Please take five minutes to watch these two videos.

First, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer Jonathan Ross’ video:

Then watch this New York Times compilation of bystanders’ videos prepared before officer Ross’ video was publicly available

The Facts

Renee Nicole Good was a US citizen, the mother of three, an award-winning poet, and the widow of a military veteran. On Wednesday morning January 7, she dropped her six-year-old son at school and proceeded in her Honda Pilot down Portland Avenue—a one-way residential street in south Minneapolis. Around 10:40 am, she had a brief encounter with ICE officers during which she smiled at officer Ross, who was filming the episode on his smartphone.

“That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you,” she told Ross.

Another officer yelled at her to “get out of the f*cking car” and grabbed her door handle. By then, Ross was standing near the front driver’s side of the Honda. Attempting to avoid him as she drove away, Good turned the steering wheel sharply to the right. Ross fired three shots, and the Honda careened toward a parked car before crashing into it.

ICE officers receive CPR training, but none went to Good’s aid. A physician nearby tried to help, but ICE officers blocked him.

Fifteen minutes later, medics arrived. Shortly thereafter, she died at Hennepin County Medical Center.

The Lies Begin

An hour later, Kristi Noem’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a statement defending Ross and demonizing Good.

According to DHS, “[R]ioters began blocking ICE officers and one of these violent rioters weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them—an act of domestic terrorism.”

The statement continued:

An ICE officer, fearing for his life, the lives of his fellow law enforcement, and the safety of the public, fired defensive shots. He used his training and saved his own life and that of his fellow officers. The alleged perpetrator was hit and is deceased. Thankfully, the ICE officers who were hurt are expected to make full recoveries.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey called that description of the event “bullsh*t.”

With her press release, Noem had launched a preemptive strike on the truth.

Trump Doubles Down on the Lies

Three hours after DHS’ statement, President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social a 13-second clip showing Good’s vehicle smashing into the parked car. It revealed nothing about the events that had led to the shooting.

But that didn’t prevent Trump from embellishing Noem’s false narrative. He said that “the woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense.”

Noem and Vance Double Down on the Lies

It’s worth noting that Noem can ill afford the publicity of an ICE officer committing a potential homicide. In December, The Bulwark reported that Trump was considering three candidates to replace her, although the White House denied it.

At 6:00 pm, Noem held a press conference. She said that Good was among a “mob of agitators,” had “weaponized her vehicle,” and committed an “act of domestic terrorism” that justified ICE officers responding with deadly force.

The following morning, Vice President JD Vance—who oozes ambition—called Good a ”deranged leftist who tried to run [the officer] over” and was certain that she had broken the law. He said that the officer was protected by “absolute immunity.” Vance, a Yale Law School graduate, knows better.

Will Patel’s FBI Seal the Deal?

Trump’s Justice Department then excluded Minnesota officials from participating in the FBI investigation into the killing. Noem said that the FBI has “exclusive jurisdiction,” which is incorrect. Minnesota has jurisdiction over state crimes, including potential homicides.

But following the launch of the Trump administration’s false narrative of the killing, barring an objective investigation is the second phase of the preemptive strike against the truth. FBI Director Kash Patel is a fierce Trump loyalist who has likened Trump to a king. But like Noem, he has been the subject of recent reports that his position is precarious. He will fall in line behind the Trump-Vance-Noem false narrative of the event.

Evaluating the Evidence

Vance said that Ross was “doing his job.” Noem insisted that he “followed his training.” Let’s test those claims.

DHS requires its officers to follow these guidelines on the use of force:

1. Respect human life;

2. Deescalate confrontations;

3. Use safe tactics that minimize the risk of personal and property damage; don’t put yourself in a situation where your only alternative is using deadly force;

4. When feasible, give a warning before using force and give the subject a reasonable opportunity to comply;

5. As soon as practicable, obtain appropriate medical assistance for anyone injured;

6. Don’t fire warning shots solely to disable moving vehicles;

7. Use of deadly force must be reasonable in lights of the facts and circumstances confronting the officer;

8. Use deadly force only when you have a reasonable belief that the subject of such force poses an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury to you or another person; “reasonableness” is an objective standard (“what would a reasonable person in that position do”);

9. Do not use deadly force solely to prevent the escape of a fleeing subject, unless you have a reasonable belief that the subject poses a significant threat of death or serious physical harm to you or others and such force is necessary to prevent escape;

10. Discharging a firearm against a person constitutes the use of deadly force and shall be done only with the intent of preventing or stopping the threatening behavior that justifies the use of deadly force; and

11. Do not discharge firearms at the operator of a moving vehicle… unless the use of deadly force against the operator is justified under the standards articulated elsewhere in this policy. Before using deadly force under these circumstances, you must take into consideration the hazards that may be posed to law enforcement and innocent bystanders by an out-of-control vehicle.

To the same effect are Justice Department guidelines.

In light of the Trump administration’s preemptive strike on the truth, the odds of getting a credible federal probe are slim. Officer Ross fired three shots; each was a use of deadly force. How many guidelines did he violate?

Watch The Minnesota Star Tribune’s analysis that incorporates five videos of the tragedy and decide for yourself.

For most of us, Friday, February 6, 2026, is likely to feel no different than Thursday, February 5. It will be a work or school day for many of us. It might involve shopping for the weekend or an evening get-together with friends, or any of the other mundane tasks of life. But from a world-historical perspective, that day will represent a dramatic turning point, with far-reaching and potentially catastrophic consequences. For the first time in 54 years, the world’s two major nuclear-weapons powers, Russia and the United States, will not be bound by any arms-control treaties and so will be legally free to cram their nuclear arsenals with as many new warheads as they wish—a step both sides appear poised to take.

It’s hard to imagine today, but 50 years ago, at the height of the Cold War, the US and Russia (then the Soviet Union) jointly possessed 47,000 nuclear warheads—enough to exterminate all life on Earth many times over. But as public fears of nuclear annihilation increased, especially after the near-death experience of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the leaders of those two countries negotiated a series of binding agreements intended to downsize their arsenals and reduce the risk of Armageddon.

The initial round of those negotiations, the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks I, began in November 1969 and culminated in the first-ever nuclear arms-limitation agreement, SALT-I, in May 1972. That would then be followed in June 1979 by SALT-II (signed by both parties, though never ratified by the US Senate) and two Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties (START I and START II), in 1991 and 1993, respectively. Each of those treaties reduced the number of deployed nuclear warheads on US and Soviet-Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and long-range bombers.

In a drive to reduce those numbers even further, President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) in April 2010, an agreement limiting the number of deployed nuclear warheads to 1,550 on each side—still enough to exterminate all life on Earth, but a far cry from the START I limit of 6,000 warheads per side. Originally set to expire on February 5, 2021, New START was extended for another five years (as allowed by the treaty), resetting that expiration date for February 5, 2026, now fast approaching. And this time around, neither party has demonstrated the slightest inclination to negotiate a new extension.

After the expiration of the New START agreement, neither Russia nor the United States will be obliged to limit the numbers of nuclear warheads on their strategic delivery systems, possibly triggering a new global nuclear arms race with no boundaries in sight and an ever-increasing risk of precipitous nuclear escalation.

So, the question is: What, exactly, will it mean for New START to expire for good on February 5?

Most of us haven’t given that a lot of thought in recent decades, because nuclear arsenals have, for the most part, been shrinking and the (apparent) threat of a nuclear war among the great powers seemed to diminish substantially. We have largely escaped the nightmarish experience—so familiar to veterans of the Cold War era—of fearing that the latest crisis, whatever it might be, could result in our being exterminated in a thermonuclear holocaust.

A critical reason for our current freedom from such fears is the fact that the world’s nuclear arsenals had been substantially diminished and that the two major nuclear powers had agreed to legally binding measures, including mutual inspections of their arsenals, meant to reduce the danger of unintended or accidental nuclear war. Together, those measures were crafted to ensure that each side would retain an invulnerable, second-strike nuclear retaliatory force, eliminating any incentive to initiate a nuclear first strike.

Unfortunately, those relatively carefree days will come to an end at midnight on February 5.

Beginning on February 6, Russian and American leaders will face no barriers whatsoever to the expansion of those arsenals or to any other steps that might increase the danger of a thermonuclear conflagration. And from the look of things, both intend to seize that opportunity and increase the likelihood of Armageddon. Worse yet, China’s leaders, pointing to a lack of restraint in Washington and Moscow, are now building up their own nuclear arsenal, only adding further fuel to the urge of American and Russian leaders to blow well past the (soon-to-be-abandoned) New START limits.

A Future Nuclear Arms Race?

Even while adhering to those New START limits of 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads, both Russia and the United States had taken elaborate and costly steps to enhance the destructive power of their arsenals by replacing older, less-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and nuclear bombers with newer, even more capable ones. As a result, each side was already becoming better equipped to potentially inflict catastrophic damage on its opponent’s nuclear retaliatory forces, making a first strike less inconceivable and so increasing the risk of precipitous escalation in a crisis.

The Russian Federation inherited a vast nuclear arsenal from the former Soviet Union, but many of those systems had already become obsolete or unreliable. To ensure that it maintained an arsenal at least as potent as Washington’s, Moscow sought to replace all of the Soviet-era weapons in its inventory with more modern and capable systems, a process still underway. Russia’s older SS-18 ICBMs, for example, are being replaced by the faster, more powerful SS-29 Sarmat, while its remaining five Delta-IV class missile-carrying submarines (SSBNs) are being replaced by the more modern Borei class. And newer ICBMs, SLBMs, and SSBNs are said to be in development.

At present, Russia possesses 333 ICBMs, approximately half of them deployed in silos and the other half on road-mobile carriers. It also has 192 SLBMs on 12 missile-carrying submarines and possesses 67 strategic bombers, each capable of firing multiple nuclear-armed missiles. Supposedly, those systems are currently loaded with no more than 1,550 nuclear warheads (enough, of course, to destroy several planets), as mandated by the New START treaty. However, many of Russia’s land- and sea-based ballistic missiles are MIRVed (meaning they’re capable of launching multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles) but not fully loaded, and so could carry additional warheads if a decision were ever made to do so. Given that Russia possesses as many as 2,600 nuclear warheads in storage, it could rapidly increase the number of deployed nuclear weapons at its disposal beginning on February 6, 2026.

That Russia is keen to enhance the destructive capabilities of its strategic arsenal is evident from Moscow’s drive to augment its existing nuclear weapons by developing new, longer-range ones. Those include the Poseidon, a nuclear-powered, intercontinental-range, giant nuclear torpedo to be carried by a new class of submarines, the Belgorod, meant to hold up to six of them. Reportedly, the Poseidon is designed to detonate off the coasts of American cities, rendering them uninhabitable. Following a round of tests now underway, it is scheduled to be deployed by the Russian Navy in 2027. Another new weapon, the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle, is being installed on some of Russia’s existing SS-19 ICBMs. After being boosted into space by the SS-19, the Avangard should be able to travel another 2,000 miles by skimming along the atmosphere’s outer surface while evading most missile-tracking radars.

The United States is engaged in a comparable drive to modernize its arsenal, replacing older weapons with more modern systems. Like Russia, the US maintains a “triad” of nuclear delivery systems—land-based ICBMs, submarine-launched SLBMs, and long-range bombers, each of which is now being upgraded with new warheads at an estimated cost over the next quarter century of approximately $1.5 trillion.

The existing New START-limited US nuclear triad consists of 400 silo-based Minuteman-III ICBMs, 240 Trident-II SLBMs carried by 14 Ohio-class submarines (two of which are assumedly being overhauled at any time), and 96 strategic bombers (20 B-2s and 76 B-52s) armed with a variety of gravity bombs and air-launched cruise missiles. According to current plans, the Minuteman-IIIs will be replaced by Sentinel ICBMs, the Ohio-class SSBNs by Columbia-class ones, and the B-2s and B-52s by the new B-21 Raider bomber. Each of those new systems incorporates important features—greater accuracy, increased stealth, enhanced electronics—that make them even more useful as first-strike weapons, were a decision ever made to use them in such a fashion.

When initiated, the US nuclear modernization project was expected to abide by the New START limit of 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads. After February 5, however, the US will be under no legal obligation to do so. It could quickly begin efforts to exceed that limit by loading all existing Minuteman-IIIs and future Sentinel missiles on MIRVed rather than single-warhead projectiles and loading the Trident missiles (already MIRVed) with a larger number of warheads, as well as by increasing production of new B-21s. The United States has also commenced development of a new delivery system, the nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM-N), supposedly intended for use in a “limited” regional nuclear conflict in Europe or Asia (though how such a conflagration could be prevented from igniting a global holocaust has never been explained).

In short, after the expiration of the New START agreement, neither Russia nor the United States will be obliged to limit the numbers of nuclear warheads on their strategic delivery systems, possibly triggering a new global nuclear arms race with no boundaries in sight and an ever-increasing risk of precipitous nuclear escalation. Whether they choose to do so will depend on the political environment in both countries and their bilateral relations, as well as elite perceptions of China’s nuclear buildup in both Washington and Moscow.

The Political Environment

Both the United States and Russia have already committed vast sums to the “modernization” of their nuclear delivery systems, a process that won’t be completed for years. At present, there is a reasonably broad consensus in both Washington and Moscow on the need to do so. However, any attempt to increase the speed of that process or add new nuclear capabilities will generate immense costs along with significant supply-chain challenges (at a time when both countries are also trying to ramp up their production of conventional, non-nuclear arms), creating fresh political disputes and potential fissures.

Rather than confront such challenges, the leaders of both countries may instead choose to retain the New START limits voluntarily. Indeed, Vladimir Putin has already agreed to a one-year extension of this sort, if the United States is willing to do likewise. But pressures (which are bound to increase after February 5) are also building to abandon those limits and begin deploying additional warheads.

In Washington, a powerful constellation of government officials, conservative pundits, weapons industry leaders, and congressional hawks is already calling for a nuclear buildup that would exceed the New START limits, claiming that a bigger arsenal is needed to deter both a more aggressive Russia and a more powerful China. As Pranay Vaddi, a senior director of the National Security Council, put it in June 2024, “Absent a change in the trajectory of the adversary arsenal, we may reach a point in the coming years where an increase from current deployed numbers is required, and we need to be fully prepared to execute if the president makes that decision.”

February 6 is likely to bring us into a new era—not unlike the early years of the Cold War—in which the major powers will be poised to ramp up their nuclear war-fighting capabilities without any formal restrictions whatsoever.

