In the mid-1960s, I joined the freedom movement in the South as a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Georgia, Mississippi, and Arkansas. Those were heady years, and I am proud of my small role in the great achievements of that time.

Our movement breathed new life into American democracy, inspiring and teaching people who led many of the other liberation movements of the 1960s and ‘70s. It opened up schools, education, jobs, public accommodations, voting power, electoral office, and judgeships to people of color in the South and throughout the country.

But there is also a fight for history. Those who rule our society have a miserly notion of democracy, and they have re-told the story of our movement, to try to make it fit into the way they want most people to act—as passive observers of government and society, who do nothing other than vote every few years.

The distorted history they tell of the civil rights movement fits into that stingy vision. Their version of our history says that the movement was about a handful of great leaders, like Dr. Martin Luther King, and their followers.

Dr. King would have recognized the urgency of this moment, as the Trump regime seeks to reverse the gains of the past and to eviscerate American constitutional democracy. And he would have been proud of those who stand up.

Dr. King was an extraordinary leader—a moral giant, a radical thinker, a gifted tactician, a great teacher of the power of nonviolence, and one of the most eloquent and inspiring speakers in American history. His memory and his teachings remain a threat to those who seek to empower white supremacy and debase our democracy, which is why MAGA denigrates Dr. King and tries to obscure his teachings.

But a giant part of King’s leadership was inspiring others to be leaders. The freedom movement was about thousands upon thousands of leaders, all across America, sometimes acting in planned ways, sometimes acting spontaneously.

The movement was about millions of people who took to the streets, courthouses, and schools, who were jailed and beaten, fired, and abused for standing up for themselves. People who nonetheless protested, organized, went to meetings, voted, and demanded justice—demanded freedom.

Each of them was a leader, too, leading other Americans to understand the flaws of our nation—and the urgency of curing them.

Mitchell Zimmerman is shown as a SNCC volunteer in Arkansas in 1966. (Photo by Brian Rybolt, a fellow member of Arkansas SNCC. Used with permission.)

One other important lesson to understand about the movement was that, with hindsight, its victories appeared inevitable. But they did not seem inevitable at the time. People had to persist in struggle over years and decades, understanding that to grow discouraged would be a kind of surrender—that defeats might not be permanent, nor would victories, and that it might take a long time to finally smash the Jim Crow system.

Those lessons apply to today’s struggle against fascist authoritarianism in the United States. I keep hearing people ask, “What can we do?” and “Can anything we do make any difference?”

Persisting—not surrendering to despair—is part of the struggle. Victory over fascism may not be inevitable, but neither is defeat. We must keep demonstrating on the streets—peacefully, no matter what violence Immigration and Customs Enforcement wreaks—monitoring ICE activities, recording their abuses and exposing them, disrupting when we can at acceptable risk, writing to our representatives and to newspapers, voting, canvassing, contributing money and time, joining with others, and above all reaching out.

We must all become leaders in small or large ways, attempting to persuade and remind others of the dangers and of the injustices that we are fighting against, and urging them to act.

Dr. King would have recognized the urgency of this moment, as the Trump regime seeks to reverse the gains of the past and to eviscerate American constitutional democracy. And he would have been proud of those who stand up—peacefully, insistently, loudly—and say, "No, we’re not going to go backward."

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s job is to calm the economic fears that President Donald Trump creates. He has followed a curious journey to get there, and now he’s sacrificing his integrity and legacy to remain.

Stage 1: Democratic Fundraiser

Born in a small South Carolina town, Bessent, 63, graduated from Yale College in 1984 with a bachelor’s degree in political science. Eventually he went to work for Soros Fund Management—founded by the Republicans’ favorite Democratic demon, George Soros.

Bessent is openly gay, married since 2011 to a former New York City prosecutor, and has been a strong advocate for gay rights and marriage equality. In 2000, he supported Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore, co-hosting a fundraiser for him in East Hampton, New York. He donated $2,300 to Barack Obama’s campaign in 2007. Although he donated $25,000 to support Hillary Clinton’s presidential aspirations, by then he was a major donor to Republican candidates.

Stage 2: Republican Oligarch

Bessent returned to work for Soros in 2011 as chief investment officer but left in 2016 to form his own fund for which Soros provided a $2 billion anchor. From 2018 through 2021, as the global stock market broke records, the performance of Bessent’s fund was mediocre. Still, he amassed an estimated wealth of $600 million, although some reports refer to him as one of “Trump’s billionaires.”

Bessent and his husband have two children studying in Europe. As they process the European reaction to Trump, they may ask him what he is doing to make the world a better place.

Bessent donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration in 2016, but was not part of the first term’s inner circle. When Trump left office in disgrace after January 6 and under the cloud of other legal woes, most business leaders were reluctant to support him publicly. But as Bessent said on Roger Stone’s radio show in 2024: “I was all in for President Trump. I was one of the few Wall Street people backing him.”

The 68 senators who voted to confirm Bessent as Treasury secretary probably hoped that, like Marco Rubio at the State Department, Bessent would be an “adult in the room.” Unlike other members of the clown car comprising Trump’s cabinet, Bessent would save the nation from Trump’s worst financial impulses.

After all, the country has never had a president who declared bankruptcy six times (although Trump told the Washington Post that he had only four because he counted the first three bankruptcies as one).

Stage 3 :Trump Sycophant

Instead of a principled voice for sound economic policies and principles, Bessent has become a cheerleader for Trump’s dubious financial moves. At times, he has resorted to rhetorical gymnastics to explain away Trump’s plain language. For example:

• On April 2, 2025, on what Trump called “Liberation Day,” the president announced his first round of universal tariffs. The thoughtless imposition of across-the-board tariffs was often nonsensical, such as tariffs on uninhabited islands near Antarctica and on countries with which the US has a trade surplus. Trump sent global markets into a tailspin and US interest rates upward. Five days later, Bessent admitted that he was surprised by the “impatience” of commentators and the financial markets. He tried to stop the carnage by saying that Trump’s bizarre action was simply a clever negotiating strategy—which made little sense to the penguins of Antarctica.
• In September, as major US companies announced the loss of billions of dollars resulting from Trump’s tariffs, Bessent dismissed their concerns.
• Bessent—who is not an economist—has parroted the Trump line that tariffs are not a tax on American businesses and consumers because foreign exporters bear the cost. A broad consensus of economists has concluded otherwise, and a major study released on January 19 found that consumers and businesses—not foreign exporters—bear 96% of tariff costs.
• As Trump touted tariffs as a boon to manufacturing, Bessent acknowledged that the US has been losing manufacturing jobs. But he insists that better days are coming.
• When Trump tried to fire Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa Cook, Bessent said that the Fed’s independence was important, but that Trump had the right to fire her. After reportedly trying to persuade Trump not to fire Fed Chair Jerome Powell, Bessent has now become one of Powell’s most vocal attackers—along with Trump’s Justice Department.
• When the US Supreme Court heard oral argument in the case challenging Trump’s tariffs, Bessent sat in the front row. Now he’s criticizing Powell’s decision to attend the oral argument in Cook’s case.
• Most recently, Trump blamed his threat of a global trade war on Denmark’s refusal to let the US take over its longstanding territory, Greenland. In a social media post on Saturday morning, January 17, Trump announced new 10% tariffs on Denmark and the countries who stood with it in resisting Trump’s demand: Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, Britain, the Netherlands, and Finland, effective February 1. He threatened to increase the levies to 25% on June 1, unless Europe capitulated.
• Sunday evening, January 18, NPR’s Nick Schifrin posted a letter that Trump had previously sent to Norway’s prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre. Trump revealed that after not winning last year’s Nobel Peace Prize “for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS,” he “no longer feel[s] an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America… The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland.”
• Hours after the public disclosure of Trump’s message, Bessent held an impromptu press conference on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He tried to explain away Trump’s childish fit: “I think it’s a complete canard that the president will be doing this because of the Nobel Prize,” Bessent asserted. Accusing Trump’s critics of “hysteria,” Bessent said, “What I am urging everyone here to do is sit back, take a deep breath, and let things play out.” His words fell flat, and he looked as uncomfortable as he must have felt.
• In Brussels on January 21, the European Parliament protested Trump’s demand by suspending its work on the previously negotiated US-EU trade deal. Meanwhile at Davos, Trump delivered a 90-minute screed that insulted many European leaders by name and reiterated his demand for Greenland. But later that day, Trump posted that he and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte had worked out a “framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland and, in fact, the entire Arctic Region.” And he walked back the new European tariffs he’d threatened to impose on February 1.

Stage 4: The Coming Quest for Rehabilitation

Bessent seems destined to follow the paths of other Trump enablers who eventually left the fold, like former Attorney General William Barr. He neutered the Mueller Report on Russian election interference during the 2016 election, only to resign 18 months later as January 6 approached. Eventually, Bessent will find himself on the outs with Trump, write a book, pursue a public speaking “redemption tour,” and explain that his government service saved the country from Trump’s worst impulses.

Such a rationalization rings hollow.

Bessent and his husband have two children studying in Europe. As they process the European reaction to Trump, they may ask him what he is doing to make the world a better place. The answer is also his legacy: In the process of sacrificing his personal integrity, Bessent has disserved the nation.

Maria Corina Machado said it was a “historic day for us Venezuelans” as she handed President Donald Trump her Nobel Peace Prize. For the pro-Israel, far-right opposition figure in Venezuela, being welcomed to the White House may have been a historic day. But for those of us interested in peace and justice, the only history the United States is making by keeping the sitting president of Venezuela locked up in New York is of colonialist bullying and imperialist violence.

After being snubbed of her dreamed-of-role as President of Venezuela, Machado left no hard feelings as she gave her recently awarded Nobel Peace Prize to Trump on January 15. One might think being told she didn’t have the “respect” nor “support” within Venezuela to be parachuted in as leader would sever Trump-Machado relations. But, US relations with Machado and her far-right party are deep. This remains the zenith of her life’s worth to sell back her country to capital. For those wondering if Trump now has the Nobel Prize–yes. Well, he did the second Machado got it, no matter his statements to counteract that. Machado’s decision to accept the prize, supposedly contrary to the wishes of the White House, before delivering it to him in person, signifies the depth of Machado’s commitment to enact the US will on Venezuela.

Maria Corina Machado was born in 1967 into one of the wealthiest families in Venezuela. This wealth came from their ownership and control of Venezuela’s largest private-sector steel company, Sivensa, and its largest private steel processor, Sidetur. Her family also benefited greatly from the 1997 privatization of Sidor, the largest steelmaker in Venezuela, as they held a controlling stake. Between 2008 and 2010, the Chávez government nationalized all three of these companies, which stripped the Machado family of their life of abhorrent luxury while most Venezuelans suffered. Like many of this era, these wealthy families never forgave the revolutionary government for providing for the Venezuelan people.

In her youth, with all of the riches of these companies, Machado was educated at an elite boarding school in the United States, which costs $78,000 a year in today’s money. She then studied engineering at the graduate and post-graduate levels. After completing her studies, she spent a brief stint in her family’s steel company before she moved into philanthropy. It is not hard to see where her virulent pro-US politics have come from. But US-Machado relations go back a long way, which is why her handing Trump the Nobel Peace Prize is not the first occasion when she has shown her true nature as a US-backed asset.

US-Backed Asset

In 2002, Machado set up Súmate, an NGO aiming to topple the Bolivarian Revolution under the supposed task of “election monitoring” in Venezuela. It immediately received at least $53,400 from the United States via the National Endowment for Democracy, the infamous route through which the US funds its CIA campaigns globally. Súmate was the front through which US interests repeatedly attempted to undermine Chávez: They pushed the campaign for a 2004 recall of the presidential election, produced data for opposition attacks, and peddled anti-Chávez propaganda in the media, among other nefarious activities using the front of “democracy” to do so. In 2005, President George W. Bush invited Machado into the Oval Office to personally thank her for carrying out this work.

In 2012, Machado set up Vente Venezuela, a far-right political party that pushed for private property and free markets in Venezuela. Through this political party, she has attempted to unify strands of the opposition to push her challenge to the Bolivarian project and launch counterrevolutionary measures aimed at overthrowing the government. Machado has asserted that if she were in power, she would sell off Venezuela’s publicly owned oil company and privatize all oil and gas reserves that currently fund public services for Venezuelans. These instances reveal that “democracy” and “freedom” are guises for the ultimate aim of privatization in order for her, as well as her friends and family, to once more embezzle huge sums of money and cut off millions of people from needed public services.

Machado is a key asset for the US as a voice that ostensibly speaks on behalf of those grieved from within Venezuela that can be used to justify its regime change attempts from outside.

When the US imposed sanctions on Venezuela, formally in 2005, Machado was one of the loudest and most abrasive supporters. On many occasions, she has been boldly in support of these unilateral coercive measures that have killed over 100,000 people and caused absolute misery for Venezuelans.

Beyond her support for sanctions, Machado’s appetite for the murder of her own countrymen is seen through her support for the US naval armada as well as murderous US attacks on small boats in the Caribbean and Pacific, which have killed over 120 people since September 2025. As 70% of the US oppose war on Venezuela, as families mourn their loved ones, and as millions of dollars are used to fund warship deployments in the Caribbean, Machado said: “I totally support [Trump’s] strategy. I think it is the right thing to do. It’s courageous. It’s visionary.” Perhaps Machado’s American boarding school taught her such conceptions of courage and vision, but for those of us who have seen the videos of boats being bombed, heard testimonies of the civilian victims of airstrikes in La Gauira, and watched the rabid threats of war flow unabated, they are supportive of terror and murder.

Not only are people in Venezuela being sacrificed in Machado’s dream of a ravaged, neoliberal Venezuela, but as per her duty, she also justifies US action against Venezuelans living in the United States. Machado peddled lies about drug cartels and their links to the Venezuelan government, which justified Trump’s incarceration of 200 Venezuelans in the US to the CECOT torture facility in El Salvador. When she traveled to Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, Machado revealed her journey was made possible by US support. She also dedicated the prize to Trump before ultimately delivering the prize to him by hand this week. Machado is a key asset for the US as a voice that ostensibly speaks on behalf of those grieved from within Venezuela that can be used to justify its regime change attempts from outside.

Instigator of Violence

A second prong to Machado’s role in the Venezuelan opposition is in instigating violence, both within Venezuela, through funding and provoking violent riots, and externally, encouraging foreign intervention. In 2002, Machado helped lead the US-backed coup to overthrow democratically elected President Hugo Chávez. She signed the Carmona Decree, which tried to dissolve the National Assembly, the Supreme Court, and other governmental bodies that brought about change in the interests of the Venezuelan people and away from the hoarding of foreign and domestic elites, like herself.

Machado was a key figure in organizing guarimbas, violent riots aimed at causing chaos and paralyzing the country in order to provoke political and economic collapse. In 2014, Machado was a key organizer and supporter of guarimbas that killed her political opponents, burnt down public infrastructure, and set ambulances and doctors on fire. Again in 2017, she helped to organize and fund the guarimbas, which killed 200 people and wounded more than 15,000, and caused significant damage to bus drivers, metro workers, and passengers, hospitals, roads, and other public buildings. These riots targeted people living their daily lives: Barricades were erected to stop people from going to work or school, bus drivers were attacked for transporting people, metal wires were hung to kill anyone who tried to bypass them, and the public infrastructure for life was destroyed. This onslaught on Venezuelans strove to make their lives unbearable to inflict the maximum social damage and force political change through terror and violence. After the presidential election in 2024, Machado’s party funded saboteurs to stage tire-burning protests and attack military bases in an attempt to spur more guarimbas and justify the US and opposition’s call that the election was a “fraud.”

As well as her support for US sanctions and attacks on Venezuela, Machado made a plea to genocide architect Benjamin Netanyahu in 2018 to intervene at the United Nations for military intervention in Venezuela. She asked for Netanyahu’s apparent “strength and influence to advance the dismantling of the criminal Venezuelan regime.” But this appeal represents the critical link between Machado’s desire for Venezuela and her Zionist fanaticism, necessary and unsurprising as Machado is a node within the global imperialist axis,

Pro-Israel Propagandist

Machado is openly Zionist and receives strong support from Israel, perhaps unsurprisingly given her status as a US puppet. She’s repeatedly committed to alliances with the Zionist entity and spread its propaganda, particularly as she has become the key opposition leader of the current moment. Since 2009, when Chávez ended diplomatic relations with Israel, Venezuela has not engaged with the Zionist entity. This, too, is a rationale for persistent US efforts at overthrowing the anti-imperialist, anti-Zionist governments of Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, who have repeatedly stated: “Humanity’s most important battle is for the liberation of Palestine.”

In 2020, Machado’s party signed a cooperation agreement with Israel’s fascist “Likud” Party, a party advocating for the total extermination of Palestine. Every year, she posts on social media erasing and celebrating Nakba Day as Israel’s “founding,” a genocidal Zionist propaganda line. In 2025, she praised Netanyahu for the genocide in Gaza, saying “she greatly appreciates his decisions and resolute actions in the course of the war, and Israel's achievements." Her desire for power is also in the interest of Israel; she said if she were president, “Venezuela will be Israel’s closest ally in Latin America.” Machado has promised to move Venezuela’s embassy to Jerusalem in an attempt to legitimize Israel’s occupation. She has also vowed to restore relations with Israel.

