For a variety of reasons, I’ve found the data center debate to be difficult to get a real handle on over the last year. But I think a clearer picture is beginning to emerge, and I will do my best here to share it with you. Remember, I’m just one human brain, and I have not (illegally) digested every single book ever printed; I can’t draw you a picture of a data center licking an ice cream cone; and if you asked me to render this essay in the style of Emily Dickinson I would fail. Still, for what it’s worth:

First source of confusion: How much demand for AI will there actually be?

This depends on how useful it turns out to be, and that is still a very open question. Yes, AI executives are busy insisting it will upend everything and everyone—the AI chief at Microsoft said last week that all white-collar jobs using computers will be wiped out in the next 12 to 18 months—accountants, project managers, marketing staff. But there’s another school of thought—most ably represented by an AI researcher named Gary Marcus—that thinks the hallucination-prone large language models are good at writing certain kinds of code but not getting much better, and in fact may be at about the limit of their abilities.

There’s a second question resting on top of that one: Whatever AI can do, will it make a lot of money doing it, thus justifying the enormous investments currently being made or planned for data centers? The stock market apparently thinks so—AI makes up some stupendous percentage of its gains in recent years—but there are, as you have heard, fears it might be a bubble. The most eloquent—indeed logorrheic—source of those fears is Ed Zitron, a blogger who has followed the various money trails and concluded that companies like OpenAI and Anthropic have no real prospect of making back the scads of money that they’ve spent, and that sooner or later the bubble will indeed do the thing bubbles do.

If we reach the point where we decide as a society that we actually want to build out this technology, then BYOG should be replaced by BEYONCE—Bring Your Own New Clean Energy.

These are crucial questions for us because as long as the bubble keeps expanding, there will be insatiable demand for more electricity for more data centers, and if it pops that demand will start to drop dramatically, especially since much of it is still semi-speculative—that is to say, there are far more data centers on the drawing board (to use an old-fashioned image) than under construction.

In fact, it’s been remarkably hard to estimate how much demand for electricity is actually going to go up, precisely because there’s so much speculation here. In an interview that got pretty wonky even for him, the invaluable David Roberts last week talked to Clara Summer, a public advocate at the PJM Interconnection Board, PJM being the the largest regional transmission organization (RTO) in the United States, managing the high-voltage electric grid for 67 million people across 13 states from Delaware to Illinois. Anyway, Summer explained that any given data center might be applying for permits to build in four or five different jurisdictions:

There is a big difference between a data center that has knocked on the door of a utility and said, “I am interested in being in this area,” versus a data center that has entered into a contract with a utility and put down money.

One estimate has that the number of requests for potential data centers to connect to the grid is 5 to 10 times more than the number of actual data centers that will be built.

Obviously, however, there are plenty of data centers going up. Some are truly terrible (consider the joint investigation by Floodlight News and the Guardian of an xAI facility in Mississippi; it has followed the path of Elon Musk’s egregious data center in the poor part of Memphis, both using portable gas turbines that pollute the air, and all in an effort to support an artificial “intelligence” that goes on long happy rants about Hitler; it won’s surprise you that the NAACP was early in expressing concern) and some are less terrible: Google just signed up for two big solar farms in Texas to support its data centers.

The default, sadly, seems to be headed toward the Musk model. With grid providers unable to build generating capacity fast enough to keep up with demand, data center developers are going BYOG—bring your own generation. Here’s a long and detailed new report about how the G generally turns out to also stand for gas, in this case onsite gas turbines, with not much concern for the climate or local air pollution risks. (Or for the amount of water required—here’s a recent account from Brad Reed of a single Pennsylvania data center that will use 40% of the town’s excess water). Here’s a kind of worst-case scenario from John Kostyack, a DC-based consultant:

By the end of this decade, capital spending by tech, real estate, and utility companies will likely represent the largest private-sector infrastructure spending spree in world history. McKinsey, for example, estimates a whopping $6.7 trillion in capital expenditures by 2030.

Although forecasts of the scale of data center buildout vary widely, anything near this projected scale has enormous climate implications. The most obvious concern is the emissions generated in powering the massive hyperscale complexes, which are being designed to consume as much as 2 gigawatts (GWs) of power–roughly 15 times the capacity required by the entire city of Philadelphia during summer peak load. According to energy analyst Rystand’s 2025 review of industry announcements, data centers consuming up to 100 GWs of power could come online in the next 10 years.

Much of this power would come from gas-fired power plants. Researchers at Urgewald estimate that roughly 37% of the gas plant capacity proposed in the last 2 years is linked to data centers and AI infrastructure. Thanks in significant part to data centers, the US has overtaken China as the world’s largest developer of gas plants, with 125 GWs of planned new capacity, up 120% from 2024.

Faced with this level of speculative craziness, local opponents and an increasing number of national groups are calling for a moratorium on the buildout of data centers. As Jenna Ruddock wrote in December:

Confronted with similar stakes, cities and counties across the US are pulling the emergency brake. From Maryland to Missouri, at least 14 states are home to towns or counties that have implemented moratoriums: a complete pause on data center development. In early December, over 200 groups—from faith groups in Florida and Louisiana to physicians in Texas—publicly called for a moratorium on new data center construction nationwide.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) became the highest profile Democrat-aligned politician to join the call for a moratorium, but as Politico reported in January it’s been hard to find others who are quite as outspoken. Most temporized—for instance, Rep Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), running for Senate, said AI “can bring real economic opportunity to Texas,” but “we must demand transparency, accountability, and responsible growth.”

But this is very soft ground for politicians, who haven’t found their footing yet. Late last week Sanders joined California Rep. Ro Khanna for conversations with AI executives; he emerged to tell a Stanford audience:

Congress and the American public have “not a clue” about the scale and speed of the coming AI revolution, pressing for urgent policy action to “slow this thing down” as tech companies race to build ever-more powerful systems.

It seems to me that the call for a moratorium is sound; we should pause before remaking society, not to mention pouring far more carbon into the atmosphere. Whether that’s possible is not clear. The Trump administration, amid its myriad corruptions, is making the case that we must keep ahead of China. What that means is unclear: The Chinese are indeed building AIs of their own, but they seem to be developing architectures that use less energy. And of course they are building out huge amounts of clean electricity, to use for transit and heating and, if they want, artificial intelligence. So far the big difference with the Chinese models is that they’re transparent and open. Which, by the way, complicates the task of American AI entrepreneurs who want to get rich via their proprietary systems.

That getting rich part, of course, now means using AI to try and game our politics, and indeed in recent weeks a new generation of AI-fueled bots seem to be infecting our political system. An AI platform apparently managed to generate 20,000 comments telling California regulators to ignore air quality concerns:

Environmental and public health advocates are calling on California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman to investigate an AI-powered campaign that allegedly submitted public comments attributed to residents without their consent to oppose Southern California clean air standards. The extent of the AI astroturf campaign remains unknown—who funded it, whose identities were used without consent, and whether California law was broken. Watch the press conference recording here.

The call follows a Los Angeles Times investigation exposing how CiviClick, an AI-powered advocacy platform, was used to generate more than 20,000 public comments opposing standards proposed by the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD). When staff at the AQMD followed up with a sample of people to verify comments, at least three said they had not written to the agency or had knowledge of the message.

Even so, the campaign for a data center moratorium seems to be gathering steam—one of the most recent pushes emerged in New York State where Third Act’s organizing director Michael Richardson was among the proponents. He said, quite sensibly I think:

At a time when New York State should be leading the rapid transition to solar and wind energy generation while also ending further buildout of fossil fuel infrastructure, the permitting of data centers with massive energy needs will only feed into the fossil fuel industry’s narrative that to keep this technology running we have to put a pause on dealing with climate change for now. The pause should be the one put on the data centers—not renewable energy projects.”

Indeed, if we reach the point where we decide as a society that we actually want to build out this technology, then BYOG should be replaced by BEYONCE—Bring Your Own New Clean Energy. But in the politically charged year in which we find ourselves, I think intelligence requires us to slow down.

A real shoutout, as I close, to the 86-year-old Pennsylvania farmer who last week turned down a $15 million offer for his land from a data center developer, instead giving it to a land conservancy for $2 million. Let’s give Mervin Raudabaugh the final word:

“It was my life,” Raudabaugh told Fox 43 News of the land he has farmed for 50 years. “I told [the data center company] no, I was not interested in destroying my farms.

“That was really the bottom line,” he continued. “It wasn’t so much the economic end of it. I just didn’t want to see these two farms destroyed.”

Last month, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers pulled over several cars in Eagle County, Colorado. They took the people away in handcuffs, according to a witness, and left the cars idling at the side of the road. When family members of the disappeared immigrants arrived, there was no sign of their loved ones. What they found instead were customized ace of spades playing cards that read “ICE Denver Field Office.”

When I saw an image of that card, the memories came flooding back. I’d seen something similar many years before. Sitting in the US National Archives building—Archives II—in College Park, Maryland, sometime in the late 2000s or early 2010s, I’d spent parts of several afternoons watching film footage shot by—and of—US troops in Vietnam back in the 1960s. One of those silent military home movies always stuck with me.

That short film opened with a Vietnamese woman clutching a child next to a group of 10 or 15 other children huddled together. They all look wary. Worried. Scared. The camera lingered on a young girl, perhaps 5 years old, clutching a baby. If that girl survived, she would be around 64 years old today.

After several shots of those children, the source of their fear was revealed. The film cut to a group of foreign young men—heavily armed US soldiers. They were tanned and gaunt, smoking and talking, standing over the corpses of some young Vietnamese men or boys. We see the dead bodies at a distance, again. Lying together and yet eerily alone. Next, the film cuts to a collection of weapons—perhaps a cache found in or near the Vietnamese village where all of this occurred—that resembled old junk more than lethal armaments. The film kept cutting between short scenes of American troops and Vietnamese bodies until it happened.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that a war of extreme brutality rooted in racism would have resonance with ICE.

I’ve never forgotten the scene that followed because I was initially shocked that it had been immortalized on film. I was also surprised that the film had never been destroyed. But then I remembered how ubiquitous such activity was at the time. How soldiers bragged about it. How it was covered—positively—in the US press. How it even showed up in the Congressional Record, not as an outrage deserving of investigation but essentially as a thank you to a manufacturer of playing cards.

In the next scene, we see a soldier pull an ace of spades from what looks like a big stack of such cards. He’s nonchalant. He’s clearly not worried about an officer seeing what he’s doing. He obviously knows he’s being filmed. He reaches down and, as another soldier presses his boot into the chest of that corpse to hold it steady, he tries to insert the card into the mouth of one of the dead Vietnamese. It’s apparently not so easy. It takes a bit of doing, but it proves possible. The next scene shows an ace of spades sticking out of the dead boy’s mouth. The camera lingers. It’s oddly and sickeningly cinematic. The following scene shows another Vietnamese, his face blackened. There’s a battered ace of spades jammed in his mouth, too.

“Impeding” ICE

Such “death cards”—generally either an ace of spades or a custom-printed business card claiming credit for a kill—were ubiquitous among US troops in Vietnam in those years. Some soldiers, like those in that unit of the 25th Infantry Division operating in Quang Ngai Province in 1967, used a regular ace of spades of the type you’d find in a standard deck of cards. But Company A, 1st Battalion, 6th Infantry of the 198th Light Infantry Brigade, for instance, left their victims with a customized ace of spades sporting the unit’s nickname “Gunfighters,” a skull-and-crossbones, and the phrase “dealers of death.” Helicopter pilots, like Captain Lynn Carlson, occasionally dropped similar specially made calling cards from their gunships. One side of Carlson’s card read: “Congratulations. You have been killed through courtesy of the 361st. Yours truly, Pink Panther 20.” The other side proclaimed, “The Lord giveth and the 20mm [cannon] taketh away. Killing is our business and business is good.”

The cards found last month in Eagle County harken back to that brutal heritage. They were the same general size and shape as those shoved into the mouths of dead Vietnamese: black and white 4×6-inch cards with an “A” over a spade in their top left and bottom right corners. A larger ornate black-and-white spade dominates the center of the card. Above it is the phrase “ICE Denver Field Office.” Below it, you find the address and phone number of the ICE detention facility in nearby Aurora, Colorado.

The 10 people taken away by ICE in Eagle County are now reportedly being held in that very same Aurora Detention Facility.

In a recent letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the Democrats in Colorado’s Congressional delegation called out ICE’s use of the ace of spades. The card, they wrote, “has long been known as the ‘death card’ and has been used by white supremacist groups to inspire fear and threaten physical violence. It is unacceptable and dangerous for federal law enforcement to use this symbol to intimidate Latino communities.” They continued: “This behavior undermines public trust in law enforcement, raises serious civil rights concerns, and falls far short of the professional standards expected of federal agents.”

ICE’s Denver field office offered a boilerplate response to TomDispatch when questioned about the use of the cards. “ICE is investigating this situation but unequivocally condemns this type of action and/or officer conduct,” a spokesperson wrote in an email, adding, “Once notified, ICE supervisors acted swiftly to address the issue.” The spokesperson said that ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility, which deals with employee misconduct, will conduct a “thorough investigation,” but the Colorado lawmakers asked for more. Those lawmakers called for an independent investigation by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General.

“As the son of immigrants and the father of two young children, I am horrified by the abuses being committed by the Trump administration—from the streets of Minneapolis to right here in Eagle County,” said Democratic Representative Joe Neguse, a member of the delegation that wrote the letter. “These outrageous, aggressive intimidation tactics,” he added, “are meant to stoke fear among our neighbors, and it is immoral and wrong. This administration must be held accountable, and we cannot allow this to continue unchecked.”

ICE Denver has a much different opinion. “Under President Trump and Secretary Noem, ICE is held to the highest professional standard,” the spokesperson there told TomDispatch. “America can be proud of the professionalism our officers bring to the job day-in and day-out.”

Americans think otherwise. A clear majority of voters—63%—disapprove of the way ICE is doing its job after more than a year of immigration crackdowns across the United States, according to a January poll by the New York Times and Siena University. Sixty-one percent of voters said that ICE had “gone too far,” including nearly 1 in 5 Republicans. The poll was conducted after Renee Good, a 37-year-old US citizen and legal observer, was gunned down in Minneapolis by an ICE officer.

Federal immigration officers have shot at least 13 people since September, according to data compiled by The Trace, killing at least five, including Good and Alex Pretti, a Minnesota resident who was gunned down by Border Patrol agents last month. Before their killings, Good and Pretti had been observing the activities of agents. Federal officers frequently confront and threaten those observing, following, and filming them for “impeding” their efforts. In numerous prior instances, they had unholstered or pointed weapons at people who filmed or followed them.

A recent report by the Cato Institute notes that it is “crucial to understand that ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) consider people who follow DHS and ICE agents to observe, record, or protest their operations as engaging in ‘impeding.’” It goes on to note that DHS “has a systematic policy of threatening people who follow ICE or DHS agents to record their activities with detentions, arrests, and violence, and agents have already chased, detained, arrested, charged, struck, and shot at people who follow them.” In the wake of Good’s death, to take one example, the Justice Department opened an investigation of Good’s widow for allegedly “interfering” with an ICE operation—apparently for filming the shooting.

A Death Card Moment

Killing, wounding, threatening, or investigating observers are just some of the many abuses and violent tactics of immigration officers in the era of Donald Trump. Others include brutally beating detainees, employing banned chokeholds, or spraying chemical irritants on protesters. They also have carried out arbitrary and unlawful arrests and detentions, fired tear gas and flash-bang grenades into crowds, and shattered the windows of vehicles.

Colorado specifically has seen numerous abuses by immigration agents in addition to the use of those death cards. ICE officers in Colorado continue to arrest people because of the color of their skin and in violation of a federal judge’s order, according to a complaint filed earlier this month by the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado and two Denver law firms. In November, US District Court Judge R. Brooke Jackson found that ICE was routinely conducting illegal arrests in the state.

“Just in Colorado, we’ve seen ICE agents pepper-spray protestors in the face. We’ve seen ICE drag elderly women on the ground,” said Judith Marquez, a volunteer for the Colorado Rapid Response Network and a campaign manager for the Colorado Immigrants Rights Coalition. “We don’t want to wait for another Renee Nicole Good to be murdered.”

In the absence of independent oversight of the crime scenes, TomDispatch asked DHS if the federal agents who gunned down Good and Pretti had left death cards at the scene of those killings. The department never responded.

Alex Sánchez, president and CEO of Voces Unidas, the immigrant rights group that took possession of those death cards in Colorado, fears that ICE might be using such cards as an intimidation tactic elsewhere, too, but that information about such acts remains unreported because those affected are unlikely to trust local law enforcement officers, elected officials, or even mainstream human-rights groups.

In the wake of the killings of Good and Pretti, the Trump administration quickly branded those observing ICE as domestic terrorists, and federal authorities insisted that Minnesota had “no jurisdiction” to investigate those killings, while blocking the access of state investigators to evidence at the crime scene.

As US District Judge Alex Tostrud wrote in an 18-page decision: “Federal agents collected evidence from the scene… They won’t share it with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension [BCA]… After BCA agents arrived, federal agents blocked them from accessing the scene.” Earlier this month, Tostrud, an appointee of President Donald Trump no less, lifted the emergency order he had issued the day of Pretti’s shooting that required federal investigators to preserve evidence gathered at the scene of that fatal shooting.