Those who favor such a move regularly point to China’s nuclear buildup. Just a few years ago, China possessed only some 200 nuclear warheads, a small fraction of the 5,000 possessed by both Russia and the US. Recently, however, China has expanded its arsenal to an estimated 600 warheads, while deploying more ICBMs, SLBMs, and nuclear-capable bombers. Chinese officials claim that such weaponry is needed to ensure retaliation against an enemy-first strike, but their very existence is being cited by nuclear hawks in Washington as a sufficient reason for the US to move beyond the New START limits.

Russian leaders face an especially harsh quandary. At a moment when they are devoting so much of the country’s state finances and military-industrial capacities to the war in Ukraine, they face a more formidable and possibly expanded US nuclear arsenal, not to mention the (largely unspoken) threat posed by China’s growing arsenal. Then there’s President Donald Trump’s plan for building a “Golden Dome” missile shield, intended to protect the US from any type of enemy projectile, including ICBMs—a system which, even if only partially successful, would threaten the credibility of Russia’s second-strike retaliatory capability. So, while Russia’s leaders would undoubtedly prefer to avoid a costly new arms buildup, they will probably conclude that they have little choice but to undertake one if the US abandons New START.

Racing to Armageddon

Many organizations, individuals, and members of Congress are pleading with the Trump administration to accept Vladimir Putin’s proposal and agree to a voluntary continuation of the New START limits after February 5. Any decision to abandon those limits, they argue, would only add hundreds of billions of dollars to the federal budget at a time when other priorities are being squeezed. Such a decision would also undoubtedly provoke reciprocal moves by Russia and China. The result would be an uncontrolled arms race and a rising risk of nuclear annihilation.

But even if Washington and Moscow were to agree to a one-year voluntary extension of New START, each would be free to break out of it at any moment. In that sense, February 6 is likely to bring us into a new era—not unlike the early years of the Cold War—in which the major powers will be poised to ramp up their nuclear war-fighting capabilities without any formal restrictions whatsoever. That comfortable feeling we once enjoyed of relative freedom from an imminent nuclear holocaust will also then undoubtedly begin to dissipate. If there is any hope in such a dark prognosis, it might be that such a reality could, in turn, ignite a worldwide anti-nuclear movement like the Ban the Bomb campaigns of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. If only.

On January 7, Renee Nicole Good was murdered by Jonathan Ross, an “experienced” Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent with more than 10 years with the agency.

This tragic event was recorded from multiple angles. This includes a video recorded by Ross himself during the confrontation. If you ask me, these videos, alongside detailed frame-by-frame breakdowns produced by the media, clearly show that Good had no intention to hit Ross. She had no malice toward him. She literally says, “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you.”

Ross was not in any danger. He didn’t need to shoot, let alone shoot three times. It was not self-defense. He murdered Good—or, as he saw her, a “fucking bitch.”

Yet, many conservatives saw things completely differently. At a press hearing on January 8, Vice President JD Vance remarked, "Everybody who has been repeating the lie that this was some innocent woman who was out for a drive in Minneapolis when a law enforcement officer shot at her, you should be ashamed of yourselves, every single one of you.” This viewpoint was shared by Republicans in Congress, like Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.) and Rep. Dan Meuser (R-Pa.), conservative commentators like Jesse Watters and Steven Crowder, and, of course, the world’s most chronically online billionaire Elon Musk.

We have no obligation to follow unjust laws. Our duty, as those who believe in democracy and freedom, is to challenge authoritarianism and injustice anytime and anywhere.

It may be tempting to argue that these people are all simply lying. However, that response overlooks that it’s not just political commentators and politicians—across social media, people are seeing what Vance and others claim.

Here it is important to remember that perception is not neutral. The world we see is very much shaped by our beliefs, values, and our commitments. This doesn’t mean that everything is relative. For instance, it’s clear that Ross fired after he was no longer in the path of Good’s car. But, while some like Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem are blatantly lying, others really are seeing something different here. The question then is: why? What is the basis for these discrepancies? And what does it tell us about where we’re at as a society?

The murder of Renee Nicole Good is a political Rorschach test. At the heart of this test lie two irreconcilable viewpoints: those who align themselves with armed agents and the task of protecting America from the “enemy within,” and those who embrace compassion for others and support their diverse communities. Between those with the guns, and those with the whistles. Between those who think that what happened to Good could never happen to them, and those who see in Good’s death their own vulnerability.

These opposing viewpoints reflect deep divides regarding how Americans think about defiance, vulnerability, and community.

A Test of Defiance

For those who immediately see Good as “a domestic terrorist,” the issue is not about criminality. ICE agents are not police officers. They can only lawfully detain citizens under very narrow circumstances, such as if they interfere with an arrest or assault an agent. None of these conditions applied to Good. She was, by the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) own standards, outside the scope of their limited authority.

The issue is not about criminality, malice, or citizenship. It’s about defiance. This sentiment is captured in an op-ed written by the conservative New York Post Editorial Board. They place “full blame” for Good’s death on the Democrats for “cheering law-breaking protesters, calling for resistance to ICE as if it weren’t a duly constituted law enforcement agency.” They emphasize that, “anyone who doesn’t like how the law is enforced is free to work to elect different leaders, and to advocate for different laws. If you absolutely must object, then employ genuine, orderly civil disobedience and go peacefully off to jail afterward.”

For the board, those of us critical of ICE, DHS, and the Trump administration have two options: obey, or protest and go to jail. Though ideally, in their view, everyone should simply allow ICE agents to do their work unimpededly. As they write, “If the civilians had just left the law enforcers alone, Renee Nicole Good would still be alive.” Without explicitly saying so, the board blames Good for her death.

Central to this view are two key assumptions: first, “law-breaking protesters” are always in the wrong; and second, that legality alone makes law enforcement legitimate. The board is wrong on both fronts. We have no obligation to follow unjust laws. Our duty, as those who believe in democracy and freedom, is to challenge authoritarianism and injustice anytime and anywhere. The government is no exception.

We should also all be mindful that immigration enforcement officers have a long history of putting themselves in danger to justify violence. For instance, a 2013 review of US Border Patrol by the nonprofit Police Executive Research Forum found that agents “have intentionally and unnecessarily stepped in front of moving cars to justify using deadly force against vehicle occupants.”

A Test of Vulnerability

This is a test about vulnerability. Dan McLaughlin, a fellow at the conservative National Review Institute, argues that Good “had to actively try to make herself a target for an ICE agent. That was her choice, not ICE’s.”

Many of Ross’ supporters see the situation similarly—ICE poses no immediate threat to citizens. If an ICE agent gives a citizen an order, they have no reason to refuse. They implicitly trust that ICE will respect their status as Americans. On this view, Good put herself in danger; she made herself vulnerable to police violence. Thus, she is at fault.

Yet, as has been widely reported, ICE have surveilled, approached, assaulted, arrested, and detained US citizens. For Muslims, people of color and immigrants alike, citizenship offers no protections. Some of us don’t have the privilege to forget about the ways in which we are different.

When I see video from that day, I see Good being murdered. I see a version of America that betrays its most cherished ideals. I see community resilience and the attempts by armed officers to silence it.

Even if an act of injustice does not directly impact us, that’s not a reason to do nothing. Yet this is precisely what some believe. Conservative commentator Matt Walsh, for instance, posts: “This lesbian agitator gave her life to protect Somali scammers who couldn’t give less of a shit about her. The most disgraceful and humiliating end a person could possibly meet.”

Walsh’s comment is both homophobic and racist. It also demonstrates something very true about the nature of bigotry. The homophobe is always a racist; the racist is always a sexist; the sexist is always a xenophobe. Bigotry is inherently irrational and irrationality knows no bounds. As a woman in a same-sex marriage, Good likely understood this. As a Christian, she acknowledged her duty to help others in need.

A Test of Community

Finally, this is a test about belonging and community. For some, like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), ICE agents “are under unprecedented siege by radical leftist open border activists. This video […] shows you the danger our ICE agents are under.” But I would argue that it’s the exact opposite. American communities are under siege by federal agents empowered by an administration openly hostile to its own citizens.

When I see video from that day, I see Good being murdered. I see a version of America that betrays its most cherished ideals. I see community resilience and the attempts by armed officers to silence it.

But, in the aftermath, I see hope in the form of nationwide anti-ICE protests. I see a public that will not be gaslit by lies and falsehoods from those in power. I see that, despite the best efforts of the Trump administration, we haven’t yet lost what makes America great.

The beginning of 2026 falls into a period of increasing global social destruction. Multilateral institutions such as the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe OSCE are being systematically destroyed. Countries such as the US and Russia are withdrawing from these institutions or attempting to obstruct them through blocking behavior.

Rich and Undemocratic ‘elites’ Are Appropriating the State

US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are political leaders who are dismantling or destroying the remnants of democracy in their countries, increasing repressive pressure on their populations, and acting aggressively toward the outside world. They find international law rather annoying, ignore it, and develop a right-wing and authoritarian nationalism, within the framework of which the ruling circles in the US and Russia enrich themselves excessively and disregard everything that previous values in terms of decency and justice demand.

This goes hand in hand with a publicly declared shift in the definition of terrorism. People who demonstrate by peaceful and legitimate means against the excesses of the system and the policies of the corrupt and enriching class are not seen as opposition figures with a legitimate claim, but are increasingly classified as terrorists and criminals. This is the case, for example, in the US, Russia, and Turkey. The aim is to intimidate people and, once they are caught, to lock them up without a fair trial.

The self-enrichment of people who are already rich, multimillionaires and billionaires, goes hand in hand with the widening of the social divide in the countries affected. The lower social classes are deprived of what the super rich acquire. The USA is one example among many: Taxes have been drastically reduced for the rich, while at the same time the government is trying to withdraw healthcare support from millions of people.

The World Does Not Consist Only of the West

Certainly, only a few selected aspects can be addressed here.

The Global South is trying to organize itself and is pushing for a say in decision-making and an end to unfair economic exchange relationships. However, huge Western corporations continue to seek contact with regional despots and corrupt African leaders in order to gain access to Africa's mineral resources. South America is also affected by the eco-imperialist encroachments of the US. The US government even openly admits that its aggression in Venezuela, for example, is motivated by a desire to secure and exploit the world's largest oil reserves there.

Even if the pendulum has swung in the wrong direction so far, only gradual and internationally coordinated disarmament could enable an effective peace dividend that could be used to combat world hunger and the climate catastrophe.

China's role in the world is not yet clear. The People's Republic of China is attempting to gain economic access to the global economy and is particularly focused on its own interests in this regard. Step by step, internal social surveillance and repression are also being intensified. Ultimately, the assessment of China will be decided by the development of the Taiwan issue and China's behavior in Southeast Asia, particularly with regard to territorial issues in the South China Sea with other Southeast Asian neighboring countries.

Israel's government, which is in part right-wing extremist, has reacted completely disproportionately to the terrible attack by Hamas. Approximately 60,000 Palestinians, half of them women and children, were killed and the Gaza Strip was almost completely destroyed. It will take generations to overcome the hatred resulting from these murders and killings.

In Sudan, a civil war supported by foreign powers is raging, with mass rape and killings. Over 10 million people are fleeing Sudan.

Massive Armament Programs Promise a Deceptive Sense of Security

The eco-imperialist and geostrategic wars instigated by right-wing nationalist governments are also coming closer and closer to the center of Europe. Concerns about being drawn into a war over Russia's attack on Ukraine are spreading there as well. At the same time, almost all European countries are arming themselves militarily, incurring massive debt, and wasting the resources of future generations on the destructive production of increasingly dangerous weapons.

This leads to substantial returns for the owners and shareholders of the arms industry. The political-military-industrial complex is functioning and is becoming increasingly accepted by society through media influence, growing fear of war, and the creation of jobs.

The new weapons systems below the nuclear threshold are becoming increasingly dangerous. Hypersonic missiles in particular pose a major threat, as they are capable of carrying out "decapitation strikes" that are difficult to intercept due to their high speed and maneuverability. The planned deployment of hypersonic missiles and cruise missiles under US command in Germany in 2026 is a provocation that the peace movement is trying to resist.

The ever-evolving drones with increasingly dangerous warheads are also changing the war situation not only on the front lines, but also for civil societies at home. No one is safe from the drones lurking in war zones anymore. Drone operators, hidden in the hinterland, can kill and destroy with relatively little risk.

Nuclear weapons systems are currently being modernized in all nuclear states with huge investments and developed to be increasingly dangerous. These states hope that the deterrent effect will provide security and also enable them to assert their geostrategic interests with the conventional weapons systems of a nuclear power. There are now also calls for a nuclear protective shield for Europe. But the security promise of a nuclear protective shield is an illusion. No country in the world is capable of reliably defending itself against attacking hybrid weapon systems, which also include hypersonic missiles with nuclear warheads.

But even without the use of nuclear weapons, modern society is extremely vulnerable. Drone and hacker attacks on critical infrastructure cannot be defended against in their entirety. They can lead to chaos in a society and the collapse of the social organization of life, combined with social unrest, violence, and looting.

Ultimately, societies can only be protected from these dangers by reorganizing and restructuring their multilateral relations in a cooperative direction. Even if the pendulum has swung in the wrong direction so far, only gradual and internationally coordinated disarmament could enable an effective peace dividend that could be used to combat world hunger and the climate catastrophe. This can only be achieved through a significant reform of the United Nations. In particular, the right of aggressive states such as Russia and the US to block decisions in the highest bodies of the UN, especially the UN Security Council, must be abolished. Overall, the United Nations needs to be strengthened and democratized.

AI Can Have Positive but Also Dangerous Effects

The further development of artificial intelligence (AI) in connection with newer weapon systems means that humans are increasingly losing control over weapons. AI information is difficult to verify when decisions must be made within minutes about whether a nuclear attack is taking place and a counterattack should be launched. In such cases, decision-makers are ultimately at the mercy of AI, which transmits messages based on information from hundreds of sensors. Misinformation cannot be clarified. There is a risk of accidental nuclear war.

In this context, it is also important to warn very clearly about the danger of superintelligence developing on the internet, AI that becomes autonomous. Superintelligence achieves cognitive performance that far exceeds human capabilities and intelligence. Such AI could have a disruptive or even destructive effect on critical infrastructure and, in the worst case, gain uncontrolled access to nuclear weapons systems.

