Most of us associate Independence Day with celebration, from grandiose fireworks displays to backyard barbecues. The 250th anniversary of our nation’s founding, however, comes at a time when celebration alone is not enough. We have to remember what the first Independence Day was all about: refusing to accept an unaccountable monarch’s abuses of power and creating the foundation for a government that is run by and for the people.

The Declaration of Independence, at its core, was a watchdog report. Our nation was founded on a promise of accountability — and 250 years later, we must ask ourselves whether we’re keeping this promise.

After years of being subject to the whims of a singular ruler, our founders dared to ask the question: What does it look like to create a government that answers to the people it’s meant to serve? And thus, the framers signed the Declaration of Independence. Our nation’s most foundational text is literally a 27-count public accounting of one ruler’s abuses of power: taxation without consent, a military turned against civilians, obstruction of accountability institutions, and more.

We find ourselves on the precipice of returning to the very form of government Americans rebelled against 250 years ago.

Following this document, our founders then created the Constitution, outlining how the government should work and who it should work for. Rather than consolidate power in the hands of a few, it deliberately separated power across an executive branch that represents the nation as a whole, a legislative branch that represents the interests of individual communities, and a judicial branch that upholds the Constitution over any one party or politic.

Our personal freedoms, financial stability, community safety, and more depend on these accountability mechanisms working the way our founders intended. If an executive can singularly plunge our nation into a war that everyday people don’t want, we pay the price in lost family members and skyrocketing costs. If our judiciary decides to prioritize partisanship over the Constitution, we lose our ability to shape our own futures.

That is, unfortunately, exactly what we’re seeing play out today, and there is no shortage of examples. The Declaration of Independence may have centered on accountability, but in its first year alone, the Trump administration illegally fired nearly a quarter of the government’s inspectors general — the people tasked with combating waste, fraud, and abuse in federal agencies — and defunded the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE), which ensures these federal watchdogs have the resources they need to do their jobs effectively. Meanwhile, it decimated our merit-based civil service, replacing nonpartisan federal workers with partisan lapdogs.

Just as Americans rebelled against soldiers patrolling our communities in the 1700s, we have once again had to fight back against the deployment of the military to our cities. On the eve of our 250th birthday, troops trained for war are illegally occupying our nation’s Capitol, costing us more than $1 million a day.

After years of enduring a monarch who treated the U.S. colonies as a personal piggy bank, our founders created a republic meant to prevent leaders from using their power of office to amass personal wealth. But today, we’re seeing lawmakers on both sides of the aisle benefit from insider trading; top White House advisors holding stock in companies profiting from the administration’s own policies, and major government contractors gifting massive sums to the lawmakers who oversee their work.

The challenges we face today are urgent, but they are not new. The pillars of our democracy have been tested since our nation’s founding, and they have remained standing only because regular people have risen, time and again, to hold power to account.

And it’s not just the executive branch eroding these protections. Congress, too, has abdicated its watchdog responsibilities; up until this month, it failed to exert its constitutional war powers to put an end to the president’s illegal war. It has time and again ceded the power of the purse —which belongs “the people’s branch” for a clear reason — to the administration. to the administration.

In short, we are seeing a small but powerful group of public officials use their positions to destroy the accountability mechanisms that make our government work for us so that they can rule with impunity. We find ourselves on the precipice of returning to the very form of government Americans rebelled against 250 years ago.

But just as the founders fought against the monarchy over two centuries ago, we can fight back against these latest attempts to take power away from the people. That means demanding Congress take back its constitutional powers — from its warmaking authority to its power of the purse — so that these critical, life-changing decisions don’t rest with a singular leader. It means passing legislation to restore protections for a non-partisan civil service and provide our inspectors general the independence and resources they need to make agencies accountable and effective. It means ensuring public officials institute policies based on the needs of the people and not their own bottom line.

We know that, in spite of our differences, we are united in a belief that our government should be responsive to our needs. We keep this belief alive not through sentiment alone, but with our actions.

The challenges we face today are urgent, but they are not new. The pillars of our democracy have been tested since our nation’s founding, and they have remained standing only because regular people have risen, time and again, to hold power to account. On our 250th anniversary, celebrating our nation is not enough — we must honor the founders by taking action to uphold the promise of accountability laid out in our founding documents.

In 1776. Tom Paine wrote: "We have it in our power to begin the world over again."

