How did we get to the point where the president can say and do things that put our culture and democracy at risk, and it’s just shrugged off as if it were normal?

In social media posts and unscripted press comments he uses language that would have been unimaginable coming from a president in any other period of American history. In just the past few months, Mr. Trump: was photographed making an obscene gesture and mouthing a vulgarity at a demonstrator; demeaned a popular TV personality who had just been murdered; called a Somali American member of Congress garbage, adding that all Somalis were garbage; called the Governor of Minnesota “retarded,” an especially hurtful slur as that governor has a son with a disability; and insulted women reporters who asked him challenging questions, calling them “ugly,” “obnoxious,” and “stupid.”

Parents wouldn’t tolerate this from their children and yet here we have a president of the United States demeaning his office by speaking in such a deplorable manner.

It’s not just the president’s speech that has been so “unpresidential.” Mr. Trump’s need to gratify his ego has led him to make exaggerated false claims about his grievances and his successes. He claims that he has been attacked by media, Congress, and law enforcement agencies like no other president in history. At the same time, he boasts that he has improved the economy and made our cities safer than they have ever been. None of this is true.

In an effort to impose his will and worldview, he has surrounded himself with White House staff and Cabinet that not only heap praise upon him and carry out his every whim, but also support his efforts to silence and intimidate those whom he has denounced as critics.

Herein lies a fundamental difference between President Trump’s first and second terms. In the former, some senior members of his staff and Cabinet served as a check on his behavior. Many were fired and replaced. He began his second term with a detailed plan to transform government, and with a more compliant senior leadership (e.g., the Department of Justice and FBI are willing to order investigations of his critics).

This combination of unchecked power, the president’s need to have his every ambition fulfilled, and his disrespect for law and precedent has led to actions that are illegal. In the first few months, his administration put in place a program to remove over 300,000 government employees. He shuttered USAID, the Voice of America, and the US Institute for Peace—all illegal actions as these were congressionally created and funded entities. He later reopened the Institute for Peace as the Trump Institute for Peace; renamed the nation’s premier center for the arts The Donald J Trump, The John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts without any authorization; and had the White House’s East Wing torn down to be replaced by another vanity project—a massive ballroom—which no doubt will also bear his name in the near future.

Conceivably the most dangerous of President Trump’s moves have been the dramatic expansion of ICE—the immigration enforcement entity—and its unleashing in US cities, posing a direct threat to American democracy.

In recent weeks Mr. Trump sent a massive contingent of ICE agents to Minneapolis, Minnesota ostensibly to root out illegal immigrants, while attempting to embarrass that state’s Democratic governor and to target one of Mr. Trump’s new favorites, Minnesota’s large Somali community. As expected, ICE’s arrests have been indiscriminate, detaining many legal residents and citizens, and their behavior unacceptably brutal. As seen in other cities, ICE behaviors have provoked widespread protests. In one horrifying incident, a member of an observer team monitoring ICE behavior was shot and killed through an open car window by an ICE agent.

The shooting was filmed from multiple angles, establishing that the victim posed no threat to the ICE agent. That didn’t stop the president and other administration officials from propagating a lie about what had transpired. They called the murdered woman a domestic terrorist, saying she’d threatened the life of the ICE shooter. Unwrapping this murder is instructive on many levels.

First, with the enormous budget appropriated for ICE expansion, that entity now has over 10,000 armed agents. The rapidity of its growth has led to inadequate vetting and training. More dangerous still is how ICE has recruited agents: at gun shows and right-wing events, and targeted advertisements on right-wing radio shows. The White House appears to be forming an ideologically cohesive national police force that is anti-immigrant and violence-prone and has been told by the administration that they can act with impunity.

This incident also points out the extent to which the White House is capable of fabricating a storyline that will be echoed by other leaders and their supportive media outlets. The impact is clear. A recent poll showed that, by a wide margin, most Americans believe that the woman’s killing was wrong, but more than three-quarters of Republicans believe the president’s narrative that the murdered woman was a threat to the ICE agent and her killing was justified.

So, how did we get to this point? The answer is clear. A president who says whatever he needs to say to justify his position, officials around him and a supportive media who vociferously agree with him and threaten those who disagree, and a cult-like movement of partisans who will believe what they are told even when the facts speak to a different reality.

To Dr. King and my fellow Minnesotans,

A holiday is supposed to slow a nation down long enough to remember its standards. This year, MLK Day arrives with masked federal agents fanning out across the Twin Cities and beyond, with unmarked vehicles and street-level operations reshaping daily life, and with a growing chill that has many immigrants and other people of color, and many white residents too, thinking twice before leaving home, going to school or stepping into public spaces.

Dr. King, we are not living in your era, but we are facing a familiar question: Is “order” being used to protect the public, or to protect power from accountability?

I keep thinking about how people often meet you only through the safest doorway — a dream, a monument, a quote polished down until it can sit on a poster without asking anything of the reader. But your most demanding work was written in the middle of conflict, not after it. You wrote as someone being told to wait, to soften the message, to respect “proper channels,” even while the people you loved were living under improper conditions.

And I keep returning to one of the most basic ideas you insisted on in Birmingham. You were there because injustice was there. Not because it was convenient, not because it guaranteed applause. Because moral emergencies do not respect city limits, and because distance is one of the oldest excuses in American life.

That is the first reason this moment in Minnesota matters on MLK Day 2026. We are being encouraged to treat what is happening here as a local disturbance. A Minneapolis problem. A Minnesota problem. A protest problem. Something to be managed.

But what is happening here is not simply “tension.” It is an argument about the character of public power.

When a president threatens a state with “reckoning and retribution,” he is not using the language of neutral law. He is using the language of punishment. A government can enforce laws without promising vengeance. When it promises vengeance, it tells you what it believes the law is for.

And when the institutions that are supposed to steady the public start to fracture, the message becomes louder than any speech at a rally.

The news Minnesotans woke up to last week was not a minor internal shuffle. The Minnesota Star Tribune described a mass resignation from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota, including senior prosecutors, stemming from directives after the killing of Renee Good by an ICE agent. The reporting described an internal directive that prosecutors “say nothing” about the federal investigation, and it noted that state investigators were cut out of the probe and that federal officials sought to investigate Good’s widow for possible federal charges.

Whatever your politics, you can feel the difference between a justice system that invites public trust and a justice system that treats public concern as something to be contained.

I am an attorney. I believe in rules and procedures, in evidence and due process, in institutions that protect people from impulsive power. That is exactly why this moment feels so dangerous. A justice system does not earn legitimacy by demanding quiet. It earns legitimacy by being worthy of witness.

You understood that power does not only suppress through force. It also suppresses through framing. It trains the public to treat discomfort as disorder, and disorder as the real threat. It persuades decent people that their primary civic duty is to keep things calm, even if calm is purchased with someone else’s fear.

When people ask today about Minnesota, “Why are there demonstrations?” I hear the question you confronted directly: Why are we focusing on surface behavior while refusing to confront what produced it?

In Birmingham, you challenged critics who deplored the demonstrations but did not show the same concern for the conditions that created them. You warned against analysis that fixates on effects and refuses to grapple with causes.

Minnesota is drowning in effects-talk. We are being pulled into arguments about tone, about disruption, about whether grief is being expressed in the “right” way. You can hear it in the complaints about protesters blowing whistles when masked agents roll through neighborhoods in unmarked vehicles. You can see it in the backlash to residents who follow and film ICE agents to document arrests, as if witnessing and recording the exercise of power is itself an offense. And you can feel it in the way some keep pushing public debate toward a discussion on manners, rather than grappling with what it means to live in a state where daily life is being deliberately reshaped by fear.

But the cause is what keeps demanding attention. The loss of life. The integrity of an investigation the public must be able to trust. The fear many communities feel when stepping outside can feel like a test of your skin, your accent, your name, and when citizens and lawful residents begin to move through public life as if visibility itself is risk.

If we do not grapple with causes, we will spend MLK Day doing what this country does too well. We will commemorate, and then we will return to the habits that made commemoration necessary.

Here is another thing you wrote that Minnesota needs right now, and it has nothing to do with nostalgia. You insisted on the interrelatedness of communities, and you rejected the narrow “outside agitator” idea. You insisted that no one in this country should be treated as an outsider anywhere within it.

That is the second reason this moment matters on MLK Day. Minnesota is being spoken about as if it is separable from the rest of the country, as if what happens here can be punished here, contained here. But this is not a Minnesota-only problem. It is a national test with a Minnesota address.

If a president can promise retribution against a state for its politics, that is not just rhetoric. It is a message to every other state. If federal institutions can be pressured into secrecy or political targeting, and the public is told to accept silence as strategy, that is not just an internal dispute. It is an instruction about what accountability will look like from here forward.

We will hear the dream recited this weekend. But a dream can become a lullaby. Repeated without its demands, it can become a way to pretend we have already arrived.

If the new dream is a nightmare, it is not because people are speaking out. It is because the public is being trained to accept intimidation as governance, and to accept silence as legitimacy.

So what does moral clarity look like in Minnesota this MLK Day?

It looks like refusing to confuse quiet with peace, and refusing to treat fear as normal.

It looks like insisting that investigations be credible, independent and transparent enough to earn public trust, not simply declared trustworthy by authority.

It looks like leaders who speak with discipline and courage, and citizens who do not outsource their conscience.

That is what your letter offered. Not comfort. A standard.

My dear fellow Minnesotans, if we are going to honor Dr. King this year, let’s do it without sedation. Let’s treat MLK Day as an audit, not a performance. Let’s be brave enough to focus on causes, not just effects.

And let’s remember the moral claim at the center of the holiday, the claim that makes it worth keeping on the calendar: Nobody is an outsider to justice. Not here. Not anywhere in this country.

If injustice is here, then responsibility is here, too.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s words from his “Beyond Vietnam” speech still ring true.

“When machines and computers, profit motives, and property rights are considered more important than people,” he warned, “the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

Those words, delivered in 1967, still summarize today’s political moment. Instead of putting the lives of working Americans first, our leaders in Congress and the White House have prioritized advancing corporate profits and wealth concentration, slashing government programs meant to advance upward mobility, and deploying military forces across the country, increasing distrust and tension.

This historic regression corresponds with a recessionary environment for Black America in particular. That’s what my organization, the Joint Center, found in our report, State of the Dream 2026: From Regression to Signs of a Black Recession.

Unless we act deliberately, economic and racial inequalities will become entrenched, resulting in generational loss.

The economic landscape for Black Americans in 2026 is troubling, with unemployment rates signaling a potential recession. By December 2025, Black unemployment had reached 7.5%—a stark contrast to the national rate of 4.4%. This disparity highlights the persistent economic inequalities faced by Black communities, which have only been exacerbated by policy shifts that have weakened the labor market. The volatility in Black youth unemployment, which fluctuated dramatically in the latter months of 2025, underscores the precariousness of the situation.

The Trump administration’s executive orders have systematically dismantled structures aimed at promoting racial equality. By targeting programs such as Lyndon Johnson’s 1965 Equal Employment Opportunity executive order and defunding agencies like the Minority Business Development Agency, the administration has shifted federal support away from disadvantaged businesses.

As a result, Black-owned firms risk losing contracts and resources tied to federal programs, potentially resulting in job losses and reduced economic growth. These changes threaten billions in federal revenue for Black-owned firms and undermine efforts to move beyond racial inequality in the workforce.

The GOP’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” passed in 2025, further entrenches inequality by providing tax cuts that disproportionately benefit high-income households and corporations—while simultaneously slashing investments in programs like Medicaid and SNAP, limiting access to essential services for low-income households.

The technology sector, a critical component of the American economy, is also affected by this disregard for civil rights. Executive orders like “Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence” have stripped away protections that could advance inclusion in this rapidly growing field. As a result, the future of the American economy risks reinforcing past inequalities.

Dr. King’s call for strong, aggressive federal leadership in addressing racial inequality remains highly relevant. However, instead of eradicating structures of inequality, our current leadership is implementing policies that destroy government jobs and dismantle agencies responsible for preventing predatory economic practices. These choices undermine longstanding efforts to combat racial and economic disparities—and exemplify the regressive economic policies that coincide with rising Black unemployment.

As Dr. King stated, “we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.” But urgent action is required. Unless we act deliberately, economic and racial inequalities will become entrenched, resulting in generational loss. The core question is whether we will move beyond our nation’s history of racism, materialism, and militarism, and—as Dr. King urged—embrace “the fierce urgency now” to advance equity.

As 2026 begins to hit its stride and we pray nourish our hopes for it, it might be wise to look around. In his December 8 column in the New York Times, Thomas Friedman addresses the war in Ukraine and how to end it. In his opening, he argues that a Munich-style truce, such as the one President Donald Trump has proposed, would be a disaster. Like the Munich Pact, it wouldn’t last. All the concessions would be on Ukraine’s side, it would leave Russian President Vladimir Putin free to resume the war at his pleasure, and it would continue the Ukrainian people’s suffering.

Any lasting peace, Friedman insists, will require tough, rigorous, careful negotiating; flexibility and concessions on both sides; and firm guarantees of Ukraine’s sovereignty. It won’t be pretty, and it won’t be perfect, but, as he phrases it, a dirty deal would be better than a filthy one.

So far, so good. Then he pokes fun at Putin: Why is Russia wasting resources on a slog of a war when it could develop artificial intelligence instead, and get in on the greatest technological revolution ever before it falls too far behind countries that are already in? Buried in the joke is the sly hint that the US might do the same by pulling back on its own military adventures, even though Trump has given the techies the order to go full speed ahead. Damn the environmental torpedoes!

That’s where Friedman’s argument goes off its track. Artificial intelligence is hugely capital, water, and energy intensive. Once running, the data centers will fry the planet, not to mention the higher electric bills and blackouts their voracious appetite will cause. How about some taxpayer subsidies and fossil fuel fire to keep those data centers going, scarecrow?

How about putting an end to our president’s flamboyant criminality, which he flaunted as he bombed Venezuela’s capital and kidnapped its president, while he continues to finance genocide in Gaza?

As he often does, Friedman has proposed a technological and entrepreneurial solution to a moral and political problem. All that does is further entrench the advantages of a military-plutocratic elite and worsen the socioeconomic and environmental damage which results. What’s more, the events of January 3 have made his proposal irrelevant.

We’ve already blown our chance to keep global warming below 1.5°C above preindustrial levels. Now that it’s 2026, we’ve got four more years to cut fossil fuel use enough to keep the planet below 2°C. Right now, fossil fuel use is still rising and the warming is headed toward 2.6°C.

Rather than artificial intelligence, how about some actual intelligence instead? New START expires next month. While that’s too short a time to get a new arms control pact, how about beginning the negotiations to get there? Or are the business opportunities from a breakneck arms race too tempting for the powers that be on all sides to resist?