In the absence of independent oversight of the crime scenes, TomDispatch asked DHS if the federal agents who gunned down Good and Pretti had left death cards at the scene of those killings.

The department never responded.

For more than two decades, America’s forever wars have been coming home in large and small ways. But in 2026, death cards made famous in a war that ended more than 50 years ago—a war that America’s president dodged via a draft deferment for seemingly spurious bone spurs—have made a reappearance. It shouldn’t be a surprise that a war of extreme brutality rooted in racism would have resonance with ICE any more than that those macabre calling cards are on brand for a self-proclaimed peacemaker president who has made war on Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen, as well as on civilians in boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean. While he might not have actually dealt those cards in Colorado, it’s hard not to see them as Donald Trump’s death cards.

In the shadow of President Donald Trump’s military assault on Venezuela and threats to Iran, an escalation of the longest war in US history, the 65-year war on Cuba, is being waged while Congress is virtually silent.

This is the latest chapter in an aggression waged by 12 successive US presidents, with an all too brief break when President Barack Obama initiated diplomatic steps toward normalcy in his last year in office. It has included a failed invasion by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 at the Bay of Pigs, multiple covert assassination attempts against Cuban President Fidel Castro, and secret chemical and biological attacks on Cuban agriculture and livestock to sabotage Cuba’s food self-sufficiency.

The US launched the war to overturn a socialist Cuban revolution that kicked out longtime dictator Fulgencio Batista who allowed US mobsters and corporations to dominate the island. US corporate interests owned “90% of Cuba’s mines, 80% of public utilities, 50% of railways, 40% of sugar production, 25% of bank deposits,” posted journalist Afshin Rattansi.

Most grievously, Kennedy in 1962 introduced an economic blockade of Cuba, in violation of international law, in retaliation for his Bay of Pigs humiliation. The rogue nation globally is not Cuba, it is the US. The United Nations has voted repeatedly, 33 years in a row, demanding an end to the embargo, most recently last October by a 165-7 vote. Only five right-wing allies joined the US—Argentina, Hungary, Israel, North Macedonia, and Paraguay, plus Ukraine, dependent on the US for defensive arms against Russia.

Sadly, the Trump administration’s disdain for the lives it destroys in Cuba shows little difference from its lack of compassion with how it treats US residents.

In January, shortly after invading Venezuela to kidnap President Nicolás Maduro and seize Venezuela’s rich oil resources, Trump issued a sweeping expansion of the blockade. It was enforced with Naval ships that impounded one oil tanker while Trump imposed tariffs and other threats on nations that offer to provide aid to Cuba. The war on Cuba has long been sustained, primarily for political purposes by both major parties to appease and win the votes of Cuban emigres. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose family left Cuba decades ago, has long been desperate to impose regime change on the island. He was the principal proponent of both the invasion of Venezuela, which he viewed as step one to end economic support for Cuba, and the follow-up quarantine.

Trump’s harsh blockade has already produced catastrophic suffering. It is not just crippling the economy, Cuba’s Health Minister José Ángel Portal Miranda told the Associated Press, but threatens “basic human safety.” The New York Times reports frequent blackouts, shortages of gasoline and cooking gas, and dwindling supplies of diesel that power the nation’s water pumps.

But the devastation to public health and Cuba’s crown jewel healthcare system forms the most calamitous consequences. Israeli researcher and activist Shaiel Ben-Ephraim cites “rising mortality rate among the elderly and those with chronic illnesses who cannot access life-support or specialized care” and a surge in diseases such as dengue fever and Orupuche virus, “which have become increasingly fatal due to the shortage of basic medicines and rehydration fluids.”

“Public health data shows a spike in infant mortality, rising from 7.1 per 1,000 live births in 2024 to an estimated 14 per 1,000 in late 2025/early 2026,” Ben-Ephraim added on Twitter. “Over 32,000 pregnant women are currently classified as 'at high risk' due to the lack of fuel for obstetric monitoring and emergency medical transport.”

Portal warned that 5 million people in Cuba living with chronic illnesses will face disruption of medications or treatments, including 16,000 cancer patients requiring radiotherapy and another 12,400 undergoing chemotherapies. “Cardiovascular care, orthopedics, oncology, and treatment for critically ill patients who require electrical backup are among the most impacted areas. Kidney disease treatments and emergency ambulance services have also been added to the list of impacted services,” he reported.

It is an undeclared war, illegal under international law, without approval from Congress. Yet only a small handful of lawmakers are expressing opposition. Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern introduced H.R. 7521 in early February with just 18 co-sponsors to date. It calls for an end to the embargo paralleling similar legislation last year by Oregon Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.). “It’s time to throw away the old, obsolete, failed policies of the past and try something different. Let’s focus on the people of Cuba—and let’s treat them like human beings who want to live their lives in dignity and freedom. The Cuban people—not politicians in Washington—ought to decide their own leaders and their own future,” McGovern says.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) compared the Cuban crisis to that of Gaza, Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota called for the “cruel” and “despotic” blockade to be lifted, and Rep. Chuy García of Illinois said the blockade is “deliberately starving civilians” in Cuba. “The US is creating a humanitarian crisis in Cuba. Trump's & Rubio's blockade is punishing the Cuban people, not the regime. We must learn from 6 decades of failed Cuba-policy & reverse course,” tweeted Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.).

Ironically, the only setback for Trump’s attack on Cuba has come from the Supreme Court. Its February 20 decision striking down his use of the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) for tariffs appears to also invalidate his tariffs on countries sending oil to Cuba. Hopefully it’s “a measure of relief. The siege must be broken,” Michael Galant, a member of Progressive International’s secretariat, told Julia Conley in Common Dreams. “The siege must be broken.”

In 2018, National Nurses United Board members saw first-hand the accomplishments of the Cuban medical system in a professional “people to people” research visit. Seventy percent of care is delivered in localized polyclinics and family clinics. The polyclinics are the centerpiece providing integrated, comprehensive services, including 24-hour urgent care, prenatal, maternity, pediatric, dental, vision, hearing, vaccinations, counseling, physical therapy, x-ray, and more, serving about 30,000 area residents. The family clinics are neighborhood based, providing home visits, and serving schools and workplaces that refer people to the nearby polyclinics for more specialized care. Together, both staffed with doctors and nurses, they reduce the need and pressure for hospitalization, with less waiting time for specialists. There is universal access to care with nearly all services free, including for most medications. Cuba’s patient outcomes often exceed the US from infant and maternal mortality to life expectancy despite reduced access to some medical equipment and other restrictions due to the blockade.

Cuba even developed its own medical biotech research and development programs including a vaccine for lung cancer treatment that extends life that is unavailable for US residents due to the sanctions. Cuba also trained medical professionals from throughout the world, especially the Global South, and sent doctors and nurses to multiple countries in need, a program the US has also tried to destroy. Cuba’s healthcare model is widely regarded around the world, and yet is now in grave danger due to the draconian Trump-Rubio assault.

Sadly, the Trump administration’s disdain for the lives it destroys in Cuba shows little difference from its lack of compassion with how it treats US residents, including immigrants or citizens, whether by terrorizing communities or slashing social programs. All the more reason for all of us to continue to challenge the lawlessness at home and abroad.

“This is what we’ve seen with Gaza—a new era of depravity,” says Ocasio-Cortez. “There used to be stated protections for innocent civilians, and now it’s almost acceptable for the Western world to look the other way as people are starved or deprived—simply because political actors or regimes in that country are found objectionable. What we’re seeing is the possible precipice of hospitals running out of fuel. Innocent children and women could be put in harm’s way. It’s incumbent upon all of us to defend human rights no matter where.”

In recent conversations about vaccines, we often hear an argument framed around individual rights and personal choice. This perspective was echoed by Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices Chair Kirk Milhoan in his January 22 interview with STAT News, when he suggested that vaccine recommendations should place greater emphasis on individual autonomy and questioned whether longstanding vaccines, including polio, should continue to be viewed primarily through a public health lens.

As grandparents, we understand that instinct deeply. We raised children. We worried about their safety, questioned new information, and felt the weight of responsibility that comes with making decisions for someone you love more than yourself. Respect for individual liberty is not abstract to us, it is part of who we are as Americans.

But we also belong to a generation that remembers polio. And that memory changes how we see this debate.

Polio was not a distant or theoretical threat when we were children. It arrived quietly, spread easily, and struck without warning. One day a child was fine; the next, paralyzed. Parents kept their children out of swimming pools, movie theaters, and playgrounds. Summers were seasons of fear. Hospital wards filled with children in iron lungs, machines that breathed for bodies polio had left unable to do so.

Protecting public health does not mean erasing individual rights. It means recognizing that some choices carry consequences beyond ourselves.

Janice (Jan) Flood Nichols can attest to what life was like before vaccines. She and her twin brother Frankie were in first grade. It was fall, and they were excited to go trick-or-treating. A few days before Halloween, Frankie caught what seemed like a simple head cold, so their parents kept him home to rest. But the day before Halloween, he suddenly struggled to breathe. They rushed him to the communicable disease hospital in Syracuse.

Doctors performed a spinal tap and placed Frankie in an iron lung. By morning, the diagnosis was confirmed: polio. Jan was brought to the same hospital and given massive doses of gamma globulin, the only treatment doctors hoped might stop the disease.

Frankie’s condition worsened. Unable to control his breathing, doctors rushed him toward emergency surgery. He never made it. Frankie died on November 1, 1953, at 10:25 pm.

That same night, Jan developed symptoms of polio. Her condition deteriorated rapidly, and she was rushed back to the hospital where Frankie had died. Doctors told her parents they did not know if she would live or die. Jan did survive but spent months painfully rehabilitating and learning to walk again.

Jan’s story is why discussions about polio vaccination cannot be reduced to personal preference alone. Polio is not just a risk to one child or one family. It is a highly contagious virus that spreads silently, often through people who show no symptoms at all. That means individual decisions ripple outward, affecting newborns, pregnant women, immunocompromised individuals, and entire communities.

When we talk about rights, we must also talk about responsibility.

In America, freedom has never meant the absence of limits when others are placed in danger. We accept speed limits not because we distrust drivers, but because unchecked speed endangers everyone on the road. We require clean drinking water and food safety standards because one person’s contamination can harm thousands. Public health has always been a balance between individual liberty and collective protection.

Polio vaccination is no different.

Those of us who lived through the polio era know something that is easy to forget today: Vaccines did not take freedom away, they restored it. The widespread use of the polio vaccine didn’t just reduce disease; it gave families their lives back. Children returned to playgrounds and pools. Parents stopped holding their breath every summer. Communities could gather without fear that invisible danger lurked in everyday spaces.

It’s also important to say this clearly: Today’s parents are not reckless or uncaring. Vaccine hesitancy often grows from love, fear, and an overwhelming flood of conflicting information. Many parents have never seen the diseases vaccines prevent. That is a testament to how successful vaccination programs have been, but it also makes the risk feel abstract.

For grandparents, it is anything but abstract.

Many of us came together through Grandparents for Vaccines, a national grassroots organization formed to ensure that the hard-won lessons of the past are not forgotten. We speak not as politicians or policymakers, but as witnesses, people who saw firsthand what happens when diseases like polio are allowed to spread, and who now want to protect the children and grandchildren we love.

We remember classmates who never walked again. We remember neighbors who lived with lifelong disabilities. We remember funerals for children who should have grown old alongside us. These memories are not meant to frighten, they are meant to remind us what happens when a dangerous virus is allowed to spread unchecked.

Protecting public health does not mean erasing individual rights. It means recognizing that some choices carry consequences beyond ourselves. Infants cannot choose to be vaccinated yet. People undergoing cancer treatment cannot choose to have fully functioning immune systems. They rely on the rest of us to create a protective barrier around them.

That is not government overreach. It is community care.

As grandparents, our perspective is shaped by time. We have seen what happens before vaccines and after them. We have watched fear give way to relief, and tragedy replaced by prevention. When we advocate for polio vaccination, we are not dismissing freedom—we are defending a broader, deeper version of it.

The freedom for a child to grow up walking.
The freedom for families to trust public spaces.
The freedom for future generations to know polio only as a chapter in history books, not a living threat.

Our message is simple and heartfelt: We respect choice and we remember the cost of unchecked disease. Polio showed our generation that collective protection can increase freedom across an entire society. That lesson continues to matter for the health and well-being of our grandchildren.

The US Supreme Court's rejection of President Donald Trump's singular policy on tariffs is a reason for some celebration. During the past year, using the so-called "shadow docket," the Roberts Court had ruled in Trump's favor on an emergency basis 24 out of 28 times.

But the mainstream media, and even much of the progressive media, is misinterpreting the tariff decision as demonstrating the Roberts Court's independence and judicial neutrality.

For example, the New York Times lead article by its chief legal correspondent Adam Lipnick was headlined, "The Supreme Court's Declaration of Independence," and the article argued that SCOTUS's decision "amounted to a declaration of independence." One progressive blogger wrote, "It would be nice—and, in political terms, smart—if the left changes its tune about Roberts in the wake of his courageous stand." An article in the generally liberal Atlantic magazine was headlined, "The Supreme Court Isn't a Rubber Stamp."

But the Roberts Court is not independent. Rather, when there's a conflict between big corporations and Trump, it will side with the corporations.

Most of the media is getting the meaning of the tariffs case wrong.

The plaintiffs challenging the tariffs were represented by the New Civil Liberties Alliance funded by billionaire Charles Koch and former Federalist Society chief Leonard Leo who selected the right-wing Justices. Even The Chamber of Commerce filed an amicus brief opposing the Trump tariffs and asking the Roberts Court to overturn them.

In most cases that don't threaten corporate interests, the Roberts Court sides with Trump. However, as with the tariff decisions, in cases soon to be decided on whether Trump can fire a Federal Reserve governor without cause—which threatens business interests—oral arguments indicate they will probably side with the business interests and rule that the Fed is a special case and the president cannot fire a Fed governor without cause. But they will likely bend themselves into pretzels to hold that Trump can fire without cause the heads of most other agencies like the Consumer Protection Financial Bureau and the National Labor Relations Board, which regulate business and which corporate interests want kneecapped..

Most of the media is getting the meaning of the tariffs case wrong. It does not show that the Roberts Court is independent. Rather, it shows that the Roberts Court is pro-corporate.

Incarceration has been used as a core tactic of the United States in upholding racial capitalism and imperialisms through repression, extraction, and violent control. Growing to more than 65,000 people at the start of 2026, more people than ever are being held in immigration detention centers, with 2025 setting a 20-year record for deaths while detained.

The arrest and detention of dissenting people due to political motivations—or, the making of political prisoners—has required alleged charges, manufactured evidence, and the expansion of detention infrastructure. With the creation and rapid expansion of immigration enforcement agencies, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is creating another mass category of political prisoners.

Incarceration of Immigrant Protesters As Political Repression

The criminalization of protest and dissent has expanded in mission and in agency, as dissenters without citizenship have been targeted, investigated, and detained.

In a letter sent from inside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in 2025, Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil declared, “I am a political prisoner,” as he explained the nature of his warrantless arrest by DHS officers after having been the target of an FBI investigation. Khalil stated, “Justice escapes the contours of this nation’s immigration facilities.”

Movements to end mass incarceration, immigrant justice movements, labor movements, environmental justice movements, and all others need to be interconnected in the fight to free all political prisoners.

Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian with a pending asylum application in the US, was arrested after attending a protest, her charges were dropped, and she was later placed into custody at an ICE detention facility where she has been held despite a judge's orders for her release. Kordia’s family has shared the conditions she has faced, including being chained while hospitalized and barred from access to her attorneys and family.

A federal judge in Massachusetts ruled that people without citizenship have the same free speech rights as citizens, declaring immigration detention for protest and ideological deportation unconstitutional. Yet, the practice of kidnapping and detaining protesters without citizenship continues. Due to the Israeli occupation, seizure of land, and creation of an apartheid state, Palestinian activists like Mahmoud Khalil, Leqaa Kordia, Mohsen Mahdawi, and others are often considered stateless, making them harder to deport and leading to their indefinite apprehension in immigration detention centers as political prisoners.

The Expansion Of Crimmigration Infrastructure

In a similar pattern to the prison boom in 1980s California, ICE is rapidly expanding its detention infrastructure. Across the country federal funds are being used to purchase warehouses to convert into detention centers and lease offices to conduct operations in efforts to establish mass permanent presence of ICE around every corner. Abroad, the US is invested in political detention at facilities such as the camps in Guantánamo Bay in Cuba and Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT) in El Salvador.

Alongside political repression, many of these infrastructure-strengthening actions, such as building and staffing for-profit schools in detention facilities and purchasing surveillance technologies, are increasing profits in the billions for developers, tech giants, and stock holders.

Federal funding of these actions by the billions fuels repression. The backing from elected officials, from local jurisdictions to Congress, supplies the infrastructure needed to build a mass system of political prisoners and violent socialeconomic control.

The Making Of Mass Political Prisoners

Prisons are a booming business that require a continued supply of people to ensure continued profit. From what Ruth Wilson Gilmore calls “organized abandonment,” people have been politicized by the repression they experience. The survival behaviors necessary to navigate life in this repression have been criminalized to keep facilities and pockets full.