Today, we are in the throes of another deep crisis.

The United States of America has lost its way. The fundamental premise of our founding, the rejection of tyranny—the focus of Common Sense, the pamphlet which sparked the popular revolution of 1776-1783—has been abandoned.

Part 1: Common Sense Revisited

Today, we are ruled by a tyrant, a President whose criminality and drive for self-gain has obliterated the Constitution’s restrictions on one-man rule—aided throughout by cowering lackeys in Congress and justices of the courts who value their status over the sovereignty of the people.

The history of the past 250 years shows that significant social change, the type we need now—where real power and wealth are redistributed to the people, away from elites—only takes place in the wake of a crisis: witness 1776, the Civil War, America’s response to the great depression, and after WWII.

Now, we certainly have our crisis.

It’s time to get our act together, the center stage of history is waiting.

What Tom Paine observed in early 1776 is even more true today: “The cause of America is in great measure the cause of all mankind.”

This portrait of Thomas Paine was painted by Laurent Dabos around 1792. (Image source: Wikipedia)

Paine inspired Americans to leave the British Empire with the prospect not only of dignity through self-rule, but also more power and prosperity—which, in turn, inspired the French, and the Haitians, and thus the entire world.

Now, our crisis is everyone’s crisis. For the past eighty years, America has been the country at the heart of a global system of nations and economy.

The people must mobilize—both to reclaim our sovereignty and keep alive the unrivaled promise of America.

Now the people of the world watch in dismay and disbelief, as the dynamics of our internal disfunction destroy the beacon of democracy and popular sovereignty. Yet, no other nation, no other people, are stepping up to remedy the weakening of liberty and the rise of authoritarianism. Power dynamics being as they are, it’s hard to see how they could.

It’s up to us, the people of the United States: "These are the times that try men's souls."

An America as great as its promise is right over the horizon.

It’s been there since the inception (“All men are created equal…”). The problem is that no one ever reaches the horizon, it continually recedes.

But now is not the time to address riddles; or develop a nuanced explanation of the betrayals of American history.

Now is the time for Common Sense, of the Tom Paine variety. Revolutionary Common Sense.

Looking through that lens, it’s clear why the idea of America’s unfulfilled promise is so salient at this moment.

America’s current crisis is rooted in the public’s deep dissatisfaction with the direction of our society and country, which has been consistent since the 2007-08 financial crisis and the ensuing Great Recession.

Trumpian authoritarianism perfectly reflects the political interests of a wealthy elite: democracy must be suffocated, lest the dissatisfied masses interfere with their “right” to run the world that they own.

This sentiment is compounded by an even greater lack of faith in politicians to turn things around; especially now that one of the two major political figures who openly acknowledged these problems and promised a remedy (“Make America Great Again”) has been exposed before the whole world as a con man motivated by lining his pockets and dodging the law—but not before doing unprecedented damage to our constitutional democratic republic, delivering us to the precipice…

The authoritarians currently control most of the levers of power; have the backing of the wealthiest oligarchs the world has ever known; a powerful propaganda machine whirring 24/7 and they have no compunction about stealing elections. If they triumph in either November 2026 or ’28, it’s game over.

So, what will bring us back from the edge?

Tom Paine himself has the answer. The people must mobilize—both to reclaim our sovereignty and keep alive the unrivaled promise of America.

But no one will mobilize for a promise that is continually deferred.

We must release the “Promise of America” from its metaphorical exile over the horizon—and make this goal the attainable centerpiece of our politics (updated, of course, for 2026).

Indeed! Like Paine, we must think like revolutionaries. We are going to make something happen that is new in all of human history. We are on the precipice of creating the world’s first successful multi-ethnic democracy. With progressive leadership, we are going to create the greatest—the most just and prosperous—nation the world has ever known.

We are going to fulfill the promise of America!

Part 2: Common Sense Solution

(Common Sense so obvious they’ve yet to write an algorithm that can suppress it.)

As I said above, the American political system and, in fact, the entirety of American society are in the throes of a major crisis. Our constitutional democratic republic is fraying. Few could have imagined that this would be the case only three and a half decades after the United States had “won” The Cold War and established itself as the first truly unrivaled global hegemon.

There is no mystery about the cause. In poll after poll during every election cycle, one issue tops all others: The vast majority of Americans know the economy is not working for them. They also know that wasn’t always the case.