Machado is ultimately one thread in the fabric of the US empire.

Previous failed US-backed opposition leaders have also been recognized by Israel immediately, including Juan Guaido, who announced himself president and quickly said, “The process of stabilizing relations with Israel is at its height.” Israel also recognized Machado’s predecessor, Edmundo Gonzalez’s claim that he was president of Venezuela in 2024, after he lost the election. When the US pushes these leaders, they are in the interests of its own empire, of which Israel is a critical component. Thus, we must recognize the role of Venezuela’s revolutionary government in supporting Palestine in sharp contrast to the far-right opposition’s desire to propel Venezuela into the US-Israel axis.

While Machado has played a pertinent and critical role for the US in causing chaos, disseminating propaganda, and pushing for regime change in Venezuela, it is necessary not to see Maria Corina Machado as an individual solely motivated by her own interests. Her desire to return to Venezuela for the profits of the few at the expense of the many is certainly rooted in her elite upbringing and personal stake in a potential neoliberal Venezuela. But Machado is ultimately one thread in the fabric of the US empire. Whether it’s Machado, Guaido, Gonzalez, López, Capriles, or any new figure that will certainly emerge, all are set up with the one aim of destroying the Bolivarian Revolution in the interests of the United States.

White House officials might have told the Washington Post that the only reason Machado was not installed as President of Venezuela was that she accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, when it belonged to Trump. But, Machado could give that certificate to Trump again and again, and again; it is the Venezuelan people who will determine their own fate. We stand with them.

Writers often try to gild their tawdry times or dignify their flawed leaders with lofty literary analogies—notably, America as the New Jerusalem; Lincoln as Moses leading his people through the wilderness of the Civil War; the Kennedy White House as an incarnation of King Arthur’s “Camelot“; or Lyndon Johnson living his last years as a latter-day King Lear, cast off by his ungrateful children into the moors of south Texas.

But what are we going to do with Donald Trump? Wouldn’t his vanity, his vulgarity, and his relentless pursuit of money and minerals in every corner of the globe turn any literary analogies into soggy clichés? Like the showman P.T. Barnum, Trump is an American original, whose true metaphors can be found only in comic books (America’s one true art form), not literature. As Ariel Dorfman reminded us once upon a time in How to Read Donald Duck, that classic guide to US cultural imperialism in Latin America, there was always more to a Disney comic book than gags.

To understand Trump’s America, we need our own comic guidebook to his global misadventures, which might be titled something like “How to Read Scrooge McDuck.” After all, in case you never had the pleasure of his acquaintance, Scrooge McDuck was the predatory billionaire in Disney comics, who was amazingly popular among teenagers in Cold War America. In that era when American corporations scampered around the global economy extracting profits wherever they saw fit, Scrooge McDuck put a friendly face on US imperialism, making covert intervention and commercial exploitation look benign, even comic.

From 1952 to 1988, a period coinciding almost precisely with the Cold War, the comic’s creator, illustrator Carl Barks, filled the country’s magazine racks with more than 220 comic books celebrating Scrooge’s schemes to accumulate ever more billions by dispatching Donald Duck and his triplet nephews (Huey, Dewey, and Louie) to scour the world for riches—gems, minerals, oil, and lost treasure. No place on the planet was too remote, not even the Arctic or the Amazon, and no people too poor or obscure, not even Hondurans and Tibetans, to escape his tight-fisted grasp. And yet in that innocent world of the comic book, every adventure, no matter how twisted the plot, always ended with a light laugh for those duckling heroes and the diverse peoples they encountered on their global travels.

Just as Scrooge McDuck scoured the world in a relentless, even ruthless search for wealth, so our real-life Donald has made mineral deals everywhere on the planet his top presidential priority.

Let’s visit a few of my favorite comic books from my Cold War childhood, starting with the 1954 story “The Seven Cities of Cibola.” Its initial panels show a butler showering the billionaire duck with coins while he swims around in his Money Bin’s “three cubic acres” of cash. At first, Scrooge McDuck seems content as he gloats about making money from “about every business there is on Earth” (from “oil wells, railroads, gold mines, farms, factories”).

Suddenly, however, saddened by the realization that he’s exhausted every possible domestic path to profit, Scrooge decides to lead his nephew Donald and the triplets into the desert borderlands between Mexico and the US. There, they come upon a lost Eldorado, a towering, multitiered city with gold-paved streets and a cistern filled with opals and sapphires. But caution intrudes when Huey, Dewey, and Louie discover that the whole edifice is poised dangerously atop a spindly stone pillar. Then, at their moment of near triumph, the ducks are denied any treasure by Scrooge’s recurring nemesis, the comically criminal Beagle Boys, who break in and grab the city’s bejeweled idol, triggering a hidden mechanism that fractures the pillar. As those fabled cities collapse into a heap of rubble, our duckling heroes escape unharmed, ready for their next adventure.

The first panel in a 1956 comic book, the “Secret of Hondorica,” shows Scrooge McDuck pointing to a map of the Caribbean as he dispatches Donald Duck and his three nephews deep into tropical jungles near—yes, how sadly appropriate almost seven decades later—Venezuela to recover his lost deeds to the region’s rich oil wells. After crossing steep mountains and crocodile-infested creeks, the Ducks happen upon a Mayan temple filled with spear-carrying “savages” arrayed around their idol. By translating the “picture writing” on the temple walls with the help of their handy encyclopedic “Junior Woodchuck Guidebook,” the nephews deceive the natives with incantations in their own language and escape with the idol’s crown of gold.

President Donald Trump is, of course, our real-life Scrooge McDuck. Mar-a-Lago is his Money Bin. And the world is his playground for schemes to add another billion or two to his and his family’s growing fortune. Just as Scrooge McDuck scoured the world in a relentless, even ruthless search for wealth, so our real-life Donald has made mineral deals everywhere on the planet his top presidential priority—rare earths from Ukraine, oil from the Middle East, and (someday perhaps) a frozen treasure trove of minerals in Greenland. And just as Scrooge dispatched Donald Duck on a mission to recover his lost oil wells from the jungles of “Hondorica,” so our real Donald did indeed send US special forces to capture President Nicolás Maduro and win yet more of Venezuela’s oil fields for American companies.

Back to the Reality of the Old Cold War

Alas, my innocent childhood is long gone. The world is no backdrop for comic book adventures, and imaginary heroes don’t flit from frame to frame to amusing endings. In the real world of 2026, we are already deep into a “new Cold War” against nuclear-armed powers, and President Donald J. Trump’s comedic foreign policy is dragging us toward a dismal defeat.

First, let’s snap back to reality by taking stock of the world we’ve actually been living through all these years and review how we got here. During the real Cold War, the global conflict that lasted from 1947 to 1991 (when the Soviet Union collapsed), the one I describe in my new book, Cold War on Five Continents, Washington’s geopolitical strategy was brilliantly ruthless in its basic design. After fighting quite a different global conflict, World War II, for four years with the aim of defeating the Axis powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan) entrenched at both ends of Eurasia, America’s leaders of General (and future president) Dwight D. Eisenhower’s generation knew instinctively that geopolitical control over that vast continent was indeed the key to global power.

If Washington’s strategy for waging the Cold War was a successful exercise in geopolitics, its use of “unipolar” power in the decades to come was... much less so.

Guided by that fundamental strategic principle (which had, in fact, held true for the last thousand years or so), Washington’s early Cold War leaders worked hard to “contain” the Sino-Soviet communist bloc behind an “Iron Curtain” that stretched for 5,000 miles around the rim of Eurasia. With the armed forces of its NATO alliance securing that continent’s Western frontier and five bilateral military pacts ranging along the Pacific littoral from Japan to Australia for its eastern border, Washington bottled up the communist superpowers. That strategy freed the US to make the rest of the planet into its very own “free world.” In exchange for open access to the markets and minerals of the countries in much of that free world, the US distributed a few development dollars of aid to the emerging nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, which often served to fatten up the bank accounts of their nominally “democratic” dictators.

After two decades of being locked up inside Eurasia, however, Beijing and Moscow tried to break out of their geopolitical isolation by arming allies for revolutionary warfare on Cold War battlegrounds stretching from South Vietnam across the Middle East and through southern Africa, all the way to Central America.

To counter that gambit and push those communist powers back behind the Iron Curtain, the US sometimes sent in its own troops, whether successfully to the Dominican Republic in 1965, or disastrously to South Vietnam from 1965 to 1973. But most of the time, Washington dispatched individual CIA operatives armed with impunity to do whatever—and I do mean whatever—they wanted to deflect Moscow and Beijing’s gambits and secure contested terrain. Usually misfits, even oddballs at home, those surprisingly significant historical actors, whom I’ve come to call “men on the spot,” often proved quite successful abroad. Using the cruelest instruments in the toolkit of modern statecraft—assassinations, coups, surrogate troops, torture, and psychological warfare—those covert operatives fought for control of foreign capitals as diverse as Kinshasha, Luanda, Saigon, Santiago, San Salvador, Tegucigalpa, and Vientiane. And then, with the Soviet Union significantly “contained” geopolitically within its borderlands, Washington could just sit back and wait for Moscow to make a strategic blunder.

That blunder came in 1979 in one of those classic military misadventures that often hasten the deaths of empires in decline. When Moscow sent 100,000 troops to occupy Afghanistan, Washington sent just one CIA operative, Howard Hart, to defeat that occupation. Acting as Washington’s “man on the spot,” he used the agency’s millions of dollars to form a guerrilla army of 250,000 Afghan fighters. By the time the Red Army was bled dry and left Afghanistan a decade later, defeated and demoralized, Moscow’s satellite states in Eastern Europe were erupting in mass anti-communist protests. With the Red Army generally unable or unwilling to intervene, the Soviet bloc broke apart as the Soviet Union broke up, ending the Cold War with an unqualified US victory.

Toward a New Cold War

If Washington’s strategy for waging the Cold War was a successful exercise in geopolitics, its use of “unipolar” power in the decades to come was, as I also argue in Cold War on Five Continents, much less so. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Washington stood astride the globe like a Titan of Greek legend—the sole superpower on Earth, at least theoretically capable of remaking the world as it wished. Convinced that “the end of history” would make its free-market democracy the future of all mankind, America’s leaders, “drunk with power,” advanced sweeping plans for a new world order, grounded in a globalized economy that served their short-term interests but would have deleterious long-term consequences for their global hegemony.

Only a decade after the Cold War ended, Washington started facing serious strategic challenges across the Eurasian continent, which, then and now, has been the epicenter of geopolitical power. In the heady aftermath of its Cold War victory, the US attempted some bold strategic gambits that would soon prove to be distinctly ill-advised. Above all, Washington’s leaders believed that they could co-opt Beijing’s rising power by recognizing China as an equal trading partner. In a parallel attempt to curb any of Moscow’s future imperial ambitions, the US also presided over NATO’s expansion until that alliance surrounded Russia’s western borders, sparking security concerns in Moscow. Such ill-fated initiatives, combined with ill-considered military interventions in Afghanistan and also Iraq, created conditions for the revival of a great-power rivalry that, since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, many observers have called “the new Cold War.”

For over a century, the Caribbean region had consistently experienced the most brutal, least benign aspects of US foreign policy and now that reality has only worsened.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union and its socialist economy in 1991, Washington seemed to feel its post-Cold-War globalization would both promote democracy there and integrate that country into an emerging American world order, perhaps as a secondary power supplying cheap commodities, including oil, to the global economy. For the Russians, however, such globalization produced the dismal decade of the 1990s that would be marked by what economist Jeffrey Sachs has called a “serious economic and financial crisis” and a privatization of state enterprises “rife with unfairness and corruption,” creating a coterie of predatory Russian oligarchs.

When Vladimir Putin became prime minister amid the post-Soviet malaise of the late 1990s, he reverted to Russia’s centuries-old imperial mode. He found his vision for the country’s revival as a “great power” in the sort of geostrategic thinking that Washington’s leaders seemed to have forgotten in the afterglow of their great Cold War victory. Following a 2005 address calling the collapse of the Soviet Union the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,” Putin set about systematically reclaiming much of the old Soviet sphere—invading Georgia in 2008 when it began flirting with NATO membership; deploying troops in 2020-2021 to resolve an Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict in favor of a pro-Moscow regime in Baku; and dispatching thousands of Russian special forces to Kazakhstan in 2022 to gun down pro-democracy protesters challenging a loyal Russian ally.

Concerned above all with securing his western frontier with Europe, Putin pressed relentlessly against Ukraine after his loyal surrogate leader there was ousted in the 2014 Maidan “color revolution.” First seizing Crimea, next arming separatist rebels in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region adjacent to Russia, and finally invading Ukraine in 2022 with nearly 200,000 troops, he would spark a protracted war that has yet to end.

At first, as Kyiv fought the Russians off, Washington and the West reacted with a striking unanimity by imposing serious sanctions on Moscow, dispatching armaments to Ukraine, and expanding NATO to include all of Scandinavia. Moreover, Ukraine showed a formidable flair for unconventional operations—clearing Russian ships from the Black Sea with naval drones and sabotaging that country’s massive gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea.

As Russia’s war on Ukraine reverberated across Eurasia and beyond, geopolitical tensions also rose in the Western Pacific, sparking a renewed great power rivalry that became worthy of the phrase “the new Cold War.” In a striking parallel with the 1950s, in February 2022, just before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Beijing and Moscow forged a multi-faceted economic and strategic alliance that they claimed had “no limits.” In an eerie reprisal of the early Cold War years, Russia and China were in that way united against a Western alliance, once again led by Washington with its military forces still deployed in Western Europe and East Asia.

After two years of continuous combat in Ukraine, however, cracks began to appear in the West’s anti-Russian coalition. Most critically, American domestic support for Ukraine started to falter under partisan political pressures, amplified by a rising populist opposition in both the US and Europe to the globalized economy and its military alliances. After successfully rallying NATO to stand with Ukraine, President Joseph Biden opened America’s arsenal to Kyiv until Republican legislators, at Donald Trump’s behest, delayed military aid throughout much of 2024.

President Trump’s Second Term

Following his second inauguration in January 2025, President Trump’s initial foreign policy initiative was a unilateral attempt to negotiate an end to the Russia-Ukraine war—an effort that would be complicated by his underlying hostility toward NATO and his sympathy for Russian President Putin. On February 12, Trump launched peace talks through a “lengthy and highly productive” phone call with the Russian president, agreeing that “our respective teams start negotiations immediately.” Within days, Defense Secretary (or do I mean Secretary of War?) Pete Hegseth announced that “returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective,” and Trump added that NATO membership for Kyiv was no less unrealistic—in effect, making what a senior Swedish diplomat called “very major concessions” to Moscow before any talks even began.

At month’s end, those tensions culminated in a televised Oval Office meeting in which Trump berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, saying: “You’re either going to make a deal or we’re out, and if we’re out, you’ll fight it out. I don’t think it’s going to be pretty.” That unilateral approach not only weakened Ukraine’s ability to defend itself, but also degraded NATO, which had, for the previous three years, supported Ukraine’s resistance to Russia. Recoiling from the “initial shock” of that utterly unprecedented breach, Europeans quickly appropriated $160 billion to build up their own arms industry in collaboration with both Canada and Ukraine, thereby reducing their dependence on US weaponry.

Although it has little chance of success, Trump’s attempt at a tricontinental grand strategy will likely leave a residue of ruin—alienating allies in Latin America, weakening NATO’s position in Western Europe, and ultimately corroding Washington’s global power.

For the rest of the year, Putin continued to work on Trump. He even scored a state visit and meeting with the American president in Alaska, without making any concessions whatsoever. In the process, he reduced US envoys to messenger boys for his unyielding demands, while using disinformation to drive a wedge between Washington and Kyiv. Even if the Trump administration does not formally withdraw from NATO in the years to come, the president’s repeated hostility toward it, particularly its crucial mutual-defense clause, may yet serve to weaken, if not eviscerate the alliance.

Amid a torrent of confusing, often contradictory foreign policy pronouncements from the White House, the design of Trump’s de facto geopolitical strategy soon took shape. Instead of focusing on mutual-security alliances like NATO in Europe or NORAD with Canada, Trump seems to prefer a globe divided into three major regional blocs, each headed by an empowered leader like himself—with Russia dominating its European periphery, China paramount in Asia, and the United States controlling the Americas. That aspiration to hemispheric hegemony lent a certain geopolitical logic to Trump’s otherwise quixotic strikes on Venezuela (and his capture of its president and his wife), as well as his overtures to claim Greenland, reclaim the Panama Canal, and even to make Canada the 51st state.

Last November, formalizing that approach, the White House released its new National Security Strategy, which proclaimed a “Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine” aimed at achieving an unchallenged “American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere.” Think, of course, the Donroe Doctrine. To that end, the US will reduce its “global military presence to address urgent threats in our Hemisphere,” deploy the US Navy to “control sea lanes,” and use “tariffs and reciprocal trade agreements as powerful tools” to make the Western Hemisphere “an increasingly attractive market for American commerce.” In essence, “the United States must be preeminent in the Western Hemisphere as a condition of our security and prosperity.”

