakota News Cooperative. Even more concerning, financial records link the CEO of Energy Transfer, Texas billionaire Kelcy Warren, to the creation of the fake newspaper. It looks a like blatant attempt to taint the jury pool. Despite this, Judge Gion refused to allow Greenpeace to investigate the origins of the biased mailer.

The crucial role of the Trial Monitoring Committee is to bring attention to these abuses of due process. “We are going to monitor this case one way or the other,” Badenoch told me. “But the more that [Judge Gion] withholds transparency and access from us, the more obvious it is that something is going on that they don’t want people to see.”

Meanwhile, the stakes of the case extend far beyond Greenpeace. If Energy Transfer is successful, Badenoch said, the precedent would be cataclysmic for nonprofit advocacy. An organization could be held liable for any actions by any activists, however tenuously affiliated. “Literally every social justice, climate justice, civil rights, human rights organization across the country—and maybe the planet—is at risk of legal murder in a courtroom, where an organization is put to death by a SLAPP suit.”

As members of the public, that means we all have a responsibility to advocate for transparency, fairness, and ideally dismissal of Energy Transfer’s lawsuit. While the Trial Monitors and some activists will be on the ground in North Dakota, we need to make noise online and in the media, ensuring that as many people as possible know what’s at stake. Badenoch was emphatic about this: “The number one thing is to bring attention to the case. Don’t let Greenpeace die with a whimper.”

In a time of chaos and distraction, it’s all too easy to let cases like this one go unnoticed. But the risks are simply too dire to ignore. “It’s absolutely terrifying for advocacy in this country and beyond. The risks are really hard to overstate,” Badenoch told me. “If Greenpeace is allowed to die in this field in North Dakota, then every single nonprofit is next in line.”

We are in the midst the gravest constitutional crisis since the Civil War. In less than one month, the new administration has shredded the United States’ heretofore sacrosanct system of checks and balances—through the brazen expansion of executive power, the de facto disregard of Congress whenever expedient, the intimidation of adversaries including the press, and a brash confidence that President Donald Trump cannot be contained by the courts.

Fortunately, there is one weapon available to us, one that is large enough to combat a crisis of this scale, one that we as citizens can wield to contain, defeat, and roll back this fascist counterrevolution–the Democratic Party.

Not the Democratic Party as it is—so far, the response to the crisis by Democratic leadership in Congress has been anemic, an utter failure.

After four and half decades of neoliberalism’s marginalization of popular political participation, the American majority has effectively been hypnotized into accepting its own oppression.

Rather, the Democratic Party as it must be, and will be, when we do the only thing available to us to save our democracy, freedom, and constitutional republic: Enter en masse into the Democratic Party and transform it into an institution of, by, and for the people.

For better or for worse, we live in a two-party political system.

Since 1946 there have been over 17,000 elections for the U.S. House of Representatives. How many have been won by a third-party candidate? Zero.

In the U.S. Senate, there have been two third party candidates elected: William F Buckley’s brother, James L Buckley, in 1970 on the New York Conservative line (usually a fusion Party); and Joe Lieberman, founding member of the Connecticut for Lieberman Party.

Final score over the past 78 years: Connecticut for Lieberman 1 Green Party 0.

The record is just as bad statewide and in localities. There have literally been millions of elections since WWII. The number of third-party victories is infinitesimal, less than one-tenth of 1%.

Third Partyism in the United States is, at best, an utter waste of time and energy; at worst (and this is usually the case), left-wing third parties facilitate the rise of the right—both by siphoning votes away from Democrats, and, more significantly, by drawing well-intentioned progressives away from participating in politics that actually make a difference.

This is unequivocally true for a very simple reason: The rules and regulations that govern our society are still, to this day, determined by our elected officials, who are either Democrats or Republicans.

Indeed. Until Trump, Elon Musk, and their minions do considerably more damage to our democratic republic by changing the rules of our elections, this will remain the case. There are scheduled midterm elections in 2026—and it remains likely that they will be as competitive as recent U.S. elections. (The Trump administration is intent on whittling away voter protections, but anything like the wholesale transformation of competitive voting as in Hungary or Russia appears a bridge too far in just two years.)

As such, the Democratic Party remains our only hope to preserve our freedom and our civil, human, and political rights. The Republican Party is wholly captured by the authoritarian, anti-constitutional MAGA movement.

And, to reiterate, there are only two parties that matter in the American political system, in which elected officials establish the laws that govern our society.

So, either you enter the Democratic Party to reform it, or you are complicit in the rise of fascism.

If that sounds too straightforward or confrontational, I ask you to take a breath and seriously consider what’s transpiring in the country. I don’t mean to be condescending, and I certainly don’t intend to scold anyone (if anyone deserves that, it’s myself for not writing this sooner). But I’ve done my due diligence in writing this essay. I’ve challenged dozens upon dozens of people to negate the logic of my argument. No one who has tried has even come close—and 90% have conceded the point without even making a counterargument.

At this hour, the Democratic Party is the only instrument at our disposal that can deliver the results we need.

The time has come for us to take off our blinders, understand the lay of the land so we can engage our foes, defeat them, and then proceed to build a stronger democratic society.

This strategy has worked before, in the 1930s and 40s, to claw our society back from the brink of fascism. FDR’s transformed Democratic Party, defined by the mass entry of workers in coordination with the labor movement, then proceeded to build the most prosperous middle class in human history, and by the mid-1960s codified the demands of the civil rights movement.

This is the third essay in a four-part series outlining why progressive “mass entryism” into the Democratic Party is necessary at this hour of history in order to salvage American democracy, freedom, and our Constitutional Republic.

The first two installments addressed the main causes behind the rise of Donald Trump: widespread dissatisfaction with the economy and the political establishment. The first article made the case that only a progressive-Bernie Sanders-FDR-inspired set of policies can deliver the shared economic prosperity that Americans crave and thus vanquish Trump’s hollow populism. The second shows that, once again, only progressives will fulfill the wishes of the people by establishing a true “small d” democratic revival that ends the reign of plutocratic money and insures equal political agency for every citizen.

In this essay, the most polemical in the series, I make the case that all progressives, with no exceptions, must get over any qualms they have about entering the Democratic Party. They either do this or accept that they are failing to stand up for what they claim to believe. History will not treat them kindly if they fail to act accordingly.

The fourth and final installment will outline a two-step fail-proof strategy for transforming the Democratic Party in a progressive direction. Together we can build the party into a force that can save American democracy and deliver the fully inclusive, prosperous middle-class society that the vast majority of Americans want.

In the title of this article, the words “to transform” are just as important as those about joining the Democratic Party. Heretofore, and since Bill Clinton’s election in 1992, the mainstream of the Democratic Party has supported neoliberal policies. This must end, and end now, for the simple reason that neoliberalism begat Trumpism—and will always continue to do so.

Here’s why. If a society is organized, as it is under neoliberalism, so that all the surplus wealth flows into the coffers of an ever increasingly rich small minority (aka the idle investor class)—it simply follows that this group of people will use their unrivaled wealth and power to end any capacity the general population may have to influence how society allocates its resources. Four and a half-decades after former President Ronald Reagan and former U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher launched the neoliberal revolution, and 30-odd years since Clinton and former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair joined their team—this is exactly what Trump, Musk, and Project 2025 are doing.

It follows that mass entryism into the Democratic Party is not enough; we also must reform it along the lines that were outlined in the first two articles in this series. To sit idly by, allowing the Democratic Party to remain in its current state, is as good as handing Trump the keys to the kingdom.

While mass entryism may be necessary, it won’t be easy. At this hour of history, people’s resistance to becoming actively involved in Democratic Party politics is profound. On the one hand, party leadership has (with rare exceptions) obstructed efforts by progressives to gain a toehold, wearing down its grassroots wing. More significant for the general population has been the slow realization and then tacit acceptance of a central tenet of the neoliberal order—that money and capital have an iron grip on all meaningful political decision-making.

However, neoliberal ideologues, in their heyday, did not actively seek to dismantle the apparatus of elections. Rather, promotion of “democracy” was central to their world view—even as they declared themselves the winners in advance (witness Thatcher’s “There is no Alternative” and Francis Fukuyama’s “End of History”). The actual destruction of liberal democracy has been left to neoliberalism’s heirs—Trump and the emergent international alliance of authoritarians (the “reactionary international,” aka 21st century fascism).

Nonetheless, after four and half decades of neoliberalism’s marginalization of popular political participation, the American majority has effectively been hypnotized into accepting its own oppression.

As mentioned before, no one I spoke to could negate the structural reality that the Democratic Party is literally the only institutionally empowered channel in American society capable of beating back Trumpism. However, the very same people acknowledged that they hadn’t even considered mass entryism into the Democratic Party as the appropriate and viable solution to the current crisis.

When asked why, a common response was for people to look at me with a blank stare, then blink their eyes or look away as if seeing the sun for the first time after being in a cave for days. However, this was not a “seen-the-light moment,” only a momentary break in the hypnosis. Invariably, what I would hear next became a familiar litany of reasons why Democratic mass entryism just won’t happen.

Most prominent among these were:

• The Democratic establishment will never cede power.
• Too many people are making too much money through the Democratic Party, and they will block any attempt to shut down their gravy train.
• Capital will never allow one of the two parties to be taken over by the people.
• Progressives will resist being shepherded into a centrist party.
• The Democrats are a war party. Gaza.
• The Democratic “brand,” and the progressive brand, have been made toxic by effective right-wing propaganda.
• Resistance activism is adequate (The Resistance is a great thing. Necessary, but not sufficient; it requires a parallel positive program.)
• Social movement activism is the solution (Also, a great thing, but requires allies on the inside. Must be supplemented by Democratic Party entryism.)
• Labor Movement activism is the solution (Another great thing. Solidarity forever, and across all sectors of society through Democratic Party entryism)
• Working people simply don’t have the time for political activism.
• Americans have been conditioned to remain politically inert.

