Ever since Hugo Chávez became Venezuela’s president in 1999 and initiated the Bolivarian Revolution, the country has been under siege by the US. The aggression escalated with the kidnapping of its lawful president, part of a larger and accelerating assertion of US imperial power worldwide. The Bolivarian Revolution survived but is in a forced tactical retreat.

For progressives outside Venezuela, this presents a difficult question. How should we respond when a government resisting US domination makes compromises that we may oppose, but does so under conditions largely imposed by Washington?

This article argues that criticism has its place. But it also needs to be contextualized in the larger struggle over Venezuela’s sovereignty and the consequences of weakening a government confronting overwhelming US power.

Chávez: Founding of the Bolivarian Revolution

Tension between solidarity with an actually existing revolutionary process and criticism of its compromises has recurred throughout the Bolivarian Revolution. Among the first on the left to part company with the Chavista government were anarchists, who proclaimed that they were second to none in supporting revolutions against imperialism—until those projects succeeded in achieving state power.

We can all agree that the Rodríguez government faces demands backed by overwhelming US power and unite to oppose the continuing imperialist siege. Those of us living in the imperial core must aim the main blow at the conditions that have necessitated such retreats.

This tendency still affirmed their abstract solidarity with “the people” but not with their chosen representatives. They felt betrayed because the Bolivarian leadership failed to fulfill their expectations to build a workers’ state on a suitably expeditious timetable.

Riding a global commodities boom, the Bolivarian Revolution funded major social welfare programs, prioritizing poor and working people. To finance these measures, over half of Venezuela’s oil exports and 60% of its overall exports were sold to the US. Dependency on oil sales deepened, with oil accounting for over 95% of the country's foreign earnings.

Chávez proclaimed the goal of a socialist future, although he pardoned the unsuccessful 2002 coup plotters in an effort—perhaps mistaken—to encourage a cooperative domestic business class. He pragmatically sought opportunities to negotiate with them.

Maduro: Intensification of the Imperialist Siege

When Chávez died in March 2013, his chosen successor Nicolás Maduro won the snap presidential election. Maduro carried the Bolivarian project forward but under geopolitical conditions markedly different from his predecessor. Venezuela scholar Steve Ellner argues that there were no substantive political differences between the two leaders.

During Chávez’s illness, economic problems had accumulated (e.g., a dysfunctional currency exchange system). Maduro was under intense pressure from the moment he entered office.

Immediately, the US-backed and funded opposition started the guarimbas, demonstrations intended to accomplish by violence what they had failed to achieve at the ballot box. Washington, meanwhile, stepped up its hybrid war. Soon oil prices crashed and the US, under President Barack Obama, initiated ever more punishing sanctions in 2015.

Under these coercive measures, the Venezuelan economy by 2019 was in free fall with inflation over 100,000%. Never had an economy contracted so much in modern peacetime.

At this time of maximum weakness, a faction of the Venezuelan Communist Party developed a strategic disagreement with the governing coalition. It argued that the revolution should confront its class enemies more aggressively and expropriate major corporations, rather than seek a temporary rapprochement.

The nearly overwhelming task of righting the economy was ultimately achieved under Maduro's leadership. After precipitous economic contraction, Venezuela has experienced positive economic growth since 2021. Never had a petro-economy achieved such a turnaround, which included near food sovereignty. To do so, the government relied foremost on the strong Chavista base. It also had to appeal to nationalistic elements among the bourgeoisie and offer them economic incentives to secure their cooperation.

Venezuela was not unique in making such accommodations. During this period, Cuba and Nicaragua—the two other Latin American countries striving for socialism—also introduced market-oriented reforms. With all three countries, the measures were pragmatic adjustments to a world economy dominated by the US and hostile to socialism.

Kidnapping of Maduro

The events leading up to Maduro’s abduction on January 3 involved an ever-intensifying regime-change campaign by the US in concert with its allies: asphyxiating sanctions, stolen assets, diplomatic isolation, cyberattacks, assassination attempts, mercenary invasions, among other measures. The last two months saw a total naval blockade on Venezuelan oil shipments, cutting the country’s economic lifeline.

Regardless, Maduro repeatedly maintained his longstanding willingness to negotiate with Washington. Just two days before his abduction, Maduro outlined a program of accommodation in his annual New Year’s interview with Ignacio Ramonet. This is the program that his successor Delcy Rodríguez has followed, including the amnesty and hydrocarbons laws.

The Bolivarian Revolution persevered. Its accommodations may be understood as tactical responses to unfavorable conditions rather than as a full abandonment of the project.

The fact that Maduro did not waver and the Bolivarian Revolution did not break presented a dilemma for Washington. The US—especially as its aggression against oil-rich Iran was heating up—needed access to Venezuelan oil. Neither country benefited by keeping the oil in the ground.

Yet the US had painted itself into a corner. The Trump administration had demonized Maduro as a narco-trafficker. Even though Maduro was more than willing to negotiate, the US had precluded that option. The kidnapping followed.

Rodríguez: Negotiated Sovereignty

The US invasion of Venezuela on January 3 demonstrated to both the leadership and the Venezuelan grassroots that they were alone—no country came to their defense. Whatever guardrails had existed before on the hegemon were down.

Yet the Bolivarian Revolution did not collapse. The highly polarized nation did not fall into civil unrest between Chavistas and opposition—if anything, it unified. The far-right María Corina Machado did not make her triumphal return to Caracas. Instead, that part of the opposition found itself discredited and in disarray.

In a seamless constitutional transition, Maduro’s vice president was sworn in as president. The Chavista movement united behind Acting President Delcy Rodríguez. Venezuela’s national recovery continues under a negotiated sovereignty where the US now bargains—with the ever-present threat of an even more lethal military action—over matters that should be the sole purview of Venezuelans.

Finding a way forward

The Bolivarian Revolution persevered. Its accommodations may be understood as tactical responses to unfavorable conditions rather than as a full abandonment of the project.

For international solidarity activists, the central question is how to forge a stance that advances the anti-imperialist struggle under these conditions. Those of us who support national sovereignty and self-determination should understand that what Venezuela is suffering relates to our failure to constrain our own imperialists.

Aiming the punch at the target. We can all agree that the Rodríguez government faces demands backed by overwhelming US power and unite to oppose the continuing imperialist siege. Those of us living in the imperial core must aim the main blow at the conditions that have necessitated such retreats.

We can all unite on actions to demand freeing President Maduro and “First Combatant” Cilia Flores from jail in New York City, ending sanctions, and returning stolen assets.

Differences among progressives. A useful distinction can be made between disagreements within the “left camp” and the fundamental conflict with imperialism. This does not mean suppressing differences or assuming that they are unimportant. Rather, it suggests approaching tensions among forces resisting imperialism in ways that seek common ground and avoid turning secondary differences into antagonistic ones.

Contextualizing criticism. Under pressure from Washington, the Rodríguez government deported former Venezuelan diplomat and minister Alex Saab and has established consular relations with Israel. These are among the bitter pills to swallow. Criticism of such actions may be entirely warranted, but should be assessed in light of the extraordinary constraints under which the Rodríguez government is operating.

A related example is Cuba, which is forced to tolerate a US military base and torture center in Guantánamo, has had the indignity of having the US secretary of war and the commander of the US Southern Command visit, and has introduced pro-capitalist economic reforms. Those reforms should be understood as “strategic adaptation” according to an article in Black Agenda Report. While not welcoming these accommodations to the US siege, international solidarity activists still unite with and defend Cuba.

Considering the alternatives. For example, the US and its allies waged wars of aggression and deposed Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in 2003, Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad in 2024. There were left critiques of these leaders but, in all instances, there were no viable left alternatives to them; nor were conditions for their people improved by their removal. There is no “third way” in a war.

This suggests that the relevant question is not whether a preferable government can be imagined, but what forces actually stand to replace the existing government. For Venezuela, if not the Rodríguez government, what is the actual alternative?

After 26 years of siege and domestic polarization, the Venezuelan people yearn for peace, reconciliation, and reconstruction—more so than ever after the devastating twin earthquakes on June 24. For those of us abroad, we can only imagine the difficulties of life under sanctions from the US and its allies.

Regional trends. Developments in Venezuela reflect a broader shift in Latin America under the “Donroe Doctrine,” where Trump’s reactionary wave has flooded the former Pink Tide. Venezuela should therefore be understood in the context of this region-wide sea change.

Not since Maduro’s election in 2024 has a leftist won in the region. We have witnessed a succession of far-rightists replace center-left presidents in Latin America. Last year, Nasry Asfura replaced Xiomara Castro in Honduras, José Antonio Kast replaced Gabriel Boric in Chile, and Rodrigo Paz replaced Luis Arce in Bolivia. This year, Abelardo de la Espriella replaced Gustavo Petro in Colombia. Coming up in October is the Brazilian presidential election pitting Flávio Bolsonaro against incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, with Trump actively interfering as he did in the other contests.

In all cases, the incumbents faced considerable criticism from the left. Yet whatever their shortcomings, the alternatives have been, or would be, less desirable.

Conclusion

Venezuela is not an isolated case. How progressives weigh criticism against solidarity, assess governments operating under US pressure, and consider the actual alternatives is increasingly relevant throughout the region.

Remarkably, given the intense pressure from the imperialists, the core Chavista leadership, the Socialist Party (PSUV), the civil-military union, the high courts and legislature, and the communes and grassroots organizations have all remained unified. Preserving that unity is particularly important; Bolivia’s experience of left fragmentation offers a cautionary example.

Our tasks are to educate the broader public about what is happening in Venezuela under extreme duress and to take collective action against the imperialist siege.

Between the Rubio State Department and corporate media, on one hand, and rejection of the Rodríguez government by some on the left, on the other, there is a vast intermediate terrain that needs to have a voice.

Whatever disagreements progressives may have with decisions made in Caracas, those decisions belong ultimately to Venezuelans. Our first responsibility is not to prescribe Venezuela's political course, but to challenge the coercive power our own government exercises over it. The Venezuelans have not told us how to make our revolution; we should do the same for them.

Our tasks are to educate the broader public about what is happening in Venezuela under extreme duress and to take collective action against the imperialist siege. The Bolivarian Revolution has not failed. But the project urgently requires relief.

For nearly three years, foreign ministries in Washington, London, and Brussels have debated arms embargoes on Israel in committee rooms, largely without result. Meanwhile, a much less formal network of ordinary people has been trying to accomplish the same goal from the ground up—one factory gate, one shareholder register, and one pension fund at a time.

Palestine Action, the direct-action network founded in the UK in 2020 by Huda Ammori and Richard Barnard, is built on a simple theory of change: If governments won’t stop arming Israel, activists will go after the companies that do it for them. Its central target has been Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, which supplies the bulk of the drones, munitions, and surveillance equipment used in Gaza and the West Bank.

But the network’s real innovation is how it maps the entire supply chain—not just Elbit’s factories, but the banks that hold its shares, the recruiters that staff it, the cleanroom contractors that service its subsidiaries, and the local landlords who rent it space. Every link has become a pressure point.

How the Network Actually Works

Palestine Action isn’t a single organization so much as a constellation. Its hub-and-spoke structure includes a UK core, plus franchises, affiliates, and offshoots that have adopted its name, its tactics, or both. These affiliates include Unity of Fields, formerly Palestine Action US, and sympathetic cells in Canada, France, and Germany.

A war sustained by a transnational arms and finance network, in other words, is being contested by an equally transnational, but far more improvised, citizen network.

Tactics range widely. Some are the kinds of action that make headlines: blockading factory entrances, occupying rooftops, spray-painting military aircraft. Others are quieter and far more replicable by an average person—researching a company’s supply relationships, showing up to a shareholder meeting, filing a public-records request on a pension fund’s holdings, or simply refusing to bank with an institution that finances the war.

This second track has produced some of the most durable wins. In 2026, for instance, Urbana, Illinois became the first Illinois city to bar its pension investments from the top 100 global arms producers; Burbank, California divested from Caterpillar and Honeywell after a local coalition campaign; and the state of Maryland’s pension fund sold off 85% of its Israeli bond holdings—about $62 million—after more than a year of sustained pressure. None of those campaigns required anyone to climb a fence.

Palestine Action’s campaign against Elbit’s UK operations has been credited with forcing the closure of the company’s London headquarters, the cancellation of Ministry of Defence contracts, and the loss of its UK recruitment partner. Barclays bank—long a target of Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s parallel boycott—stopped holding shares in Elbit in 2024, something campaigners point to as evidence that sustained pressure, even short of full divestment, moves institutional money.

None of this has stopped the war. But it has made doing business with Israel’s arms industry measurably more expensive and more reputationally toxic, which is precisely the mechanism that sanctions and embargoes are supposed to achieve when foreign ministries won’t act.

The Safety Question

In July 2025, the UK government proscribed Palestine Action as a terrorist organization under the Terrorism Act 2000, making membership or expressed support punishable by up to 14 years in prison. A High Court panel ruled in February 2026 that the ban was disproportionate and unlawful, noting that only a small fraction of the group’s actions met the legal definition of terrorism, and that ordinary criminal law was already available to prosecute any violence. The government appealed, and in June 2026 the Court of Appeal reversed that ruling and upheld the ban. More than 1,600 people have been arrested in the UK simply for expressing support for the group since the proscription took effect, and four activists convicted only of criminal damage at an Elbit factory were sentenced on the basis of a “terrorist connection.”

That is a genuinely severe legal environment, and it is specific to the UK. Direct action involving property damage or blockades carries real prosecutorial risk anywhere, including the United States, where Unity of Fields and similar groups are not proscribed but individual activists can and do face criminal charges for actions like the 2023 blockade of Elbit’s Cambridge, Massachusetts office.

The boycott, divestment, and shareholder-pressure (BDS) track—writing to a pension board, organizing a bank boycott, supporting BDS-endorsed campaigns—carries none of that risk and remains fully legal free speech and civic organizing in the United States and most of Europe. The two tracks get conflated constantly, including by the UK government itself, but they are not the same thing. This kind of conflation is exactly what makes proscription such a blunt instrument: it criminalizes a banner alongside a blockade.

One Person Still Matters

Much of this network’s actual leverage comes from single, unglamorous decisions. Huda Ammori didn’t wait for a government to act; she and a handful of others started a campaign against one company in 2020 that has since reshaped how a much larger movement thinks about supply chains. The Boycat app, the closest thing the BDS movement has to an official target list, exists because someone decided that consumer choice needed better information, not more slogans. A single city council member willing to bring a divestment resolution to a vote in Urbana did something no protest outside a factory could: moved actual pension dollars.

None of that required anyone to risk a UK terrorism charge. It required deciding that a supply chain is not too complicated, or too far away, to trace and interrupt.

A war sustained by a transnational arms and finance network, in other words, is being contested by an equally transnational, but far more improvised, citizen network. The citizen network’s most effective tool so far hasn’t been confrontation, it’s been documentation. Knowing exactly which bank, which pension fund, which subcontractor is implicated—and saying so publicly and persistently—has moved more money than any single blockade. This tactic is the most likely one to still be legal, and successful, in the near future.

Established by Congress in 1984, with legislation signed by Ronald Reagan and funded annually by Congress, the United States Institute of Peace, or USIP, was a well-respected, authoritative, independent, officially nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, until it was eviscerated by President Donald Trump early last year.

Its purpose was to promote conflict prevention and resolution worldwide and to provide analysis, research, and training in diplomacy, mediation, and peace-related activities. In 2011, the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs wrote that USIP “helped to build the conflict management and resolution field, both as an area of study and as an applied science.”

The institute had a staff of 300 professionals; a budget of $55 million; published numerous research reports on peace issues around the world; and trained 65,000 professionals. Although the institute’s extremely useful database was wantonly destroyed, one can see the breadth and depth of its important work by sampling some of its publications here.

The Demise of the US Institute of Peace

Construction of an impressive $153 million building near the State Department was completed in 2011 but confiscated by the Trump administration in March 2025 with the help of the institute’s former security vendor, the FBI, and the DC Metropolitan Police. A few months later, it was renamed the “Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace” and has since become the home for his “Board of Peace.” An account of the events leading to this outcome explains the shameful way in which this was carried out:

The lesson from these two tragedies—the demise of the US Institute of Peace and the likely failure of the Board of Peace—is that voters must, in the future, avoid electing someone to a position of great power who doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.

One month after assuming office for the second time, on February 19, Trump signed an executive order calling for the elimination of USIP. The next day, USIP was contacted by a representative from the newly established “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), set up by Trump under Elon Musk—allegedly to reduce government expenditure, but actually to eliminate institutions that Trump and the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 didn’t like. In a virtual meeting a few days later, USIP’s president-CEO and lawyer explained to three DOGE representatives that the institute was an “independent, nonprofit corporation outside the executive branch.”

When, on March 8, USIP’s president learned that DOGE had inquired about the status of the organization’s security arrangements, its lawyer contacted DOGE to explain that unauthorized personnel would only be admitted to the building with a valid court-issued warrant.