Because of the nature of detention under racial capitalism, all imprisonment has been considered political, making all who are detained—whether that be in jails, prisons, immigration facilities, involuntary mental health facilities, and other sites of hold—political prisoners. The expansion, then, does not require formal conviction for the state to justify detention indefinitely.

Just like borders, immigration enforcement and detention creates political prisoners. For immigrants in the US, living within its borders is a political act, and continuing to live is a form of resistance. Once detained, immigrants are marked for life as a threat. A child born in an immigration detention facility is born a political prisoner.

These processes make political prisoners common, legitimizing their treatment and making it more difficult to unbuild the systems that keep them.

A Collective Responsibility To Resist

Political prisoners of movement spaces, such as Assata Shakur, Leonard Peltier, and Xinachtli (Alvaro Luna Hernandez), did not allow their detention to stop their resistance efforts. Many have written letters while incarcerated, providing critical texts revealing the use of detention as a method of political repression while exposing their inhumane living conditions. Others have organized from the inside, building power among incarcerated workers and connections to movements on the outside. And, like those held in immigration detention, some have focused on survival as their act of resistance.

On the outside, organizations such as the National Political Prisoner Coalition, Critical Resistance, the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, and Close Guantánamo and the Center for Victims of Torture, have centered their actions around campaigns to free political prisoners. With the expansion of political prisonership under immigration repression, cross-movement solidarity is needed to work in coordination to interrupt and end all carceral tactics used for repression. Movements to end mass incarceration, immigrant justice movements, labor movements, environmental justice movements, and all others need to be interconnected in the fight to free all political prisoners.

Our survival depends on each other.

Rev. Jesse Jackson, who passed away last week, was a larger-than-life figure who made enormous and consequential contributions to American life. He registered millions of voters laying the groundwork for a substantial increase in the number of Black elected officials across the country. He also succeeded in pressing major corporations to increase economic opportunities for Black Americans thereby significantly increasing the Black middle class.

As part of the younger generation of Black leaders who had developed a global consciousness, his agenda moved beyond civil rights to make support for movements for social justice and liberation part of the mainstream of American politics. Because of this, he was the first American political leader to recognize and incorporate into his movement my community of Arab Americans and our domestic and foreign policy concerns.

I first began working with Rev. Jesse Jackson in the late 1970s. His staff approached me to discuss his plans for a visit to Palestine-Israel to see for himself the situation in the occupied lands. The injustices he witnessed left an indelible impression, leaving him committed to addressing the centrality of Palestinian rights to Middle East peace.

In 1979, when US Ambassador to the United Nations Andrew Young was removed from his post for speaking with the Palestine Liberation Organization’s United Nations representative, many Black leaders, Reverend Jackson included, were outraged. It wasn’t just that Andy Young had been a colleague in the civil rights movement. Jackson could not accept that the US had committed itself to a “no talk” policy with the Palestinian leaders.

In all the years I worked with Rev. Jackson, I witnessed not only his commitment to justice and courage in the face of challenges, but also the extent to which he recognized that his personal power could make a difference on the world stage.

He resolved to visit Beirut to meet directly with PLO chief Yasser Arafat and demonstrate that “a no talk policy is no policy at all.” Before leaving, he asked to address my Palestine Human Rights Campaign convention, taking place at that time. His presence and his remarks were electrifying and drew national and international media coverage.

In 1983 Rev. Jackson approached me at a dinner and asked me to leave what I was doing and join his campaign for president. When I replied, “I’ve been organizing my community of Arab Americans for the last four years and I’m not sure I can leave what I’m doing,” he said, “You will do more for your community in the next four months than you’ve done in the last four years.” He was right.

Up until that point, Arab Americans had never been welcomed in American politics as an ethnic constituency, mainly because of our support for Palestinian human rights. Candidates had rejected our contributions and endorsements. No campaign had ever included an Arab American committee. And no candidate had raised the issues about which our community cared deeply.

Rev. Jackson changed all that, and the response from Arab Americans was overwhelming. In fact, we were so moved by that 1984 campaign, that we launched the Arab American Institute to focus on lessons we’d learned: increasing voter registration, encouraging candidate engagement, and the importance of bringing our concerns into the electoral arena.

Because Rev. Jackson had made it possible to speak about Palestine, we built coalitions around the issue during the 1988 presidential campaign. We elected a record number of delegates across the country, and built coalitions with Black, Latino, progressive Jewish delegates, and others. We passed resolutions supporting Palestinian rights in 10 state Democratic conventions. And at the national convention in Atlanta, we’d earned enough delegates to call for a minority plank on Palestinian rights.

There had never been a discussion about Palestine at a Democratic convention. In negotiations with the presumptive winner Michael Dukakis’s campaign, they were adamant that the issue would not be raised. In fact, Madeleine Albright, representing the Dukakis people, said if the “P word” was even mentioned at the convention, “all hell would break loose.” I told them not to play “chicken little” with us and insisted that the issue be discussed. Rev. Jackson asked me to present our plank from the podium of the convention and I did. It was a heady experience to be able to address the National Convention calling for “mutual recognition, territorial compromise, and self-determination for both Israelis and Palestinians.” My speech was preceded by a floor demonstration of more than 1000 delegates carrying signs calling for Israeli-Palestinian peace and a two-state solution and waving Palestinian flags. It was the first (and unfortunately, the last) time that that issue was raised at a party convention.

The backlash was intense. While Rev. Jackson had secured a position for me on the Democratic National Committee, party leaders told me I should withdraw because my presence would make me a target for Republicans and for some Jewish Democrats, who would use an Arab American in a DNC leadership role to attack Dukakis. Incoming Party Chair Ron Brown thought it best that I withdraw but promised to make it up to us. And he did. He became the first party chair to host Arab Americans at party headquarters, to meet with Arab American Democrats around the country, and to address our national conventions. A few years into his term, he appointed me to fill a vacancy on the DNC where I’ve been ever since.

In 1994 in the months after Oslo Accords signing, Rev. Jackson accepted an invitation to be keynote speaker at an international peace conference the Palestinians were convening in Jerusalem. Once there, the Israelis said that we could not meet in Jerusalem or hold a political meeting with Palestinians. Rev. Jackson was determined to go forward. We spoke with Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin and Foreign Minister Shimon Perez urging them to allow the event to go forward. Even though they were unrelenting, Jackson convened the meeting and then announced that we’d march from the hotel to the Orient House, the Jerusalem headquarters of the Palestinians. The Israeli military surrounded the hotel and told us we could not leave.

True to form, Rev. Jackson announced that we’d march anyway and so we left the hotel walking through the lines of Israeli soldiers. To be honest, I was frightened, but what happened surprised us. Because of the power of his personality and his work, Jackson’s presence was formidable on the world stage. Once the Israelis soldiers saw him leading this peaceful march right up to their blockade, they parted and not only allowed him through, but many gathered around, wanting to touch or shake his hand, asking to have their pictures taken with him. The Israeli commanders were furious and continued barking orders to their troops to back away. The soldiers ignored them. We marched to Orient House and had our meeting.

In all the years I worked with Rev. Jackson, I witnessed not only his commitment to justice and courage in the face of challenges, but also the extent to which he recognized that his personal power could make a difference on the world stage. He freed prisoners. He opened doors to negotiations. He gave hope to the hopeless and voice to the voiceless. He also challenged the Democratic Party to be principled and consistent in its commitment to human rights and justice. He will be missed, but his legacy lives on in the progressive movement for domestic and foreign policy change that he helped shape.

After the Trump administration illegally kidnapped the legitimate president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, on January 3, 2026, we saw two distinct and divergent responses from Venezuelans. On the one hand, the Venezuelan diaspora, especially in the United States, celebrated President Maduro’s kidnapping and bombing of their birth country. They congregated in small gatherings the weekend of the abduction, including in Miami. These celebrations, alongside videos online, were widely disseminated in corporate and social media for a US-based (and broader Western) audience, all broadcasting the same message: Venezuelans support President Maduro’s abduction.

On the other hand, inside Venezuela, for weeks after the illegal abduction, citizens engaged in (almost) daily and massive demonstrations to condemn the attack that killed and wounded over 100 people. These protests have not been shared by US corporate media and have been suppressed in US-aligned social media; thus, a US audience is not privy to the substantial support for Chavismo and President Maduro.

The US propaganda assault plays a large part in generating these two opposing reactions regarding President Maduro’s abduction among Venezuelans, outside (celebration), especially among the US-based diaspora, compared with inside (condemnation) Venezuela. The US propaganda assault refers to the US’(or its aligned entities’) deployment of its vast ideological apparatus (White House communications, corporate media, academia, social media, NGOs, and international organizations) to impose narratives about Venezuela, especially its economic and political conditions, that undermine the Bolivarian Revolution to justify US intervention.

The US propaganda assault shapes how Venezuelans make sense of their experiences in and—for those who left—out of Venezuela, generating more support for the illegal kidnapping of President Maduro among those living abroad compared with those living inside Venezuela, where the propaganda assault faces reality and a stronger counteroffensive, undermining its effectiveness.

The Venezuelan Diaspora

In general, Venezuelans in the United States are more likely to support the illegal kidnapping of President Maduro because of their adherence and susceptibility to US-deployed narratives about the Bolivarian Revolution, often linked to their socioeconomic background in Venezuela.

Venezuelans in the United States, as a group, “have higher rates of educational attainment than either native- or overall foreign-born populations” and they are, on average, more educated than their compatriots in Venezuela. Because education is a common marker of socioeconomic status, the Venezuelan diaspora tends to be more socioeconomically advantaged than compatriots who stayed in Venezuela. Moreover, some members of Venezuela’s upper class and elites migrated to the US after Hugo Chavez came to power in 1999, as they are the most vociferous opponents to his political project, a socialism of the 21st century. Thus, middle- and upper-class (and elite) segments of Venezuelan society are overrepresented in the Venezuelan diaspora in the United States. These individuals led comfortable lives in Venezuela until US economic attacks induced economic deterioration and emigration; they carry all of the disappointment, anger, hurt, and resentment associated with economic difficulties—or reduced advantaged among the upper-class and elites—and subsequent displacement.

The neoliberal imperial worldview is a crucial part of the propaganda assault against the Bolivarian Revolution, as it dictates the parameters, including premises and assumptions, that structure debates about Venezuela, including the legitimate role of the US in its affairs.

Venezuelans with middle- and upper-class backgrounds—and especially elites—tend to adhere most closely to a US-centric, neoliberal, and imperial worldview, a prevalent perspective among more advantaged individuals all over Latin America. Two dimensions of this worldview are imperative. First, the state should be subordinated to capital. Secondly, the US’ unruly “rules-based order”—with its related economic, political, and cultural dimensions—should have hegemony over the world, especially the Western Hemisphere. According to this worldview, US neoliberal imperial hegemony is morally superior to other arrangements; thus, US intervention in foreign nation-states to maintain its hegemony is justified. More advantaged, usually light-skinned sectors of Latin America, including in Venezuela, see themselves as part of a US-aligned cosmopolitan milieu, whose perspective they enforce, often violently, in their countries of birth.

US Propaganda for a Receptive Venezuelan Diaspora

The New York Times, the most powerful and effective mouthpiece of the US empire’s propaganda, recently acknowledged that US economic and financial attacks “crushed the Venezuelan economy and led to a humanitarian crisis.” As the US destroyed the Venezuelan economy and created a humanitarian crisis, it deployed (and continues to deploy) a propaganda assault that minimizes or outright obscures the role that US attacks have played in the economic devastation and political troubles in Venezuela. The propaganda assault shifts blame away from the US government onto Chavismo’s leadership, suggesting that the economic duress in Venezuela was primarily—or even exclusively—a result of “mismanagement and corruption” endemic to socialism, in general, and Chavismo, in particular, led by its “narco-trafficker” leader, Nicolás Maduro.

For instance, the claim that Maduro is a narco-trafficker who heads the nonexistent Cartel de los Soles was taken as fact in the most recent Rubio hearings about Venezuela, even though the US government itself has jettisoned this accusation from the “legal” proceedings against President Maduo, a tacit admission that it is false. The fact that corporate media knew about the military attacks ahead of time and refused to publish or sound the alarm is perhaps the best evidence that they are a complicit player in the assault against Venezuela.

The neoliberal imperial worldview is a crucial part of the propaganda assault against the Bolivarian Revolution, as it dictates the parameters, including premises and assumptions, that structure debates about Venezuela, including the legitimate role of the US in its affairs. For instance, at the referenced Rubio hearings, questioning from most senators relied on the premise that the US has the right to intervene in Venezuela’s internal affairs and kidnap its sitting president, a blatant violation of international law. Stunningly, though not surprisingly, some congressmen reprimanded Secretary of State Marco Rubio for not going further and targeting other high-profile Chavista leaders and installing opposition figure María Corina Machado as president, demands only conceivable under a neoliberal imperial worldview. The parameters of the debate that the US propaganda assault delimits is found in most debates about Venezuela, regardless of its interlocutors.

Moreover, when the Bolivarian Revolution defends itself against US attacks, including limiting US influence through opposition proxies, it is labeled “authoritarian.” For example, the US propaganda assault paints US-funded guarimberos as “political prisoners.” These criminals destroyed public and private property, including schools, and killed Venezuelans and targeted Chavistas, including by burning them alive in an attempt to dislodge the Bolivarian Revolution from power. When the Chavista government jailed these “political prisoners,” the US propaganda assault accused the Bolivarian Revolution of authoritarianism, noting that these actions are proof that President Maduro (and Chavez before him) is a dictator. The US propaganda assault does not acknowledge the heinous crimes these guarimberos committed. Due to Chavismo’s alleged authoritarianism, a neoliberal imperial worldview demands that the United States has a duty to intervene in order to “liberate” the allegedly “oppressed” people to clear the way for foreign capital with its subservient “democracy,” a “common sense” solution to its hardships.

The more privileged segment of the Venezuelan society diaspora, who strongly adhere to a neoliberal imperial worldview, is exposed to nothing but anti-Chavismo narratives in the United States. Notably, the US propaganda assault politicizes some members of the diaspora to such a degree that the “MAGAzolano” emerges as a political actor: Venezuelans who ardently support Trump, even though Trump is attacking their country, killing their compatriots with illegal military incursions, and making life unbearable for Venezuelan immigrants through oppressive immigration enforcement and the deportation regime in the US. Although the MAGAzolano is often found among more privileged Venezuelans—who tend to be light-skinned descendants of European immigrants who consider themselves white—they are not limited to this group.

Economic difficulties and subsequent emigration, refracted through a US propaganda assault, including a neoliberal imperial worldview, feeds and deepens these middle-class, upper-class, and elite Venezuelans’ disappointment, anger, hurt, and resentment about their situation, thereby hardening their views against Chavismo, including blaming Maduro for their personal difficulties. Consequently, these Venezuelans in the diaspora celebrate the military attack that led to Maduro’s illegal abduction.

Chavismo finds most support among working-class Venezuelans. For this reason, working-class Venezuelans are the primary target of the US propaganda assault. For instance, when Chavistas appear in corporate media, Chavismo is presented as a failed boogeyman. One corporate media report, which featured a Chavismo-supporting family who lost a son to the US military attack, describes the socialist Bolivarian Revolution as “faded” and “handicapped by corruption cronyism, and incompetence and”—wait for it, at the end of the list—“US-led sanctions.” Notably, the story articulates the lofty aims of the Bolivarian revolution that Chavez started but only to highlight its failures.

Due to the absence of forceful and consistent counternarratives in corporate-owned legacy and social media against US propaganda, arguments against Chavismo—largely unopposed— gain ground. Consequently, support for Chavismo weakens among this segment of the population in the US. Moreover, the propaganda assault is coupled with incentives to sing an anti-Maduro tune in the US, especially in co-ethnic communities like Miami, a hotbed of anti-socialist sentiment. In these locales, employment and other opportunities may vanish if one articulates support for the Bolivarian revolution. Furthermore, legalization incentives decrease articulating support for President Maduro, as a pathway to legalization might be more likely if one argues political persecution by the Chavista government. Thus, the US propaganda assault and material incentives undermine support for Chavismo, even among its followers. At the very least, every anti-Chavismo story in the press—in the absence of counternarratives—sows doubt, leading these working-class individuals who support the Bolivarian Revolution in the diaspora to ask: Is it true?

The Limits of the US Propaganda Assault Inside Venezuela

Condemnation for President Maduro’s illegal kidnapping is stronger and more visible inside Venezuela, largely because Chavismo is the strongest political movement inside the country, because these Venezuelans had to deal with bombs landing on their heads, and because the US propaganda assault encounters reality and a stronger narrative counteroffensive.

Chavismo is the strongest social movement in Venezuela. Since Chavez came to power, Chavismo has won most of the over 30 elections Venezuela has held at different levels of governance. They control all of the levers of power and enjoy the most mobilized base compared to other political movements, including the fractured political right. Notably Chavismo has empowered communes, which strengthen support for Chavismo on the ground. For instance, in November 2025, a national election took place so that communes could vote to prioritize projects whose support is provided by the federal government. The PSUV (Socialist Party) is the largest and most organized political organization in the country. Central to the US propaganda assault is to refuse to acknowledge, attempt to obscure, or outright deny this fact. While US propaganda buries this fact from a US-based (and Western) audience, including the Venezuelan diaspora, it cannot disguise it from Venezuelans inside the country, who see—with their own eyes—Chavismo mobilized on the streets, thereby undermining the US propaganda assault’s effectiveness.