In the fourth and final article in this series, I will outline an effective strategy for transforming the Democratic Party through mass entryism. In the context of that strategy, I will address the objections listed above.

In the meantime, please internalize the message of this essay—nothing is more important:

Because of the structure of American society and politics, the Democratic Party is the only institution positioned to challenge, defeat, and reverse the Trump administration’s ongoing destruction of our constitutional order.

The Democratic Party is failing now. We cannot allow this to continue. Everyone reading this understands there must be change, and that requires action.

Either we get involved in transforming the Democratic Party into the means that will defeat Trump and 21st-century fascism, or we are complicit in its rise.

Join PDA’s efforts to create a truly progressive Democratic Party, which we desperately need at this crucial hour of our history.

President Donald Trump has made no secret of his disdain for immigrants, particularly the non-white variety from south of our border. His statements that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of our country,” coupled with Fox News reports on Hispanic-appearing migrants who commit crimes, leave little doubt about what he and his allies think of (non-white) immigrants and their contributions to this country.

So it didn’t surprise me that he recently began to follow through on his own and his Department of Homeland Security (DHS) leadership’s earlier intentions (as far back as 2018) to detain immigrants—including unaccompanied children—at military posts. Earlier this month, the first deportation flight carried a few men from the American mainland to our naval base and Global War on Terror offshore prison site in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Trump’s spokesperson Karoline Leavitt referred to those migrants as “the worst criminal illegal aliens” and “the worst of the worst.” The flight apparently included members of a gang from Venezuela. Yet troops had already been ordered to ready the base in Cuba to house some 30,000 immigrants—a dramatic increase in its capacity—in military tent encampments meant to supplement existing detention facilities there.

The move is part of President Trump’s signature public policy initiative: to deport millions of immigrants living in the U.S. without clear legal status. Some 40% of those Trump deems “illegal” and has targeted for deportation actually have some sort of official permission to be here, whether because they already have temporary protected status, a scheduled date in immigration court, or refugee or asylum status.

The Trump administration isn’t planning to give the public the opportunity to critique the mistreatment of migrants deported to Guantánamo or any other military post or new detention center in an up-close-and-personal fashion.

Since none of them wear their immigration status on their shirts (thankfully!), it might prove unnerving indeed how officers from DHS will be selecting people for interrogation and detention. (It’s probably not the guy in front of you at Starbucks with a Scandinavian accent who just ordered a fancy drink.)

Everything from Ku Klux Klan flyers left in towns across the Midwest after the election to Trump’s order removing the protected status of schools, healthcare facilities, and places of worship when it comes to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids paints a dire picture. We haven’t seen profiling on this scale since the days after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, when the federal government ordered tens of thousands of men of Arab, Middle Eastern, and South Asian descent to register and be fingerprinted, subjecting them to increased surveillance and vigilante violence.

Since then, globally, the U.S. has detained hundreds of thousands of men (and, in some cases, boys) domestically and at that infamous prison in Guantánamo Bay, many without the ability to challenge their detentions and without the Red Cross surveillance that international law grants them.

Given the way legal standards for the treatment of people detained at federal facilities have eroded over the last two and a half decades, what may happen to tens of thousands of migrants at incarceration centers like Guantánamo in the years to come can only be a matter of grim speculation. However, one thing is clear: Whatever the treatment of the “worst of the worst” at or near that infamous prison, now a recyclable holder for whoever is the enemy of the day, it will be hidden from public view.

My Backyard

Such developments seem ever more real to me because my family lives about 40 miles from downtown Washington, D.C., where the Trump administration is churning out executive orders at breakneck speed. We live in a beautiful rural community in a county where about one-third of all residents are foreign-born. Those immigrant families bring cultural and linguistic richness to our schools, fuel the day-to-day operations of our many nearby military posts, run some of the most affordable supermarkets and tastiest restaurants around, and do the physically and emotionally demanding work of growing our local food. It’s hard for me to imagine how such immigrants are the worst of the worst.

Sure, some of them—like some of any other population you choose, including, of course, that convicted felon Donald Trump and crew—commit crimes. Yet rates of criminal activity among immigrants are much lower than among U.S. citizens. According to a 2020 study by the Bureau of Economic Research, immigrants are 60% less likely to be incarcerated than people born in this country.

I’m also a military spouse of more than 10 years and, in my family and community, it’s taken for granted that you’re going to be spending a lot of time with people who were born elsewhere, since immigrants of various stripes make up about 5% of our service members and are a significant part of military spouse communities as well. And believe me, many of the folks I know in those foreign-born subcategories of military communities are truly scared right now, even if for wealthier white families like mine, the suburbs and rural rolling hills around our nation’s capital offer opportunities to learn and a peacefulness that make them great places to raise kids.

A Changing Landscape

That said, in the wake of President Trump’s recent orders, the landscape around me is already changing. Some children whose family members are immigrants or who themselves are foreign-born have been absent from local schools. One of my children came home upset earlier this week and has been complaining of an unsettled stomach since learning that a good friend will have to leave the country due to fear of harassment under Trump’s new policies. Nearby, a Maryland high school teacher has been placed on leave after boasting on social media that he would help ICE identify “illegals” among his students. School administrators are bracing for armed federal agents to show up, demanding access to kids.

This is the kind of mundane horror and sadness I see blooming around me these days, as the news starts to report similar developments elsewhere: the Syracuse restaurant workers who were called into an ICE office and left with ankle monitors; the Guatemalan-American father of four in Ohio who was told by an ICE agent during his annual check-in that he needs to book a flight back to the country he only remembers from his teenage years or be deported. And these are the “lucky” ones who at least have some forewarning. Others won’t and will simply be subjected to the whims of federal immigration agents like those in New York City, where a memo issued by Mayor Eric Adams informed city workers that they can allow ICE agents into municipal facilities if they “reasonably feel threatened or fear for your safety or the safety of others around you.”

I wish I could say that history has taught Americans about the human costs of war and the dangers of indifference to it.

At least, the Trump administration’s immigration policies and actions are still subject to criticism by plucky journalists and activists prepared to call out instances of abuse of executive power, racial profiling, and violations of the right to education and other human rights. Count on this, though: The Trump administration isn’t planning to give the public the opportunity to critique the mistreatment of migrants deported to Guantánamo or any other military post or new detention center in an up-close-and-personal fashion. Such areas will be closed to all but servicemembers and assigned workers.

Sometimes even military family members won’t have the special authorization to enter them. In order to get in, you’ll need to present an official ID, have a reason to enter, possibly have a military service member directly authorize your access, and abide by specific restrictions on movement and rules about whether you can photograph anything on the base. At that base in Guantánamo, restrictions are even tighter and there are no guarantees that journalists will ever have access to migrants and their living conditions there.

Isolation as Death

President Trump has undoubtedly chosen the U.S. military base at Guantánamo, Cuba not just because it has so much detention space or, in past times, was used to detain Haitian and other immigrants, but at least in part because the prison there that held so many tortured prisoners from this country’s war on terror is well known to rights groups and the general public as a nightmarish facility. A 2014 Senate report, along with numerous investigations by human rights groups, found that terror suspects, including in some cases boys, at that base had often been denied due process, detained indefinitely without charge, and subjected to inhumane or degrading treatment.

It’s a fact that people do poorly living in conditions of isolation from the rest of society. Our own military is a case in point. In the decades since fewer of us began to serve, thanks to the absence of a draft (even as the military budget ballooned), Americans generally know far less about what our military is like and what it does. In these same years, suicide rates among servicemembers and veterans have surpassed civilian rates, while violent crime and accidents have grown more common following post-9/11 deployments. Such problems are due, at least in part, to a culture of silence and isolation among military families, as well as a lack of access to military bases by journalists and the public. What we can’t know about or see, we naturally care so much less about.

Other examples of isolated populations, ranging from those in nursing homes during the Covid-19 pandemic (where there were staggering death rates) to closed mental institutions, remind us that isolation begets a lack of public accountability, indifference, and greater human pain.

Of course, the federal government has also had a deadly history of isolating people for national security reasons—from Indian reservations to the internment of Japanese- and German-Americans on military installations during World War II. Things have never ended well for such groups.

The Sound of Silence

As our country’s next wave of abuse toward supposedly dangerous “others” begins, it’s possible to pay attention. Yet when I go out into my community and speak with neighbors, other parents, friends, and acquaintances, I’m reminded of how easy it is to do nothing in the face of what’s happening around us. When I urge people to write their representatives about the treatment of immigrants, they all too often look away and don’t respond, or say they’re afraid of violent retribution if they post a yard sign on their lawns about how “everyone is welcome here.” And I can’t blame them. After all, you bring kids into this world and your first loyalty is to their safety. By the same token, ignoring signals of growing authoritarianism in the interest of peace and continuity has its obvious problems.

In my area, populated by many federal employees recently ordered to return to full-time in-person work, daily life will soon be overflowing (with little room for anything else). Residents will commute two-plus hours each way to crowded office buildings in D.C. so that voters in red states can be happy. Possibly the only ones among us who will have no choice but to pay attention to what happens in their own backyards are those who have already lost their jobs; activists at local NGOs serving immigrants and other vulnerable groups; and schoolchildren who, by necessity, see the horrors of this administration through the eyes of their vulnerable friends and parents.