On March 14, all Biden-appointed members of USIP’s Board of Directors were fired by Trump. Three ex-officio members—Marco Rubio; Pete Hegseth; and Peter Garvin, president of the National Defense University—remained on the board.

The same day, a representative of DOGE and a State Department official arrived at USIP and requested entry, but were denied. That evening, two DOGE members arrived with FBI agents and a directive signed by Rubio, Hegseth, and Garvin to remove the president, naming a new acting president. They were again denied entry, with the USIP lawyer declaring the directive illegal.

The next day, the lawyer learned that two FBI agents had visited the home of USIP’s security vendor to discover how to gain physical entry to its headquarters; it was later reported that they threatened the vendor by warning that, if he didn’t comply, he would lose all government contracts. The lawyer contacted the FBI agents to inform them that all inquiries about USIP should be directed to him. Subsequently, the FBI also contacted USIP’s chief security officer to discuss the institute’s security procedures and threatened that he was the subject of investigation by the Department of Justice into denied entry.

Later that day, the US attorney for the District of Colombia Criminal Division Chief called the USIP lawyer, requesting access to the headquarters by Rubio and Hegseth to inspect records and books. The lawyer said he would provide access with a written request. The US attorney informed him that there was suspicion that USIP was engaging in criminal behavior. He also said that representatives would be sent to USIP headquarters the next day and that they would criminally investigate anyone who obstructed access.

USIP then suspended its security vendor’s contract, and its chief security officer deactivated the vendor’s staff badges and retrieved all physical keys except a master. But the next day, four security vendor employees arrived at USIP HQ and attempted to enter the building. They were ultimately admitted, but informed by the lawyer that they were trespassing. The chief security officer called 911 and reported them as intruders.

Armed Metropolitan Police officers then arrived at the USIP HQ and escorted the chief security officer, the USIP lawyer, and other staff from the building and turned the building over to DOGE.

Although members of the former Board of Directors contested the takeover in court, citing the agency’s independent status—and a first court ruling ruled in the institute’s favor—a federal court of appeals stayed the lower court’s ruling and, after a short reprieve, the building was returned to DOGE, which then took down USIP’s website, containing years of work.

It was later reported that DOGE’s physical occupation of the building led to thousands of dollars in damage, leaving the facility in disarray and littered with drugs and cockroaches.

The building and USIP’s assets were transferred to the General Services Administration and Office of Management and Budget Director, Russell Vought (who was involved in Project 2025) signed off on the transfer. On December 3, 2025, the State Department had “The Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace” inscribed on the outside of the building.

The Formation of Trump’s Board of Peace

The Board of Peace (BOP) was established to implement Trump’s “Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict,” a 20-point plan drawn up by Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff and subsequently negotiated with Israel and Hamas with input from a number of Arab and Muslim countries. The agreement was signed on October 9, 2025 and came into force the next day. It was endorsed by United Nations Security Council Resolution 2803 on November 17, with 13 members of the council in favor and Russia and China abstaining.

The first phase of the plan began before the BOP was formed and involved the initial withdrawal of Israeli troops to agreed-upon deployment lines (although this did not hold and almost daily ceasefire violations ensued). It also involved the return to Israel by Hamas of all living hostages, as well as the remains of those deceased. This was followed by the release by Israel of a large number of Palestinian prisoners, including remains of those deceased. Humanitarian aid was gradually reintroduced by UN agencies and their partners, although needs continue to be extensive and restoration of basic services is far from complete. The Rafah border crossing was also reopened, although sporadically closed again.

On January 15, 2026, Trump announced the formation of a Board of Peace whose charter (drawn up by his administration) named Trump as its chairman for life and gave him extensive unilateral powers over the board. In his usual self-congratulatory style, he wrote on Truth Social, “I can say with certainty that it is the Greatest and Most Prestigious Board ever assembled at any time, any place.” He added that it “would be the most consequential international body in History.”

In the future, the pursuit of international peace and security must be left to the United Nations, which represents the entire world; is backed by the force of international law; and has extensive experience.

Trump invited some 60 countries to join his BOP, including Israel, although no sub-Saharan African country was invited. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu initially refused because invitations had not been coordinated with him and he disapproved of invitations to Türkiye and Qatar. After further discussion with Trump, Israel agreed to join—along with 27 other countries. More than half of those invited, however, declined, concerned that its new charter was an attempt to establish a “Trump-dominated alternative to the United Nations” and could undermine the role of the UN and other multilateral organizations. Countries that agreed were appointed for a three-year term with those wanting lifetime membership required to contribute $1 billion.

It was also announced that Bulgarian Nikolay Mladenov, the former UN special coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, would become director-general of the board and high representative for Gaza. As well, General Jasper Jeffers, was appointed commander of the planned International Stabilization Force.

A nine-member Executive Board was formed with seven who have close ties to Trump. The eighth member is Indian-born Ajay Banga, also a US citizen, who is president of the World Bank Group. Tony Blair is the only non-American.

Amid much fanfare, the BOP was officially launched on January 22, 2026 at the 56th World Economic Forum in Davos with Trump signing its charter in the presence of 19 new members.

After the signing, Jared Kushner made a presentation of plans for a “New Gaza,” using AI-generated slides, showing gleaming skyscrapers, deluxe hotels, and luxury villas lining Gaza’s Mediterranean shoreline, “reserved for coastal tourism.” Entirely new cities with multistory apartment buildings for Palestinians were also shown, as well as schools and hospitals, with sports facilities and parks breaking up industrial complexes, data centers, and advanced manufacturing facilities, as well as a new airport and port.

Kushner’s presentation was in stark contrast to the current reality of Gaza, where 2 million Palestinians live in tents and bombed-out buildings, amid 90,000 tons of rubble, with vastly insufficient food, water, electricity, fuel, healthcare, and medicine. The plans, which seemed more suited for wealthy tourists than for poor Palestinians, apparently had no Palestinian input and were coordinated with an Israeli real estate billionaire (later invited by Kushner to be on the BOP’s Gaza Executive Committee). They also seemed totally out-of-touch with the current or past crowded demographic situation in Gaza and appeared designed to enrich opportunistic developers.

The first and only meeting of the BOP was held on February 19 at the newly named Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace, designated as the seat of the board. There have been no further meetings—presumably, because Trump has been consumed by his war with Iran which he initiated nine days later.

At this meeting, nine members (Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, the UAE, Morocco, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, and Kuwait) pledged $7 billion for the reconstruction of Gaza, and Trump announced a $10 billion pledge, although without consulting Congress. FIFA, which also attended, pledged $50 million for football facilities. It is estimated that $70 billion is required to rebuild the territory.

Five members (Indonesia, Morocco, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, and Albania) agreed to provide troops for the temporary International Stabilization Force (ISF), which the Security Council had authorized the BOP to create. It is intended to work with a newly trained and vetted Palestinian police force to oversee the ceasefire; monitor the security environment and borders; decommission weapons; destroy terrorist infrastructure (e.g., tunnels); and protect civilians and humanitarian operations.

Also at this meeting, Egypt and Jordan committed to training the police force. The plan is to deploy 20,000 ISF troops and 12,000 police. However, to date, neither the ISF nor the police force has deployed.

A National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) was also formed of Palestinian technocrats under BOP supervision, led by Dr. Ali Shaath, a civil engineer from Gaza who held senior roles in the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority. But the NCAG has not been able to enter Gaza, because the ISF meant to disarm Hamas and secure parts of Gaza has not materialized—so it remains in Cairo, unable to exercise any authority in Gaza.

More recently, on July 30, a 15-point “Roadmap for Completing the Implementation of President Trump’s Comprehensive Peace Plan in Gaza” was published. Hamas agreed to the road map and announced that it would dissolve its government in Gaza and disarm, appealing to the international community to push Israel to allow the NCAG to enter Gaza and take over.

Until now, Israel has refused to agree to the road map, arguing, in contradiction to the road map’s prescription for a phased Israel Defense Forces withdrawal from the parts of Gaza where Hamas disarmament has been completed and verified, that it won’t withdraw its troops at all until Hamas has totally disarmed everywhere.

There is, of course, always the possibility that things will change, if Trump can persuade Netanyahu to comply, or if the upcoming Israeli elections change the situation. But for the moment, things appear deadlocked.

There are also questions about BOP finances. When Marco Rubio recently requested that Congress transfer $50 million to the BOP from the State Department budget for international organizations (from which it has not yet paid its 2026 UN dues), Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md), ranking member of the House Committee on the Judiciary, and Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), ranking member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, called for Rubio to “answer basic questions about the board’s structure, funding, and oversight, nine months after its creation.” In a confronting letter that can be read here, they write:

We thus have a profusion of questions about this mysterious operation: What is the Board of Peace? Is it a public or private entity? International or domestic? Is it registered as a corporation in the United States or abroad? What kind of corporation is it—for-profit or not-for-profit? Who controls the funds in its J.P. Morgan bank account? In what countries are those accounts located? Who will audit those funds and conduct oversight of the Board? What does President Trump intend to do with this vast slush fund while he is in office—or after he leaves? Can anyone assure Congress that billions of dollars from US taxpayers and foreign governments will not be flowing into the pockets of President Trump, members of his family, corrupt or incompetent contractors or business partners, or political allies and foot soldiers of the President?

The bottom line is that realizing the aspirations of the Comprehensive Plan with BOP oversight is an exceedingly tall order, given the utter devastation of Gaza, its infrastructure, and its people—and the extremely fraught political difficulties of getting Israel and Hamas to adhere to what they have agreed. Implementation of this process has been incremental, slow, and is at a virtual standstill. Although members of the NCAG have begun work in Egypt, they have not been able to deploy to Gaza. Although some funds have been pledged, most have not materialized. The same is true for pledges of ISF troops.

It will be exceedingly difficult for a new organization without full-fledged international support and clout, and without sufficiently experienced staff to know what approaches are most effective in peace building, creating new governance structures, and carrying out disarmament. At the moment, the whole endeavor looks more like a slow-motion train wreck than the effective implementation of a viable peace process.

As Mladenov warned at an August 26 meeting of the Security Council, called to discuss the obstacles—if the ceasefire is allowed to collapse, “There will be no road map to return to, there will be no administration to deploy, and there will be nothing left on the ground to rebuild... It would be a point of no return for everyone.”

The lesson from these two tragedies—the demise of the US Institute of Peace and the likely failure of the Board of Peace—is that voters must, in the future, avoid electing someone to a position of great power who doesn’t know what he doesn’t know and who has the hubris to create his own half-baked, cobbled-together international Board of Peace to try to resolve one of the world’s most intractable conflicts, allegedly in the hope of being awarded a Nobel Peace Prize—just like Barrack Obama.

Trump has even implied that somehow the BOP could replace the UN, saying, “Well, it might.” But what he doesn’t understand is that the legal foundations of the two are totally different. “The Security Council derives its authority from the UN Charter, a treaty ratified by UN Member States that explicitly assigned it primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. That mandate was conferred collectively by the international community and cannot be replicated.” Also, there is the question of binding authority: “UN Member States are obliged to carry out decisions of the Security Council. The Board of Peace has no comparable mechanism.”

Thus, in the future, the pursuit of international peace and security must be left to the United Nations, which represents the entire world; is backed by the force of international law; and has extensive experience in preventive diplomacy, peacemaking, peacekeeping, and post-conflict peace building.

In the case of Israel, however, the UN has been effectively sidelined, since the Israeli administration, and even much of the Israeli public, harbor a deep antipathy for the UN because of its past condemnation of Israeli behavior, which is nearly always vetoed by the US in the UN Security Council.

This means that the Comprehensive Plan and the BOP are “the only game in town.” Given that winter is on its way and 2 million Palestinians who are already in grave danger will once again be exposed to its ravages, it leaves one hoping against hope, in spite of major concerns about the BOP, that there is some way to salvage the Comprehensive Plan, so that the tremendous suffering by the people of Gaza can finally be lessened.

The escalation of the current crisis-ridden conditions in the areas of climate change, the economy, international security, and the development of democracy—leading to dystopian future scenarios—need not occur in this form. However, there is a real possibility that they could occur if humanity fails to bring about a paradigm shift, makes the wrong decisions, and continues its destructive behavior toward the planet.

Learning from the ‘Anticipated Danger'

The construction of negative scenarios in the sense of an anticipated possibility of dystopian development can certainly serve a constructive purpose.

In his book The Imperative of Responsibility, the philosopher Hans Jonas developed what he called a “heuristics of fear,” by which he meant that potential undesirable developments should be recognized in all their severity and menace and described in drastic terms commensurate with their presumed magnitude. According to Jonas (1979/2015, 7), this enables a society to look the potential risks squarely in the eye and thereby resolve to acknowledge its own responsibility for the planet and the fate of future generations:

What can serve as a compass? The anticipated danger itself! In its flash of lightning from the future, in the foreshadowing of its planetary scope and its human depth, the ethical principles from which the new duties of new power can be derived first become apparent.

Of course, this negative vision must be compatible with the developments already analyzed; it must not, therefore, be plucked out of thin air, even if not all the information needed for an assessment is yet available. Heuristics is a creative thought process based on estimates, assumptions, and calculations.

Immersing oneself in a likely future situation and sensing the potential of a future catastrophe can provide insights for preventive action. It is possible that the fear of a catastrophic planetary scenario could lead to a systemic shift in course and to responsible decisions.

The Inadequacy of the Paris Climate Agreements

From the spectrum of multiple crises—which are certainly interconnected—this article will focus on the disrupted relationship between humanity and nature and heuristically develop it into a negative scenario.

David Spratt and Ian Dunlop (2019, 6) predict that even if the 2015 Paris Climate Agreements were fully implemented, stable climate conditions would still not be expected. In particular, climatic feedback effects would render the Earth largely uninhabitable for human civilization by the end of the century. Even if the Paris climate targets were met, a warming of 5°C would be expected by the year 2100, with devastating consequences for life on Earth.

It must also be taken into account that not all countries have accepted the Paris Agreements or, in some cases—such as the U.S. under Trump—have since withdrawn from them.

Fires, Storms, Overheating, and Floods

A worst-case scenario for such an increasingly hot biosphere must anticipate a rise in wildfires. Vast areas of the Earth will begin to burn. Fire walls driven by massive gusts of wind will devour everything in their path: trees and bushes, houses, animals, and people. Such firestorms are beyond human control and cannot be fought; they depend on heavy rainfall, and it is unclear whether such rain will fall in the burning regions at all due to climate shifts. The result will be the desolation of entire regions, leading to humanitarian, ecological, and financial problems on a global scale. The fires of 2025 and 2026 are already offering a glimpse of what lies ahead for humanity.

Future average temperatures in the Persian Gulf are projected to reach 50-60°C, meaning that for the average person, human life here will no longer be possible—or will only be possible in artificially cooled spaces. Even in the countries of the Global North, mass mortality is beginning due to overheated living environments. Initially, this will affect older people and those who are already ill, and will then spread to people who would otherwise be considered healthy. Circulatory shock, overheating, and dehydration will then also affect younger people.

It is undisputed that sea levels will rise due to the melting of the poles, the warming of seawater, and the accompanying melting of Arctic ice.

However, a potential average rise of 2.5 meters by 2100 does not represent the extreme level of sea-level rise. During storm surges in particular, the rise in sea level can be several times this value and lead to flooding deep into continental areas. This will also affect the Global North.

Islands, coastal regions, and low-lying inland areas will be flooded, destroying living conditions there and, in turn, triggering migration. Not only will island groups disappear, but large parts of countries such as Bangladesh and India will also be flooded, triggering mass exoduses. In this context, the rise in sea level, combined with the monsoon rains in this region—which are already becoming increasingly devastating—will have a particularly dangerous effect.

The thawing of Arctic and Siberian permafrost, through the associated release of carbon dioxide and methane, will lead to a massive increase in global warming and abruptly intensify all related processes.

In other parts of the world, climate shifts are causing air masses with extremely different temperatures to collide, resulting in devastating storms such as tornadoes and hurricanes. Houses, cars, animals, and people are swept up into the air and smashed to pieces. Skyscrapers collapse, and the infrastructure—including electricity, water, and gas lines, as well as the internet—is irreparably destroyed. Radioactivity is released from destroyed nuclear power plants; it circulates in the Earth’s atmosphere, falls as rain, and will lead to increased rates of cancer and birth defects in humans and animals.

Catastrophic Impact on Social and Political Development on a Global Scale

Massive migration—in the form of mass exoduses or mass migrations—will be triggered by climate change. Migration to date should be viewed, at best, as the tip of the iceberg in this context, as billions of people will set out as refugees if global warming continues unchecked. It is not difficult to imagine the conflicts—including military confrontations—that will arise from these upheavals in the struggle for ecologically intact regions.

Global warming will lead to massive crop failures and associated famines. The global agricultural food system will collapse. The struggle for food and survival will lead to massive price increases, looting, and military conflicts. The call for a heavy hand, for authoritarian leaders, and for police-state methods will grow louder even in democracies.