The current crisis is very much predicated upon the public’s awareness that once upon a time, not long ago, a slice of America’s tremendous wealth was set aside for them. Average Americans could pursue and achieve the “American Dream” through hard work. Indeed, evidence of this is everywhere to be seen across the American landscape. Today, however, this American dream of comfort, prosperity is out of reach for ever more Americans. At the same time, unprecedented wealth pours into the coffers of oligarchs and idle investors.

Working people are mad. They work non-stop hours in alienating jobs just to keep their heads above water. Their lives are slipping away; and they are condescendingly told by establishment politicians that the economy is strong. This anger will not abate until what they feel is their birthright is restored to them: prosperity and a sense of control, and stability in their lives.

Trumpian authoritarianism perfectly reflects the political interests of a wealthy elite: democracy must be suffocated, lest the dissatisfied masses interfere with their “right” to run the world that they own.

But people overwhelmingly want democracy. They understand that without it, there’s no prospect of building a society that respects them and serves the interests of the working person.

Working people are mad.

One thing is clear: either a shift happens in the economy such that it once again lifts average households and holds promise for all Americans—or the country will remain riveted by crisis. The era of post-war prosperity, the American dream of owning a suburban house, was too real and lasted too long, impacting too many people—that it can’t be erased from the collective American mind. Nothing less is acceptable.

Only the progressive agenda promises to deliver what the people want and need.

The “neoliberal” (market based) political consensus that sees all of the economy as a commodity to be bought and sold, collapsed in 2016, with the rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Since that time, three political tendencies have vied for power in America’s two-party system:

• The Neo-Fascist Right: Represented by the now-dominant Trump wing of the Republican Party.
• The Neoliberal Center: Ranging from the defunct Romney wing of the GOP to the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party. These “conservatives” seek to maintain a failed status quo.
• The Progressive Left: Often referred to as Rooseveltian, Social Democratic, or Democratic Socialist.

Of the three, only this left alternative has a program designed to deliver for the American people: the re-establishment of a middle-class-centric social order.

This desire refers back to post-World War II America; and what historian Gary Gerstle refers to as the “New Deal Order.” By the 1970s, the countries that adopted this model were the wealthiest and most equitable in human history.

The conclusion we can draw from this: only one macro-economic model has a proven track record of delivering the broadly prosperous middle class society, in which the “American Dream’ is readily attainable for all people willing to make a standard contribution to the social weal—that is, work one full time job (with full benefits and guaranteed vacation time!). This model was introduced to the world by FDR and Frances Perkins, codified in the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes, and bolstered by a strong union movement. It used government spending to fill the gaps where the market failed to deliver social necessities to all people; and it deployed state power to regulate business and protect the population from the excesses and imbalances of capitalism. The model was developed in democratic societies and proved conducive to strengthening democracy.

In contrast, the neoliberal model that followed the era of the “New Deal/Keynesian” consensus, was grounded by the central principal that the market knows best. Regulations were weakened (except when they served big business) and more decisions were placed in private hands. The result? Wealth and power flowed upward to the rich. The “Neoliberal Order,” has failed over the past 45 years to bring our society into that realm of prosperity. Rather, it has diminished the middle class and weakened the welfare of the general population while siphoning almost all the wealth produced collectively into the coffers of an idle investor class.

The electorate rebelled against the political status quo in 2016 with Sanders on the left and Trump on the right pulling apart what had been a bi-partisan neoliberal consensus. Unfortunately, the wrong rebel candidate won, as Trump (for all of his bluster) has no intention of re-ordering the economy away from the interests of the investor class—and the economic and political power of the elite has become only more concentrated during his two administrations… and public dissatisfaction has reached fever pitch.

We must not pull any punches. Here’s the truth:

The public will remain dissatisfied and our society in a dangerous crisis until a President and Congress sets a new course—one that is, in fact, an old course, albeit adjusted for the 21st Century—and a broadly social democratic FDR-inspired social contract is re-implemented nationally.

No other set of policies has worked to generate such a prosperous society with aggregate wealth justly-distributed among the population. There is no other model that will deliver what Americas want and expect as citizens of the wealthiest country in the world.

What should such a program look like in contemporary America?

At PDA, we advocate for a 21st Century Economic Bill of Rights. We demand universal “rights” for all, not “entitlements.” While liberals may see housing, education, and food as entitlements, we understand they are fundamental rights. Polling shows that every one of these rights has majority support amongst the American public.