For over a century, the Caribbean region had consistently experienced the most brutal, least benign aspects of US foreign policy and now that reality has only worsened. Not only has Trump reverted to the gunboat diplomacy of Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, but he’s done so with a caricatured cruelty—sinking boats in the Caribbean in the name of drug interdiction and sending troops to invade Venezuela, a sovereign state.

Just as Theodore Roosevelt used the Navy to seize land from Colombia for the Panama Canal, so Trump sent Special Forces into Venezuela to gain control over its oil. “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies… go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country,” Trump said at a January 3 press conference just hours after President Maduro’s capture. “We’re gonna rebuild the oil infrastructure, which will cost billions of dollars. It will cost us nothing. It’ll be paid for by the oil companies directly.” Such a caricatured assertion of economic interest is likely to inflame resentment in a region where anti-imperialist sensibilities remain strong.

Although it has little chance of success, Trump’s attempt at a tricontinental grand strategy will likely leave a residue of ruin—alienating allies in Latin America, weakening NATO’s position in Western Europe, and ultimately corroding Washington’s global power. From a strategic perspective, a staged US retreat from its military bastion in Western Europe would end its long-standing influence over Eurasia, which remains the epicenter of geopolitical power in this new Cold War era, just as it was in the old one. Such a retreat, at the very moment when Russia and China are expanding their influence over that strategic continent, would be tantamount to a self-inflicted defeat in this era of a new and intensifying Cold War.

To return to those Donald Duck comic books for an appropriate analogy: Just as that bungled grab for a bejeweled idol collapsed the spindly stone pillar holding up the “Seven Cities of Cibola,” so the Trump administration’s inept foreign policy is potentially destabilizing a fragile world order with dangerously unpredictable consequences for us all. And count on one thing, unlike in the comic books, it won’t be even a little bit funny.

According to a major new report from the United Nations University, global water systems are no longer in crisis, but have entered a state of chronic failure, with shortages that extend far beyond temporary shocks or short-term recovery.

Released on January 20 by the UN University’s Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH), Global Water Bankruptcy: Living Beyond Our Hydrological Means in the Post-Crisis Era concludes that the planet has entered the era of global water bankruptcy. This indicates that long-term water use now exceeds renewable inflows, leaving much of Earth’s natural systems damaged beyond realistic repair. In other words, societies have already exhausted or polluted the natural buffers—rivers, aquifers, wetlands, and glaciers—that once sustained them. Droughts, shortages, and pollution events are increasingly becoming persistent features of daily life. In this post-crisis condition, the authors argue, it is best not to describe the situation as a crisis at all, but as water bankruptcy.

At the press conference set to release the report, Kaveh Madani, lead author and director of the UNU-INWEH, emphasized that this is not a semantic shift, but a clear warning that the dominant way governments, markets, and international institutions think about water is no longer fit for reality.

“For decades, scientists, the media, and policymakers have warned about a global water crisis… what we document in this report is a different reality emerging in many places: a persistent failure state in which water systems can no longer realistically return to their historical baselines,” Madani said.

Applied to water, bankruptcy management requires confronting overuse, acknowledging irreversible losses, and aligning development goals with hydrological limits.

The report does not claim that the entire planet is bankrupt. Water bankruptcy is assessed basin by basin and aquifer by aquifer. However, as regions across the globe simultaneously overdraw water and erode the natural systems that sustain it, the world faces a fundamentally altered risk landscape, with cascading threats to food security, agricultural markets, rural livelihoods, and climate feedbacks.

What distinguishes water bankruptcy from familiar narratives of scarcity is the scale of irreversibility. According to the report, societies have not only overdrawn annual renewable water flows, but have also liquidated long-term savings stored in groundwater, wetlands, glaciers, soils, and river ecosystems.

Over the past five decades, the world has lost approximately 410 million hectares of natural wetlands—almost the land area of the European Union—resulting in the disappearance of vital ecosystem services such as flood control, water purification, and habitat provision, valued at more than US$5 trillion. Groundwater depletion is even more consequential. According to the analysis, around 70% of the world’s major aquifers show long-term declining trends. Excessive pumping has already caused land subsidence across nearly 5% of the global land area, including dense urban zones that are home to close to 2 billion people. In some regions, land is sinking by up to 25 centimeters per year, permanently reducing storage capacity and increasing flood risk. These damages are not easily undone. Compacted aquifers, subsided deltas, dried-up lakes, and extinct species represent long-term, irretrievable losses.

As Kaveh Madani emphasizes, “This is not another warning about a future we might still avoid everywhere… It is a diagnosis of a world where, in many basins, the old normal is already gone.”

The current human cost and future risks of water bankruptcy are also staggering. According to the report, nearly three-quarters of the world’s population lives in countries classified as water insecure or critically water insecure. About 2.2 billion people still lack safely managed drinking water, 3.5 billion lack safely managed sanitation, and roughly 4 billion experience severe water scarcity for at least one month each year. The risks are compounded given more than half of global food output is located in regions where total water storage (including surface water, soil moisture, snow, ice, and groundwater) is already declining or unstable.

The report’s crux is that the global water agenda remains stuck in a crisis-response mindset that is no longer fit for purpose. Such alarming figures are partly the result of governments, utilities, and basin authorities continuing to treat chronic overshoot as a temporary emergency. Short-term emergency measures, supply expansion, and incremental efficiency gains dominate policy discussions, even as underlying water balances continue to deteriorate. Ultimately, this only deepens ecological damage and entrenches unsustainable water-use practices.

Madani was clear at the press conference: “Expecting a wicked problem of this scale to have a simple solution is as naïve as the reductionist solutions that helped get us into the current state,” he said.

Instead, the United Nations University calls for a shift to what it terms bankruptcy management, a concept borrowed deliberately from finance. Applied to water, bankruptcy management requires confronting overuse, acknowledging irreversible losses, and aligning development goals with hydrological limits. It also demands protecting remaining aquifers, wetlands, soils, rivers, lakes, and glaciers, rather than treating these life-sustaining systems as expendable capital to prop up unsustainable growth.

The report itself also highlights the social and political dimensions of water bankruptcy, stressing that it is not solely an environmental issue. The costs of hydrological overshoot fall hardest on those least responsible and least able to adapt: smallholder farmers, Indigenous communities, and the urban poor. The authors caution that demand reduction is not politically feasible if treated as a purely technical exercise, noting that abruptly cutting water access for farmers could trigger unemployment, social unrest, and broader instability. Effective management, they argue, must be paired with political and economic transitions that protect livelihoods, provide compensation and risk support, enable shifts in crops and practices, and help economies decouple jobs and growth from ever-rising water use.

Despite their sober diagnosis, the authors do not end in resignation, arguing that water could—and existentially must—still serve as a unifying axis in an increasingly fragmented world. Given water intersects climate, biodiversity, food systems, public health, land use, and political stability, it remains one of the few domains where coordination is both necessary and unavoidable.

“Investing in water is an investment in delivering on all of those [aforementioned] agendas,” said Madani, at the report’s launch. “And in rebuilding cooperation in a fragmented world.”

Similarly, authors stress the importance of upcoming political milestones: the UN Water Conferences in 2026 and 2028, the conclusion of the Water Action Decade, and the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals deadline. They argue these moments offer a rare window to reset the global water agenda to move beyond incremental efficiency gains and emergency responses toward explicit recognition that many river basins and aquifers have already crossed thresholds where historical conditions cannot be restored.

Yet translating this clarity into action faces stark political and institutional realities. The UN system, tasked with leading such a reset, remains mired in member states cutting funding, worsening geopolitical polarization and international conflict, and key bodies—including the Security Council—grossly failing to uphold the UN Charter’s basic human rights mandates. In practice, declarations and frameworks proliferate, deadlines are extended, but meaningful, coordinated action remains slow, uneven, or hollow. Water may be uniquely cross cutting, yet it is not immune to these structural constraints or the apparent erosion of accountability. Crucially, it also requires that primarily Western, early-industrial economies reckon with histories of inequitable use and extraction that have both driven water shortages and contributed to the persistent inequities of scarcity today.

As with other pressing global crises, the consequences of water bankruptcy may unfold faster than governments and institutions can respond, but the authors argue that naming the problem clearly could galvanize civil society and decision-makers into meaningful action before it’s too late.

“Our message is not despair,” Madani concluded. “It’s clarity. The earlier we face the real balance sheet, the more options we still have.”

If there is any hope for humanity’s future, it is in the vision of the day when war criminals, authoritarians, fascists, and other enemies of democracy can no longer threaten the world with impunity.

We are far from that reality at present. As we enter a new year, global power remains decidedly in the grip of a status quo dominated by corporate politicians, war criminals, and financial elites. Led by President Donald Trump, the worst of these political mobsters represent leadership on a moral caliber with history’s most malevolent barbarians.

In Minneapolis, the murder of Renée Good on January 8 by a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent has rightly provoked an outpouring of popular grief, anger, and resistance. In turn, the Trump administration’s response makes it clear that even the pretense of accountability or expectation of due process are nonexistent for this government. With even more federal agents flooded into Minneapolis in response, this lawless administration has made it clear it is at war with the American people.

A man with a reputation for lying about almost everything, President Trump has recreated his second administration in his own likeness. It took director of Homeland Security Kristi Noem only a couple hours after the shooting to brand Good a “domestic terrorist,” claiming the ICE agent acted in “self-defense” when she attempted to strike him with her vehicle. Noem also claimed Good had been stalking and impeding ICE’s activities “all day,” even though it was only just after 9:30 am when she was shot. She offered no evidence to support these charges.

The Trump presidency is an authoritarian cancer on what’s left of the body politic of democracy, led by the mendacious real estate blowhard turned politician and his hand-picked cabinet of sycophants, grifters, opportunists, and assorted incompetents.

In fact, ICE agents reportedly waited nearly three minutes before even calling 911 emergency services. Nor did they initiate CPR on Good or allow a doctor on the scene to assess her in the moments after the shooting. Instead, ICE agents briefly assessed Good and then left her bleeding and unattended until paramedics arrived several minutes later. It was more than 10 minutes before Good, who reportedly still had a pulse, received CPR from paramedics.

MAGA’s Hack Propaganda

Not surprisingly, President Trump and MAGA loyalists in the media and elsewhere quickly echoed Noem’s fantastical narrative. But anyone who watches video of the incident and thinks this victim blaming is a closed case requiring no further investigation is just serving the cause of hack propaganda.

Incredulously, it took Homeland Security more than a week to claim the agent who shot Good, Jonathan Ross, had received medical treatment for “internal bleeding” in the torso after being hit by Good’s car. No corroborating evidence was offered in support of this claim. But what does this claim even mean? That Ross was slightly bruised after being bumped by Good’s car as she attempted to drive away? In videos of the incident Good is clearly turning her vehicle to the right (not toward Ross) as she attempted to drive away. Further, the ICE agent is plainly visible standing to the side of Good’s vehicle when he fired two more shots at her. Did Good also deserve to be shot in the face because she didn’t immediately comply with one agent’s order to exit her vehicle? Actually, the MAGA hive mind has no shortage of reasons to justify her murder. She was a “lesbian agitator” with pronouns in her bio, after all.

But not to worry. Vice President JD Vance has assured us the ICE agent who killed Good has “absolute immunity” from prosecution, a view many legal experts strongly refute. The Trumpified FBI has also barred Minnesota state criminal investigators from access to materials in the case, exposing the Trump administration’s utter disregard for both the law and the truth. Tellingly, the US Department of Justice shows zero interest in even investigating the killing, a move that has prompted resignations of several federal prosecutors in Minnesota.

It’s a sign of the urgency of our times that scheduled antiwar rallies across the United States on January 10 to oppose the recent US military assault on Venezuela and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Celia Flores... had to be quickly amended to include a response to Good’s murder and the escalating threats from ICE.

The litany of ICE atrocities in the past year are many. For months, these thugs have terrorized American neighborhoods, pursuing a mass deportation policy that is inhumane and racist. In the first nine months of 2025 alone, approximately 220,000 people were arrested by ICE officers. Despite the president’s bogus claim that the immigration crackdown is necessary to target murderers, rapists, and gang members, more than 75,000 of those arrested last year had no criminal record. Can Trump make the same claim?

Actually, available data does not distinguish detainees with serious legal offenses from those with minor violations. In many instances, being in the United States illegally is a civil violation or misdemeanor offense, not a felony. As of early December, there were about 65,000 or more persons being held in ICE detention facilities.

The shooting of Good is also not an isolated incident of government violence. In fact, since September, ICE agents have been involved in 11 shooting incidents. In Santa Ana, California, federal officers shot two people in the face with “less lethal” projectiles, causing permanent eye damage. In Minneapolis, federal agents deployed flash-bang devices and tear gas on a family with six children in their car who were driving home from a sports practice.

The exploding lawlessness of the Trump administration now constitutes a blatant threat to democratic and human rights everywhere. Indeed, it’s a sign of the urgency of our times that scheduled antiwar rallies across the United States on January 10 to oppose the recent US military assault on Venezuela and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Celia Flores, initiated by the Democratic Socialists of America and the Party for Socialism and Liberation, had to be quickly amended to include a response to Good’s murder and the escalating threats from ICE.

Obviously, the military assault on Venezuela’s sovereignty was less about drugs and democracy than oil, power, and money. Maduro’s alleged complicity in narco-terrorism and weapons charges is only a specious pretext for an attack on a nation that just happens to have the world’s largest oil reserves. Venezuela’s real crime is that it operates independently of US foreign policy, which under Trump’s crudely resurrected version of the Monroe Doctrine now constitutes an unforgivable sin. Does anyone seriously believe Trump, who recently pardoned convicted former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez of drug trafficking and weapons charges, actually cares about narco-trafficking?

With escalating threats now against Columbia, Cuba, Mexico, Denmark, Greenland, and Iran, there is little coherent or reasoned policy in this intensifying US global aggression. But there is Trump’s need to distract the American people from his personal scandals and failures as a leader, and from the basic truth that he has absolutely nothing to offer to improve life for the majority of the people.

Gaza: Preface to a World Under Siege

Of course, we should not be surprised at what is happening now in the United States. Trump’s wild assault on democratic and human rights, his unhinged violent imperialism, are just the logical next expression of two years of genocidal destruction unleashed upon the people of Gaza by the Israeli state. This was a campaign of pure evil facilitated with decisive military support from both the Biden and Trump administrations.

Ironically, in 2025 the president who thought he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize conducted military attacks on seven countries, and launched air assaults on alleged drug boats in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean. But don’t feel too sorry for Trump the Nobel loser. To thank him for bombing her country, Veneuelan right-wing coup plotter Maria Corina Machado has now given Trump her Nobel Prize. In his own name, Trump has also been awarded the Israel Prize by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a war criminal and fugitive from an international arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court.

Watching Trump and MAGA politics in action over the past year is like viewing a film documentary in reverse motion, as established rights are undone and the rule of a lunkhead mob of far-right extremists takes over.

These war criminals and obsequious grovelers before the American president can give each other all the awards they want, it won’t erase the moral censure they deserve. Whatever hope for this world exists belongs instead to the many millions of human beings who don’t support targeting Palestinian children for bullets to the head or chest, starving families, bombing hospitals and schools, the forced displacement of around 2 million people, and other crimes against humanity. They don’t believe 250,000 Palestinians deserved to die, to be maimed or left buried under rubble by a genocidal apartheid state. Nor do these many millions believe in kidnapping leaders of foreign states, bombing and threatening other nations with capricious indifference to their sovereignty, and ignoring international law.

The Trump presidency is an authoritarian cancer on what’s left of the body politic of democracy, led by the mendacious real estate blowhard turned politician and his hand-picked cabinet of sycophants, grifters, opportunists, and assorted incompetents. Watching Trump and MAGA politics in action over the past year is like viewing a film documentary in reverse motion, as established rights are undone and the rule of a lunkhead mob of far-right extremists takes over. For what it’s worth, Trump is already floating his interest in finding a way to subvert or even cancel this year’s midterm elections. That’s the direction his addled extremism is going.

Those who support the democratic and human rights of migrants and citizens, who oppose genocide and imperialist violence, are in a moment now that demands an escalation in mass action, solidarity, and resistance. Enough of the entrenched timidity of the Democratic leadership, many of whom remain hesitant even to curtail ICE funding. We need a mass united front built on grassroots organizing power, fueled by the activism, energy, and strength of unions, communities, students and everyone with a vested desire to stop ICE terror and the larger and growing authoritarian threat.

The call by labor and community leaders in Minneapolis for a general shutdown of the city on January 23—an “economic blackout”—to protest Good’s murder and the ongoing harassment, abductions, and violence by ICE is an important initiative. This means no school, no work, and no shopping. Significantly, the Minnesota Labor Regional Federation AFL-CIO has announced support for the Minneapolis Day of Truth and Freedom, demanding ICE leave Minnesota now and the agent who killed Renée Good be held legally accountable.

This call for justice represents a significant step toward building an ever more forceful campaign of popular mass resistance to the current threats to our democratic and human rights.