Far-right governments will attempt, in the interests of their constituencies, to deny climate change and continue to rely on the exploitation of fossil fuels.

The struggle for drinking water will intensify, on the one hand due to increasing periods of drought and, on the other, due to the growing trend toward profit-driven privatization of water sources. Privatized water sources will be guarded by militarized security forces against raids by groups of thirsty people. In drought-stricken areas, people will die of thirst—especially those who no longer have the financial means to purchase water, a scarce and therefore increasingly expensive commodity.

Spratt and Dunlop (2019, 9) describe the societal consequences of climate change even at the 3°C level. States and societies will be overwhelmed and will face extreme collective stress:

The flooding of coastal communities around the world—particularly in the Netherlands, the United States, South Asia, and China—has the potential to call regional and even national identities into question. Armed conflicts between nations over resources such as the Nile and its tributaries are likely, and a nuclear war is possible. The societal consequences range from heightened religious zeal to utter chaos. In this scenario, climate change triggers a lasting change in humanity’s relationship with nature.

Furthermore, if a UN in need of strengthening fails to dissuade unscrupulous governments from the generationally selfish destruction of the rainforest for the purposes of livestock ranching, soybean cultivation, the search for mineral resources, or land speculation, then this, too, will not only destroy the Earth’s lungs but also bring about a drastic climate shift.

Wars raging globally and emissions from explosions and fires exacerbate climate change while simultaneously preventing the affected regions from taking effective measures against this climatic dystopia. The military in active service is becoming the largest institutional global destroyer of the climate.

These are just a few of the developments addressed so far. Threats such as temperature changes and the resulting diversion of the Gulf Stream, the narrowing of the temperature difference between the North Pole and the equator—which leads to a weakening of the jet stream—the release of methane trapped in the seabed, insect die-offs due to the increased use of pesticides in agriculture, the destruction of clean drinking water due to overfertilization of fields, as well as plastic pollution in the oceans and the demise of all life in increasingly larger marine regions are likely to represent additional ecological tipping points that will further exacerbate the massive problems already mentioned.

When Will the “Point of No Return” Be Reached?

The question is when the global situation will reach a point from which there will be no return to ecological balance for many generations to come.

The progression of overpopulation, coupled with unchecked economic growth and rampant consumerism, leads to increased ecological exploitation of the Earth system under the conditions of an increasingly overcrowded planet.

However, it is to be expected that population pressure is not primarily responsible for environmental destruction, but rather, in particular, the irresponsible consumption of resources by the wealthier segment of the world’s population (Roettig 2021).

The “point of no return” is likely to be crossed soon. Once the biosphere’s planetary responses develop an uncontrollable momentum of their own that turns against human civilization and the conditions necessary for all life on Earth, it will be too late—both for prevention and for mitigation.

Over the past 20 years, the planet’s resilience has reached its breaking point; in some areas, it has demonstrably been exceeded.

The Doomsday Clock makes this clear. According to the Doomsday Clock—founded and calculated in 1947 by Albert Einstein, among others—we are already 85 seconds away from the destruction of the planet’s foundations as of February 2026. In 1991, we were still 17 minutes away from destruction.

Eco-Imperialist and Systemic Causes

Violent competition over the use of resources is intensifying as more people’s basic needs—and, in particular, their luxury needs—must be met. Not only the struggle for clean drinking water and food, but also the struggle for lithium, cobalt, uranium, etc., is leading to violent conflicts between different groups of people and regions. German political scientist Hans-Jürgen Burchardt criticizes the fact that the rich industrialized nations are the main contributors to climate change, yet the Global South bears the brunt of its consequences.

Thus, following the phase-out of nuclear power, Germany’s energy transition is also made possible by cheap coal imports from Colombia. There, mining takes place in highly environmentally damaging open-pit mines; entire communities are forcibly displaced for this purpose, and human rights violations are commonplace. Even the much-lauded green economy, which relies on electric mobility, would not be possible without the lithium reserves in the Andes. Locally, however, lithium mining robs residents of their livelihoods.

The war in Ukraine, too, must be viewed not only from a geostrategic perspective but also through an eco-imperialist lens, in which Russia and the US are attempting to divide up Ukraine’s natural resource deposits among themselves.

Conclusion: The Need for a Positive Vision of Social Development

The outline presented here of a dystopia of planetary development—based on a negative ecological scenario—should have made it very clear: If the right decisions are not made in the coming years and drastic systemic changes are not implemented, the destruction of planetary habitats can no longer be stopped. If, in addition to a biosphere in decline, further stressors arise—such as potentially runaway generative AI, authoritarian and aggressively acting nation-states at war with one another, and the threat of a nuclear inferno—this will likely spell the end of humanity. No more and no less.

The ecological dystopia outlined here does not have to come to pass. Everything depends on how responsibly and competently the current generation—which is currently active in the global centers of power—will act, and on the corrective influence that civil society resistance can exert in this regard.

Wendell Berry, who died Monday at the age of 92, was such a great man that I hardly know where to start. He was on the very short list of the best writers of our time: His essays on rural America were the words that launched 10,000 farmers markets; his poems, the staple of many happy weddings (and I’ve peed in a dozen different bathrooms where the Manifesto of the Mad Farmer’s Liberation Front was framed above the toilet). If you’ve never read his short stories of the Port William Membership, or his finest novel, Jayber Crow, you can count yourself lucky that you’ll get to encounter them for the first time.

Berry was also, of course, politically engaged. I remember standing with him 20 years ago, at a protest against the Capitol Hill power plant that I’d asked him to attend. It was a bitterly cold day, and at one point he turned to me and smiled and said, "Do you think maybe they’ll arrest us soon?" He didn’t particularly like movements, but he understood the power of moral witness; he occupied the Kentucky governor’s office, in a protest against mountaintop removal coal mining, with a toothbrush and volume of Shakespeare in his pocket.

And, perhaps above all, his life was a work of both art and politics—his decision to give up a New York lit’ry career and to return instead to the Kentucky of his boyhood, settling along the Ohio River where he and his wife Tanya farmed and he wrote, embodying the commitment to place and community that animated his writing. (His family is asking that in lieu of flowers people might send a donation to the Berry Center that is carrying on his agrarian work).

I was very lucky that my wife handed me a copy of his essay collection Home Economics about 40 years ago, when we were still courting. If I hadn’t fallen under his spell I’m not sure I would have spent my life in rural America, red state and blue; I know that he taught me how to see my town and my county, and my country and my species, in new-old ways that have undergirded all my work. And I’m very glad that we became friends, visiting and writing back and forth. His droll good humor rarely faltered, in my experience. I did not agree with him at all times, nor he with me—though he had solar panels behind his house, for instance, he didn’t think they belonged on farmland, while I think they’re a boon to both farmer and planet. But we agreed on most things of real dimension, and I was always delighted to see in the mailbox a letter with the return address of Port Royal Kentucky. He was one of the last people with whom I had a true written, as opposed to electronic, correspondence. Sometimes he’d tap things out on a manual typewriter, but more often it would be in pencil, on lined yellow paper.

The most recent arrived in July, and after news about grandsons and granddaughters it contained his newest discovery, a 1940 volume titled Stops, A Handbook for Those Who Know Their Punctuation and Those Who Aren’t Quite Sure. He was recommending it to me on the grounds that it is the “only book of my acquaintance that makes grammar delightful,” but also because he’d noted that it was published by the press (now defunct) at Middlebury College, where I teach. So while the rest of us were figuring out how to enlist Claude to help with our composition, one of the best writers of our age was still enjoying sharpening his prose, just as he enjoyed sharpening the tools of his work in field and forest. “I’m writing this on the porch of the ‘camp house,’ still unwired, built, I think, in 1964, in the woods between the river and the road.” He died on that farm on Monday, surrounded by family.

I got the news about his passing even as I was trying to grapple with the latest from a man who will attract more notice when he dies, but less affection. Elon Musk is always advancing his own vision of the world, of course—in fact, he’s just pledged to spend $100 million helping Republicans this fall. Or maybe $200 million—neither would be a noticeable sum to a trillionaire, of course. Whatever good he did with his early advocacy for electric vehicles has now been undone 100 times over with his advocacy for the people who hate EVs and all the other things we need. (He’s, as of last week, building gas turbines to make more electricity for his right-wing Grok AI project, already polluting the air of Black neighborhoods in Memphis).

He offers the Nazi salute; we are at his behest settling thousands of refugees from white South Africa (and no others) in our country; his rancid racism has destroyed Twitter. It would be a pleasure never to think of him again, but because he’s the richest man in the world, one has to monitor what he says. And here’s Monday’s installment, from of course his own social media site:

Extremely severe extinction events happen every 100M years or so and just switching to sustainable energy will not be enough to stop them.

Space satellites to control temperature and massive geo-engineering will be needed or it will be game over.

The disingenuousness of this is remarkable. Extremely severe extinction events have indeed happened just five times in the last half-billion years, which means it would be extremely unlikely we’d spontaneously come across one any time soon: Human civilization is, after all, just 10,000 years old. And yet of course we face one, not because of anything nature has done, but because we’ve filled the air with carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuel, which his allies wish to continue indefinitely. “Just switching to sustainable energy” is in fact the one good, scalable weapon we have to fight that, but since he’s a part of the political movement against this idea, he is now backing an alternative: “space satellites to control temperature,” which he further explains will be accomplished by a “super-intelligent swarm” of “sentient satellites, launched into Earth-Sun Lagrange points by mass drivers on the Moon.”

This is the kind of fantasy that drove Berry to distraction (and to work)—all about control and domination, all done by the few to the many, utterly ignorant of context. Immodest in every way.

But in Musk’s case it was accompanied by another revelation that began to emerge over the weekend. It turns out that the human toll of the horrific rampaging floods on the Nepal-Tibet border may well have been exacerbated by Musk’s decision to destroy the US Agency for International Development early in the DOGE assault on our government. USAID, in collaboration with NASA, helped maintain a network of monitors high in the Himalayas and Hindu Kush. Musk, in February 2025, “spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Could gone to some great parties. Did that instead.” One casualty was apparently this network. As Jeremy Konyndyk, who oversaw America’s response to the 2015 Nepal earthquake, wrote this weekend on (ironically) X:

DOGE famously used keyword searches for terms like "climate" to terminate federal grants. Among the victims: a collab between USAID and NASA for flood prediction, early warning, disaster readiness, glacier inventories, and mapping dangerous glacial lakes in Nepal.

As Konyndyk added:

Could these programs have helped foresee or mitigate this week's glacial flooding catastrophe? Hard to say with an outlier event like this. But that was their purpose.

Sadly, it's hard to anticipate or mitigate climate hazards which your ideology has decreed do not exist.

Musk’s victims already number in the millions—a Lancet study predicts 14 million by 2030 as the indirect results of shutting down America’s humanitarian work, which puts him up there in the Stalin-Mao category, and almost certainly the most deadly human of this millennium. So maybe a few thousand more people hardly matter.

But contrast what Musk did with the actions of a principal at a school along the river. When a friend upstream phoned one of his teachers a blurted warning, he immediately evacuated the entire student body, saving at least 900 lives. Given a warning, he acted (precisely what the world has not done with climate change). “I thought that even if the warning turned out to be wrong, the worst it would cost us was one day of study,” Rajendra Dawadi said. “But taking it lightly could mean the loss of hundreds of lives.”

Principal Dawadi will spend the rest of his life going to the weddings of the students whose lives he saved, and I imagine there will be no small number of babies named in his honor. Elon Musk’s name will be cursed—the richest man in human history, who used his wealth and power to kill the most vulnerable people on the planet.

Here is a recent poem of Wendell Berry’s, published in The New Yorker less than a year ago and titled "The Loved Ones":

The loved ones we call the dead
depart from us and for a while
are absent. And then as if
called back by our love, they come
near us again. They enter our dreams.
We feel they have been near us
when we have not thought of them.
They are simply here, simply waiting
while we are distracted among
our obligations. At last
it comes to us: They live now
in the permanent world.
We are the absent ones.

A new University of Massachusetts-Amherst opinion poll, conducted August 21-26, finds profound American disillusionment with President Donald Trump, with his Iran War, and with its economic fallout in their lives.

Apparently the Ellison family’s attempt to drum up support for Donald Trump and his Iran War by buying up CBS News and gutting it as a respected news organization was a costly failure. Likewise, Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp and his various pro-Trump organs, from Fox Cable News to The Wall Street Journal, have not pulled the wool over the public’s eyes in the ways that Murdoch hoped. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boasted of the effort he expended convincing the American people to go to war with Iran, saying he had a thousand hours on US television , but while he may have prevailed on the gullible and avaricious Trump to fall on that country like a ravenous wolf, he did not succeed in altering the views of the American public on the desirability of such a war. The only significant impact of Netanyahu on most Americans has been to convince them that the Israeli government is a combination of genocidal maniacs and welfare queens that Americans should cut off economically and perhaps even militarily.

The UMass poll asked a weighted sample of respondents how well Trump has handled his Iran War. The response of 55% of those asked this question was “not well at all.” Ouch. Another 13% replied “not too well.” So 68%, over two-thirds, think he has done a piss-poor job on his Iran War, which was his war of choice. Two-thirds is the percentage needed in the Senate to impeach and remove a president, so if our representatives actually mirrored public opinion, Trump would be toast.

That question had to do with Trump’s handling of the war. Asked whether they approved of the war on Iran, a majority, 54%, said they strongly or somewhat disapproved, and another 20% were noncommittal, which I would interpret as not actively supporting the war even if they didn’t particularly oppose it. Those statistics yield a picture of a war that nearly three-fourths of Americans either oppose or about which they just don’t care. It isn’t what the commander of a war would want to hear from his own public.

Trump and the Republicans are always campaigning on being the party of business and therefore the party that knows how to handle the economy, but only a tiny minority, 7%, think Trump is handling the economy very well.

A majority think the war was a mistake and question whether it has made the US safer or forestalled an Iranian bomb.

Another way of putting it is that only about a quarter of respondents think the US should have gone to war with Iran, and that the US is winning.

The UMass report on the opinion poll noted that Raymond La Raja, professor of political science at UMass Amherst and co-director of the poll, said, “Americans are overwhelmingly negative about Trump on the Iran situation.” He continued: “Only 1 in 4 Americans thinks he is handling Iran well. The real divide is increasingly between Trump’s hardcore MAGA base and almost everyone else. Among Republicans who identify very strongly with MAGA, 87% approve of Trump’s handling of Iran. But that falls to 58% among Republicans who are ‘somewhat MAGA’ and just 30% among Republicans who say they are ‘not MAGA at all.’ The more loosely attached Republicans are to the MAGA identity, the more skeptical they are of the war.”

Conducting a war in the Middle East, as even the cowboys in the G. W. Bush administration recognized, requires at least some allies. But Americans don’t think Trump plays well with other children. Asked how he has handled working with allies in global affairs, 52% say “not well at all” and 12% say “not too well,” showing that nearly two-thirds view his foreign policy performance negatively.

Based on this sounding, we can further project that Americans are even more angry about the main fallout of the failed war on Iran, which is high inflation. Fully 80% of respondents said that the Iran War has increased the cost of gasoline and groceries. Asked about how Trump has dealt with inflation, 57% responded, “not well at all.” A further 18% said “not too well.” That is 75%, fully three-fourths, who disapprove of his handling of inflation. Trump and the Republicans are always campaigning on being the party of business and therefore the party that knows how to handle the economy, but only a tiny minority, 7%, think Trump is handling the economy very well, and I presume they are wealthy investors in Trump’s casino stock market. The tech-heavy Nasdaq is up 14-16% so far this year.

Cuba is starving. Iran is being economically cut off from the world. And Russia is the target of a sanctions regime unlike any that a major nation has ever faced.

The US secretary of state has abandoned his post to play viceroy of Venezuela, and his role has been filled by the amateur team of Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. American evolution has favoured the Pentagon and Treasury, while the State Department has gone extinct. Coercion is America’s only foreign policy strategy, and bombs, sanctions, and tariffs are its only tools. The US “will negotiate with bombs” and with “economic statecraft.”

Canada, previously America’s closest ally and its second largest trading partner, is now feeling the weight of that coercion in an economic assault unimaginable for most of the modern history of Canadian-American relations. The relationship changed at the start of President Donald Trump’s second term when he announced that he was prepared to use “economic force” to absorb Canada into the United States. “You’re at war when you get attacked,” Canada’s Prime Minister, Mark Carney, said. “We got attacked.” Canada has been subjected to economy-crushing tariffs and warned to “fall in line or, the consequences for Canada will be far WORSE!”

The punishing 50% tariffs are meant to coerce Canada into surrendering aspects of its sovereignty. Part of what caused the latest round of trade talks to explode was demands that made Canada “a subsidiary of the United States” and “compromise[d] Canada’s sovereignty.”

The US is no longer a hegemon that leads for the mutual benefit of the West. It is a bully that coerces its former friends to “fall in line” for the singular benefit of America.