We also focus on five “big costs” that destroy household balance sheets: Childcare, Housing, Higher Education, Healthcare and high-interest debt. The market will not adequately address these; they require regulation and public policy. They require political will.

Furthermore, we address poverty, to alleviate it and then eliminate it. Almost all of the world’s wealthy countries have low-to-no poverty with a large prosperous middle class; and all of the nations (not on the Arabian peninsula) that fit this description are healthy democracies. In fact, all of these countries were the strongest allies of the United States during the cold war: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and all of Western Europe including the UK. This is not a coincidence. Their shared economic model was initially developed in the 1930s in a democracy: the United States.

Tellingly, no other countries, not even China, has achieved the average level of household wealth as these countries (or even come close) during the entire neoliberal era. That’s because only one economic model can develop and sustain this level of general prosperity: the FDR/Keynes/Social Democratic/Democratic Socialist model.

Lastly, let’s not fall for the nonsense put forth by neoliberal ideologues that progressive Keynesian economics won’t work in the mid-21st century. None of the other prosperous democracies, not even the UK, were as transformed by neoliberalism as the United States. Sure, governments across the world adjusted to a global economic order defined by market fundamentalist principles, but their populations consistently voted to protect and maintain programs established during the post-war era of social democratic dominance. These programs continue to define the social fabric of all the world’s other prosperous democracies.

America will remain a society in decline, consumed by crises and prayed upon by demagogues until the national economy is once again organized in the interests of working people. This can only be achieved successfully through the implementation of an FDR/Keynesian/Democratic Socialist-inspired template of policies for the 21st Century.

Once the American people understand this, they will demand nothing less. The task for progressives is clear.

Thomas Paine’s path—to the revolutionary fulfillment of an America as great as its promise—lays ahead.

Part 3: Common Sense Strategy

So, pray tell, how are we going to alter the entire American economy so that it no longer serves the wealthy few, but delivers prosperity for the many; saving our democracy in the process?

The answer is simple: the same way we did before.

In the 1930s and ‘40s, with the threat of fascism looming, the Democratic Party was transformed by the mass entry of workers in coordination with the labor movement. Under FDR’s and Francis Perkins’ leadership, the Democratic Party’s New Deal policies redesigned the entire American economy. After the war, these policies provided the foundation for unprecedented affluence, defined by the growth of the largest and most prosperous middle class in human history

We must take over and transform the Democratic Party.

There are two central facts about the Democratic Party that everyone must understand if our democratic republic is going to survive President Donald Trump’s authoritarian counterrevolution:

1. The Democratic Party is the only institution in our society with the breadth and scale to defeat and vanquish Trumpism
2. The Democratic Party, as currently configured, has proven incapable of doing this.

Fortunately, the Democratic Party is a malleable institution. Winning control of one of America’s two major parties is the opportunity we need to redesign the economy so it serves the people, to build an America as great as its promise and fulfill Thomas Paine’s vision for a revolutionary country defined by freedom and equality for all.

There’s still a long way to go. Our opponents have the money, but we have the people.

We can get this done. The proof is in the polling. Ever since the 2024 general election, the Democratic Party has shattered records with astonishingly low approval ratings. At the very same time the Democrats are polling way ahead of the Republicans in relation to the upcoming 2026 midterms. This may seem contradictory, but it’s not. The public understands the necessity of defeating Trump’s GOP, which represents a mortal threat to our republic; and they will use the only instrument available to them to defeat MAGA, the Democratic Party, which at least supports the constitution.

This doesn’t negate the fact that the public loathes the centrist faction that has defined the Democratic Party in recent decades. Under their leadership, the Democratic Party has consistently gaslit the public: claiming to be with the people but serving the status quo; offering, at best, tiny incremental improvements, while imposing “necessary” austerity just as frequently. Furthermore, while a centrist-led Democratic Party has shown it can win narrow victories over Trump’s GOP, these have only amounted to temporary setbacks. After a few years of unsatisfactory Democratic governance, the fascists come roaring back

In contrast, the centrist’s nemesis, Bernie Sanders, consistently ranks as the most popular politician in the country. This is not due to his rakish charm, but rather his unwavering commitment to a progressive agenda, which has overwhelming support among Democrats and majority support among the general public.