Denmark and other European Union states are deploying additional troops to Greenland, world leaders are exchanging messages of concern with US President Donald Trump, Canada moves to expand its trade relations with China, and tariff warfare is being explored by both sides of the Atlantic. As the US threatens to annex Greenland, potentially putting major NATO allies against each other, the political commotion is real. The US’ imperial ambitions, combined with Greenland’s rich mineral and freshwater resources, are an understandable concern for EU leaders.

Examining the EU’s stance on recent violations of international law by the US and Israel, and expanding our analysis to include how the EU has responded to US military aggression in other regions, it is hard not to see the hypocrisy in urging the US to adhere to international law now. Let’s look at that hypocrisy up close.

“Concerns” and a Lack of Concrete Action Over Principled Condemnation and Accountability

When it comes to speaking out against aggression by the US and Israel, a state that bombed six countries and attacked three more in their territorial waters just in 2025, the EU’s record shows a grim example of moral gymnastics.

For example, the EU has not released an official statement condemning Israeli aggression against Yemen. Yet it had no problems accusing Yemen of what it called “indiscriminate attacks against international maritime shipping in the Red Sea, and against Israel.” When Israel bombed Iran in June 2025, which, in turn, sent rockets to Israel, the EU did not express a condemnation but its “deepest concern”:

The EU reiterates its strong commitment to regional security, including the security of the State of Israel, and calls on all sides to abide by international law, show restraint, and refrain from taking further steps which could lead to serious consequences such as potential radioactive release.

Notice how it is the security of Israel—the party that initiated military aggression in this case—that the EU chooses to mention, and not the country whose territorial integrity was infringed upon first.

What is more revealing than the refusal to express any written condemnation is the fact that the EU’s statements to this day have not been accompanied by any concrete punitive action toward Israel. There are no significant sanctions in place, and the suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, a framework that guides their bilateral trade, has been proposed but not officially discussed, and is currently being pushed by a citizens’ initiative. What the EU has granted Israel for violating international law grossly and continuously has been only complete impunity. Let’s not forget that not even the July 2024 ruling by the International Court of Justice declaring Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories unlawful and demanding it withdraw from the territories and provide reparations was a factor for the EU to hold Israel accountable to follow through in any way.

Most recently, when the US attacked Venezuela on January 3, 2025, kidnapping its head of state, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, and murdering tens of people and injuring over a hundred, the EU had an opportunity to condemn a violation of the United Nations Charter. Instead, as in Iran’s case, a statement encouraging both sides to refrain from further escalation of violence was issued; the aggressor was neither identified nor condemned. In fact, the EU took this opportunity to reiterate that it considers the Maduro government illegitimate, as if such a view legally justifies the breach of any state's sovereignty.

When Stronger Language Becomes Possible

The EU has shown that, in certain cases, it can condemn one country’s attacks on another sovereign state. To spot this, contrast the abovementioned language with how Russia’s attacks on Ukraine have been assessed in official EU communications. Here, Russia’s military aggression and the infringements of Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty are clearly condemned, sometimes even “strongly”—language the EU still has not applied to Israeli military actions in Gaza.

In Russia’s case, the aggressor is identified; it is not about both sides being encouraged to refrain from further escalation. Suddenly, we see a firm stance and the EU’s ability to identify the violations of basic international law principles.

One Cannot Condemn What One Supports

The EU’s decision to continually bow down to and appease the US, the world’s military strongman, either out of fear or a lack of moral compass (or both), has left Europe in a situation it might never have expected: the potential for US aggression to turn on one of its member states.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, Emmanuel Macron said it was “not a time for new imperialism or new colonialism,” a phrase that only Eurocentric thinking can produce, completely disregarding the US history of the past six decades around the world.

Because there is nothing new about US imperialism, and if we look at which countries sent troops to support the US' illegal invasions over the past two decades, we see neither the EU nor Denmark is an innocent bystander in this neocolonial quest. “We have fought shoulder-to-shoulder with your soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq,” says Julie Rademacher, chair of Uagut, an organization for Greenlanders in Denmark, on Democracy Now!, suggesting this collaboration in the US-led military endeavors should make Europe immune to becoming one of them.

Now, we will see whether diplomacy can curb the US’ imperial ambitions in Europe, something both military support and the EU's lack of moral leadership have only emboldened around the world.

Imagine this … and if you watch the daily stream of videos coming from the ICE raids that have roiled Minnesota since the start of the new year, it’s not that hard to imagine.

You’re minding your own business, or maybe picking up your kid at their school, when suddenly you find yourself in the middle of a platoon of masked, armed, camouflaged government agents. One thing leads to another, and in a flash, an agent has wrestled you to the ground, and is brandishing a weapon — maybe a Taser … if you’re lucky.

But what if I told you that lawmakers on Capitol Hill have a solution? They are proposing a brave new world, where now — flat on your back and gasping for air, and perhaps able to bravely manage to free your phone from your pocket — you could scan a federally mandated QR code on the agent’s uniform and find out the identity of the man who is currently pummeling you to within an inch of your life.

You’re probably thinking the same thing I did when I read about New York Rep. Ritchie Torres’ new bill he called the Quick Recognition (get it?) Act, which is his big idea for how Democrats can respond to public anger over the murder of Minneapolis mom Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent, and the raids that have led to violent encounters and made a major U.S. metropolis look and feel like a war zone.

A four-word sentence that begins with, “What the actual …?”

“There is nothing the Trump administration fears more than transparency and accountability,” a spokesperson for Torres, who faces a primary challenge, in part, because of his outspoken views on Gaza, said recently.

Really? Is that true? Because everything I’ve seen is that Donald Trump is mainly terrified about a GOP bloodbath in the November midterms, which would surely lead to his impeachment, his eventual disgrace, and even a shot at the real accountability that takes place only behind prison bars. But that’s not going to happen unless Democrats can convince those midterm voters they are serious about dismantling the rotten system that murdered Good — so there are no bad guys left to scan.

It’s tempting to write off Torres’ idea as one stray piece of almost comically misguided legislation. But the truth is that his core idea — that what’s evolved during the Trump era into an American secret police force that folks like Joe Rogan and Bruce Springsteen are openly calling “the Gestapo” can be tweaked into something great — is endorsed by Democratic leaders in Congress and many rank-and-file members.

“Clearly, significant reform needs to take place as it relates to the manner in which ICE is conducting itself,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.) told MS Now, bloodlessly. “ICE is using taxpayer dollars to brutalize American citizens and to unnecessarily and viciously target law-abiding immigrant families and communities.”

So you’re going to halt the flow of those taxpayer dollars, right?

Right?

Actually, many key Democrats — facing a Jan. 30 deadline for new appropriation bills — say they are willing to keep the dollars flowing to the embattled and increasingly unpopular agency, but with hopes of leveraging the Minneapolis controversy in return for major reforms. Sen. Chris Murphy (D., Conn.), who has been a leading critic of the Trump regime, has suggested banning masks, mandating badges, requiring warrants to make an arrest, and returning Border Patrol agents to the border.

Most critics of ICE, Border Patrol, and any other immigration raiders under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security would agree that all of those things should have happened yesterday. But the lack of appetite for utterly dismantling the DHS regime — despite its culture of violence and disrespect for law-abiding refugees — reminds too many voters of the cowardice that branded the Dems as losers in the first place.

Progressive attorney Aaron Regunberg mocked the stance of some mainstream Democrats as: “We are the resistance. We are also negotiating furiously to figure out how to fully fund the Gestapo.” He’s right. Under Trump, with recruitment ads inspired by white nationalist memes, ICE has become a tool of a new American fascism.

You don’t “significantly reform” fascism. You need to crush it. As Andrea Pitzer, who literally wrote the book on the history of concentration camps, noted Monday night, “The correct response to Dachau was not better training for the guards.”

It’s telling that — as often is the case — everyday people are way out in front of the supposedly opposition Democrats. The latest polls show that a strong majority of Americans oppose Trump’s immigration policies — with just 38% approving of them in a new AP-NORC poll, down sharply — and that, for the first time, a plurality would like to see ICE (which has only existed since 2003) eliminated. No wonder the number of Americans who now identify as liberal — 28% — is the highest since Gallup began asking in the early 1990s.

And yes, more Democratic officials are starting to get it than ever before. More than 100 members of the House Progressive Caucus said last week that they won’t vote for any budget bill with additional funding for the immigration raid agencies without an end to their militarized policing. Arizona Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego, who seemed to tack right on immigration issues in winning a close election in 2024, surprised political observers when he declared this weekend in a CNN interview that “I think ICE needs to be totally torn down.”

Note that he didn’t say “abolish” — a word that causes Democrats to break out in hives. That’s OK. Call it a teardown, or a demolition, but every day, more Americans can see that the United States would function better without ICE — as it did the first 227 years of its history — and with the work that’s actually needed, like arresting the sliver of immigrants who really are violent criminals, given to all new people.

The problem is that Democratic fecklessness isn’t limited to just the future of ICE. Our European allies are disappointed that the opposition party isn’t out manning the barricades and calling for much more forceful action to curb Trump’s bat-guano crazy demand for Greenland, apparently because he feels slighted by not getting the Nobel Peace Prize. And sure, Americans want lower coffee prices, but they care more about not having Captain Queeg with the nuclear football.

Dismantling the ICE regime needs to be the floor, not the ceiling, and any Democrat in Congress who doesn’t get with the program can — and should — be replaced in the primaries to avoid another debacle with alienated or apathetic voters in November. Call your member and find out where they stand. You won’t even need a QR code.

The men in Western capitals who are making decisions about Gaza have no real understanding of its people. They do not know their history, their lineage, their culture, or their deep roots in the land. And now, added to them, are the rich and insulated men who have never associated with ordinary people even in their own countries—men who have never known hunger, fear, displacement, or the sound of bombs in the night.

These are the men who presume to determine the fate of a people who have lost their homes, their family members, and their limbs. They dine together on champagne and caviar, slap each other on the back for their “strategizing,” and congratulate themselves on their cleverness—while entire families are being erased and a wounded people are reduced to numbers in briefing papers.

Yet this is exactly what is happening. Men in Armani suits, taking their directives from a president who does not even know the geography of the region—much less its history—are now presiding over a grotesque tribunal whose real concern is not justice or peace, but real estate, luxury projects, and the protection of the occupiers. It is a scene reminiscent of the Dark Ages of Europe, when humanity was set aside so that a handful of rulers could live in comfort and isolation, untouched by the suffering they decreed for others.

They shuttle back and forth in carefully staged visits, with the media serving as their marketing arm, recording their words as if they were gospel truth, while the victims of this genocide continue to languish in tents, under rubble, and in extreme heat and cold. To make themselves look important—and to pretend they are learners and peacemakers—they “consult” with the occupiers, bribe or threaten the dependent regimes surrounding Palestine in the name of their so-called noble mission, and then announce to the world their “progress” in bringing peace to the region.

What these men do not understand is that even while bombs rain down on us from the sky, we focus not only on surviving, but on succeeding.

Even before they began this so-called mission, these wealthy men were already complicit in the destruction of Gaza. They are on record describing Gazans as barbaric killers who must be “reined in” because a small number of armed resisters refused to submit quietly to life under brutal Israeli occupation. Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of Donald Trump and a close ally of Benjamin Netanyahu, has spoken openly about further ethnic cleansing. He was quoted as saying, “It’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but I think from Israel’s perspective, I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up.”

When Steve Witkoff was asked whether a genocide was taking place in Gaza, he replied, “Absolutely not… No, no… there was a war being fought.” This, despite the fact that many major human rights organizations and genocide scholars—including Jewish and Holocaust experts—have described what is happening in Gaza as genocide.

As for Tony Blair, he has never seen a Western war he did not like. He was among the first to support the invasion of Iraq, took part in the Kosovo war, and remains an ardent supporter of Israel and its occupation. These men—and their wealthy Arab collaborators—see no problem in deciding the fate of the Palestinians without a single Palestinian at the table.

Their aim is clear: to keep Israel armed and protected as it continues what it has been doing since 1948—ethnically cleansing, colonizing, and reshaping Palestine in their so-called enlightened Western image and their so-called democracy.

They see Gaza only through maps, military briefings, and political calculations—not through the lives of human beings who carry memory, dignity, and an unbroken history in their very bones. You cannot govern, partition, or destroy a people you have never taken the time to know.

Yet as a Palestinian, I am not shocked or surprised by these delusions. I am not even discouraged by the scale of destruction or the theater of cruelty disguised as diplomacy. After all, our history is riddled with empires and conquerors. Palestine has been subjected to waves of imperial conquest and colonial rule for thousands of years—and yet we, the Indigenous people of this land, remain.

What these men do not understand is that even while bombs rain down on us from the sky, we focus not only on surviving, but on succeeding. While every university in Gaza has been destroyed, surviving professors have continued teaching and training new doctors to replace the many medical workers who were killed. What they will never understand is that children whose limbs were severed by bombs are forming soccer teams and playing the game they love on crutches.

What these so-called peacemakers will never understand is this: The men, women, and children whose fate they are trying to decide come from a lineage that has outlived every empire, outlasted every conqueror, and will still be here long after these architects of destruction have been forgotten.

Video evidence of the brutality of the Department of Homeland Security’s agencies, such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, Homeland Security Investigations, alongside agencies within the Department of Justice such the Drug Enforcement Administration, has become all too familiar imagery in our everyday lives.

Witnessing actions of terror—from neighbors being beaten and forced into unmarked vehicles by masked agents, to children being kidnapped as they are released from school, to observers being murdered—has sparked demands for change. Reformist demands, such as increased training for federal immigration agents, move us farther from, not closer to, dismantling these systems.

Transformative Solutions Versus Reformist Reforms

Since its very recent inception in 2003, funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its agencies has ballooned. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) received a budget of $27.8 billion in 2025, and other agencies whose on-the-ground presence support mass detention and deportation, such as Customs and Border Protection, have additionally seen increases alongside specific funding to the Department of Defense for border enforcement.

Transformative change demands have called for ending collaborations between local police and federal immigration agencies, ending 287(g) agreements, implementing and strengthening sanctuary laws, and the defunding and dismantling of ICE and similar agencies. Transformative models recognize the root causes and work to uproot harmful systems in order to invest in community-centered social programs.

A more trained mass deportation system is still a mass deportation system. A more trained agent of family separation is still an agent of family separation.

Reformist, yet system upholding, demands have also emerged, such as calls for improving hiring requirements for agents, increasing training for new hires, and crowd-management training in response to protests. Calls for more training for ICE and other immigration enforcement agencies means more investment in these systems and legitimizing the expansion of the role of the agent.

We saw a parallel of this direction a decade ago with increases in resourcing for local police. With the emergence of the Movement for Black Lives and community demands for transformative solutions to public safety, backlash and reformist demands in response to these calls led to strengthening the infrastructure of these systems of state terror. Thus, if this direction in response to state violence from immigration agencies is followed, transformative change will be severely restrained.

The Policing Parallel and Lessons Learned

After the murders of Michael Brown and Tamir Rice in 2014, and increases in public awareness of the pervasiveness of police killings and racial disparities that target Black people in interactions with police, reformist demands led to increased funding for policing and police training. We saw this trend of increased budgets repeat after the 2020 murders of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and other loved ones by police.

“Solutions” for the problems of policing proposed during this time included increasing community trust in police, improving public perceptions of police, and investing in community policing. These “solutions,” which are removed from historic context, only strengthen systems while placing blame on communities and delegitimizing criticism of systems and transformative demands.

One study examining 15 pre-attack indicator police trainings showed that police are trained to recognize reactions to interactions with police, such as anxiety and arousal, as threats to their safety and justifications for use of force. A 2023 conference of police training exposed “instructors promoting views and tactics that were wildly inappropriate, offensive, discriminatory, harassing, and, in some cases, likely illegal.”

Since 2013, alongside increases in police funding and training, murders by police have only increased year to year. Calls for more police training and increased funding only strengthen the infrastructure of the very systems that we need to dismantle.

The Urgent and Necessary Need to Delegitimize and Dismantle Agencies of State Terror

Everyday community members are being kidnapped, families are being separated, people are dying in immigration detention centers, and community members are being shot at and killed at the hands of DHS. The very existence of ICE requires these events of terror, and its agency collaborators are strengthened by them.

You can’t dismantle a system of harm by increasing its resourcing and legitimizing its existence. Removing the harm means uprooting the source of the harm, not reforming it. A more trained mass deportation system is still a mass deportation system. A more trained agent of family separation is still an agent of family separation. A more trained armed stated terror presence in communities is still armed state terror.

On a September morning, armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents broke in and raided the home of 15-year-old Marie Justeen Mancha while her mother was running an errand. They blocked the door, accused her of being an “illegal,” and questioned Marie about her and her mother’s legal status. They are both US citizens.

This break-in was part of a widespread sweep targeting Hispanic communities in southeast Georgia. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) accused ICE of using “Gestapo-like” tactics to trample “on the constitutional rights of every person of Hispanic descent who was unfortunate to be in their way.”

SPLC filed a class-action lawsuit against ICE on behalf of five US citizens. In addition to compensation for property damages, the lawsuit sought a court order to stop ICE from conducting similar raids in the future.

Sound familiar? That occurred in 2006—20 years ago.

ICE is not broken. It is not reformable. It must be abolished.