How about saving the money, energy, and water that data centers would consume for human use—at least until we know how to control them and the AI they’d serve?

How about putting an end to our president’s flamboyant criminality, which he flaunted as he bombed Venezuela’s capital and kidnapped its president, while he continues to finance genocide in Gaza?

How about breaking our long-standing habit of overthrowing foreign governments whose leaders disagree with our policies?

How about providing enough decent food, pay, housing, clean energy, and affordable healthcare for everyone? Yes, everyone.

How about doing all we can to salvage the environment upon which all our planet’s life depends?

And how about doing all we can to make America safe for democracy?

That would be a proper way to offer homage to Martin Luther King’s birthday, the anniversary of which we observe today.

In December, US President Donald Trump was awarded FIFA’s newly created “FIFA Peace Prize–Football Unites the World” by FIFA President Gianni Infantino. The decision immediately sparked disbelief and criticism worldwide, raising a fundamental question: What does FIFA mean by peace?

If football is truly meant to unite the world, then this prize—and the process that produced it—must be seriously reconsidered.

The awarding of the Peace Prize did not emerge from a transparent or democratic process. It reflects a broader pattern in which the Trump administration has exerted political and diplomatic pressure on international institutions to secure legitimacy and public endorsement. In other words, bullying. FIFA, despite its claims of neutrality and independence, appears to have yielded to that pressure.

But power imposed through coercion can be reversed through organized, collective, nonviolent action. If a government can pressure a global sports institution into legitimizing its leader under the banner of peace, then global civil society must be capable of compelling that same institution to correct its course. It is not about punishment or humiliation. It is about legitimacy.

Peace Cannot Be Performed

The United States’ current posture toward the rest of the world—marked by sanctions, coercive diplomacy, military threats, and disregard for international norms—stands in open contradiction to the values the Peace Prize claims to represent. One cannot credibly speak the language of peace while practicing domination.

Revoking this prize would send a clear message: Peace is not a public-relations exercise, nor a political trophy extracted through pressure.

When intimidation succeeds without challenge, it becomes precedent. When it is challenged collectively and nonviolently, it becomes brittle.

Revoking this prize would send a clear message: Peace is not a public-relations exercise, nor a political trophy extracted through pressure.

A World Cup Under Question

This controversy unfolds as the 2026 FIFA World Cup approaches. Scheduled from June 11 to July 19, it will be the first-ever 48-team tournament, with 104 matches across 16 cities, 11 of them in the United States, the others in Canada and Mexico.

International fans, activists, and political figures are questioning whether the current US political climate—particularly immigration enforcement practices, travel restrictions, and border policies—makes the country a safe and welcoming host for a global celebration meant to unite humanity.

Calls to boycott the 2026 World Cup are spreading across social media, as supporters report canceled travel plans; withdrawn ticket purchases; and growing fears of arbitrary detention, visa denials, and hostile treatment at borders. Human rights organizations have repeatedly warned about detention practices and the erosion of civil liberties—concerns that take on heightened urgency when millions are expected to cross borders for a global event.

A Nonviolent Proposal for a Global Reset

If there is one nonviolent action in 2026 with the potential to shift global consciousness, it is an international campaign demanding accountability from FIFA itself.

Such a campaign could call for:

• The revocation of the FIFA Peace Prize awarded to Donald Trump;
• A one-year postponement of the 2026 World Cup; and
• The relocation of the tournament to a coalition of African host countries—such as South Africa, Morocco, Egypt, and Algeria—regions with deep football traditions and long-standing exclusion from global sporting power.

This proposal is ambitious. But ambition has always been necessary for transformation.

FIFA is not a neutral body floating above politics. It is a global institution with 211 member associations, whose decisions reflect values, alliances, and power relations. What FIFA chooses to reward—and whom it chooses to honor—sends a message to billions.

Broadcasters: Withdrawing the Economic Consent

One of the most powerful nonviolent levers lies beyond stadiums and borders: broadcasting. The World Cup exists not only as a sporting event, but as a global media product. Television networks and streaming platforms pay billions in licensing fees that finance FIFA’s operations. Without those fees—and without audiences—the tournament loses its economic foundation.

A coordinated nonviolent campaign could therefore call on broadcasters to:

• Suspend World Cup coverage;
• Refuse to pay licensing fees while FIFA legitimizes coercive political power under the banner of peace; and
• Publicly explain their ethical position to viewers, advertisers, and citizens.

This action would not target players, fans, or workers. It would target the financial and symbolic infrastructure that allows FIFA to operate without accountability. This is not censorship—it is ethical refusal.

A Universal Campaign: Social Media as Nonviolent Infrastructure

For such a campaign to succeed, it must be global, visible, and coordinated. That is why social media is not secondary—it is essential. Social media platforms are today’s nonviolent infrastructure. They allow millions of people to act together across borders, languages, and cultures without centralized control. When used strategically, they transform isolated actions into universal pressure.

A global campaign could:

• Coordinate shared messages, visuals, and hashtags across continents;
• Amplify testimonies from fans, players, journalists, and human rights advocates;
• Expose contradictions between FIFA’s rhetoric and its actions in real time; and
• Apply sustained public pressure on FIFA leadership, broadcasters, sponsors, and advertisers.

This is how nonviolent movements grow: through visibility, participation, and persistence—until silence becomes impossible.

In order to succeed, however, this must be more than a media moment. It must become a grassroots nonviolent movement.

Football clubs, supporters’ associations, players, national federations, and fans everywhere should be called upon to stand—not against the sport, but for human dignity. This is about withdrawing consent from illegitimacy and restoring meaning to the game. Football has always been more than a game. It reflects who we are—and who we choose to become.

After all, people are not football fans first. They are human beings first.

The question now is simple: Will FIFA continue to serve power—or will it revoke the Peace Prize and reclaim the game for humanity?

This article was first published in English on Pressenza and is now available in: Spanish.

Donald Trump may, of course, be the Republican candidate for president in 2028, the US Constitution notwithstanding. Although it is clearly written in the 22nd Amendment that “no person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice,” it may well be a majority vote of the Supreme Court that determines whether that applies to Trump.

In the past, that court has gotten around the Constitution without a single word of it being changed. Rather, its judges have let an innovative interpretation prevail. In 1896, for instance, in Plessy v. Ferguson, the court ignored the unambiguous language of the 14th Amendment that demanded “equal protection” and so upheld racial segregation by creating the fiction of “separate but equal.” It would take 58 years before that lie would be overturned.

Harvard law professor and Trump legal whisperer Alan Dershowitz has told the president that “it’s not clear” if it is constitutionally settled whether he can serve another term, even if elected. Reportedly, Jeffrey Epstein’s former lawyer is working on a book on the subject to be published in March 2026. And MAGA world—from the White House to members of Congress to far-right media figures—is stirring the pot on Donald Trump’s potential fourth bid for president.

Trump is also clearly worried about his legacy. Branding federal buildings and institutions with his name, building an outrageous ballroom, pimping out the Oval Office in gold, and constructing an unnecessary “Triumphal Arch” are all desperate attempts to be remembered as “great” at any cost. Yet, he has to know that the next Democratic president will be under tremendous pressure to remove most, if not all, Trump-brand edifices as quickly as possible. In the end, his real memorials will undoubtedly be the authoritarian policies and conduct that will label him as one of the worst, if not the worst, presidents in American history.

Keep in mind that Trump will be 83 by the time of the 2028 election and he’s already exhibiting so many of the behaviors generally attributed to the fabled “crazy old man” down the street.

That said, Trump remains a question mark when it comes to a third term. There are a number of reasons he might not try for one, not the least being his deteriorating mental and physical health. It didn’t take the New York Times to question his capabilities, not when anyone watching him could hear him slurring his words, dozing off in front of the cameras, barely moving even on a golf course, and sounding more incoherent than ever.

His manic putting up of sometimes hundreds of posts a day or in the wee hours of the night—although his staff may be responsible for some of it—should be considered a cry for help, if ever there was one. And it’s not just the volume of his postings, but their increasing extremity. The hate has become more hateful, the taunts more vicious and racist, and the fabrications more outlandish and divorced from reality. And keep in mind that Trump will be 83 by the time of the 2028 election and he’s already exhibiting so many of the behaviors generally attributed to the fabled “crazy old man” down the street.

Finally (should it get to that point), a majority of the Supreme Court—I certainly don’t think all of them, no matter the situation—could follow the Constitution and rule against a third term. It should be considered ironic at this point that the 22nd Amendment was proposed and passed in response to a Democratic president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, winning his fourth consecutive presidential race.

The Vance Option

With Trump a distinct question mark and while the Trumpian current ebbs and flows, another wave is pushing the 2028 candidacy of Vice President JD Vance. Trump found his avatar in 2024 when the junior senator from Ohio and former harsh Trump critic joined the crew of Republican senators fighting to be the most sycophantic to the party’s new Führer. Like his compatriots Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, and Marco Rubio, there were no morals or principles that superseded Vance’s ambition and lust for power. Under the circumstances, that “JD” could easily have stood for “just as dangerous.”

As Vance confirmed at the recent Turning Point USA gathering, not only are White nationalists like Nick Fuentes and unrepentant conspiracists like Candace Owens not denounced, but they are welcomed and embraced. Tucker Carlson’s friendly interview with Fuentes roiled MAGA, but before that he was interviewed by Owens on her podcast. Again, there are no discernible objections from GOP leaders, including Vance.

While Vance opportunistically inserted himself into the Charlie Kirk martyr-building project—he was a pallbearer and spoke at his memorial—he has yet to call out Owens for her wild and unfounded claims that Turning Point USA staff, Israel, the French Foreign Legion, and God knows who else were somehow involved in Kirk’s assassination.

If Trump doesn’t manage to run a fourth time and Vance wants to be president, he’ll be more dependent than ever on the MAGA base and the far-right, especially since he has little to no chance of winning over many Democrats or independents.

Vance’s most eye-raising statement at the TPUSA event was when he said, “You don’t have to apologize for being white anymore.” First, it is a pretty sure bet that no one at the event (or in MAGA) ever apologized for being white. Second, Vance reinforced the view that white supremacy will not be a barrier to any future campaign of his.

Vance’s message is clear: Every imaginable far-right extremist, from white supremacists and technofascists to offensive fabulists, is welcome in his coming 2028 campaign. And he will assumedly have Trump’s blessing (if the president doesn’t indeed decide to try to run again himself).

Poor Secretary of State Marco Rubio has as much chance of getting Trump’s support as Black GOP Congressional Representative Byron Donalds did of becoming his vice-presidential candidate in 2024. Trump 2.0 is wholly built on racial profiling, especially of Latinos, and asserting White power. Merely “looking” Latino is enough in these Trumpist times to attract armed masked men and a trip to an immigration hellhole. Rubio has vigorously defended such illegal arrests and detentions and the racist demonization of immigrants of color that’s gone with it, but he’s rolling the dice if he thinks the MAGA base will see him as the exception to their rule.

Just ask Vance. As hillbilly-centric and pro-white working class as he has tried to portray himself, despite being a millionaire many times over, the fact that he is married to Usha Vance, a woman of color and a non-Christian, has generated lots of racist blowback. Fuentes, for example, called Vance a “race traitor” for marrying Usha. Many MAGA adherents were shocked to discover Usha was not white. One report found that, between January and August 2024, there were at least 1,800 racist, gender, or religious-based attacks on Usha that reached an audience of an estimated 216 million.

While Vance has pushed back against such threats and insults, he’s ignored any possible relationship between Trump’s and his racism against Haitian and other immigrants of color and the blowback he’s experienced against Usha. His default position (rather than directly challenging MAGA bigotry): Usha is “tough enough to handle it.” In addition, instead of defending Usha’s right to practice whatever religion she chooses, he pandered to the religious extremist crowd by stating that he hoped she would convert to Catholicism and “eventually that she is somehow moved by the same thing that I was moved by in church.” He then added, “I honestly do wish that because I believe in the Christian Gospel, and I hope eventually my wife comes to see it the same way.”

Vance Courts the Extremists

If Trump doesn’t manage to run a fourth time and Vance wants to be president, he’ll be more dependent than ever on the MAGA base and the far-right, especially since he has little to no chance of winning over many Democrats or independents. Few will forget that he personally led the outlandish racist claims that Haitian immigrants were stealing pets and eating them in Springfield, Ohio. When busted on that fabrication, he admitted that he had known the truth, but didn’t care as long as it served his interests. He stated in an interview during the 2024 election campaign, “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do because you guys are completely letting Kamala Harris coast.”

Vance’s “stories” were blatant lies about immigrants (of color) and their role in US society. According to him, undocumented (and perhaps, maybe, kinda legal) immigrants are to blame for high medical prices, rising housing costs, education crises, crime, antisemitism, and illegal voting. In other words, there isn’t a problem in the United States that can’t be linked to undocumented aliens.

A Time When Vance Was Truthful

The next time around, Democrats would be wise to highlight Vance’s past criticism of Donald Trump. After all, he referred to Trump as “Hitler” and as a “morally reprehensible human being” in emails that plausibly were not supposed to be publicly seen. However, he did publish an article in The Atlantic only weeks before the 2016 election that he clearly wanted to be on the record. In a piece entitled “Opioid of the Masses,” he called Trump “cultural heroin.” He argued that, while Trump’s blather might make people feel good, he was anything but the answer to the deeply rooted causes of the multiple crises facing poor whites, particularly and ironically, opioid drug addiction. Like heroin, he wrote, its poison “enters minds, not through lungs or veins, but through eyes and ears, and its name is Donald Trump.” Vance’s own mother, as he noted in the article, abused heroin and prescription opioids, giving him a highly personal stake in the issue.

What he wrote then is no less true today: “Trump offers an easy escape from the pain… Trump’s promises are the needle in America’s collective vein.” Continuing with that addiction metaphor, he added, “Perhaps the nation will trade the quick high of ‘Make America Great Again’ for real medicine.” That Vance is long gone.

It’s a maxim of today’s politics that all relationships with Trump end badly.

Of course, his most important pre-Trumpian links weren’t to his largely made-up hillbilly upbringing—he was born and raised in Ohio—but his ties to far-right billionaires in Silicon Valley. They have been dubbed “techno fascists” for their reactionary, racist, misogynist, and anti-democratic views. His bids for the Senate and then the vice presidency weren’t just supported by Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and other big names in the billionaire tech world, but opened the door to their increasing role in shaping policy, especially but not exclusively in relation to the artificial intelligence and technology industries.

Vance has, of course, also been in lockstep with Trump’s imperialist and self-serving foreign policy. He crudely sided with the president when he attempted to browbeat Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in their infamous Oval Office meeting on February 28, 2025. He also defended, and even cruelly joked about, the deadly strikes on boats in the Caribbean by the US military. He justified Trump’s illegal abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, echoing all the false claims of Trump, Rubio, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth about drug trafficking and stolen oil.