The fact that the Bolivarian Revolution did not crumble after the kidnapping of its president, as many other societies have done after a US strike, reveals the Bolivarian Revolution’s strength.

Notably, the military attack against Venezuela generated a “rally-behind-the-flag” effect. The aggression against Venezuela affected all of its citizens, regardless of political ideology, leading Chavistas and non-Chavistas alike to condemn the intervention. For instance, bombs landed on La Boyera, a historically stronghold for the opposition, destroying homes and harming individuals. The attack also destroyed a medical warehouse that stored supplies for dialysis patients in La Guaira and damaged a research center in Miranda state. (In a show of solidarity, the Brazilian government donated medical supplies to help these patients.) Venezuelans of all political stripes are dealing with the psychological and emotional toll of Trump’s attack.

Among Venezuelans inside Venezuela, there is no confusion as to who bombed them and who defended them, heightening patriotism in defense of their sovereignty. Because Chavismo is in charge of the government, it emerged as the unequivocal defender of Venezuela sovereignty, generating sympathy (or quelling animosity), if not support, among some detractors. Maria Corina Machado’s gifting of her Nobel “peace” medal to Trump as a sign of gratitude for bombing Venezuela highlighted a contrast between those who support (extreme right-wing opposition) and those who reject (Chavismo) the US military attacks, defining the latter as the protector of the Venezuelan people. Importantly, the rally-behind-the-flag effect reveals why the propaganda assault was launched first, as it undermines and diffuses patriotic cohesion by concealing the US as the unequivocal aggressor. It is not surprising that some non-Chavistas have joined the demonstrations condemning the illegal attack. Having experienced the attack firsthand, they are not eager to stand in a town square and celebrate bombs raining down on them and the killing of their compatriots and neighbors.

Inside Venezuela, Chavismo supporters offer counternarratives to the US propaganda assault. Social media, state-sponsored media, and the pulpit of the presidency—among other avenues—are deployed to help people understand the US assault and what the Bolivarian Revolution is doing about it. For example, these outlets point out that the US attacked to steal their natural resources, not for democracy or any other excuse. Importantly, they debunk a range of narratives that attempt to divide and, therefore, weaken Chavismo (see below). They highlight how the extreme right-wing opposition has called for US military intervention and how they have celebrated the bombing of their compatriots; in doing so, they highlight how unpatriotic these right-wing sectors are and how little they care for the Venezuelan population. Importantly, they highlight the importance of socialist principles to understand and resist this attack, and how a deepening of socialism is the only answer to US pressure.

The US Propaganda Assault Doubles Down

After the military aggression, the US propaganda assault against the Bolivarian Revolution has jumped into hyperdrive to generate division and weaken Chavismo in an effort to dislodge the socialist project from controlling the Venezuelan government. The US propaganda assault continues to try to break Chavismo, targeting Delcy Rodriguez, the vice president who is now in charge in President Maduro’s absence, Jorge Rodriguez, the head of the assembly (and Delcy’s brother), and, most importantly, Diosdado Cabello, the interior minister. These narratives include:

• “Chavistas did not fight back against the US attack; they are weak.”
• “The ‘capture’ was an exacting, clean, and without resistance.”
• “The abduction is legal.”
• “Traitors collaborated with the US; Chavismo is ready to collapse from within.”
• “Delcy and her brother betrayed Maduro; Chavismo is fractured.”
• “Delcy is an opportunist ready to give up her Chavista roots for power.”
• “Delcy has expensive taste; she is a hypocrite and not committed to the Bolivarian revolution.”
• “Diosdado Cabello is the real motor behind Chavismo; Delcy must be weary of him.”
• “Diosdado Cabello betrayed Maduro.”
• “Diosdado is a narco-terrorist.”
• “Chavista leadership has abandoned the Bolivarian revolution.”
• “Trump runs the United States.”
• “Delcy is subservient to Trump and CIA.”
• “Chavista leaders have millions in offshore banks; they are not real socialists.”

One of these narratives—“Delcy is a narco-trafficker”—is a rehashing of US accusations against Maduro. The Bolivarian Revolution’s resistance to these nefarious narratives is also working overtime, undermining the attacks’ effectiveness, providing almost instantaneous rebuttals. Many of these US propaganda narratives have been thoroughly debunked. But new ones emerge, and old ones are recycled, almost on a daily basis. As Vijay Prashad notes, “Every single Western corporate newspaper has run a story on how the Venezuelan leadership made a deal with US to hand over Maduro.” The evidence? Boogeyman “anonymous sources,” who almost always turn out to be US intelligence campaigns that feed corporate media the narrative the US wants to impose. The corporate media, for their part, does little to investigate and corroborate the anonymous sources’ claim; they just print them without proof or verification, acting as a propaganda arm of the US government. Note that as the Chavismo leadership negotiates with the US, the latter is engaged in a ferocious propaganda assault to undermine the Bolivarian government.

Finally, Venezuelans abroad try to silence support for Maduro by arguing that those who did not experience the economic hardships that they experienced do not have a right to speak. As a rebuttal, those inside the country argue that Venezuelans who left during the most difficult times as a result of the US financial attacks did not experience the subsequent economic upward swing that Chavismo engineered, despite US-imposed crippling sanctions. Venezuela has experienced continued economic growth from 2020-2025, which is one of the primary reasons the United States used the military to encircle and attack it; the Bolivarian Revolution was outmaneuvering US economic sanctions. Those who stayed in Venezuela experienced, firsthand, economic recovery, however slow, a reality that cannot be denied to those who experienced it.

A Note on the Imperial Left: The Reach of the US Propaganda Assault

US propaganda assault deploys narratives to undermine the Bolivarian Revolution that face few counternarratives in the United States, including among self-professed “progressives,” “leftists,” or “democratic socialists.” One of the most despicable arguments that emerges out of this group, which I refer to as the “imperial left,” is the ever self-serving “both-sideism” claim. It states that both of the following claims are true: Maduro—and Chavismo more generally—is “corrupt” and “authoritarian” and “mismanaged” the economy and the US carried out an illegal attack and abduction against Venezuela and its leader. These imperial leftists reject both Chavismo and the United States’ actions, thereby projecting a seemingly “neutral,” “objective,” and “unbiased” perspective.

Although “both-sideism” appears as a “neutral,” “unbiased,” and “objective” stance, it is actually in alignment with US aggression against the Bolivarian Revolution. This narrative creates a moral equivalence between the victim (Venezuela and its Bolivarian revolution) and its aggressor (the United States) that renders them both objectionable, which undermines support for Chavismo and, consequently, demobilizes anti-imperial resistance inside the US and strengthens Venezuelan diaspora support for the illegal kidnapping of President Maduro. Notably, for this “equivalence” to work, imperial leftists accept narratives deployed by the US government, including that Chavismo’s mismanagement, corruption, and authoritarianism is primarily responsible for Venezuela’s economic duress, ignoring actual evidence.

In doing so, “both-sideism” legitimizes US government claims and, consequently, its purported reasoning for intervention. For the imperial left, self-defense under imperial aggression is dictatorship; concessions forced under imperial attacks exemplify lack of revolutionary commitment; and neutralization of US proxies reveals authoritarianism. If not a perfect socialist utopia, the imperial left is more than happy to join right-wing forces against revolutionary governments working toward socialism, including in Latin America. All they accomplish is undermining solidarity and resistance against imperial aggression.

Will the Real Venezuelan Please Stand Up!

By highlighting Venezuelans abroad who celebrated the January 3 military attack against their birth country, the US propaganda assault seeks to impose the narrative that all Venezuelans support the illegal kidnapping of President Maduro. To do so, it obscures Venezuelans inside and outside the country who disagree. Even outside of Venezuelan, however, opposition to the illegal kidnapping of President Maduro is alive and well—and ignored by US corporate media. For instance, in a demonstration in Paris, France a Venezuelan migrant raised her voice and spoke thus:

I lived in Venezuela until 2017 and had to leave—not because I wanted to, but because of the economic sanctions the US imposes against my country for the fact that Venezuela dared to nationalize its resources, including oil. But corporate media will not tell you this; its propaganda—along with the far-right extremist elements of the Venezuelan opposition—want you to believe that Venezuela is a failure. But this is not true. Venezuela is a country that, despite imperialist sanctions, endures. When are we going to believe Yanquí propaganda? It’s time to stop legitimizing narratives that justify invasions. History is on our side.

Although ignored, voices like these ring out all over the world, despite having a difficult time finding a public platform for dissemination. Inside Venezuela, these voices are loud and find themselves in every nook and cranny of the national territory, which make them hard to ignore or obscure.

US violence against Venezuelans is intentionally obscured by the US propaganda assault, but it inevitably becomes apparent, often in the midst of dire circumstances, especially in the United States. At the end of one of Maduro kidnapping celebrations, for instance, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents showed up and detained some Venezuelans. One of those individuals captured articulates the reality that the propaganda assault conceals. He says: “We were only celebrating Maduro’s capture. And they brought us here [to an ICE detention center]. It's unjust. Now that I am in this condition, I don’t know who the bad guy is. I thought Maduro was the dictator, but it is Donald Trump who has jailed us.”

Chavismo is Alive and Continues Fighting

The analyst Diego Sequera describes the successful US military aggression that led to the kidnapping of President Maduro as a “sugar-high victory,” suggesting it is momentary and fleeting. Right now, the Trump administration and the extreme right-wing opposition is overcome with glee, expecting the abduction to signal the beginning of the end of Chavismo. However, events subsequent to the abduction call for a different interpretation. Chavismo endures. In the aftermath of the attacks, Venezuelan institutions held their ground, with Chavismo controlling all levers of power. Organizational capacity is strong. For instance, buildings destroyed by the attack were rapidly renovated, highlighting how the Bolivarian Revolution’s primary goals are to serve all Venezuelans. Moreover, due to the limited sanction relief, economic growth under the leadership of Delcy Rodriguez may generate more sympathy for Chavismo among skeptics and deepen commitment for the Bolivarian Revolution among its supporters. As it stands, approval for Rodriguez is high.

The US propaganda assault will continue to try splinter Venezuelan society, including sowing divisions between those who live inside and outside the country. This propaganda assault obscures the fact the military attack was a violation of Venezuelan sovereignty, not just aggression against the Bolivarian Revolution, a point the Bolivarian Revolution makes over and over again. Chavismo is absorbing the attack as a singular moment of vulnerability; it is re-grouping, re-organizing, and now re-energized, as it has done time and time again after each illegal, immoral, unjust US attack over its history. The fact that the Bolivarian Revolution did not crumble after the kidnapping of its president, as many other societies have done after a US strike, reveals the Bolivarian Revolution’s strength.

The time ahead is full of uncertainty, sometimes necessitating temporary changes and strategic deceleration or concessions—as Chavez once said in a previous moment of political vulnerability—“por ahora” (for now). But the process continues. As the movement’s chant reminds us, “Chavez Vive! La Lucha Sigue!” For Chavistas, the Bolivarian Revolution está en marcha (marches on). There is never a final defeat or a final victory. Just temporary battles won or lost on the path toward a different world. Chavismo is now a structural feature of Venezuelan society, part of its DNA. Whatever happens in the coming days, something is assured: Chavismo is here to stay—working, building, organizing to unite Venezuelans, which the US propaganda assault has divided, and building, slowly, toward its next leap forward.

I’m not going to watch the State of the Union address Tuesday night. I urge you not to, either.

I hope Nielsen (or whoever makes such estimates these days) will find that far fewer Americans watched President Donald Trump’s State of the Union than have watched any other State of the Union in recent memory. It will drive Trump nuts.

There are plenty of other reasons for not watching.

First, he doesn’t deserve our attention. He’s abused and defiled the American presidency, even worse than he did in his first term.

I already know the real state of the union. It sucks.

He’s openly taken bribes. He’s blatantly usurped the powers of Congress. He has overtly used the Justice Department to punish people he considers his enemies and pardon people loyal to him. He has willfully rejected the rule of law, broken treaties, literally destroyed part of the White House, thumbed his nose at our allies (including our closest and heretofore loyal neighbors), and utterly failed his constitutional duty to take care that the laws are faithfully executed. He lies like most people breathe. He’s a fraud and a traitor.

Second, we already know what he’s going to say because he’s already stated and restated his lies every chance he gets. He says the economy is in wonderful shape, that he’s settled six wars, that he’s brought peace to the Middle East, that he’s made America safer and more secure, that the 2020 election was stolen from him, ad nauseam.

He assumes that if he repeats these lies often enough, people will believe them. Why should we give him more of an audience for his lies?

Third, he refuses to be president of the United States but only of the people who voted for him in 2024.

He talks in glowing terms about “my” people while denigrating “them”—those of us who didn’t vote for him, who still disapprove of him, or who refuse to give him whatever he wants.

He won’t even fund so-called blue states. So far this year he’s axed over $1.5 billion in blue-state grants, contrary to the wishes of Congress.

If he doesn’t believe he’s my president, why should I treat him as my president and watch his State of the Union?

Fourth and finally, I already know the real state of the union. It sucks.

The economy has been good for big business and wealthy Americans but shitty for small businesses and average working Americans.

Although Trump repeatedly promised that his tariffs would reduce US imports, shrink the trade deficit, and lead to a revival in American manufacturing, the opposite has happened. The annual trade deficit in goods last year hit a record high. And US manufacturers cut 108,000 jobs.

In the 2024 election, Trump also promised to bring down prices, but inflation is still steaming ahead. Prices grew at an annual rate of 3% in December. He’s so out of touch with what most Americans are enduring that he calls the crisis of affordability “fake news.”

He promised to control immigration, but 6 out of 10 Americans think he’s gone “too far” by sending federal agents into American cities who have caused mayhem and murder.

He promised to avoid foreign entanglements, but he abducted the president of Venezuela, killed more than 150 Venezuelans, and is now planning to attack Iran.

His menacing the Middle East has created another inflation risk: The possibility that a key oil export route will be disrupted has caused the price of Brent crude to soar.

For all these reasons, I’m not going to watch Trump’s State of the Union. I recommend that you don’t, either.

Your senators and representatives in Congress should boycott it, too. You might call their offices to suggest this. (Some Democrats are already planning to skip it, opting instead for a counter-programming event on the National Mall dubbed “The People’s State of the Union.” Good!)

And why the hell should justices of the Supreme Court show up, especially after he says he’s “ashamed” of the six who decided his tariffs exceeded his authority—calling the three Democratic appointees a “disgrace to our nation” and the three conservatives who voted against him “fools and lapdogs for the RINOs and the radical left Democrats,” “very unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution,” “swayed by foreign interests,” and “an embarrassment to their families”?

Boycott the State of the Union. It’s the least we can do.

Some tales can cross cultures, continents, and even centuries to arrive in our own era with their timeless truths pretty much intact. That’s particularly so for the immortal story of “an appointment in Samarra.” It first appeared in the fifth century in the Babylonian Talmud, that ancient repository of Jewish rabbinical wisdom. Then it crossed over into Islamic literature for reiterations in a 13th-century Persian version and a 15th-century Egyptian text, before popping up on the London stage in Act III of William Somerset Maugham’s 1933 play Sheppy.

In Maugham’s retelling, the tale is rich in irony. Once long ago, he wrote, there was a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to shop in the market. But the servant soon returned home in a panic and told his master about a woman in the crowd there who stared at him angrily. “It was Death that jostled me,” the servant announced, pleading with his master for a horse to flee to the town of Samarra. There, said the servant, “Death will not find me.”

Riding hard and spurring the horse’s flanks, the servant raced across the desert and made it to Samarra by nightfall. That evening, the master himself went to the market and spotted the woman, demanding to know why she had threatened his servant. “That was not a threatening gesture,” said Death. “It was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.”

More than anything else, that ancient tale testifies to the eternal human folly of trying to outrun fate. And if that’s true for individuals, it’s doubly true for one of their most ancient collective creations, the phenomenon we call “empire.” Ever since Sargon the Great of Assyria founded history’s first trans-regional empire in 2300 BCE, the world has witnessed a succession of some 200 empires, of which 70 were large or lasting. Over the span of those 4,000 years, each empire rose, reached a peak so powerful that it seemed eternal, only to fade and finally fall, giving way to the next imperial reality.

Setting aside President Trump’s celebratory claims of miraculous success, there are ample grounds to argue that each strand of his grand strategy is rapidly accelerating the decline of US global power.

Until January 2025 when President Donald J. Trump took office a second time, the United States seemed to be following that fateful journey. After nearly a century as the largest, most powerful empire in history, the country seemed to be on a gradual downward trajectory from the peak of power it reached around 1991 (when that other imperial power of the time, the Soviet Union, collapsed). But from the first day he took office the second time around in January 2025, President Trump assured us that his bold plans to “Make America Great Again” would save this country from that sad fate. To understand how and why our master, our president, is, in fact, leading America to its own appointment in Samarra at a remarkably rapid pace, we need to understand the way this country has exercised its global power and the dynamics underlying its long-term decline.