The reality is that while ICE’s violence has become more public, what we are seeing today is not a deviation from how it has always acted. For ICE, mass surveillance, assaults, arrests, prolonged detainment, and killings of citizens and noncitizens alike are normal.

Between 2015 and 2021, ICE agents were involved in at least 59 shootings across 26 states and two US territories. At least 24 people were injured and 23 were killed.

A 2018 Los Angeles Times review of ICE activities found more than 1,500 cases of the agency wrongfully arresting and targeting US citizens for deportation and prolonged detainment. This includes Davino Watson, a US citizen, who was illegally detained by ICE in 2008 and spent 1,273 days in their custody. The agency faced no consequences for this grave injustice.

Between 1994 and 2019, the average daily population of detained immigrants grew from 7,000 to 50,000. In December 2025, the number was nearly 66,000—the highest level ever recorded. While President Donald Trump alleges that ICE is “removing some of the most violent criminals in the World from our Country,” 73% of those arrested by ICE have no criminal convictions.

ICE is not broken. It is not reformable. It must be abolished.

Abolish ICE

ICE has always relied on violent tactics, racial profiling, and increasingly invasive surveillance technology. It has faced persistent criticism from activists, nonprofits, and news outlets for its discriminatory practices. Yet, over the years, ICE has only become more aggressive.

There are many reasons for this: first, ICE agents, like other officers, have qualified immunity to prosecution. If they are involved in a potentially criminal incident, that case is reviewed by ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility. This office lacks the authority to discipline agents. Instead, any suggestion on disciplinary measures goes back to the agent’s supervisor, who then decides whether to administer it. If they do, the ICE agent can still appeal. This triggers a lengthy process that can take years to resolve.

Second, most of their work targets undocumented immigrants and people of color—populations that are both exceedingly vulnerable to police violence and to have their suffering ignored by America’s white-dominated political institutions.

Turns out, state-sanctioned violence—not healthcare, welfare, education, or housing—has broad bipartisan support.

Third, ICE operates according to the immigration-control strategy known as “attrition through enforcement.” The goal is to compel undocumented immigrants to self-deport by making their lives increasingly more difficult. This is accomplished by limiting their access to jobs, housing, and social services; utilizing aggressive policing methods (e.g. workplace raids, home surveillance, coercion, ruses, and targeting family and friends); as well as public displays of state-sanctioned violence. This is why the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) launched an aerial and ground assault on a Chicago apartment building in November 2025. For DHS and ICE, the more violent they become, the more likely that immigrants in the US will self-deport. That violence will also deter people from entering the country in the first place. Violence and state terror are core components of ICE’s formal policing strategy.

Fourth, ICE has been strongly and consistently supported by both Democrats and Republicans. Between 2003 and 2024, ICE’s annual budget grew from $3.3 billion to $9.6 billion. As part of the One Big Beautiful Act (OBBA), Congress allocated $75 billion to ICE over four years, approximately $18.7 billion per year. Even now, despite growing public outcry against ICE, Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), refuse to commit to defunding the agency. Turns out, state-sanctioned violence—not healthcare, welfare, education, or housing—has broad bipartisan support.

Fifth, but perhaps most importantly, is the reason why ICE and DHS were initially created. As the Department of Justice (DOJ) noted in 2004, “The primary mission of ICE is to prevent acts of terrorism by targeting the people, money, and materials that support terrorists and criminal activities.” Under DHS, immigration control is first and foremost about counterterrorism.

This is why ICE has such broad and invasive policing powers; why Republicans have insisted for years that terrorists are entering the country via the US-Mexico border; why the Trump administration designated groups like Tren de Aragua and La Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) as terrorist organizations; and why Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Border Czar Tom Homan have been so quick to label Renee Nicole Good a “domestic terrorist.”

It's also why simply abolishing ICE doesn’t go far enough. DHS must be abolished too.

Abolish DHS

For the Bush administration, DHS “would make Americans safer” by creating a department “whose primary mission is to protect the American homeland.” To this end, DHS “would unify authority over major federal security operations related to our borders” thereby “allowing a single government entity to manage entry into the United States. It would ensure that all aspects of border control, including the issuing of visas, are informed by a central information-sharing clearinghouse and compatible databases.”

Importantly, for DHS, the goal of defending “the American homeland” is about more than protecting US citizens, preventing destruction of property, or policing criminal offenses. It is about protecting the identity of America.

As President George W. Bush noted in his 9/11 address, “Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts.” A month later, he remarked that, “The [9/11] attack took place on American soil, but it was an attack on the heart and soul of the civilized world.” In the same speech, he announced the establishment of the Office of Homeland Security.

We must completely sever immigration services from a national security apparatus designed to police all immigrants as potential terrorists.

DHS was created to protect “our way of life” and “our freedom.” To defend “the heart and soul” of America. This sentiment is echoed by Trump’s DHS: “Protect your homeland, defend your culture.” More recently, on January 9, DHS posted on Twitter-X, “We’ll have our home again.”

From its inception, DHS has been tied to an image of the “homeland” as continuously under existential and physical threat from invaders both at our gates and already here. A key rationale for integrating immigration enforcement and control agencies within DHS was that the 9/11 hijackers entered the US legally. They were, as President Trump would describe them, “the enemy within.” This is still the rationale with which DHS and ICE currently operate. Anyone who threatens “civilizational erasure” and the loss of America’s Christian, English-speaking, and Western identity is a legitimate target of surveillance and violence.

Abolishing ICE is insufficient. We must completely sever immigration services from a national security apparatus designed to police all immigrants as potential terrorists. Abolishing DHS is necessary. This does not, however, entail dissolving all its agencies, most of which predate the department. Some, like the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) that processes asylum requests and issues visas, should be preserved and transferred to a department better suited to serving immigrant communities.

One might object that abolishing DHS would make America vulnerable to terrorism; however, three points are worth emphasizing: First, prior to DHS, the US already had counterterrorism measures. For instance, the CIA reported to President Bill Clinton in December 1998 about a potential terrorist attack in the US that might involve hijacking an aircraft. White House Counterterrorism Chief Richard Clark testified that the Bush national security team was not sufficiently concerned about that information.

Second, since 9/11, the majority of terrorist attacks have been thwarted by traditional law enforcement tools. In recent years, most cases of terrorism stem from domestic threats, predominantly “white supremacist and anti-government extremist individuals and groups.” Yet, DHS has been slow to acknowledge and properly tackle these threats.

Third, as an organization, DHS was always flawed. It was hastily put together using arbitrary and questionable criteria. Moreover, as former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff acknowledged, because the entire purpose of the department is preventing terrorism, DHS officials inevitably feel pressured to exaggerate the threats facing the nation. This “security theater” creates more public fear that results in greater government spending on oftentimes expensive and wasteful preventative measures.

Even at the time of DHS’s founding, there were concerns that the US was creating an all-encompassing domestic surveillance apparatus that would eventually undermine civil liberties and endanger the public. Seth Stodder, who served in Customs and Border Protection (CBP) under President Bush and DHS under President Barack Obama, had largely dismissed such concerns. He argued that the Constitution would ultimately safeguard Americans. Now he recognizes the threat: “To suddenly see DHS become this kind of mechanism of authoritarian intimidation and incipient fascism [under the Trump administration] is disorienting, and frightening. It makes me think that maybe DHS was a bad idea.”

But arguably the Trump administration’s disregard for the Constitution and the rule of law have only made the problems of DHS and ICE more blatant. They didn’t become a mechanism of authoritarian intimidation under Trump—they always were.

Now is the time for action. For the sake of all those who have been assaulted, wrongfully detained, and killed, we must abolish ICE and DHS.

According to the Saga of Eirik the Red , from the year 1200, the Norse explorer who established homesteads on the island, Eirik, called the place Greenland, "Because,” he said, “men will desire much the more to go there if the land has a good name.”

For Donald the Orange of Florida the attraction of Greenland is not its good name, but obsession with land mass, strategic minerals, and Nobel prizes. Donald the Orange has threatened to annex Greenland from Denmark by force, if need be, “Whether they like it or not.” Raising the specter of the Norse god Loki the Trickster, he continued, “I would like to make a deal, you know, the easy way. But if we don’t do it the easy way, we’re going to do it the hard way.”

President Donald Trump doesn’t know that Greenland, the world’s largest island at over 2 million square kilometers, is covered almost entirely by a massive ice sheet up to 3 kilometers thick. Its magnificent, unique fjords include Ilulissat, a UNESCO World Heritage site. He cares less that Greenland, territory of Denmark, has home rule by Inuit, of whom roughly 56,000 inhabit the land. And he has no concern that its ice sheet has been shrinking for 29 years. He wants mineral wealth.

Minerals and Trump

Donald the Orange’s involvement in disputes in Africa, Ukraine, Venezuela, and in his efforts to annex Greenland, indicate his belief that control of minerals and fossil fuels are critical to the US superiority in world affairs. Conquest of Greenland will enable the US to escape reliance on China which controls, mines, or processes many of the worlds strategic miners. Greenland has been “underexplored and is geologically very favorable," according to an economic geologist at Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.

The Kalaallit and Danes do not need Trumps’s threats or his contaminated garbage.

A 2023 European Commission survey showed that 25 of the 34 minerals classified as "critical raw materials" are found in Greenland. They include rare earth elements used in electric vehicles, wind turbines, advanced electronics, and military equipment. There is great potential to develop zinc, copper, and nickel deposits, although oil and natural gas extraction are banned for environmental reasons. But mining projects would encounter bureaucratic hurdles as well as opposition from Indigenous communities. Hence annexation is Donald the Orange’s preferred path.

Donald the Orange and the Viking Myth

The Vikings had treaties to expand trade networks and influence across the Arctic. Donald the Orange rejects trade for tariffs and relies on bloviating threats that make him the consummate dealmaker. Trump first demanded Greenland as a gift; next floated the idea of purchasing it as "an absolute necessity”; and now is committed to military force to plunder its fish, gold, graphite, and zinc from Inuit people. Donald the Orange ultimately sees Greenland as an outpost of his bold leadership to keep the Russian and Chinese pillagers at bay.

Trump ignores universal European opposition to his plans. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen warned that any attack by the US would destroy NATO. European NATO leaders issued a joint statement that "Greenland belongs to its people.” They pointed out that “the United States is an essential partner in this endeavor, as a NATO ally and through the defense agreement between the Kingdom of Denmark and the United States of 1951.”

But Donald the Orange rejects contemporary diplomatic maneuvers for a Viking, 19th-century view of international relations where power derives from control of resources. He ties this view to renewal of the outdated Monroe Doctrine (1823) to oppose European influence in the Western Hemisphere. He laughingly calls this policy the Donroe Doctrine.

Seeing landmass as strategic in an age of nuclear missiles, submarines, and bombers reveals only ignorance of modern military technologies. And annexing Greenland would lead to rippling strategic catastrophes. It would mean that a NATO member state had just invaded another member state. It would empower Russia to ignore NATO entirely and push beyond Ukraine into Poland and the Baltic states. Donald the Orange is helping Vlad the Impaler.

The US Legacy of Nuclear Greenland

Sadly, there is a long history of US military meddling in Greenland. During the Cold War, the US sought to transform the ice sheet into a nuclear weapon. There were two major programs: a nuclear bomber base at Pittufik (formerly Thule) and a nuclear-powered ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) network built under the ice sheet at Camp Century. Pituffik opened in 1951 after Denmark became of founding member of NATO. A major component of the Strategic Air Command (SAC) and NATO's defense system, Putuffik supported nuclear bombers so that the US was always prepared to jet over the North Pole to bomb the USSR. Its construction forced the expulsion of Inuit from the region.

Donald the Orange is determined in conquest. Donald the Orange needs even more tribute. Perhaps he will threaten to annex Norway to control its NOK $2 trillion trust fund.

An even more audacious project was the never-completed “Project Iceworm” at Camp Century to move 600 ICBMs missiles undetectable by Moscow through a maze of ice tunnels spread over thousands of square kilometers. A 330-ton reactor was trekked in on sleds from Thule to power the station. Neither the missile maze nor the reactor worked as intended. The reactor exposed soldiers to high levels of radiation, and it leaked radioisotopes into the surroundings.

The US also dropped a nuclear bomb on Greenland in January 1968 when a B-52 bomber with four hydrogen bombs caught on fire, destroying the bomber’s electrical power grid; the crew bailed out at 4,300 meters; and the pilotless B52 crashed. The crash spread radioactivity over a 75 square kilometer area. One bomb was never found. The US refused to clean up the mess, but Denmark insisted upon careful removal of the debris in “Project Crested Ice.” US soldiers gathered and shipped to the US 163 drums of dangerous detritus, 14 engine containers, and 11 large fuel tanks, and 900 95 M3 tanks filled with ice and snow, leaving behind contaminated equipment, vehicles, mukluks, and clothing that became part of a nuclear cemetery.

Global Warming and Donald the Orange

The Kalaallit and Danes do not need Trumps’s threats or his contaminated garbage. Already scores of military Greenland sites have accumulated huge quantities of crates and barrels filled with tainted soil, PCBs, heavy metals, diesel oil, and radioactive waste. And more waste will appear. Donald the Orange and his advisers contribute to global warming through their devotion to fossil fuels. Meanwhile, the melting Greenland ice sheet will reveal Camp Century by 2090, when 200,000 liters of radioactive waste and other toxic materials will be released.

Donald the Orange is determined in conquest. Donald the Orange needs even more tribute. Perhaps he will threaten to annex Norway to control its NOK $2 trillion trust fund. Having occupied Oslo, he can claim as many Nobel Peace prizes as he wishes.

Exactly a year ago today, Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th president of the United States. He took over a nation with strong imperialistic tendencies and a democratic polity but with widespread illiberal features throughout its history and, in less than a year, succeeded in establishing a 21st-century US variant of fascism while espousing a lawless world order.

The successful transition of the United States from an imperial republic to what could be best described as imperial proto-fascism was achieved due to the ease with which the Trump administration weakened the country’s institutions meant to restrain power and the massive support that it received, and continues to receive, from the nation’s oligarchy. There are thus eerie similarities between Trump’s United States and the rise of Italian fascism and German Nazism, and none more so than those between Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency and Mussolini’s Squadristi and Hitler’s Sturmabteilung (SA), respectively.

Fascism, the most reactionary regime of oligopolistic and decaying capitalism, has always relied on violent paramilitary groups to intimidate political opponents and spread fear across society. In Italy, in 1919, Benito Mussolini formed a paramilitary squad of war veterans called Blackshirts (or squadristi) whose primary goal was to terrorize fascism’s political opponents, mainly the socialists and the communists. By the early 1920s, the squadristi had wiped out the Italian left and destroyed Italian democracy. In Germany, in 1921, Adolf Hitler established the SA, known as the Brownshirts due to their brown uniforms. They were street thugs who used violent intimidation against opponents of National Socialism and assaulted non-Aryan citizens, particularly Jewish citizens. Blackshirts and Brownshirts acted with impunity as the regular uniformed police in both Italy and Germany turned a blind eye to their thuggish tactics.

Violent paramilitary groups were seen by fascists as essential tools in the struggle to uproot the previous sociopolitical and cultural order and pave the way for the success of fascism’s ultimate goals and objectives, which are to promote extreme nationalism and do away with democratic liberties and implement policies without legal or political restraints while dehumanizing those labeled as “the enemy.” Under fascism, propaganda and violence work in unity in order to secure conformity and subdue the opposition.

Fascism is not knocking at US’s door. It is already inside.

Enter the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). ICE was created in 2003 pursuant to the Homeland Security Act of 2002, following the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. The US Congress has granted ICE “a unique combination of civil and criminal authorities,” which make it a very powerful federal law enforcement agency. The primary mission of ICE is to enforce immigration laws. It has the power to search, arrest, and deport undocumented immigrants. It can also detain and try to deport green card holders by claiming that they represent a threat to US national security.

On December 19, DHS announced that it had deported more than 620,000 noncitizens while 1.9 million undocumented immigrants have “self-deported” since Trump took office. If these figures are true and haven’t been exaggerated for propaganda purposes, we’re looking at the largest forced relocation of immigrants in a single year in the history of the United States. Immigration detention has also expanded dramatically in Trump's second term.

ICE immigration raids have been accused of excessive-use-of-force tactics and violating US citizens’ constitutional rights. Unshockingly enough given that the Trump administration relies on terror to push its inhuman agenda, DHS has used a variety of loathsome names for ICE immigration raids, ranging from “Operation Midway Blitz” (“Blitz” is a German word for lightning and was used to describe the bombing campaign undertaken by Nazi Germany on British cities, ports, and industrial sites in 1940) to “Operation Dirtbag.”

ICE has always been a notorious agency, even from the time it was designed to fight terrorism, and “the subject of numerous allegation of abuses and violations,” as has been pointed out by Brazilian professor and expert in international migration Gustavo Dias. ICE became especially aggressive during the Obama administration, when US liberals like to forget that it was responsible for over 3 million deportations. However, under Trump 2.0, ICE has been transformed into a fascist paramilitary squad, into a “virtual state police,” as Jamelle Bouie put it.