So, how do we Achieve what the people want, and wrest control of the Democratic Party from a historically anachronistic, but deeply entrenched and well-funded dominant faction that serves the interests of the elite and their courtiers?

Before addressing that, let’s backtrack briefly to clarify why the progressive takeover and transformation of the Democratic Party is a historical necessity if we’re going to salvage our democracy and truly Make America as Great as its promise. Two Reasons:

1. For better or for worse, we live in a two-party political system.

Since 1946 there have been over 17,000 elections for the US House of Representatives. How many have been won by a third-party candidate? Zero.

In the US Senate, there have been two third party candidates elected: William F Buckley’s brother, James L Buckley, in 1970 on the New York Conservative line (usually a fusion Party); and Joe Lieberman, founding member of the Connecticut for Lieberman Party.

The record is similar in statewide and local elections, where there have literally been millions of contests since WWII. The number of third-party victories is infinitesimal, less than one-tenth of 1%.

Now that Trump’s Republican Party is openly embracing a Putin-like evisceration of democracy and elite accountability—effectively destroying our constitutional republic—there’s even less tolerance for third party adventurism, or anything that splits the Democratic Party vote.

Third Partyism in the United States is, at best, an utter waste of time and energy; at worst, left-wing third parties facilitate the rise of the right—both by siphoning votes away from Democrats, and by drawing well-intentioned progressives away from participating in politics that actually make a difference.

2. This is unequivocally true for a very simple reason: The rules and regulations that govern our society are still, to this day, determined by our elected officials, who are either Democrats or Republicans.

Let’s be clear what that means. At the federal level, Congress passes legislation, the President signs it into law, the courts uphold the law and law enforcement ensures its implementation.

Movement activism, no matter how powerful, cannot change the law or create public policy—both require elected officials passing legislation.

From the 1970s through to the rise of the new progressive movement with Bernie Sanders campaign in 2016, this reality was somehow lost on progressives. Resources poured into single issue advocacy campaigns; very little into electing progressive candidates. From addressing the climate emergency to reforming law enforcement to many other progressive causes, popular support grew substantially, but very little changed. There were too few progressive politicians in place to make that change a reality.

The American people want change. Trump is an utter charlatan, and the centrists are empty suits. It’s time for progressives to step onto the stage of history; and do what’s necessary to deliver change.

Either progressives win control of the Democratic Party or we’re lost.

So, how to proceed? There are two main fronts where the battle for the soul of the Democratic Party will take place: inside the Party apparatus; and in primary elections. These two fronts are distinct but inter-related, success will require victory in both.

There is much confusion among the public about the role and authority of the Democratic National Committee and the ruling bodies of the State Democratic Parties. Oftentimes, the DNC gets blamed for the Party’s milquetoast policies, but the Democratic Party is not a parliamentary party, in which its candidates are expected to adhere to the platform. Rather, Democratic candidates determine their own policy priorities. Thus, the Party’s political identity is defined by its leading elected officials more than by the platform deliberations at Party meetings.

So, what does the Party apparatus do and why is it important?

The party platform and official resolutions are not entirely insignificant, and they could be used to greater effect. If progressives get the upper hand at the DNC or at the state level they can do more to promote the platform to help establish progressive candidates as the true Democrats in the minds of voters.

Similarly, a progressive Democratic Party would flip the endorsement script and start endorsing progressive candidates over centrist opponents in primaries.

The party’s governing bodies make the rules for how it operates. Rule changes can impact every facet of the Party, transforming it from a party dominated by inaccessible elites, into one that is responsive to the interests of poor, working- and middle- class Americans.

Right now, there is a battle raging inside the party over the role of money in primary elections. Progressives are calling for its prohibition. In recent years, progressive candidates have narrowly lost numerous elections that they were poised to win until massive tranches of dark money poured into their districts to fund an avalanche of propaganda in support of their conservative opponents.

While the party can do little about money spent to influence general elections (other than support measures like Hawaii’s Act 11) there are a variety of measures that the Democratic Party can take to limit, or eliminate, the influence of “big money” in its own primaries.

The public, once again, agrees with progressives on this. If Democrats become known as the party that has honest primaries, free of big money influence, they will be rewarded in the general election.

None of these positive changes are possible unless progressive activists move into the Party, become the new majority and change it from within.