The US reportedly demanded compromises on the protection of French language and culture that is essential to Canadian federalism and unity. The US wanted Canada to repeal laws that promote French language shows to Canadian subscribers of streaming platforms and wave requirements that package labeling be in French as well as English (a demand the US now seems to have dropped).

They also demanded fealty on crucial trade decisions. The Trump administration demanded that Canada comply with American demands on what tariffs it places on other countries and what countries it trades with. Negotiators went so far as to insist on the right “to review and potentially dictate the terms for Canada’s trade agreements with other countries.” American dominance would be enshrined with the prerogative “to change tariff policy against Canada at any time, irrespective of the agreement.”

The US had already set the precedent for this imperial strategy in other countries. In March, Trump declared that he “will be having the honor of taking Cuba.” Toward that end, he cut Cuba off, mandating that “THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA—ZERO,” adding that “I strongly suggest they make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.” He then signed an executive order imposing tariffs on any country that sends oil to Cuba.

Despite the devastation that embargo has caused the people of Cuba, the Trump administration has continued to tighten its stranglehold, ever increasing the sanctions. “We have a pretty deep toolbox, especially when it comes to sanctions and enforcing them,” a senior administration official told Axios. “More is on the way.” On August 20, the US announced further sanctions.

The same playbook is being employed in Iran where Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who has become Trump’s chief executioner, has boasted of America’s ability to starve people into the streets and countries into submission. “President Trump ordered… maximum pressure on Iran. And it’s worked,” he said, “because in December, their economy collapsed... and this is why the people took to the street. This is economic statecraft.” Bessent told the Senate Banking Committee that “what we have done is created a dollar shortage in the country… The Iranian currency went into free fall, inflation exploded, and hence we have seen the Iranian people out on the street.”

But neither the people in the streets nor the brutal bombing campaign accomplished America’s goals in Iran. So, Washington turned to intensified economic warfare. Bessent has threatened the “toughest sanctions in history.” Trump called it “economic D-day,” "Economic Warfare and Isolation on an unprecedented scale.”

But the coercion extended beyond Iran. Trump warned that “ANY country that… provide[s] any type of lifeline to Iran will itself face TREMENDOUS Economic Consequences.” Bessent provided the details, announcing “an economic onslaught against Iran’s financial connections around the globe.” He said, “Our objective is to sever every economic lifeline that sustains this tyrannical regime until it stands alone.” He then threatened that “any economic engagement of any kind with this murderous regime will expose those responsible to the full reach of American power.”

That global coercion is being challenged. China called the US threat “illegal unilateral sanctions” and promised that it will “take all necessary measures to firmly safeguard its own rights and interests.” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said, “Cooperation between China and Iran has always been conducted within the framework of international law and should not be interfered with or disrupted."

Shockingly, like Cuba, neither Russia, Iran, nor Canada have backed down. Though Canada can hardly be called a fellow traveler of Russia or Iran, it has learned similar lessons and come to similar conclusions.

Like Russia, Canada has learned that, in the face of tariffs or sanctions, it must rely less on the US and more on itself. Russia has tried to substitute lost American business with domestic replacements. “Building at home,” Carney said, is “our plan A.” He says that Canada is “focused on building strength at home…. Launching big nation-building projects…. And… building Canada strong.”

Like Iran, Canada has learned that America’s “signature [is] written in pencil” and that countries negotiating with the US need to call “into question the reliability of any deal.” Like Iran, Canada has learned that deals with the US can be broken, like the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear agreement and the US-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement. Like Iran, Canada has learned not to make any concessions in exchange for future promises but to get everything guaranteed up front because the US can change the terms any time, irrespective of the agreement.

The US is no longer a hegemon that leads for the mutual benefit of the West. It is a bully that coerces its former friends to “fall in line” for the singular benefit of America. Its former friends follow, no longer out of partnership, but out of fear.

While the US has a long history of signing treaties, making commitments, and then walking away from them (ask Native American tribes about this), this century’s record of American policy in the Middle East is something quite extraordinary. Dramatic policy shifts, broken treaties, promises made and forgotten, foolish wars fought without attention paid to the mess left for others, and the shattering of international law and conventions—all of these have done substantial damage to the region and to the trust that others have in the US.

It’s convenient for Republicans and Democrats to point the finger at the “other side” for America’s loss of standing and support in the world. In reality, there’s plenty of blame to be shared by all of this century’s administrations. President George W. Bush started the disastrous wars and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, but Presidents Barack Obama and Joseph Biden ended both badly, compounding the damage that had been done. And while Bush may have flaunted international law and conventions with the use of torture, rendition, and extrajudicial targeted killings, Obama further undermined the US’s commitment to the rule of law by refusing to call for accountability for these crimes.

Biden waxed eloquent in his defense of what he called the “international rules-based order.” But he undercut himself when it became clear that his commitment was selective since it only applied to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and not to Israel’s genocidal policies in Palestine.

And speaking of Palestine, during the first quarter of this century, no administration has taken the firm measures needed to curb Israeli behaviors in the occupied Palestinian territories or in Lebanon and now Syria. The impact has been clear: Israel acts with impunity, Palestinians have lost hope, and the people of the region have lost even a shred of belief that the US can play a constructive role in peacemaking.

Upon this dismal record of this century’s first four administrations, President Donald Trump, since reentering the White House in 2025, has pounded the final nail in the coffin of trust for American leadership in the Middle East.

While on one occasion Biden went to UN Security Council and secured passage of a ceasefire for Gaza—telling the council that Israel approved it, knowing full well that Israel had not agreed to its terms—Trump has taken this practice of dissembling even further. With great fanfare he assembled leaders to an event celebrating his 20-point peace plan to end the Gaza conflict. The problem, of course, was that none of the combatant parties—neither Hamas nor especially Israel—had agreed to its terms. And Trump’s boastful handling of his war with Iran has reached new levels of absurdity. On at least 42 occasions he has announced that the war was over, he had won, or that Iran was begging to negotiate on his terms, only to pivot a day or two later threatening, in violent or vulgar language, to obliterate Iran if they didn’t, as he put it, “wave the white flag” of surrender.

Added to this mess are the thousands of Lebanese who’ve been killed and the scores of villages laid waste by Israel since the Trump-backed ceasefire, the displacement and frightening violence that Israeli settlers and soldiers are wreaking in the West Bank, the continuing genocide unfolding in Gaza, and the insecurity in the Arab Gulf States housing US bases which are being recklessly attacked by Iranian missiles and drones. It is no wonder that Arabs have lost faith not only in the US’s commitment to regional peace and security, but also to the trustworthiness of the US as an ally.

A problem so big can’t be fixed by one US election. After decades of a dizzying roller coaster ride of wars based on lies, violations of international laws and conventions, promises made and then broken, and now an administration that acts impulsively and makes contradictory pronouncements as if words have no meaning—trust has been lost.

After the disasters resulting from the Bush administration’s Iraq war, its anti-Arab, anti-Muslim domestic policies, and its ill-conceived “democracy agenda,” President Obama traveled to Cairo to deliver a speech designed to open a new chapter in US relations with the region. After seven years without decisive follow-through on the promises he’d made in his Cairo address, Obama gave a long interview to The Atlantic Magazine in which he blamed the Arabs for not doing enough. When I spoke with him about the speech and that interview, he told me that the expectations of the Arabs had been too high. I responded that he was the one who set the high expectations and made the promises that he would “change Washington, change America, and change the world.” “Don’t blame them,” I said, “for believing you.”

What’s evident now is that the Arab world isn’t believing US promises or even our words. They are beginning to find their way in a post-US world order by creating new alliances, finding new partners, and putting their own interests first. If the US is to even have a place in this new order, we will need more than a just a new president with promises of change. What will be required is a thoughtful examination of our decades of shortcomings and betrayals leading to new policies toward justice for Palestinians and regional partnerships and security. But acknowledging the problems is only the first step. A demonstrated and sustained commitment to implement a changed approach to the multiple crises we have helped to create or exacerbate across the region must follow. Since it took us a generation to dig deep holes for ourselves in the Arab World, getting out won’t be quick or easy. Restoring trust will take time and hard work.

Donald Trump is not very good at running the economy, but he does have a great imagination about how he runs the economy. Trump continually boasts about the incredible amount of foreign investment coming into the country. It was $20 trillion last I heard, but it might be up to $30 or $40 trillion the next time Trump decides to boast about it.

This boast has absolutely nothing to do with reality. Contrary to what Trump says, there is no boom in auto factories or any other factories coming into the United States. Factory construction has actually plummeted since Trump came into the White House, after booming under Biden.

The looniness about the investment boom should be kept in mind when considering Trump’s deal to take control of 65 billion barrels of Venezuela’s oil. Trump is promising that this deal will both lower gas prices and be used to refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserves that he has largely drained as a result of his war on Iran.

If Venezuela doesn’t honor this deal, what will a future administration do, take them to court? Or will they send US soldiers to die for Venezuela’s oil?

While people are naturally offended by the blatant imperialism in this deal, that is precisely the reason why there is not much cause to be concerned. The basic story is, because the deal is so transparently an effort by the United States to steal oil from a country that it controls militarily, it is virtually guaranteed that as soon as the country is not run by a U.S.-installed dictator, Trump’s deal will be dumped in the trash.

This point was well-made by Venezuelan economist and opposition leader Ricardo Haussman (also cited in a piece by Michael Tomasky in The New Republic). The deal is seen as a joke by pretty much everyone in Venezuela.

If Venezuela doesn’t honor this deal, what will a future administration do, take them to court? Or will they send US soldiers to die for Venezuela’s oil?

In terms of its immediate impact, there is not some spigot that can be turned on that will get massive amounts of Venezuela’s oil flowing. It’s currently producing around 1.25 million barrels a day. While it has massive reserves, its production facilities deteriorated badly as a result of U.S. sanctions. The country was largely unable to get needed parts, and it lacked funding because it was prevented from selling its oil to much of the world.

Oil production can only get back to its 3 million barrel a day turn-of-the-century pace with billions of dollars of foreign investment. It is unlikely that this deal will make companies happier about putting large sums at risk. Any investment will only pay off over many years, long after Trump will be out of office.

It also is not plausible to use Venezuela’s oil to refill the Strategic Reserves. Venezuela’s oil is very heavy and highly acidic. The Strategic Reserve is designed for light, alkaline oil. It could not easily store Venezuela’s oil.

In short, file Trump’s Venezuelan oil deal with the $60 trillion in foreign investment pouring into the country. It exists only in his head.

Simon Bolivar, the great liberator of South America, famously observed, “The United States appear(s) to be destined by Providence to plague America with misery in the name of liberty.” For 200 years, US leaders have never proved him wrong.

In the early 1800s, Bolivar led what is now Venezuela and five other countries to independence from the Spanish Empire. But the United States still refuses to recognize the independence of other countries in the region. Wannabe emperor Donald Trump even refers to Canadian prime minister Mark Carney as a “governor,” as if Canada was merely another US state.

The US-backed despots replacing popular democratic and socialist governments across Latin America today are indeed doing so in the name of liberty, as Bolivar warned. But in practice this means only the liberty of traditional ruling classes to exploit, impoverish and kill their less privileged neighbors, formerly as conquistadors and compradors for the Spanish Empire and now as agents of the US government and transnational corporations.

Trump’s 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) vowed to “restore American preeminence in the Western hemisphere.” It reiterated the 19th century Monroe Doctrine, demanded “sole source contracts to our companies,” and promised to “push out foreign countries that build infrastructure in the region.”

Then came the most blatant demonstration of what Trump’s new Monroe Doctrine means in practice: the US invasion of Venezuela. On January 3, 2026, US forces bombed targets in Venezuela, stormed Caracas and kidnapped President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Trump has openly declared that the United States would “run” Venezuela and recently claimed that the U.S. had secured the biggest oil deal in world history.

And Venezuela is not the only place where the US is using military force. The “war on drugs” has become a pretext for expanding US military power throughout the region. Since September 2025, the US military has incinerated small boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing at least 227 people without providing proof that they committed any crime. US forces are now participating in counternarcotics operations inside Ecuador, while the Trump administration is seeking similar joint military operations in Colombia, Honduras and other countries.

But military force is only one weapon in Washington’s arsenal. Trump has also cajoled, threatened and encouraged people throughout Latin America to elect extreme right-wing authoritarian presidents in his own image. Before Argentina’s 2025 midterm elections, Trump offered Javier Milei’s far-right government a $20 billion currency lifeline and backed another $20 billion in financing, while warning that US generosity depended on Milei’s political success. After Milei’s party won, Trump boasted, “He had a lot of help from us.”

Across the continent—from Colombia and Peru to Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Honduras, Bolivia and Panama—there has been a stark reversal of the region's progressive pink tide that brought hope for a more independent and socially just Latin America. The only two major powers in Latin America still governed by the left are Mexico and Brazil—and Brazil faces a fiercely contested presidential election in October.

The progressive coalitions that came to power in Latin America had forged impressive grassroots ties between indigenous and rural communities in heavily exploited areas and urban working classes, linking struggles over identity, land and sovereignty with struggles over class and economic justice. But these broad coalitions were fragile, while the economic and institutional power of entrenched oligarchies remained largely intact. Those elites were never going to surrender their wealth and power without a fight.

And that fight is hardly unique to Latin America. In the United States, oligarchs are reacting furiously to the election victories of democratic socialists, who propose real-world solutions to America’s problems that would improve ordinary people’s lives instead of making the rich even richer, as our current system of neoliberal capitalism demands. In Latin America and the Caribbean, the same battle is playing out on a larger and often more brutal scale.

The right has capitalized on genuine voter concerns about crime, drug trafficking, economic hardship and, in some cases, immigration. Promises to eradicate violent crime through harsh crackdowns modeled on El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele resonate with many voters.

Just as Americans who are disillusioned by economic insecurity and the broken promises of the Democrats have turned to Donald Trump and the Republicans as the only alternative on offer within this undemocratic two-party system, elections in Latin America present voters with similarly narrow and deliberately confusing choices that can lead to the election of Trump-allied right-wing governments.

This pattern is also reflected in the news media that frame these choices for voters. Since the 1980s, Latin American broadcast media have become increasingly dominated by a small number of large commercial conglomerates, mostly tied to wealthy, powerful families. Latin America lacks the public broadcasting and community media that balance the dominance of commercial media in other parts of the world, although, as in the United States, there is a small but growing alternative media movement, with outlets like TeleSur, Brasil do Fato, La Jornada and Kawsachun News.

The United States also has a narrow range of dominant corporate media, but Latin America’s media are even more concentrated and responsive to oligarchic interests. The market concentration of Latin American media conglomerates is among the highest in the world, with four transnational companies controlling 89% of the broadcast media across six major countries, while Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim has the largest media holdings anywhere. The market power of these huge media conglomerates is a real obstacle to any movement for democracy or socialism.

Another major factor working against progressive forces is direct intervention from the United States. As working people come together to organize coalitions for structural change in Latin America and the Caribbean, the United States pours money into right-wing political movements to counter them.

The US-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED), has spent billions of dollars to interfere in the political systems of countries around the world, especially to organize opposition to governments that won’t take orders from Washington. Allan Weinstein, who helped to create the NED, told the Washington Post in 1991, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”

The NED’s annual budget for Latin America and the Caribbean in 2025 was $36.7 million. But the NED spends most of its money in the countries where the US has the least influence, so it spent the largest amounts in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, and the most globally in China and Russia.

In countries where the US already has more influence through existing ruling classes and captive corporate media, it protects and promotes its interests through ideologically-crafted NGOs. Some receive direct US funding, while others are funded by corporate sponsors and foundations.

An organization that plays an outsized role in Latin America is the Atlas Network, a sprawling international network that brings together corporate interests, conservative donors and extreme right-wing groups to coordinate their activities. The Atlas Network receives no direct US government funding, but the US does fund many of the NGOs and foundations that Atlas works with to build right-wing coalitions and parties.

Atlas Network was founded in San Francisco in 1981 by Sir Antony Fisher, a British businessman and a colleague of Margaret Thatcher, Milton Friedman and F.A. Hayek, who all reportedly approved of his Atlas Network project. Atlas works in the shadows as “a think tank that creates think tanks,” and trains its partners on “how to win the battle for hearts and minds.” It has annual revenue of $28 million and works with more than 500 partner organizations in nearly 100 countries.

Atlas has a long history of connections to powerful corporate interests. In the 1990s it was strongly linked with the tobacco industry, and the UK’s Tobacco Control Research Group reported that Atlas “appears to have played a particular role in helping the tobacco industry oppose tobacco control measures in Latin America.” Atlas also has long-standing links with ExxonMobil and the Charles Koch Foundation.

More recently, the Atlas Network has been linked to Donald Trump, the Brexit campaign in the UK, and to protest movements against left-wing governments in Latin America.