There are terrifying reasons for ICE’s transformation from an aggressive, rogue agency into Trump’s personal paramilitary squad. Trump’s domestic policy agenda revolves around the reshaping of US political culture, from liberal to illiberal through rollbacks in civil and human rights, putting an end to rising population diversity and creating (or fantasizing) in turn a white paradise, and advancing the interests of corporate oligarchs and digital feudal lords. Hence the attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI); hence the violent immigration crackdown and banning citizens of “shithole countries” from vising the US; hence the erasing of non-white history; and hence the war against organized labor.

The successful implementation of all of the above policies demand loyalty to Trump’s actions from servants in the administrative state, conformity from major institutional actors, and a subdued civil society. No regime, however oppressive, can implement its policies without having a large network of allies, influential entities willing to conform, and citizen control and popular acquiescence. Trump has succeeded in securing loyalty by offering key federal positions to allies and supporters and replacing public servants with political loyalists. He has forced elite institutions to bend to his will with threats and intimidation tactics while tech billionaires and other members of the oligarchy kissed his ring because they feared retribution.

However, keeping the public subdued is trickier for any regime than cowing elite institutions and members of the economic elite into subservience. This is where ICE comes into play. ICE tactics are designed to instill fear in people and create chaos in communities as part of an overarching strategy aimed to silence opposition to Trump’s overall domestic agenda and let citizens know that this is the dawn of a new era for the United States. Dissent will not be tolerated under Trump 2.0, and undesirable elements, the “radical left,” and all those deemed unpatriotic will be weeded out.

US citizens are an intended target as much as the immigrant communities across the nation by Trump’s lawlessness. ICE agents wearing masks and decked out in military-style gear reflects the militarization of law enforcement, which is a trademark of fascist regimes and brutal dictatorships. And the message intended by the unleashing of a paramilitary force, Trump’s own goon squad, throughout the nation’s communities is to let people know that you are either with us or against us. This was indeed the intended message behind the murder of Renee Nicole Good. ICE agents stopping US citizens, at random, and going from door to door demanding proof of citizenship, as has been happening in Minneapolis-St. Paul and other places, are scenes reminiscent of Nazi Germany and speak volumes to the sociopolitical order envisioned by the Trump administration.

ICE is already acting in a similar way to how the Blackshirts (Italy) and the Brownshirts (Germany) functioned under Mussolini and Hitler, respectively. Fascism is not knocking at US’s door. It is already inside. And Minneapolis has emerged as the “new epicenter of resistance to Trump,” as France’s leading newspaper Le Monde aptly put it. The only question now is whether citizens throughout the land will resist to the end, until fascism is fully defeated, or surrender to fear and intimidation and, in turn, find themselves being deprived not only of their basic rights but also stripped of their dignity, which is what fascism ultimately does to human beings.

The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) warehouse detention system is rapidly unfolding across the United States, advancing in open contempt of oversight, outpacing public scrutiny, and operating with the same disregard for the Constitution, the rule of law, and human life that defines the Trump administration’s exercise of power.

In November 2025, NBC News reported that DHS was actively scouting enormous industrial warehouses across the country, particularly in rural areas near major airports and transportation hubs, in an effort to expand the administration’s capacity to execute its mass deportation agenda—a system Secretary Noem recently aptly described as “one of the most consequential periods of action and reform in American history.”

After the “Big Beautiful Bill” allocated an additional $45 billion specifically to ICE for building new immigration detention centers through 2029—a budget 62 percent larger than the entire federal prison system—DHS gained unprecedented financial capacity to expand its system of terror on a massive scale. Some of the warehouses under imminent consideration exceed 800,000 square feet and could hold far more people than existing detention centers, compressing thousands of human beings into spaces designed for inventory, not habitation.

Further reporting in December showed that with this massive budget increase, DHS is not merely expanding capacity at the margins, but is redesigning the model itself. All those detained by DHS and ICE agents, including predominantly people without criminal records, both documented and undocumented im/migrants, and US citizens, will presumably be swiftly processed at local sites before being funneled into a small number of mega-facilities, each holding between 5,000 and 10,000 people. The plans outlining the duration of confinement and the conditions under which people will be held in these warehouses while awaiting deportation remain unknown.

Regardless of motive, Americans must confront that this hub-and-spoke detention network is a moral calamity, echoing some of the most inhumane periods in American and world history.

One can only assume the system will operate as Trump’s ICE Director Todd Lyons described at the 2025 Border Security Expo in Phoenix: “like Amazon Prime, but with human beings.” Concern for fundamental standards of care and due process, or pathways to legal immigration is replaced with the directive to “get better at treating this like a business.” The confinement, neglect, abuse, and exploitation that this process will inevitably worsen will be excused by the administration as “efficient.”

Since the news first broke, local reporting has confirmed the rapid construction and conversion of mass confinement centers across the country. Warehouse sites in Maryland, Texas, Florida, and New York’s Hudson Valley were reported to be under active consideration just in the past two weeks. Many communities slated to host these facilities have only learned of the plans through national reporting. In early January, The Washington Post found that when it contacted local governments in all 23 cities on ICE’s internal list, many officials had not been informed by federal authorities and could not comment. Multiple members of Congress have also stated publicly that they were not formally notified about the plans to establish these facilities in their districts.

State and local officials near proposed sites are now scrambling to hold emergency meetings, trying desperately to prevent being cut out of decisions with profound moral and ethical consequences that will reshape their communities. Still, there is widespread fear that the federal government will simply ignore local zoning and land-use laws.

Under the Supremacy Clause, federal agencies are largely immune from local zoning rules unless Congress explicitly requires compliance. Private contractors or lessees are not automatically covered, but in practice, immigration detention facilities and their operators face almost no local oversight. States like California have passed laws to empower health inspections and enforce standards against operators such as GEO Group, yet counties rarely act, and courts often side with federal preemption. If this continues, DHS could override community land-use standards entirely, imposing massive detention infrastructure on rural, resource-strained neighborhoods without consent, accountability, or regard for local residents.

Notably, the Trump administration has already made clear its intention to restrict congressional oversight of existing detention facilities, leaving little reason to believe the mega-warehouse model will be any more transparent or accountable. On January 8, DHS issued a directive requiring members of Congress to provide prior notice before inspecting immigration facilities, attempting to circumvent a court order that blocked such restrictions. Although federal law allows for unannounced visits, the Noem memo instructs staff that visits are not considered actionable until acknowledged by the Office of Congressional Relations, which coordinates with ICE and confirms details “as soon as practicable.”

The only supposed oversight of this expansion is being handled by figures deeply embedded in the detention industry, such as David Venturella, who has been seen in recent weeks touring ICE facilities slated for the “unloading and loading of goods.” Venturella quietly entered the Trump administration in early 2025 to avoid Senate confirmation, when DHS hired him as a full-time adviser and granted him an ethics waiver. Prior to this role, he spent more than a decade at GEO Group, one of the nation’s largest private prison corporations, where public filings show he was paid over $6 million to oversee immigrant detention operations. His career has moved seamlessly between ICE leadership and private security firms, including GEO Group, L-3 Communications, and USIS—companies whose profits depend on surveillance, enforcement, and confinement. He now oversees the ICE division responsible for detention contracts and infrastructure, the same system he previously expanded for private prison shareholders.

Private contractors such as GEO Group continue to operate facilities housing the vast majority of ICE detainees, positioning themselves to make substantial profit as the administration moves to double detention capacity to 100,000 beds with tens of billions in federal spending. GEO Group and CoreCivic have already reported soaring revenues under Trump’s second term, with executives describing the expansion as “pivotal” and “an unprecedented growth opportunity.” In this system, human confinement has been transformed into an investment strategy.

Regardless of motive, Americans must confront that this hub-and-spoke detention network is a moral calamity, echoing some of the most inhumane periods in American and world history. These warehouses lack climate control, ventilation, running water, sanitation, and medical facilities. The public cannot assume they will be retrofitted to meet even basic standards. Under the pressures imposed by political will and the promise of enormous financial gain for both contractors and the administration, restrained only by Trump’s own notion of “morality,” overcrowding, medical neglect, sanitation failures, family separation, and death are not incidental or isolated. They are the predictable, systemic outcomes of this design. Frequent transfers between facilities further destabilize those detained, shattering whatever order remains in local custody, tearing families apart, severing access to legal support, and concentrating the suffering of detention out of public view.

2025 was already ICE’s deadliest year in more than two decades, with at least thirty-two people dying in custody. In December 2025, Amnesty International described ICE facilities as “a deliberate system built to punish, dehumanize, and hide the suffering of people in detention.” Recent site visits documented by Congressman Ro Khanna further revealed the inhumane and degrading conditions detainees face today, including denial of medical care and meals containing rocks and debris.

In this moment of utter chaos—multiple wars looming or underway, international law ignored and explicitly disregarded, pedophiles protected, cities under conditions of terror, with agents told they have “federal immunity” to occupy streets—the infrastructure for this mass detainment system is expanding largely out of public view. Facilities may be secured before communities can mobilize, contracts locked in before lawmakers intervene, and once operational, and our communities will be left to reckon with the human suffering they guarantee.

These facilities are instruments of state-sanctioned inhumanity, engineered to evade legal standards and public accountability. The depravity lies not only in the degrading conditions they produce but in the calculus that animates them: speed is treated as a virtue, suffering is deemed acceptable—perhaps even a goal—and profit is treated as proof of success. The administration is not asking the public to accept this system; it is demanding acquiescence and enforcing it through threat and force. ICE’s expansion has already reshaped the country’s physical and moral landscape, without consent, transparency, or regard for human life. The choice is no longer abstract; communities must decide whether to act against this system of cruelty, or let silence stand as consent.

The past year has completely discredited any claim that choosing between the Democratic and Republican parties would be merely a matter of “pick your poison” with the same end result. In countless terrible ways, the last 12 months have shown that Donald Trump’s party is bent on methodically inflicting vast cruelty and injustice while aiming to crush what’s left of democracy and the rule of law.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party’s leadership persists with the kind of elitist political approach that helped Trump win in 2024. Hidebound and unimaginative, Senate leader Chuck Schumer and House leader Hakeem Jeffries have been incapable of inspiring the people whose high-turnout votes will be essential to ending Republican control of Congress and the White House.

The Democratic establishment shuns the progressive populism that’s vital to effectively counter bogus right-wing populism. And so, the fight to defeat the fascistic GOP and the fight to overcome the power of corporate Democrats are largely the same fight.

Advocates for progressive change will remain on the defensive as long as the Trump party is in power. With the entire future at stake, social movements on the left should have a focus on organizing to oust Republicans from control of Congress in this year’s midterm elections.

Counting on denunciations of Trump to win elections is a very bad strategy. It didn’t work in 2016, it barely worked in 2020, and it failed miserably in 2024.

The point isn’t that Democrats deserve to win – it’s that people certainly don’t deserve to live under Republican rule, and ending it is the first electoral step toward a federal government that serves the broad public instead of powerfully destructive and violent elites. Like it or not, in almost every case the only candidates in a position to defeat Republicans for the House and Senate this year will have a “D” after their name.

Democratic Party leaders have dodged coming to terms with reasons why their party lost the White House in 2024, preferring to make a protracted show of scratching their chins and puzzling over the steep falloff of support from working-class voters of all colors. The Democratic National Committee’s refusal to release its autopsy report, assessing what went wrong in the election, underscores the party’s aversion to serious introspection.

Cogent answers are readily available, but top Democrats like Schumer and Jeffries refuse to heed them. If the party wants to regain and expand support from working-class voters, it must fight for programs that they clearly want.

Extensive polling shows strong public support for major progressive reforms, such as raising taxes on big corporations and the wealthy, lifting the Social Security tax cap, boosting the federal minimum wage, and greatly expanding Medicare to include dental, vision, and hearing coverage.

The multifaceted tyranny that Trump and his toady lieutenants want to impose is both abrupt and gradual. Relying on “big lie” techniques, they strive to turn this month’s shocks into next month’s old hat.

Yet counting on denunciations of Trump to win elections is a very bad strategy. It didn’t work in 2016, it barely worked in 2020, and it failed miserably in 2024.

If the party wants to regain and expand support from working-class voters, it must fight for programs that they clearly want.

Democrats on ballots this fall will need to be offering plausible relief to voters in economic distress. But it’s hard for Democratic leaders to come across as aligned with the working class when evidence is profuse that they aren’t.

In essence, Schumer and Jeffries—and the majority of Democratic officeholders who keep those two in the party’s top positions—represent the Biden-era status quo that was unpopular enough to return Trump to the White House. A key reason is a reality that Sen. Bernie Sanders described soon after Trump’s 2016 win: “Certainly there are some people in the Democratic Party who want to maintain the status quo. They would rather go down with the Titanic so long as they have first-class seats.”

Democratic Party leaders should be removed from seats of party power or bypassed as relics of bygone eras. Their ongoing refusals to distance from corporate power, rich elites, and militarism have alienated much of the party’s base.

As I wrote in my free new book The Blue Road to Trump Hell, “The Democratic Party enabled Donald Trump to become president twice because of repetition compulsions that still plague the top echelons of the party.” To eject Republicans from power – and to advance a strong progressive agenda – true leadership must come from grassroots mobilization.

The denizens of Minneapolis are currently undergoing a violent attack on and occupation of their city by over three thousand heavily armed ICE and Border Patrol agents dispatched to the city by the Trump administration, over the strenuous objections of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. This military assault on the city by “Homeland Security” has already resulted in the murder by ICE agents of one unarmed person, 37-year-old Renee Good, a US citizen; the shooting by ICE agents of at least one other individual; and untold incidents of harassment, intimidation, kidnapping, and the use of brute force.

This attack poses a threat, either directly or indirectly, to everyone living in Minneapolis.

At the same time, the attack is part of Trump’s broader authoritarian agenda, which centers on (1) a xenophobic campaign to arrest and deport over one million undocumented immigrants a year, which has led to similar “surges” of heavily armed ICE agents in Los Angeles, Portland, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Memphis, and Charlotte, some backed up by federalized National Guard troops, and (2) the pursuit of “retribution” against Democrat-controlled cities and states and against political opposition more generally. What is happening in Minneapolis right now thus poses a threat to every citizen of the US, and indeed every resident of the country whatever their legal citizenship status. For what is going on is a direct and indeed deliberate assault on civil liberties that are guaranteed by the US Constitution, and on constitutional democracy itself.

State power is now being wielded directly and violently by the Trump administration against individuals “under suspicion” of being “illegal,” against the communities where these individuals live and work, and against all citizens who act in solidarity with the victims of administration assaults or who join in protest against these assaults.

Participation in mass protest is a deliberately chosen public act as well as an individual moral choice. And so practices of civil resistance also implicate challenging questions of political ethics.

Last year’s intellectual debates about whether this is “fascism” have now been rendered entirely academic, for the manifest violence and the cruelty are now obvious for all to see, however various political theorists may choose to describe it.

Resisting this direct attack on civil liberty and constitutional democracy is essential, for the people directly violated, and for all who care about such violations or who are themselves vulnerable to similar violations–and anyone serious about democratic citizenship or even about going out in public without fear is so vulnerable.

Such an observation is hardly “academic” or merely theoretical. For right now, as the city of Minneapolis is the site of an assault, it is also the site of resistance to this assault, by masses of citizens who have taken to the streets of Minneapolis to protest, obstruct, disrupt, and counter ICE violence.

The situation is very dangerous, because ICE agents are heavily armed; either poorly trained or expertly trained to kill enemies in war rather than to patrol US cities; and obviously contemptuous of civil liberties and disposed to react to perceived “threats” with overwhelming force.

It is also dangerous because Trump has very publicly and repeatedly stated that if the situation on the streets devolves into greater chaos or violent confrontation, as he defines this, he is poised to invoke the Insurrection Act, which authorize him to deploy thousands of National Guard soldiers and active duty US military troops to back up the ICE occupation. This would in effect place the entire city of Minneapolis under martial law, and it would likely lead to similar measures taken in every city where protests intensify–and in that event protests will surely intensify in every city. Trump’s hesitance to take such measures thus far should provide no comfort for anyone, given the possibilities for things to spin out of control through misunderstanding or ICE provocation, and given Trump’s very serious mental instability, which is a very real factor that should frighten everyone.

What is to be done to resist this assault on a city and on democracy itself?

I’ve followed much of the discussion of this question online and in the media. And while the urge to hold forth with categorical statements of praise or denunciation is understandable, especially in a time of such heightened danger, there is surely more than one thing to be done, and differently situated people will surely respond differently, in ways that are often complementary but will also sometimes be in tension. Being clearer about these different ways, and mindful that tension between them can be genuinely productive, is thus important. Towards this end, I think it is particularly important to distinguish between morally justified forms of self-defense, and forms of public collective action that involve less proximate, and thus more political, goals.

Individuals that ICE seeks to detain on the grounds that they are “illegal”—a vile term– have every right to refuse to cooperate, to attempt to flee, and to fight back if attacked. In a moral sense, the violence of the situation clearly makes the use of counter-violence in self-defense legitimate. Whether it is wise to do so is a secondary but important question. But it is entirely reasonable for anyone approached by ICE to consider arrest by ICE as an extra-legal infringement of one’s liberty and an endangerment of one’s very life.