AI can be used positively in many ways, such as in skin cancer screening or language translation. However, there must be no unrestrained AI development in the hands of large, profit-oriented tech companies. Instead, development must be controlled by ethically guided international rules and strictly sanctioned in the event of violations.

The World Is Increasingly on the Run

Millions of people, especially in the Global South, are currently fleeing the consequences of the climate crisis and wars that are destroying their livelihoods. At the same time, the countries of the Global North are trying to shield themselves from these refugee movements. This is also being done in the defense against right-wing extremist political movements and parties, which exploit the flight of these people for their political propaganda. Nevertheless, even countries that still seriously pursue democratic goals are threatened by right-wing extremist takeovers of their governments.

That is how things currently stand. It would be wrong to look away or gloss over the situation.

And yet: Perspectives for Positive Developments

Especially in this difficult global situation, it is important to pay attention to social countermovements and successful examples of social organization and social resistance against the destruction of civilization.

The pendulum may well swing back when the civilian population and parts of the ruling classes realize that war is not a solution to global problems, but only costs livelihoods, human lives, financial resources, and destroys our shared world.

The influence of those parts of the global economy that compete with the political-military-industrial complex and depend on peace and the undisturbed global exchange of goods and services should not be underestimated. They will try to assert their influence.

People in a society will not put up with decades of oppression and exploitation.

The trillions of dollars that will be spent in the future on measures to prevent and mitigate the approaching climate catastrophe will also give large sections of society pause for thought. The climate catastrophe will occur earlier than expected due to emissions from wars and military operations. If, in addition, social resources are invested in wars and states go into debt for this purpose, they will lack the financial resources and social energy to even begin to address human-made climate change.

Even if the world's largest fossil fuel dealers try to assert their interests by military means, their time will be up in the medium term. The development of technology based on renewable energy generation can no longer be stopped globally.

Furthermore, people in a society will not put up with decades of oppression and exploitation. They will reorganize themselves into civil society and begin to work together to bring about change, even in the face of pressure from authoritarian societies.

These are some weighty arguments as to why the current destruction can develop in a more constructive direction and the pendulum can swing back.

In addition to these economic, sociopolitical, and peace-ecological perspectives, there are other developments in which new ideas are already being tried out, new forms of community life and work are emerging, and civil society protest movements are evolving.

Thus, the new is already emerging from the old.

Even though many things are currently moving in the wrong direction, there are also reasons for hope and prospects for positive developments. I still believe that a peaceful and sustainably developed world is possible through a realignment of social conditions at the local, national, regional, and global levels.

But all those who see this and desire it must intensify and expand their efforts together. A social realignment can only come about if visions of social development based on precise analysis are thought through, then formulated in a way that is feasible and can be put into practice.

With Congress overseeing the ending of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, enhanced premium tax credit, or subsidies, for Americans, hiking premiums for them to buy private healthcare insurance, consider such economics and politics in the context of $1 trillion in defense spending. Why? Context matters, economically and politically.

Against this backdrop, ACA subsidies are 3% or three-hundredths, of $1 trillion. To be sure, $30 billion is real money to the average US citizen. But $30 billion of federal spending for ACA subsidies is a drop in the bucket of a $1 trillion defense budget.

This policy priority reflects a political economy that weakens the healthcare of an estimated 22 million Americans facing ACA premium hikes of 114%, on average, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey, and strengthens the profitability of military corporations such as Lockheed Martin, RTX Corporation, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, and General Dynamics. Such federal spending priorities are a kitchen table issue affecting people who vote blue, red, or independent, or are non-voters.

Here’s the bottom line. Healthcare insurance is a necessity, not a luxury.

Thus, about 10 days of annual defense spending equals the $30 billion of expired Obamacare subsidies. Welcome to politics and economics in capitalist America.

In 2026, with ACA tax credits expiring, Renee Rubin Ross, a mother who lives in California and covers her family of four with Obamacare, is facing a big price hike. How big? Try $2,700 more each month to maintain healthcare coverage. That’s $32,400 more per year for Ross to buy ACA coverage. Where will she and millions of Americans like her find the money to pay their healthcare bills?

The out-of-pocket costs for mom-and-pop shops are also spiking. Shaundell Newsome is the founder of Sumnu Marketing in Las Vegas and co-chair of Small Business for America's Future. “Refusing to extend the Affordable Care Act enhanced tax credits has abandoned us and added soaring healthcare costs to the economic crisis crushing Main Street this year,” he said in a statement. “We’re beyond disappointed that 5 million small business owners are now almost certain to see their premiums double.”

We return to the $1 trillion annual defense budget. That figure amounts to just over $2.7 billion of spending on defense every day of the year. Thus, about 10 days of annual defense spending equals the $30 billion of expired Obamacare subsidies. Welcome to politics and economics in capitalist America.

The US political economy reflects the money power of the top defense contractors to lobby Congress and the White House for a budget policy that drives increased military spending. There’s a bipartisan consensus, a blue and red marriage. You can’t blame only President Donald J. Trump. Visit opensecrets.org to see the proof of the spending parity in military contractors’ lobbying, a revealing blue and red party breakdown.

For the average US citizen, there is simply no equivalent force of politics and economics in their interests regarding health and warfare spending. Big money sways policy priorities, and the average US citizen is at a distinct disadvantage. That’s not a law of nature, just an indication of a disorganized American working class, politically speaking.

Healthcare spending is a constructive means of improving people’s living conditions. Think of regular check-ups, ranging in age from infants to seniors, who receive care from doctors and nurses. Think of mental health services, a crucial component of health and wellness, for those in need, from traumatized military veterans to sexual assault victims. There are also emergency room visits for accidents and unexpected medical situations such as strokes.

There are coalitions at the state level that do great work to improve funding for healthcare. One example is Health Access California. Its advocacy has in part resulted in lower-cost insulin via CalRX. This means $11 per pen for Californians.

Meanwhile, defense spending is a destructive force that worsens people’s lives at home and abroad. I close with a list, a partial one, of the foreign places where US armaments directly and by proxy lead to the loss of lives and limbs.

Just ask the relatives of Venezuelans maimed and murdered during the US early morning attack and kidnapping of the nation’s elected president and his wife recently. For that matter, ask the family members of the fishermen who lost their lives due to aerial strikes from US forces in the Caribbean over the past few months. Then there are families and friends of those injured and killed by US drone strikes in Somalia. US defense spending has been and remains despite a “ceasefire” a central part of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

Meanwhile, there is talk in the US Senate about resuming the expired ACA enhanced tax credits. Shifting federal spending from a $1 trillion defense budget to funding Americans’ healthcare is in all likelihood not a part of this political talk given the corporate-dominant political economy of the country’s military-industrial complex and imperialist foreign policy.

A solution to this destructive situation is movement politics, popular mobilization, and organization of working people in their interests as a class force for peace and social justice, domestically and globally. A few groups that come to mind are CodePink, the Poor People’s Campaign, Public Citizen, and Repairers of the Breach.

One word—plastics. That was the golden grail that Dustin Hoffman learned about from some well-wisher in the movie The Graduate. I remember watching the film as a farm kid and thinking about the updated version I was being told by my guidance counselors—one word: computers. We are now in the midst of the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” and the latest mantra is: artificial intelligence. Such free advice, though, could really be a costly warning in disguise.

Granted, there is a lot of poverty in the “richest” nation on Earth, and marginalized US communities often have few choices for economic (mal) development. It becomes a twisted game of pick your own poison: supermax prison, toxic waste dump, ethanol facility, tar sands pipeline… Now, AI data centers have been added to the limited menu. Someone recently shared a map of looming AI data centers across the world. It reminded me of how a tumor spreads and Edward Abbey’s quote that “growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”

The fact that Big Data has targeted Rural America for its latest mastitis should be no surprise. We have lots of available land to grab, thanks to the legacy of settler colonialism and family-farm foreclosure. Back in August I remember driving past Beaver Dam, Wisconsin and watching bulldozers flattening over 800 acres along Hwy 151 and my first hunch was: data center. Sure enough, the secretive $1 billion deal with Meta was finally revealed in a November press release. Just north of Madison in the town of DeForest, Blackstone subsidiary QTS Realty Trust is aiming to build another $12 billion data center on close to 1,600 acres. And if we need to free up more land for AI, we quaint rural folks could just abandon growing real Xmas trees and force people to buy plastic ones instead, as one Fox News “expert” suggested over the holidays. Former President Joe Biden visited Mt. Pleasant, Wisconsin in May 2024 to promote Microsoft’s new $3.3 billion 300+ acre AI campus on the former site of flat screen maker, Foxconn, that welcomed President Donald Trump for its groundbreaking back in 2018. Foxconn abandoned that $10 billion project and its 13,000 job promise, after getting millions in state subsidies and local tax deferrals.

The Microsoft AI complex in Mt. Pleasant will also require over 8 million gallons of water per year from Lake Michigan. We still have some clean water, though that may not last long thanks to agrochemical monocultures, CAFO manure dumping, and PFAS-laden sludge spreading. And AI certainly is thirsty—the Alliance for the Great Lakes noted in its August 2025 report that a hyperscale AI data center needs up to 365 million gallons of water to keep itself cool—that is as much water as is needed by 12,000 people! A recent investigative report by Bloomberg News found that over two-thirds of the AI data centers built since 2022 are in parts of the country already facing water stress. And it is really hard to drink data.

But is all the AI hype just another bubble about to burst? Rural communities (and public taxpayers) have been offered many “amazing” schemes in the past that ended up being just a “bait and switch”—another hollow promise.

In the Midwest we also have potential access to vast electricity (fracked natural gas, wind and solar farms, methane digesters), and relatively under-stressed high voltage grids (unlike California or Texas), though the loss of “cheaper” imported Canadian hydropower with the latest trade war could be a serious challenge. In 2023 the US had over a $2 billion electricity trade deficit vis-a-vis Canada. According to a recent Clean Wisconsin report, just two of our proposed AI data centers will require 3.9 gigawatts—1.5 times the current power demand of all 4.3 million homes in the state.

But, no worry, there are dilapidated US nuclear reactors with massive waste dumps that could be put back online such as Palisades in Michigan, despite opposition from environmental activists and family farmers. The Trump administration also just announced a $1 billion low-interest loan to reanimate Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania for the sake of AI. Until all that happens, though, regular ratepayers can expect a huge hike in their energy bills as Big Data has the market clout to siphon off what it needs first, especially as it colludes with utility monopolies. Many people in Wisconsin are already paying for $1+ billion in stranded assets—mostly defunct coal plants, as well as nuclear waste storage facilities—while utility investors continue to receive guaranteed dividends of 9-10%.

But is all the AI hype just another bubble about to burst? Rural communities (and public taxpayers) have been offered many “amazing” schemes in the past that ended up being just a “bait and switch”—another hollow promise. If we subsidize a massive data center, will the projected “market” for increasing algorithms actually come? Many within the AI industry don’t think so, and are now invoking the lessons we should have learned from the Enron scandal decades ago or the even worse sequel in the subprime mortgage-fueled financial meltdown. Corporate cheerleaders can be quite clever when it comes to inflating prices (and stocks) for goods and services that may not even exist, while hiding their massive debt obligations in a whole cascading series of shadowy shell subsidiaries and dishonest accounting shenanigans.

Many industry insiders are ringing alarm bells. "These models are being hyped up, and we're investing more than we should," said Daron Acemoglu, who won the 2024 Nobel Economics Prize, quoted in a recent NPR story about the current AI boom or bubble. OpenAI says it will spend $1.4 trillion on data centers over the next eight years, while Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft are going to throw in another $400 billion. Meanwhile, just 3% of people who use AI now pay for it, and many are frantically trying to figure out how to turn off AI mode on their internet searches and to reject AI eavesdropping on their Zoom calls. Where is the real revenue going to come from to pay for all this AI speculation? The same NPR story notes that such a flood of leveraged capital is equal to every iPhone user on Earth forking over $250 to “enjoy” the benefits of AI—and “that’s not going to happen,” adds Paul Kedrosky, a venture capitalist who is now a research fellow at MIT's Institute for the Digital Economy. Morgan Stanley estimates AI companies will shell out $3 trillion by 2028 for this data center buildout—but less than 50% of that money will come from them. Hmmm...

Special purpose vehicle (SPV) may sound like a fancy name for a retrofitted tractor, but that is how Big Data is creating a Potemkin Village to hide their Ponzi Scheme. Here is one example from Richland Parish, Louisiana where Meta is now building its Hyperion Data Center—a massive $27 billion project. A Wall Street outfit, Blue Owl, borrows $27 billion, using Meta’s future rent payments for a data center to back up its loan. Meta’s 20% “mortgage” on the facility gives them 100% control of the purported data crunching from the facility. This debt never shows up on Meta’s books and remains hidden from carefree investors and shallow analysts, but, like other synthetic financial instruments such as the now infamous mortgage backed security (MBS), the reality only comes home to roost when the house of cards collapses and Meta has to eventually pay off Blue Owl.

In the meantime, as the Louisiana Illuminator reports, the residents of Richland Parish (where 25% live below the poverty level) are bearing the brunt of all the real costs of having an AI factory farm. Dozens of crashes involving construction vehicles; damage to local roads; and massive future energy demands (three times that required for the entire city of New Orleans), which will entail new natural gas power plants to be built (subsidized by existing ratepayers even as fossil fuel-induced climate change floods the Louisiana delta). Beyond the initial building flurry, AI data centers are ultimately job poor. It just doesn’t take that many people to tend computers once they are built. As Meta’s VP, Brad Smith, admitted, the 250,000 square foot Hyperion data center may need 1,500 workers to build but barely 50 to operate. Beyond all the ballyhoo, the main reason a particular community is chosen to “host” one seems to be based upon the bought duplicity of elected officials and the excessive generosity of local taxpayers. Not a good cost-benefit analysis—unless you are Big Data.

And then there are the questionable kickback schemes between the suppliers of the technology and those owning the data centers. If you are maker of computer chips, would you not be tempted to fork over capital to a major buyer of your own products to ensure future demand? Nvidia just announced a $100 billion stake in OpenAI to help bankroll the data centers. In turn OpenAI signed a $300 billion deal with Oracle to actually build the AI data centers that will require Nvidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs). OpenAI also signed a separate $6+ billion deal with former BitCoin miner, CoreWeave, which rents out internet cloud access (using Nvidia’s chips once again). This type of incestuous circular financing should raise eyebrows to anyone who studies business ethics—and perhaps remind others of how a toilet operates.