The Cold War Legacy

Throughout the 44 long years of the Cold War (1947 to 1991), Washington pursued an effective geopolitical strategy for containing its chief global rival, the Soviet Union, behind an “Iron Curtain” guarded by a chain of US military bases and alliances that stretched for 5,000 miles across the broad Eurasian land mass. Whenever Moscow tried to break out of its geopolitical isolation by arming surrogates in Asia or Africa for war or revolution, Washington, as I explain in my latest book Cold War on Five Continents, sometimes sent troops, as in South Korea in 1950. Usually, however, it dispatched individual CIA officers to organize covert interventions to beat back any Soviet advance, as it did so effectively in Afghanistan in 1980. In the end, exhausted by one foreign adventure too many, Moscow was forced to acquiesce as its satellite states in Eastern Europe broke away and the Soviet Union shattered. By 1991, Washington had won the Cold War, emerging from that monumental conflict as the world’s sole superpower.

At that hour of seemingly ultimate triumph, the signs of America’s military omnipotence and its overweening imperial hubris were both amply evident.

Let’s start with Washington’s imperial hubris. At the close of the Cold War, political scientist Francis Fukuyama published an article that became a veritable manifesto for Washington’s power elites. Not only were we witnessing the end of the Cold War, he argued, but we were also seeing—yes!—“the end of history” through the “universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.” Not only was there a “total exhaustion of viable systemic alternatives to Western liberalism,” but there was also, he claimed, an “ineluctable spread of consumerist Western culture” to the most remote corners of the globe, even into the shopping malls of our former enemies, China and Russia.

And his viewpoint did indeed reflect a certain reality: Our nation’s leaders were fully convinced that their Pax Americana would become the final form of global governance for all of humanity for all time. While that unapologetic imperial hubris may now seem almost quaint, in the aftermath of the Cold War it became gospel. It guided Washington’s leaders who indeed seemed to wield ample enough power, both military and economic, to fulfill that bold vision for remaking the world in America’s image.

Next, as for US military omnipotence, while the Russian military was ravaged by the collapse of the Soviet Union and China still couldn’t project power beyond its own borders, America’s armed forces emerged from the Cold War as a global behemoth. By the mid-1990s, the US had more military forces than all the other major powers combined—with more than 700 overseas bases, an air force of 1,760 jet fighters, more than 1,000 ballistic missiles, and a navy of 600 ships, including 15 nuclear aircraft carrier battle groups—all linked by the world’s only global system of communications satellites.

When Iraq’s military dictator Saddam Hussein occupied the small petro-state of Kuwait in 1990, Washington mobilized a coalition of 42 nations to obliterate the Iraqi army in the Gulf War with a show of overwhelming force evident in that conflict’s glaring disparity in casualties. The US-led coalition killed an estimated 50,000 Iraqi troops and destroyed more than 5,000 of that country’s armored vehicles at a cost of just 292 of their own soldiers.

A few years later, in 2002, imperial historian Paul Kennedy reviewed the relative strength of rival empires over the past 500 years, concluding: “Nothing has ever existed like this disparity of power; nothing.” Given America’s “mind-boggling” dominance in finance, scientific research, and, above all, military strength, there was, he added, “no point in the Europeans or Chinese wringing their hands about US predominance and wishing it would go away.” In sum, he concluded, any chance for a serious erosion of Washington’s global power “seems a long way off for now.” But to give Professor Kennedy his due, he did warn that China was “perhaps the only country that—should its recent growth rates continue for the next 30 years and internal strife be avoided—might be a serious challenger to US predominance.”

Seeds of Decline

Yet even at a peak of military supremacy not seen since ancient Rome, America’s asymmetric power was already starting to slip silently, slowly, but inexorably away. Part of that power loss was a tribute to the dynamic world order that Washington had created in 1945 at the end of World War II. Under its innovative system of free trade, low-cost development loans, and stable exchange rates (based on the US dollar), the world dug itself out of the rubble of global war and enjoyed a half-century of unprecedented prosperity.

As the rest of the world experienced a rapid economic recovery exemplified by Germany’s solid 6% annual growth rate and Japan’s sizzling 10%, America’s share of the global economy would, in fact, decline steadily from a formidable 50% in 1945 to 40% in 1960 to just 25% in 1995, and there it would essentially remain for several decades. Using an index called PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) that measures the real value of economic output, the International Monetary Fund calculates that, in 2026, China now leads the world with 20% of global economic output, the US comes in second at just 15%, and the European Union places a close third at 14%. In effect, over the past 80 years, the United States has gone from a towering economic Titan, capable of dictating the terms of trade to the rest of the world, to just one among several major players that must bargain with its peer rivals, China and Europe.

As this country’s economic superiority, the foundation for its global hegemony, slowly began to ebb, Washington’s leaders made some dubious decisions about the Middle East and also China that contributed to the erosion of their international influence. In 2001, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the US invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, seeking to bring the Pax Americana with its “universalization of Western liberal democracy” to the oil-rich Middle East (and beyond). As President George W. Bush told the nation in 2004: “America is pursuing a forward strategy of freedom in the greater Middle East” through “the development of free elections, and free markets, free press, and free labor unions… in Afghanistan and Iraq, so those nations can light the way for others, and help transform a troubled part of the world.”

If such trends continue, Trump’s strategy could not only reduce the US from a global hegemon to a regional power, but also leave it remarkably isolated diplomatically and otherwise in its own hemisphere.

While the US was pouring its blood and treasure (an estimated $4.7 trillion worth) into those desert sands, China was enjoying a decade of warless economic growth. By June 2014, in fact, it had accumulated $4 trillion in foreign currency reserves—and in a major strategic miscalculation, Washington had even lent a hand. In deciding to admit Beijing into the World Trade Organization in 2001, Washington’s leaders proved bizarrely confident that China, home to a fifth of humanity, would somehow join the world economy without changing the global balance of power in any significant way.

In 2013, as Beijing’s annual exports to the US grew nearly fivefold to $462 billion and its foreign currency reserves approached that $4 trillion mark, President Xi Jinping announced his historic “Belt and Road Initiative.” Thanks to that initiative and the lending of a trillion dollars to developing nations, within a decade China would become the dominant economic player on three continents—Asia, Africa, and, yes, even Latin America.

Trump’s Grand Strategy for Making America Great Again

In 2021, at a delicate juncture in the history of US global power, President Joseph Biden took office with a reasonable strategy for managing Washington’s position in a changing world. Above all, he tried to maintain the longstanding US geopolitical position astride the Eurasian landmass by strengthening the NATO alliance in response to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and by expanding the country’s Asia-Pacific alliances to contain China.

To complement that geopolitical strategy, the Biden White House pursued traditional US free-trade policies, while working through the international organizations that were the hallmark of Washington’s world order. In response to the globe’s rapidly accelerating green-energy transformation, the Biden administration also launched a trillion-dollar program to modernize the nation’s electrical grid and support Detroit’s transition to electric vehicles. Had Washington continued such policies long enough to realize their promise, the US might indeed have remained a primus inter pares, a first among relatively equal world powers, while protecting its global economic strength and promoting its international influence.

But in January 2025, Donald J. Trump took office (again!) with a seemingly bold vision for nothing less than a new world order. If you sort through all the static and superficial chaos that emanates from official Washington these days, it’s possible to identify three intertwined strands in Trump’s grand strategy for US foreign relations—a tricontinental division of global power, the continued use of traditional oil-powered energy, and a transactional international trade.

Instead of maintaining alliances like NATO, the foundation of the US position in Eurasia (long the epicenter of global power), President Trump has pursued a tricontinental strategy for a world divided into three great-power blocs—with Russia resurgent in the old Soviet sphere, China ascendant in Asia, and the US dominant in the Western Hemisphere. All of his seemingly erratic statements in his first months back in the White House about claiming Greenland, reclaiming the Panama Canal, and making Canada the 51st state were, in fact, expressions of his underlying geostrategic vision. Indeed, he became so insistent in his attempt to grab Greenland—the sovereign territory of NATO ally Denmark—that it threatened to rupture that alliance, long central to US global power.

Last November, the Trump White House imposed an overarching logic on the president’s seemingly erratic eruptions by releasing its National Security Strategy. Reflecting the president’s longstanding aversion to the NATO alliance, the document predicted that Europe faced a “stark process of civilizational erasure” though a mix of multiracial migration and “cratering birthrates” that raised the question of whether its nations would stay “strong enough to remain reliable allies.”

Instead of relying on an unreliable Europe, that strategy document insisted that Washington must “be preeminent in the Western Hemisphere as a condition of our security and prosperity.” To that end, the US should refocus its “global military presence to address urgent threats in our Hemisphere,” while redeploying the US Navy to “control sea lanes” closer to home. By using “tariffs and reciprocal trade agreements as powerful tools,” the Western Hemisphere would become, the document claimed, “an increasingly attractive market for American commerce” and that ever-rising power China would be pushed out of the region.

All those puffy abstractions gained a physical reality in January when a US naval armada, amassed off the coast of Venezuela, sent Special Forces shooting their way into its capital, Caracas, seizing President Nicolás Maduro and taking control of his country’s oil reserves, the world’s largest. While the US might have only 4.7% of the globe’s proven oil reserves, by adding Venezuela’s (17.2%) and possibly Canada’s (9.2%), Washington would suddenly control 32% of the planet’s total oil supply—more than enough to fuel Trump’s contrarian vision of America as a petroleum-fueled superpower and defying what he believed was a disastrous global turn toward green energy.

With Caracas now allowing Washington to control access to its oil and billions of dollars of its oil revenues already sequestered in a Persian Gulf bank that would be under his sole control, Trump is well on his way to achieving the second strand in his grand strategy by returning the United States to its traditional full-scale reliance on oil-powered energy. By trying to bar the completion of coastal wind farms, cancelling tax credits for electric vehicle purchases, opening a billion acres of federal lands to oil exploration, and preventing the planned shutdown of aging coal-fired power plants, after just one year in office, Trump has essentially smothered America’s infant green-energy economy in its cradle (and ceded a future green-powered global economy to China).

With his escalating, ever-changing tariffs on imported goods—the third strand in his strategy—the president has roiled the global economy sufficiently to achieve his objective of replacing rules-based free trade with a transactional system that makes access to the US market contingent on his caprice. When he first imposed a roster of high tariffs on what he called “Liberation Day” in April 2025, he claimed that jobs and factories would “come roaring back into our country.” But by zapping allies and enemies alike with his rat-a-tat-tat burst of tariffs, he raised the average US tariff on imports from 2.5% in January 2025 to a hefty 16.6% just six months later, the highest since 1932, while not faintly stopping the ongoing loss of jobs in the manufacturing sector.

That Appointment in Samarra

Setting aside President Trump’s celebratory claims of miraculous success, there are ample grounds to argue that each strand of his grand strategy is rapidly accelerating the decline of US global power.

His ongoing retreat from Europe into the Western Hemisphere—the first strand—is already eroding Washington’s position in Eurasia, the cornerstone of its geopolitical power for nearly 80 years. Such a withdrawal is tantamount to a full-scale surrender in the great-power struggle between Beijing, Moscow, and Washington for Eurasia that scholars have dubbed “the new Cold War.”

Moreover, the president’s heavy-handed policy toward the Americas is already alienating this hemisphere’s major nations—sending Canada’s prime minister to Beijing in search of a major trade deal to offset punitive US tariffs, and prompting Brazil to lead the Mercosur bloc of South American nations in signing a landmark trade pact with the European Union. Over the past 25 years, moreover, Brazil has led its region in making China its top trading partner and a key source of capital for auto manufacturing, major infrastructure building, communications, and computer technology. If such trends continue, Trump’s strategy could not only reduce the US from a global hegemon to a regional power, but also leave it remarkably isolated diplomatically and otherwise in its own hemisphere.

Import duties of 100% might continue to keep Chinese electric cars out of the US, but Detroit’s big three (Ford, GM, and Stellantis) do the bulk of their business overseas where their lack of competitive EV models threatens their profitability and even, ultimately, their survival.

In the second strand of his strategy, Trump’s aggressive anti-climate-change advocacy of fossil fuels is delaying, at an incalculable cost, this country’s participation in the global shift to renewable energy—a change so profound and pervasive that it’s nothing less than a new industrial revolution, one whose leadership the president is handing to China. In less than a decade, solar-powered electrical generation has already cut costs and increased efficiency, becoming 41% less expensive than the cheapest fossil fuels. And engineering innovations in panel design and battery storage are likely to make any future use of carbon-fueled electricity economically infeasible. In 2025, while the US was blocking wind farms and straining its grid by building ever more data centers, China increased its total power generation by 16%, with solar and wind energy now accounting for half of that country’s total installed electrical capacity.

Just as China already produces 80% of the global supply of solar panels and their components, so its recent innovations in electric vehicle design, including five-minute charging for a 320-mile range, have allowed it to capture 70% of global EV production. In the past five years alone, China’s share of worldwide auto manufacturing has surged to 24%, while Detroit’s share fell to only 16%, driven in part by a costly retreat from EV production since Trump took office a second time. Import duties of 100% might continue to keep Chinese electric cars out of the US, but Detroit’s big three (Ford, GM, and Stellantis) do the bulk of their business overseas where their lack of competitive EV models threatens their profitability and even, ultimately, their survival. “I have 10,000 dealers around the world,” said Ford’s CEO Jim Farley recently. “Only 2,800 are in the US. So, you do the math.”

And while Trump’s ambitious tariff policy—the final strand in his grand strategy—is producing some short-term gains in revenue, it carries some serious long-term costs. When the US accounted for 50% of the global economy in the 1940s, Washington could play any tune and the world had to dance. Now, however, with just 15% of global output, Washington might well find itself ever more economically isolated as major players choose other commercial partners. Trade represents about 57% of gross domestic product in countries worldwide, so no nation can long prosper in commercial isolation.

With his seemingly bold moves to avert American decline, President Trump is, in fact, adopting ill-considered policies that will, in the end, serve to accelerate that very decline. Like the merchant in that tale who sent his servant to Samarra to avoid Death, President Trump is sending the United States down a path that is leading to its own appointment in Samarra.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any [part] of Government [—including its political parties—] becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new [parties], laying [their] foundation on such principles and organizing [their] powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

It’s not a secret: About 45% of labor union members voted for President Donald Trump in 2024. In unions with fewer minority workers the percentage was substantially higher. More importantly, most union members no longer identify with the Democratic Party. In fact, they are downright hostile to it. In our YouGov poll of 3,000 voters in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, 70% held negative views of the Democrats.

Why so much hostility? Very few respondents said anything about wokeness or immigration. Much of the bitterness was related to the Democrats failing to live up to their promises and losing touch with everyday people. My research also shows that mass layoffs, especially those caused by trade with China and Mexico after North American Free Trade Agreement, have soured voters on the Democrats.

That leaves progressive union leaders with the difficult task of lining up their members for the candidates they think will represent the political interests of their members—which, because of the Republicans’ overwhelming antipathy to organized labor, almost always better align with the Democrats. Despite, it should be said, their failings. For the fall midterms this year, union leaders will be 100% in support of the Democrats, as they hope to check the power of Trumpism. How can they do that effectively given all this negativity?

A different and I think more promising approach is to open up a discussion about alternative politics and seriously explore the prospects of building a new political party of working people.

The usual approach involves various procedures that eventually lead the membership to the Democrats. One union, for example, holds meetings during which the rank-and-file defines an agenda. The leadership then uses that agenda to evaluate candidates, who conveniently all turn out to be Democrats. Another union conducts educational programs that are, one way or another, designed to help the membership understand why the Democrats are more favorable to the working class than Republicans. This isn’t hard or even that manipulative, but rarely do these methods effectively appeal to those who disdain the Dems.

The preferred option for many unions is to avoid political discussions entirely for fear the ensuing debate might tear the union apart—pitting MAGA and non-MAGA members against each other. Better to duck and cover, hold onto the solidarity you have, and hope the storm will soon pass.

A different and I think more promising approach is to open up a discussion about alternative politics and seriously explore the prospects of building a new political party of working people. Union leadership can easily justify such an undertaking as a long-term project necessary to mobilize working-class political power and find solidarity around the issues that matter most to all working people.

The Hunger for Independence

Polling shows that such an effort would be well received. Overall, 57% of the respondents in our YouGov survey support the idea of an independent political organization for workers. Here are the results for union-oriented voters:

SupportOpposeNot SureCurrently union member58%16%25%Former union member59%21%19%Not a union member but would support efforts to form a union at my workplace80%8%12%

(The overwhelming support from those who want to join a union should get the attention of union leaders for whom organizing new members is of the highest priority.)

The idea is even attractive to 2024 Trump voters: 40% support a new party, as do 42% of those who identify as Republicans.

No matter how you slice the demographics, aside from Democratic and Republican Party operatives, a new political party independent of the Democrats and Republicans is really popular.

That’s why opening up a discussion about how to build a new working-class party stands a decent chance of increasing solidarity among the various political groups in the union rank-and-file. It allows leadership to respond to what the workers really want—a party that puts their needs and interests at its center rather than adopting watered-down policies designed to please billionaire donors.