Individuals who ICE seeks to detain, or merely to subdue, because they protest the above efforts to detain people suspected of being “illegal,” also cannot reasonably be expected to simply submit to ICE orders. For such orders have questionable legal validity, and following them places any individual at serious risk of harm, disappearance, or worse. Here too, whether or not it is wise not simply to flee but to resist, to the point of employing counter-violence, is a secondary question. What is primary is that every individual has the moral and even arguably the legal right to judge this for themselves.

But participation in mass protest is a deliberately chosen public act as well as an individual moral choice. And so practices of civil resistance also implicate challenging questions of political ethics. For here the moral question is also a political one, not “how should an individual threatened directly by ICE respond?” but “how should organized groups of citizens act collectively to oppose ICE threats to individuals and to resist the broader ICE occupation?”

It is uncommon for elected politicians to hold forth with seriousness and integrity on such questions of political ethics. But in the current crisis, Minnesota’s elected politicians have spoken publicly ways I consider exemplary. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey’s immediate response to the killing of Renee Good—an emphatic rejection of Trump administration bullshit about the killing and about Good, combined with an equally emphatic “get the fuck our of our city”—is one example. But here it is the response of Governor Tim Walz—who, let us not forget, was also in the cross-hairs of Justice Department allegations of corruption, even before it was announced that he and Frey were being investigated for their responses to the ICE occupation—that concerns me. Two nights ago, Walz put out a statement that has received much attention. It is worth quoting in its entirety:

My fellow Minnesotans:

What’s happening in Minnesota right now defies belief.

News reports simply don’t do justice to the level of chaos and disruption and trauma the federal government is raining down upon our communities. Two to three thousand armed agents of the federal government have been deployed to Minnesota. Armed, masked, undertrained ICE agents are going door to door, ordering people to point out where their neighbors of color live. They’re pulling over people indiscriminately, including US citizens, and demanding to see their papers. And at grocery stores, at bus stops, even at schools, they’re breaking windows, dragging pregnant women down the street, just plain grabbing Minnesotans and shoving them into unmarked vans, kidnapping innocent people with no warning and no due process.

Let’s be very, very clear: This long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement. Instead, it is a campaign of organized brutality against the people of Minnesota by our own federal government. Last week, that campaign claimed the life of Renee Nicole Good. We’ve all watched the video. We all have seen what happened. And yet, instead of conducting an impartial investigation so we can hold accountable the officer responsible for Renee’s death, the Trump administration is devoting the full power of the federal government to finding an excuse to attack the victim and her family. Just yesterday, six federal prosecutors – including the longtime career prosecutor leading the charge to investigate and eliminate fraud in our state’s programs – quit their jobs rather than go along with this assault on the United States Constitution.

But as bad as it’s been, Donald Trump intends for it to get worse. This week, he went online to promise that, quote, “the day of retribution and reckoning is coming.” That is a direct threat against the people of this state, who dared to vote against him three times, and who continue to stand up for freedom with courage and empathy and profound grace. All across Minnesota, people are stepping up to help neighbors who are being unjustly, and unlawfully, targeted. They’re distributing care packages and walking kids to school and raising their voices in peaceful protest even though doing so has made many of our fellow Minnesotans targets for violent retribution.

Folks, I know this is scary. And I know it’s absurd that we all have to be defending law and order, justice, and humanity while also caring for our families and doing our jobs.

So, tonight, let me say, once again, to Donald Trump and Kristi Noem: End this occupation. You’ve done enough.

Let me say four critical things to the people of Minnesota – four things I need you to hear as you watch the news and look out for your neighbors.

First: Donald Trump wants chaos. He wants confusion. And, yes, he wants more violence on our streets. We cannot give him what he wants. We can – we must – protest: loudly, urgently, but also peacefully. Indeed, as hard as we will fight in the courts and at the ballot box, we cannot, and will not, let violence prevail.

You’re angry. I’m angry. Angry might not be strong enough of a word. But we must remain peaceful.

Second: You are not powerless. You are not helpless. And you are not alone. All across Minnesota, people are learning about opportunities not just to resist, but to help people who are in danger. Thousands upon thousands of Minnesotans are going to be relying on mutual aid in the days and weeks to come, and they need our support. Tonight, I want to share another way you can help: Witness. Help us establish a record of exactly what’s happening in our communities. You have an absolute right to peacefully film ICE agents as they conduct their activities. So carry your phone with you at all times. And if you see ICE in your neighborhood, take out that phone and hit record. Help us create a database of the atrocities against Minnesotans – not just to establish a record for posterity, but to bank evidence for future prosecution.

That’s the third thing I want to tell you tonight: We will not have to live like this forever. Accountability is coming, at the voting booth and in court. We will reclaim our communities from Donald Trump. We will re-establish a sense of safety for our neighbors. We will bring an end to this moment of chaos and confusion. We will find a way to move forward – together. And we will not be alone. Every day, we are working with business leaders, faith leaders, legal experts, and elected officials from all across the country. They have seen what Donald Trump is trying to do to our state. They know their states could be next.

And that brings me to the fourth thing I want to tell you tonight. Minnesota, I’m so proud of the way we’ve risen to meet this unbearable moment. But I’m not surprised. Because this – this is who we are. Minnesotans believe in the rule of law. And Minnesotans believe in the dignity of all people. We’re a place where there’s room for everybody, no matter who you are or who you love or where you came from. A place where we feed our kids, take care of our neighbors, and look out for those in the shadows of life. We’re an island of decency in a country being driven towards cruelty. We will remain an island of decency, of justice, of community, of peace. And, tonight, I come before you simply to ask: Do not let anyone take that away from us.

Thank you. Protect each other And God bless the people of Minnesota.

Some have praised this statement as a necessary call for “civility” and respect for law and order at a moment of disorder that promises great danger. Many on the left have denounced the statement as a reactionary call for “civility” at a moment of disorder and crisis that presents opportunities for more robust “resistance” to ICE and for “antifascism” more generally.

Debate about such matters is healthy—but only if it generates greater understanding among those who stand, together, against Trump’s fascism. This means greater appreciation among some centrists for the justified outrange, and passionate opposition, that many protesters are acting out on the streets of Minneapolis. But it also involves much greater seriousness among some on the left about the grave dangers associated with the possible escalation of violent confrontation.

Careful attention to Walz’s words makes clear that his statement is not a simple appeal to “civility” or call for citizens, as one colleague has put it, to “stand down.” After leading with a denunciation of the Trump administration for orchestrating “a campaign of organized brutality against the people of Minnesota by our own federal government,” Walz proceeds to praise fellow Minnesotans for taking initiative both “to resist” and “to help people who are in danger.” He validates public anger and indignation, and declares that “We can – we must – protest: loudly, urgently, but also peacefully. Indeed, as hard as we will fight in the courts and at the ballot box, we cannot, and will not, let violence prevail.” He is very clear that the source of the violence is ICE, and not ordinary citizens who are resisting and protesting. He is also clear that while action in the courts and at the ballot box is crucial, protest is equally legitimate important. He is not telling people to go home and be patient, or to have faith in politics as usual. For he is very clear that the situation is not “normal” and represents a genuine crisis.

The danger of violent escalation is very great and the likelihood that it will lead to an even more repressive response by the fascistic Trump, Hegseth, and Noem is equally great.

Some have claimed that the insistence that “we must remain peaceful” is reactionary in a situation where calls for more resolute confrontation are possible. But what else can any elected politician in the flawed constitutional democracy that is the US be expected to say? Walz is not a revolutionary—if he was, he would not be Governor of Minnesota (Zohran Mamdani is also not a revolutionary, which is why he is the elected Mayor of New York City and not an editorialist for the DSA newsletter). And Minneapolis today is not the Paris Commune of 1871 or the revolutionary Bavaria of 1918-1919 or the Budapest-based Soviet Republic of 1919—all arguably noble revolutionary experiments, and all experiments that were crushed by overwhelming military force.

When Walz says that Trump “wants chaos,” because it mobilizes his base and can serve as a pretext for the invocation of the Insurrection Act, he is simply saying what is obviously true. Saying this does not morally or politically absolve Trump or Stephen Miller or Kristi Noem or Tom Homan or ordinary ICE agents of their criminal complicity in violence, nor does it imply in any way that counter-violence is the primary problem at issue. No false equivalence is being asserted. It is true, as some critics have noted, that Trump has gone very far on the basis of lies about non-existent “domestic invasions” and “radical threats.” What is the guarantee that a commitment to non-violent protest will inhibit him from going farther, it is asked. There is no such guarantee. But it is obviously that Trump can yet go much farther down the fascist road than he has thus far done, and it is simply naïve to ignore that chaos in the streets of Minneapolis would offer him a very convenient pretext to do so.

More importantly, it is worse than naïve to imagine that it is possible, through counter-violence, not simply to put Minneapolis ICE agents on the defensive, but to defeat Trumpism.

First, because Trump retains some measure of procedurally democratic legitimacy in the U.S—over seventy-seven millionpeople voted for him a little more than a year ago, for God’s sake; Trump’s recent poll numbers do not represent any kind of dramatic political reversal, and he will occupy the White House for the next three years, whatever happens in this year’s midterm elections (assuming that free and fair elections will even take place).

Second, because Trump and Hegseth have purged the US military of all independent voices and scrupulous career professionals, and have laid the basis for the Pentagon’s massive domestic deployment of overwhelming force—as the widely reported September meeting at Quantico made plain.

Finally, because those who might understandably fantasize about a “revolutionary conjuncture” fail to take account of the fact that in the event a serious outbreak of violent conflict it’s not just the US military that will follow Trump’s commands. There is also the large number of state and local police officers, many of whom lean far right, however liberal their Governors or Mayors might be. Further, in a real civil war, the far right in this country would annihilate the left in pretty much everyplace outside of the major coastal cities. I know there are left militias too. And they amount to little more than nothing by comparison to their fascist counterparts, who typically recruit combat veterans and retired police officers with real military training, and who have been prepping for decades.

In short, the danger of violent escalation is very great and the likelihood that it will lead to an even more repressive response by the fascistic Trump, Hegseth, and Noem is equally great.

It is worth repeating that the call to practice nonviolent resistance does not mean that individuals in the literal grasp of ICE ought to submit. Walz’s words do not include a call for individuals to submit to ICE commands or detentions. Nor do they imply that the kind of civic monitoring and solidarity offered by people like Renee Good and her wife, and thousands of others, is wrong even if it obstructs “officers.” There is no suggestion that it was wrong of Nicole Good to be parked where she was, or to try to drive away when approached by ICE agents. She clearly was in the right.

Walz is calling–as a public official who is, to be candid, totally outgunned and overpowered by Trump’s federal government—not for submission but for strategies and tactics likely to build political support without provoking a wave of repression far greater than anything yet attempted by Trump.

I can’t imagine a better response to the situation at hand from any elected public official in the country in which we actually live.

Obviously, protest leaders and movement activists speak from a very different place. It is understandable that some might be suspicious of Walz when he says that “we all have to be defending law and order, justice, and humanity,” and might believe, contrary to Walz, that tactics that press the boundaries of “civility” and “order” might be effective in mobilizing activists in the streets or even provoking ICE overreach. There are legitimate arguments to be had about such things. Indeed, such arguments are going on right now. For no movement can speak with a single voice. Yesterday’s Minnesota Star Tribune thus reports that “Debate grows in protest movement over how hard to push back against ICE,” and that “shootings by ICE agents have led to tension among protesters calling for a peaceful approach and those who want to get more confrontational.”

Indeed, such debates have characterized every significant social movement in US history that has struggled against injustice. At the same time, it is important to recognize that outside of the Civil War, every successful movement resisting injustice has by and large proceeded, and succeeded, through non-violent means. Yes, such movements have typically included radical groupings often willing to practice more risky forms of direction action and even to employ forms of counter-violence. But such efforts have always worked at the margins, and only up to a point. More importantly, there has never been a US president like Trump, who is so drawn to fascist ideology and so willing to flout the Constitution, subvert democratic elections, and deploy armed force, in cities across the country, to suppress opposition. And it has thus never been more dangerous to promote any kind of protest activity.

Now is a good time to recall the very distinguished tradition of non-violent movement activism and organized protest that has played such an important role in US history.

As I think about the exemplary upsurge of protest on the streets of Minneapolis, I am reminded of the most dramatic moment in “No Easy Walk,” an installment of the acclaimed PBS documentary “Eyes on the Prize,” which chronicled the evolution of the USUS civil rights movement. The installment centered on the 1963 Birmingham campaign, and featured a lesser known but hugely important movement leader, James Bevel. Bevel, a leader of the Freedom Rides, and a leading tactician of non-violent direct action, found himself at the head of one particular march, during “the children’s crusade,” that was threatening to erupt into a violent confrontation. In newsreel footage, Bevel is seen being given a bullhorn by a policeman on site, and using it to calm his large and understandably heated crowd. In voiceover, he recounts his experience, worth quoting at length:

We were coming off a demonstration and the police was driving the students back with water and dogs. . . The students was being playful and jovial and mocking the police, but the adults — upon seeing a lot of the students knocked down by the water and their clothes torn off by dogs — began to organize their guns and knives and bricks.

What I did, actually, was tell the students that they had to respect police officers, that their job was to help police and to keep order. That the police was there to keep order and that the people who was there throwing [things] was probably paid instigators, and therefore we had to watch them. And it was very effective. It started all the students to pointing at adults who had rocks and knives and guns, and then the adults had to start dropping them. Because it would’ve started a riot, and a riot would’ve gotten off the issue. The students was very aware of that, and the adults weren’t aware of that. . . [and there was] this policeman with a bullhorn not knowing what to do with it to keep order. . . And I said, ‘Let me use your bullhorn.’

So he just gave it to me, and I said, "OK, get off the streets now. We’re not going to have violence. If you’re not going to respect policemen, you’re not going to be in the movement."

Bevel, John Lewis, Diane Nash, and other young movement leaders– who studied nonviolent direct action with James Lawson in Nashville, Tennessee, first practiced it at lunch counters in Nashville and Greensboro, North Carolina, and in 1960 proceeded that year to form the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee—understood, from years of experience, that the practice of self-restraint has both ethical and strategic value. The 1963 Birmingham campaign organized by King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference was indeed called “Project C,” with the “C” standing for Confrontation. Bevel, like King a student of Reinhold Niebuhr, understood that it is possible to confront injustice, even violent injustice, in ways that are coercive even as they abjure physical violence.

The whole world is now watching Minneapolis, the site of appalling ICE violence, but also brave civic solidarity and resistance to the violence.

The rhetoric of civility is often a rhetoric of pacification, a way of saying “calm down, be reasonable, be patient” to rebellious citizens who have been told too long to “wait,” and of insinuating that “we are all in this together” to people who have for too long been ignored, denied, or suppressed. Appeals to this rhetoric can be a way for power holders and those who believe in the essential rightness of the status quo to quiet dissenting and disruptive voices.

But it can also be a way for savvy citizen activists to build oppositional power in situations where mass direct confrontation with police, or the use of organized violence in response to police violence, is likely to furnish pretexts for much more violent and repressive official responses, and where creative nonviolence can more effectively resist injustice.

The whole world is now watching Minneapolis, the site of appalling ICE violence, but also brave civic solidarity and resistance to the violence.

And what happens in Minneapolis in the coming weeks will quite likely play an outsized role in what happens politically in the country at large. And the danger of a massive, full-scale campaign of repression, and thus of a dramatic curtailment of constitutional freedoms already stretched to the breaking point, has never been greater.

Tim Walz and Jacob Frey are not activists. But in the situation we face, which pits a fascistic Trump administration against both Minnesota’s citizens and its elected state and local governments, they are supporters and even allies of a political resistance not only to the brutal and unjust ICE assaults, but to Trumpism more generally. And in this context, their use of the rhetoric of “law and order” against the manifestly lawless violence of the Trump administration, plays a very important role, not as a substitute for angrier rhetoric or passionate protest, but as a necessary call for civic self-limitation in the name of democracy.

Rep. Ilhan Omar is an activist, even as she is also an elected member of the US House of Representatives. And just yesterday she urged similar restraint in response to reports of protesters hurling projectiles at police. Her public appeal seems a fitting way to conclude: “Do not let your anger get the best of you. . . We are justified in the rage that we feel, as Minnesotans with the paramilitary force that is roaming our streets and the brutality in which our neighbors are being treated and the inhumane ways we are being described, but giving into that rage gives them license to terrorize more.”

I’d like to thank my dear friends Bob Ivie and Bob Orsi for their helpful suggestions on this piece.

‘First they came for the journalists and then we don’t know what happened’ is an ironic take on a chilling post- World War II German minister’s confessional, only a bit less amusing today. Last Wednesday, the FBI, under the control of Trump loyalist Kash Patel, raided the home of Washington Post journalist Hannah Natanson seeking to identify her sources. She’s been the Post’s lead reporter covering the Administration’s approach to government workers. Among the items they seized were her cell phone and personal and Washington Post issued laptops.