It’s a maxim of today’s politics that all relationships with Trump end badly. Will Vance abandon Trump as he deteriorates yet more? The main lesson Trump learned from his late lawyer, the notorious Roy Cohn (of McCarthy-era fame), was to use people until they are no longer useful. Cohn counseled Trump in his early years and introduced him to influential and important people who facilitated his rise in New York City. They became “friends” until Trump (of course!) abandoned Cohn in his time of need once he contracted AIDS and was dying. Trump simply brushed him aside when he was no longer useful and reportedly did not even attend his funeral. Can Trump expect the same treatment from Vance?

Or will the vice president be like Kamala Harris and, as she did with President Joe Biden, pretend Trump is well when he clearly is not? As Trump struggles to make it for three more years, Vance will be questioned about his cognitive state and physical health. Will he gaslight the public and hope for the best?

Given what we have seen and that Vance has demonstrated no loyalty to principles or ethics, no one should be surprised if he turns on Trump at some point, should he determine that it is in his interest to do so.

The Trump peace scheme is not an imperfect plan that at least ends the genocide in Gaza. It is in fact a new plan to continue the genocide using a different strategy. It poses a mortal threat to the survival of Palestinians in Gaza. However this plan is not being implemented in isolation from the massive Israeli attack on Palestinians in the West Bank, but in conjunction with it. We are now witnessing, not merely a messy and complicated ceasefire in Gaza and stepped up attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank. Rather, we are witnessing a coordinated 2-pronged attack to destroy the very idea of Palestine. As a result we need to move from targeting the Gaza genocide as separate from what’s being done in the rest of Palestine to a focus on both Palestinian self-determination and opposing ongoing efforts to erase the reality of Palestinians as a people. To repeat: we must now insist on the national rights of Palestinians to live in a Palestine shaped by their own hands – and to counterpose that insistence to the Trump-Netanyahu plans being implemented throughout Palestine to savage Palestinians and destroy their existence as a people.

Gaza

Trump’s peace plan for Gaza is of course absurd. The Palestinians played no role in creating it. The country that has been committing an internationally recognized genocide is now going to “temporarily” occupy more than 50% of the territory on which it has carried out that genocide. And the President of the country who teamed up with Israel to commit that genocide is the Chairman of something bizarrely named the “Board of Peace”. As such he is given the power to oversee all aspects of Gaza’s future including an international “peacekeeping” military force and the appointment of Palestinians he judges should temporarily administer Gaza while Israeli troops directly occupy most of the area. The only party to be disarmed is the Palestinian resistance to the genocide.

On paper there was at least to be a ceasefire. But instead we see the Israeli military killing Palestinians on a daily basis. At the same time they violate their obligation to allow sufficient food, medicine and other basics of life to be brought in to Gaza by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) as Israel creates all kinds of barriers to sufficient aid reaching the people. In addition the Israelis have blown up 1500 more buildings in the area of Gaza allotted to them and are taking over parts of Gaza beyond the area given to them in the plan. Nothing gets in the way of Israel doing whatever it wants.

In the ultimate act of betrayal, the United Nations security council has turned over the future of Gaza, not to Palestinians, but to Israel, Trump and his investors. Yet this brute reality is not seen clearly by most of the world. It is now our movement’s job to take on this plan directly and create a counter narrative that explains the continuing genocide and the need to immediately rise up in opposition to it. If the millions of people who rose up against the genocide in the past saw this plan for what it is, instead of seeing it as something that might benefit the Palestinians, they would increasingly roar their opposition.

The West Bank

In the West Bank the escalating violence includes land theft, murders, the expulsion of farmers from their fields, uprooting trees, burning home and cars, and systematic attacks during the olive harvests – a central source of their livelihoods. All this to lay the ground for almost complete ethnic cleansing and a vast expansion of Israeli settlements. The ultimate goal is to turn the West Bank into a part of greater Israel.

Meanwhile thousands of Palestinians from both areas are “interred” in the Israeli Gulag of torture centers where unspeakable conditions are just as bad—or even worse–than those at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.

In short, we are seeing a wave of expulsions, arrests and murders by Israeli settlers and soldiers in the West Bank in combination with post-ceasefire killings, demolitions and restrictions on food, medicine and shelter in Gaza. The goal of these tactics is the same as that of the genocidal military operations and food blockade during the first 2 years of Israeli rampage that has left Gaza in ruins:The end of Palestine.

We must now shift our focus from Gaza alone to the preservation of Palestine, as Palestinians and their aspirations for freedom are under deadly attack throughout their country. We must educate the public on how the genocide in Gaza has not ended, but has taken on a different form, while Israel’s goal of eliminating the possibility of Palestinian life has broadened to include the West Bank.

Much as they did back in 2018, when New Yorkers stunned the political establishment by electing a little-known former bartender named Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Congress, the corporate political press covered the most thrilling Democratic victories of 2025 as if they were largely inexplicable, semi-miraculous flukes. While breathlessly covering the tweets, styles, preferred lipstick brands and personal qualities of individual politicians, establishment media outlets mostly ignored the organizing efforts led by ordinary people that put representatives like Ocasio-Cortez in positions of power.

In the view of these publications, recently sworn-in New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani wasn’t a movement candidate who emerged after years of working on other insurgent campaigns and organizing with groups like the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), of which I am a member, but a slick young upstart whose campaign was “built from nothing in a matter of months” (New York Times, 6/29/25).

After the general election, the New York Times (11/4/25) wrote that while Mamdani had won the primary by uniting “a new coalition of Brooklyn gentrifiers and Queens cabbies,” he triumphed in the general by running an “improbable backroom campaign” that “wooed, charmed and delicately disarmed some of the most powerful people in America.” This framing, by New York politics reporter Nicholas Fandos, suggested that Mamdani—undeniably a “megawatt talent”—had blandished his way into the mayoralty virtually singlehandedly.

NBC News (11/4/25) wrote of his “meteoric rise” from a “virtually unknown state assemblyman who barely registered in polling” to the mayor of America’s largest city without substantially analyzing how that came about.

‘Building civic architecture’

This framing obscures both the crucial role that ordinary people played in these campaigns, and the potential they have to organize and win even political changes the rich and powerful bitterly oppose. And it misses the real story of Mamdani’s win: the unprecedented army of volunteers, young people and first-time voters who propelled him to victory. That story was mostly covered by left-wing outlets like Dissent (11/25/25) and Jacobin (7/15/25), which put out sharp analyses of how campaigns like Mamdani’s were structured and organized, and how they were able to succeed against such long odds.

Grassroots formations that provided crucial support to Mamdani’s campaign, such as DSA and DRUM Beats, which organizes working-class Indo-Caribbean and South Asian communities, are membership-based organizations. They differ in structure and strengths from the top-down, consultant-driven campaign model corporate political outlets see as the norm.

These groups also spent years planting the seeds of victory by organizing people who had long been overlooked, ignored or shut out of conventional politics to participate in local elections. In other words, Mamdani’s campaign was the opposite of the Times‘ characterization as being “built from nothing in a matter of months.”

As Chris Maisano explained in Dissent, “people on the ground have been quietly building civic infrastructure” in neighborhoods Mamdani won. The mobilization of these communities “transformed the electorate and helped Mamdani offset Cuomo’s strength in neighborhoods that shifted sharply to the former governor in the general election.”

Establishment media’s obsession with portraying democratic socialism as divisive and/or fatally alienating to voters blinded it to what was truly radical about Mamdani’s campaign: It empowered ordinary people to lead, changing individual lives and history. What most scares the establishment isn’t socialism; it’s people-powered democracy.

Discouraging mass political participation is not new—in a 2019 Politico article (4/25/19) headlined “Politics Is Not the Answer,” Matthew Continetti suggested that “we might begin to see ourselves, and all of our virtues and our vices, more clearly” if we would only lower our expectations “of what politics can achieve”—but it’s newly salient in the run-up to the 2026 midterms.

‘Too much emphasis’ on ‘far-left positions’

One function of the corporate political press is to funnel popular energy and outrage into what its backers see as the proper channels: lawsuits, think tanks and voting for establishment-backed candidates. This is reflected in how these outlets are covering contemporary opposition to Donald Trump.

The New York Times (9/17/25) wrote about a new Democratic think tank, the Searchlight Institute, that attributes the party’s recent losses to “too much emphasis on issues like climate change and LGBTQ rights…at the expense, some argue, of appealing to voters in battleground states.”

Paraphrasing the think tank’s founder, Adam Jentleson, the paper’s Reid J. Epstein noted that

organizations focused on climate change, gun control and LGBTQ rights have all managed to get Democratic presidential hopefuls on the record taking far-left positions to the detriment of their general election performance.

The Times quoted operatives who disagreed with Jentleson, but didn’t bother to analyze his essential claims: Were those positions really “far left” and alienating to the party’s base? What evidence is there that candidates who took certain positions on climate change and/or LGBTQ rights underperformed in general elections as a result of those positions?

To the Times, the needs and preferences of the party’s “liberal base” are inscrutable and beside the point; what matters is the guidance of self-appointed experts like Jentleson, whose think tank is “subsidized by a roster of billionaire donors,” including prominent hedge fund managers and real estate investors.

‘A lot of compromise’

In a New York Times column (4/17/25) calling for a “national civic uprising” against Trump, David Brooks argued that the mass rallies Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders led in 2025 were “ineffective” because they were “partisan,” and made opposition to Trump “seem like a normal contest between Democrats and Republicans.”

Yet one day earlier, the Times (4/16/25) reported that the Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez rallies had “drawn enormous crowds” and were “energizing a beaten-down Democratic Party.” And according to a Sanders adviser, the paper noted, “21% of those who signed up to attend Mr. Sanders’ events reported that they were independents, and 8% said they were Republicans.”

Organizing mass rallies that expose thousands of listeners in conservative areas to critiques, not just of Trump, but of oligarchy in general, seems like an effective means of diluting right-wing power and demonstrating that leading Democrats and their allies care about Americans throughout the country, not just in blue states. But to those in corporate media, the point of politics is not to inspire regular people to organize and win broadly popular demands, but to “build power” and “do good things” by, as the New York Times’ Ezra Klein suggested in a recent interview with the New Yorker’s David Remnick (9/29/25), engaging in “a lot of compromise and a lot of working with people who we have very, very deep disagreements with.”

Klein is far from the only Democrat who believes we should take “an approach to politics that we think will expand our coalition such that we are not always within two points of losing to Donald Trump or the people around him.” But to Klein, that means penning paeans to hatemongers like the late Charlie Kirk (New York Times, 9/11/25), not standing up to plutocrats.

‘A better story’

Despite evidence that mass issue-based organizing campaigns can and do politicize people, bring them into effective coalitions and achieve significant victories, corporate media outlets and establishment leaders remain laser-focused on encouraging the rank and file to elect centrists rather than build mass movements.

As CBS News (12/16/25) recently reported, former President Barack Obama—still one of the Democratic Party’s most popular figures—is urging Democrats to “focus on winning the midterms and developing ‘a better story’ to tell voters, rather than on ‘nerdy’ internal disagreements.” The man once touted as the nation’s “organizer in chief” has long since abandoned encouraging Americans to organize, fight for and win life-changing policies; he is advising them to focus on winning the midterms by burnishing their brand.

The endurance of Trump, who won more votes than Kamala Harris in 2024 but has never won the consistent support of a majority of Americans, revealed to many that they cannot trust US political leaders to protect the rights and interests of ordinary people. Campaigns like Mamdani’s in New York, and recently elected Mayor Katie Wilson’s in Seattle, have shown people around the world that they have the power to win the policies and elect the leaders they want, without top-down instruction or management from—and despite interference by—elites.

To pundits and corporate media outlets, this is a dangerous lesson: If everyday people realize they don’t need overpaid consultants or self-declared experts to win real change, how long can the status quo be maintained by its beneficiaries?

The consequences of President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) are already apparent. Millions have already lost health insurance. Millions more face soaring costs.

Nevertheless, fierce political opposition to a national Medicare for All legislation remains. The only possible path forward is to enact universal health care programs in those states where the electorate will be receptive. To facilitate this process, the State Based Universal Health Care Act (SBUHCA) has been introduced into both the United States Senate (S. 2286) and House (HR. 4406). This bill establishes minimal standards for state-based healthcare delivery programs and codifies the transfer of funds for healthcare services from Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) to states with state-based programs.

Over the past 60 years, repeated attempts to improve the quality and availability of healthcare have had some success. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson passed our first national healthcare legislation: Medicare for those age 65 and over and for younger adults with disabilities. Medicaid for indigent people. Most working- and middle-class Americans were excluded. Presumably working Americans would get health insurance via their workplace. Presidents Clinton and Obama, neither of whom pushed for passage of a universal program, were able to pass legislation providing incremental change. Clinton’s “Healthcare Act of 1997” and Obama’s “Affordable Care Act” of 2010 reduced the number of uninsured Americans. These bills, however, did not insure everyone or address segregation within the insurance system. They did not stem the rising cost of health care or reduce the number of underinsured persons with medical debt. They are responsible for the convoluted and cumbersome healthcare system we have today.

It is helpful to look back at the Social Security Amendment of 1965 that created the Medicare and Medicaid programs. In the days before the 1965 Civil Rights Act, Democrats usually enjoyed wide majorities in both the Senate and the House. There was however a confounder. Their majority included a block of Southern politicians whose principles were akin to those of their Civil War era Democratic Party predecessors. To gain their support, Johnson had to craft legislation that would somehow assure continued inequality between White and Black Americans. A true Medicare program was offered only to older retired Americans. That legislation required that hospital funding would be contingent upon hospital desegregation. In fact, hospital desegregation was achieved. Working age people however would be served by Medicaid, a program with means testing that provides care only to people at the poverty level. Details of the program are left to the discretion of the states. Most wage-earning, working-class people are thus excluded from the government program. Practical details of the program are left to the discretion of each state. The drawback became apparent during Covid when ten red states rejected the Medicaid supplements offered via the Affordable Care Act. Covid mortality in those states was greater than in those that participated in the Medicaid expansion.

Passage of a state-based program thus poses a conundrum: will passage of a state-based program serve as an initial step towards a national program? Or, with single-payer programs in place in progressive states, will the push for true national universal program be abandoned? The Medicaid experience bodes poorly for the success of a state-based plan. On the other hand, the history of the Canadian healthcare system shows that a state-based program may serve as a solid foundation for evolution to a nationwide plan. The Canadian program began in 1947 as a Saskatchewan-wide hospital insurance program for that province. Over the years, health programs were developed in other provinces such that in 1984, these coalesced into one: the Federal Canada Health Act.

With its New York Health Act (NYHA), New York State is now at the forefront of the movement toward state-based healthcare legislation. The notion that progressive legislation should originate in New York State has precedent. In the aftermath of the early 20th century Greenwich Village Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire, Frances Perkins, then a social worker and executive secretary of the newly formed Statewide Committee on Safety, was instrumental in crafting minimum wage, child labor and worker safety laws for the State. These State laws would later become the template for much of FDR’s New Deal legislation.