And it makes room for some very frank discussions:

“Look, I understand that many of you no longer want to vote for Democrats. You want a new party independent of the Democrats and Republicans. But until we build that new party, there are some solid pro-labor candidates that we need to support if we’re to have any chance of passing labor law reform and protecting jobs. We are pressuring the Democrats and the Republicans to run more working-class candidates. Meanwhile, let’s start the process of building a new working-class party. We can do both right now.”

If unions seriously committed resources to building, or at least exploring, an independent political formation, the political credibility of union leaders would likely increase. It also would create a plausible, easy to understand political argument: Long term, we want a working-class party that represents our interests and needs. Short-term, we support candidates who represent our interests and needs!

I see three main problems with charting this new course. The first is that many union leaders are deeply entwined with the Democratic Party leadership. They have personal ties. They attend common events. They see the world similarly. The idea of a new party feels like a betrayal. As one labor leader told me, “These are the only political friends we have.”

Wouldn’t it be better to build with the membership a vision that puts working people in the center of the economy rather than as an afterthought of trickle-down two-party politics?

The second obstacle is one of resources and bandwidth. Union leaders have their hands full. They are always dealing with difficult employers, complex contracts, union organizing drives, and internal union problems. Adding a new alternative politics project is likely to be seen as beyond their capacities.

The third issue is the fear of being a spoiler—that criticizing Democrats, let alone starting a new party for workers, would take votes away from the Democrats and elect Republicans. That’s what most labor leaders believe happened in 2000 when Ralph Nader ran for president. They hold him accountable for taking enough votes away from Al Gore in Florida to throw the state and the election to George Bush.

While the spoiler issue may be valid in presidential contests and in closely contested races for Congress, it is not relevant in the 130 congressional districts in which the Republicans usually win by 25% or more. In these districts there is effectively no Democratic Party to spoil. And it’s in those districts that a new working-class party is most needed. It would only take a handful of congressional victories for working-class candidates to gain the controlling votes in a closely divided House of Representatives.

Of course, running 130 congressional campaigns is no small task, but there are smaller, more doable first steps that could help union leaders with their political dilemma. They could start by holding workshops with their local leaders and rank-and-file to discuss the need for a new independent political organization for union members and indeed all working people. Such discussions would allow members to air their grievances while signaling that the leadership is willing to listen and forge a new independent path.

Such workshops will be part of a new National Worker Educational Campaign for Independent Politics that my colleagues and I are launching this spring.

Many say that forging a new party is unrealistic and that we are stuck with the Democrats. But to me that seems likely to further alienate much of the union membership.

Wouldn’t it be better to rekindle political hope by opening up discussion?

Wouldn’t it be better to let memberships discuss their needs and aspirations and how they would like to relate to politics?

Wouldn’t it be better to build with the membership a vision that puts working people in the center of the economy rather than as an afterthought of trickle-down two-party politics?

It sure beats hoping that the MAGA membership just fades away.

President Donald Trump, you took funds from the American people that were never yours to take. Give them back, and end the abuse of power.

Friday, the Supreme Court confirmed what many of us argued from the beginning: Your sweeping tariffs were an unlawful overreach of executive power. The Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the authority to set tariffs. Yet you invoked emergency powers you do not have, in response to a supposed national emergency that does not exist. This was a power grab, and the court said so.

President Trump, your tariff regime was illegal, unfair, and detrimental to the American people. You also grossly misrepresented the facts to the American people by claiming that foreign countries were paying. They were not. American families paid.

Over the past year, roughly $140 billion in tariff revenue was collected at US ports. Economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Kiel Institute, and other independent research institutions reached the same conclusion, that the burden of the tariffs fell overwhelmingly on American importers, businesses, and consumers. Foreign exporters barely reduced their prices, so the tariffs were passed on to Americans and have shown up as higher prices for consumers and businesses.

President Trump, you asked Americans to believe that you stood with working people. Instead, you imposed illegal taxes on them and gave large tax cuts to the richest Americans.

During the past year, on average, American households paid roughly $1,000 or more. For families living paycheck to paycheck, that is not abstract. That is rent stretched to the breaking point. That is groceries rising in price while wages fail to keep up. The working-class Americans who believed your promises were the ones who bore the cost of this power grab.

Each claim you made in favor of the tariffs was unsound and proven to be so. You said that the tariffs would slash the trade deficit. This was wrong because the US trade deficits reflect the low US saving rate, and especially the large US budget deficits. In fact, the US goods deficit in 2025 was $1.241 trillion, worse than the 2024 deficit of $1.215 trillion. You said that you would restore manufacturing jobs. Yet employment in manufacturing in January 2026 was 12.590 million, compared with 12.673 million in January 2025, a decline of 83,000 jobs year over year.

At the same time, you championed and extended tax cuts that disproportionately benefited the wealthiest households and large corporations. Independent studies have repeatedly shown that the largest permanent gains from those tax cuts flowed to the top of the income ladder. Your administration’s approach has effectively given tax relief for the rich, covered in part by regressive tariffs hitting the working class and poor. And much of your tax cuts are paid for by red ink, debts pushed into the future, that will be borne by today’s young people in later years.

Working families have paid more at the checkout counter. Wealthy households have received large tax cuts. And young Americans have been burdened with more debts.

And now comes insult added to injury. Following the Supreme Court’s ruling, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made clear the administration’s position. Speaking at the Economic Club of Dallas, he said, “I got a feeling the American people won’t see it,” referring to the prospect of tariff refund checks. He instead dismissed refunds as “the ultimate corporate welfare,” arguing that any repayments would go to importers rather than consumers.

The White House and Congress can and should provide relief to American families who bore the costs of these illegal tariffs. The administration has the responsibility to design such relief. You took the money illegally; now you should return it.

Astoundingly, in response to the Supreme Court decision, you have just announced a new across-the-board 15% tariff under Section 122 of the Trade Act, this time supposedly justified on emergency balance-of-payments grounds. Section 122 might possibly give you the temporary authority, for up to 150 days, to impose such a tariff in response to serious balance-of-payments difficulties. Here too, your authority is doubtful because the US is not in a balance-of-payments crisis. Yet even should the courts find that you have the authority, you should not use it.

A 15% across-the-board tariff will simply continue the same regressive tax on the American people that you illegally implemented with the claim of emergency powers. It would once again mean higher prices on food, clothing, electronics, building materials, and countless everyday essentials. It would once again fall hardest on working families who spend the largest share of their income on such goods.

An unlawful regressive tax cannot be remedied by replacing it with a possibly lawful and temporary regressive tax. It’s quite possible that the 15% tariff will be struck down too.

The United States needs real tax reform. Our tax code has become a distorted mess, shaped over decades by presidents of both parties to favor capital over labor, wealth over work, and obscurity over fairness. The tax code needs progressivity. It needs to close loopholes that allow the wealthiest Americans and multinational corporations to avoid paying their fair share of taxes, especially in an era when eleven Silicon Valley centibillionaires have $2.6 trillion in personal wealth.

Working Americans are not props in a political narrative. They are parents choosing between medical care and rent. They are families who were told someone else would pay, only to discover the higher prices in their own shopping carts.

President Trump, you asked Americans to believe that you stood with working people. Instead, you imposed illegal taxes on them and gave large tax cuts to the richest Americans. Now your Treasury secretary says the government will keep the money you took, and you have promised to continue to take this money in a different way.

Return the $140 billion that was taken under unlawful authority. Do not impose a new 15% tax on American households. Fix the tax code honestly and transparently through Congress.

The Constitution demands accountability. Justice demands restitution of the funds and an end to your tariff grab. The American people deserve better.

A 6-3 majority of the Supreme Court decided Friday that Trump cannot take core powers that the Constitution gives Congress. Instead, Congress must delegate any such power clearly and unambiguously.

This is a big decision. It goes far beyond merely interpreting the 1997 International Emergency Economic Powers Act not to give Trump the power over tariffs that he claims to have. It reaffirms a basic constitutional principle about the division and separation of powers between Congress and the president.

On its face, this decision clarifies that Trump cannot decide on his own not to spend money Congress has authorized and appropriated—such as the funds for USAID he refused to spend. And he cannot on his own decide to go to war.

"The court has long expressed 'reluctan[ce] to read into ambiguous statutory test' extraordinary delegations of Congress' powers," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for himself and five other justices in the opinion released Friday in Learning Resources v. Trump.

He continued, "In several cases involving 'major questions,' the court has reasoned that 'both separation of powers principles and a practical understanding of legislative intent' suggest Congress would not have delegated 'highly consequential power' through ambiguous language."

Exactly. Trump has no authority on his own to impose tariffs, because the Constitution gives that authority to Congress.

But by the same Supreme Court logic, Trump has no authority to impound money Congress has appropriated because the Constitution has given Congress the "core congressional power of the purse," as the court stated Friday.

Hence, the $410-425 billion in funding that Trump has blocked or delayed violates the Impoundment Control Act, which requires congressional approval for spending pauses. This includes funding withheld for foreign aid, FEMA, Head Start, Harvard and Columbia universities, and public health.

Nor, by this same Supreme Court logic, does Trump have authority to go to war because Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the Constitution grants Congress the power to "declare war… and make rules concerning captures on land and water"—and Congress would not have delegated this highly consequential power to a president through ambiguous language.

Presumably this is why Congress enacted the War Powers Act of 1973, which requires a president to notify Congress within 48 hours of deploying troops and requires their withdrawal within 60-90 days unless Congress declares war or authorizes an extension. Iran, anyone?

The press has reported on Friday's Supreme Court decision as if it were only about tariffs. Wrong. It's far bigger and even more important.

Note that the decision was written by Roberts—the same justice who wrote the court's 2024 decision in Trump v. United States, another 6-3 decision in which the court ruled that former presidents have absolute immunity for actions taken within their core constitutional powers and at least presumptive immunity for all other official acts.

I think Roberts intentionally wrote Friday's decision in Learning Resources v. Trump as a bookend to Trump v. United States.

Both are intended to clarify the powers of the president and of Congress. A president has immunity for actions taken within his core constitutional powers. But a president has no authority to take core powers that the Constitution gives to Congress.

In these two decisions, the chief justice and five of his colleagues on the court have laid out a roadmap for what they see as the boundary separating the power of the president from the powers of Congress—and how they will decide future cases along that boundary.

Trump will pay no heed, of course. He accepts no limits to his power and has shown no respect for the Constitution, Congress, the Supreme Court, or the rule of law.

But the rest of us should now have a fairly good idea about what to expect from the Supreme Court in the months ahead.

Over the past several months, President Donald Trump has launched a tirade of racist, xenophobic, and Islamophobic attacks demonizing Somalis and Somalia. If Trump weren’t the president, his ignorant and incoherent ramblings would not be worth addressing; unfortunately, he is. So, let’s go over everything Trump gets wrong about Somalis.

Somalis, Minneapolis, and Trump’s Domestic Fearmongering

In December 2025, Trump told reporters that Somalis have “destroyed Minnesota.” He contends that Minnesota is “a hellhole right now. The Somalians should be out of here. They’ve destroyed our country. And all they do is complain, complain, complain.” According to Trump, the roughly 80,000 people of Somali descent living in Minnesota have somehow destroyed a state with over 5.7 million people—a state that ranked fourth in the 2025 Best States ranking from US News & World Report.

In January 2026, Trump deployed 3,000 federal agents to Minneapolis as part of an immigration enforcement effort primarily targeting Somalis. However, 58% of Somalis in Minnesota were born in the US. Of foreign-born Somalis, 87% are naturalized US citizens. There are roughly 5,000 people of Somali descent in the state who are noncitizens, but this includes people who are on visas, green card holders, permanent residents, those on Temporary Protected Status (TPS), asylum-seekers as well as undocumented immigrants. Jaylani Hussein, the executive director of the Council of American-Islamic Relations’ Minnesota Chapter (CAIR-MN), estimates that the number of undocumented Somali immigrants in the state is “less than a thousand for sure.”

Trump claims, “Somali gangs are terrorizing the people of that great State.” Yet, while the Somali population in Minnesota has grown in recent decades, the state’s violent crime rate is 28.5% lower than the US average. The rate of property crime is 8.7% lower. Compared to native-born Americans, Somali immigrants aged 18-54 have a lower incarceration rate. By contrast, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol are kidnapping, assaulting, maiming, and killing citizens and noncitizens alike. Trump’s gangs are actively terrorizing the people of Minnesota.

Trump complains that Omar is “always talking about the Constitution.” He forgets that the Constitution should always be first and foremost on the mind of an elected official.

Trump alleges that “much of the Minnesota Fraud, up to 90%, is caused by people that came into our Country, illegally, from Somalia.” Yet, Attorney General Pamela Bondi reports that the Department of Justice has been investigating fraud in Minnesota for months and thus far has only “charged 98 individuals—85 of Somali descent—and more than 60 have been found guilty in court.” While the government should investigate these crimes and hold the responsible parties accountable, the Trump administration has offered no evidence that Somalis en masse are guilty of rampant and widespread fraud.

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) is a frequent victim of Trump’s anti-Somali rhetoric. Trump has referred to her as a “fake congresswoman,” “garbage,” “disgusting,” and a “disgraceful person, a loser.” Even when responding to the murder of Alex Pretti by Border Patrol, Trump randomly and nonsensically attacks Omar: “Why does Ilhan Omar have $34 Million Dollars in her account?” On January 26, Trump announced that the Department of Justice is investigating why Omar’s net worth has grown since taking office. Yet, the reason for this is well-documented: As her 2025 Financial Disclosure Report makes clear, the change is due to her spouse’s business holdings. By contrast, Trump is illegally exploiting his political office to enrich himself and his family.

Trump complains that Omar is “always talking about the Constitution.” He forgets that the Constitution should always be first and foremost on the mind of an elected official. In fact, Trump could learn a lot from her!

Somalia, Imperialism, and US Military Violence

At the 2026 Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum, Trump ranted: “The situation in Minnesota reminds us that the West cannot mass import foreign cultures, which have failed to ever build a successful society of their own. I mean, we’re taking people from Somalia, and Somalia is a failed—it’s not a nation.” Yet, Somali immigrants were not ‘imported,’ they were displaced. The political situation in Somalia is the byproduct of many factors including imperialism and US military interventions.

Starting in the late 1960s, Somalia implemented a number of progressive policies, including widening access to primary education, mass literacy campaigns, and public health initiatives. These policies were fueling social and economic development, especially in rural areas. However, Somalia’s growing ties with the Soviet Union and its embrace of Soviet-style policies worried the US.

Since the 1960s, Somalia and Ethiopia became increasingly entangled in Cold War politics that fueled political instability in the region for decades. As sociocultural anthropologist Ahmed Ibrahim writes: “Cold War geopolitical machinations partly created the contextual background to the 1977-78 Somalia-Ethiopia war. Somalia’s defeat in this war set the stage for the disintegration of the state in 1991.” Notably, 1991 marked the start of the Somali Civil War as well as the collapse of the Soviet Union—this was no coincidence.

Trump claims that in Somalia people “just run around killing each other. There’s no structure.” His vitriol overlooks the role of US military violence—and his presidency in particular—in fomenting that social and political instability.

While the Soviet Union had initially supported both Somalia and Ethiopia, after their war, it shifted its attention entirely to the latter. At that point, the US began providing a weakened Somalia its aid in the hopes of using them to combat Soviet influence in the region. In the early 1990s, with Moscow now politically and economically weakened, the US no longer saw any value in maintaining that dependency relationship. Instead, they began condemning the human rights abuses taking place in Somalia—abuses the US had known about but chosen to ignore until then.

In 1993, the US, with support from the United Nations, launched a military mission to disarm and arrest Somali militia members. Many civilians were caught in the crosshairs. In particular, US airstrikes killed a group of political leaders, religious leaders, intellectuals, and businesspeople meeting to discuss a UN peace proposal. Those strikes sparked massive outcry and triggered a wave of retaliatory attacks against US and UN troops. The growing violence fueled mass displacement and migration out of Somalia. The mid and late-1990s saw the largest influx of Somali immigrants arriving in the US, predominantly Minnesota.

Importantly, US military presence in Somalia continues in the name of counterterrorism and "supporting" the central government in Mogadishu. However, as is often the case, the US has contributed to the very political instability and violence it purports to be solving. The Trump administration has been particularly devastating. His administration carried out 219 military strikes in Somalia during his first term. So far, in his second, the US has conducted 162. By comparison, under President George W. Bush, President Barack Obama, and President Joe Biden, the US launched 110 strikes in total.

According to the nonprofit watchdog Airwars, since 2007, US airstrikes have killed an estimated 93 to 170 civilians, including 25 to 28 children. In September 2025, a US drone strike killed Omar Abdullahi, a prominent political leader who played a key role in local governance, including rallying support against insurgents and gathering supplies to support government operations.

Trump claims that in Somalia people “just run around killing each other. There’s no structure.” His vitriol overlooks the role of US military violence—and his presidency in particular—in fomenting that social and political instability.

Somalis as Scapegoats

Ultimately, none of these facts matter to Trump. Even if you could educate him about the history and political situation in Somalia; or the many cultural and economic contributions people of Somali descent have made to Minnesota or the US more broadly, he would almost certainly continue to villainize them—why? Because as a small population of predominantly Muslim people of color living in a state Trump lost three times in a row, Somalis are an easy and useful scapegoat.