For us adults, especially parents occupied with the care of our children, I’m reminded of how easy it is to ignore or forget what happens right in our own backyards. Recently, I read a New York Times article about a house in Poland on the edge of what used to be the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz, where its wartime commandant once lived. It overlooks a former gallows and the gas chambers where more than a million civilians were murdered, even as many Poles then carried on with their daily lives. A widow who brought up two kids there in the post-war years called the house “a great place to raise children.”

I wish I could say that history has taught Americans about the human costs of war and the dangers of indifference to it. Yet, around here at least, as Donald Trump and his administration scapegoat immigrants to distract from the impunity of their own actions (particularly those of Elon Musk, perhaps the most prominent immigrant ever to work here “without a legal basis to remain in the United States”), the silence is deafening. It seems to matter not at all that the infamous all-American prison in Cuba from this country’s grim war on terror has now become the “homeland” for a new nightmare (and a half).

Among the flurry of actions by the Trump administration, it could be easy to miss one that poses a grave danger to public health and our planet: a no-holds-barred attack on science.

In a series of disturbing moves, the administration has censored scientific research, slashed resources for public health and the environment, and advanced fossil fuel industry propaganda. These moves only serve corporate interests—at the expense of ordinary people and the planet.

Already, the administration has scrubbed government websites providing information on climate change and environmental justice. And it’s attempted to slash funding for research on climate and medical science (though a federal judge has temporarily blocked the defunding of medical research).

An administration claiming to crack down on “fraud, waste, and abuse” in government is doing the opposite.

Meanwhile, in a pair of astonishingly irresponsible moves, the administration has fired a large number of staff of the Epidemic Intelligence Service, which identifies and tracks emerging epidemics, and pulled the U.S. out of the World Health Organization— even as we face the serious risk of a worldwide bird flu pandemic.

On the climate front, President Donald Trump has launched an ideological attack against the very idea of environmental justice. That’s the idea that marginalized communities—including people of color and poor people of all races—suffer the worst from pollution. There’s a large body of peer-reviewed scientific literature confirming this pattern, but Trump and his ideologues don’t care.

Elsewhere, Trump’s Energy Secretary—former fossil fuel executive Chris Wright—has made the outlandish claim that electricity in the U.S. is more expensive today, and the electric grid is less reliable, because of closure of coal-fired power plants.

Every part of this industry propaganda is verifiably false. The U.S. electricity grid is highly reliable. While electricity rates are rising, the increase over the 10-year period from 2013 to 2023 was only about 1% in inflation-adjusted terms.

If anything, coal plant retirements were a factor in keeping rates lower, since the plants being retired are older plants with higher operating costs. And this year, solar energy is expected to be a major contributor to keeping rates almost unchanged.

Significantly, every one of these facts comes from the Energy Department’s own research and data. That’s why we shouldn’t let them scrub it.

The administration’s erasure of data has profound human consequences.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the foremost international climate science institution, “Human-induced climate change, including more frequent and intense extreme events, has caused widespread adverse impacts and related losses and damages to nature and people,” including “reduced food and water security.”

These statements are in the present tense. Severe climate change impacts are already occurring, and will get much worse if we don’t slash our greenhouse gas emissions rapidly. Disasters like this year’s Los Angeles wildfires and last year’s floods in Appalachia and the Southeast will become more frequent and damaging.

By censoring and defunding climate science, Trump and his cronies are trying to erase the link between these impacts and fossil fuel pollution. Trump has been effectively bribed by fossil fuel oligarchs—and he’s returning the favor by making it official U.S. government policy to remove all restraints on the growth of their industry.

Under Biden, fossil fuel companies reported record profits as drilling reached record highs in the United States. Yet consumers still battled high gas prices and other costs. Under Trump, doing favors for this polluting industry is no likelier to benefit regular people.

An administration claiming to crack down on “fraud, waste, and abuse” in government is doing the opposite. It’s engaging in corruption on a massive scale to benefit wealthy, politically connected oligarchs—at the expense of the rest of us.

With an annual budget rapidly approaching $1 trillion, the Pentagon already gets more discretionary tax dollars than any other agency.

Now congressional Republicans are proposing to hike that figure by anywhere from $100 billion to $150 billion—while slashing funding for programs like Medicaid, SNAP, and other programs that help keep Americans on their feet.

Lawmakers have it backwards: We need to invest more in those programs and less in the Pentagon, which simply can’t account for how it’s spending our money.

We have to curb our endless spending on the military—and put that money back into our real needs, like creating jobs, educating students, protecting our planet, and much more.

Late last year, the Pentagon failed its mandatory audit—yet again.

This isn’t the first time this has happened, either—in fact, the Pentagon has failed every audit it’s ever undergone. According to the Project on Government Oversight, the Defense Department is the only department to have achieved consistent failure over nearly 35 years of government audits. Quite the achievement.

While the Pentagon may not know where its money goes, we do know that about half of its budget each year goes to private, for-profit military contractors. The Pentagon’s deep over-reliance on these corporations not only wastes billions of taxpayer dollars, but also feeds conflicts and contributes to weapons proliferation. Ultimately, this creates a fundamentally less secure world.

Much of the Pentagon’s operations and personnel have been outsourced to “private military contractors,” or PMCs. The use of PMCs exploded during the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars—by 2019, there were 1.5 times as many contractors on the ground in the Middle East as U.S. troops.

These corporations have turned our tax dollars into their private slush fund with rampant waste, fraud, and abuse.

Take for instance the time in 2020 when the Pentagon paid over $52,000 for a trashcan. Or when a Pentagon contractor made a 9,400% profit margin off of a half-inch metal pin. Last year, reports emerged that Pentagon contractor Boeing made almost $1 million in profit just from overcharging for spare parts on C-17 cargo planes, such as soap dispensers.

There are countless examples of Pentagon contractors defrauding American taxpayers like this, and yet we keep writing them bigger and bigger checks. And the wealthier these companies and their executives get, the easier it is for them to throw their weight around in government.

Look at Elon Musk, President Trump’s chief billionaire backer and the one he charged with rooting out “waste” from the government.

Musk, the wealthiest oligarch on the planet, has many glaring conflicts of interest as he meddles in the U.S. government. Not the least of which: He’s a Pentagon contractor CEO himself, through his company SpaceX.

Contractor fraud isn’t going away—in fact, it will only get worse with the most recent Pentagon budget’s loosened restrictions on how these companies can spend taxpayer dollars. Despite this, there is little political will to crack down on the companies that are bleeding taxpayers dry.

Our politicians can’t just allow the Pentagon to fail audit after audit forever. We have to curb our endless spending on the military—and put that money back into our real needs, like creating jobs, educating students, protecting our planet, and much more.

Targeting companies that make billions ripping off taxpayers is a perfect place to start.

“...I write today from a position rare for a former prosecutor: to beseech you to commute the sentence of a man I helped put behind bars.”

Thus begins one of the most stunning letters I have ever read, written almost four years ago by former U.S. Attorney James H. Reynolds to then-President Joe Biden, pleading with him to exonerate former American Indian Movement (AIM) leader Leonard Peltier, who had been convicted of murdering two FBI agents at South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation in 1975.

In one of his last acts before leaving office, Biden did so: freeing Peltier, now 80 years old and beset with health problems, after nearly half a century in federal prison, allowing him to serve the rest of his sentence—lifetime imprisonment—from the Chippewa reservation in North Dakota that is his home. Peltier was released from prison on February 18.

Hey, big news—kind of. Much of the mainstream coverage has been careful to present it as simply a kind-hearted act by the U.S. Department of Justice, allowing an elderly, convicted murderer to spend his final years under home incarceration. It has downplayed not only the serious flaws in the case against Peltier and the worldwide demands for his release—from Amnesty International, from Pope Francis, from Nelson Mandela, and so many others—it has avoided any mention of the larger context: that white America has long been at war with the continent’s Native population, taking their land and attempting to obliterate their culture, essentially declaring them to be subhuman.

For that reason, the fact that Reynolds’ letter is now poking itself into the present news cycle is utterly mind-boggling.

The Pine Ridge shootings occurred on June 26, 1975, when two FBI agents entered the reservation to arrest a resident for stealing a pair of cowboy boots. According to Peltier-supporters’ account, the agents entered private property without identifying themselves. Many AIM members happened to be present at the time. A shootout took place—the reason uncertain—and the two agents, along with a Pine Ridge resident, were killed. The reservation was soon surrounded by about 150 police and FBI officers. Peltier, a Native rights activist, was among those arrested and eventually became the focal point of the government’s case.

Reynolds’ letter to Biden continues: “Leonard Peltier’s conviction and continued incarceration is a testament to a time and a system of justice that no longer has a place in our society. I have been fortunate enough to see this country and its prevailing attitudes about Native Americans, progress dramatically over the last 46 years.”

He then goes into detail about the case itself, explaining: “We were not able to prove that Mr. Peltier personally committed any offense on the Pine Ridge Reservation. As a result, we shifted our stance on the theories of guilt throughout the prosecution and appeal.”

Ultimately, the entirety of the case against Peltier, he writes, was that he was present at the reservation and was in possession of a weapon. There was no evidence that he shot the agents—or evidence against anyone else at the reservation. Indeed, The Guardian, writing about the case, notes that a witness who testified that she saw Peltier shoot the agents “later said she had been coerced into testifying and recanted her testimony.”

All of which sets the context for the largest point Reynolds makes to Biden, transcending the case itself and looking directly at the country’s evolving social consciousness:

“I believe,” he writes, “that a grant of executive clemency would serve the best interests of justice and the best interests of our country. In my opinion, to continue to imprison Mr. Peltier any longer, knowing what we know now, would serve to continue the broken relationship between Native Americans and the government.”