What is all this AI doing? Promoters will point to many innovations—faster screening for cancer cells, closer connection to far-flung relatives, precision application of fertilizers and pesticides, elimination of drudgery in the workplace through automation. A bright future indeed—or perhaps not?

The real issue is whether or not AI data centers are economically viable, socially appropriate, environmentally sustainable, and actually serve the public interest.

In August 2025, ProPublica reported that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had lost 20% of its staff devoted to food safety thanks to DOGE cuts. Inspection of food import facilities is now at a historic low even as our dependence on the rest of the world to feed us grows. But not to worry, the FDA announced in May that AI was coming to the rescue thanks to a large language model (LLM)—dubbed Elsa—that would be deployed alongside what’s left of its human staff to expedite their oversight work. Hopefully, Elsa knows melamine when it sees it. AI chatbots are also growing in popularity and available 24-7 to “talk or advise” people on all sorts of pressing issues—how to win more friends, how to cheat on this exam, how to make up fake legal opinions, even encouraging a teenager to commit suicide and suggesting to someone else that they murder their own parents.

But there is an even dirtier AI underbelly. Some have dubbed these AI slop, AI smut, and AI stazi—three 21st-century horsemen of the digital apocalypse. What is this all about? Well, a lot of these accelerating AI algorithms are actually devoted to selling “products” that many people do not want and would find objectionable, as well as providing “services” that undermine our basic freedoms. Slop (Merriam Webster’s word of 2025) is used to describe when AI generates internet content that is only meant to make money through advertising. Right now there are thousands of wannabe internet “creatives” all over the globe, watching “how-to videos” to manufacture AI social media to grab the eyeballs of US consumers. That cute puppy video you see on Instagram or that shocking “news” story you read on Facebook is not by accident—the goal is to monetize clicks per thousand (cost per mille, or CPM) where advertisers pay for how much their ad is viewed online. This is also why online content is often overly long (where is the actual recipe in this cooking blog?), since that increases ad scrolling. The average US consumer is now subject to between 6,000 and 10,000 ads per day—70% of which are online. For more on AI slop, visit: https://www.visibrain.com/blog/ai-slop-social-media.

An even worse virtual commodity is AI smut—literally algorithms creating pornography. This perverted version of AI scraps the internet for images (high school yearbooks, red carpet fashion shows, popular music concerts, street cam footage, etc.) and then uses “face swap” programs to create personalized hardcore rubbish. There is little if any accountability for this theft of public images and violation of personal privacy—at best those involved are “shamed” into taking down their AI sites after being exposed due to fears of liability and prosecution for child abuse. But that has hardly stopped this seedy AI subsector. Can you imagine your face or image being put into such a lucrative sexploitative scenario without your permission? At this point, there are hardly any internet police walking the beat in the virtual AI world. We don’t even have the right to be forgotten on the internet.

Which brings us to AI stazi—the updated version of the Cold War-era East German secret police. University of Wisconsin Madison just announced the creation of a College of Computing and Artificial Intelligence (CAI), in part thanks to a $140 million donation from Cisco. Few Bucky Badger fans know that 30 years ago they were used as guinea pigs while cheering at Camp Randall Stadium to help create facial recognition technology through a UW-Madison grant from the Department of Defense Applied Research Agency (DARPA). Visitors to the UW campus today will no doubt “enjoy” the automated license plate readers (ALRPs) owned by Flock Safety. According to an August 2025 Wisconsin Examiner expose, there are hundreds of Flock cameras across the state in use by law enforcement agencies, including Wisconsin county sheriff departments with active 287(g) cooperation agreements with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. No warrant is needed for law enforcement agencies to browse the national Flock database. In fact, agents have used Flock to track peaceful protesters, spy on spouses, or just stalk people they don’t like. To see where Flock cameras are near you, visit: www.deflock.me. Of course, Flock Security has outsourced its AI programming to cheaper (and more secure?) Filipino contractors. Similar AI spying networks such as Pegasus have been widely exposed and have become “bread and butter” for authoritarian regimes from Israel to Saudi Arabia. China and Russia have their own versions (Skynet, SORM, etc.). Thanks to the cozy relationship between Trump and Peter Thiel, the US-based AI mercenary outfit, Palantir, is now being redeployed for domestic surveillance—first revealed by Edward Snowden back in 2017.

The latest executive bluster from Trump is that states’ rights are out the window when it comes to regulating AI data centers—such federal preemption of local democratic control is part of the larger neoliberal “race to the bottom” forced-trade agenda. But the cat is already out of the bag as dozens of communities have successfully blocked AI data center projects and others are poised to do the same based upon their winning strategies. Better yet, this is a bipartisan grassroots organizing issue!

What is the best way to keep out an AI factory farm? No non-disclosure agreements (NDAs)! These are massive development schemes that could not exist without the approval and support of elected officials, so any agreement should not be secret. They can hardly claim to be providing a public good if they are not subject to transparency and oversight. No sweetheart deals! Big Data is among the wealthiest sectors of our current economy and does not need or deserve subsidies, discounted electric rates, tax increment financing, property tax holidays, or other incentives. It is a classic move of crony capitalism to privatize the benefits and socialize the costs. No regulatory loopholes! Given their huge demands for land, water, and energy, Big Data should not be allowed to cut legal corners and needs to follow all the rules of any other normal enterprise—full liability coverage, no special economic zones, consideration of cumulative impacts, protections for ratepayers, no unregulated toxic pollution or illegal water transfer in violation of the Clean Water Act or the Great Lakes Compact, etc. How much water your data center demands is hardly a “trade secret.”

And most important, don’t let Big Data boosters belittle your legitimate concerns as “neo-Luddite!” Everyone uses technology—even the Amish. The real issue is whether or not AI data centers are economically viable, socially appropriate, environmentally sustainable, and actually serve the public interest. People have good reasons to be wary and oppose them on all those fronts.

For more info, checkout: Big Tech Unchecked: A Toolkit for Community Action

As well as the North Star Data Center Policy Toolkit

In polling conducted on January 8, YouGov showed that American public opinion has turned sharply against Immigration and Customs Enforcement. This polling was conducted on the same day Renee Good was killed during an ICE operation in Minneapolis, so it does not fully incorporate the public outrage generated by this event.

Fully 52% disapprove of how ICE is doing its job (42% strongly disapprove), while 39% approve. Furthermore, 51% say that ICE’s tactics are “too forceful," while just over 1 in 4 (27%) say they are “about right.” A 44% plurality (30% strongly approve) approve of “recent protests against ICE.”

Support for ICE’s work is clustered strongly among Republicans (53% strongly approve, 27% somewhat approve). Democrats give ICE failing grades by an overwhelming margin (72% strongly disapprove, 13% somewhat disapprove). The most significant finding in the YouGov poll is that a 56% majority of Independents (44% strongly, 12% somewhat) disapprove of ICE.

To put this issue in perspective, in February of last year YouGov polling found that ICE had a plus 16-point approval rating.

As more people see video from the Good killing, public opinion will continue to shift.

Axios points out that support for abolishing ICE has dramatically increased.

• In September 2024, just 19% supported abolishing the agency, according to survey data from research firm Civiqs, while 66% opposed.
• This month, 42% support abolishing the agency and 49.5% oppose.
• Abolishing ICE has become a consensus view among Democrats, per the Civiqs data, with 69% of Democrats now supporting the idea.

As more people see video from the Good killing, public opinion will continue to shift. In response to the White House reaction, we may see more Republican support for ICE. An equally likely conclusion is that ICE will hemorrhage support from Independents.

Despite what President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance say, the polling data clearly shows that the majority of Americans are not on the side of ICE, but are with those putting their lives on the line to protest ICE’s aggressive actions.

For decades, Canada has carefully cultivated a global reputation for principle, human rights, and moral clarity. However, that image is now cracking, and cracking fast. For too long, Canada has cloaked its inaction and complicity, rather spectacularly, behind political correctness. But as the global crises grow more brutal—and more visible—it has become harder for Canada to maintain this facade.

Canadians and people around the world are catching on to the gap between what the country claims to stand for and what it actually does. That gap is just impossible to ignore when it comes to the situation in Gaza. Since October 2023, Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has killed over 80,000 Palestinians—and that figure represents only the confirmed deaths, excluding those trapped beneath the rubble. Experts have estimated that nearly 600,000 total Palestinians have lost their lives, including thousands of children, and nearly 2 million more have been displaced, an overwhelming portion of the strip’s population.

United Nations experts and international human rights organizations have increasingly raised alarms, calling this horrific massacre what it is: a genocide. Gaza now lies beneath 68 million tons of rubble, roughly the weight of 186 Empire State Buildings—enough debris to spread 215 pounds over every square inch of Manhattan. Meanwhile, the United States continues to ship to Israel, and Canada, despite claiming to have imposed an arms embargo, continues to fuel the violence unabated, its factories producing fighter jet components, explosives, and munitions that move through US channels directly into the assault.

The latest Arms Embargo Now report documents hundreds of shipments of Canadian-made fighter jet components, explosives, and propellants flowing through US facilities to Israel. Shipping data, contract records, ports of exit, and delivery timelines confirm that Canadian military goods are directly sustaining Israel’s assault on Gaza. Between late 2023 and mid-2025, over 360 shipments of Canadian aircraft parts reached Lockheed Martin's F-35 assembly plant in Fort Worth, Texas. Analysis of commercially available shipping data revealed that at least 34 shipments were forwarded from US facilities directly to Israeli military bases and defense firms. Canadian explosives and propellants, including the M31A2 triple-base propellant and TNT, transshipped through the Port of Saguenay, Quebec, were routed through US munitions plants to produce bombs and artillery shells used in Gaza.

Why is Canada so determined to continue funneling weapons parts and ammunition to the US, unquestioningly, even as it allows itself to be used as an accessory to Israel’s genocide and deepens dependence on a country that has openly entertained annexing Canada?

The report further shows that many of these controlled military components were transported from Canada to the United States as cargo on commercial passenger flights, departing from major airports such as Toronto Pearson and Montréal-Trudeau. These components support both new aircraft production and ongoing maintenance, keeping Israeli F-35s operational during the Gaza assault, while the use of civilian airlines blurs the line between ordinary passenger travel and an active military supply chain. Every shipment appears to flow through a calculated, politically engineered pipeline fueling war.

This evidence exposes a stark truth: Public assurances by Canadian officials are incompatible with reality. Former Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly promised that Canada would not allow “any form of arms or parts of arms” to reach Gaza, directly or indirectly. Her successor, Anita Anand, repeated similar commitments. Yet the shipments continue. Canada has not stopped sending arms; it has simply outsourced accountability.

The government’s defense relies on the so-called US Loophole: Military exports to the United States are exempt from Canada’s permit requirements and human rights assessments. Once in US hands, Canada claims no responsibility for where the arms go next. However, international law does not vanish because weapons cross a border. The Arms Trade Treaty prohibits authorizing transfers when there is a substantial risk of facilitating serious violations of humanitarian law. Knowledge, foreseeability, and contribution still matter.

The pattern of misrepresentation is clear. From December 2023 to January 2024, officials, including former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and GAC Assistant Deputy Minister Alexandre Lévêque, claimed no arms exports or permits had been issued to Israel, a statement contradicted by nearly $30 million in new export permits. Early 2024 saw a pivot to “non-lethal” exports, with night-vision goggles and protective gear cited to obscure lethal shipments of bomb accessories and explosives. Parliamentary motions and public statements claiming a halt to arms exports were largely symbolic, leaving the vast majority of existing permits intact.

By 2024-2025, claims that exports were restricted to “defensive” uses, such as the Iron Dome, or would not reach Gaza, were impossible to verify and did not prevent Canadian-made components from being incorporated into Israeli munitions. The government’s narrative meandered endlessly, offering Kafkaesque explanations that dissolved accountability into legalistic semantics.

If Canada were truly innocent, it would have promptly and publicly refuted the findings of the Arms Embargo Now report. Instead, it has responded with silence. Even after Member of Parliament Jenny Kwan introduced Bill C-233 in September 2025 to close the US loophole and impose meaningful parliamentary oversight on arms exports, the bill has been left to languish untouched. This legislation offers a straightforward safeguard to prevent Canadian weapons and components from being routed through the United States to fuel conflicts abroad, yet the government refuses to move.

If this were merely bureaucratic oversight, and if sending arms indirectly to Israel were not the objective, why has there been no momentum on a measure so clearly aligned with transparency and human rights? Why is Canada so determined to continue funneling weapons parts and ammunition to the US, unquestioningly, even as it allows itself to be used as an accessory to Israel’s genocide and deepens dependence on a country that has openly entertained annexing Canada? And why do weapon components and ammunition continue to flow even as Canadian representatives and humanitarian delegates are barred from entering the occupied West Bank, prevented from witnessing conditions on the ground themselves?

At this point, one can only wonder how much longer Canada’s moral facade can plausibly endure. As Aldous Huxley once observed, “The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not by doing something, but by refraining from doing.” This appears to be the goal here. The government has offered no coherent defense, only theatrical explanations in which responsibility dissolves into process and legality is reduced to paperwork. There is no counterstrategy, no rebuttal, and no attempt at persuasion. There is only silence, complexity, and delay.

Perhaps the unspoken calculation is that this response will be enough. After all, when public schools report alarming declines in reading and comprehension skills, critical engagement becomes harder to sustain. If citizens struggle to parse policy documents or follow supply-chain evidence, denial need not be convincing; it merely needs to be exhausting. In such an environment, ignorance becomes not a failure of governance, but a quiet line of defense.

In light of all this, recognition of the State of Palestine now reads like a scripted apology: Yes, we see your suffering, we hear your cries, but don’t worry, we’ll keep arming your oppressor through the US. Meanwhile, Canadian factories quietly churn out fighter jet parts, explosives, and munitions that fuel Israel’s assault on Gaza. As Joseph Heller observed in Catch-22, “The enemy is anybody who’s going to get you killed, no matter which side he’s on.” It is a brutal reminder that, regardless of what the government says, Canada’s military industry has reduced Palestinian lives in Gaza to expendable instruments, sacrificed to preserve contracts, alliances, and profit. Words without action are meaningless; they are a costume of virtue, while the violence continues unabated.

Canada’s reputation cannot survive on statements alone. It rests on the belief that credible evidence of mass harm would prompt action. That belief no longer holds. The facts are documented. The loopholes are exposed. The silence is deliberate.