The “Somali fraud network” narrative becomes the pretext that allows the Trump administration to invade Minnesota, terrorize its civilians, and then send its governor a “ransom note” with a list of demands including access to the state’s voter rolls. Trump, a fraudster himself, can exploit this fraud narrative to make himself appear tough on crime and immigration enforcement; while, at the same time, pardoning people like David Gentile who defrauded thousands of investors as part of a $1.6 billion Ponzi scheme.

Somalis are not the first to be victims of Trump’s racism, xenophobia, and Islamophobia, nor will they be the last. We must stand with the Somali community against Trump’s bigotry and prejudice. We must correct the misperception that Trump’s vile rhetoric is trying desperately to normalize. We cannot allow his hatred to win.

The kidnapping of a sitting head of state marks a grave escalation in US-Venezuela relations. By seizing Venezuela’s constitutional president, Washington signaled both its disregard for international law and its confidence that it would face little immediate consequence.

The response within the US political establishment to the attack on Venezuela has been striking. Without the slightest cognitive dissonance over President Nicolás Maduro’s violent abduction, Democrats call for “restoring democracy”—but not for returning Venezuela’s lawful president.

So why didn’t the imperialists simply assassinate him? From their perspective, it would have been cleaner and more cost-efficient. It would have been the DOGE thing to do: launch a drone in one of those celebrated “surgical” strikes.

Targeted killings are as much a part of US policy now as there were in the past. From former President Barack Obama’s drone strikes on US citizens in 2011 to President Donald Trump’s killing of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, lethal force has been used when deemed expedient. And only last June, the second Trump administration and its Zionist partner in crime droned 11 Iranian nuclear scientists.

The present US-Venezuelan détente is making history. So far—in Hugo Chávez’s words, por ahora—it does not resemble the humanitarian catastrophes imposed by the empire on Haiti, Libya, Iraq, Syria, or Afghanistan.

The US posted a $50 million bounty on Maduro, yet they took him very much alive along with his wife, First Combatant (the Venezuelan equivalent of the First Lady) Cilia Flores.

The reason Maduro’s life was spared tells us volumes about the resilience of the Bolivarian Revolution, the strength of Maduro even in captivity, and the inability of the empire to subjugate Venezuela.

Killing Nicolás Maduro Moros appears to have been a step too far, even for Washington’s hawks. Perhaps he was also seen as more valuable to the empire as a hostage than as a martyr.

But the images of a handcuffed Maduro flashing a victory sign—and declaring in a New York courtroom, “I was captured… I am the president of my country”—were not those of a defeated leader.

Rather than collapsing, the Bolivarian Revolution survived the decapitation. With a seamless continuation of leadership under acting President Delcy Rodríguez, even some figures in the opposition have rallied around the national leadership, heeding the nationalist call of a populace mobilized in the streets in support of their president.

This has pushed the US to negotiate rather than outright conquer, notwithstanding that the playing field remains decisively tilted in Washington’s favor. Regardless, Venezuelan authorities have demanded and received the US’ respect. Indeed, after declaring Venezuela an illegitimate narco-state, Trump has flipped, recognized the Chavista government, and invited its acting executive to Washington.

NBC News gave Delcy Rodríguez a respectful interview. After affirming state ownership of Venezuela’s mineral resources and Maduro as the lawful president, she pointed out that the so-called political prisoners in Venezuelan prisons were there because they had committed acts of criminal violence.

Before a national US television audience she explained that free and fair elections require being “free of sanctions and… not undermined by international bullying and harassment by the international press” (emphasis added).

Notably, the interviewer cited US Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s admission made during his high-level visit to Venezuela. The US official said that elections there could be held, not in three months, but in three years, in accordance with the constitutionally mandated schedule.

As for opposition politician María Corina Machado, the darling of the US press corps, Rodríguez told the interviewer that Machado would have to answer for her various treasonous activities if she came back to Venezuela.

Contrary to the corporate press’s media myth, fostered at a reception in Manhattan, that Machado is insanely popular and poised to lead “A Trillion-Dollar Opportunity: The Global Upside of a Democratic Venezuela,” the US government apparently understood the reality on the ground. “She doesn’t have the support within, or the respect within, the country,” was the honest evaluation, not of some Chavista partisan, but of President Trump himself.

Yader Lanuza documents how the US provided millions to manufacture an effective astroturf opposition to the Chavistas. It is far from the first time that Washington has squandered money in this way—we only have to look back at its failed efforts to promote the “presidency” of Juan Guaidó. Its latest efforts have again had no decisive result, leaving Machado in limbo and pragmatic engagement with the Chavista leadership as the only practical option.

Any doubts that there is daylight between captured President Maduro and acting President Rodríguez can be dispelled by listening to the now incarcerated Maduro’s New Year’s Day interview with international leftist intellectual Ignacio Ramonet.

Maduro said it was time to “start talking seriously” with the US—especially regarding oil investment—marking a continuation of his prior conditional openness to diplomatic engagement. He reiterated that Venezuela was ready to discuss agreements on combating drug trafficking and to consider US oil investment, allowing companies like Chevron to operate.

That was just two days before the abduction. Subsequently, Delcy Rodríguez met with the US energy secretary and the head of the Southern Command to discuss oil investments and combating drug trafficking, respectively.

Venezuelan analysts have framed the current moment as one of constrained choice. “What is at stake is the survival of the state and the republic, which if lost, would render the discussion of any other topic banal,” according to Sergio Rodríguez Gelfenstein. The former government official, who was close to Hugo Chávez, supports Delcy Rodríguez’s discussions with Washington—acknowledging that she has “a missile to her head.”

“The search for a negotiation in the case of the January 3 kidnapping is not understood, therefore, as a surrender, but as an act of political maturity in a context of unprecedented blackmail,” according to Italian journalist and former Red Brigades militant Geraldina Colotti.

The Amnesty Law, a longstanding Chavista initiative, is being debated in the National Assembly to maintain social peace, according to the president of the assembly and brother of the acting president, Jorge Rodríguez, in an interview with the US-based NewsMax outlet.

As Jorge Rodríguez commented, foregoing oil revenues by keeping oil in the ground does not benefit the people’s well-being and development. In that context, the Hydrocarbon Law has been reformed to attract vital foreign investment.

The Venezuelan outlet Mision Verdad elaborates: “The 2026 reform ratifies and, in some aspects, deepens essential elements of the previous legislation… [I]t creates the legal basis for a complete strategic adaptation of the Venezuelan hydrocarbon industry, considering elements of the present context.”

As Karl Marx presciently observed about the present context, people “make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances.” The present US-Venezuelan détente is making history. So far—in Hugo Chávez’s words, por ahora—it does not resemble the humanitarian catastrophes imposed by the empire on Haiti, Libya, Iraq, Syria, or Afghanistan.

But make no mistake: The ultimate goal of the empire remains regime change. And there is no clearer insight into the empire’s core barbarity than Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s speech at the Munich conference with his praising of the capture of a “narcoterrorist dictator” and his invocation of Columbus as the inspiration “to build a new Western century.”

Washington’s kidnapping of Maduro was intended to demonstrate the empire’s dominance. But it also exposed its limits: the durability of the Bolivarian Revolution and the reality that even great powers must sometimes negotiate with governments they detest. The outcome remains uncertain.

Climate activists are calling out pro sports teams across the US Why? The answer is the teams' sportswashing partnerships with Big Oil.

According to activists, sportswashing uses fans’ fondness for their pro teams to fog the lethal consequences of fossil fuel sponsorships with Big Oil, e.g., BP America, Phillips 66 and Shell.

Call it a planet-destroying impact of the athletic-industrial complex.

The national action for sustainable humanity on Planet Earth is an outgrowth of the Sierra Club chapter of the Los Angeles’ Dodger Fans Against Fossil Fuels campaign demanding the team’s owners to drop their sponsorship deal with oil giant Phillips 66. Boo on Dodger Blue for that deal. Meanwhile, the climate dissent that began in LA didn’t stay there.

“Our region has suffered devastating wildfires in recent years, and we shouldn’t pretend that fossil fuel companies are our buddies when they are causing the climate change that worsens these disasters.”

Simultaneous anti-sportswashing actions unfolded across 10 US cities on February 17. Check it out:

• Los Angeles, Dodger Stadium, Dodgers (Phillips 66/76 gas)
• San Francisco, Oracle Park, Giants (Phillips 66/76 gas)
• Sacramento, Golden 1 Center, Sacramento Kings (AM/PM, owned by BP)
• Portland, Providence Park, Portland Timbers (Bank of America)
• St. Louis, Busch Stadium, St. Louis Cardinals (Phillips 66)
• Atlanta, Mercedes-Benz Stadium, FIFA World Cup (Aramco)
• Cleveland, Progressive Field, Cleveland Guardians (Marathon)
• Philadelphia, Lincoln Financial Field, Philadelphia Eagles (NRG)
• New York City, Citi Field, Mets (Citi bank)
• Boston, TD Garden, Boston Celtics (Gulf)

Groups participating and supporting Tuesday's action included: Communities for a Better Environment, Scientific Rebellion, Stop the Money Pipeline, EcoAthletes, Dayenu, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sisters of Charity New York, and Third Act.

In Sacramento, activists gathered with protest signs at the Golden 1 Center, where the Kings, an NBA team, play in the Western Division. "We are asking the Kings' owner and executives to immediately end the team’s sponsorship deals with Shell, one of the world's largest oil companies, and AM/PM," said Sally Richman, a Third Act Sacramento member, in a statement.

She explains, “Our region has suffered devastating wildfires in recent years, and we shouldn’t pretend that fossil fuel companies are our buddies when they are causing the climate change that worsens these disasters.”

One of these deadly wildfires occurred in 2018, in Paradise, California, north of Sacramento. Before that cataclysmic wildfire, Paradise was a town that had a population of 27,000 people. Eighty-five people lost their lives, over 50,000 were displaced, more than 18,000 structures were destroyed, with a loss of nearly $17 billion.

The wildfire that began in Paradise didn’t remain there. Spoiler alert: The climate catastrophe does not obey human-created boundaries and limits. Consider this bit of climate history.

Sacramento residents felt the effects from poor air quality during the Camp Fire in Paradise. City officials distributed particulate respirator masks to help residents breathe normally, approved by the Environmental Protection Agency. These masks carried an N-95 classification designed to protect the lungs from small particles found in wildfire smoke. At that time, the Air Quality Index was 367 in some areas, more than double the 150 reading considered unhealthy. I can personally attest to that.

Third Act Sacramento also sent a letter via email to Kings’ management. The missive fleshed out in part its opposition to the term of deception in question:

Sportswashing occurs when a company that has harmed the public creates a financial partnership with beloved sports teams, and markets their brand to the fans to create positive associations that are undeserved. The Sacramento Kings are allowing BP America and Shell to pretend they are "good guys" by their sponsorships of the team.

Kings’ management had not responded at press time.

Personally, I’m a big fan of the NBA. My family and I have had this fan-ship in common for years during the regular season, All Star game, and of course the playoffs to watch NBA stars do their thing. In my view, we are watching among the most talented athletes in the world.

Bill McKibben is an author, environmentalist, journalist, and co-founder of Third Act and 350.org. "The greatest threat to sports in the years ahead is the rapid rise in temperature,” according to his statement, “which increasingly makes it too hot and stormy to play. So, you might say it's an error for those who enjoy—and profit from—sports to be collaborating with the industry doing the most to overheat the planet."

A January 2026 Gallup poll showed that 89% of all Americans expect high levels of political conflict this year, as the country heads toward one of its most decisive midterm elections ever.

Gallup, however, was stating the obvious. It is a surprise that not all Americans feel this way, judging by the coarse, often outright racist discourse currently being normalized by top American officials. Some call this new rhetoric the "language of humiliation," where officials refer to entire social and racial groups as "vermin," "garbage," or "invaders."

The aim of this language is not simply to insult, but to feed the "Rage Bait Cycle"—tellingly, Oxford’s 2025 Word of the Year: A high-ranking official attacks a whole community or "the other side"; waits for a response; escalates the attacks; and then presents himself as a protector of traditions, values, and America itself. This does more than simply “hollow out” democracy, as suggested in a Human Rights Watch report last January; it prepares the country for “affective polarization,” where people no longer just disagree on political matters, but actively dislike each other for who they are and what they supposedly represent.

How else can we explain the statements of US President Donald Trump, who declared last December: “Somalia... is barely a country... Their country stinks and we don't want them in our country... We’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country. Ilhan Omar is garbage. She’s garbage. Her friends are garbage.” This is not simply an angry president, but an overreaching political discourse supported by millions of Americans who continue to see Trump as their defender and savior.

We are entering a state of regime cleavage—a political struggle no longer concerned with winning elections, but one where dominant groups fundamentally disagree on the very definition of what constitutes a nation.

This polarization reached a fever pitch at the 2026 Super Bowl, where the halftime selection of Puerto Rican artist Bad Bunny ignited a firestorm over national identity. While millions celebrated the performance, Trump and conservative commentators launched a boycott, labeling the Spanish-language show “not American enough” and inappropriate. The rhetoric escalated further when Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem suggested Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents would be “all over” the event, effectively ostracizing countless people from their right to belong to a distinct culture within American society.

The weaponization of culture and language was not limited to the stage; it split American viewers into two distinct camps: those who watched the official performance and those who turned to an “All-American” alternative broadcast hosted by Turning Point USA featuring Kid Rock. This "countering" is the very essence of the American conflict, which many have rightly predicted will eventually reach a breaking point akin to civil war.

That conclusion seems inevitable as the culture war couples with three alarming trends: identity dehumanization; partisan mirroring—the view that the other side is an existential threat; and institutional conflict—where federal agencies are perceived as "lawless," sitting congresswomen are labeled "garbage," and dissenting views are branded as treasonous.

This takes us to the fundamental question of legitimacy. In a healthy democracy, all sides generally recognize the legitimacy of the system itself, regardless of internal squabbles. In the United States, this is no longer the case. We are entering a state of regime cleavage—a political struggle no longer concerned with winning elections, but one where dominant groups fundamentally disagree on the very definition of what constitutes a nation.

The current crisis is not a new phenomenon; it dates back to the historical tension between 'assimilation" within an American "melting pot" versus the "multiculturalism" often compared to a "salad bowl." The melting pot principle, frequently promoted as a positive social ideal, effectively pressures immigrant communities and minorities to "melt" into a white-Christian-dominated social structure. In contrast, the salad bowl model allows minorities to feel very much American while maintaining their distinct languages, customs, and social priorities, thus without losing their unique identities.

While this debate persisted for decades as a highly intellectualized academic exercise, it has transformed into a daily, visceral conflict. The 2026 Super Bowl served as a stark manifestation of this deeper cultural friction. Several factors have pushed the United States to this precipice: a struggling economy, rising social inequality, and a rapidly closing demographic gap. Dominant social groups no longer feel "safe." Although the perceived threat to their "way of life" is often framed as a cultural or social grievance, it is, in essence, a struggle over economic privilege and political dominance.

There is also a significant disparity in political focus. While the right—represented by the MAGA movement and TPUSA—possesses a clarity of vision and relative political cohesion, the "other side" remains shrouded in ambiguity. The Democratic institution, which purports to represent the grievances of all other marginalized groups, lacks the trust of younger Americans, particularly those belonging to Gen Z. According to a recent poll by the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), trust in traditional political institutions among voters aged 18-25 has plummeted to historic lows, with over 65% expressing dissatisfaction with both major parties.

As the midterm elections approach, society is stretching its existing polarization to a new extreme. While the right clings to the hope of a savior making the country "great again," the "left" is largely governed by the politics of counter demonization and reactive grievances—hardly a revolutionary approach to governance.

Regardless of the November results, much of the outcome is already predetermined: a wider social conflict in the US is inevitable. The breaking point is fast approaching.

Data centers are the modern equivalent of feudal castles. They dominate the landscape, consume resources, and aggregate power. Unlike medieval barons, though, today’s data dukes don’t live in their castles. Their “court” is in Washington and Silicon Valley, but they expect their local vassals to pay tribute through higher utility rates, water, and electricity consumption. A data center complex is being built near my home. I feel like my village is being colonized.

Data Centers have huge moats, which indirectly consume vast quantities of water, electricity, and land. I’d like to know—in addition to utility rate impacts—what their carbon footprint is over time. Yet, like a lot of non-tech-engaged citizens, I have more questions than answers.

“Unmitigated data center growth puts the public at risk of large cost increases, from higher utility bills to public health costs to climate impacts," according to a recent study by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), a national nonprofit advocacy group. In Illinois alone, where I live, the UCS estimates that electric utility rates could soar:

• "From 2026 to 2050, data center load growth will increase electricity system costs in Illinois by $24 billion to $37 billion, or 15% to 24%."
• "Based on current trends, data centers will account for up to 72% of electricity demand growth in Illinois by 2030."
• "Overall electricity demand could increase by more than half by 2035. Data centers will still account for up to 65% of that growth by 2035 as electrification of other sectors starts to play a bigger role."