“I urge you to chart a different path in the history of the government’s relationship with its Native people through a show of mercy rather than continued indifference. I urge you to take a step toward healing a wound that I had a part in making. I urge you to commute Leonard Peltier’s sentence and grant him executive clemency.”

All I can do is let these words sit there for a moment. My God, this is a larger look at the nature of justice than I would expect from at actual member of the Department of Justice. Mr. President, let us take action now to begin healing our broken relationship with Native Americans. Let us look at ourselves!

It took Biden several years to take action on Peltier’s incarceration, and it’s not as though Biden’s commutation was also an exoneration—a declaration of his innocence... nor was it an apology for the nation’s, or for Europe’s, five centuries of land theft and cultural dehumanization of Indigenous people of the Americas.

But let me dig for a moment into the words of Peltier himself, who has written an account of how, as a nine-year-old boy, he (along with his sister and a cousin) were taken from their homes and sent off to... uh, boarding school, perhaps more accurately called dehumanization school, the point of which was to take away their language, their culture, their humanity. Upon arrival, the children were stripped naked, forced into hot showers, then “they put DDT all over us. The poison even got in our eyes and mouths.”

The children were told it was to kill lice and other insects—but in reality it was no doubt to eliminate the “Indian” in them. “They made it clear we were hated,” he wrote. “With every look, with every cruel word, they continued a war our ancestors had fought since their ancestors landed here back in 1492.” Some of the kids wound up committing suicide; they were buried in unmarked graves on the school grounds.

Peltier also noted: “We spoke our language. We sang our songs. And we prayed in our languages, all in secret.”

Proof of his guilt—he broke the rules!

He concluded his boarding school memories by writing: “You don’t treat people badly like that. I rise only when I help you rise. Despite all those beatings, I still believe it. It’s a law, like physics, and it’s true. You get nowhere being mean and disrespecting the feelings of others, especially the most vulnerable. I have seen both kinds of people and more than my share of evil ones, and I know I’m right. I rise only when I help you rise.”

This isn’t what the boarding school taught, but apparently this is what he learned. And now, his intention is to teach it to the world.

“What the Democrats are not saying is how they propose to fix what was wrong with the system Trump is destroying. I won’t repeat the numbers here. But the richest country on Earth is also one of the most unequal, unhealthy, and unhappy countries on Earth—probably half the nation is again ‘ill-fed, ill-clothed, and ill-housed,’ to quote FDR. Is it any wonder many people are fed up? Is it any wonder they grasp at straws? The most radical proposal I have heard from the establishment Democrats is to shut the government down. In other words, the best they can come up with is what the Republicans have been demanding for years. Shoot me now!” —Professor Mike Merrill, Rutgers University, February 2025

Democrats and the Left are terrified of the threat to democracy posed by the Trump administration and by his assault on needed government programs. But so far, the public doesn’t seem to care all that much.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s approval rating is at 49%, three points higher than his disapproval rating, (according to fivethirtyeight.com). Former President Joe Biden’s end of term approval rating was only 37%.

Build a worker political movement outside the Democratic Party—a movement, an association, an organization by and for working people.

Flailing away at every perceived Trump transgression isn’t working any better now than it did during the Harris campaign. The Center for Working Class Politics demonstrated that focusing on Trump and the threat to democracy was the least effective message for Pennsylvania voters, while a bold populist message was the strongest. Which supports Merrill’s point—voters, especially working-class voters, want proposals “to fix what was wrong with the system Trump is destroying.”

But aren’t working people the problem? Aren’t they getting what they really want? A dictator to own the libs? An enforcer to put America first? An attacker of DEI, transgender people, and criminal immigrants who bedevil the country? Don’t they really crave a sexist, racist leader willing to play footsie with authoritarians the world over? Isn’t this just another populist uprising, like others which have historically been threats to democracy and liberty?

That’s not what we’ve found in the hundreds of day-long Reversing Runaway Inequality workshops we’ve conducted for working-class union members. (See curriculum here.) We ask, during these sessions, rather than tell, and we listen to what the participants say.

After spending much of the workshop day reviewing materials on the economy and having small group discussions about the causes of rising inequality, the participants are asked:

“What would the world look like if we were able to reverse runaway inequality? How is your vision different from the world we live in today?”

The trainers then give each small group a piece of easel paper and some markers and ask them to create a map or drawing of what a community would look like in a world without runaway inequality. After they finish the drawings each group in turn goes to the front of the room and describes their vision.

In workshop after workshop, workers all along the blue-red political spectrum come up with joyful expressions of the world they want. When shared with the class, applause always breaks out, eyes water, there’s hope bursting out all over the room. (Full disclosure: At first, I thought this exercise would be hokey. But my colleagues, thankfully, ignored me. I was wrong.)

While every picture is different, the common elements are predictable. The groups want job security, better pay, vacation time, responsive institutions, reliable and affordable healthcare, and a safe environment. The drawings represent a party platform of ideas supported by the working class across party lines.

Here’s my version of what a working-class agenda would include:

• Increasing the minimum wage to a livable wage, providing paid family leave, and giving four weeks paid vacation for all workers.
• Protecting jobs by prohibiting large corporations that receive taxpayer money and tax breaks from laying off taxpayers involuntarily or without adequate compensation.
• Guaranteeing the right to a job at a living wage, which if the private sector doesn’t provide the public sector must.
• Stopping drug company price-gouging and ending health insurance company rip-offs by replacing them with Medicare for All.

Why isn’t the Democratic Party vigorously supporting these kinds of policies? They certainly fall within the Roosevelt and Truman agendas and are akin to the Freedom Budget developed by A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin in 1966. Full employment legislation was once a cause celeb for the Democrats. Not any longer. Why is that?

Today, far too many Democrats are no longer interested in radically changing the institutions that are reproducing rising inequality and job insecurity. They support a system that has served them well. Change would require more than messaging and branding. It would require going after Wall Street and large corporations through much tougher regulations, higher taxes on the wealthy, price controls on price gougers, ending stock buybacks, and more.

Many Democrats also believe that the pendulum will swing their way without major changes. The inevitable rise of the knowledge economy, pushed forward by AI, means that more and more educated workers will replace those without degrees, they think. As those more educated voters flock to the Democrats, the party will gain an electoral advantage. So best to stay the course and not panic!

That’s not exactly an inspirational call to working people. As educated voters turn to the Dems, workers and business owners without degrees have turned to the Republicans. At some point progressive Democrats and the Left need to face up to reality. Trump winning twice is not an accident. It’s the result of the abject failure of a left political strategy that ignores financial reform and attempts to nudge the Democratic Party forward based more on identity than class.

What should we do?

We should do what working-class activists have done for the last 150 years. Build a worker political movement outside the Democratic Party—a movement, an association, an organization by and for working people.

That’s a tall order and will require a great deal of debate, discussion, and planning. It will require dozens of pilot programs to find a model that can scale up. It will require most of all a belief and commitment to the idea that something new needs to be built. Working people are desperate for a political voice independent from the two major parties.

The alternative is more of the same: resist, resist, resist, while, in effect, defending the elite establishment that so many voters detest.

If that’s all we do, don’t be surprised if Trump’s wrecking ball makes him even more popular.

If we do have the courage to face up to our strategic failures, we may become as hopeful as the workers who share their depictions of a fair and just society.

U.S. President Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and their ilk are returning the U.S. to the Gilded Age of robber barons, replete with railroad monopolies and no union protections. They are bringing us back to a time before the Progressive movement had instituted the first real wave of social reforms, which were later widely expanded by New Deal programs. These initial reforms offered workers’ compensation, free school meals for poor children, regulated working hours, and put antitrust laws on the books. They protected the everyday person, white- and blue-collar alike, and were a setback for the ultra-rich. For generations afterward, the ultra-rich have been pushing to overthrow the Progressive Era’s and the New Deal’s utilitarian reforms.

It started with deregulation in the 1970s and was then magnified during Ronald Reagan’s neoliberal presidency. The talking points behind deregulation duped people through bastardizing the concept of “freedom.” The U.S. is a free country, the argument goes, so there shouldn’t be regulation. Yet deregulation, in this sense, is focused on giving businesses and corporations free rein, screwing the rest.

Inevitably, the neoliberals’ free trade policies, the gutting of unions, the reducing of social programs, and the lowering of taxes for the very wealthy led to wide-scale disillusionment. It birthed the Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party movements.

That brings us to today, where there is one option: resistance everywhere.

The Tea Partiers, mostly unwittingly, pushed for the policies of the late 19th-century robber barons, free of any regulation on business and extremely low (if any) taxes, as if these policies would help the average person. The Occupy movement failed in that, while offering an accurate critique of vast wealth inequality, it did not propose any concrete goals. There was the fear that its message would be branded, hijacked, or warped by the mainstream media. Fair point, I suppose. But a protest movement without policy objectives is like a tree falling in an empty forest. Luckily, the forest was not empty.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) had been voicing the same message for decades. He rose to national prominence shortly after the movement’s demise, and his popularity was, in part, due to the Occupy movement raising the issue of wealth inequality to public consciousness. Unlike Occupy, Bernie had specific utilitarian policy goals.

On the other side, Trump voiced the radical Tea Partiers’ message of the robber barons, with more overt xenophobia and racism.

In 2016, both establishment parties tried to crush their mass movement candidates. The Democratic Party succeeded and had Hillary Clinton run as its presidential candidate. On the other hand, the GOP failed to stop Trump and held their nose, presuming Hillary Clinton would trounce him in the general.

When Trump won, most were surprised. Trump himself was unprepared, and the majority of institutions were unprepared to back him. His policy efforts, such as the Muslim ban and immigrant parent-child separation, were short-lived due to popular and legal pushback and sloppy execution.