History will not remember Canada for its statements or parliamentary motions. It will remember the arms it allowed to flow, the civilians killed with its components, and the moral compromise it has embraced. Canada’s rhetoric of principle is a veneer, one that is cracking as a majority of Canadians now demand recognition of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Behind this veneer lies complicity, deliberate and undeniable.

The Trump administration has suspended over $10 billion of federal childcare funds for five Democratic-led states over alleged fraud. So what if childcare in the United States is already outrageously expensive, much higher than in other developed countries? And why is it that childcare in the US is so expensive?

Socialist and feminist economist Nancy Folbre sheds light on these questions in the interview that follows by pointing out the various changes that have taken place over time in the organization of social reproduction and argues, in turn, that universal childcare, an idea that is becoming increasingly popular with voters across many parts of the United States, is very much needed.

Nancy Folbre is professor emerita of economics and director of the Program on Gender and Care Work at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

C. J. Polychroniou: You’ve written widely about the rising price of parenting. Despite concerns about a national birthrate that is now below replacement level, there seems to be relatively little public effort to increase economic support for parents and children in this country. Why?

Nancy Folbre: The undeclared wars the Trump administration is conducting include a brazen process of reducing public support for the next generation. This process began last spring when billionaire Elon Musk spearheaded budget cuts and layoffs in programs benefiting children and began dismantling the Department of Education. It escalated in the first week of 2026 when the administration used accusations of fraud from a partisan video of childcare centers in Minnesota as an excuse to freeze federal childcare funds to five Democratic states.

The strategy is transparent: Tar all social spending with a sticky claim of fraud and abuse. This includes spending on parents and children, already hurt by cuts to Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, and the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program. These cuts have reduced the affordability of family care for all but the affluent, making a mockery of the Trump administration’s promises of prosperity for all.

An understanding of the deeper forces driving this strategy requires a deep dive into historical changes in the organization of our social reproduction.

A similar logic applies in a different direction to investments in us and our children—why risk them if they are not cost-effective? Robots may soon be cheaper, and they never go on strike OR vote.

Children are getting more expensive for parents even as investment in future workers is becoming less cost-effective for employers. Economic pressures became evident centuries ago when child labor was outlawed and technological change increased the demand for skilled labor. This shift in demand helped incentivize investments in public health and education that were financed by higher taxes. The need for future workers—and soldiers—also intensified the need for wages sufficient to support at least a modicum of family care.

While employers constantly sought ways to reduce labor costs, their need for an ample supply of skilled labor at least partially aligned their incentives with those of workers themselves through support for the so-called welfare state (better termed a “social investment” state) that helped develop and maintain the capabilities of the working population.

Fast forward to the present. The huge amounts of money being invested in artificial intelligence represent a new bet on reducing labor costs both directly (through reduced employment and wages) and indirectly (through reduced investment in health, education, and social services).

A recent Wall Street Journal headline put it this way: “AI Job Losses Are Coming, Tech Execs Say. The Question: Who’s Most at Risk?” The answer: most of us—because general artificial intelligence (AI) is likely to reduce private incentives to invest in humans rather than data centers. Elon Musk, who spearheaded efforts to cut federal spending in early 2025, is happily promoting Tesla’s new Optimus robot.

C. J. Polychroniou: You seem to be suggesting that class conflict affects public policies, which affect demographic outcomes (and vice versa). How do most economists think about these issues?

Nancy Folbre: Mainstream economists seldom pay much attention to collective identities or interests such as those based on class, gender, citizenship, or parenthood. Their general confidence in the efficiency of market forces makes them hopeful that that the labor market will adjust to changing prices—that new jobs will replace those rendered obsolete. However, college-educated, entry-level workers in the US are already experiencing diminished job prospects. Some economists predict that the “adjustment costs” will be high—a polite way of saying that the younger generation is in for an unpleasant economic shock.

Some ideological adjustment is also underway. The theory of “human capital” successfully promoted the view that the labor market would reward the skills represented by a college degree, reinforcing the claim that employees are generally paid according to the value of what they produce. The very term “human capital” suggests that there is no real distinction between capitalists and workers—everyone can be a capitalist by investing in their own earning power.

This utopian fantasy has long been countered by evidence that the environment people grow up in—including many factors well beyond their own control—shapes their economic trajectory. The fantasy is countered even more powerfully by evidence that the returns to a college education are now declining for individuals coming from low-income families. The surge of investment in AI raises the distinct possibility that the supply of “human capital” is likely to further exceed the demand for it, threatening downward mobility for a segment of the paid labor force once considered relatively secure.

Of course, even conservative economists recognize that a good education—from preschool to college--does more than merely increase lifetime earnings. It enhances the skills that people need to manage their own lives—skills like troubleshooting phones, making good decisions about what to buy, how to save, how to vote, and how to parent. Well-educated people live longer—and not just because they tend to earn more money.

But these benefits are not as profitable as increased productivity for a private firm.

Because they have characteristics of a public good, their economic contribution is difficult to measure, much less privately capture. Policies such as universal childcare, paid family or sick leave, and options to engage in employment from home yield significant economic returns, but these are not channeled directly to those who pay for them.

Standard economics textbooks note that firms have economic incentives to pollute the environment if this increases profitability, even if future inhabitants of the planet will pay a high price. A similar logic applies in a different direction to investments in us and our children—why risk them if they are not cost-effective? Robots may soon be cheaper, and they never go on strike OR vote.

C. J. Polychroniou: It sounds like you’re arguing that the theory of “human capital” no longer holds much water. But there are some economists out there who have articulated larger criticisms of capitalist institutions in general. How do these criticisms connect the rising private cost of children, fertility decline, and the possible obsolescence of the white-collar labor force?

Nancy Folbre: Kind of a long story, but I’ll keep it short! Economists like myself, influenced by socialist and feminist ideas, highlight the institutional arrangements that shape the distribution of the costs of raising children and the reproduction of human society itself. In many precapitalist societies, parents enjoyed at least partial payback for the costs of childrearing, as adult children contributed to family income and the support of their elders. Capitalist institutions encouraged labor mobility and reliance on individual earnings, weakening such family and community-based transfers.

Democratic engagement and bargaining over the role of the state gradually led to a different system of intergenerational transfers, taxing employers and the working-age population to help finance public education for the young and pensions and healthcare for the elderly.

This institutional compromise helped stabilize the process of “social reproduction” but also led to unequal distribution of its costs. It allowed employers to keep their contributions to the production of the next generation relatively low. It delivered fewer benefits to parents (those devoting time and money to producing new workers and taxpayers) than to non-parents. It also reinforced a gender division of labor that imposed a disproportionate share of the private costs of family care on women.

We can’t continue to treat care as a kind of expensive hobby rather than a productive contribution to our collective future.

These inequalities amplified increases in the private cost of raising children (for mothers in particular), encouraging efforts to limit family size. New technologies, increased demand for skills, and opportunities for employment outside the home also played an obvious role.

Until recently, fertility decline was considered an economic boon, allowing more women to enter paid employment and promoting the growth of Gross Domestic Product. As is now widely recognized, however, below-replacement fertility poses problems of its own. When women bear less than about 2.1 children over their lifetime, they don’t generate enough surviving children to “replace” their biological parents.

If this rate persists, the size of the youngest generation declines steadily over time, increasing the share of the elderly population relative to the employment-age, tax-paying population. The economic burden of increased old-age dependency increases political conflict over who should pay the costs—and can intensify the economic stresses of caring for younger dependents as well.

Reduction in the size of the global population offers some potential benefits, given current threats to the global environment (not to mention the dicey future of decent jobs). But if we prove unable to get back up to replacement levels of fertility at some point in the future, we will render ourselves extinct. I’d call that a pretty acute crisis of social reproduction.

C. J. Polychroniou: How can we avert such a crisis? Are you suggesting that we adopt pronatalist policies? How do responses in other countries differ from those in the US?

Nancy Folbre: No. We’re not in a state of demographic emergency and we don’t need to encourage a higher birth rate. Much of the global population is suffering from lack of decent employment. And the number of children in the US harmed by poverty makes investment in child health and education a much higher priority than increasing births here.

However, investments in child “quality” can help stabilize and strengthen private commitments. Many other countries are implementing policies designed to make family care more affordable. As is well-known, most affluent European countries have put such policies in place. South Korea began providing universal childcare services in 2013 and is now increasing parental leave allowances. Canada is a more nearby example, with its rollout of a new federal childcare system that will offer universal childcare services at a private cost of $10 a day. Within the US, both New Mexico and New York City are setting an example with new initiatives.

The US as a whole is lagging beyond for several reasons. Racial and ethnic divisions, regional differences, and exceptionally high levels of earnings inequality have weakened the solidarity needed to build a “pro-care” coalition. Imperialist rhetoric and illegal military actions have literally bloodied the water.

As I argue in my forthcoming book, Making Care Work, we need to do a better job explaining the public benefits of investment in human capabilities, including the care of people experiencing illness, frailty, or disability. We can’t continue to treat care as a kind of expensive hobby rather than a productive contribution to our collective future.

Let’s talk about how to move forward in another interview—I think that a universal basic income will be part of the solution, even though it will face vehement opposition. Will employers invest in our kids? Only if we can make them.

When US forces carried out a large-scale military operation in Caracas on January 3, 2026—capturing President Nicolás Maduro and transporting him to New York to face US indictments—Washington framed the moment as resolution. President Donald Trump declared Venezuela’s long crisis effectively over, announcing that the United States would “run” the country for a period of time and openly discussing the reinstallation of US oil interests. The language was casual, almost improvisational, as if Venezuela were an unruly subsidiary finally brought to heel.

What the operation revealed, however, was not strategic clarity but a familiar blindness. Once again, US power moved decisively while understanding lagged far behind. Leadership was removed, headlines were captured, yet the deeper structures shaping Venezuelan life—its history of extraction, its social networks, its hard-earned skepticism toward imposed authority—remained untouched. The episode fit neatly into a long pattern: Outsiders mistaking control for comprehension.

For more than five centuries, Venezuela has attracted this kind of attention. It has been treated as a resource cache, a geopolitical puzzle, a cautionary tale, or a problem to be solved. Rarely has it been approached as a society with its own internal logic. Again and again, external actors arrive convinced that this time, through capital, force, or expertise, they have finally grasped what Venezuela is and what it needs. The confidence never lasts.

The misreading begins early. When Alonso de Ojeda and Amerigo Vespucci reached the northern coast in 1499 and named it Veneziola, they imposed a European metaphor on a place already dense with meaning. Indigenous societies—the Timoto-Cuica in the Andes, Carib and Arawak peoples along the coast—had built complex agricultural systems, trade routes, and ecological knowledge. Spanish conquest dismantled much of this world, extracting pearls, gold, and cacao while concentrating power in Caracas, a city whose monumental architecture masked the fragility beneath it.

Venezuela has been misread repeatedly. Not because it is unknowable, but because powerful outsiders rarely bother to know it on its own terms.

Colonial Venezuela was never cohesive. Authority flowed downward; legitimacy never followed. The German Welser banking house, granted control of the territory in the 16th century, pursued gold through enslavement and violence. Later, the Guipuzcoan Company monopolized trade, choking local economic life. Periodic uprisings were crushed rather than resolved. The lesson repeated itself quietly but insistently: Wealth could be extracted, order imposed temporarily, but social trust could not be engineered from afar.

Independence did not resolve these tensions. 19th century unfolded through fragmentation, regionalism, and civil war. Simón Bolívar understood Venezuela better than most foreign admirers or critics since, yet even he struggled to translate military success into durable political unity. The Federal War left the country devastated and more unequal, reinforcing a pattern in which power was centralized while social cohesion remained elusive. European creditors and early oil prospectors took note, circling patiently.

Oil altered Venezuela’s position in the world but not its underlying dynamics. In the early 20th century, Juan Vicente Gómez offered foreign companies stability and access in exchange for political backing. Later, Marcos Pérez Jiménez presented a gleaming vision of modernization—highways, towers, civic monuments—that impressed visiting dignitaries. The spectacle worked. Venezuela appeared governable, even exemplary. Yet outside the frame, inequality hardened and participation narrowed. Development was visible; legitimacy was thin.

By the time the bolívar collapsed on Black Friday in 1983, the illusion was difficult to sustain. An economy tethered to oil rents proved dangerously exposed to global shocks, while political institutions remained distant from everyday life. The Caracazo riots of 1989 were not a sudden breakdown but a release, an eruption from a society that had absorbed decades of exclusion. International observers described chaos. Venezuelans recognized continuity.

Hugo Chávez entered this landscape not as a rupture but as a condensation of long-simmering forces. His rise drew on popular frustration with a system that had promised stability and delivered precarity. The brief 2002 coup against him, quietly welcomed in Washington, collapsed almost immediately, undone by mass mobilization. Power changed hands; legitimacy reasserted itself. Chávez’s social programs produced real gains while deepening reliance on oil, leaving unresolved the same vulnerability that had defined Venezuelan political economy for a century.

After Chávez’s death, Nicolás Maduro governed a system already under strain. Falling oil prices, hyperinflation, protest cycles, mass migration, and partial dollarization followed. External pressure mounted, sanctions, recognition battles, diplomatic theater, often treating Venezuela less as a society than as a message. Leadership was personalized; history flattened.

The capture of Maduro followed this script. It was decisive, dramatic, and legible to a US political culture that favors clear villains and clean endings. What it did not do was engage the complexity of Venezuelan life: the informal economies that keep neighborhoods fed, the communal networks that substitute for absent institutions, the cultural memory shaped by centuries of extraction and resistance. These dynamics do not disappear when a president boards a plane.

Venezuelan resilience rarely makes headlines because it lacks spectacle. It is found in Indigenous land stewardship, Afro-Venezuelan cultural traditions, cooperative food systems, remittance networks, and everyday improvisation. Migration, so often framed solely as collapse, has also become a form of continuity, extending social ties across borders rather than severing them.

Oil still looms over everything. The 1970s boom, including Saudi-Venezuelan cooperation, promised autonomy through abundance and delivered deeper dependence instead. Resource wealth invited intervention and centralization while postponing harder questions about participation and governance. The pattern has proven remarkably durable.

Venezuela’s history does not yield easily to slogans or interventions. It resists tidy moral arcs and quick fixes. Again and again, external actors—most recently the Trump administration—have approached the country as if force, markets, or managerial confidence could substitute for understanding. Each time, they discover too late that Venezuela is not an abstraction but a living society shaped by long memory and adaptive survival.