The NYHA would provide comprehensive coverage to all New York residents. The bill would establish a trust fund to hold money for patients and pay providers. Providers would bill the fund for services. Fees would be negotiated. Patients’ choices of physicians would not be limited by networks or prior authorizations. Nor would the bill dictate physicians’ methods of practice. All New Yorkers would pay a progressive graduated annual tax scaled according to income. Capital gains and stock transfers would be taxed as well. Additional funds would be available from Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP. While these funds could be transferred to the states via a wraparound process, SBUHCA would codify this transfer of funds. Patients would make no further healthcare payments. No co-pays, deductions, payment at the point of service, or denials. No one would have medical debt. It is projected that 9 of 10 New Yorkers would pay less for medical care under the NYHA than they pay now.

New Yorkers can afford the NYHA. All other industrial nations provide better care to their citizens and at lower cost. New York can do the same. The cost of providing comprehensive care to include those services now not covered by Medicare, e.g., dental, visual and auditory along with long term care, is large. But eliminating the middlemen in the insurance, pharmaceutical and other provider industries would produce sizable savings. A recent Rand Corporation analysis assumed that the rates for physicians’ fees and other service providers would be greater than Medicare rates but less than that of more generous providers. The analysis concluded that the NYHA would reduce the overall cost of healthcare by 4%.

Where does the NYHA stand today? The process of advancing legislation from its drafting toits passage is arduous. Presently, the NYHA has a majority of co-sponsors in both chambers: 32 in the Senate; 78 in the Assembly. More public support for the bill is necessary, however, before legislators will advance the bill to the legislative chambers for a vote. Opposition from two major public service unions has also hindered efforts to bring the bill to a vote.

Passage of the NYHA would be a meaningful forward step toward adequate health insurance for all. We must continue the fight.

As President Donald Trump’s dictatorial grip over America worsens, his violations of our Constitution, federal laws, and international treaties become more brazen. Only the organized people can stop this assault on our democracy by firing him, through impeachment, the power accorded to Congress by our Founders. This is one of the few things that he cannot control.

According to a PRRI’s (Public Religion Research Institute) poll, “a majority of Americans (56%) agree that ‘President Trump is a dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys American democracy’ up from 52% in March 2025.” Trump’s recent actions will only further increase this number.

In earlier columns, I discussed the potential power of

1. The Contented Classes;
2. The small minority of progressive billionaires; and
3. The huge potential of the four ex-presidents–George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden, who detest Trump but are mostly silent, and are not organizing their tens of millions of angry voters in all Congressional Districts.

A fourth formidable constituency, if organized, is retired military officers who have their own reasons for dumping Trump. Start with the ex-generals whom Trump named as Secretary of Defense (James Mattis); John Kelly, as US Secretary of Homeland Security and White House Chief of Staff; and Mark Milley, who headed the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

High military brass have sworn to uphold the Constitution, which does not allow for monarchs or dictators.

Trump introduced many nominees with sky-high praise. When they tried to do their job and restrain Trump’s lawlessness, slanders, and chronic lies to the public, his attitude toward them cooled, and then he savaged them. Ultimately, he fired several of them in his first term.

During a November 2018 trip to France to mark the WWI armistice centennial, Trump canceled a planned visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, where many Americans killed at Belleau Wood are buried. Trump said he canceled the visit to the cemetery because of the rain. The Atlantic magazine reported that Trump claimed that “‘the helicopter couldn’t fly’ and that the Secret Service wouldn’t drive him there. Neither claim was true.” Trump especially disliked Kelly saying about Trump that “a person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them.’” This sentiment, coming from Trump, a serial draft dodger, rankled Kelly. (Of course, the persistent prevaricator Trump denied saying these words.)

The retired military officers’ case against Trump is too long to list fully. They were, however, summarized by one retiree, who cited the military code of justice and declared that were he to be tried under that code, Trump would be court-martialed and jailed many times over. Consider some of the would-be charges: constant lying about serious matters, including his own illegal acts; using his office to enrich himself; unconstitutionally and illegally bombing countries that do not threaten the United States; using federal troops inside our country; and escalating piracy on the high seas, with misuse of the US Coast Guard.

Moreover, they resent deeply how Trump came into his second term, enabled by the feeble Democratic Party, and fired career generals for no cause other than to replace them with his cronies and sycophants. This includes firing the highly regarded first woman to head the Coast Guard. He has discarded the policy aimed at ensuring the military reflects America’s diversity by providing equal opportunities for women and minorities to serve.

Retired military officers despise Pete Hegseth, the incompetent, foul-mouthed puppet secretary of defense, for his mindless aggressions, misogyny, and mistreatment or forcing out of long-time public servants in the Pentagon. They find it appalling that Trump’s statement that the six ex-military members of Congress who reminded US soldiers not to obey an illegal order (long part of the Military Code of Justice and other laws) should be executed. This impeachable outburst was followed by Hegseth moving to punish Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), one of the signers, by seeking to lower his reserve rank and reduce his pension.

They also resent Trump reducing services at the VA due to mass layoffs.

What could be keeping these officers on the sidelines? Many of the very top brass have become consultants to the weapons manufacturers. Others fear retribution affecting their retirement. Others want to avoid the Trumpian incitement to his extreme loyalists to use the internet anonymously to attack any critics.

None of the above should be controlling factors. After all, these officers were expected to face the dangers of any military battle courageously.

Retired Colonel Larry Wilkerson, former chief of staff of Secretary of State Colin Powell, has been outspoken in the media against Trump’s dangerous policies for years. There are others who have taken on Trump, the White House Bully-in-Chief.

Besides, the Republic’s existence is urgently at stake here. Trump is overthrowing the federal government, invading America’s cities with his growing corps of storm troopers, while threatening to go much further with his mantra, “This is just the beginning.” High military brass have sworn to uphold the Constitution, which does not allow for monarchs or dictators.

Once these former generals and admirals and other high officers take a united stand, they will receive great mass media attention. They will give great credibility to the expanding peaceful opposition to Trump. They will provide the needed backbone to the Democrats in Congress to hold shadow hearings to press for impeachment and removal from office Fuhrer Trump, who daily provides Congress with openly boastful impeachable actions.

For example, he told the New York Times on January 9, 2026, that only “my own morality. My own mind.” restrains him. Not the Constitution, not federal laws and regulations, not treaties we have signed under Republican and Democratic presidents.

He took an oath to obey the Constitution and violated it from Day One.

Stepping forward with an adequate staff, funds that would be raised instantly, the fired generals would bring out retired officers and veterans down the ranking ladder all over the country. Already, Veterans for Peace, with over 100 chapters, is ready for rapid expansion. (See, https://www.veteransforpeace.org/).

Remember this: TRUMP’S DICTATORIAL RAMPAGE IS ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE, MUCH WORSE. Venezuela, Cuba, Panama, Greenland, Nigeria, and Iran are on the growing list for Trump’s endless warmongering. He has openly declared more than once, “Nothing can stop me.” Those words should be sufficient for enough top retired military officers to exert their special legacy of patriotism for the “United States of America and the Republic for which it stands…”

At dawn on January 15, the infrastructure I documented in “The Disappearance Machine” completed its pivot. FBI agents seized a journalist’s devices containing 1,169 federal sources and know every person those sources ever contacted.

The surveillance tools built to map immigrant networks are now mapping dissent. The databases are merging. The lists are compiling. The machine is building its lists.

This essay asks when and how we will build ours.

In August, I preached and I warned: The United States had built a system for disappearance at scale, and it wouldn't stay at the border. I was dismissed as alarmist. Five months later, the wolf is through the door. The FBI at a journalist's home at dawn, seizing the devices that map everyone who ever talked.

The machine built to disappear immigrants is now being calibrated for journalists, whistleblowers, and political opposition. This is not the beginning of that process. It is the middle.

On January 15, 2026, FBI agents arrived at Hannah Natanson’s Virginia home before first light. They took her phone. Two laptops. A Garmin watch. The Washington Post reporter had spent a year as the “federal government whisperer,” building a network of 1,169 Signal contacts from federal workers documenting President Donald Trump’s transformation of government. Every one of those contacts trusted that encryption meant protection. Now their names, numbers, and message histories sit in FBI forensic labs. The trust was misplaced. The exposure is underway.

This is not a separate story from the immigration enforcement apparatus I documented in “The Disappearance Machine.” It is the same infrastructure, the same surveillance tools, the same logic of bureaucratic erasure, the same expansion I warned was inevitable.

The machine built to disappear immigrants is now being calibrated for journalists, whistleblowers, and political opposition. This is not the beginning of that process. It is the middle. The die is cast. The machinery is active. And it is learning how to map dissent the same way it learned to map migration: through databases, devices, and the quiet accumulation of lists that no one sees until it is too late.

The Infrastructure Does Not Discriminate

The tools were built for the border. They will not stay there.

In “The Disappearance Machine,” I described how the United States government contracted with Palantir, Amazon, and Anduril to build AI-powered surveillance systems for immigration enforcement. Predictive software. Commercial databases that map not just individuals but their relationships, behaviors, and associations. Cell signals tracked. Protest attendance logged. Clinic visits recorded. The same way totalitarian regimes once tracked enemies by ledger and index card, we now track them by algorithm and metadata.

That infrastructure was never going to stay confined to immigration. The tools don’t discriminate. They sort, flag, and process by design. A database built to map immigrant networks maps any network. Software trained to predict “deportability” predicts any target category you feed it. Surveillance systems deployed to track one population can pivot to another with a policy memo and a shift in priorities.

The Natanson raid makes that pivot visible. The FBI seized devices containing years of communications, contacts, and location data. Signal conversations with phone numbers traceable through government records. Email chains revealing addresses. Browser history showing which government sites she visited and when. Even the Garmin watch, because location data maps patterns of movement, meetings, and association.

This is not traditional criminal investigation. This is network mapping at scale. The same forensic capabilities applied to immigration databases are now being applied to journalist-source relationships. The architecture is identical. Only the target has changed.

The Lists Are Always the Core

Every authoritarian system runs on lists. Oskar Schindler knew that. He built one to save lives because the same machinery was building them to end lives. The list doesn't care what it's for. It just processes names.

The Disappearance Machine operates on lists. More than 20 million people are being targeted, already within reach of the immigration enforcement system based on the government’s own data. Not just undocumented immigrants but visa holders, DACA recipients, parolees, asylum seekers, aid workers, and US citizen children connected by family ties. The list converts proximity into guilt, connection into evidence, care into crime.

Now the same list-making infrastructure is being turned inward. Attorney General Pam Bondi’s December 2025 memo directs the FBI to compile “lists of groups or entities engaged in acts that may constitute domestic terrorism.” These lists are compiled in secret. No notice. No hearing. No means for redress. Updated every 30 days. The FBI has established cash reward systems for informants and publicized tip lines for reporting suspected domestic terrorists.

None of this is new. It is merely new again.

A government employee on both lists, flagged for immigration ties and for contact with a journalist, becomes a higher-priority target.

The FBI’s Security Index and Rabble Rouser Index, exposed by the 1975 Church Committee, rolled civil rights leaders, clergy, and students into a homogeneous category of threats to national security. The Church Committee’s core lesson remains relevant: When the government builds systems for tracking domestic enemies, those systems rarely stay confined to people engaged in actual crime. They expand, driven by broad labels and institutional instincts to gather more information than needed.

The Natanson raid exposes how these lists are populated in practice. Seize a reporter’s devices. Map every source who ever made contact. Cross-reference with employment databases to identify agencies, departments, positions. Match timing of communications with leaks or published stories. Build a network diagram of everyone connected to information the government wants to control.

Hannah Natanson’s 1,169 sources on her federal government beat are not the whole exposure. Add thousands from years covering education. Sources from her January 6 coverage. Breaking news contacts from mass shootings and disasters. Email and phone contacts accumulated across a career going back to 2019. We are talking about thousands of people whose information now sits in FBI databases, flagged by association with someone the government decided to investigate.

Most did not share classified information. They shared workplace conditions, policy changes, agency mismanagement. That is often protected whistleblowing under law. But protection under law means little when the goal is not prosecution. The goal is mapping. Building lists. Identifying networks. Creating a comprehensive picture of who talks to whom about what.

And here is what makes this moment different from the Church Committee era: The lists are converging. The lists from immigration enforcement, the DOGE data accumulations, and journalist surveillance are being compiled in the same databases, using the same tools, following the same logic. Today they are separate categories. Tomorrow they can be merged, cross-referenced, analyzed for patterns. A government employee on both lists, flagged for immigration ties and for contact with a journalist, becomes a higher-priority target. The infrastructure doesn’t just track. It learns. It predicts. It escalates.

Bureaucratic Disappearance, Scaled and Refined

The violence hides in the paperwork.

In “The Disappearance Machine,” I described how people are being taken and files vanish. Lawyers find no records. Families are left with no answers. The system hides itself in bureaucracy. Cloud servers instead of filing cabinets. Charter flights instead of cattle cars. Software platforms instead of stamped passports. The fear is made public through spectacle, a raid televised, a camp built in a week, while the machine operates in silence.

The Natanson raid follows the same pattern. The spectacle is the dawn knock, the devices seized, the attorney general’s public statements about “classified information” and “national security.” That is theater. The real work happens in silence. FBI forensic labs extracting years of data. Analysts building network maps. Names added to databases. Sources flagged for investigation. All conducted under legal process that makes it feel orderly, authorized, routine.

This is what bureaucratic disappearance looks like when applied to dissent rather than detention. No one is being put on a plane. But sources are being exposed, careers destroyed, networks mapped, and fear distributed through the knowledge that contact with a journalist creates a permanent record accessible to law enforcement. The outcome is the same as physical disappearance: silence. Self-censorship. Networks dissolved not through arrests but through the rational calculation that speaking carries unacceptable risk.

The lesson is being taught one case at a time. Every federal employee now knows that contacting a journalist may mean their name ends up in an FBI file. Every journalist knows their sources face exposure if devices are seized. Every advocacy organization knows they might be labeled domestic terrorists and subjected to the same surveillance. The chilling effect operates not through mass arrests, which would be too visible, too contestable, but through the quiet accumulation of cases that teach everyone else to stay silent or risk everything.

This is how totalitarian systems operate. Not through spectacular violence but through bureaucratic process that converts dissent into data, association into evidence, and speech into crime. The machine does not announce its intentions. It simply processes the next case, adds the next name, expands the next database. And by the time the pattern is obvious to everyone, it is too late to stop it.