During his first term, Trump’s core supporters remained steadfast behind him, but most mainstream institutions did not overtly support or cave to him.

For an unprepared presidency, dawdling along much like a toddler with a flippant mouth, the Covid-19 pandemic was icing on the cake for executive leadership failure. Because of Trump’s anti-vax rhetoric, inept health policies, and spewing of misinformation, the deaths of nearly half-a-million Americans can be attributed to him.

Unsurprisingly, Trump was booted out of office in 2020 and Joe Biden stepped in. Once again, the Democrat establishment coalesced against Bernie’s candidacy.

During Biden’s first three years in office, he was a good president, passing the most important climate change legislation in U.S. history, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the bipartisan infrastructure bill. He supported unionization efforts and tried to eliminate student loan debts. He restored a sense of decency and aid for UNWRA.

As the 2024 election came closer, the Gaza genocide commenced, which Biden wholeheartedly backed. In Biden’s last year in office, when Trump became the clear GOP presidential candidate, he tried to outflank the GOP on the right on immigration, restricting asylum seeker border crossings and attempting to push an anti-immigrant bill that Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) crafted. (Of course, Trump killed it to prevent Biden from getting “credit.”)

Throughout the Biden years, inflation increased dramatically, similarly to most of the world. Yet Biden could never adequately explain this phenomenon to the American people and was horrible at communicating his domestic accomplishments.

He and his staff ignored his mental decline, leaving former Vice President Kamala Harris little time to campaign. Simultaneous to Biden’s growing unpopularity, far-right institutions began crafting Project 2025 (now being instituted) for a new Trump administration. When the Dems lost this time, the far-right was prepared with institutional backing. For the most part, the establishment (media, corporations, etc.) caved to Trump and his anti-constitutional, authoritarian executive actions.

That brings us to today, where there is one option: resistance everywhere.

Resist on the streets, in Congress (wake up Jeffries and Schumer!), and the courts, to save a very flawed republic before it’s too late. Before fascistic robber barons steal it away, leaving the American people whistling in the desert wind watching a whiny rich snowflake asshole pretend that the United States is a reality TV gameshow.

"The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters."—Antonio Gramsci

Over the weekend, an avalanche of emails buried the careers of countless workers in the federal government. The wave of mass layoffs, dubbed the Valentine's Day Massacre, is the latest and perhaps most far-reaching attack on the civil service since U.S. President Donald Trump's inauguration, targeting probationary employees across the federal government whose ranks include some 200,000 workers. While families across the nation were reeling from the crippling blow to their very livelihoods, a small man—a monster, really—gleefully celebrated the mayhem. Signaling his cruel pleasure at the suffering he inflicted, he reposted himself as a gladiator destroying the "woke mind virus."

The United States' descent into full-blown kleptocracy, as the new Trump regime unleashes the fangs of fascistic oligarchs into seemingly every inch of government and society, has been a surreal and horrifying spectacle. Each day brings a barrage of devastating executive orders and headlines. Elon Musk, the billionaire sociopath who commands a vast cult of petty techno tyrants with dangerously fragile egos, has gained unprecedented access to the inner workings and data of agencies across the federal government. His team of unelected bureaucrats has swarmed offices like a flock of rapacious vultures picking at the carcass of government, devouring all vestiges of racial and gender equality, all acknowledgment of the very existence of transgender people—all in the name of ending the scourge of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Predictably, after masquerading as a champion of working-class Americans alienated by the Democratic Party, the new Trump regime has put the rights and regulations that protect working people in its cross hairs.

Throughout human history, tyrants have believed they could use their wealth and power to kill ideas. In its war on the "woke mind virus," the new regime's delusional hubris is no different than that of so many despots before it. Likewise, Trump's politics of distraction is nothing new. Since the time of chattel slavery in America, and perhaps before, the ruling classes have exploited cultural distinctions among workers to keep them divided, focusing their grievances against one another instead of their common oppressor: the rich.

Today, the assault on DEI is more than an ugly war against people of color, women, and other marginalized groups. While engineering a reversal of civil rights in the U.S., Musk's "Department of Government Efficiency" is using the cultural grievances of white America as cover to roll back nearly every institutional means designed to protect the working class from the parasitic impulses of Musk and other billionaires.

Under the guise of attacking woke politics, a total siege has hit communities across the nation and the world, with draconian cuts shutting down essential programs and services that working people rely on.

Predictably, after masquerading as a champion of working-class Americans alienated by the Democratic Party, the new Trump regime has put the rights and regulations that protect working people in its cross hairs. The administration quickly gutted the National Labor Relations Board, the single most important government agency charged with enforcing the rights of workers against greedy and abusive bosses. Anti-union zealots are being installed in key posts across the government to execute the billionaire agenda of Trump and Musk. And while Musk's henchmen set out to cut jobs and government waste, the Tesla CEO was set to rake in $400 million from a pending State Department contract for armored Tesla vehicles until public attention forced the department to put the deal on hold. Still, the purchase would have only added a fraction to the roughly $20 billion of taxpayer money from federal contracts awarded to Musk's companies.

Downsizing government with the aim of handing off essential services to profit-driven private enterprise has long been the vision of America's corporate elite. Only now, the corporatists have a perfect moment and a pair of big business moguls to make it happen. Not even so-called "free speech" is spared from the onslaught, as anyone who dares criticize this fleecing and grift of public resources faces the wrath of Musk's cyber sycophants, activated by snide barbs spewed from the megaphone of Musk's personal social media platform.

Alongside Musk's federal rampage, the regime's new war on undocumented immigrants further feeds the flames of cultural tensions meant to divide workers and criminalize anyone deemed unworthy of Trump's definition of America. And if the process of terrorizing immigrant communities with the promise of deporting "millions and millions" of their lot doesn't offer sufficiently swift gratification for his supporters, Trump has usurped the Gulf of Mexico with the stroke of a pen, albeit in name only. Trump's second regime indeed intends to expand its racist cultural crusade far beyond U.S. borders. From its arrogant posturing across the Atlantic to boost far-right xenophobic parties in Europe to its colonial dreams of wholesale ethnic cleansing and conquest of Gaza, neoconservative U.S. imperialism is being slowly reborn under Trump, despite the many so-called right-wing isolationists influencing the new regime.

If it seems we are living in what Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci called "a time of monsters," we must examine the conditions that got us here and what kind of future we should fight for in which those monsters are forever buried. We must understand the old world that spawned the Musk monster virus and have a sense of the new world that struggles to be born free from the contagion.

As much as villains like Musk are the product of America's capitalist decay, Musk's new throne atop the highest government offices is a product of a rotten political system. This system has empowered the richest man in the world to effectively withhold food, healthcare, and other vital resources from the poorest people on the planet.

Each day, the establishment entities that exist to counter the power of Trump and Musk demonstrate their feebleness. The tepid pushback from the courts, the Democratic Party, and most of the media make it clear that the heart of resistance only beats beyond the strictures of these institutions, at the level of militant community organizing, mutual aid, and collective disobedience.

Only there at the grassroots, in defiance of monsters, will the struggle be sustained and the new world be born.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order that purports to place independent regulatory agencies, such as the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission, under his direct control. Based on the so-called “unitary executive” theory, which claims that any congressional limits on presidential control of every lever of government power are unconstitutional, this action poses a grave threat to the rule of law and the separation of powers—cornerstones of our constitutional system.

This executive order states that the president is charged with ‘faithfully executing the laws.’ This is true. However, the laws of our nation include the existence of independent regulatory agencies, the power of Congress to appropriate funds and direct how they are spent, and protection for certain government employees and officers from arbitrary dismissal.

Executive orders are not the law—they are statements of policy, and memos from the president about how the Executive Branch conducts its internal affairs. By attempting to use executive orders to override actual laws—the kinds that are passed by Congress, not issued on a whim from the Resolute Desk—the Trump administration is effectively asserting that it stands above the law. Indeed, that it is the law. But the role of the executive branch is not to decide what the law is, or to pick and choose which ones it likes, but to carry out and enforce the law, as written. Donald Trump is a high-ranking government employee—not a king. If there are laws he does not like, he can work with Congress to change them.

Donald Trump is a high-ranking government employee—not a king.

A nebulous and broad understanding of the phrase ‘executive power’ cannot prevail over duly enacted statutes passed by Congress and signed into law by presidents of both parties, over the course of decades. The U.S. Constitution did not change its meaning when President Trump took office. That this ‘unitary executive’ theory has made its way from the fringes of academia to the halls of power, and that it has even been accepted by some credulous judges, does not mean that it is right. Many legal observers have pointed out the shoddy scholarship and selective history that underpins it. We are a nation of laws, and we cannot be ruled by executive fiat.

In the order, the Trump administration purports to seize for itself the power Congress delegated to independent regulatory agencies, and as written, declares the White House’s interpretation of the law as ‘authoritative,’ with no mention of the courts. Of course, the president is not, and never has been, the final arbiter of what is lawful. Lawyers working for the government owe their allegiance to the American people, not to President Donald J. Trump. The many government lawyers who have already resigned rather than follow illegal or unethical directives from Trump's appointed political operatives are an inspiration, despite how frightening a hollowed-out Department of Justice might seem.

As for independent regulatory agencies, in addition to being the law of the land, they are often good policy. While I have sometimes disagreed with decisions taken by the FCC or FTC, under both Republican and Democratic control, I understand the importance of expert agencies that are free from day-to-day political interference. The FCC’s control over broadcast licenses, and its unenviable role of coordinating spectrum use between different industries and other government agencies, among other things, means it should be free to try to come to the best answer – not the one with the loudest political support. This applies to enforcement activities as well. Under the Biden administration, for instance, the FTC frequently investigated politically powerful companies, to the ire of many prominent Democrats and Democratic donors.