Atlas and its partners set up fake online accounts to boost the #SOSCuba campaign on Twitter during protests in Cuba in 2021, and also ran trolling campaigns during the 2019 coup in Bolivia and elections in Ecuador and Peru. Atlas also worked with the now jailed Argentine right-wing fixer Fernando Cemedo to orchestrate “Gen Z” protests against the Scheinbaum government in Mexico in November 2025.

In Brazil, where agribusiness is gradually destroying the Amazon rainforest, climate science denial is a central part of Atlas’s work. Atlas Network sponsors the annual Liberty Forum, which brings right-wing groups together with the agribusiness industry to plan their strategy and messaging in Brazil. Atlas’s main partner organizing the Liberty Forums is the libertarian Institute for Business Studies, which has close links to the jailed former president Jair Bolsonaro. His son, Flavio, is challenging President Lula in October’s presidential election.

Another influential US ideological export to Latin America is evangelical protestant Christianity, which has grown from 4% of the population 50 years ago to 20-25% today. As in the United States, evangelical Christianity is a political force as much as a religion, leading movements against abortion, homosexuality and liberal, scientific education, and often supporting brutal state violence in the name of law and order.

The spread of evangelical christianity in Latin America was a deliberate Cold War policy launched by the US Information Agency in 1954 as a weapon against communism and later used to counter the growing influence of liberation theology among Catholics.

By the 1980s, Guatemala had its first evangelical president, Efrain Rios Montt, who seized power in a 1982 coup and conducted a US-backed genocide against the Mayan indigenous people, particularly the Ixil. Ríos Montt’s evangelical faith helped him cultivate powerful allies among US evangelicals, who raised money for his regime and lobbied Congress to restore US military aid even as evidence of massacres mounted.

Incredibly, evangelical Christianity has kept spreading in Guatemala since the end of the civil war in the 1990s, even among the Ixil themselves. The evangelical religion has become deeply rooted in the Ixil region even as survivors have struggled with the legacy of a genocide carried out under an evangelical dictator.

On a trip to Guatemala, Nicolas met a family in Ixil whose father was beheaded by an army death squad, after being accused of giving food to the Guerrilla Army of the Poor. His widow joined a weaving collective of genocide survivors, working long hours on a back-strap loom to weave the beautiful, intricate geometric designs that Ixil women are famous for. And yet, like many Ixil families in the decades since the genocide, the family had also joined an evangelical church.

It is tragic to see the recent resurgence of right-wing parties and politicians in Latin America and the Caribbean, but indigenous and working people are resisting, and they deserve our solidarity.

The mostly indigenous people of Bolivia have endured two right-wing coups in less than 10 years, but they have learned that when they say “No,” they have the power to down tools, withdraw their labor, block the roads and shut down the system that provides profits to the ruling class. They deserve our support.

The people of Cuba are enduring their worst test since the revolution, as the United States tightens its already deadly blockade, denying them fuel, electricity, medicine and even food. Many are dying of preventable causes at the hands of Trump and the US government. For 68 years, American politicians of both parties have tried and failed to snuff out this dangerous example of a poor country that, until this latest brutal escalation of the blockade, provided better healthcare to its people than the United States does. They too deserve our support.

The people of Brazil are going to the polls, and millions are standing up to Trump’s threats, manipulation by the Atlas Network, hypocritical sermons in evangelical churches, and the sneering arrogance and greed of Bolsonaro and his cronies. They too deserve our support.

In Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Honduras, brave people are already resisting the austerity and abuses of new right-wing rulers, as they have all done many times before. They all deserve our support.

In much of Latin America, the right’s grip on power is tenuous. The recent presidential elections in Colombia and Peru were extraordinarily close and many new right-wing governments face deeply divided parliaments and powerful opposition movements. We might well see a new wave of progressive politicians taking power across the region in less than four years.

For those of us in the United States, our job is to stop our government from interfering. While Simon Bolivar has been right for 200 years, the US is not doomed to act this way forever. It can and must stop exploiting, impoverishing and killing its neighbors.

August 31, 2026

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries
U.S. House of Representatives
2267 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Rep. Jeffries,

Like other civic advocates, I read the New York Times and Wall Street Journal articles about your private meeting with Jared Kushner, Trump’s amateur Ambassador at Large, who is also furiously seeking investment opportunities while abroad. It is not difficult to read between the lines. You’re seeking a deal, should you be chosen as House Speaker in January. Trump also wants a deal as—you will hold off any Impeachment initiative, and in exchange, he will not oppose some undefined bills that you want to pass.

You can rebut this supposition by announcing very soon that you will seek to impeach Trump once the Democrats take over the House. About 90% of Democratic voters and two-thirds of independent voters want “Impeachment Now” (see Celinda Lake’s polls.) This is what the Bar of the City of New York urgently concluded, following two detailed reports on Trump’s executive violations of law in December and March. (See “The Abuse of Presidential Power and Breach of Public Trust” and “The Crisis Deepens: Congress Must Act Now to Address Escalating Abuses of Executive Power”.)

When asked about your stand on Impeachment in April by a reporter, you replied: “I don’t want to get ahead of that discussion.” What? Don’t want to get ahead of 90% of Democratic voters? Don’t want to move to fire an outlaw, corrupt, violent, raving racist, and serial sexual abuser of women? A dangerously unstable dictator (see April 30, 2026 Congressional Record) who is wrecking, endangering, and weakening America, making life more unaffordable for tens of millions of lower-income Americans and their children, many of whom are losing their Medicaid, food stamps, and health and safety protections? You are signaling that Trump has two more unchallenged years to destroy our Republic and the Constitution for which it stands. Adamant in drafting our Constitution to block any “monarchs,” what would our Founding Fathers have done?

Observers of your brand of politics know your game, Mr. Jeffries. Nonetheless, some weeks ago, your Executive Director Gideon Bragin told a respected intermediary that he was okay with receiving my suggestions for landsliding the GOP. You were sent a few pages, which your office received, but did not even courteously acknowledge, much less respond substantially. This is typical of the Democratic leadership’s incommunicado attitude toward independent citizen groups. (See the report The Incommunicados.)

Being control freaks, the Democratic leadership does not like “mandates.” Which is why they do not like popular Pledges, Compacts, or Contracts for the American People or for American Workers. When former Secretary of Labor, bestselling author, and popular podcaster Robert Reich sent his Party’s leaders a list of “What Democrats Must Pledge to America,” in December 2025, he probably expected a response. To date, not a single response from anyone in the so-called leadership of the Party. Many of his proposals are New Deal updates that test well with liberals and many conservative families where they live, work, and raise their families. NO RESPONSE!

We know the game, Mr. Jeffries. But in these times and with some stunning primary elections, it is a game that won’t be as easily played with impunity as in previous years under Speaker Pelosi. You may wish to refine your political antennae and answer the question most asked by voters, which is, “What does the Democratic Party stand for?” other than scapegoating when it loses to the most cruel, corrupt, anti-worker, corporatist GOP in history.

Having huddled with the genocide-backer Kushner, how can you continue not to meet with National citizen groups like Public Citizen, Common Cause, People for the American Way, Pension Rights Center, and others familiar to you as long-time advocates for policies that the past Democratic Party used to find commendable and support on Capitol Hill? No more excluding them, despite what your corporate-conflicted consultants advise. Also, no more of your silencing House Democrats from even talking about Impeachment. Under Rule 9, there will be a vote on an impeachment resolution after Labor Day, which you should support and NOT join Trump in opposing. (See Rep. John Larson’s H.Res 1155 and the April and July citizen impeachment symposiums on Capitol Hill.)

Ask yourself, is Trump going to continue becoming worse—violently and cruelly worse—both domestically and abroad without a mounting deterrence as in a fast-rising Impeachment Drive?

Would not such an Impeachment Drive led by the Democratic Party galvanize its voters—seeking fighters on their behalf—and increase voter turnout for a decisive November victory, not a marginal, unworkable majority?

If your answer is YES to both questions, what are you waiting for? If your answer is NO, what are you waiting for? More destruction of the living conditions of the American people, including loss of life to blatantly neglected natural disasters, the closure or depletion of crucial scientific alert and research programs, political brutalities, Trump’s inflation and job losses, and his “endless wars” and attacks and crazed military threats abroad? So you can cut deals with a treacherous Trump with his record of betrayals?? (See New York Times: “The Autocracy Index: The editorial board tracks 12 markers of democratic erosion” and “Trump’s Broken Promises, in 11 Charts”.)

You and your Party need to be seriously introspective about your mounting political disasters, the independent exclusion of input from progressive citizen groups and progressive labor unions that decades ago so assisted the Party’s better angels in enacting key legislation. (See When the Senate Worked for Us: The Invisible Role of Staffers in Countering Corporate Lobbies by Michael Perschuk, Vanderbilt University Press).

First introspection: Twice Democrats lost to the corrupt, chronically lying, corporatist, and failed gambling czar when you should have defeated him and his GOP handily. You and the Party stubbornly want to win, having years ago electorally abandoned almost half the country (red states), but without upsetting your paymasters. These are principally Wall Street, AIPAC and the military industry. Your corporate-conflicted consultants, to whom you have contracted out so much of the Party’s campaigns, lean strongly in that direction.

Back in 1994, I called the savvy Elizabeth Moynihan. She told me she had just fired Senator Pat Moynihan’s re-election consultants and is taking over management of his campaign. She firmly added: “These consultants are destroying the Democratic Party.”

How do you explain the Democratic Party’s failure at numerous critical junctures to stop Trump’s presidential campaigns? Trump’s energy levels to overcome impossible odds in 2016 and even more in 2024 tower above the feeble, indecisive ways of the Democratic Party. Your Party totally bungled, letting Trump continue to destroy our Democracy despite serious indictments, becoming a convicted felon, being sued, and being credibly charged with sexually abusing five dozen women. Trump is a foul-mouthed racist/bigot who constantly used defamatory language, such as against fallen GIs in World War II (a serial draft dodger, no less), and who was profiteering in suspect manners. He was low in the polls, and was widely condemned for his initiatory role inciting the January 6, 2020 insurrection in Congress, taking lives and causing injuries of many defending Capitol Police and other casualties. Still, he defeated your Party in 2024!

Who could overcome such odds and win the presidency? Someone with towering egomaniacal energy, opposed by the anemic, indentured Democratic Party that refuses to replace losers with new progressive energy. Indeed, losers get promoted, such as heading the Democratic National Committee, while presumptive presidential winners like Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020 are sabotaged by Party apparatchiks and their large donors.

More basically, the Party has become about raising money in place of credibly advancing progressive policies and programs. The almighty campaign dollars leave raising the paltry federal minimum wage ($7.25 per hour) to one-liners that your voting public doesn’t believe, or not taking up authentic full Medicare for all – which you just stunningly came out against!! Throwaway one-liners, like cracking down on corporate crooks, are not believable, because of the Party’s terrible record regarding corporate crime waves and massive corporate welfare. The same is true for not challenging Trump’s enormous 2017 tax cuts for the rich and big corporations when the Democrats took the House in January 2019. House Ways and Means Chair Richard Neal (D-MA), astonishingly announced on opening day that he was not going to reopen these deficit-ballooning tax cuts, depriving investments in public works and services throughout communities nationwide.

Then, of course, there is the long-sustained Democratic Party of overseas Empire, of a runaway unaudited – as long required by federal law – military budget and the aiding and abetting of Netanyahu’s genocidal mass murder and starvation of infants, children, mothers and fathers in Gaza, using U.S. bombs you voted for to drop the TNT equivalent of over eight Hiroshima bombs on that tiny enclave, the geographical size of Philadelphia, crowded with defenseless families having nothing to do with October 7, 2023, and the prior bombing raids by Israeli F-16s in the previous decades. Still, you proudly remain one of the top beneficiaries of AIPAC, which is the reason you and Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) didn’t endorse your newly elected Mayor, Zohran Mamdani.

More introspection may lead you to ask yourself whether you are up to leading the House Democrats in their immense and immediate tasks of policy and program restorations and adopting our Constitution’s mandated Congressional independence from the Presidency for the protection and advancement of the livelihoods, peace and freedoms of the American people. There is no indication that you are so willing and prepared. Unfortunately.

Your response is invited.

Sincerely,

Sincerely,
Ralph Nader

Members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are proud to wear their socialism on their sleeves (and on their hats.) It lets everyone know they are serious about changing capitalism into something far more humane, transforming the system into one in which working people rather than plutocrats run the economy.

Their embrace of socialism also gives its members a sense of community. It signals a commonality in opposition to the status quo, on behalf of all working people. It’s a righteous identity that signals us against them, right against wrong, justice against injustice—a moral, almost religious bonding.

However, it also pushes people away. It creates a demarcation line between in and out. It’s not just the capitalists who are excluded, but anyone who doesn’t buy into DSA’s vision of socialism.

But why wouldn’t all working people readily embrace DSA’s socialist vision?

Let’s look at how the DSA defines its socialism:

• Capitalism is a system designed by the owning class to exploit the rest of us for their own profit.
• We must replace it with democratic socialism, a system in which ordinary people have a real voice in our workplaces, neighborhoods, and society.
• The people should collectively own key economic drivers, such as energy production and transportation, that are used by all.
• We want the multiracial working class united in solidarity instead of divided by fear.
• We want reforms, such as Medicare for All, community-centered public safety, and the Green New Deal, that the current establishment considers radical but we think are essential for a fairer system.

So far, that sounds within the realm of progressive economic populism. Even doable, I hope, but then they go further:

• Work as much as you are able and no more than needed. Control your own labor and see it going to good use. Work is not just a job to pay the bills.
• You have no debt. You don’t need health insurance. You don’t pay a mortgage or have a landlord, no rent, because comfortable housing is a human right.
• Your retirement is publicly funded. Food, education, energy, medicine, and transportation aren’t for-profit businesses; they are common goods and utilities.
• A socialist’s day off could be like any good day now. But you should be free to spend your time how you like without worrying about cost or dreading going back to work.
• And college, as well as groceries, should be free.

When DSA candidates take to the field, they focus almost entirely on populist economic demands—housing and food affordability, fair taxes on billionaires, and Medicare for All. These are socialist in the sense that Social Security, libraries, fire departments, and our current Medicare are socialist, and yet they are also firmly embedded in our capitalist system.

I have yet to encounter a DSA candidate who discusses truly socialist reforms, like the elimination of large private enterprises and workers’ control of the corporations that employ them.

We have the word “socialism” and significant portions of the DSA platform that do not have significant working-class support, yet DSA doesn’t seem bothered by being out of touch with large segments of the working class they claim to be fighting for.

Then why does DSA use the word “socialist” if it does not involve their day-to-day political debates? And why use it when it is sure to turn off many of the very working people DSA claims to represent?

The Education Class Divide

There is a significant disparity among educational groups when it comes to having positive or negative views toward socialism.

Gallup’s 2025 polling found that:

• 31 percent of people with some college, but no four-year degree, viewed socialism positively, compared with 66 percent who viewed it negatively.
• Among people with a high-school education or less, the split was 38 percent positive to 57 percent negative.
• College graduates were the most favorable educational group, with 47 percent viewing socialism positively, and 51 percent negatively.
• Among independents, only 38 percent viewed socialism positively, compared with 57 percent who viewed it negatively.

This doesn’t mean working people oppose the policies associated with democratic socialism, like taxing billionaires. But it does mean that DSA’s use of the word “socialism” itself is likely to trigger a negative response and undermine its effectiveness among working-class voters, especially in red America.

Why use the word “socialism” when it’s going to turn off the very voters you hope to attract?

Because it doesn’t turn off DSA college-educated members. The reality is that despite their “Workers Deserve More” platform, DSA is a political organization by and for college graduates, especially disenchanted Democrats in blue areas. That demographic seems to have no problem with the idea of socialism. In fact, 66 percent of Democrats had a favorable opinion of socialism, with just 32 percent feeling negatively.

Which fits with several of the policies DSA supports that also are likely to turn off non-college working-class voters.

Immigration

For example, the DSA platform calls for legalizing migration, granting amnesty to all immigrants regardless of status, providing a path to citizenship for all permanent residents, and ending visa caps and quotas.

Some elements of this position have considerable popular support. Pew Research found that 64 percent of Americans believe undocumented immigrants should have some way to stay legally in the United States, and 60 percent favor allowing them to apply for citizenship.

But that support generally comes with conditions: 79 percent favor security background checks, and 52 percent favor requiring immigrants to have a job.

The broader DSA position is another matter. The Pew Research Center conducted in August 2024 found that 48 percent of U.S. adults wanted legal immigration kept at its present level; 24 percent wanted it increased and 26 percent wanted it decreased.

There is little evidence that working-class Americans want to eliminate visa caps and quotas altogether. In fact, non-college voters are more likely than college graduates to see large-scale migration as contributing to crime.

The distinction is important: working people can support a path to citizenship for immigrants already here while also wanting secure borders and limits on future immigration. DSA’s position largely erases that distinction.

Abolish the Police?

DSA calls for demilitarizing police departments, disempowering police unions, redirecting police funding to public services, and ultimately abolishing the police and prison system.