Venezuela has been misread repeatedly. Not because it is unknowable, but because powerful outsiders rarely bother to know it on its own terms. And so the cycle continues: decisive action, confident declarations, and, beneath them all, a society that endures—complex, unfinished, and stubbornly beyond control.

Socialism destroyed Venezuela. This is the claim being made by many. According to the Manhattan Institute, corruption was not to blame, mismanagement was not to blame, falling oil prices were not to blame, and US sanctions were also not to blame. No—they argue the single cause of Venezuela’s plight was socialism. The big bad bogeyman we have all been taught to fear.

It is widely argued that growth in socialist economies is lower than in capitalist economies. This argument dominates mainstream economic discourse. We can see it with our own eyes. Of course, the citizens of the capitalist United States have higher standards of living. Of course the citizens of Europe have more cars, and Chinese citizens have more gadgets. We know all this. But we no longer live solely in capitalist economies. Today we are living under the machinations of the billionaire class. We live in a rampant capitalist fever dream that is doing so much more damage than socialism ever will.

While socialism, in a few nations on Earth, has lowered the standard of living for a few hundred million human beings, capitalism is destroying any chance of a peaceful and abundant future for all species on our incredible planet. Our atmosphere is full of carbon dioxide that is in geological terms warming our home at an unprecedented rate that threatens the very survival of our species. Every year, 7 million people die from breathing polluted air. I say “murdered” is the better word—because we could stop it. We know it is happening, and we know the cause, so manslaughter doesn’t do it justice. And what we see is only the smoke; the real fire is much larger.

Since the industrial revolution we have destroyed 1.5 billion hectares of forest. This is an area 1.5 times the size of the US. In the last 10 years alone, we have cleared an area of land equal to that of Central America. Animal populations have declined by 73% since the 1970s. Our rivers are full of shit, yet void of life. Our oceans will soon be home to more plastic than fish. Humans and the animals we breed to kill make up 95% of the world’s mammalian biomass. Around 70% of the world’s bird biomass is now made up of domesticated poultry bred for human consumption.

The leader of Venezuela was just hauled out of bed and jailed for failing his people. Well, I would suggest that the leaders of the “free” world are also failing their people, but who is going to haul President Donald Trump out of his gold-plated corporate-sponsored bed?

Due to climate change, primarily driven by the burning of fossil fuels for economic growth and animal agriculture, which reduces our ability to draw down carbon naturally, we are beginning to see the outcomes of unregulated growth. Erratic weather conditions in Russia, Ukraine, the UK, China, Mozambique, Pakistan, Canada, and Iran resulted in reduced harvests of key staples in 2025. This is just the beginning.

Our soils have been so degraded by intensive agriculture that the United Nations has warned that much of the world’s remaining topsoil could be severely degraded by 2074 if current practices continue. On top of that, we are hurtling rapidly toward a future of widespread water shortages. In just four years, demand for freshwater is projected to outstrip supply by 40% and half the world’s population could suffer severe water stress. This includes the now free and prosperous people of Venezuela, where much of the country could be uninhabitable by 2070. Without water, there is no food. Scientists have been warning us for decades that food production will be impacted greatly by climate chaos. They forecast that the chance of simultaneous areas suffering crop failure increases from 7% at 2°C (3.6°F) to a staggering 86% if we allow the billionaire class to push us to 4°C (7.2°F).

A lack of food and water, extreme heat, and sea-level rise will certainly make our planet more volatile and conflict ridden. Report after report state that we are heading toward societal collapse—a term used to describe the systematic breakdown of the core social, economic, and political institutions that sustain societies. A consequence of this will be the erosion of international laws and human rights. Does this ring any bells?

As destabilizing as climate chaos already is, an even more profound disruption is now being layered on top of it: artificial intelligence (AI). Beyond its enormous energy and water demands, which promise to exacerbate the problems outlined above, AI threatens the very fabric of society. It threatens vast swathes with employment. It threatens to fundamentally destabilize the conditions that make human societies possible. And it is all being foisted on us without our consent in order to increase profits. This is capitalism in its purest form—where profitability outweighs every other consideration, including life itself.

If we are going to blame socialism for the problems in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, communism for the problems in North Korea, then surely, with everything stated above, we must blame capitalism for the complete breakdown of ecosystems, never-ending wars, climate chaos, and a potential AI takeover. And the scale of destruction wrought by Jeff Bezos and his billionaire brethren is gargantuan when compared to anything caused by socialism. Let’s please put things in perspective.

The leader of Venezuela was just hauled out of bed and jailed for failing his people. Well, I would suggest that the leaders of the “free” world are also failing their people, but who is going to haul President Donald Trump out of his gold-plated corporate-sponsored bed? It is only the people of the most powerful nation on Earth that can do that. It should always be down to the citizens of a country to bring about change. It should never be the responsibility of a golden elite that has no interest in improving lives, but simply improving bank balances. They say you get the government you deserve. Well then, we currently have the governments we deserve. What are we going to do about it?

The question is no longer whether this system is failing us, but whether we are willing to confront the power structures that depend on that failure. We need to be honest with ourselves: We are in a class war. A small number of billionaires are grinding all Earthlings into the ground. We are losing on every battlefield. Until we start acting like we are being erased systematically, we will continue to be erased systematically.

The staggering cowardliness by four ex-presidents vis-à-vis Tyrant Trump’s wrecking of America cannot escape history’s verdict. However, there is still an opportunity for vigorous redemption by George W. Bush—whose life-saving AIDS Medicine Program in Africa was shut down by President Donald Trump—Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden, if they have any self-respect for their patriotic duty.

As of now, these former presidents are living lives of luxury and personal pursuits. They are at the apex of the "contented classes" (see my column “Trump and the Contented Classes”, November 14, 2025) who have chosen to be bystanders to Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulation, and the doling out of Trump’s corporatist welfare giveaways.

Imagine, if you will, what would happen if these four wealthy politicians, who still have most of their voters liking them, decided to band together and take on Trump full throttle. Privately, they believe and want Trump to be impeached (for the third time in the House) and convicted in the Senate. This time, on many impeachable actions that Trump himself boasts about, claiming, “With Article II, I can do whatever I want as President.”

Right off, they can upend the public discourse that Trump dominates daily with phony personal accusations, stunningly unrebutted by the feeble Democratic Party leaders. This counterattack with vivid, accurate words will further increase the majority of people who want Trump “Fired.” Just from their own observations of Trump’s vicious, cruel destruction of large parts of our government and civil service, which benefits and protects the populace, should jolt the former presidents into action.

Send these four politicians, who are friendly with one another, petitions, letters, emails, satiric cartoons, or whatever communications that might redeem them from the further condemnation of history.

Next, the bipartisan Band of Four can raise tens of millions of dollars instantly to form “Save Our Republic” advocacy groups in every congressional district. The heat on both parties in Congress would immediately rise to make them start the Impeachment Drive. Congressional Republicans’ fear of losing big in the 2026 elections, as their polls are plummeting, will motivate some to support impeachment. Congressional Republicans abandoned President Richard Nixon in 1974, forcing his resignation with Impeachment on his political horizon.

Events can move very fast. First, Trump is the most powerful contributor to his own Impeachment. Day after day, this illegal closer of long-established social safety nets and services is alienating tens of millions of frightened and angry Americans.

Daily, Trump is breaking his many campaign promises. His exaggerated predictions are wrong. Remember his frequent promise to stop “these endless wars,” his assurance that he would not impair government health insurance programs (tell that to the millions soon to lose, due to Trump, their Medicaid coverage), his promise of lifting people into prosperity (he opposes any increase in the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour) and he has signed GOP legislation to strip tens of millions of Americans from the SNAP food support and take away the Obama subsidies for Obamacare. Many Trump voters are among the vast number of people experiencing his treachery, where they live and raise their families, will lose out here. The catalytic opportunities of these four ex-presidents and their skilled operating teams are endless.

Further, this Band of Presidents, discovering their patriotic duty, will recharge the Democratic Party leaders or lead to the immediate replacement of those who simply do not want or know how to throw back the English language against this Bully-in-Chief, this abuser of women, this stunning racist, this chronic liar about serious matters, this inciter of violence including violence against members of Congress, this invader of cities with increasingly violent, law breaking storm-troopers turning a former Border Patrol force into a vast recruitment program for police state operators.

Trump uses the word “Impeachment” frequently against judges who rule against him, and even mentions it in relation to it being applied to him. Tragically, Democratic Party leaders Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries have made talk of Impeachment a taboo, arguing the time is not yet ripe. How many more abuses of power do they need to galvanize the Democrats in the House and Senate against the most blatantly impeachable president by far in American history? He keeps adding to his list—recently, he has become a Pirate and killer on the High Seas, an unconstitutional war maker on Iran and Venezuela, openly threatening to illegally seize the Panama Canal, Greenland, and the overthrow of the Cuban government.

Constitutional scholar Obama can ask dozens of constitutional law professors the question: “Would any of the 56 delegates who signed our US Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the 39 drafters who signed our US Constitution in 1787, being told about Monarch King Donald Trump, oppose his immediate Impeachment and Removal—the only tool left he doesn’t control?” Not one, would be their studied response.

Trump, a serial draft dodger, pushes through another $150 billion to the Pentagon above what the generals requested while starving well-being programs of nutrition for our children and elderly, and cutting services, by staff reductions, for American veterans, and strip-mining our preparedness for climate violence and likely pandemics.

He promised law and order during the election and then betrayed it right after his inauguration, pardoning 1,500 convicted, imprisoned criminals, 600 of them violent, emptying their prison cells and calling them “patriots” for what they did to Congress on January 6, 2021.

MR. EX-PRESIDENTS, JUST WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? WHAT ARE YOUR ESCAPIST EXCUSES? Call your friends who are ranking members of the GOP-controlled Committees of Congress and tell them to hold prompt SHADOW HEARINGS to educate the public through witnesses about the TRUMP DUMP, impeachable, illegal, and unconstitutional government. The media would welcome the opportunity to cover such hearings. Congressman Jamie Raskin thought this was “a good idea” before being admonished by his frightened Democratic leaders to bide his time and remain silent.

As more of Trump’s iron boots drop on people’s livelihoods, their freedoms, their worry for their children and grandchildren, their antipathy to more aggressive wars against non-threatening countries, and their demands at town meetings and mass marches for action against Trump’s self-enriching despotism, the disgraceful, craven cowardliness of our former presidential leaders will intensify. Unless they wake up to the challenge. With the mainstream media attacked regularly and being sued by Trump’s coercive, illegal extortion, the action by the Band of Four will bolster press freedom, press coverage, and their own redemption.

Send these four politicians, who are friendly with one another, petitions, letters, emails, satiric cartoons, or whatever communications that might redeem them from the further condemnation of history.

Rest assured, with Trump in the disgraced White House, THINGS ARE ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE, MUCH WORSE! For that is the predictable behavior from the past year and from his dangerously unstable, arrogant, vengeful, and egomaniacal personality.

While Americans were preparing to ring in the new year, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Federal Emergency Management Agency Chief Karen Evans were firing dozens of disaster response workers. The employees who lost their jobs on New Year’s Eve weren’t bureaucrats shuffling papers in Washington—they were members of FEMA’s Cadre of On-Call Response and Recovery teams who deploy when hurricanes flatten communities, when floods trap families in their homes, and when wildfires consume entire towns.

This wasn’t a budget decision. This was sabotage.

I spent years at FEMA and working disaster response, and I know what it takes to save lives when disaster strikes. You need trained personnel who can mobilize immediately; who know how to coordinate search and rescue operations; who understand the complex logistics of getting food, water, and shelter to people who’ve lost everything. You can’t save lives and rebuild communities while gutting FEMA’s workforce and keeping the agency under incompetent and overtly political control. These New Year’s Eve firings guarantee that when the next disaster hits, Americans may very well pay the price with their lives.

The timing tells you everything about this administration’s priorities. FEMA’s workforce has already been traumatized by DOGE, endured a revolving door of unqualified political leadership, witnessed retaliation against staffers who speak out, and heard President Donald Trump himself threaten to destroy the agency. Most recently, senior FEMA leaders were tasked with an agency-wide “workforce capacity planning exercise,” with the stated goal of cutting 50% of FEMA’s workforce (a target the administration claims was included in error). Now they’re watching their colleagues get fired on a holiday while the nation faces a looming crisis.

Every day that FEMA remains under Noem’s control, every firing of trained disaster workers, every delayed disaster declaration brings us closer to a preventable catastrophe.

Nearly 200 FEMA employees warned that this combination of political obstruction and resource depletion risks another Katrina-level catastrophe. They’re not exaggerating. I fear that we’re on a course to painfully relearn the lessons of Hurricane Katrina. Those who watched that disaster unravel in real time remember that it was a bad time for emergency management. FEMA was underfunded, it wasn’t a respected agency, and we saw the result: a bungled response to a major disaster that failed Americans when they needed help most. And now, we’re watching it happen again, in real time, and this time the warnings are coming from inside the agency itself.

The pattern under Noem’s leadership at DHS has been consistent: political interference that kills. When catastrophic flooding struck Texas, her bureaucratic approval requirements delayed Urban Search and Rescue deployment for more than 72 hours while Americans feared for their lives. Disaster declarations are being weaponized along partisan lines, with Democratic states denied relief at alarming rates while Republican states receive swift approvals, turning emergency management into political retaliation.

The administration’s contempt for professional emergency management extends beyond Noem’s obstruction. Trump appointed Gregg Phillips—a conspiracy theorist and election denier with zero emergency management experience—to lead FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery, one of the agency’s most critical offices. Karen Evans, whose reputation for eliminating programs and slashing staff preceded her appointment as FEMA chief, is now overseeing the systematic dismantling of disaster response capabilities. A leaked report exposed plans to gut FEMA and slash the workforce in half. When the White House faced criticism, they didn’t abandon the plan. They just canceled the public meeting and stopped talking about it.

FEMA’s placement under DHS has enabled Noem to impose political interference and red tape that directly endangers American lives. Last month, Sabotaging Our Safety sent a letter to the FEMA Review Council with a straightforward solution: Make FEMA an independent, cabinet-level agency. Give the FEMA administrator a direct seat at the table with the president so the agency can respond to disasters without political obstruction from DHS leadership. This isn’t a radical proposal. It’s the only way to ensure that when Americans need help, they get it based on need rather than which party controls their state government.