While I have sometimes disagreed with decisions taken by the FCC or FTC, under both Republican and Democratic control, I understand the importance of expert agencies that are free from day-to-day political interference.

President Trump, like other presidents have done, is free to express his views as to what the agencies should prioritize, and to nominate like-minded commissioners as vacancies arise. But, as directed by Congress, and reflected in commissioners' protection from being fired due to policy or political differences with the president, such agencies must make the final call on policy decisions.

The notion that independent agencies are ‘unaccountable’ is, on its face, absurd. The president nominates all agency commissioners, including ones of the opposite party, and names the Chair from among them. Agencies regularly answer to Congress, which controls their budget, and enacts the statutes that spell out the limited scope of their authority. Independent agencies cannot issue regulations without following the strict guidelines of the Administrative Procedure Act, and their rules and enforcement actions are regularly challenged in the courts, and occasionally reversed by Congress.

The wisdom of having independent agencies and tenure protections for certain government officials has been confirmed in recent weeks by the disastrous and irresponsible actions of the lawless Trump administration. One president should not be able to nullify statutes passed into law by past presidents and past Congresses with the stroke of a sharpie. Congress must re-assert its central constitutional role. Further, one hopes that federal judges and Supreme Court justices who, in the past, have lent their support to an imperial vision of the presidency, can see where this is going and act to limit the ability of the president to subvert our democracy and constitutional order.

Among the many attacks in U.S. President Donald Trump’s Day One Executive Order on “unleashing” American (fossil) energy, is a directive to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin to reevaluate the agency’s bedrock 2009 scientific determination of the harms caused by heat-trapping emissions and submit recommendations within 30 days (i.e. this week). The “”“Endangerment Finding” establishes that heat-trapping emissions harm people and the environment, and it forms a core legal basis for the agency’s subsequent actions to set standards to limit global warming pollution from vehicles and power plants, as well as methane pollution from oil and gas operations.

The fact remains that any science-based update to the Endangerment Finding would conclusively demonstrate that the actual harms and projected risks from climate change have only grown grimmer since the 2009 endangerment finding was issued.

It’s no surprise that this anti-science, pro-fossil fuel administration wants to go after the Endangerment Finding. Of course, an honest assessment of the latest climate science will show that since 2009 the evidence has become even more compelling and dire. Climate change, driven by rising heat-trapping emissions, is already causing significant harm to people’s health and well-being and to vital ecosystems. Those harms will worsen rapidly as global warming emissions, primarily from burning fossil fuels, increase.

This blatant attempt to do an end-run around scientific evidence deserves to fail.

What Is the Endangerment Finding?

Back in 2007, the Supreme Court reached a landmark judgment in Massachusetts et al. v. Environmental Protection Agency et al. establishing that heat-trapping emissions (or greenhouse gas emissions) are air pollutants covered by the Clean Air Act. The court further mandated that, under the Clean Air Act, the EPA must set protective standards for global warming pollutants if the agency found them to be harmful to human health and welfare.

The 2007 case was brought by petitioners (which included several state attorney generals and NGOs, including the Union of Concerned Scientists) in the context of greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles.

The EPA subsequently undertook an extensive process, including hearings and a public comment period, and concluded that a vast body of scientific evidence showed that heat-trapping pollutants do indeed harm public health and welfare and that motor vehicles contribute to that pollution.

In 2009, the agency issued the Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases, summarized below:

• Endangerment Finding: The administrator finds that the current and projected concentrations of the six key well-mixed greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6)—in the atmosphere threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations.
• Cause or Contribute Finding: The administrator finds that the combined emissions of these well-mixed greenhouse gases from new motor vehicles and new motor vehicle engines contribute to the greenhouse gas pollution that threatens public health and welfare.

The findings have subsequently been extended to other major sources of heat-trapping emissions, including power plants and oil and gas operations, and have been upheld in court.

For more on the legal and political twists and turns in the history of the Endangerment Finding, please check out this blogpost: “Endangered Science: Why Global Warming Emissions Are Covered by the Clean Air Act.”

What Is Zeldin Being Directed to Do?

President Trump’s Day One executive order directs the EPA administrator to work with other relevant agencies to submit recommendations, within 30 days, to the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on the “legality and continuing applicability” of the agency’s Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases under the Clean Air Act.

Opponents of climate action have long understood the power of the Endangerment Finding and tried unsuccessfully to dismantle it during the first Trump administration. Project 2025 also includes a call to “Establish a system, with an appropriate deadline, to update the 2009 endangerment finding.”

With a new more dangerous Trump administration, thoroughly corrupted by fossil fuel interests—and with the architect of Project 2025, Russell Vought, now confirmed as OMB Director—this time the risk to the Endangerment Finding is definitely greater. Gutting the Endangerment Finding would completely undermine EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and put a stop to all of EPA’s regulations to limit global warming pollution, a gift to the fossil fuel industry.

But getting rid of the Endangerment Finding is not going to be easy and is by no means a foregone conclusion, as even Lee Zeldin knows. It would require such a brazen effort to lie about climate science evidence that it’s hard to imagine courts going along with that even if the EPA were to take that unwise route.

The Latest Climate Science Is Clear and Alarming

There’s no question that this is a bad faith effort to try to find ways to undercut EPA’s responsibility and authority to regulate heat-trapping emissions under the Clean Air Act. The fact remains that any science-based update to the Endangerment Finding would conclusively demonstrate that the actual harms and projected risks from climate change have only grown grimmer since the 2009 endangerment finding was issued.

As heat-trapping emissions, primarily from burning fossil fuels, continue to rise, global average temperatures too continue their relentless climb with 2024 once again the hottest year on record. Extreme climate-related disasters—including heatwaves, storms, droughts, wildfires, and flooding—are worsening, taking a fearsome toll on people, the economy, and ecosystems. Accelerating sea-level rise, ocean acidification, and loss of major ice sheets also continue apace, with profound consequences for the planet.

If Lee Zeldin is looking for a recent authoritative assessment of the science, he should turn to the 2023 Fifth U.S. National Climate Assessment, produced under the direction of the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP). The Global Change Research Act of 1990 mandates that the USGCRP—which collaborates across 15 federal agencies—deliver a report to Congress and the president at least every four years.

Here’s the headline from the NCA5:

The effects of human-caused climate change are already far-reaching and worsening across every region of the United States. Rapidly reducing greenhouse gas emissions can limit future warming and associated increases in many risks. Across the country, efforts to adapt to climate change and reduce emissions have expanded since 2018, and U.S. emissions have fallen since peaking in 2007. However, without deeper cuts in global net greenhouse gas emissions and accelerated adaptation efforts, severe climate risks to the United States will continue to grow.

Another valuable source is the IPCC sixth assessment report, which reflects the work of thousands of scientists around the world—including many from the United States—in assessing the latest climate science, impacts, and opportunities to cut heat-trapping emissions and adapt to climate change.

The National Academy of Sciences would also be a good source of information. Here, for example, is a handy booklet on the evidence for and causes of climate change.

NOAA and NASA, premier federal science agencies, also closely monitor and track global climate change and its impacts. (And hopefully will continue to do so—although recent attacks on NOAA, foreshadowed in the Project 2025 manifesto, do not bode well.)

An Anti-Science, Pro-Fossil Fuel Administration

Barely a month into the term of this second Trump administration, it’s clear that the president and his cabinet are hell-bent on doing everything they can to boost fossil fuels and shred climate and clean energy policies, catering to deep-pocketed fossil fuel interests.

They clearly intend to use every means at their disposal (lawful or not) to roll back regulations to help address global warming pollution. Those actions will be rightfully challenged in court, and it takes time to undo regulations in a legal way. However, any delay in implementing strong standards is harmful when the climate crisis is so acute. If the Trump administration succeeds in weakening or stopping EPA’s efforts to cut heat-trapping emissions, that will just leave people bearing the costs while fossil fuel polluters rake in profits.

Revisiting the endangerment and cause or contribute findings is just one more backdoor way to try to advance that harmful agenda. This directive shouldn’t fool anyone. It’s not a genuine effort to engage with scientific facts and listen to climate scientists. After all, the president has called climate change a hoax and many of his cabinet are climate science deniers.

The question for Lee Zeldin is whether he will just pander to that destructive agenda, or will he actually defend the mission of the agency he leads, which is to protect public health and the environment. He has already overseen a series of harmful actions at the EPA—including firing staff, cutting budgets, gutting its environmental justice work, and illegally freezing already-allocated funds for clean energy. So, I doubt we can count on a courageous defense of the endangerment finding from him.

Regardless of how Zeldin responds to President Trump’s directive, this administration cannot hide the reality of climate change. Undoing the Endangerment Finding is such an extremist anti-science endeavor, it is hard to imagine how it could succeed.

Over the past few years, there has been an alarming surge of coups d’état across the world, particularly in Africa. The most common definition of a coup is an illegal attempt to seize control of the government. The seizure of power by coup leaders is often justified by pointing to poor governance and/or deteriorating security situations.

Coups are typically irregular transfers of power that occur in countries with weak democratic institutions and may be carried out by military or civilian elites. Consolidated democracies have long prided themselves of being immune to the conditions that generate coups d'etat, but the Trump phenomenon in U.S. politics seems to suggest that there are no absolutes, and that liberal democracy can be brought down.