The Expansion Was Always the Plan

“If you’re telling yourself this is just about immigration, you are lying to yourself.” That is what I wrote in “The Disappearance Machine.” The infrastructure now in place can be turned inward with a single policy shift. A protest database. A subpoenaed group chat. A misread message. The files are already compiled. The logic is already tested. What began with immigration will not stop at the border. It will not stop at citizenship. It will not stop at all, unless it is broken.

The Natanson raid is that expansion happening in real time.

The surveillance tools built for immigration enforcement are now being applied to domestic political opposition. The lists are being compiled. The networks are being mapped. The legal framework is being established piece by piece.

This is the moment when action matters. Not later, when the pattern is obvious to everyone. Now, when the machinery is visible to those willing to look.

National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, issued September 2025, directs law enforcement to investigate “acts of recruiting or radicalizing persons” for “political violence, terrorism, or conspiracy against rights.” It identifies ideological markers as red flags: “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity.” “Extremism on migration, race, and gender.” “Hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”

The Bondi memo implements this vision by directing the FBI to compile lists of groups engaged in “organized doxing campaigns, swatting, rioting, looting, trespass, assault, destruction of property, threats of violence, and civil disorder.” These categories are breathtakingly broad. They could encompass virtually any protest that becomes disruptive, any criticism framed as “anti-American,” any opposition to immigration enforcement or support for “radical gender ideology.”

What we are witnessing is the creation of a domestic terrorism designation process without legal foundation. No federal law permits the president to label domestic groups as terrorist organizations. Yet the administration proceeds anyway, using the same infrastructure built for immigration enforcement. Secret lists compiled. Cash rewards for informants. Joint Terrorism Task Forces, historically used against foreign threats, now mobilized against American citizens engaged in constitutionally protected activities.

This is not a future risk. It is operational now. The Natanson raid demonstrates how the system works in practice. A journalist documents government actions. Sources provide information. The government decides that information is dangerous. Devices are seized. Networks are mapped. Sources are exposed. Legal process provides cover. Bureaucracy makes it feel orderly. And the next journalist, the next source, the next researcher learns the lesson: Silence is survival.

What History Teaches

Ask survivors of authoritarian regimes what they remember. They rarely describe the first moment of violence. They describe the silence.

They remember when neighbors vanished and no one asked where they had gone. They remember how fear hardened into habit. How routine replaced resistance. How everyone waited too long to believe what was happening because believing meant acting, and acting meant risk.

We have seen this before. Not identical, but unmistakably familiar. In Nazi Germany, it was lists, uniforms, house visits, household registries, and public silence. Files became train rosters. Erasure became routine. Citizens looked away because the violence arrived not as chaos but as order. The Stasi in East Germany compiled comprehensive surveillance files on millions of citizens. The KGB used networks of informants to map dissent. The Gestapo maintained card files on suspected opponents. Each system relied on the same core infrastructure: comprehensive surveillance, secret lists, bureaucratic processing, and the normalization of disappearance.

The technology changes. The logic does not.

Now it is cloud servers instead of filing cabinets. AI-powered network analysis instead of hand-drawn relationship maps. Device seizures instead of house searches. The scale of what is now possible exceeds anything historical authoritarian regimes could achieve. The Stasi employed hundreds of thousands of informants and took decades to compile files on millions of people. The FBI can map networks of millions in months, using tools that automatically analyze communications, predict associations, and flag targets for investigation.

One device seizure exposes thousands of sources. Metadata reveals patterns of contact that would have taken years of human surveillance to establish. Location data maps every meeting, every movement, every association. And the databases that receive this information do not forget. Unlike paper files that could be destroyed, digital records persist indefinitely. They can be searched instantaneously, cross-referenced with immigration records, tax records, health records, financial transactions, social media activity, and location data from cell towers and traffic cameras.

This is not paranoia. This is documented capability. The contracts are public. The technologies are commercial. The legal frameworks are established. The only question is how far the government chooses to go. And history teaches that governments with comprehensive surveillance capability always go further than they initially promise.

The question survivors of other regimes ask is always the same: Why didn’t anyone act sooner? And the answer is always the same: because it arrived not as chaos but as order. Forms being filed. Legal procedures followed. Systems working exactly as designed. By the time the violence becomes undeniable, the infrastructure is already complete and the space for resistance has closed.

We are in that middle space now. The infrastructure is operational but not yet complete. The expansion is happening but not yet normalized. The lists are being compiled but not yet acted upon at full scale. This is the moment when action matters. Not later, when the pattern is obvious to everyone. Now, when the machinery is visible to those willing to look.

What Schindler Knew

Schindler understood something essential: The list is the power. Whoever holds the names decides who disappears and who survives. He built a list to save lives because the same machinery, in other hands, was building lists to end them. Same columns. Same categories. Same bureaucratic logic. Different purpose. That was the only difference that mattered.

Hannah Natanson built a list too. Not names to save from trains, but names willing to speak truth. 1,169 sources who believed that documenting the dismantling of democratic government mattered more than their comfort, their careers, their safety. She built a network of witnesses. A chorus of voices. A record of resistance written in encrypted messages and quiet meetings and the steady courage of people who decided that silence was not an option.

That list is now in FBI hands. The sources are exposed. The network is mapped. The chorus is identified. The machinery built to disappear immigrants has turned inward, and the first thing it seized was a record of everyone who ever talked.

This is not coincidence. It is strategy.

The answer to a list of targets is a list too long to process, too distributed to seize, too deeply rooted to pull from the ground.

Hannah Arendt wrote that totalitarianism succeeds not through violence alone but through isolation. It atomizes. It separates. It makes each person feel alone, unseen, unable to trust that anyone else sees what they see or feels what they feel. The purpose of seizing a journalist’s sources is not prosecution. It is silence. It is severing. It is teaching every federal employee, every potential whistleblower, every citizen with something true to say that they stand alone. That no one will protect them. That the machine sees all, remembers all, and forgives nothing.

The answer to isolation is solidarity. The answer to silence is a thousand voices. The answer to a list of targets is a list too long to process, too distributed to seize, too deeply rooted to pull from the ground.

Schindler saved 1,100 lives because he understood that the list was the power and he seized it. Hannah Natanson documented a transformation of government because she understood that the truth required witnesses and she gathered them. Both built something the machinery could not build for itself: trust. Connection. A web of humans who chose each other over safety.

That is what the machine cannot tolerate. Not the leaks. Not the stories. The solidarity. The proof that isolation can be broken, that people will still speak to people, that the chorus can grow louder even as the machinery grows stronger.

What we build now determines what survives. The networks we create. The connections we protect. The records we keep in too many hands to seize, too many places to raid, too many voices to silence.

The machine is processing names. It will not stop. It does not tire. It does not forget.

But neither does memory. Neither does history. Neither do the witnesses who refuse to look away.

Schindler built a list. Hannah built a list.

Now build yours.

This essay builds on “The Disappearance Machine,” published in Common Dreams, August 30, 2025. A comprehensive academic version has been accepted for peer-reviewed publication and will appear this spring.

In Charlie Chaplin’s 1940 masterpiece The Great Dictator, there is a scene in which his character “Adenoid Hynkel,” ruler of the antisemitic and fascistic nation named “Tomania,” dreamily juggles a huge balloon painted as a globe—until it bursts. Should our balloon burst, and the possibility is becoming ever greater, the consequences will dwarf anything that Charlie might have imagined.

Since the start of Donald Trump’s second term in 2025, his cult of the personality picked up steam. The Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts has been renamed the Trump Kennedy Center. The president’s name also graces the new $300 million ballroom at the White House and various other Washington buildings. In this vein, he has also called for the construction of a new “Arc de Trump,” and—significantly—plastered his moniker on a new class of Navy battleships.

On the campaign trail, Trump had promised there would be no new wars and that the United States would no longer serve as the “world’s policeman.” But we should have seen what was coming. Glimpses of the future were already apparent when the president changed the “Gulf of Mexico” into the “Gulf of America,” demanded that Denmark surrender Greenland to the United States, and called upon Canada to become our 51st state. Nor was that all. Trump renamed the Department of Defense the Department of War and, despite the cost-cutting frenzy led by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, he successfully pressured Congress into passing the first $1 trillion military budget in American history.

Trump’s crass public campaign for the Nobel Prize failed. An Israeli Peace Prize and another from soccer’s FIFA governing body, both hastily created for Trump, proved merely embarrassing substitutes. His attempts to coerce peace in the Russia-Ukraine War had been unsuccessful. The Gaza ceasefire was appearing increasingly fragile, and it was clear that the president had stoked international tensions with his strangely miscalculated tariff policy.

Trump’s actions normalize contempt for international law, rights of national self-determination, and sovereignty.

Trump claims that he has ended more than eight wars all over the globe. But the statement is thin on evidence, whereas it is abundantly clear that the United States was involved in 622 air and drone strike across seven countries in 2025: Afghanistan,, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen. The president has never been a staunch advocate of international law or human rights. To the contrary: Trump stated quite openly that he recognized no constraint on his international decision-making authority other than his own “morality,” which should have surprised no one.

As 2026 begins, the president has taken over Venezuela, kidnapped its president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, charging them with “narco-terrorism.” To achieve these ends, the United States launched 22 strikes that killed 110 people, murdered sailors seeking to surrender, and shelled vessels without first determining whether they were actually carrying drugs. Nor did Congress approve Trump’s act of war; it was not even briefed. The enterprise was instead prepared by Trump and a few close advisers in consultation with oil company executives; indeed, this was a war waiting for an excuse to wage it.

Why did Trump do it? The president needed something dramatic in the face of slipping poll numbers, mumblings of discontent among a few supporters, the mess surrounding the Epstein files, the anger resulting from an economic “affordability” crisis, changes in healthcare that put millions at risk, and the growing repulsion against the storm-trooper tactics of Immigration and Customs Enforcement against immigrants. In 2024, moreover, Trump had demanded that oil companies and the energy sector donate $1 billion to his campaign. They gave him $75 million. Corporations always expect something for their money, and perhaps providing them with a profitable surprise would make them more generous the next time around.

Given Trump’s desire to recreate a past golden age, it made sense for him to justify his Venezuelan policy by invoking the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. This seminal document of American diplomatic history warned foreign powers against interfering in the Western Hemisphere, and contributed to the belief that Central and South America constituted the United States’ sphere of influence. However, Trump gave it a radical twist by declaring that the United States would “run” Venezuela until an “acceptable” sovereign is installed and for now, under his stewardship, the United States would “indefinitely” control sales of its oil and minerals on the open market.

This he calls the “Donroe” Doctrine. Justifications are of secondary importance. He insisted that the Maduro regime was an agent of “narco-terrorism,” which dominated fentanyl smuggling operations, but it turned out that Venezuela was responsible for only about 5% of the fentanyl entering the United States. Trump then changed the narrative by claiming that Maduro was the mastermind behind the cocaine plague, and when that accusation fell flat, he shifted it again by condemning him as a war criminal for possessing weapons of mass destruction.

Americans cheer interventions when they begin, but quickly grow weary when the price comes due. And invading Venezuela might prove to be a high price to pay. There are striking similarities with the plans laid bare in Venezuela and the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. In both cases, there was the lure of oil, a murderous dictator to overthrow, an exaggerated “existential” threat, an arrogant conviction the citizenry of another country would welcome American “liberators” with open arms, and disregard for the chaos that reckless regime change would generate.

Maduro’s regime was authoritarian, brutal, corrupt, and incompetent. But Trump’s actions normalize contempt for international law, rights of national self-determination, and sovereignty. Indeed, calling his overthrow an international police action against narco-terrorism doesn’t change that reality. Arbitrarily snatching world leaders creates widespread fear and destruction and contributes to creating a politics based on the “war of each against all’ that Thomas Hobbes feared above all else, if only because it heightens instability

As became clear in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, to leave a nation without a sovereign is to condemn it to violent rivalry between paramilitary groups. Vice President Delcy Rodriguez was installed by the Venezuelan Supreme Court as “interim” president for up to 90 days, though that can be extended by legal means, and an election awaits in the future. She is in an untenable situation. Rodriguez must navigate between independence and submission. She must either stand on her own and risk regime change or serve as a shadow sovereign lacking legitimacy and power.

Trump is satisfied with what has transpired, and he feels emboldened. He is already saber-rattling while making similar charges of drug running against Colombia, Mexico, and Cuba. Trump has also grown more bellicose in insisting that Denmark prioritize American “national security” interests, and either sell or prepare to lose its autonomous territory of Greenland. Whether discord among members of NATO will strengthen its enemies is far less important than Trump’s ability to exercise power in an unimpeded manner

Besides, these policies can change in the blink of an eye should Trump find that alternative approaches better serve his purposes. He has stated openly that his vaunted unpredictability is a tactic to keep his enemies off guard. He neglected to mention, of course, that his erratic behavior gets in the way of planning, heightens distrust, and serves as an incentive for other nations to spend more on defense. He wishes only to be able to do what he wants, when he wants, and wherever he wants. This spirit is infusing his foreign policy and contributing to a spreading existential fear of military conflict.

Nationwide protests have rocked Iran in response to the Islamic Republic’s repression of all democratic tendencies, its incompetence in dealing with questions of infrastructure and water, the corruption of the mullahs, and the complete collapse of the currency. These are brave people risking their lives in the streets, but Trump feels it his duty to take center stage. He has warned that he will intervene should the government wind up killing protesters. It sounds heroic, but such warnings only put protesters at greater risk because the leadership can now claim that they are traitors and agents of “The Great Satan”—and that is precisely what the Supreme Leader has done.

Trump was not thinking about the negative consequences his words might have for those Iranians fighting for freedom. But that is the point: He never thinks about others, only about himself. More likely Trump is thinking about sabotaging further negotiations on a nuclear deal; undermining a regional rival; and making himself appear once again, as with the Maduro affair, as the champion of democracy and peace. Even if the rest of the world disagrees, indeed, that is how he can view himself—and that is what counts.

President Donald Trump’s new “Great Health Care Plan” is anything but.

Unsurprisingly, Trump’s concepts of a plan fail to even begin to reverse the damage he caused when he made massive cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act in order to fund tax cuts for billionaires. Now, Trump and his Republican allies are trying to cover up the gaping wound they have created with a Band-Aid. At the same time, Americans are desperate for relief from Trumpflation, including rapidly rising healthcare costs.

Too many Americans struggle to get the healthcare they need even with insurance. A recent poll found that more than 1-in-3 adults in the US had skipped or postponed needed healthcare in the last 12 months because they couldn’t afford the cost. The situation is even more dire for the uninsured, with 75% of uninsured adults under age 65 reporting going without needed care because of the cost.

Shutdown negotiations and subsequent scattershot health ideas from the White House and Republicans in Congress show they have no real idea what to do when it comes to actually bringing down the cost of healthcare in America. President Trump’s half-baked plan appears doomed to fail and doesn’t even have the support of Republicans in Congress. Plus the only alternate Republican plans for healthcare that currently exist strictly serve corporations and fail to provide relief to patients.