Here again, polling reveals a sharp divide between progressive reforms and the more sweeping DSA position. A 2020 Gallup poll taken after the George Floyd murder found that 58 percent said policing needed major changes and vast majorities supported changing police management practices so that officer abuses are punished. However, there was little to no support for abolishing police departments.

The lesson here isn’t that working people oppose police reform. Quite the contrary: there is overwhelming support for holding abusive officers accountable, improving police-community relations, and expanding community-based alternatives.

But there is a huge difference between reforming policing and abolishing it. DSA’s position goes far beyond what polling shows most working people are prepared to support.

Palestine

It’s not that working people necessarily disagree with DSA’s concern for Palestinian lives or even with major elements of its policy. Polling shows substantial support across the electorate for a ceasefire, humanitarian aid, Palestinian self-determination, and conditioning or reducing U.S. military aid to Israel.

The problem is that DSA bundles those broadly popular positions with a much more sweeping ideological program—open-ended opposition to Israel as a state, the right of return to Israel for Palestinians and their decedents who lived within its border but fled during various wars, unrestricted immigration, and prosecution of U.S. and Israeli leaders for genocide—that has not been adequately tested among working-class voters.

While justice for Palestine is a major issue for DSA members, it’s not at all clear that it is a major issue for working people without college degrees. We have no indication from polling that it ranks anywhere near as important as economic issues, nor that it influences the votes of non-college graduates. Also, it seems to rank about the same as the Russia-Ukraine war, which is not even mentioned in the DSA platform. The distinction? Palestine, not Ukraine, is a very big issue among college-educated young people and hence essential to the DSA platform.

Why would an organization that purports to be fighting on behalf of the working class develop a platform with many elements that a majority of working people do not support?

Again, the answer is that those positions do have strong support among college graduates, the real base of DSA. And those college graduates hope that most working people will support those positions, if not now, eventually.

So, we have the word “socialism” and significant portions of the DSA platform that do not have significant working-class support, yet DSA doesn’t seem bothered by being out of touch with large segments of the working class they claim to be fighting for.

That’s socialist identity politics. It lets the world know that DSA members, mostly college educated, have a vision to eliminate capitalism and the many problems it poses. While DSA would like to have broad working-class support, it is not about to give up its socialist vision and its more radical policies to get it.

And it’s doubtful to change because DSA is on a roll as it gains more and more members and support among disenchanted college graduates who they see as the new working class, or at least a large part of it. Afterall, DSA already is the largest, most active political organization in the country.

So, DSA and its members do not feel any pressure to change their political identity. They wear it proudly as the oligarchy limits opportunities for recent college graduates and drives them towards DSA.

That’s why it is highly unlikely that DSA will become a political organization of workers without college degrees. And that’s exactly why those unrepresented workers need a party of their own that reflects what they believe in and what they want from our economy and political system. (Please see my latest book for a fuller account.)

On August 24, the Department of War announced a $750 million investment to secure rare-earth elements produced by Serra Verde at its Pela Ema project in Brazil. Combined with a $300 million purchase commitment from the Defense Logistics Agency and $500 million from a major bank, the arrangement represents a $1.55 billion investment structure aimed at reducing US dependence on Chinese-controlled supply chains.

There is a legitimate problem here.

There is also a troubling choice about how we intend to solve it.

Rare-earth elements such as neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, and terbium are essential components of modern life. They are used in permanent magnets found in electric vehicles, wind turbines, electronics, industrial equipment, and other technologies. They are also used in fighter jets, guided missiles, nuclear submarines, drones, and other weapons systems.

A mineral dug from the ground does not know whether it will eventually become part of an offshore wind turbine or the guidance system of a missile. That decision is political.

China currently dominates this supply chain. According to the International Energy Agency, China accounted for about 60% of global mining of magnet rare earths in 2024, 91% of their refining, and 94% of sintered permanent-magnet production. That level of concentration creates a genuine economic vulnerability, particularly after Chinese export restrictions demonstrated how quickly access to these materials can become a geopolitical bargaining chip.

Diversification makes sense.

But listen carefully to the language the US government is using to describe it.

Assistant Secretary of War for Industrial Base Policy Mike Cadenazzi called resilient supply chains a “fundamental warfighting requirement.” The department says the agreement will guarantee materials necessary to manufacture “next-generation weapons systems.” Its announcement specifically highlights nuclear submarines, fighter jets, guided missiles, combat vessels, and drones.

That framing deserves scrutiny.

The United States is not simply securing minerals. It is incorporating another piece of the global economy into an increasingly militarized conception of national security.

A Mineral Can Power a Wind Turbine or a Missile

There is nothing inherently military about neodymium.

A mineral dug from the ground does not know whether it will eventually become part of an offshore wind turbine or the guidance system of a missile.

That decision is political.

And that is precisely why this $1.55 billion initiative should provoke a broader conversation about the kind of economy the United States is building.

If Washington treats critical minerals primarily as inputs for weapons, we should not be surprised when the industries surrounding them increasingly organize themselves around weapons production.

Serra Verde is an important source of these materials. Its Pela Ema operation began commercial production in 2024 and is the first large-scale producer outside Asia of all four critical magnetic rare-earth elements: neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, and terbium. The company expects production to reach roughly 6,400 metric tons of rare-earth oxides annually by the end of 2027.

That makes Brazil potentially important to reducing the world's dangerous dependence on a single supplier.

But reducing dependence on China should not automatically mean subordinating a new international supply chain to the needs of the Pentagon.

Rare-earth resilience could instead be treated as civilian industrial policy: an effort to ensure reliable supplies for renewable energy, public transportation, resilient electrical grids, medical technologies, communications infrastructure, and other components of human security.

The difference is more than rhetorical.

Government priorities influence markets. Purchase guarantees influence production. Subsidies determine which industries expand. Billions of public dollars can create an ecosystem in which manufacturers orient themselves toward military customers because those customers offer enormous, guaranteed demand.

If Washington treats critical minerals primarily as inputs for weapons, we should not be surprised when the industries surrounding them increasingly organize themselves around weapons production.

Security Is Bigger Than Military Power

The Department of War's announcement actually exposes the contradiction.

The same release that celebrates rare earths as essential to fighter aircraft and nuclear submarines acknowledges that they are vital to “energy infrastructure, transportation, aerospace, and electronics.”

Exactly.

Those civilian applications should not be an afterthought.

The United States could reproduce the very system it says it wants to escape: concentrated supply chains organized around geopolitical blocs, each treating access to minerals as leverage against the other.

Climate change threatens lives. An unreliable electrical grid threatens lives. Fragile transportation and communications systems threaten economic stability. Supply-chain disruptions can close factories and eliminate jobs.

Those are security issues too.

Yet American policymakers repeatedly define security through the narrowest possible lens: military capability first, virtually everything else second.

A peace economy asks a different question.

Instead of asking only, "What materials do we need to maintain our technological advantage in warfare?" we should ask: "What materials do people need to live safely, sustainably and prosperously—and how can we obtain them without creating new forms of exploitation, environmental destruction, or international conflict?"

That would still require diversifying the rare-earth supply chain.

It would still require investment.

It would still require cooperation with countries such as Brazil.

But the purpose would be different.

Don't Replace One Dependency With Another

There is another danger in framing critical minerals as part of strategic competition with China.

The United States could reproduce the very system it says it wants to escape: concentrated supply chains organized around geopolitical blocs, each treating access to minerals as leverage against the other.

Minerals essential to decarbonization could become another source of great-power confrontation.

The result would not necessarily be resilience. It could be a global scramble for resources.

Countries possessing lithium, cobalt, nickel, and rare-earth deposits would increasingly become arenas for competition among powerful states. Supply agreements would become security agreements. Economic relationships would become tests of allegiance.

Minerals essential to decarbonization could become another source of great-power confrontation.

That is not a theoretical concern when officials explicitly describe access to raw materials as a “warfighting requirement.”

The alternative is not continued dependence on China. Diversification is necessary. The IEA itself has repeatedly warned that extreme concentration in rare-earth refining and magnet production represents a significant economic risk.

But diversification should mean creating many reliable suppliers and processing centers—not dividing the mineral economy into rival military camps.

Build a Peace Supply Chain

A different critical-minerals strategy is possible.

The United States could invest aggressively in recycling and recovery of rare-earth materials. It could develop domestic processing capacity while applying strong labor and environmental standards. It could enter long-term partnerships with Brazil and other producing countries that emphasize shared economic development rather than simply extracting resources for American strategic advantage.

And the government could prioritize civilian demand—renewable power, electric transportation, grid modernization, and other public infrastructure—alongside legitimate defense requirements.

It could guarantee that communities near mines and processing facilities benefit economically and retain meaningful influence over development decisions.

And the government could prioritize civilian demand—renewable power, electric transportation, grid modernization, and other public infrastructure—alongside legitimate defense requirements rather than allowing military procurement to dictate the direction of an entire emerging industry.

Serra Verde itself demonstrates why the choice matters. The company's rare earths can supply permanent magnets for electric vehicles and wind turbines just as surely as they can supply defense and aerospace manufacturers.

The question is not whether America should secure access to critical minerals.

It should.

The question is what we intend to do with the security that access provides.

A nation can spend billions building supply chains designed to manufacture the next generation of weapons.

Or it can use the same industrial capacity to build the infrastructure required for the next generation of human life.

The minerals are the same.

The economy we build around them is a choice.

I still come across people who believe Trump won the 2020 election, that the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, was an act of patriotism, that Trump’s subsequent indictments and felonies were Biden’s work, that most immigrants are criminals, that Democrats are evil, that Jews are trying to replace white Christians born in America, that Muslims can’t be trusted, that a significant amount of voting is fraudulent, that we’re winning the war against Iran, that the economy has never been as good, that climate change is a hoax, that Canada poses a threat to the United States and it’s only fair for Lake Ontario to be renamed Lake America.

To label these people “deluded” is to overlook an entire world created by Trump and his assistants, Cabinet secretaries, “spokespeople,” other political appointees, Republican enablers in Congress and state legislatures, and billionaire accomplices in the media (Musk, Murdoch, Pichai, Bezos, Zuckerberg, the Ellisons) — all of whom have reinforced Trump’s “artificially fabricated insanity,” as the philosopher Hannah Arendt once termed the technique of totalitarian tyrants.

Google, for example, just updated its Maps application to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America.” ** (It’s already relabeled the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.”)

Totalitarian movements, Arendt wrote, succeed not by convincing people of a specific lie but by creating a consistent, logical fictional world that defies ordinary common sense and human experience.

Which raises the questions that a growing number of Americans are asking: Is Trump insane? Are those who believe Trump’s artificially fabricated world insane? Are they making the rest of us insane?

I remember during the Biden administration when a panel of medical experts — the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force — recommended that doctors screen all adult patients under 65 for depression and “anxiety disorders.” The advisory group said the guidance was intended to deal with a rise in mental health disorders that were going undetected and untreated.

The advice highlighted the extraordinary stress levels that have plagued Americans in recent years, especially since Trump and his enablers and accomplices have come to power. Lori Pbert, a clinical psychologist and professor at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, who served on the task force, called mental health disorders “a crisis in this country.”

But maybe we need to stop thinking about anxiety and depression as “disorders” and start regarding them as rational responses to a society that’s become ever more disordered under Trump, and to an economy that’s been leaving so many behind.

Sane Americans are outraged by Trump’s continuous lies, terrified by his attacks on our democracy, upset by his arbitrary renaming and rearranging of our reality, angry about his brutality toward immigrants in our communities, and furious at his encouragement of homophobia, transphobia, and racism. They’re also concerned about the soaring costs of living and growing insecurity of jobs.

Let me be clear: Trump is out of his gourd. He’s losing all connection to reality. His lies are becoming more brazen. His statements about Canada, his war in Iran, the economy, and immigrants, all increasingly bizarre.

But his MAGA movement is just about over. His polls are in the cellar. Many of his followers now see through his lies. “It is in the moment of defeat that the inherent weakness of totalitarian propaganda becomes visible,” Arendt wrote. At such point, the followers of tyrants “quietly give up the movement as a bad bet.”

Yes, of course, we need better access to mental-heath care. We also need better wages, more job security, and stronger safety nets.

Perhaps even more important to the mental well-being of most Americans, we need an administration and media that don’t promote artificially fabricated insanity but that consistently and reliably tell Americans the whole truth.

Despite the excitement around Donald Trump’s new sanctions and even the US strikes against the Iranian island of Larak just hours ago, much suggests that Trump is not seeking a dramatic ratcheting up of pressure on Iran.

According to reports Sunday, the U.S. military hit Iranian launchers on the island to prevent Tehran from planting new mines in the Strait of Hormuz. This is the first known U.S. strike against the country since Trump announced a ceasefire in July. Details are forthcoming.

Meanwhile, the much-touted “major financial institution” that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent promised to sanction for dealings with Iran turned out to be nothing more than Egypt’s second-largest bank. Though Banque Misr ranks among the region’s major banks, it is a dwarf beside the multi-trillion-dollar giants of global finance.

It should come as no surprise that there is more bark than bite in Trump’s latest sanctions moves. That is not to say Bessent’s economic warfare won’t hurt ordinary Iranians or squeeze the Iranian economy. It will. But there is little to suggest that the pain will compel Tehran to submit to Trump — or that the sanctions are even designed to inflict significant harm, despite his rhetoric.

Rather, Trump appears to be pursuing a very different gamble: maintaining a low-level conflict until the midterms—neither securing a diplomatic deal nor allowing the situation to deteriorate into full-scale war. A period of relative tranquility that pushes Iran out of the headlines and, in the run-up to the elections, weakens the connection between rising inflation and gas prices, on the one hand, and Trump’s foolish war of choice, on the other.

The D-Day sanctions help create the perception that the U.S. has the upper hand while increasing pressure on Iran. Together with increased traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, they make the status quo more costly for Tehran than for Washington — but not so costly that Iran is incentivized to counter-escalate in the short term.

Rather, it is a slow strangulation designed to ensure that, for the next two months, there is neither headline-grabbing diplomacy nor military escalation.

This gives Tehran little cause for immediate panic. Its response will largely depend on what Washington does next. I see three possible scenarios.

Trump may overshoot, pushing Iran beyond what Tehran deems manageable in the short term. For instance, the strikes against Iranian positions on Larak island will very likely generate an Iranian response. Moreover, if Trump confiscates Iranian oil tankers bound for China, Tehran will almost certainly respond by intensifying attacks on ships using the southern corridor of the Strait, while potentially also targeting energy infrastructure in the GCC. China, too, would likely respond forcefully to such a move. The result would be precisely the kind of escalation Trump wants to avoid over the next two months.

In the second scenario, the D-Day sanctions neither incentivize Iran to counter-escalate in the short term nor alter its medium-term calculations. Tehran reckons that, despite the hype, its closure of the Strait remains sufficient and that the mounting economic pressure on Trump will eventually compel him to return to the table with a more pragmatic posture.

Though this is not the most likely outcome, it helps explain why Iran is investing heavily in regional diplomacy even as all signs point to Trump not wanting a deal at this juncture.

Omani, Pakistani, and Qatari diplomats are engaged in intense diplomacy with Tehran over the Strait. According to my sources, Trump has signaled directly to Iran that he will not lift the blockade even if Tehran reopens the Strait, nor does he favor returning to the earlier Memorandum of Understanding. Again, keeping Iran out of the headlines in the run-up to the elections requires avoiding developments of either kind—military or diplomatic.

By engaging with regional mediators, Tehran achieves three objectives. First, it demonstrates to its domestic public that the war’s prolongation is due to American intransigence, not Iranian inflexibility. As the war drags on and Iranian civilians grow weary, controlling the blame narrative becomes increasingly important to Tehran. Fortunately for Tehran, Trump’s categorical public rejection of diplomacy plays directly into Iran’s hands.

Second, this diplomatic engagement is also crucial for the regional blame game. If the war resumes, who regional states blame matters considerably, particularly because the war will inflict a heavy price on them. Tehran needs to demonstrate to regional governments that Iran is willing to compromise while Trump refuses even to negotiate.

Finally, the current diplomacy builds regional consensus around specific solutions and principles. If Trump returns to the table, an infrastructure of semi-completed agreements with regional buy-in will already be in place — built while Trump voluntarily absented himself. Trump will pay a price if he seeks to unravel the progress the region made while he sulked in the White House.

But the most likely scenario is neither immediate escalation nor a post-midterm return to talks. Rather, in this scenario the Trump administration’s newfound confidence proves warranted: the combination of new sanctions and growing traffic through the southern corridor of the Strait has created a new reality in which Iran is hurting more than the U.S., and its trajectory is becoming increasingly — but not dramatically — negative. Iran will therefore be weaker in a few months, and in a less favorable diplomatic and military position.

While this will incentivize Iran to counter-escalate, Tehran may choose to delay its response and wait for a more opportune moment. If Washington wants to keep things quiet until the midterms, Tehran may conclude that the optimal moment to strike back is two or three weeks before the Congressional elections, maximizing the political damage to Trump.