The storming of the U.S. Capitol building on January 6, 2021, was a coup attempt incited by outgoing president Donald Trump, and can be best described as an “attempted auto-coup.” Yet, shockingly enough, not only wasn’t Trump held accountable in the end for being criminally engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 election but was allowed to run again for the presidency in 2024. And what is even more shocking is that he prevailed in his third presidential bid by winning both the electoral college and the popular vote.

Trump and his Nazi buddy Elon Musk are trying to destroy civil society by dismantling the State.

Both Trump’s attempt to incite a coup in 2021 and his subsequent victory in the 2024 presidential election speak volumes of the democratic decline in the United States. Citizens’ support not just for a democracy-eroding leader but for one who repeatedly promised during his campaign to be a dictator, even if only for one day, is ample evidence to make the case that the end of democracy in the U.S. (or whatever is left of it as the country was never designed to be democratic) is upon us.

Indeed, an actual neo-fascist coup is now underway. Trump and his Nazi buddy Elon Musk are trying to destroy civil society by dismantling the State. Trump had promised on numerous occasions during his campaign to “demolish the deep state,” and even offered specific details for how he planned to do so. And this is exactly what is happening right now.

During his first month back in office, Trump signed a plethora of executive orders which ranged from a militarized crackdown on immigration and pardoning those who had taken part in the January 6, 2021, coup attempt to shutting down scores of federal agencies and starting mass layoffs across governments. By declaring himself above the law, Trump’s intent is to use executive power not for the purpose of dismantling the “deep state” in order to make federal government more efficient and therefore more responsive to citizen needs, but rather in order to take over government and have it run by loyalists, by people who would faithfully obey the commands of the “Great Leader.”

The aims behind this neofascist coup are threefold: Oligarchic state capture; white Christian nationalism as the hegemonic project; and the rise of a new U.S. empire.

Oligarchic state capture is a key goal of the Trump-Musk strategy behind the demolition of the so-called “deep state.” Dismantling the government bureaucracy is seen by the aspiring dictator and the world’s richest person as an essential course of action if “powerful individuals or corporations” are to have absolute freedom in creating rules and policies that serve their own benefit, at the expense of society. Trump and Musk are both fervent believers in the “natural right” of the rich and powerful to shape society as they please and make government function as they see fit.

Oligarchic state capture is a key goal of the Trump-Musk strategy behind the demolition of the so-called “deep state.”

The assault on regulations and on workers’ rights and vital workers’ institutions by the “two brothers” as prerequisites for economic prosperity forces us to go back to the 1880s when laissez-faire capitalism and social Darwinism ruled the day in order to find comparable situations. Trump has always been anti-labor, but Trump 2.0, influenced as heavily as it is by the anti-labor agenda of Project 2025, that wants to roll back all labor reforms under the Biden administration, outlaw public sector unions and indeedrewrite a hundred years of labor law, could be the most damaging administration the U.S. labor movement has ever faced. Trump’s agenda for the economy revolves around laissez-faire product market regulation and laissez-faire labor market regulations. Thus, the fact that the white working-class, which has been increasingly voting Republican instead of Democrat since 2000, helped Trump to return to power is indeed one of the most disconcerting trends in U.S. society.

Trump’s vision for America’s future is also rooted in white Christian nationalism and, as such, its realization virtually mandates anti-equality and so-called “gender ideology” attacks, along with a host of other “enlightened” undertakings such as book bans and seeking to revoke birthright citizenship. Trump’s white Christian nationalism agenda is born out of the preconceived notion that the rightful owners of this country are losing their political and cultural power. It is thus an exclusionist and nostalgic ideology which transcends social class and thus may explain why a significant segment of white working-class Americans support Trump.

Dark times are ahead—dark times, indeed.

Lastly, Trump envisions a new U.S. empire which includes gaining control of the Panama Canal, the purchase of Greenland, the possibility of turning Canada into the 51st U.S. state, owning Gaza, and even extending America’s manifest destiny into the stars.The acquisition of new wealth, greater security and strategic advantage in power politics are the drivers behind this new U.S. imperialism envisioned by Donald Trump. His imposition of tariffs on imports, which is baffling to economists, is intended to force countries to play according to the rules of the free market, so it is a profound mistake to think that Trump has somehow turned his back on neoliberalism. His deadly anti-regulatory blitz combined with tax-cutting for the rich and corporations and the use of economic rules into politics should be alone sufficient enough to dispel the notion that Trump is somehow waging a war on neoliberalism simply because he is using tariffs as part of his “America First” policy.

This, of course, is not to indicate that the neoliberal world order that the United States created after the end of the Cold War is not in crisis. Economic inequalities, political fragmentation, and social discontent threaten to bring down western liberal democracies and be replaced instead by authoritarian yet staunchly pro-capitalist regimes. The contradictions of neoliberal capitalism have become so extreme that only neofascism may be able to prevent the system’s ultimate collapse. This is precisely why Trump’s billionaire top lieutenant has so enthusiastically embraced far-right parties not only in Europe but across the globe. Neofascism is also needed to defend Christian values from the “radical left” and halt the alleged threat of the Islamization of the western world.

Dark times are ahead—dark times, indeed. And the only question is how to fight back before everything good and decent is lost once again in the return to fascism.

Rural Farmers?

When U.S. President Trump and Elon Musk shut down the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, they hit MAGA farmers’ pocketbooks. American farmers provide more than 40% of the food aid that USAID and the U.S. Department of Agriculture send throughout the impoverished world—$2.1 billion in 2020.

“USAID plays a critical role in reducing hunger around the world while sourcing markets for the surplus foods America’s farmers and ranchers grow,” according to the senior director of government affairs at the American Farm Bureau Federation.

But Elon Musk declared—without evidence—that USAID is a “criminal organization.” He is proud to have spent a weekend “feeding USAID into the wood chipper,” telling thousands of employees that they no longer had jobs. Farmers learned that a critical market for their product had now disappeared.

As the consequences of the Trump administration’s incompetence ripple through the country, even the most dedicated MAGA supporter will actually feel the impact personally.

North Carolina—a Trump stronghold—was one of the top recipients of USAID dollars.

“I will be very blunt. The freeze has been devastating,” according to the executive director of the North Carolina Global Health Alliance. “Already we are seeing mass furloughs and mass layoffs. Hundreds of people have already lost their jobs…” The impact “will reach people in every corner of our state.”

Palestinians?

Michigan is home to a large number of traditionally Democratic Palestinians who sat out the 2024 election, cast ballots for third-party candidate Jill Stein, or voted for Trump. They believed that the Biden administration was too gentle with Israel and too dismissive of their concerns about Gaza’s ongoing destruction. Apparently, they thought that Trump would do better.

It was magical thinking.

A week after Trump was sworn into office, he signed an executive order to “Combat Antisemitism.” Among other provisions, it calls for canceling student visas of foreign students who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

And now Trump—who views the world in potential real estate development terms—has called for ethnic cleansing. That war crime is the only path to his desired conversion of Gaza into the “Riviera of the Mideast.” Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu—who is on trial, hoping to avoid prison, and trying to save his political skin—is all for Trump’s plan.

People Who Fly on Airplanes?

After three significant airline crashes in the month since Trump took office, Musk’s response has been to fire hundreds of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) employees who worked as maintenance mechanics, aeronautical information specialists, environmental protection specialists, aviation safety assistants, and management and program assistants.

Another 1,000 employees, including rocket scientists, are scheduled for termination at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Musk’s company, Space X, gets its mission approvals from the FAA.

Anyone Concerned About Nuclear-Weapons Safety?

The Trump administration scrambled to undo the termination notices that went to more than 300 employees at the agency responsible for managing America’s nuclear weapons.

According to CNN, “Some of the initially fired employees included NNSA staff who work at facilities where nuclear weapons are built, oversee contractors who build nuclear weapons and who are responsible for inspecting those weapons. Many of the employees affected hold a ‘Q’ security clearance within the Energy Department, meaning they have access to nuclear weapons design and systems. It also included employees at NNSA headquarters who write requirements and guidelines for contractors who build nuclear weapons.”

Anyone Concerned About Veterans?

The Trump administration fired more than 1,000 employees at the Veterans Administration.

Anyone Interested in Visiting a National Park?

The Trump administration fired 3,000 U.S. Forest Service employees.

Anyone Interested in Consumer Protection?

The Trump administration began the process of dismantling the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)—until a federal court stopped that effort. An unknown number of terminations is planned for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which oversees banks. Apparently, no one in Trump’s circle remembers the bank-related financial crash of 2008.

Anyone Seeking a Timely Tax Refund?

The Trump administration has slated 7,500 Internal Revenue Service employees for termination.

Anyone Who Could Become a Victim of Terrorism or a Natural Disaster?

Hundreds of employees are set for termination at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Anyone Interested in Public Health?

The Trump administration fired more than 1,000 workers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), as well as an unknown number at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)—including staff members involved in reviewing Musk’s brain implant company, Neuralink. Another 1,300 CDC employees got the ax—including a group responsible for training public health laboratory staffers and supporting outbreak response efforts.

And all of that is just the tip of an ugly and growing iceberg that already includes thousands of employees: FBI agents, prosecutors, investigators, and other Justice Department personnel; 19 inspectors general—watchdogs who assured agency accountability; the Department of Education; the General Services Administration; and anyone connected to diversity, equity, or inclusion (DEI).

Just wait until Trump’s clown car of cabinet members begins asserting itself:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has spent his adult life opposing vaccines, is now in charge of vaccines;

Tulsi Gabbard, who has consistently spouted Vladimir Putin’s talking points, is in charge of national intelligence;

Pete Hegseth, who is now the ultimate poster child for on-the-job training, is trying to run the 2.2 million-member Defense Department.

And orchestrating the decimation of the federal workforce is Elon Musk, whose conflicts of interest are staggering.