Every other comparably wealthy country has some version of universal healthcare, and none of them would trade their systems for the wasteful and haphazard US system.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has undertaken efforts to further privatize Medicare, including adding Medicare Advantage-style prior authorization to traditional Medicare, risking access to care for seniors by delaying and denying needed care. It also plans to place Medicare enrollees in private health contracts, similar to Medicare Advantage, where the corporations in charge are incentivized to place corporate profits ahead of patient needs.

Americans are angry about our broken healthcare system, and they want a comprehensive solution. One recent survey found that 65% of voters support a Medicare for All-style system. A similar number of voters said that the federal government right now does too little to ensure Americans can afford the healthcare they need. An in-depth study that looked across four years of data found that more than a quarter of adults went without needed care or experienced cost burdens for care they did receive over the four-year period of the study. The high cost of care and limited coverage leaves tens of millions of Americans without adequate coverage, and millions of them end up saddled with medical debt, something unheard of in other comparably wealthy countries. We need to take bold but commonsense action to finally guarantee that everyone in the US can get the healthcare they need.

Providers and hospitals are also desperate for reform. The cost of doing business in our broken healthcare system is causing hospitals to close or shutter crucial services. Providers are facing huge challenges as greedy profiteers, including private equity companies, gobble up their hospitals and medical practices and impose cost-cutting measures in the service of maximizing profits.

Fortunately, Medicare for All would address all of these issues and finally put the health of Americans ahead of corporate profits. Medicare for All would guarantee that everyone in the US can get the care they need when they need it, without financial barriers or hoops to jump through, and would be cheaper than our current system while providing coverage that is better than any commercial health insurance plan. It would do this by taking Medicare—one of the most popular parts of our healthcare system—improving it by expanding available services, ending out-of-pocket costs, and expanding it to everyone in the country.

Corporations and certain members of Congress purposefully make such a commonsense system sound like an impossible leap from America’s current broken system in order to stifle American dissatisfaction with our healthcare and keep shareholders happy. But every other comparably wealthy country has some version of universal healthcare, and none of them would trade their systems for the wasteful and haphazard US system.

We continue to see more members of Congress signing on to support Medicare for All in both the House and the Senate, and more municipalities supporting resolutions in favor of Congress passing Medicare for All. The time has come to unite around Medicare for All and build the movement that can finally make it a reality.

The consequences of our planet's changing climate extend far beyond warming temperatures, rising sea levels, and extreme weather events. Human displacement as a result of the climate crisis is now one of the world's most pressing issues, as estimates predict that there could be more than 1 billion climate refugees by 2050.

The plight of these people is neglected and forgotten as they remain unprotected by the law and are excluded from international aid programs.

Climate refugees are forced to flee their homes as the environment degrades and climate-related disasters take hold. Climate change is now one of the leading causes of mass forced displacement.

Climate change is also increasing rates of poverty, instability, and violence—further drivers of migration.

Climate migrants remain in a murky legal space that neither recognizes nor protects them. In fact, the term is not recognized at all in international law.

Those on the front lines of climate change are often in countries that contributed the least to it. The vast majority of climate migration is internal, which puts an unsustainable strain on the already limited resources of these nations.

"When people are driven out because their local environment has become uninhabitable, it might look like a process of nature, something inevitable... Yet the deteriorating climate is very often the result of poor choices and destructive activity, of selfishness and neglect," said Pope Francis.

A Humanitarian Crisis

• In 2022, climate-related disasters accounted for more than half of new reported displacements.
• Almost 60% of existing refugees and IDPs live in countries that are among the most vulnerable to climate change.
• The demand for humanitarian assistance due to climate-related disasters is predicted to double by 2050.
• In 2023, the countries with the highest numbers of new internal displacements (IDPs) due to environmental disasters were China, Türkiye, the Philippines, Somalia, and Bangladesh.
• Three out of four refugees and displaced people are in countries experiencing both conflict and high risk of climate hazards.
• By 2030, water scarcity could displace 700 million people.
• Up to 75% of Bangladesh sits below sea level. Rising water levels have already affected 25.9 million people.
• Unpredictable rainfall patterns, desertification, and declining agricultural productivity undermine rural livelihoods and force migration to urban areas.
• Climate change perpetuates poverty. The World Bank estimates that without urgent action, an additional 32 -132 million people could be pushed into extreme poverty by 2030.
• Climate migration is not just an issue in developing countries. In 2022, 3.2 million people were either displaced or evacuated due to wildfires, floods, and hurricanes in the US.
• Within Europe, rising sea levels are expected to displace 1.6-5.3 million people by the end of the century.

Expansion of Legal Protections

(Photo by Ramazan B/CC BY 3.0)

Climate migrants remain in a murky legal space that neither recognizes nor protects them. In fact, the term is not recognized at all in international law.

The Refugee Convention, which entered into force in 1954, was established to protect those who had fled persecution from the atrocities of World War II. Its protections extend only to those who must leave their home countries due to war, violence, conflict, or any other kind of maltreatment. It also does not protect those who have been displaced in their own countries.

As the vast majority of climate refugees are not crossing borders nor fleeing violence, their status is outside of the convention's reach. These facts do not mean that these people are less in need of assistance or that their lives are not equally in danger, yet the law overlooks their plight.

Climate migration is a form of adaptation. We can build new pathways for safe and regular migration.

Refugee advocates are pushing for an expansion to the convention to include the rights of those forced to move due to environmental factors, but have met with significant political pushback. Critics argue it would lead to the weakening of protection for those experiencing serious persecution. The difficulty in proving the causal factors of climate migration is a further barrier.

The 1998 Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement help bridge the gap in protecting climate refugees; however, its nonbinding nature limits its practical effect and gives it no legal force. It also does not protect those who must cross borders.

The Global Compact for Migration was adopted in 2018. It was the first United Nations framework on international migration. For the first time, climate change was officially recognized as a driver of migration, but it still does not grant legal protection for climate refugees. Instead, the compact promotes safe, orderly pathways for migrants, including planned relocation, visa options, and humanitarian shelter.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is both the process and the treaty that help countries mitigate the causes and consequences of the climate crisis. It was signed by 154 countries in 1992. Climate migrants aren't explicitly protected by the UNFCCC.

As it stands, although some countries have enacted domestic laws that provide temporary protection for climate refugees, the lack of recognition under the Refugee Convention means there is still no international, legally binding mechanism for them.

Countries are reluctant to sign up to yet another agreement, especially as it may make them responsible for climate migrants who arrive at their borders and promote larger migrant influxes to favored countries. There are many political obstacles which ultimately exacerbate the humanitarian needs of millions.

We must begin to address internal climate displacement in the most vulnerable countries. Tackling the issue at its root is imperative, and the nations historically responsible for the damage must be made to pay.

Climate migration is a form of adaptation. We can build new pathways for safe and regular migration.

The Loss and Damage Fund was established in 2022 at COP27 to address the financial needs of communities severely impacted by climate change. The money would support rehabilitation, recovery, and human mobility. While a brilliant initiative, as of late 2025, rich nations have delivered less than half of what they initially committed to the fund.

Climate Justice is Migrant Justice

Greta Thunberg and Luisa Neubauer participate in a Fridays for Future demonstration in Berlin on September 24, 2021. (Photo by Stefan Müller / CC BY 2.0)

The climate justice movement recognizes that climate change disproportionately affects marginalized and vulnerable communities. It demands that the Global North, which has massive historical accountability, should bear the burden of the solutions. The movement brings social justice, racial justice, human rights, and economic equality into the climate debate.

In July 2025, years of activism by a bold group of law students from the University of the South Pacific paid off. The Vanuatu ICJ Initiative spearheaded legal action that led to a historic advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

The following was adopted unanimously by all 15 judges: Nations have a legal duty to combat the planetary crisis.

The ICJ has, for the first time, officially categorized the climate crisis as an "urgent and existential threat" and emphasized that "cooperation is not a matter of choice for states but a pressing need and a legal obligation." The ICJ opinion can now be used to demand more ambitious climate protection measures, to ensure compliance with the Paris Agreement, to implement national and international climate laws, and potentially to help protect climate migrants.

The initiative also highlighted the vulnerability of small island nations and demonstrated that collective action and legal accountability are essential tools on the journey to justice and sustainable development.

Any justice for climate-induced migration must be human-rights focused. Humanitarian visas, temporary protection, authorization to stay, and bilateral free movement agreements would all help to ease the suffering of those forced to leave their homes.

Invisible No Longer

(Photo by Ilias Bartoli/Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0)

"When we refugees are excluded, our voices are silenced, our experiences go unheard, and the reality of the climate situation in the Global South is blurred" says Ugandan climate justice activist Ayebare Denise.

Climate migrants have remained invisible in climate and migration debates for years. The International Organisation for Migration have been working hard to bring climatic and environmental factors into the spotlight. They are establishing a body of evidence that will definitively prove that climate change, both directly and indirectly, affects human mobility.

The UN Refugee Agency advocates for states' responsibilities and obligations to address the migration crisis caused by climate change. They view climate change as a threat multiplier and are working toward protection frameworks.

Countries must begin cooperating on this global issue and ensure the fair treatment of all refugees.

The debate over establishing a climate refugee status is ongoing, and while a legal definition would be helpful, it would be only a partial solution. The vast majority of climate migrants do not want to leave their homes, their livelihoods, or their communities. Admittedly, this is no easy feat, but we must fix the root of the problem—climate change itself.

Without urgent action, we are all at risk of becoming climate refugees.

While working to address immediate needs, climate discussions should continue to focus on preventive measures. Climate mitigation, adaptation, and a just energy transition are essential.

Countries must begin cooperating on this global issue and ensure the fair treatment of all refugees. We must demand a new comprehensive legal framework for climate refugees to safeguard vulnerable populations and protect those who may be at risk in the future.

Supporting climate refugees is our moral obligation.

As we come up on the one-year mark of the second Trump administration, it’s painful to reflect on all that’s been lost on climate and clean energy progress for our nation and the grave consequences for people and the economy. As families across the nation struggle to pay their rising energy bills, the Trump administration’s efforts to gut clean energy projects and boost volatile, risky, and polluting fossil fuels are a threat to health and pocketbooks. And with the world on the brink of breaching 1.5°C of global warming, this administration’s actions to increase US heat-trapping emissions will have profound implications for years to come.

Fair warning, this blogpost covers some pretty grim ground. But stick with me, please. Documenting the harms and injustices perpetuated by this administration now, as they occur, ensures we bear witness and that the hard work that made prior progress possible is not erased. Let’s make sure we don’t forget the important details as we fight to build a better, brighter future beyond this dark time. A healthier, safer, and more equitable future is ours to create, as UCS President Gretchen Goldman says.

Annus horribilis for people in the United States

From Day One, it was clear that this deeply anti-science administration was intent on blatantly furthering a fossil fuel agenda—people’s health and welfare be damned. President Trump has assembled around him an extremely unqualified, obsequious cabinet and set of advisors, most of whom have no dedication to the public interest and are instead devoted to doing his every bidding.

This increasingly authoritarian regime has operated with impunity to tear up climate and clean energy policies, lie about the scientific realities of climate change and the facts on renewable energy, and ram through measures to boost fossil fuels and the profits of polluters. They have attacked the federal scientific enterprise built up over decades through taxpayer investments, fired or forced out agency experts, and cut funding for critical science. And a compliant Congress has enabled this destructive agenda, including by rubberstamping some of the President’s illegal actions and by failing to exercise its constitutional powers to check his tyrannical power grabs. The passage of the OBBBA, with its multiple provisions directly aimed at undermining clean energy—including wind, solar, batteries, grid infrastructure, and energy efficiency—at the President’s behest was a particularly egregious example of this.

The Sabin Center’s Climate Backtracker shows that, as of January 14, 2026, the Trump administration has taken nearly 300 actions to scale back or halt climate and clean energy progress. UCS’s six-month report on the Trump administration summarized many of the attacks on science and democracy as of July 2025. Many of these actions were previewed in the Project 2025 manifesto, but the magnitude of the harms, and the speed and intensity of the attacks, are shocking, and the impacts have been mounting.

Early destructive actions were taken by DOGE, spearheaded by Elon Musk, taking a hatchet to federal agencies tasked with protecting the public interest and advancing science and innovation. Subsequently, Director of the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought, an architect of Project 2025, has taken a personal and vicious role in many of these attacks (see here and here, for example).

And unfortunately, the full weight of the impacts on people and our economy are only going to become clearer this year, as words and cuts are translated into lived realities for communities across the country. At the same time, many of the administration’s unlawful actions are being challenged in court, and it has lost many of these cases, putting some brakes on some of its worst excesses.

Before diving further into details, it’s important to note two key themes: The Trump administration’s destructive actions are a direct threat to our health, our economic well-being, and to our nation’s ability to build a thriving, fair, innovative economy. These actions demonstrate an utterly corrupt government hell-bent on prioritizing the interests of polluters and billionaires over the needs of ordinary people.

While far from exhaustive, here are some of the major assaults on climate and clean energy from the Trump administration that we’ve seen in the last year:

1. Attacking agencies and organizations engaged in life-saving climate science research, data collection and monitoring

This has included threats to dismantle NOAA and NSF-NCAR; disbanding the author team for the sixth National Climate Assessment; taking down the US Global Change Research Program’s website, which includes all previous National Climate Assessments; and halting US federal scientists’ engagement with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). NOAA, the nation’s foremost climate science agency, has faced reckless firing of staff, budget cuts, and slashed resources for climate research, satellite programs, data, and modeling.

Under Department of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s watch, the agency’s weather forecasting and climate monitoring capabilities are being undermined and many National Weather Service offices have been dangerously understaffed—undercutting critical resources that communities, first responders, farmers, mariners, businesses, and local decisionmakers rely on to protect lives, infrastructure, and economic activity. It’s crucial that the forthcoming Congressional appropriations process rejects the Trump administration’s budget proposals and restores healthy funding levels for federal science agencies.

2. Clawing back renewable energy funding and attacking clean energy projects

The administration has illegally frozen and clawed back billions in funding for climate and cutting-edge clean energy investments, including Department of Energy (DOE) grants and the Environmental Protection Agency’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. These actions have been challenged in court, and just this week a court has ruled that the Trump administration’s cancellation of some grants based on which states grantees are in violates the law.

DOE Secretary Chris Wright has repeatedly attacked clean energy, rolled back energy efficiency standards, overseen mass staff cuts at the agency, and renamed the world-renowned National Renewable Energy Laboratory to strike “renewable energy” from its name.