But Iran may not limit its response to tankers in the Strait. Iranian officials say, both publicly and privately, that they expect the U.S. and Israel to resume the war after the midterms regardless of the impact of the D-Day sanctions. Regional diplomats have largely reached the same conclusion. If sanctions weaken Iran over time while the global economy recovers and adjusts to the new reality in the Strait, a prolonged pause will work against Tehran. Iran may therefore decide to escalate dramatically, taking full advantage of Trump’s perceived vulnerability in the run-up to the elections.

Iran appears encouraged by its performance in the second round of the war and by how quickly Trump halted his attacks. The first round lasted 38 days; the second just 13. Yet more than half of the American casualties were inflicted during the second round, despite it lasting only a third as long.

While only one out of a plethora of variables in this war, the impacts of the second round suggest that American force protection had weakened, interceptor shortages had become more acute, and Iran had learned more from the first round of fighting in February than America did. Tehran appears to have improved both the sophistication of its attacks and the intelligence behind them. Iran had spent decades studying how America fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, for the first time, it had direct experience fighting the United States — and Tehran has learned faster than Washington had anticipated.

Still, while Iran’s calculation about Trump’s electoral vulnerability may prove correct, its apparent belief that an election loss will restrain Trump in 2027 may be misplaced. A Trump humiliated at the polls and potentially facing a third impeachment attempt may be forced to play defense at home, but precisely because of his domestic troubles, he may also be incentivized to lash out abroad. Freed from electoral constraints, Trump may be willing to take risks he previously eschewed, including deploying ground troops.

After all, it was in the period following his November 2020 defeat that Trump displayed an unprecedented appetite for risk. Then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley feared Trump might either provoke a war with Iran after losing the election or manufacture a domestic crisis to justify using the military and potentially remain in power.

Trump reportedly floated proposals for an attack on Iran, which Milley vehemently opposed. “You're gonna have a fucking war,” he prophetically told Trump. Will there be a General Milley in Trump’s inner circle after the midterms?

Nearly $58 billion is now flowing into states and local governments after the recent settlement with Purdue Pharma and other companies whose actions fueled the overdose epidemic, one of the deadliest public health crises in American history. For the first time in a generation, local communities have a critical opportunity to decide how this money is spent and allocate funding to build systems on their own terms, systems that actually save lives and provide care rooted in dignity.

The question is whether state, county, and municipal officials will actually take that chance.

The settlement money belongs to the people that paid the price. It is restitution for those lives lost, for families devastated, and for communities harmed not only by addiction and overdose, but by decades of failed punitive policies that criminalized suffering instead of treating it. It doesn’t belong to politicians, hospital systems, police departments, or consultants.

That means people directly impacted by overdose, addiction, incarceration, homelessness, and family separation should help decide how these dollars are spent. Too often, they are shut out of that decision entirely. In many states, opioid settlement decisions are made in private meetings with little public awareness, minimal reporting requirements, and limited opportunities for ordinary residents to participate. Some local governments still have no meaningful public process at all.

As federal health and social service funding faces growing cuts, many states and localities are quietly eyeing opioid settlement dollars to backfill budget gaps or prop up systems that should already be publicly funded.

When people get involved, the results improve. More states are passing legislation requiring reports on opioid settlement spending. In Hancock County, Maine, there was initially no public framework for opioid settlement spending. After a local advocate stepped forward to engage county officials, authorities created a committee of community stakeholders, including people with firsthand lived experience, to help advise how to spend those funds. In Buffalo, New York, public scrutiny and press attention around the use of settlement spending on things like police equipment and snowblowers pushed local leaders toward better investments, such as recovery coaches and treatment clinic upgrades, in later funding rounds. We can see how public engagement changes outcomes.

New Jersey committed nearly $119 million to expand harm reduction centers offering naloxone distribution, syringe access, mobile outreach, and connections to care. Kentucky continues to invest in a network of legal aid providers helping people impacted by drug use expunge their criminal records. Portland, Maine spreads its opioid funds across three efforts: a needle buyback program that removes used syringes from public spaces; a housing first program that gets people into stable housing without requiring sobriety first; and contingency management, which rewards people with incentives like gift cards for staying off stimulants such as meth and cocaine.

We also know what does not work. Nevertheless, across the country, settlement dollars are still being spent on police equipment, surveillance technology, jail expansions, and outmoded treatment programs that forbid modern medications, and ineffective "just say no" style prevention campaigns. Some jurisdictions have purchased drones, tasers, license plate readers, police dogs, and narcotics detection equipment using funds that were supposed to heal communities harmed by overdose.

The most insidious trend may be one the public cannot easily see: supplantation. According to best practice guidance from Johns Hopkins University and endorsed by more than 60 organizations including my own, supplantation advises that opioid settlement funds must not replace existing funding sources. But as federal health and social service funding faces growing cuts, many states and localities are quietly eyeing opioid settlement dollars to backfill budget gaps or prop up systems that should already be publicly funded. Settlement dollars should not replace Medicaid; they should not compensate for cuts to public health infrastructure. They were never meant to become a government slush fund.

This money was won because communities suffered extraordinary harm and hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives. Funds should build and expand capacity of much-needed health infrastructure and create lasting systems of care, not patch holes created by shifting political priorities. It’s not that settlement funds should never stabilize existing programs; in some cases, communities may need to use these dollars temporarily to sustain lifesaving services that would otherwise disappear. But those decisions must happen transparently, with public input, and with a clear understanding of the trade-offs involved. Advocates have issued guidelines that can help jurisdictions think through these challenging decisions.

There is reason for cautious optimism. Advocates, impacted families, and community organizations across the country are building models for transparency, accountability, and evidence-based investment. A new National Roadmap for Spending Opioid Settlement Funds can help communities understand their local processes and push for smarter spending. It also documents problematic and promising spending across the country. Advocates in Maine, New York, and New Jersey have created websites to help community members get involved in directing opioid settlement funds. The Maine Recovery Action Project has created a national toolkit that anyone can use to start organizing residents to have a say in spending decisions.

Residents should ask simple but critical questions, such as: Where is the money going? Who benefits? What evidence supports these investments? Who was consulted?

The overdose crisis was perpetrated by decisions, made over the course of decades, that never faced accountability. We cannot afford to repeat that mistake now with resources made available to repair the damage.

It’s been harder than usual for me to write these past few days, and that’s because the glacier collapse and subsequent calamity along the Tibet-Nepal border hit very hard. As it happens, I’ve stood in that border crossing where you’ve watched the giant wave obliterate… everything in a split second. I’d spent weeks in the high, dry, cold of Buddhist Tibet, and then crossed into the lush humid chaos of Hindu Nepal, and so I can summon up some sense of what it must have been like, and of the people who died almost before panic could grip them.

More, I knew it was coming. Not on that day, of course, but I’d been in Tibet 20 years ago partly to report on what we already knew was an enormous threat: the fallout from the rapid melt on what is sometimes called Earth’s Third Pole. The danger of these collapses, and the blocked lakes they can create, were well-known to scientists; they happen often, but usually in unpopulated valleys. I’m not going to concentrate on these reports—there’s been much good coverage in the last few days. Jonathan Watts, for instance, does the important service of laying out the exact link between the climate crisis and the collapse:

Two days before the collapse, the ground temperature hit its highest point in the last two years, according to Dr. Hamish Pritchard, a glaciologist with the British Antarctic Survey, whose team had sensors 6 miles (10 kilometers) away from the site.

“These high temperatures would have weakened the snowpack, filled crevasses with water, and thawed the bonds between ice and rock that hold these glaciers in place,” he told the Science Media Centre.

Jeff Berardelli tracks the ongoing increase in temperature in the region (it’s been about twice the global average, up 5°F since 1940). And Jonathan Mingle provides a very fine account of his own travels in the region, and of the similar smaller incidents that have happened across the years.

I want simply to ask you to focus on the image at the top of this newsletter, taken by a Chinese mountaineer named Zhia Yitie, that shows the collapse—that’s the stream in the center of the picture that looks like a waterfall. And what I want you to notice is how much ice is still there—to the naked eye it looks like 99% of the glacier remains. And this is just one glacier of perhaps 50,000 across the Himalayas and Hindu Kush. My point is: There is infinitely more damage to be done, or to put it another way there is infinitely more damage we might still be able to forestall. And that’s what should concern us.

In short: In a world beginning to turn away from oil, the United States has become the biggest force trying to insure we keep pouring carbon into the atmosphere. If the rest of that ice is going to fall off that Nepali glacier, this will be why.

Just to do the math for a minute: On average, Nepalis produce about four-tenths of a ton of carbon emissions annually, compared with about 14 tons for an American. More than 99% of the country’s electricity comes from hydropower (though much of that capacity was wiped out in last week’s floods). They are not causing the crisis that is killing them: We are.

Indeed, even as the mud was settling over the ruins of Himalayan villages we took the next steps to insure these catastrophes would continue, announcing an “agreement” with the Venezuela that we control to dramatically increase its oil production. As Al Jazeera put it:

Shortly before the deal was announced, energy analyst Gregory Brew likened reports of the impending agreement to oil concessions sought by the British Empire in the early 20th century.

“Such a thing is without precedent,” Brew wrote on social media. “The closest thing would be BP [British Petroleum] (back when it was majority owned by the UK govt) claiming ownership of Iraqi and Iranian oil reserves pre-WWII.”

Trump himself has embraced the colonial-era slogan “Manifest Destiny”, as part of his plan for a “growing nation” that “increases our wealth” and “expands our territory."

This is literal colonialism, in the service of President Donald Trump’s Big Oil donors—it’s pretty much precisely what we did to Iran’s Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953, triggering a set of bloody events that continue to this day.

And it comes, of course, as we continue to sabotage renewable energy—this week’s installment, thanks to great investigative reporting from Evan Halper, finds the White House paying a European firm to cancel yet more wind leases, on the condition that the money be “reinvested” with a big Trump donor building export facilities for liquefied natural gas on the Louisiana coast.

In short: In a world beginning to turn away from oil, the United States has become the biggest force trying to insure we keep pouring carbon into the atmosphere. If the rest of that ice is going to fall off that Nepali glacier, this will be why.

Which means that the question I promised to raise in last week’s newsletter is more important than ever: How do we translate these horrors (of which there will be far far more as the growing El Niño envelops the world in record temperatures) into political change here?

To be clear: I don’t mean before November’s midterms. The issues on which that will be fought—democracy, data centers, dementia—are baked in by this point. Gas prices will play a crucial role too, which means that anyone challenging the GOP should be pointing out the absurdity of our energy policy: The polling is clear that Americans hate Trump’s attacks on wind and solar. I’ll be spending the rest of the fall out on the trail with the Third Act and Gray Pac, mobilizing voters in key races; for the moment the goal is just to reestablish some beachhead for sanity in DC.

But physics is giving us very little time now, and so the next set of elections in this country will be, I think, our last real chance to make the sea change—replacing oil and gas with sun and wind—that is our best hope for limiting warming. And the El Niño will be peaking just as the Democratic candidates start jockeying for position. So it is not too early to start trying to get them thinking about all this.

Matt Pawa, the lawyer who helped launch much of the litigation to hold oil companies responsible for global warming, has helpfully provided a three-part summation of why Democrats should run in part on climate. It is lawyerly in the best sense of the word, which is to say filled with fact—he finds the long-term polling data, offers the historical examples dating back to 1988, and brings it home with what I think will be the most salient argument: Clean energy is potentially very cheap energy:

We are in an utterly extraordinary moment of energy transformation. Yet powerful corporations are keeping us stuck burning stuff from the dinosaur era to make energy. It’s dangerously heating up the climate and causing extreme weather. It kills millions of people who breathe bad air. It poisons our water. And yet renewable energy is now the cheapest way to make energy. This is not a moment for climate silence. It’s a moment for action.

You can see this dynamic playing out right now in the UK, which isn’t in the midst of an election but—since a parliamentary system means a kind of daily political battle—is nonetheless trying to figure out how to grapple with the shock they got this summer: week after week of blistering heat, and the drought that came with it. The green and pleasant land spent most of the summer brown and sweaty. (Not only that, but it turns out that shoppers shop less if the temperature gets above 25°C, and so businesses are grump too).

It’s all put the Labour government in a difficult spot. On the one hand, they’d like to appease the Murdoch press and open up more of the North Sea to drilling. This would accomplish nothing to reduce energy prices, since oil prices are set on a global market and there’s not enough crude left off UK shores to influence that number. But it would send a signal of “moderation,” which is the same kind of signal that American politicians—New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, say—have tried to send with their embrace of gas. (It turns out, new reporting shows this week, that Hochul was also lobbied persuasasively by a natural gas front group).

But the problem is that danged heat, and the upsurge in concern, anger, and activism it’s causing among voters—it turns out that that latent hope for a workable future emerges quickly once the temperature rises. And so we’ve seen in recent weeks a spate of new data comparing the climate damage from North Sea oil drilling to the economic benefit: “The economic damage caused by the carbon pollution from the oil and gas produced would be between £119bn and £336bn in the coming decades, compared with the £28.7bn in value to the UK estimated by Adura, the fossil fuel company promoting the new fields.”

As Matthew Taylor lays out in a long and useful essay, it’s become a crucial question in UK politics, with the surging Greens on one side and the Conservatives and far-right Reform on the other:

The leader of Reform UK, Nigel Farage, and the Conservative Party leader, Kemi Badenoch, have called for a massive expansion of drilling in the North Sea, claiming they would reverse the ban on new licences if elected.

In a speech this year, Farage declared that the UK should be “self-sufficient in gas.” Badenoch followed with the promise of a growing UK oil and gas industry that would “ensure our energy security for generations to come.”

At the moment, the new Labour leader Andy Burnham is trying to figure out if there’s a straddle available. His new environment secretary, the wonderfully named Angela Eagle, tried to bluster her way through in a recent column for The Guardian but I suspect that promises of “healthier ecosystems” to fight fire risk won’t cut it. People are generally sophisticated enough by now to know that the real question hinges on fossil fuels.

I don’t know how the UK decision on drilling will fall next week—again, there’s a lot that’s been baked in by now—but I do know that ambitious American politicians would be well-advised to get ahead of this storm. I don’t think it’s hard. The basic argument goes like this:

"Donald Trump and the GOP are corrupt and stupid to insist that the future lies with fossil fuel. I will stop coddling Big Oil and instead start making it much easier to America to run on energy from the sun and wind. Instead of shutting down wind farms we’ll be opening them up; instead of tariffing solar panels we’ll be making it simple for Americans to stick them on the roof and balcony. This is our best chance to cut the risk and cost of catastrophe (not to mention rising insurance prices). It’s also our best chance to let Americans enjoy the plummeting energy prices that other parts of the world have begun to see. And it may be the only path we have to restoring even a little of our standing in a world that now sees us as a reckless and rogue state."

If nothing else, prospective candidates should be thinking of it as a way to El Niño-proof their campaigns. And they should get on it sooner rather than later.

In a recent, high-profile dispute, the president castigated the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History for failing to “present American history as a shared national inheritance to be taught and celebrated.” His showdown with its director, Anthea Hartig, followed a contentious House subcommittee hearing at which Republicans openly chastised her for similar reasons. The White House has now directed that the National Park Service install signage outside the building warning visitors of alleged inaccuracies within.

Many of the museum’s current exhibits commemorate the country’s diverse histories in honor of the American semiquincentennial. The president is wrong that these displays pander and divide. Rather, they educate Americans on often overlooked events in our own country.

Take my wheelhouse, Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) history. It gets the Smithsonian treatment in an exhibit canvassing Filipino American history from the 1910s to the 1970s. In fact, Asian Americans have been here since before the Declaration of Independence—from the crew of a Spanish expedition in 1587 to a mid-1700s settlement in the swamplands near New Orleans. I bet your school textbooks never taught that.

A robust American education requires that we preserve more of these stories: in museums, in the classroom, and in broader popular culture. To our credit, we are beginning to do so. Five years ago, Illinois passed the first state-level mandate to teach AAPI history in classrooms. Since then, local pilot programs and legislation in 23 states have expanded AAPI history in K-12 social-studies curricula. These efforts have accompanied moves in many school districts to teach diverse content, including Black, women’s, and LGBTQ+ histories.

Whatever one’s political leanings, having more information about our shared past allows us to draw more educated conclusions about our present.

Still, 55% of Americans cannot name a single event or policy related to Asian Americans. That means more than lacking familiarity with a racial group. Without knowing the past, and how diverse communities influenced it, we cannot fully understand many of today’s legal institutions and enforcement activities.

For example, immigration enforcement at our Southern border first became a priority during the era of Chinese Exclusion. To skirt detention at Angel Island, new arrivals from China increasingly entered the country via Mexico. Around 1904, mounted federal agents began patrolling the border in response. Over time, their duties expanded from immigration to general law enforcement. In conjunction with the Texas Rangers, they engaged in confrontations, sometimes fatal, with Tejanos and others accused of smuggling illicit goods.