Who Voted for This?

As the consequences of the Trump administration’s incompetence ripple through the country, even the most dedicated MAGA supporter will actually feel the impact personally. And then the answer will finally become clear:

No one voted for this.

The only efficiency Elon Musk cares about is how efficiently he can take your money to line his own pockets. Despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign promises, Musk is coming after your earned Social Security benefits.

President Dwight Eisenhower, Republican and war hero, could have been talking about Musk when he warned in 1954 of a handful of “Texas oil millionaires” attempting to abolish Social Security. “Their number is negligible, and they are stupid,” he wrote.

Musk has made no secret of his disdain for our Social Security system. In just the last few weeks, he has used his gigantic platform to spread outrageous lies about Social Security.

We must demand that every member of Congress stand up to Musk’s cynical efforts to steal our earned Social Security benefits while giving himself and other billionaires a hefty tax cut.

Unlike the extremely rich, stupid men to whom Eisenhower was referring, Musk is, unfortunately, not just ignorant. Trump is giving him the power to steal our earned benefits. Musk is drawing on an old playbook of claiming that the government in general, and Social Security in particular, is full of “waste, fraud, and abuse.” Then, when he steals your benefits, he will claim that he is simply cutting waste.

Both Musk’s ignorance and his anti-Social Security playbook were on full display Tuesday, when the shadow president talked to reporters in the Oval Office. In trying to convince us that our extremely efficient Social Security system is rife with fraud, he unknowingly proved how economical its administration is, when he asserted, “Just cursory examination of Social Security, and we’ve got people in there that are 150 years old.”

No one born 150 years ago is receiving benefits.. The hardworking civil servants at the Social Security Administration are extremely diligent in tracking the deaths of beneficiaries. Social Security spends millions of dollars every year to purchase the automated death data of state vital records agencies.

And Social Security provides a lump sum death benefit, in part to encourage the families of beneficiaries to report their deaths promptly. When beneficiaries die, their benefits are immediately terminated. Eligible survivors, if any, start to receive the benefits their loved ones have earned for them.

It is important to recognize that what Musk and others label “waste” is usually unavoidable because of the way politicians have drafted our laws. For example, Social Security benefits are paid in the month following the month that they are due. That means that if you die at the end of the month and are paid a benefit a few days later, at the start of the next month, that is considered an overpayment—even when the death is quickly reported and the benefits quickly cancelled. The law requires the Social Security Administration to claw back those benefits from the grieving survivors—which it routinely does.

Again, no one born 150 years ago is still receiving benefits. But here is where Musk is showing his ignorance: Let’s take the example of a person who is issued a Social Security card as an infant and dies at age 10, never having received a penny of benefits. Social Security doesn’t waste taxpayer dollars finding that information and cancelling their Social Security number—this would be prohibitively expensive and wasteful.

Moreover, most adults who die leave behind spouses and children, including adult disabled children, who may be eligible for benefits for many years based on the decedent’s earnings record. Therefore, that record may remain active for a very long time. For example, the last person to receive a Civil War pension was a veteran’s disabled daughter, who died less than five years ago—in 2020.

Disturbingly, the reason Musk was able to assert the ignorant claim about 150-year-olds is that he has accessed our personal data. Because Musk has access to the Treasury’s payments system, he has the Social Security numbers of every worker and Social Security beneficiary. He also has our bank account numbers, and other sensitive, private information.

Musk and his minions are reportedly now not just at the Treasury but also at Social Security’s headquarters in Baltimore. That means they may already have access to how much a person has ever earned, at what job, and when, how old they are, their marital status, and more. Musk may also have access to the medical records of every single one of the millions of Americans who have applied for disability benefits. No unelected, unconfirmed ideologue should be anywhere near those records, especially not the wealthiest man in the world, given his numerous conflicts of interest.

What is going on should be obvious. Musk wants to cut off your benefits and then have Congress use the savings to give himself a gigantic tax cut. But Social Security is incredibly popular, so he can’t be open about his intentions. Instead, he is trying to convince Americans that our Social Security system is overrun with massive fraud. The truth is the opposite.

Less than 1% of Social Security payments are improper. And remember, that already-low percentage includes all the beneficiaries who die immediately before their benefit is due.

Given that these and all other improper payments constitute less than 1% of all payments made, those that are the result of fraud are vanishingly small. This is in sharp contrast to private insurance. Indeed, the American Academy of Actuaries issued a report just last September about private insurance and concluded that “insurance fraud is widespread.”

Ironically, the best way to stop improper payments—including those vanishingly few that result from fraud—is to adequately staff the Social Security Administration. Face-to-face transactions at your local Social Security field office will catch fraudsters. Online transactions generally won’t.

Unfortunately, your local Social Security office will be closing. Musk has instructed the General Services Administration to terminate all federal office leases, including every Social Security office and every post office.

Musk will do whatever it takes to avoid paying his fair share and enrich himself at our expense. He has his eyes on our Social Security. Lies about fraud might shake people’s confidence, but they are unlikely to shake people’s support for Social Security.

His rummaging around in our private information is unprecedented. It is hard to know what he has in mind or how to stop him. But there is one thing we absolutely can stop.

We can stop Congress from cutting our benefits. We must demand that every member of Congress stand up to Musk’s cynical efforts to steal our earned Social Security benefits while giving himself and other billionaires a hefty tax cut.

Every single member of Congress must publicly pledge that they will keep the promises Trump made on the campaign trail. That means not one penny in cuts to Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid. Every member of Congress must tell Musk and Trump: Hands off Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Armed to the teeth with M4 rifles and Glock pistols and pockets stuffed with their $10,000 advance plus some, 96 former U.S. special forces veterans are currently stationed in Gaza.

These mercenaries have been hired by UG Solutions, a North Carolina-based military contractor, to patrol the intersection that Israel used to separate the north from the south of Gaza. What the Occupation called the “Netzarim Corridor” split Gaza with a fortified, wide road to resupply weapons and tanks as well as providing a vantage point to launch attacks on both the north and the south. Named after the settler encampment in the same area from 1975-2005, the area was once again made into a violent and deadly zone. After the occupation forces withdrew from the intersection, the decomposing bodies and skeletal remains of Palestinian people were found.

In a recruiting email from UG Solutions, the company describes the primary purpose of the soldiers as “internal vehicle checkpoint management and vehicle inspection.” They claim to be searching for weapons moving in Gaza, of course only on Palestinians, not their or their colleagues’ own American and Israeli guns, nor those of the Israeli occupation forces (IOF.) We know this means that these soldiers are doing the work of the occupation forces. Like the checkpoints that slice into the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, these armed and oppressive checkpoints aim to terrorize Palestinians, securitize their land, and provide outposts for attacks. As the cease-fire unfolds in stages, all eyes should be on these checkpoints to ensure all soldiers are removed, American or Israeli.

The presence of U.S. mercenaries in Gaza highlights a disturbing pattern of American involvement in the region’s violence.

The images of these mercenaries, being paid a minimum of $1,100 a day, standing with their sunglasses and rifles next to Palestinians trying to travel in their own land is infuriating. But it’s also revealing. American boots have been on the ground in Gaza many times over the past 15 months of the accelerated genocide, and certainly before that. You might recall the since-deleted photograph accidentally posted by the White House’s Instagram account that revealed the high-level U.S. Delta Squad were in Gaza. Not to mention the many, many Americans in the IOF—either settlers or enthusiastic killers traveling from the U.S.—who have had their hand in committing genocide, perhaps recording a video celebrating themselves blowing up a mosque or parading in their victims’ undergarments, before returning to the United States—if not after taking a brief vacation to Dubai or Brazil first.

This is not the first time that U.S. private mercenaries have been hired to provide assistance to U.S. military invasions. Blackwater, a private mercenary company also headquartered in North Carolina, was hired to send U.S. mercenaries to both Afghanistan and Iraq shortly after the U.S. invasions. Between 2001 and 2007, Blackwater received $1 billion in U.S. government contracts. On September 16, 2007, Blackwater mercenaries massacred 17 Iraqi civilians, aged between 9 and 77, and wounded 20 people in Nisour Square, Baghdad. Four Blackwater mercenaries were convicted of their murders: Dustin Heard, Evan Liberty, Nicholas Slatten, and Paul Slough. Despite the global outrage, Blackwater CEO, Erik Prince, maintained that they acted “appropriately” and, in his first term, U.S. President Donald Trump pardoned all of the killers.

The Nisour Square massacre is but one example of the violence of Blackwater in Iraq. Between 2005 and 2007, U.S. mercenaries attacked Iraqi civilians at least 195 times. The actions of Blackrock employees revealed in the WikiLeaks’ War Logs uncover that these were not only random acts of violence but how the private soldiers were acting in coordination with the U.S. military itself. Blackwater is but one of the many companies like it that exerted imperialist violence on behalf of the U.S. empire. The U.S. government turned to using privatized militaries to outsource accountability and actions, often opting for private contractors in the years after they officially withdrew from countries, or in places where they wanted a presence but fewer U.S. soldiers.

The presence of U.S. mercenaries in Gaza highlights a disturbing pattern of American involvement in the region’s violence. In Gaza today, these mercenaries fulfill a role without scrutiny that neither the U.S. military nor Israeli occupation forces could with the same guns and boots but different logos. These soldiers, whether it’s the IOF, Blackwater, U.S. military, or UG Solutions, only mean violence for the Palestinian people. The continuation of using private mercenaries reflects the unaccountability and disregard for Palestinian lives that characterizes U.S. foreign policy in the region, underscoring the need for global scrutiny and calls for justice as the potential for escalated violence continues.