In addition to the major harms to clean energy inflicted by the OBBBA, the administration has also repeatedly and arbitrarily intervened in the leasing and permitting of a huge range of renewable energy projects, including pausing offshore wind, onshore wind, and solar projects. Wind and solar developers have just sued the Department of the Interior and the Army Corps of Engineers for “pursuing a concerted and illegal strategy to choke the ability of private developers’ ability to build new and much-needed energy generation projects.” Numerous attacks have been lobbed at offshore wind projects—including projects that were nearly completed—most recently by citing bogus “national security” considerations. The administration just suffered a major setback in a case brought by Revolution Wind, a project of Ørsted, a Danish offshore wind developer. These attacks on renewable energy have been accompanied by a raft of disinformation spouted by the President and his administration, contrary to the facts about the tremendous economic and health benefits of renewable energy, including solar and wind.

3. Gutting pollution standards and boosting fossil fuels

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Lee Zeldin has launched an all-out assault on regulations, guidance, and scientific research aimed at protecting public health and the environment. This has included weakening, rescinding, or delaying EPA regulations to limit heat-trapping pollution from power plants, vehicles and the oil and gas industry, as well as giving exemptions to polluters causing toxic air pollution from coal-fired power plants and other industrial sources.

The agency is also in the final stages of a process to overturn the science-based Endangerment Finding, a bedrock legal determination establishing the health-harming impacts of heat-trapping emissions. And in a major departure from precedent and long-standing best practice, EPA is also moving away from quantifying the public health impacts— including lives lost or saved—associated with agency rulemakings, debuting this egregious practice in a just-released rule for NOx pollution standards for new gas turbines. This alarming action is a complete capitulation to polluter interests and upends the agency’s mission to protect public health and the environment.

They’ve also taken unprecedented steps to cut the public out of the process of weighing in by eliminating the customary notice-and-comment period for regulations they arbitrarily designate ‘unlawful,’ and a sweeping executive order essentially allows agencies to wipe off whatever regulations they want to—as well as enforcement of those regulations in the time between.

The administration has also launched multiple direct attempts to boost coal, oil, and gas use under the guise of a spurious “national energy emergency.” DOE Secretary Chris Wright and Department of Interior Secretary Doug Burgum—both with deep fossil fuel industry ties—have aggressively embraced the president’s fossil fuel agenda. Burgum’s actions have included expanding oil and gas leases on public lands, rescinding requirements for environmental impact statements, and fast-tracking permits for fossil fuel energy, all while repeatedly interfering to stop deployment of renewables. The administration’s latest shocking move in this vein is its imperial and illegal grab for Venezuelan oil.

4. Attacking FEMA’s disaster response capabilities and investments in climate resilience

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has overseen the firing and forcing out of more than 20 percent of FEMA’s staff already, with further steep cuts to FEMA’s “Cadre of On-Call Response/Recovery Employees” (CORE) expected imminently. At various points last year, Secretary Noem and President Trump went as far as calling for FEMA’s abolition! The agency has faced unending turmoil and dysfunction, with a series of unqualified acting chiefs quitting or being fired only to be replaced by yet another poor choice. This chaos led to major gaps in responding to disasters like the Texas flash flood last year. As the GAO points out, staffing shortages at FEMA have serious consequences for the agency’s ability to do its job to help communities hit by disasters.

The Trump administration also illegally cancelled FEMA’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program grants for states, which a coalition of twenty states took the administration to court over, and recently won their lawsuit. The Trump administration has taken actions that will leave communities less prepared and more at risk from worsening climate impacts, including rescinding the science-informed federal flood risk management standard, disbanding expert advisory councils, and politicizing and delaying disaster aid for states. My colleague Shana Udvardy has been carefully tracking the attacks on FEMA, including the recent last-minute cancellation of a recent FEMA Review Council meeting where they were supposed to release a report with recommendations, which has been under threat of interference from Secretary Noem.

5. Taking down or altering climate-related websites and datasets

This includes taking down the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) website and all the previous National Climate Assessments; taking down climate.gov, a free public portal for essential information on climate science and impacts (some of the information is now being curated at climate.us); removing climate science information from the EPA website; proposing to discontinue the GHG Reporting Program and datasets (like NOAA’s billion-dollar weather and climate-related disasters dataset, and its snow and ice data products); and failing to release the EPA’s Annual GHG Inventory for the United States (which the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) successfully retrieved via a FOIA filing).

6. Lying about the facts on climate science

The most egregious example of this is the sham DOE “climate” report, which weaponized disinformation and uncertainty to downplay the risks of climate change and was invoked by EPA as part of its motivation for proposing to overturn the Endangerment Finding. This mirrors a classic strategy of employing disinformation and deception long practiced by the fossil fuel industry, now dangerously being adopted by the US government.

The Environmental Defense Fund and UCS have filed a lawsuit against the administration citing its violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) in the secret, illegal preparation of this report by five handpicked climate contrarians forming the Climate Working Group (CWG). The court has held that the CWG was an advisory committee subject to FACA and had ordered the administration to release all records related to its work. Other examples of this strategy include zeroing out the social cost of carbon (widely used as a measure of the monetary costs of climate damages caused by an additional ton of carbon emissions), directly ignoring the steep and mounting costs of climate change driven by fossil fuel emissions.

7. Withdrawing from international climate agreements and organizations

The most notable examples include withdrawing the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Paris Agreement. The administration also single-handedly prevented the adoption of a major global agreement on reducing emissions from shipping, negotiated in the International Maritime Organization (IMO). Over 100 nations were on the verge of signing, but using bullying tactics—including direct threats to other nations—the administration succeeded in blocking and delaying this agreement.

Together, these actions underscore that this authoritarian, anti-science administration is determined to sacrifice people’s well-being and destabilize global cooperation. But forward-looking US states and the rest of the world recognize that devastating and costly climate impacts are mounting rapidly, and collective global action remains the only viable path to secure a livable future for our children and grandchildren. Withdrawal from global climate agreements and venues will only serve to further isolate the United States and diminish its standing in the world following a spate of deplorable actions that have already sent our nation’s credibility plummeting, jeopardized ties with some of our closest historical allies, and made the world far more unsafe.

As important as these individual attacks are, it’s crucial to also see the administration’s destructive strategy: They are trying to bury the evidence on climate change to advance a pro-fossil fuel agenda that delivers huge profits for a select few while the rest of us suffer the health and economic costs. And we can’t let them because the stakes are too high, for people today and for future generations. The stakes are especially dire for communities that have long been marginalized and discriminated against, those that bear the brunt of health-harming pollution and climate impacts and lack access to affordable clean energy and climate-resilient homes, here in the United States and around the world.

Looking back and fighting for a brighter future

Why look back on such a painful year? Because it’s a way to acknowledge and honor the people who were directly and harshly affected by the actions of this administration, including federal government scientists and frontline communities. Because remembering our shared history is how we build solidarity for the inevitable fights ahead. Because adversity teaches lessons. Because I believe the seeds of the destruction of this administration’s ill-conceived policies lie in their cruel overreach. Because we can take courage and inspiration from all the ways people across the nation showed up for our democracy, for science, for their communities.

This year has also brought extraordinary efforts to expose and fight back against the worst excesses of this unhinged administration. UCS has fought alongside many others by taking the Trump administration to court; advocating with members of Congress to stand up to the administration; filing technical comments with agencies; shining a light on the latest climate science and facts about clean energy; galvanizing the scientific community to get organized, join sign-on letters and call their elected representatives; uplifting the work of environmental justice experts; securing wins in states; joining nationwide demonstrations; and using our voice loudly in every venue we can to speak truth to power.

And as we face down another tough year under the anti-science, authoritarian Trump administration, we’re fired up to keep up the fight for science and for our democracy. We hope you’ll join us—because despite it all, that future is ours to build.

Since Renee Good’s death, clashes between ICE and the residents of Minneapolis have escalated. On Wednesday night, an ICE agent shot and wounded someone who, ICE claimed, was fleeing arrest. (Sure, just like Good supposedly was trying to run them over when she turned her car away from them and said, moments before an agent fired three bullets into her chest and head, “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you.”)

I’ve always loved Minneapolis. Its people have midwestern common sense. They also have a deep sense of fairness and justice.

On Wednesday, Trump threatened that if Minneapolis and the state of Minnesota didn’t stop the protesters, whom he referred to as “insurrectionists,” he would “institute the INSURRECTION ACT… and quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great State.”

Let’s be clear. The problem is not the protesters. It’s the armed thugs who are shooting and murdering them. (Trump seems capable of seeing a similar dynamic playing out in Iran and vows to protect the protesters there, but not in America.)

A friend who knows a lot more than I do about America’s armed forces recently wrote:

There are four kinds of people who join the armed forces: those from a traditional military family, true patriots who want to serve their country, those with no other prospects who need a job, and psychotics who just want to kill people.

The armed services do a pretty decent job of screening out the fourth group, but that group is now the prime recruitment pool for ICE. Racists, haters, gun nuts, and cage fighting fans who want to shoot anyone the least bit different from them. They are becoming America’s Gestapo. That is no exaggeration. We’re slipping into Nazi Germany.

He’s exactly right.

ICE is reportedly investing $100 million in what it calls “wartime recruitment” of 10,000 new agents, in addition to the 20,000 already employed.

It has lowered its recruitment standards to meet the deportation targets set by Stephen Miller (Trump’s deputy chief of staff for promoting bigotry and nativism), thereby increasing the numbers of untrained and dangerous agents on the streets.

ICE’s recruitment is aimed at gun and military enthusiasts and people who listen to right-wing radio, have gone to Ultimate Fighting Championship fights or shopped for guns and tactical gear, live near military bases, and attend NASCAR races.

It’s seeking recruits who are willing to perform their “sacred duty” and “defend the homeland” by repelling “foreign invaders.”

If I had my way, ICE would be abolished and Border Patrol agents sent back to the border. But this isn’t going to happen under Trump and his Republican lapdogs in Congress. Too many Democrats are almost as spineless when it comes to abolishing ICE.

But Congress can still take action to rein in ICE. At the very least, it must disarm ICE.

The Trump regime is allowing ICE officers to use lethal force in self-defense. But we’ve seen how readily ICE and Border Patrol agents claim self-defense when they’re shooting our compatriots.

How do we disarm ICE?

Congress is now considering the appropriations bill for the Department of Homeland Security, whose funding runs out at the end of January.

Please demand—call your members of Congress and tell them in no uncertain terms—that the DHS spending bill prohibit ICE and Border Patrol agents from carrying guns and that it unambiguously declare that agents do not have absolute immunity under the law if they harm civilians.

Do this as soon as you can.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee (and an old friend), said Tuesday that she’s seeking to put limits on ICE in the DHS spending bill. “I am looking for policy riders in the Homeland Security bill to [be] able to rein in ICE.” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Wednesday that Democrats will oppose the bill unless Republicans agree to new rules governing ICE officers. “ICE cannot conduct itself as if it’s above the law.”

There is no reason for ICE agents to be armed. If they are shot at—and there’s no record of this ever actually happening — they could readily summon state or local police to protect their safety.

ICE was designed to be mainly an investigative agency, not a militarized arm of the presidency. ICE agents are not adequately trained to use deadly force.

In addition, ICE agents prowling our streets in unmarked cars, wearing masks, clad in body armor and carrying long guns, are a clear provocation to violence—both by them and by otherwise law-abiding residents of our towns and cities who feel they must stop their brutality.

Trump, Vance, and Miller want to provoke violent confrontations so they can justify even more oppression — including invoking the Insurrection Act, which would allow Trump to call in the regular military. “I’d be allowed to do that,” Trump said in October, referring to the act, “and the courts wouldn’t get involved, nobody would get involved, and I could send the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, I can send anybody I wanted.”

Please: tell your members of Congress not to vote for the DHS spending bill unless it stipulates that ICE be disarmed.

Also tell them that the bill must restrict ICE and Border Patrol’s ability to conduct dragnet arrest operations and target people based on their race, language or accent. And the bill must clarify that ICE agents are liable under civil and criminal law if they harm civilians.

The Trump regime is telling agents they have “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution or civil lawsuits if they kill or maim or otherwise hurt civilians. “That guy is protected by absolute immunity,” JD Vance said of the ICE agent who killed Renee Good. “He was doing his job.”

DHS went so far as to post a clip of Stephen Miller saying, “You have immunity to perform your duties, and no one — no city official, no state official, no illegal alien, no leftist agitator or domestic insurrectionist—can prevent you from fulfilling your legal obligations and duties.”

Rubbish. There’s no such absolute immunity under the law. Regardless of what the FBI concludes, I hope and expect the state of Minnesota will open a criminal investigation of the agent who murdered Renee Good and, on the basis of the evidence uncovered, prosecute him for murder under state law.

It would be useful for Congress to make it crystal clear in the DHS spending bill now under consideration that ICE agents do not enjoy absolute legal immunity.

Please call your representative and senators today and tell them not to vote for the DHS spending bill unless it (1) disarms ICE agents, (2) prevents them from targeting people based on their race, language, or accent, and (3) stipulates that agents who harm civilians are liable under criminal and civil laws.

To reach your representative or senator, call the US Congressional Switchboard at (202) 224-3121. Tell them the state and city where you live. They will connect you to any member’s office.

With the killing of Renee Good, an unarmed mother of three, the American people have reached a breaking point. As protests surged beyond Minnesota to all 50 states, a critical window has opened in Washington. Congress has until the end of January to decide whether to fund a massive expansion of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Democratic senators alone can just say no.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey told ICE to leave, but instead the Trump regime doubled down, adding to the thousands of federal agents already sent to the twin cities. Federal agents smashed car windows to grab people observing their activities, broke down doors, and created fear and chaos around schools. President Donald Trump warned of more to come, posting to Minnesota on Truth Social on January 13, “THE DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION IS COMING.”

While the streets of Minneapolis fill with grieving and defiant residents, Congress is preparing to pour billions more into the very agencies responsible for the chaos.

There are only a few people with the power to stop the brutalizing of our communities being carried out by ICE. Congress has the power of the purse, and Congress can stop this. We taxpayers fund ICE, the Border Patrol, and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem’s salary (and her two jets). Without congressional action by the end of January, funding for ICE will lapse.

There is support among some in Congress for reining in ICE. Others will have to join these courageous leaders if we are to rein in the federal brutality.

In the Senate, where 60 votes are required to move a funding bill forward, just 41 senators can block any bill that expands the ICE budget. Senate Democrats, including two Independents who caucus with Democrats, number 47. Senate Democrats alone can halt funding for ICE.

So far, the Democratic leadership has not stepped up. Only enormous pressure from their constituents will force them to show any backbone.

There is support among some in Congress for reining in ICE. Others will have to join these courageous leaders if we are to rein in the federal brutality.

“It’s hard to imagine how Democrats are going to vote for a DHS bill that funds this level of illegality and violence without constraints,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told Axios last week.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said on X he would not support any funding for Trump’s ICE operations without safeguards.

Members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus have been speaking out.