This administration’s actions will cost lives. Every day that FEMA remains under Noem’s control, every firing of trained disaster workers, every delayed disaster declaration brings us closer to a preventable catastrophe. Our leadership must decide whether protecting FEMA’s capacity to respond to disasters matters more than political expediency. The agency that stands between American communities and disaster is being dismantled piece by piece, and we’re running out of time to stop it.

Common Sense by Thomas Paine is the most influential work of political literature in American history.

Self-published on January 10, 1776, Common Sense instantly became a sensation, spreading like wildfire across the colonies. Within a few weeks, it had sold more copies than any book in the history of the colonies.

Paine’s arguments persuaded thousands-upon-thousands of people throughout the 13 colonies to demand more than reform, to support complete independence from England and join the revolutionary cause.

Less than six months after Common Sense was first published in Philadelphia, the Declaration of Independence was signed in the same city, establishing a new country defined, in contrast to its European predecessors, by its commitment to equality, liberty and the consent of the governed—just as Paine advocated in Common Sense (and, unlike the founding fathers, Paine did not hesitate to advocate for democracy).

Paine showed Americans... that they could govern themselves without kings and overlords, and that they could set an example to the world of what a nation of citizens, not subjects, could accomplish. The relevance of these passages for our troubled times cannot be overstated.

Thomas Paine arrived in Philadelphia from England in late 1774. Paine quickly fell in love with America and its people. Struck by the country’s startling contradictions, magnificent possibilities, and wonderful energies, and moved by the spirit and determination of its people to resist British authority, he committed himself to the American cause. In the Spring of 1775, he called for the abolition of slavery, a position he saw as consistent with—and central to—the rebellion.

Paine published Common Sense on January 10, 1776, a pamphlet of fewer than 50 pages, that changed the course of world history. In its pages, he harnessed Americans’ shared but as-of-yet unstated thoughts, expressing them in words such as “The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth” and “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.” Paine emboldened his fellow citizens-to-be to turn their colonial rebellion into a world-historic revolutionary war for independence, and inspired them to establish a democratic republic. Paine defined the new nation in a democratically expansive and progressive fashion and articulated an American identity charged with exceptional purpose and promise.

In Common Sense, Paine showed Americans that they were in fact Americans, not British colonists, that they could govern themselves without kings and overlords, and that they could set an example to the world of what a nation of citizens, not subjects, could accomplish. The relevance of these passages for our troubled times cannot be overstated.

Paine appreciated the ethnic and religious diversity that already prevailed and projected the nation-to-be as a refuge for those seeking freedom. (Indeed, many passages in Common Sense speak directly to the crises enveloping America today.)

Crucially, Paine portrayed America not as thirteen separate entities, but as a singular nation-state: “Now is the seed time of continental union, faith and honour… Our strength is continental not provincial.” And he proposed a charter—a constitution encompassing a Bill of Rights—both to bind the prospective states into a union and to guarantee that liberty, equality, and democracy would prevail. Most emphatically, he argued for “freedom of conscience” and, to assure it, the separation of Church and State: “As to religion, I hold it to be the indispensable duty of all government, to protect all conscientious professors thereof, and I know of no other business which government hath to do therewith….”

In the spring of that year, 120,000 copies of Common Sense were sold. 500,000 by the end of the Revolutionary War. (Throughout Paine took no royalties, using the funds to buy mittens for General Washington’s troops). Plus, newspapers throughout the colonies excerpted it and working people read it aloud in taverns, cafes, and farm fields. Soon, town councils north and south were petitioning the Second Continental Congress to declare INDEPENDENCE! America turned Paine into a radical, and he turned Americans into democratic revolutionaries.

Today, we honor Common Sense on the 250th Anniversary of its publication, and we honor its author, Tom Paine, one of the authors of our country

“Truly terrifying.” That was how National Nurses United executive director Puneet Maharaj described this week in a group text exchange in the aftermath of the brazen murder of Renee Nicole Good by Immigration and Custom Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis on January 7. A day later there was another shooting, some 1,700 miles away in Portland, Oregon, of Luis David Nico Moncada and Yorlenys Betzabeth Zambrano-Contreras by border patrol agents. And just a week after Keith Porter was shot and killed while celebrating on New Year’s Eve by an off-duty ICE agent in Northridge, California, a Los Angeles suburb.

All three acts of violence capped a year in which the draconian anti-immigrant drive launched by President Donald Trump and campaign architect Stephen Miller has terrorized immigrant communities and sparked protests across the nation. A year in which at least 32 people have also died in ICE custody, the agency’s most deadly year in decades, according to the Detention Watch Network. Some were long-time residents, some recent abductees in ICE raids. “They died of seizure and heart failure, stroke, respiratory failure, tuberculosis or suicide,” or reported neglect, notes the Guardian.

The shootings reflect the broad portrait of US residents–Good, a white, 37-year old mother of three; Porter, a Black 43-year-old father of two; Moncada and Zambrano-Contreras, Venezuelan. And, in familiar tones, the Trump administration has been quick to demonize all four.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem rushed to defend shooter Ross insisting it was an “act of domestic terrorism” by Good. Vice President JD Vance called Ross a “deranged leftist.” Moncada and Zambrano-Contreras were immediately labeled as affiliated with the Tren De Aragua gang, though Portland officials voiced distrust in ICE characterizations. A DHS spokesperson claimed Porter was an “active shooter” and the off-duty agent was “protecting his community,” contentions that infuriated Porter’s friends.

It was a solemn beginning to the new year, an exclamation point on the past 12 months.

The administration wants to control the Good investigation even as Minnesota officials say the federal government is impeding a state investigation. Vance claims agent Ross has “absolute immunity,” a point refuted by Harvard legal scholar Lawrence Tribe on MSNow with Lawrence O’Donnell. “State laws of assault continue to apply, even to a federal officer,” he noted. Outraged Minnesotans are calling for state prosecution as was done, with a conviction, for the police officer who killed George Floyd a short distance from where Good was murdered. Gov. Tim Walz says he wants the state to do a “full investigation.”

Porter’s friends are pushing for justice for Porter. Los Angeles County is “reviewing Porter’s killing,” though, the Los Angeles Times adds, “it sometimes takes years for the agency to determine if a deadly use of force constitutes a crime.” While Los Angeles is a “sanctuary city,” the LA Police Department is notorious for supporting and defending ICE and other federal immigration agents and constraining community protesters instead.

Venezuela, of course, was the other high-profile calamity of the week. Trump’s January 3 military invasion of Venezuela, kidnapping President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores. Up to 100 people, including civilians were killed, Venezuelan officials report. The US also bombed a medical warehouse, science labs, and an apartment complex, along with other sites in Caracas.

The long-planned assault followed months of extrajudicial bombings of boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific that have executed at least 115 people since September—like the invasion, in violation of international and US law, and without congressional authorization.

It was a solemn beginning to the new year, an exclamation point on the past 12 months. The Trump administration has carried out the most sustained assault on constitutional norms, dispatching of troops to threaten Americans in numerous cities, weaponization of the Justice Department and programs to punish political enemies and entire Democratic-run states, shredding of decades of healthcare standards that have saved millions of lives, and so much more.

It’s hard to even get more appalled. But the convergence of the emergence of a new American colonial empire abroad with the deadly escalation of Trump’s cruel, racist anti-immigrant program, is what made the week “truly terrifying.”

Many people on social media searched for analogs in recent US history. For this aging lefty who lived through and participated in frequent protests against the Vietnam war, President Ronald Reagan’s sponsoring of military coups and mercenary armies in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the disastrous invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, I dredged up one comparison.

On April 28, 1970, President Richard Nixon invaded Cambodia with combat troops, an enormous widening of the Southeast Asia war he had pledged to end. A week later on May 4, following days of protests, the Ohio National Guard fired 67 rounds in 13 seconds at student protesters at Kent State University in Ohio, killing four students and wounding nine more. I huddled around the radio listening to the accounts on Pacifica’s KPFA-FM with three roommates, thinking the world had dramatically changed in our lives. Then I rushed off to join a raucous protest at Sonoma State University where I was enrolled.

Trump’s stranglehold on Republican members of Congress is weakening.

Many parallels to that time with this moment exist. There had been years of rallies and marches protesting Nixon and President Lyndon Johnson’s war before him. Nixon was elected promising a secret plan to conclude the long Vietnam War while covertly sabotaging a long-delayed Johnson plan to initiate new peace talks. Trump campaigned as a “peace” advocate, pledging to end “forever wars,” and begging for a Nobel Peace Prize before launching the most unchecked expansion of US colonialism in more than a century.

The arrogant Nixon was, arguably, the most lawless president in US history to that point, before being finally forced to resign. Trump has proven to be far worse, engaging in monarchical dictates and policies, running roughshod over Congress, defying the courts, staging an insurrection at the US Capitol attempting to overturn the 2020 election, and now scheming how to subvert the 2026 and 2028 elections.

On the two arenas of the past week, Trump and his cabal are promising more. Trump has openly threatened to expand military operations to Cuba, Colombia, Mexico, and Greenland. “I don’t need international law,” Trump told the New York Times. He will only be constrained, he said, by his “own morality.”

Vance has intensified his increasingly desperate rhetoric to defend the murder of Good; the administration recognizes they have lost public support, as millions have viewed the damning video evidence. Going on the attack, as Trump always requires when challenged, Vance boasts the administration has doubled its Gestapo-style police force to over 22,000, and plans to send ICE agents “door to door,” in coming months, mimicking the odious practices of past dictatorships. Trump has also threatened, again, to invoke the Insurrection Act to send the military to American cities to combat protesters.

Both Nixon and Trump met massive opposition. Anti-Vietnam War marches mushroomed, with over half a million people joining a November 1969 march on Washington. I remember driving overnight from Los Angeles to San Francisco to march with 250,000 others across the city that same day. The repeated mobilizations, augmenting battlefield defeats in Vietnam, ultimately coerced the US to end its war.

Trump has faced similar growing resistance. Up to 8 million Americans joined “No Kings” rallies and marches in June and October last year. And in the two days since the Minneapolis murder, thousands have turned out in spontaneous protests in many cities and smaller communities including Asheville, North Carolina, Boston, Buffalo, Atlanta, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Colorado Springs. Colorado, Columbus, Ohio, Dallas, Dayton, Ohio, Denver, Durham, North Carolina, Los Angeles, Merrimack, New Hampshire, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Providence, Rhode Island, Seattle, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, Washington, DC, and repeatedly in Minneapolis.

Trump’s stranglehold on Republican members of Congress is weakening. Trump lost two significant votes in Congress on January 7. Overriding House GOP leaders, 17 Republicans joined Democrats in the House to pass legislation to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies for three years as millions of Americans are facing calamitous increases in healthcare coverage due to GOP obstruction in the fall.

In the Senate, five Republicans joined in a “rare bipartisan rebuke of the White House” to set up a War Powers Resolution vote to require congressional approval for Trump’s militarism in Venezuela and elsewhere. Incensed by the defiance, Trump called for the defeat of the five Republicans. Both actions face a difficult outcome, but the votes are significant. It shows Republicans are worried about the approaching midterm elections in November, following sweeping losses last year.

A wounded Trump, inclined to step up his callous attacks and lawlessness, is “truly terrifying” as National Nurse United’s Maharaj noted. Responding, NNU lobbied for the ACA subsidy vote, condemned the Venezuela invasion and Good’s murder, and had members at the San Francisco protests. Nurses are among the rapidly expanding mass movement needed to protect democracy, human rights, and all who live here.

As a Christmas present to his evangelical base, President Donald Trump ordered military strikes against an Islamic State offshoot in Nigeria on December 25.

On a day usually reserved for celebrations of the birth of a man who urged his followers to “turn the other cheek,” Christian lawmakers like Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), and Ted Budd (R-NC) all celebrated the death of what Cotton called “bloodthirsty savages.”

As a New Year’s present to himself, Trump dispatched a SEAL team to kidnap Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro on January 3 and deposit him in a New York jail. Trump was personally invested in humbling a leader that had refused to kowtow in the face of American power. Trump was reportedly infuriated that the Venezuelan leader was literally dancing just out of reach.

The operation to capture Maduro was itself an audacious attempt at semi-regime change. Maduro was extracted, but the rest of his government was left in place. After claiming that the United States would rule a country still in the hands of Maduro’s colleagues, the president left it to other members of his administration to resolve the obvious contradiction.

Donald Trump is interested in only one thing: control.

Maduro is facing trial, Trump is facing questions, and a number of other countries are facing the threat that they will be next on the US president’s to-do list for 2026. The raid itself was a surprise. But what else did people expect when US voters put a vengeful felon back in the White House?

War and/or Peace

Over the last year, pundits on both sides of the political spectrum have argued over whether Donald Trump is a peace president or a war president. The interventions in Nigeria and Venezuela have served to ramp up the debate.

The president himself, as part of his bid to win a Nobel Peace Prize, has claimed to bring peace to a number of conflicts around the world. At the same time, prior to Nigeria and Venezuela, he launched strikes against Iran, Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, and Syria. He has pushed for the first trillion-dollar military budget and changed the Department of Defense to the Department of War. He has threatened Cuba, Colombia, and Greenland, and casually mentioned the annexation of Canada. He has continued to supply American weapons to a variety of rights-abusing nations including Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia.

Two days before the attack on Venezuela, Trump claimed that his New Year’s resolution was “peace on earth.” Detractors contrasted that statement with his subsequent action against Maduro. Trump himself asserted, on the other hand, that the military operation was in fact about peace, not oil or regime change.

This debate over war and peace misses the point. For Trump, peace negotiations and military strikes are simply the means to an end. He wants to exert power over as much of the world as he can reach. That power might be represented by territory (Greenland), the replacement of recalcitrant leaders (Venezuela), economic opportunity (Russia), investment into the US economy (Saudi Arabia), mineral wealth (Ukraine, Congo), trade domination (most of the world but particularly China), or just plain vassalage (NATO). In each case, Trump wants a cut for himself.

War president? Peace president?

No, Donald Trump is interested in only one thing: control.

Venezuela: What’s Next?

The idea that the United States will “run” Venezuela is the end of a conversation, not the beginning of one. Trump clearly had no follow-up plan after removing Maduro from power. He famously requires his advisors to boil briefing notes down to a half page since he can’t be bothered with details. Information about the raid itself no doubt exceeded the limit of his attention span, and he couldn’t focus on the follow-through.