I remember years ago leading a journalism training in Turkey for colleagues from around the Black Sea and going over some of the basics of investigative reporting including always keeping good notes and tapes stored and dated including by year as some stories become beats that can continue over a lifetime. Sergei Kiselyov, a Ukrainian colleague, offered an addendum, “I’d just suggest you also keep your notes and files somewhere other than your home or office so that when the police come to look for them, they won’t be there.” This tip should now be seriously considered by working reporters across the U.S.

While the Washington Post editorial board immediately identified the FBI raid as an attempt to suppress freedom of the press the billionaire owner of the newspaper—Amazon’s Jeff Bezos—who’s increasingly allied himself and his business interests with President Trump—has failed to comment on the raid. This is in stark contrast to a former owner Katherine Graham, who famously stood up to President’ Nixon’s attempts to silence the Post’s coverage of the Watergate Scandal.

As attempts at intimidation of the press increase, including physical intimidation while covering citizen protests, I’m reminded of another journalistic technique we might need to employ to circumvent the growing threat of censorship. During the years I covered wars in Central America my local colleagues were more likely to be killed or have their offices blown up for what they reported. They found it was safer for them to reprint stories from the foreign press and so many provided their stories to their overseas colleagues to be printed elsewhere so that they could then run them at home. Something similar happened with the Pentagon Papers in 1971when after a court injunction stopped the New York Times from continuing to print them the Washington Post and then other newspapers around the nation begin disseminating the unpublished portions until the Supreme Court (a very different Supreme Court from today’s) ruled that the government could not stop the press from publishing classified papers. Interestingly the raid on reporter Natanson’s home is being justified as a search for the source of classified papers.

While in today’s media environment, most reporters are more likely to be laid off than jailed, social media still offers a convenient means to disseminate news that the government (or media owners and their minions aligned with the government) might attempt to suppress.

Despite some of the billionaire allies of Donald Trump now controlling media outlets including the Washington Post, New York Post, CBS News, Fox News and the Sinclair Broadcast Group, plus the willingness of others to settle the President’s frivolous lawsuits to win his favor, most of the so-called “media elite” or “corporate media” is made up of working journalists.

The average salary of a full-time journalist is $86,000 a year while freelancers, who make up a third of what the Department of Labor says are 45,000 working US journalists, average $61,000 a year, this according to the job recruitment company Zippia. So, much like school teachers, people who choose journalism as a career path are more likely to be dedicated to their calling than to getting rich. In this case, their vocation is the free and accurate dissemination of truth and holding of power accountable as envisioned by the founders of the United States 250 years ago. They even made press freedom explicit in the First Amendment of the Constitution.

And while the commitment to a free press now comes with growing risks, it’s unlikely to be fatally shaken by those who would seek to undermine that freedom, send agents of the state to disrupt journalists’ work, gas or pepper spray them, sue or jail reporters or slander the working press assigned to cover them as ‘fake news’ ‘enemies of the people’, ‘stupid’ or ‘piggie.’

Reporters, whether being killed in Gaza and Ukraine or simply being excluded from the White House and Pentagon Press rooms, will continue to fight for their cause which is neither liberal nor conservative but simply the public’s right to know.

Donald Trump is taking his demented dreams to a new level in his quest to take over Greenland. The man who whined over not getting a Nobel Prize and then followed Hitler propagandist Joseph Goebbels lead in accepting a prize awarded to someone else, has now decided he wants Greenland.

Trump is now proposing to whack us with a $75 billion tax increase to put pressure on Denmark and the rest of the EU to give him Greenland. If you missed Trump’s plans to hit us with this tax hike it’s because of the consistently awful reporting we get from major media outlets.

They reported on the tariffs Trump is imposing on the European countries most visible in resisting U.S. pressure to take Greenland. The problem with the reporting is that it implies the European countries pay the tariffs. They don’t, we do.

This is not a debatable point; the data are very clear. Well over 90 percent of the cost of a Trump tariff is borne by consumers or importers in the United States, not by the exporting countries. When Trump starts yelling “tariff, tariff, tariff,” he is yelling “tax, tax, tax,” and we’re the ones paying it. And $75 billion is not trivial. It’s one percent of the budget, more than twice the cost of the enhanced premiums for Obamacare policies that Trump says we can’t afford.

Let’s be clear, Trump wants Greenland because it is big. And he almost certainly thinks Greenland is far bigger than it actually is because he doesn’t understand that the Mercator projection maps, which are standard ones we all use, hugely exaggerate the size of areas near the poles.

No one likes the idea that the United States is being run by a moron.

We all know Trump says that he needs Greenland for national security. This argument is not worth a second’s consideration. Greenland and Denmark are both members of NATO. If he felt there was some need for putting additional military assets in or around Denmark, all he has to do is ask.

In fact, there were many more United States military installations in Denmark during the Cold War. We removed them after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Trump’s team themselves made it clear that Greenland is not a national security issue. The country is not even mentioned once in Trump’s National Security Strategy plan that was crafted just two months ago.

Trump effectively admitted this in an interview with the New York Times earlier this month. He acknowledged that he could address any security issues through negotiation with Greenland, Denmark, and the rest of NATO, but said Trump said that he would feel better “psychologically” taking over Greenland.

He compared it to the difference between owning and renting. Insofar as Trump feels a psychological need to own territory that is something that is best addressed through therapy, not military action against allies.

The other argument is that Greenland is rich in rare earth minerals, which Trump’s rich buddies are anxious to exploit. This is popular among people who want to highlight both Trump’s venality and also find rationality in what seems to be an otherwise crazy quest.

While no one should ever underestimate Trump’s corruption, the story doesn’t make any sense. First, it’s not clear that there is big money to be made on Greenland’s rare earth minerals. It is a remote area with little infrastructure. It will be extremely expensive to reach these minerals and would almost certainly take many years. Given developments in technology, it’s not even clear these minerals will still be of much value at the point anyone is able to bring them to the market.

But what’s even more damning for this line of argument is that they could start mining in Greenland tomorrow, if they think it would be profitable. Greenland is very open to foreign investment. If they think there is big money to be made by mining Greenland’s minerals, they would be doing it already.

Trump’s rich friends are undoubtedly pushing for him to take Greenland, he’ll probably give them better deals than Greenland would. Most importantly he will likely get rid of environmental regulations that Greenland’s government would demand.

But the cost of environmental regulations is not likely to be the sort of thing that would warrant a military invasion. Also, it probably is not a good sell to the people of Greenland that Trump wants to take away their ability to protect their environment.

At the end of the day, we really can’t escape the basic story, Trump wants Greenland because it is big. No one likes the idea that the United States is being run by a moron. And it’s painful for those of us left of center to acknowledge that this is who we losing to, not some evil genius. However, that happens to be the reality, and we need to recognize it.

Presidents say stupid things. It’s inevitable, because they talk so damn much, and it is human to stumble into sounding awkward or even dumb. The most interesting gaffes are always revealing. Here are a few memorable ones:

• Jimmy Carter: “I’ve looked on many women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times. God knows I will do this and forgives me.”
• Ronald Reagan: “Trees cause more pollution than cars do.”
• Richard Nixon: “When the President does it, that means it’s not illegal.” • Bill Clinton: “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”
• Joe Biden: “Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.”

There’s an extensive list from President Trump, but this one might be the number one of all time:

“I can’t think of anybody in history that should get the Nobel prize more than me.”

True enough. Trump probably can’t think of anyone other than himself who deserves the award or any other accolade including renaming the Kennedy Center after himself. Greatest president of all time? Of course.

But it’s hard to imagine without cringing how he or any human, really, could make such a boastful statement. And how could he demand the Peace Prize just days after his invasion of Venezuela, repeated killing of civilians on alleged drug boats, and initiating the threatening drumbeat against Greenland. Then there’s his changing the Department of Defense’s name to the Department of War. Last I heard, war is the opposite of peace.

Trump is doing now what he always does: He puts a claim on what he wants and then pressures people to give it to him. “Stop the Steal” was no different than his campaign for the Peace Prize. Whatever he wants, he thinks, should be his, and he will do all he can to reshape the world so that it comes his way. And when it doesn’t, it’s people being unfair to him. He’s the victim for not getting the Nobel.

But it’s not a joke. On January 19, Trump sent a text to Jonas Gahr Store, Norway’s leader, saying “Considering that your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America.”

But you’ve got to wonder how much anyone’s ego can expand without an explosion of some sort. Most of us mortals get squeamish when bragging about ourselves. A few athletes have been able to pull it off, like Mohammed Ali’s “I am the greatest!” (He was.) Or Joe Namath’s “We’re going to win [the Superbowl] Sunday. I guarantee it.” (They did.)

But a boxer in the ring and a quarterback on the field must continually prove it or they lose face. Trump does not. He can claim he’s the greatest peace president ever, just by saying it, even if he goes to war while doing so. The people who point out that he isn’t are quickly branded liars, Marxists, idiots, losers, ugly, and operating under TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome).

Does bragging in general have social benefits that lead people like Trump to incessantly exaggerate their talents and accomplishments? A recent study found it may make them sexier!

“Seen from an evolutionary perspective, strategic self-promotion might have evolved as a beneficial psychological mechanism in mating competition.”

But there’s a downside, a big one. The noted psychologist Carl Jung in 1944 warned:

An inflated consciousness is always egocentric and conscious of nothing but its own existence. It is incapable of learning from the past, incapable of understanding contemporary events, and incapable of drawing right conclusions about the future. It is hypnotized by itself and therefore cannot be argued with. It inevitably dooms itself to calamities that must strike it dead.

Is there some kind of limit to ego expansion after which the “inevitable doom” strikes? If so, then we should all be worried. We have no idea what might happen if that limit is breached. It’s one thing for an inflated ego to feed off adoring MAGA fans who see Trump as another Joe Namath. But the danger is multiplied many times over because Trump’s ego now commands the mightiest military machine in the history of the world. If war comes to mean peace, duck and cover.

I can understand why some of my brothers and sisters in the labor movement gravitated towards Trump. He promised to save jobs and make the economy work again for working people. And many were deeply disappointed that the Democrats, on their watch, failed to mitigate millions of unnecessary mass layoffs. But Trump’s working-class support may be fading as mass layoffs continue and the cost of living rises. Increasingly working people understand that Trump’s priority is for himself, enriching his family, and boosting his billionaire buddies. And my guess is that Trump’s inflated ego is turning off many of his working-class fans who value performance over boastfulness.

But some people believe they have no choice but to play a symphony on Trump’s ever expanding ego. Maria Corina Machado, the leader of the democratic opposition in Venezuela, gave her Nobel Prize to Trump in the hope that he would soon call for elections so that she could run again. After all, her party had the 2024 election stolen from them by the now imprisoned Nicolas Maduro, and his vice-president Delcy Rodriguez, who Trump has chosen to run the country instead of Machado.

But the flagrant fawning didn’t seem to work. Trump cares more about Venezuelan oil, and supports the entrenched Maduro autocrats who can facilitate its export. He hasn’t yet said anything about stolen elections and restoring democracy in Venezuela.

He also knows the difference between a hand-me-down Peace Prize and the real thing. Here’s what he said on Truth Social soon after Machado’s gift-giving:

Without my involvement Russia would have ALL OF UKRAINE right now. Remember also I single handedly ENDED 8 WARS. And Norway, a NATO member, foolishly chose not to give me the Noble [sic] Peace Prize. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that I saved Millions of Lives…..

Uh oh, Norway, not just the Nobel Committee, is now the target. To paraphrase Marco Rubio’s warning to Cuba after the Venezuela invasion, “If I lived in Oslo and I was in the government, I’d be concerned.”

Nobody knows where our ship is sailing, including our current captain. That makes for a very dangerous, bellicose world. If ego inflation continues to run amok, not aground, perhaps the next battle for peace will be an incursion into ungrateful Norway to extradite the Nobel committee and return the coveted prize to its rightful recipient.

Let’s hope that’s a joke and not a prophecy.

The question is not if the US and Israel will attack Iran, but when. In the nuclear age, the US refrains from all-out war, since it can easily lead to nuclear escalation. Instead, the US and Israel are waging war against Iran through a combination of crushing economic sanctions, targeted military strikes, cyberwarfare, stoking unrest, and unrelenting misinformation campaigns. This combination strategy is called “hybrid warfare.”

Both the American and Israeli deep states are addicted to hybrid warfare. Acting together, the CIA, Mossad, allied military contractors and security agencies have fomented chaos across Africa and the Middle East, in a swath of hybrid wars including Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Yemen.

The shocking fact is that for more than a quarter century, the US and Israeli militaries and intelligence agencies have laid waste to a region of hundreds of millions of people, blocked economic development, created terror and mass refugee movements, and have nothing to show for it beyond the chaos itself. There is no security, no peace, no stable pro-US or pro-Israel alliance, only suffering. In the process, the US is also going out of its way to undermine the UN Charter, which the US itself had brought to life in the aftermath of World War II. The UN Charter makes clear that hybrid war violates the very basis of international law, which calls on countries to refrain from the use of force against other countries.

There is one beneficiary of hybrid war, and that is the military-industrial-digital complex of the US and Israel, with firms like Palantir and others profiting from their AI-supported assassination algorithms. President Dwight Eisenhower warned us in his 1961 farewell address of the profound danger of the military-industrial complex to our society. His warning has come to pass even more than he imagined, as it is now powered by AI, mass propaganda, and a reckless US foreign policy.

We are witnessing two simultaneous hybrid wars in recent weeks, in Venezuela and Iran. Both are long-term CIA projects that have recently escalated. Both will lead to further chaos.

There is one beneficiary of hybrid war, and that is the military-industrial-digital complex of the US and Israel...

The United States has long had two goals vis-à-vis Venezuela: to gain control over Venezuela’s vast oil reserves in the Orinoco Belt, and to overthrow Venezuela’s leftist government, in power since 1999. America’s hybrid war against Venezuela dates to 2002, when the CIA helped to support a coup attempt against President Hugo Chávez. When that failed, the US ramped up other hybrid measures, including economic sanctions, the confiscation of Venezuela’s dollar reserves, and measures to cripple Venezuela’s oil production, which in fact has collapsed. Yet despite the chaos sown by the US, the hybrid war did not bring down the government.

Trump has now escalated to bombing Caracas, kidnapping President Nicolas Maduro, stealing Venezuelan oil shipments, and imposing an ongoing naval blockade, which of course is a continuing act of war. It also seems likely that Trump is thereby enriching powerful pro-Zionist campaign funders who have their eyes on seizing Venezuelan oil assets. Zionist interests also have their eye on toppling the Venezuelan government, since it has long supported the Palestinian cause and maintained close relations with Iran. Netanyahu has cheered on America’s attack on Venezuela, calling it the “perfect operation.”

The United States and Israel are simultaneously escalating their ongoing hybrid war against Iran. We can expect ongoing US and Israeli subversion, air strikes, and targeted assassinations. The difference with Venezuela is that the hybrid war on Iran can easily escalate into a devastating regional war, even a global war. In fact, even US allies in the region, especially Gulf countries, have been engaged in intensive diplomatic efforts to persuade Trump to back down and avoid military action.

The war on Iran has a history even longer than the war on Venezuela. The US started to make deep trouble for Iran back in 1953, when democratically elected Prime Minister Mossadegh nationalized Iran’s oil in defiance of then-called Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (today’s BP). The CIA and MI6 orchestrated Operation Ajax to depose Mossadegh through a mix of propaganda, street violence, and political interference. The CIA installed the Shah and backed him until 1979.

During the Shah’s rule, the CIA helped to create notorious secret police, SAVAK, that crushed dissent through surveillance, censorship, imprisonment, and torture. Eventually, this repression led to a revolution that swept Ayatollah Khomeini to power. Amid the revolution, students seized US hostages in Teheran when the US admitted the Shah for medical treatment, leading to fear that the US would try to reinstall him in power. The hostage crisis further poisoned the relations of the US and Iran. From 1981 onward, the US has plotted to torment Iran, and if possible, to overthrow the government. Among the countless hybrid actions the US has undertaken, the US funded Iraq in the 1980s to wage war on Iran, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths, but failing to topple the government.

The US-Israeli objective vis-à-vis Iran is the opposite of a negotiated settlement that would normalize Iran’s position in the international system while constraining its nuclear program. The real objective is to keep Iran economically broken, diplomatically cornered, and internally pressured. Trump has repeatedly undercut negotiations that could have led to peace, starting with his withdrawal from the 2016 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that would have monitored Iran’s nuclear energy activities while removing US economic sanctions.

Understanding the hybrid war tactics helps to explain why Trump’s rhetoric oscillates so abruptly between threats of war and phony offers of peace. Hybrid warfare thrives on contradictions, ambiguities, and outright deceit in US intentions. Last summer, the US was supposed to have a round of negotiations with Iran on June 15, 2025, but then supported Israel’s bombing of Iran on June 13, two days before the negotiations were to take place. For this reason, signs of de-escalation in recent days should not be taken at face value. They can all too readily be followed by a direct military attack in the coming days.

The world’s best hope is that the other 191 countries of the UN aside from the US and Israel finally say no to America’s addiction to hybrid war: no to regime-change operations, no to unilateral sanctions, no to the weaponization of the dollar, and no to the repudiation of the UN Charter. The American people do not support the lawlessness of their own government, but they have a very hard time making their opposition heard. They and almost all the rest of the world want the US deep state brutality to end before it’s too late.