The border, it hardly requires pointing out, haunts national politics still, with mass detention, visas, and the status of sanctuary cities dominating the news cycle. The construction of a physical border wall, meanwhile, threatens to disrupt our relations with Native American tribes and jeopardize our national parks.

Other links between past and present abound. For example, many contemporary labor movements share DNA with those that AAPI workers led. The American History Museum’s exhibit on Filipino Americans explores the decades-long organizing work of Larry Itliong, which culminated in his leadership of the 1965 Delano grape strike alongside Cesar Chavez. The latter is a household name, and the former should be.

Similarly, the movie Sinners brought attention to the role of Chinese American grocers in the Mississippi Delta during Jim Crow. They played complex roles in their local communities, testing and fortifying racial hierarchies in turn. They sold goods to Black patrons on credit, breaking the dominance of extractive plantation commissaries. But they also brought legal challenges that reinforced the premise of “separate but equal,” such as a suit in which they argued for their children’s admission into white schools while accepting the need for separate Black schools. How Chinese American families lived in and navigated the political climate of the postbellum South sheds light on little-known facets of the region’s economy and institutions.

I learned about all these events as an adult, reading texts on my own (such as Erika Lee’s The Making of Asian America). And far from diminishing my patriotism, as the president apparently fears, each of these stories has strengthened my belief in the resilience of all Americans—and in the idea that America itself is a collective project.

Instead of warning Americans away, we should safeguard exhibits, lesson plans, and art that tell diverse histories. They help us understand our country better. Whatever one’s political leanings, having more information about our shared past allows us to draw more educated conclusions about our present. Democracies rely on informed citizens. And the way to build an informed citizenry is to treat diverse histories as a vital part of our national inheritance.

Hey, I’ve been 80 for almost two weeks now. Where’s the Jell-O? Where’s the yeast? Where’s the pitchfork?

And I know by now you’re asking: What the hell is he talking about?

Bear with me. I’m talking about being funny. This is not what I expected to be writing about today, and nothing feels the least bit funny to me about the world I’m living in—or about the stumbling leg pain and imbalance the aging process has bequeathed me, not to mention... huh? What did you say? Oh yeah, I can barely hear.

All of which, you would think, adds up to the need to be deeply serious. And that was the spirit in which I started working on this column. And nothing came of it. I felt far too lost to be serious, that is, to speak with certainty about global politics and the state of the world. What I felt instead was desperation mixed with ego and self-pity. Mostly the latter.

Now during every discussion I’m in, part of me wanders into no man’s land, looking for inappropriate, chuckle-wrenching contributions—cans of spam, political sound bites, anything to stick on the pitchfork of seriousness.

And then I went down to eat, here at my retirement community. At one point, one of the wonderful young servers asked me, “What else can I get you?”

I answered, without a moment’s thought, “How about some peace on Earth?”

And my heart lightened. So did hers. The world relaxed around us. And I thought about a column I wrote 25 years ago. It’s called (for some reason) “Yeast and Jell-O.” I think it’s time to serve it up again:

Yeast and Jell-O

Nothing particularly funny about a pitchfork, unless it’s skewering… oh, a pair of bikini underwear, maybe. A bratwurst?

Indulge me here. This is a joke in progress. What do you think? What object would be most likely to pry a guffaw out of that scowling, granite-faced farmer in Grant Wood’s famous (and famously parodied) painting, “American Gothic”? A roll of toilet paper? How about a pineapple upside down cake?

Well, keep working on it. Something has to make him laugh or he’s done for, this poster boy of dour.

His was the face that came to mind as I began pondering the nature of humor recently, thanks to my niece, who asked me, “How’d you get to be such a funny guy, Uncle Bob?” This is not an answer to her question, but here’s a fun fact: Children laugh 300 times a day, while adults cut loose a spare, grim 15. It’s true; I read it somewhere. Can’t remember where, but it’s gospel to me now. I use it to justify my life. I’m one of those people who can’t stop turning everything into a joke.

Whatever the minimum daily requirement of titters turns out to be—and I’m sure 15 isn’t nearly enough—I help supply it. If laughter is the spiritual equivalent of Fleischmann’s yeast, I’m one of the agents who makes the bread rise.

But all I was trying to do was find my way into the conversation. I was so out of it when I was an adolescent—so clueless about the straight-ahead certainties of that age, so unable to contribute to discussions about cool hair, stick shifts, or the facts of life, much less to swagger about such matters—I spent a lot of time watching other people talk. As I prowled the periphery, free of the conversation’s centrifugal logic, I’d notice stuff the participants missed.

Odd pieces would sometimes fly out of the chatter like foul balls—a word, a phrase, an implication. When I ran to retrieve it, I’d find other subject matter nearby: someone’s crabby grandmother, last week’s homework, a dirty joke. It would have nothing to do with the conversation, but I’d bring it along and divert the others’ attention. They’d look at me with surprise, their own thoughts momentarily shattered. The shattering noise was laughter.

So that was my answer to Carmen’s question: Laughter stopped the action and got a lonely kid some eye contact. Now during every discussion I’m in, part of me wanders into no man’s land, looking for inappropriate, chuckle-wrenching contributions—cans of spam, political sound bites, anything to stick on the pitchfork of seriousness.

To test my thesis, I decided to follow myself around for a few days and keep track of the levity. This is live: My sister is telling me about losing her credit card, then remembering she used it at Kinko’s. She calls the place; amazingly, it’s there. “When you pick it up,” I hear myself say, “Be wary if, when you say ‘Thanks,’ the clerk says, ‘No, thank YOU!’” She laughs. Life goes on.

I’m proofreading a column of news briefs. I read that the No. 1 city in per capita Jell-O consumption is Des Moines, followed by Salt Lake City. This pitches me into a fit of giggles; I have no idea why. Maybe because Jell-O is such an earnest food, laced with shredded carrots, topped with sliced bananas. It’s a staple of church socials and moms everywhere, but it also wiggles. It has no food value. I work in a hushed setting, among copy editors. It’s all I can do not to disrupt their concentration with the news.

I can’t help myself. Life is too full of frowning guys gripping pitchforks.

On Saturday August 22, the world’s ocean surface temperature was the hottest it’s ever been recorded—just a fraction under 70°F. As the ocean continues warming, I and Vicki Nichols Goldstein of the Inland Ocean Coalition interviewed weather and climate scientist Daniel Swain who is affiliated with the University of California’s California Institute for Water Resources and the National Science Foundation’s National Center for Atmospheric Research. We spoke with him on our Rising Tide Ocean Podcast. Here is an excerpted version of that conversation:

David Helvarg: Before we get into our rapidly heating ocean and its impacts onshore and off, give us some background.

Daniel Swain: I started out as a weather geek, even as a kid. When I went to UC Davis for an undergraduate degree in atmospheric science, I thought I might become a federal meteorologist with the National Weather Service. But at some point, I realized that some of the really big questions, both intellectually interesting and societally important, were at this weather-climate interface. We can predict the weather really well, but the climate is changing. What does that mean for the weather?

So, I came into climate from the weather side—day-to-day weather changes and operational forecasting. I still get to wear that weather-geek hat pretty regularly, even though today I would call myself a climate scientist. I exist at that boundary between weather and climate, which of course is not very distinct to begin with. It’s all the same fluid atmosphere and the same fluid ocean, just different densities.

If funding becomes dependent on whether a research topic aligns with the political priorities of whoever happens to be president, that fundamentally changes the scientific enterprise. It is difficult to overstate how destructive and dangerous that could be.

I’ve been known to call the ocean, “the atmosphere, but upside down and wet.” That comes from an Earth-system perspective. The atmosphere, ocean, biosphere, and cryosphere (frozen water) aren’t really distinct elements. That becomes more obvious with each passing decade as we try to predict and model these different Earth systems and discover we can’t do it very well unless we connect them. We can’t predict the atmosphere very well unless we connect it to the ocean, and vice versa.

Helvarg: So, let’s start at that large scale. People don’t necessarily think of the ocean as a driver of climate and weather, even though it covers more than 70% of the planet.

Swain: Exactly. We live on a water planet even though we don’t really think of it that way. Fundamentally, that is what Earth is. The fact that more than 70% of the planet is covered by water means that long-term variations in the atmosphere are largely driven by what’s happening in the ocean.

Climate change, as we think about it, is actually, to a first order, ocean warming. The majority of the accumulated heat is going into the oceans. Then it affects the atmosphere as some of that heat comes back out of the ocean and comes back to bite us on land. One way to think about global warming is that it is primarily a tremendous amount of extra energy accumulating in the oceans and then spilling over into the remaining third of the Earth that isn’t ocean covered.

Vicki Nichols Goldstein: We know that about 90% of the excess heat is being stored in the ocean. Why can the ocean absorb so much heat compared to land?

Swain: First, because most of the planet is ocean. If you’re warming the whole sphere, most of that warming is going to involve the ocean simply because that’s most of the planet. But there’s more to it. Water has an enormous specific heat capacity. It can absorb an incredible amount of energy compared to an equivalent mass of soil or rock. It can also absorb that energy over a very deep layer.

On land, we talk about geology over millions of years—mountains building and collapsing, continents colliding and diverging. But over a few decades, that’s not happening to a meaningful degree. The ocean moves much more rapidly. An individual water molecule at the surface can end up in the atmosphere through evaporation or thousands of feet down in the deep ocean within a couple of years. The ocean is therefore very good at transferring energy from the surface to the depths.

It’s not just that the ocean covers 70+% of the planet and absorbs a lot of the increased warmth at the surface. Through vertical circulation and currents, it transfers some of that heat downward and redistributes it across the planet—longitudinally, latitudinally, and vertically.

The atmosphere overturns very quickly. A cumulus cloud can go from your house up to 20,000 feet in 20 minutes during a thunderstorm. The ocean takes longer, but significant movement can still occur over weeks, months, and years. On land, comparable movement can take millennia to millions of years. That’s why the ocean and atmosphere are tightly coupled. They interact causally, bidirectionally, and continuously.

Helvarg: People also have a hard time grasping how rapidly this change has occurred. Since we began burning fossil fuels just a few centuries ago, we’ve been changing the physical nature of the ocean—its temperature, chemistry, circulation, even its color. What does increasing ocean heat mean in terms of marine heatwaves?

Swain: Marine heatwaves really just mean anomalously warm ocean temperatures. Usually, we’re talking about the surface ocean because that’s what we can observe most readily and where these heatwaves are often most pronounced. We’re seeing them emerge with much greater frequency, intensity, and spatial connectedness, year after year and decade after decade. Unfortunately, I don’t see that stopping.

We’re going to see continued acceleration in marine heatwaves for as long as planetary warming continues. And marine heatwaves can have a lot of staying power because the oceans evolve more slowly than the atmosphere. You get a blob of unusually warm water and, except under unusual circumstances, you can’t just blow it away with a strong wind the way you might end a heatwave over land. A large marine heatwave can take days, weeks, or months to dissipate because there’s so much thermal inertia in the ocean.

Ironically, that persistence is also part of why the ocean helps us predict the atmosphere. The ocean varies more slowly. It has more “memory,” and therefore its variations can exert a persistent influence on the atmosphere. At a fundamental level, as the air warms, the ocean beneath it is going to warm too—although it will warm more in some places than others because of ocean currents, circulation, and atmospheric conditions.

Goldstein: We hear a lot about La Niña and El Niño. What is actually happening during that transition?

Swain: El Niño and La Niña are parts of a broader pattern of natural ocean variability called the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO.

El Niño is the warm phase. La Niña is the cool phase. Essentially, we’re talking about whether the eastern tropical Pacific, particularly the ocean off Peru and South America, is warmer or cooler than usual. That’s a region where there’s normally a lot of coastal upwelling, with cold water moving vertically upward from the deeper ocean. Despite being in the tropics, this keeps coastal temperatures relatively moderate.

During El Niño, that cold-water upwelling weakens as warm water from the western Pacific literally sloshes eastward, sometimes thousands of miles. The prevailing easterly winds that help drive the upwelling can also weaken or even reverse. When the eastern tropical Pacific warms substantially, that is fundamentally El Niño.

But the reason it matters globally is that ENSO performs something like a thermostat function in the global climate system. During La Niña, heat gets stored below the surface in the tropical Pacific. During El Niño, some of that accumulated heat is released from the ocean into the tropical atmosphere, where it spreads through the rest of the climate system.

Swain: Because El Niño unleashes stored energy from the tropical ocean, it increases the global average temperature. And in a warming world, when you put a big El Niño on top of long-term global warming, you increase the likelihood of new global temperature records. It also accelerates the hydrologic cycle.

The warmer the air, the greater the potential swings between extreme wet and extreme dry. Warmer air can hold more water vapor. It doesn’t necessarily do so everywhere, but it raises the ceiling on how much moisture can be present. That raises the ceiling on extreme precipitation events, but also on extreme drought and wildfire conditions in different places and at different times. Some parts of the world see increased flood risk during El Niño. Other places see increased drought risk. El Niño shifts weather patterns while global warming increases the potential magnitude of whatever those patterns produce.

Helvarg: Here on the West Coast, my experience with El Niño has generally meant more storminess. How strong is that relationship?

Swain: El Niño in general exerts a meaningful but sometimes hard-to-pinpoint influence on California because it’s just one of many relevant factors. But with a very strong El Niño, I think it’s a different story.

This is a message I’ve tried to communicate to people in emergency management and policy. Recent El Niño events haven’t always produced the canonical effects people expected. The 2015-16 El Niño, for example, was one of the strongest ever observed in the tropical Pacific, but we did not see extremely strong impacts in California. Some people took that to mean, “Well, what does El Niño really mean anyway?” My answer is: not much if it’s weak. But if it’s strong or very strong, it should significantly tilt the odds.

It can mean a significantly warmer California nearshore ocean. It can mean temporarily elevated local sea levels, increasing the risk of coastal flooding and marine heatwave impacts. And in winter it can significantly increase the odds of a wetter-than-average California winter, potentially even a very wet winter with increased flood risk.

But if you asked me for one single predictor in the global climate system that could provide three to six months’ advance notice of the potential for a very wet California winter, it would be a very strong El Niño.

Goldstein: What does that mean for mountain snowpack in California and across the West?

Swain: This is where things get tricky because precipitation means different things in a warming world. You can have a winter that isn’t particularly dry and still have very low snowpack because it’s simply too warm. Some places can actually be wetter than average and still have unusually low snowpack. So, a strong El Niño may increase precipitation in California, including the Sierra Nevada, and could bring needed water to parts of the Colorado River Basin.

But more precipitation doesn’t necessarily mean more snow (if it rains). We may see above-average precipitation in some mountainous regions while still seeing below-average snowpack. That can help alleviate drought, but it’s a very different picture from a cold, snowy winter.

Helvarg: Jumping from the Pacific to that other still-significant ocean, the Atlantic: Strong El Niño events are supposed to suppress Atlantic hurricanes. Is that right? And why?

Swain: This is a good example of global warming and El Niño pushing in different directions. El Niño usually decreases Atlantic hurricane activity, mainly because of its effect on vertical wind shear rather than temperature. Tropical cyclones don’t like strong winds at upper levels of the atmosphere because those winds can literally decapitate storms—shear them apart. El Niño tends to increase wind shear in the Atlantic hurricane development region, making it more difficult for hurricanes to form and strengthen.

But there’s a big asterisk. If you have record-warm waters in places like the Gulf of Mexico, and a storm manages to develop during a brief period when wind shear is low, you can still get an extremely strong hurricane. So, a strong El Niño may suppress the overall hurricane season, while exceptionally warm ocean water can supercharge a storm that does manage to develop.

That’s a good example of natural variability—El Niño and the Southern Oscillation—interacting with the decidedly unnatural long-term warming trend to produce outcomes we haven’t seen very often before. It’s also why, despite all our advances in prediction and historical data, science still has a lot to learn.

Goldstein: That brings us to science itself. The Trump administration is changing Office of Management and Budget rules in ways that could make federal research funding reflect presidential priorities. How does that affect climate research and communication?

Swain: This goes far beyond weather, climate, and oceans. It affects any domain requiring expert knowledge to make important decisions—from health to public policy to research funding. There has been a lot of focus on research funding, but it’s important to emphasize that this affects everything.

The degree of alarm in academic and research institutions is significant. Changes that politicize the federal grant system could make us vastly less able to understand how the world works and prepare for future contingencies—whether storms, floods, pandemics, or geopolitical disturbances. It also becomes much harder for people in science to remain nonpartisan and simply focus on their research.

If funding becomes dependent on whether a research topic aligns with the political priorities of whoever happens to be president, that fundamentally changes the scientific enterprise. It is difficult to overstate how destructive and dangerous that could be.

Goldstein: That’s why people have to follow these issues, raise their voices, and try to hold the line.

Helvarg: Democracy doesn’t guarantee that we’ll be good ocean stewards or base public policy on sound science. But without democratic means, it becomes far harder to move forward on existential challenges like climate change and ocean protection.