The most important question—who will replace Maduro—doesn’t seem to concern him. He was dismissive of Maria Corina Machado, the opposition figure who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year that Trump thought rightfully belonged to him. He also seems unclear about the disposition of Delcy Rodriguez, who has replaced Maduro.

The capture of Maduro was for demonstration purposes, much as a mafioso orders a hit on a rival to send a message to all other competitors that resistance is futile.

The confusion might stem from the secret negotiations that Rodriguez and her brother Jorge, the head of the National Assembly, conducted with US negotiators last year. According to the Miami Herald, the Rodriguez siblings offered to push Maduro aside and install a retired general in his place. Charges against Maduro would be dropped, and the former leader would stay in Venezuela or go into exile in Turkey or Qatar. The Trump administration ultimately said no, reportedly because Trump didn’t want to let Maduro off the hook. For Trump, revenge is paramount.

When confronted on future plans for Venezuela, Trump has fallen back on his business-world instincts. The new boss would naturally control the company against which he’d conducted a hostile takeover. What Trump really meant by “running” the country, according to his court interpreter Marco Rubio, is that the US government would work with Venezuelan partners to ensure free or very low-cost access to oil and other key assets in the country. Governance is not Trump’s thing. Just look at DOGE and his incompetent handling of US government policy. Relying on the rule of thugs—in Saudi Arabia, Hungary, or North Korea—is more his style.

Trump and the US military reserve the right—the right of imperial powers—to intervene again if Venezuela resists US dictates. But the administration is not interested in nation building. Nor was the kidnapping of Maduro all about Venezuela’s oil. After all, Maduro offered to give US preferential access, which Trump rejected.

The capture of Maduro was for demonstration purposes, much as a mafioso orders a hit on a rival to send a message to all other competitors that resistance is futile.

Message to China

The key recipient for the Venezuela message was not China per se but all the countries in Latin America—and elsewhere in the world—that have begun to rely on China as their primary trade partner, investor, and benefactor. China, for instance, is South America’s largest trading partner. Trade between Brazil and China is now twice the volume of trade between Brazil and the United States. This is astonishing given that the United States was Brazil’s largest trade partner for 80 years—until 2009.

Latin America has also taken advantage of billions of dollars in Chinese investments into infrastructure, like ports, mines, and transportation. The overall percentage might be low—China represents 2% of the FDI total compared to 38% for the United States—but the numbers are much bigger in certain sectors, such as mining and energy. Also, much of the Chinese investment doesn’t appear in that total because it flows through third countries.

The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy updated the Monroe Doctrine to emphasize the US priority of keeping other major powers out of its backyard and extending that priority to drug interdiction and immigration. The Trump administration has put pressure on specific countries—Panama, Argentina—to move away from China. It has celebrated recent right-wing victories in Chile, Bolivia, Honduras, and Ecuador.

But China is patient. It offers good deals to Latin American countries, regardless of the political ideology of the ruling party. The Trump administration, aside from some ad hoc offers like the $20 million it sent to Javier Milei’s government in Argentina, is not interested in competing at that level. The Biden administration sent some nominal funds to Central America to stabilize economies and reduce the push factors for immigration. Trump prefers to use the stick over the carrot.

Unraveling the World Order

Trump has famously bent over backwards to explain away Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The truth is, Trump has long admired Russian President Vladimir Putin’s contempt for international law. Much of his frustration during his first term was that he couldn’t flex US military muscle in quite the unrestricted way that Putin was doing even before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The compliment is now being repaid by some pro-Kremlin sources in Russia in their commentary on Venezuela. “The operation was carried out competently,” according to the Telegram channel Dva Mayora, which is close to the Russian military. “Most likely, this is exactly how our ‘special military operation’ was meant to unfold: fast, dramatic and decisive.”

Trump is on an extended power play. He will use America’s asymmetric advantage to score as many goals as he can during his term.

Putin has pioneered a modern double standard on sovereignty. No one should be allowed to tell Russia what to do within its borders and thus violate its sovereignty. But Russia is free to dictate to its neighbors and violate their sovereignty at will. Trump loves that double standard so much that he has rebuilt US foreign policy around it.

Previous US administrations tried to paper over such double standards. Trump revels in them. He doesn’t follow rules. He rewrites them and then delights in how the comparatively powerless cluck and moan. The United Nations watches as Trump tears up the UN Charter and can do little more than lament the state of the world.

In hockey, a power play happens when one team loses a player to the penalty box and the other team goes a player up. With overwhelming military force at his disposal, Trump is on an extended power play. He will use America’s asymmetric advantage to score as many goals as he can during his term.

The analogy is not precise. Trump is not only the captain of the team that’s up one player. He is also the referee. He determines when an infraction has taken place, and he assesses the penalties. He is judge, jury, and executioner.

Whether it’s war or peace, it’s all the same game for Trump. He aspires to be the number one bad hombre: the one in complete control.

Running a news weekly as I do, it’s always interesting to watch the narrative around developing stories that I might comment on as a journalist change quickly over days or even hours. Such is the case with two big national and international stories of great interest to many American citizens and residents this week: the capture of Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro by the US military under orders from President Donald Trump and the killing of Renee Nicole Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent (now identified as Jonathan Ross) in Minneapolis.

As more information pours in, both stories are changing by the minute at this point. We’ve seen the White House excitedly claim credit for a successful military action in Venezuela on Saturday that may turn out to have been more of a diplomatic and intelligence “win” than anything else, but the Senate just advanced a bipartisan measure to invoke the War Powers Act to block Trump from “using military force ‘within or against Venezuela’ unless he gets prior approval from Congress.”

Does the Senate vote mean that Trump, his administration, and their oil company cronies aren’t getting what they want from the country with the world’s largest oil reserves? No, they probably are for the time being, but it’s fascinating that five Republican senators crossed the aisle to vote with 47 Democrats, including conservative Dems like Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, to attempt to restrict presidential power. A clear result of public pressure on the pols to rein in executive authority.

After the tragic Minneapolis shooting, the immediate reaction of tens of thousands of people there and around the country, including here in Boston, was to get out in the street to protest. And Trump has been immediately and roundly condemned for being far too quick to declare the fatal shooting of a person who may have had nothing to do with the small anti-ICE protest on a residential block to be some kind of act of self-defense by an armed government agent against a “professional agitator.” On Thursday, Trump already began backing off his rhetoric under pressure from the public, the press, and the evidence of multiple videos from the scene to lamely say that the shooting victim “behaved horribly.”

I suggest that readers who are unhappy with the Trump administration get out in the streets and protest as often as possible.

Does this mean that anyone has a perfect understanding of either event at this juncture? No. Is every protest acting on the most solid information available. Also no.

But do I think that people protesting presidential overreach in the name of democracy are right to listen to their instincts about the actions taken by the US military in Venezuela and ICE in Minneapolis at the behest of the Trump administration?

Absolutely yes.

Such protest, as usual, is all over the road politically and otherwise. It’s messy. It’s emotional. It gets some things wrong or even misses forests for trees at times. Yet it’s the right thing to do. And it is working. Trump and his allies have not consolidated unlimited power. Far from it. The MAGA movement is fragmenting and the administration is under pressure from many directions.

In such an environment, the president needs as much of the public on his side as possible—with polls showing his popularity has been on the downswing for months.

So I suggest that readers who are unhappy with the Trump administration get out in the streets and protest as often as possible. Your actions won’t solve all of our fragmented nation’s problems and won’t make the Democrats into an actual opposition force. But they may well stop the US from becoming a tinpot dictatorship like the ones previous governments have forced on so many other countries in the Americas and create openings for the construction of a genuinely democratic opposition movement.

Which would be as good an outcome as we might hope for at the moment.

The original version of this article ran on January 8, 2026 at BINJ.News

The US government’s official definition of “international terrorism” includes “violent acts” intended “to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion,” including through “kidnapping.” By the US definition, it’s hard to find a more textbook example than US actions toward Venezuela. Yet few US reporters or commentators seem willing to call the policy what it is.

Until the Government Cries Uncle

The aerial murder of at least 110 people in boats off the Venezuelan coast starting in September 2025 was aimed at toppling the Maduro government. As White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles said on November 2, President Donald Trump “wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle.” The phrasing recalls Ronald Reagan’s 1985 demand that the Nicaraguan government “say uncle” while he bombed the Nicaraguan coast, a campaign the International Court of Justice ruled to be terrorism.

Since bombing the Venezuela mainland and kidnapping President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores on January 3, top US officials have repeatedly reiterated their terrorist intentions. They plan to use the “tremendous leverage” afforded by a US naval blockade to ensure that the remaining government “does what we want”: Fork over billions of dollars in “our oil”; give US companies control over your resources; and help us reestablish “dominance in the Western Hemisphere,” starting with your cooperation in starving Cuba of oil.

Keeping It on Venezuelan Civilians

The US definition of terrorism also includes actions intended “to intimidate or coerce a civilian population” for political objectives. For nearly a decade the US government has pursued a bipartisan policy of making Venezuelan civilians suffer enough that they’ll rise up and overthrow their president.

In their first year alone, from 2017 to 2018, US financial sanctions led to tens of thousands of civilian deaths from lack of medicine and other essentials. The continuation and expansion of the sanctions under Presidents Trump and Joe Biden also foreclosed any possibility of resuscitating the Venezuelan economy after the depression that began in the mid-2010s.

Over just that 50-year period, economic sanctions have killed around 28 million people.

The official line is that Venezuelans’ economic suffering is the result of Maduro’s “mismanagement.” Periodically, however, US officials have claimed credit. In 2018 a State Department spokesperson crowed that “the financial sanctions we have placed on the Venezuelan Government has [sic] forced it to begin becoming in default.” Critics could shove it. “Our strategy is working and we’re going to keep it on the Venezuelans.”

In 2019 Secretary of State Mike Pompeo rejoiced that “the circle is tightening” around the Maduro government and “the humanitarian crisis is increasing by the hour.” His colleague Elliott Abrams warned that “a Venezuela in recovery” was “not going to happen under the Maduro regime.”

28 Million Other Times the Strategy Worked

Intimidating and coercing civilian populations has always been the conscious strategy of broad-based economic sanctions.

An early version of this policy was used by British colonizers, and later the US government, in their wars against Indigenous populations in North America. As military historian John Grenier details in his indispensable book The First Way of War, conquering the continent for the Anglo race involved systematically targeting noncombatants and their food, water, and shelter.

The strategy was refined in the 20th century. After World War I sanctions on a country’s economy were marketed by Western governments as a humane alternative to military warfare. In reality sanctions were an adaptation of the earlier terrorist strategy. They could be even more lethal than the earlier version, since the expansion of global capitalism left nations more dependent on imports and exports.

The authoritative study of sanctions’ impact on human welfare was published in The Lancet Global Health in 2025. Upon evaluating mortality rates in 152 countries between 1971 and 2021, the authors found that unilateral economic sanctions like the ones on Venezuela and Cuba “were associated with an annual toll of 564,258 deaths.” That’s roughly equal to the death toll from military conflicts.

Over just that 50-year period, economic sanctions have killed around 28 million people.

So That the Cuban People Take Care of Their Government

Cuba has been the target of a US economic blockade since 1960, far longer than any other country. Although its healthcare system has greatly limited the death toll as compared with other countries targeted by US sanctions, no other case reveals the terroristic logic of sanctions with such clarity.

In October 1960, soon after the Eisenhower administration initiated its sanctions against Cuba, Vice President Richard Nixon boasted on national TV that “we are cutting off the significant items that the Cuban regime needs in order to survive. By cutting off trade, by cutting off our diplomatic relations as we have, we will quarantine this regime so that the people of Cuba themselves will take care of Mr. Castro.”

And that was the language approved for TV audiences. Six months prior, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Lester Mallory wrote privately that “every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba.” He proposed an embargo “which, while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”

Why is a fascist sociopath more honest than the press corps tasked with holding him to account?

This economic warfare proceeded in parallel with bombings and biological warfare carried out by right-wing Cuban exiles, acting with the consent and often direct sponsorship of the US government. Those terrorist operations have killed hundreds of Cubans since 1959.

Mallory and his colleagues candidly explained why these policies were necessary. “Latin America today is in a state of deep unrest,” noted the State Department in 1961, because “the poor and underprivileged, stimulated by the example of the Cuban revolution, are now demanding opportunities for a decent living.”

The “major threat” of Cuba, said another 1961 memo, was “the example and stimulus of a working communist revolution.” If the revolution “thrives,” hungry people around the world might believe they too could challenge capitalism. Maybe “a blacklist of Cuban commercial activities in Latin America,” including Cuba’s trade “in foodstuffs and medicines,” could disabuse the hungry of their fantasy.

The Kennedy administration liked that idea. In 1962 it expanded Eisenhower’s sanctions on Cuba into a full economic embargo. That policy remains intact today, now more brutal and punitive than ever.

The economic blockade against Cuba hasn’t yet toppled the government. But whatever happens in the future, the US strategy has already succeeded in its larger goal of preventing a “working communist revolution” that might inspire others.

Sanctions on Venezuela have similarly helped crush any chance of a functioning socialism, or even a robust social democracy, for the foreseeable future.

See No (US) Terror

Despite the candor with which US officials have stated their intent “to intimidate or coerce” Venezuelans and Cubans, US reporters and commentators seem unwilling to use the word “terror.” As of this writing, no one at the New York Times, Washington Post, National Public Radio, or CNN has labeled the January 3 invasion of Venezuela as terrorism.

The only mentions of terror are in reference to President Nicolás Maduro, whom the US government labels a “narco-terrorist.” The latter term is rarely defined, let alone coherently. Maduro’s recent indictment on “narco-terrorism” charges in the Southern District of New York has been widely mentioned as a legal rationale for the invasion. None of the four outlets listed above have mentioned that the US attorney who signed the indictment, Jay Clayton, was appointed by Trump, had no previous prosecutorial experience, and has behaved like Trump’s lapdog since he was installed. Failing to scrutinize Clayton lends legitimacy to the claim that the US was merely enforcing the law.

Maybe editors have forbidden use of the T word. The BBC has prohibited its writers from saying that Maduro and Flores were “kidnapped” on January 3. Trump himself has no objection to using the term. Why is a fascist sociopath more honest than the press corps tasked with holding him to account?

Even in the Orwellian dystopia of today’s United States, words still have meanings. If rational debate is to be possible we must defend them.