Data Centers typically have voracious electrical and water demands. They need huge amounts of electricity to power their citadel of computer servers and water to cool them. According to an analysis by CLC JAWA, the local water agency for Lake County, the proposed Grayslake data center near my home will use up to 1.6 billion (giga) watts of electricity in its first phase. When completed, the first phase will use about 50,000 gallons of water daily, which is roughly equivalent to an average-sized health and fitness club.

Worse yet, since there are no national or state regulations on data centers, their power consumption could increase the burning of fossil fuels (mostly coal and gas)

Yet the demand for water in the “T5” Grayslake data center around the corner from my home will spike when it pumps water into its “closed-loop” (recirculated) cooling system. Filling up that system—what the operators call a “flush and fill”—will require an estimated 3.2 million gallons over several days. Keep in mind that’s treated Lake Michigan water, which is not billed at a higher rate for industrial use. Will that outsize water consumption raise rates for residential water users? That’s not clear, although the combined water and power usage will be enormous for a 470 acre-complex (approved by the local village board) with up to 10 million total square feet in less than 20 buildings.

Worse yet, since there are no national or state regulations on data centers, their power consumption could increase the burning of fossil fuels (mostly coal and gas). That means more pollutants and greenhouse gases flowing into our atmosphere. At the very least, local residents need more detailed information on utility and environmental impact.

Across the border in Wisconsin, there’s been an outcry over lack of information on data castles. Meta, the holding company that owns Facebook and Instagram, has proposed a complex as big as 12 football fields in a city with a population of 16,000, reports Wisconsin Watch. It’s 1 of 7 major proposed data centers in Wisconsin that are worth more than $57 billion combined. Local governments in the Dairy State, though, which already has 40 data centers, have been reluctant to disclose details.

There’s also been pushback against data centers in New York state, where a tough data center law is being drafted. At least 19 have been cancelled in Michigan. Although action this year is unlikely, a stricter federal data center bill called the “Power for the People Act (S. 3682) was filed in the US Senate. The bill is supported by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Citizen’s Utility Board in Illinois.

Back in Illinois, legislators and environmentalists are mobilized. Gov. JB Pritzker announced a two-year pause on data center tax breaks in his recent budget address. In the Illinois General Assembly, the introduction of the POWER Act would set some guardrails on water use and environmental impact. It’s being sponsored by Prairie Rivers Network and the Clean Jobs Coalition.

The Illinois General Assembly is also considering data center regulation this year. “By requiring data centers to supply new carbon-free electricity resources,” the UCS report notes, “Illinois can protect other electricity consumers and stay consistent with its clean energy goals, while at the same time seeking improved federal policies.”

Data Center operators are concentrating their expansion in Great Lakes states because that’s where the water is: They need fresh water to cool their hot, thirsty servers. According to a new study by the University of Virginia:

At the end of 2024, the Great Lakes region was hosting approximately 20% of all US data centers and had 500+ operational facilities. By 2030, Illinois and Ohio together will account for about 50% of regional sites, and planned and under construction facilities will increase by 42% regionally. More than 95% of data centers are located in large or medium metro counties, anchored by Chicago, Columbus, New York City, and Minneapolis.

Unlike the legendary story of Robin of Locksley, who robbed the rich to give to the poor, data center dukes and barons appropriate land and resources while indirectly taxing the middle and lower class through higher utility bills. Yet these “reverse Robin Hoods” don’t do this on roads winding through dark forests. They do it in plain sight during daylight, although they hate the transparency of sunlight and community activism.

“Deregulation” is an antiseptic word loved by the giant corporations that rule the people. In reality, health and safety “deregulation” spells death, injury, and disease for the American people of all ages and backgrounds. This is especially so with the deranged dictates from the Tyrant Trump, who is happily beholden to his corporate paymasters, who are making him richer by the day.

President Donald Trump’s mindless deregulation mania got underway in January 2025 with his illegal shutting down of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which has saved lives in poor countries—by providing food, water, medicine, etc.—for a pittance. USAID spends less in a year than the Pentagon spends in a week. International aid groups predict that the ongoing cuts could lead to 9.4 million preventable deaths occurring in poor countries by 2030 unless the vicious and cruel, unlawful Trumpian shutdown is reversed.

It turns out Trump was just warming up for his illegal violence against innocent American families in both blue and red states. He has abolished requirements for the auto industry to limit its emissions and maintain fuel efficiencies. The result: more disease-bearing gases and particulates into the lungs of Americans, including the most vulnerable—children and people suffering from respiratory diseases.

Trump wants to roll back the regulations that would require auto company fleets to average 50 miles per gallon by 2031. In 2024, the US Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said its proposed vehicle fuel economy standards would save Americans more than $23 billion in fuel costs while reducing pollution.

Rather than faithfully execute federal laws, and ensure the well-being of the people, Dictator Donald is using his position and time in the White House to enrich himself and to get his name on anything he can get away with.

Month after month, Trump is illegally reducing or shutting down lifesaving programs without the required congressional approval. One of his major targets is the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This month, his puppet EPA head, Lee Zeldin, celebrated the elimination of lethal greenhouse gases from the EPA’s regulatory controls. Zeldin and Trump are in effect telling Americans, “Let them breathe toxic air.” Plus, more climate catastrophes.

Smothering wind and solar projects while boosting the omnicidal polluting oil, gas, and coal production is another way Trump is exposing people to sickening gases and particulates. A corporate cynic once joked, “No problem, you can always refuse to inhale.”

Trump’s treachery toward coal miners, whom he praises, is shocking. He cut the funds for free testing of coal miners’ lungs, often afflicted with the deadly black lung diseases that have taken hundreds of thousands of coal miners’ lives over the past century and a half. We worked to pass the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969, to control the levels of coal dust causing this disease, but Trump is unraveling it by cutting law enforcement. The Trump administration says it is “reconsidering” the long-awaited proposed silica control regulations. More unnecessary delay. In 2024, Politico reported that “Mine Safety and Health Administration projects that the final rule will avert up to 1,067 deaths and 3,746 silica-related illnesses.”

In his mass firings of federal civil servants, Trump has included the ranks of federal safety inspectors for meat and poultry plants (USDA), for occupational health and safety (OSHA), and specialized areas like you would never imagine—such as nuclear security. Tyrant Trump worsened the potential danger for workers and communities by firing most of the inspectors general—again illegally—who are the powerful watchdogs over federal departments and agencies. Many inspector general positions are still vacant.

In terms of short and long-run perils, Trump’s attacks on scientific research and discovery to reduce or prevent diseases would be enough to give him the grisly record for knowingly letting Americans die. The assault on vaccines, including for contagious diseases, is staggering, led by RFK, Jr., the secretary of Health and Human Services.

RFK, Jr. becomes more extreme by the day. His actions go way beyond any legitimate skepticism of the drug companies. He is going along with officials in states like Florida who are about to ban children’s vaccine mandates, even for polio, measles, and whooping cough. He has severely slashed, without congressional authority, budgets for basic and applied science programs underway at universities and other public institutions. His salvos are resulting in the reduction of families getting their children vaccinated, who, if contagious, could infect their classmates. The so-called powerful medical societies have not risen to their optimal level of resistance to what is fast coming, a green light for epidemics—starting with the resurgence of measles now underway in places like South Carolina.

The crazed Menace-in-Chief wanted to abolish the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and its rescue responses to hyper-hurricanes, floods, and giant wildfires. He recklessly says the states can handle the carnage from such disasters. The real reason is that he doesn’t want to be held responsible for failing to properly respond to such disasters. Remember the criticism of George W. Bush’s response to Katrina?

Again, with Trump, it is all about him, feeding his insatiable MONSTROUS EGO, rather than saving American lives. Recently, tragic events have forced him to reconsider. He is bringing back some of the experts and rescuers he fired from FEMA earlier last year.

Rather than faithfully execute federal laws, and ensure the well-being of the people, Dictator Donald is using his position and time in the White House to enrich himself and to get his name on anything he can get away with—the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the US Institute of Peace, the US Treasury Department’s relief checks during Covid-19, the federal investment accounts, special visas, and a discount drug program. (See the February 16, 2026, article in the New York Times by Peter Baker titled, A Superman, Jedi and Pope).

Chronically lying; threatening violence against his opponents and people abroad; slandering anyone he feels like via the compliant mass media, including journalists and editors; and generally wrecking America as a serial law violator, Trump deserves to be told, “YOU’RE FIRED.” (This was his favorite TV show catchphrase). Trump deserves Impeachment and Removal from Office. Congress should act now, before more Americans die, get sick, or are injured from the destruction of long-established, critical protections under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

Wes Jackson’s career demonstrates that sometimes the race goes not to the swift but to the unconventional, that the battle can be won not only by the strong but by the stubborn. Straight-A students don’t always lead the way.

Jackson, one of the last half-century’s most innovative thinkers about regenerative agriculture, has won a MacArthur Fellowship, the so-called “genius grant.” He also received the Right Livelihood Award, often called the “alternative Nobel Prize,” in addition to dozens of other awards from various philanthropic, academic, and agricultural organizations. Life Magazine tagged him one of the “100 Important Americans of the 20th Century.”

But mention any of those accolades to Jackson—who was one of the first people to use the term “sustainable agriculture” in print—and he likely will tell the story of almost getting a D in a botany course and describe himself as a misfit.

Not the Top of His Class

Jackson’s education started in a two-room school near his family’s farm in North Topeka, Kansas, where classes met for only eight months because students were needed for planting and harvest. He was an uneven student whose classroom performance varied depending on the quality of the teacher and his interests at the moment. He went to nearby Kansas Wesleyan University in Salina, focusing as much on football and track as on academics. “I wasn’t what you would call a top student,” Jackson said. “I had a lot of Cs and Bs, an A here and there, but also my share of Ds.”

Jackson said the central question on his mind is much the same as when he was creating that Survival Studies curriculum nearly six decades ago—how is our species going to make the transition from a high-energy, high-technology world of 8 billion people to a smaller population that doesn’t draw down the ecological capital of Earth?

One of those D grades came in botany. “I went to the prof and explained that I couldn’t have a D in my major field, which was biology,” Jackson said. The response: “Well, you got one.” Then the professor said he would give Jackson six weeks to study for a makeup exam, and if Jackson got an A on that he would receive a C in the course. Jackson made the grade, and later that professor wrote him a glowing recommendation for the MA program in botany at the University of Kansas, which he completed in 1960. After that, Jackson was back in the classroom, teaching first in a Kansas high school and then at KWU, before heading to North Carolina State University for the PhD program in genetics.

“I guess you could say I was sort of in business for myself, and so I wasn’t worrying about grades,” Jackson said. “I either did it or didn’t, according to what was satisfying.”

Different Routes to Finding Purpose

I was teaching at the University of Texas at Austin when I first heard those stories, and I recounted them to many students, especially those who seemed too concerned about being a “good student” as the path to a “successful career.” Jackson’s story illustrates that we don’t always have to do as we are told.

I used another Jackson story to make the point that striving for the highest status job isn’t the only path to fulfillment. After earning that PhD in genetics in 1967, Jackson had a lot of options, including an offer from the University of Tennessee for a tenure-track teaching job that would have allowed him to continue the genetics research that he loved, at a time when the federal government was throwing lots of grant money at scientists. Instead, he returned to KWU to teach the same biology classes he had been teaching before the doctoral program. Why did he turn down a job at a Research 1 university to return to a small liberal arts college in a rural area?

“I suppose I’m something of a homing pigeon,” Jackson said. “I wanted back to that prairie landscape. And there was family back there, too.” But when pressed, Jackson acknowledged that he still isn’t sure why he made that choice. “I don’t know why I did what I did,” he said. “People would ask me why I turned down that job and I couldn’t give them any decent sort of answer.”

While teaching at KWU that second time, when the environmental movement was taking off, Jackson said students started pressing him to make biology courses more “relevant.” His response was to design a “Survival Studies” program that took seriously the deepening ecological crises, and he also began work on one of the emerging discipline’s first collections of readings, Man and the Environment. By the time that curriculum was in place, Jackson had been hired by California State University, Sacramento to create and run one of the first environmental studies programs in the country. But after a few years, the restless Jackson was back in Kansas on leave, dreaming of starting an alternative school that would combine book learning with hands-on work on the land. He gave up the security of his California job and, with his then-wife, Dana, created that school, The Land Institute, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.

Back to my students. After telling Jackson’s story, I asked them whether he had been foolish to walk away from the more prestigious job. There’s no right answer, of course. I just wanted my high-achieving students—the ones who had been earning good grades and building stellar resumes since grade school—to realize they had options, that success can come in many forms down many roads.

A stubborn humility

Back to Jackson, who is a curious mix of humility and self-confidence. He accumulated all those accolades because he never let his critics slow him down. Jackson was ahead of his time in seeing not only problems in agriculture but what he called the problem of agriculture, the millennia of soil erosion and soil degradation caused by plowing and planting annual grains such as wheat.

For decades, Jackson said agronomists politely told him that his plan to breed perennial grains was interesting but unworkable. Today, plant breeders at The Land Institute and around the world are working on what Jackson calls “Natural Systems Agriculture,” growing perennial grains in mixtures. There’s a long way to go before those crops can feed the world, but there are perennial grains in commercial production (especially perennial rice in China) and more in development (such as varieties of wheat).

He called me one morning to describe in detail a spider web between two trees that he had been studying and then asked me a rhetorical question that goes to the core of our ecological crises: “Why is this not enough?”

Jackson jokes that he enjoys people “praising me,” but his humility is real. I worked with him on books that were published in 2021 (my summary of his key ideas, The Restless and Relentless Mind of Wes Jackson: Searching for Sustainability, and his book of stories, Hogs Are Up: Stories of the Land, with Digressions) and 2022 (the co-authored An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity). I have no specialized training in the areas we wrote about, but Jackson never discounted my contributions. He enjoyed being challenged and always took my ideas seriously. In fact, he attributes his success to his argumentative friends and colleagues.

There’s a story about his debt to comrades that Jackson loves to tell. One day his brother Elmer noted that Jackson was always quoting others in his writing and asked, “Don’t you have a mind of your own?” Jackson readily conceded that he did not. “I don’t know what I think until I talk to my friends,” Jackson said, emphasizing how much he has benefited from the insights of others. That’s the way it should be, Jackson said, because no one has a mind of their own, as we all puzzle through life’s challenges together.

Family Can Keep Us Honest

Jackson was the only one of six siblings who earned advanced degrees, and his connection to his family is another source of the humility that keeps his hard-charging intellect grounded.

For example, when he received his MA from the University of Kansas, his parents made the 30-mile drive from North Topeka to Lawrence for the ceremony, but Jackson said that they left once he crossed the stage and didn’t hang around for the graduation reception. Why? “I didn’t ask them,” Jackson said. “I just assumed they had chores that needed to get done.” Jackson said they were proud of his accomplishments but didn’t consider those more important than his siblings’ work in farming, nursing, and business.

Another example: When Jackson was building the house and structures that became The Land Institute, he was surprised one day to see Elmer pull up with a tractor. “Elmer simply said, ‘You’re going to need this’ and told me that I owed him $800,” said Jackson, who paid off the debt as he had the money. That was typical, not only of Jackson’s family but of many rural people who had lived through the Great Depression, which Jackson said is part of why he stayed close to home, both geographically and culturally.

Jackson, the youngest in the family, is the only sibling still living. This year he will turn 90, and he and his wife, Joan, still live in that house Jackson built from scratch—no blueprints and a limited budget—with the help of family and friends in the early 1970s. After doing his best to ignore the aging process, Jackson finally has slowed down. In 2016 he stepped down as president and in 2024 he retired completely from The Land Institute, which had evolved from an alternative school to a full-fledged research institution, a hub for the worldwide work on perennial grains. But Jackson said the central question on his mind is much the same as when he was creating that Survival Studies curriculum nearly six decades ago—how is our species going to make the transition from a high-energy, high-technology world of 8 billion people to a smaller population that doesn’t draw down the ecological capital of Earth?

A Future?

Can we manage such a down powering? Jackson is not naïve about our chances but wants to help a younger generation continue the work on his property, on The Land. He doesn’t have a specific program for them to follow but hopes they will be open to unpredictable possibilities, most of which he thinks won’t come by sticking to typical career paths.

Jackson said his own idiosyncratic choices simply may be the result of being a misfit. “I have never really fit anywhere,” he said. “I don't fit in genetics anymore. I didn’t fit in the nonprofit world. I certainly wouldn’t fit in any university. And I don’t think I would fit as a farmer.”

Jackson may be a misfit in human enterprises, but he continues to feel at home on his 30 acres of Kansas prairie, where even a short walk reignites his sense of wonder. He called me one morning to describe in detail a spider web between two trees that he had been studying and then asked me a rhetorical question that goes to the core of our ecological crises: “Why is this not enough?” Why are people not satisfied, he asked, with all the beauty, creativity, and complexity of the ecosystems around us?

If that were to be enough for more people, Jackson mused, the human species just might have a chance.

“Prairie Prophecy,” a documentary about Jackson’s work, will air on public television stations around the United States in spring 2026. For more information, visit https://www.prairieprophecy.com/. For extended audio conversations with Jackson, listen to “Podcast from the Prairie” at https://podcastfromtheprairie.com/.