“Our caucus members will oppose all funding for immigration enforcement in any appropriation bills until meaningful reforms are enacted to end militarized policing practices,” Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) told a press conference at the US Capitol. According to a report in the Guardian, Omar, who is the caucus’s deputy chair, went on to say, “We cannot and we should not continue to fund agencies that operate with impunity, that escalate violence, and that undermine the very freedoms this country claims to uphold.”

“They’ve gone rogue under Donald Trump; they should be disbanded,” Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) said, according to The Hill. “You’re still going to have immigration enforcement, but ICE shouldn’t have any part of it.”

The Price of Retribution: Following the Money

The massive funding that is supercharging ICE is coming from taxpayers. Trump’s signature legislation, the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” earmarks $170 billion over four years for immigration enforcement. The ICE budget alone would nearly triple compared to its 2024 budget, reaching $28.7 billion per year. The bill included $30 billion over four years to hire 10,000 additional ICE officers, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

This massive influx of cash would also triple the budget for immigrant detention, eventually becoming 62% larger than the funding for the entire federal prison system. Detention of undocumented immigrants has grown to the highest level in US history, according to the Migration Policy Institute, with more than 8 in 10 held in private detention centers. Contrary to the Trump regime’s promise to go after the “worst of the worst,” 71% of ICE detainees have no criminal conviction.

This year’s appropriation for ICE has yet to be approved. And Congress can just say no.

With Kristi Noem and others in the Trump regime calling protesters “domestic terrorists,” these growing detention facilities could be used to hold any who express disagreement with the Trump agenda.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is also using its massive war chest to pressure state and local law enforcement to enter into 287(g) partnerships with ICE, in which they receive generous federal funding for collaborating with federal agents.

This federal “campaign of terror” relies entirely on congressional approval, says Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) of Chicago. “We need to cut and claw back ICE’s funding as natural consequences for DHS’ disregard for the rule of law and violations of our rights,” the Guardian quoted her as saying.

This year’s appropriation for ICE has yet to be approved. And Congress can just say no.

A Popular Uprising

The people affected by the bloated ICE budget are our friends and neighbors. They are hospital and home-health workers. They harvest the crops and process meat, and many own small businesses. They are mothers and fathers and neighbors who contribute to the fabric of our communities. They pay taxes and contribute to social security, although they are not eligible to receive social security benefits. Many of those targeted are in the US legally, including refugees, those applying for citizenship, and even US citizens.

Public support for the ICE roundups has plummeted since President Trump took office. More Americans now believe ICE is making the country less safe (47%) than more safe (34%), according to an Economist/YouGov poll taken after the shooting of Renee Good. A plurality of Americans (46%) support the abolition of ICE, a figure that jumps to 80% among Democrats or those who lean Democratic. Indivisible has made the ICE funding fight a major priority.

The Trump regime wants us to believe we are powerless to stop this massive buildup of armed, masked federal forces in our cities and towns. They’re wrong.

People are making their opinions known through extraordinary acts of courage:

Ordinary people are showing up, as Renee Good did, to literally blow the whistle on ICE outside workplaces, in neighborhoods, and at detention centers. Around the country, people are supporting parents trying to get their kids to school—and those whose loved ones have been detained. Rapid response teams have formed, with members filming detentions, challenging federal agents to show warrants, and staging late-night parties outside hotels housing ICE agents.

People power is having an impact. Spotify recently stopped accepting ICE recruitment ads following a widespread consumer boycott, and Avelo Airlines ended its contract for deportation flights.

The Trump regime wants us to believe we are powerless to stop this massive buildup of armed, masked federal forces in our cities and towns. They’re wrong. Our tax dollars are the fuel for this machine. The American people are stepping up, risking injury and arrest to defend their rights and their neighbors. Now we will see if elected lawmakers have as much courage as the people they represent. It’s time for Congress to use the budgeting powers vested in them by the founders, and turn off the spigot.

Shock and awe. The phrase is apt in describing what Israel has done in the occupied West Bank almost immediately following the events of October 7, 2023, and the start of the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

In her book The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein defines “shock and awe” not merely as a military tactic, but as a political and economic strategy that exploits moments of collective trauma—whether caused by war, natural disaster, or economic collapse—to impose radical policies that would otherwise be resisted. According to Klein, societies in a state of shock are rendered disoriented and vulnerable, allowing those in power to push through sweeping transformations while opposition is fragmented or overwhelmed.

Though the policy is often discussed in the context of US foreign policy—from Iraq to Haiti—Israel has employed shock-and-awe tactics with greater frequency, consistency, and refinement. Unlike the US, which has applied the doctrine episodically across distant theaters, Israel has used it continuously against a captive population living under its direct military control.

Indeed, the Israeli version of shock and awe has long been a default policy for suppressing Palestinians. It has been applied across decades in the occupied Palestinian territory and extended to neighboring Arab countries whenever it suited Israeli strategic objectives.

What is underway, therefore, is a race against time. Israel is working to consolidate what it hopes will become an irreversible new reality on the ground.

In Lebanon, this approach became known as the Dahiya Doctrine, named after the Dahiya neighborhood in Beirut that was systematically destroyed by Israel during its 2006 war on Lebanon. The doctrine advocates the use of disproportionate force against civilian areas, the deliberate targeting of infrastructure, and the transformation of entire neighborhoods into rubble in order to deter resistance through collective punishment.

Gaza has been the epicenter of Israel’s application of this tactic. In the years preceding the genocide, Israeli officials increasingly framed their assaults on Gaza as limited, “managed” wars designed to periodically weaken Palestinian resistance.

These operations were rationalized through the concept of “mowing the lawn,” a phrase used by Israeli military strategists to describe the periodic use of overwhelming violence to “reestablish deterrence.” The logic was that Gaza could not be politically resolved, only indefinitely managed through recurrent destruction.

What unfolded in the West Bank shortly after the start of the Gaza genocide followed a strikingly similar pattern.

Beginning in October 2023, Israel launched an unprecedented campaign of violence across the West Bank. This included large-scale military raids in cities and refugee camps, the routine use of airstrikes—previously rare in the West Bank—the widespread deployment of armored vehicles, and a surge in settler violence carried out with the backing or direct participation of the Israeli army.

The death toll rose sharply, with hundreds of Palestinians killed in a matter of months, including children. Entire refugee camps, such as Jenin, Nur Shams, and Tulkarm, were subjected to systematic destruction: Roads were torn up, homes demolished, water and electricity networks destroyed, and medical access severely restricted. Israeli forces repeatedly laid siege to communities, preventing the movement of ambulances, journalists, and humanitarian workers.

At the same time, Israel accelerated the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian communities, particularly in Area C. Dozens of Bedouin and rural villages were forcibly emptied through a combination of military orders, settler attacks, home demolitions, and the denial of access to land and water. Families were driven out through sustained terror designed to make daily life impossible.

Yet the most violent period of Israeli aggression in the West Bank since the Second Intifada (2000-2005) has been largely overlooked, in part because of the sheer scale and horror of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The annihilation of Gaza has rendered the violence in the West Bank seemingly secondary in the global imagination, despite the fact that its long-term consequences may prove just as devastating.

At the same time, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist coalition succeeded in presenting themselves to the world as reckless, unrestrained, and ideologically driven—willing and able to expand the cycle of destruction far beyond Gaza, into the West Bank and across Israel’s borders into neighboring Arab countries. This performance of extremism functioned as a political strategy.

The consequences are now unmistakable. Large areas of the West Bank lie in ruins. Entire communities have been shattered, their social and physical fabric deliberately dismantled. According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East, more than 12,000 Palestinian children remain displaced, increasingly suggesting a displacement that may become permanent rather than temporary.

History, however, offers a critical lesson. The Palestinian struggle against Israeli settler colonialism has repeatedly demonstrated that Palestinians do not remain passive indefinitely. Despite the paralysis and fragmentation of their political leadership, Palestinian society has consistently regenerated its capacity for resistance.

Israel understands this reality as well. It knows that shock is not infinite, that fear eventually gives way to defiance, and that once the immediate trauma begins to fade, Palestinians will reorganize and push back against imposed conditions of domination.

What is underway, therefore, is a race against time. Israel is working to consolidate what it hopes will become an irreversible new reality on the ground—one that enables formal annexation, normalizes permanent military rule, and completes the ethnic cleansing of large segments of the Palestinian population.

For this reason, a deeper and more sustained understanding of current events in the West Bank is essential. Without confronting this reality directly, Israeli plans will proceed largely unchallenged. To expose, resist, and ultimately defeat these designs is not only a matter of political analysis but a moral imperative inseparable from supporting the Palestinian people in restoring their dignity and achieving their long-denied freedom.

On Tuesday ofthis week, The Economist and YouGov released a poll finding, for the first time, that more Americans want to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) than don’t.

According to the poll, 46 percent of people support getting rid of ICE, compared to 43 percent who oppose its abolition. This represents a major shift in public opinion—this same polling outfit found only 27 percent support for abolishing ICE as recently as July. Today’s survey also found that most Americans believe ICE is making them less, not more safe, by a margin of 47 percent to 34 percent.

In perfect form, this morning the centrist advocacy group Third Way released a memo warning Democrats not to call for dismantling ICE, arguing that “politically, it is lethal.” Their evidence includes a focus group they conducted in October, which…is dumb. ICE’s execution of Renee Nicole Good has broken through—69 percent of Americans report having seen video of the shooting. This has clearly impacted public opinion in a way that makes information from months ago significantly irrelevant.

We cannot let the Third Ways of the world—the centrist establishment muckety mucks whose version of the Democratic Party already lost to Trump, twice—win this debate. It’s simply too important.

There are lots of reasons to dismantle ICE. There’s a functional argument: We do not need ICE to enforce immigration laws; the U.S. handled this just fine for 227 years prior to the creation of this specific agency. There’s a fiscal argument: ICE is now larger than every other federal law enforcement agency combined. It’s larger than the militaries of all but 15 countries in the world! It’s annual budget, $37.5 billion, could pay for the health insurance of every needy child in the country!

But the core reason for abolishing ICE is that it poses a structural threat to American democracy. This is an unaccountable agency, by design. ICE is not subject to the rules governing local or state police departments; there are no laws barring ICE agents from wearing masks, driving in unmarked cars, and operating in plainclothes. ICE was designed after 9/11 to support the FBI’s domestic terrorism efforts, with almost nothing in the way of transparency or guardrails. So what happens when domestic terrorism gets defined as expressing “opposition to law and immigration enforcement; extreme views in favor of mass migration and open borders; adherence to radical gender ideology, anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, or anti-Christianity,” and “hostility towards traditional views on family, religion, and morality,” as Trump’s NSPM-7 directive and Attorney General Pam Bondi’s recent memo to the FBI do?

Well, what happens is everything that we are seeing from ICE today—a federal agency operating quite explicitly as Trump’s personal militia. Mussolini had his Blackshirts, Hitler had his SS, and Trump has ICE—an army of ideologically motivated MAGA loyalist chuds whose new members owe their employment not to the state (being largely unqualified for positions in legitimate law enforcement agencies) but rather to Trump’s personal patronage.

The existence of this profoundly unaccountable, overtly fascist military apparatus poses a structural danger to our democracy. Structural dangers like this can’t be reformed—they need to be dismantled. “We shouldn’t have a Gestapo in this country” isn’t a radical position. It’s actually the only non-radical position you can take on the question. That’s long been true morally. And today’s polling shows it’s true politically, as well. In every way, abolishing ICE is now the moderate position.

So email your Democratic elected officials, call their offices, speak up at their town halls. Tell our Democratic representatives and senators that they need to use every tool at their disposal—including, in the near term, the Congressional appropriations process—to stand up to this rogue militia. And help our Democratic leaders understand—if we are so lucky, come 2028, to get a second chance at resetting our democracy—that getting rid of Trump’s SS is nonnegotiable.

There is no part of the federal government that Americans depend on more than the Social Security Administration. It is the agency that is charged with administering the earned benefits of millions. Unfortunately, after one year into President Donald Trump’s second term, SSA is in disarray. The Washington Post recently took an in-depth look at the SSA and reported among other things that:

Long-strained customer services at Social Security have become worse by many key measures since President Donald Trump began his second term, agency data and interviews show, as thousands of employees were fired or quit, and hasty policy changes and reassignments left inexperienced staff to handle the aftermath.

Exaggerated claims of fraud, for example, have led to new roadblocks for elderly beneficiaries, disabled people, and legal immigrants, who are now required to complete some transactions in person or online rather than by phone. Even so, the number of calls to the agency for the year hit 93 million as of late September—a six-year high, data shows.

SSA officials are likely to respond to the Washington Post story by pointing out that a recent SSA inspector general argued that SSA has made major improvements. Fox News reported that:

The inspector general’s report concluded that SSA’s telephone performance improved during fiscal year 2025 largely because of operational changes, including the rollout of a new cloud-based telecommunications platform, expanded automation, and staffing realignments. The platform, implemented in August 2024, allowed SSA to increase call capacity, expand self-service options, and monitor performance in real time, according to the report.

There is one catch with the inspector general’s report, and, to paraphrase Joseph Heller, it is one heck of a catch. This summer SSA changed “the type of data it reports publicly, removing information like callback wait times.” SSA Commissioner Frank Bisignano told members of Congress over the summer that SSA changed the metrics because reporting the wait times might discourage people from calling the agency. Yes, you read that correctly. So, rather than fixing the problem SSA decided to not share the data. This might be a solution to a public relations problem, but it is not going to help beneficiaries in the slightest.

There is no doubt about the fact that 2025 was a tumultuous time for SSA. The year began with Elon Musk, the then head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme; and, in an address to Congress in January President Trump said that there were “shocking levels of incompetence and probable fraud” in Social Security and that people up to 160 years old were receiving Social Security benefits. None of these accusations, of course, proved to be true. While Trump and Musk’s spurious claims have faded away, the damage they have done to SSA lingers on.

If Republicans on Capitol Hill are not interested in exercising their duty to provide oversight, Democrats must step up to the plate.

The current congressional leadership has shown zero interest in exercising any oversight responsibility on any issue foreign or domestic. Congress’ lack of interest or will to scrutinize the Trump administration led Virginia Democratic Sen. Mark Warner to ask, “Is congressional oversight dead? Where does this end? If none of my Republican colleagues raises an issue, does this mean we are ceding all oversight?”

While they are not in the majority, Democrats on Capitol Hill are not powerless. They can still hold hearings of their own. These hearings would not be part of the legislative process. They would however give Democrats the platform they need to speak up for the American people. There is good news here for those who care about Social Security. The ranking Democrat on the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Social Security is Rep. John Larson of Connecticut who has fought for years to protect Social Security. Larson is the perfect person to shine a light on the current state of affairs at SSA.

If Republicans on Capitol Hill are not interested in exercising their duty to provide oversight, Democrats must step up to the plate. Seventy-five million Social Security beneficiaries are counting on them to protect their earned benefits.