Most of the state parties, while not exactly hollow shells, have low-to-very low participation. Given the groundswell of enthusiasm for the progressive movement across the country, we should be able to overwhelm the centrists with our numbers. Since the state parties, in turn, elect the Majority of the DNC’s members, progressive leadership at the national level will follow.

However, don’t expect a cakewalk. There was a wave of Democratic Party entryism after the 2016 Sanders campaign. While this led to progressives becoming the dominant faction in a few states, most progressives were unwelcome and were rebuffed by the established leadership.

Progressives can expect the same reception now, so we must learn from our experience. The key will be maintaining coordination among progressives entering into the party at the local, state and national level. This means consistently “huddling up,” sharing experiences with each other, understanding what works and what doesn’t, and most importantly re-enforcing each other and maintaining solidarity. I called this the “Outside/Inside” strategy in an article I wrote last year. The effort in 2016-17 showed that progressives who enter into the Party will benefit from being part of a well-coordinated team that understands, and is motivated by, the importance of their mission: winning control over one of America’s two national parties so that the people can take back control of our society from the oligarchs.

That brings us to the other front, the one that defines the Democratic Party for the public: who are its elected officials.

First, it must be said, for all of the problems with America’s electoral system—and as Trump and his minions work daily to further pervert our democracy—the country does have an “extra layer” of democracy rarely found in other countries: the open primaries in the two dominant parties. Most progressives I know gripe about the two party system, and praise the multitude of parties in the world’s other “liberal” representative democracies. But almost none of those parties have open primaries where the public (not party members, or more frequently party committees) determines the candidate that will run in the general election.

Now is the time for progressives to recognize our power and mobilize.

Primaries provide a real opportunity to reset the party every two years and totally transform it within six years. This is the opportunity we must seize.

Detractors of the two party system will point to how the Democratic Party establishment gamed the system to block Bernie Sanders path to the nomination in both 2016 and 2020. Yes, major shenanigans took place both years, but this is why coordinated Party entryism goes hand-in-hand with electing candidates that reflect the interests of working people—we can make sure there’s a level playing field.

The same is true for eliminating the primary instrument the establishment uses to defeat competitive progressives: big money. The only way that we can contain, and then eliminate, the influence of big money in Democratic Party primaries in a reasonable time frame is also through mass entryism into the Party to change its internal rules.

There is another barrier to electoral success that progressives must address: the frequent occurrence of too many progressive challengers running in the same primary race. This problem has resulted in electoral losses in districts where the combined vote for progressive candidates exceeded 50%. We need to develop a clear and fair mechanism through which progressives unify behind one candidate in every primary in every race across the country. This may seem like a stretch, but it should be easy to achieve through greater coordination between the national mass-membership organizations that endorse candidates such as Progressive Democrats of America (PDA), Justice Democrats, Our Revolution, Progressive Change Committee (PCCC), People’s Action, Popular Democracy, Democratic Socialists of America, and others.

This unified front, getting behind candidates across the entire country, will have the added benefit of alerting voters that wherever they live there will be a strong progressive candidate on the ballot. This will further nationalize the contest between the do-nothing centrists and progressives committed to solving (not just “addressing”) the problems faced by poor, working- and middle-class Americans. That is a contest progressives will win.

Gaining control of the party apparatus and racking up wins in the primaries are both about building power. With each victory more people will feel empowered. Together, we will become strong enough to change and renew the most influential country in the world, setting it back on the path to where we can, in the words of Bob Dylan “breath the air around Tom Paine.”

Currently, Democratic voters overwhelmingly support progressive policy positions, but the lion’s share of elected Democrats are establishment centrists. Fortunately, progressives have the momentum now, buttressed by a series of high-profile victories in the 2026 primaries. There’s still a long way to go. Our opponents have the money, but we have the people.

It is not in numbers, but in unity, that our great strength lies; yet our present numbers are sufficient to repel the force of all the world. —Thomas Paine, Common Sense

Now is the time for progressives to recognize our power and mobilize. Our movement is strong, our policies are popular, we can change American society for the better, empowering people and improving their lives, revitalizing our democracy in the process—but to achieve any or all of this, we need the Democratic Party. No other institution, no other vehicle has the capacity to deliver what needs to be delivered—but the Party must be transformed to succeed. The centrist-led Democratic Party has failed to vanquish Trumpism.

If progressives enter the party en masse in a coordinated manner and unify behind one progressive candidate in primaries across the country, we can have a Democratic Party that serves the interests of the people by 2028.

We are right on time to beat back authoritarianism, enact a popular ground-breaking social contract and renew faith in the American project—much like 96 years earlier, and the revolutionary spirit of 1776.

Coda: Applied Common Sense

Progressives must win the battle for the soul of the Democratic Party.

At this hour in our history, if the party remains dominated by its conservative neoliberal faction, an increasingly desperate public will seek an alternative—and in our two party system, that means a “populist” anti-democratic authoritarian GOP.

We can’t fall into that trap again.

A Democratic Party that serves the interests of the poor, working- and middle-class Americans—aka the vast majority of the population—is an imperative.

Anyone who has read this far understands that the idea of shepherding millions of people into a status quo Democratic Party is anathema to your humble author and all sincere progressives. Any progressive campaign for mass entryism into the Party must be predicated on an unwavering commitment to transform the party. As a show of public accountability, we must loudly proclaim this as our goal, complete with detailed plans to achieve our ends. This transparency will weed out the charlatans from our ranks.

At the same time, Common Sense demands every progressive, every democratic socialist, anyone of good conscience who wants to live in a free, democratic society—indeed, everyone who holds out hope to live in an America fulfilling its potential as the world’s first multi-racial democracy—must unite behind the Democratic Party for the 2026 midterm general election in November.

Yes, that means partnering with the very same “moderates” who reject the progressive policies supported by the Democratic base, are servants to big money and are despised by the public—but they do support the constitutional democratic republic and oppose fascism.

We cannot and will not make the same mistake that anti-fascist forces made in Germany in 1933, by splitting the opposition. We must do what Americans did in 1933. Build the Democratic Party into a pro-working class super-majority party and transform the economy and by extension the country—and this time no one will be excluded.

So, progressives must fight like hell in the remaining primaries to defeat the centrist Democrats but come October we will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them to defeat the fascists (to the tunes of Woody Guthrie, Cardy B, Chuck D and Bad Bunny).

Then, on November 4th, we return to the task of taking over and transforming the Democratic Party so that we can win more than a temporary respite from fascism.

The 21st Century Economic Bill of Rights
Alan Minsky and Harvey J Kaye, Co-Authors

Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) proposes a 21st Century Economic Bill of Rights that will guarantee all people residing in the United States the right to the basic necessities of life regardless of their income, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or country of origin. Having a 21st Century Economic Bill of Rights will establish that all Americans are entitled to:

1. The right to a job that pays a living wage

2. The right to a voice in the workplace through a union and collective bargaining

3. The right to comprehensive quality health care

4. The right to a complete cost-free public education & broadband Internet

5. The right to decent, safe, affordable housing

6. The right to a clean environment and a secure planet

7. The right to a meaningful endowment of resources at birth and a secure retirement

8. The right to sound banking and financial services

9. The right to an equitable and economically fair justice system

10. The right to recreation & participation in public life

Ten Pillars of A Rural New Deal
Alan Minsky, Anthony Flaccavento and Dave Alba, Co-Authors

• Rebuild farm, forest & food economies
• Reward work & ensure livable wages
• Dismantle monopolies, empower & support local business
• Invest in community & regional infrastructure
• Re-build small town centers
• Cultivate self-reliance & resilience
• Invest in rural health care
• Fully fund rural schools
• Make rural & small town housing affordable
• Re-localize rural & small town banks

AMES, IOWA - JANUARY 25: Iowa voters listen as Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) speaks at the Ames City Auditorium on January 25, 2020 in Ames, Iowa. Iowa holds the state's caucuses in nine days on February 3.

Two hundred fifty years ago, Americans rejected monarchy. They rejected the idea that power should rest in the hands of one person, one family, or a distant ruling class. Instead, they enshrined an American promise: Legitimate power comes from the people.

Our Constitution opens with three words: “We the People.” As the country marks its 250th anniversary, that promise is worth remembering: In America, the people are supposed to be in charge.

Indeed, every day we see neighbors working together to improve their lives, their communities, and the country.

Earlier this year, hundreds of residents of San Marcos, Texas, packed into public meetings with concerns about a new data center. The Caldwell/Hays Examiner, a local paper, summarized the sentiment: “Electricity bills may soon spike while access to clean water diminishes drastically, given the unfathomably giant data center on its way.”

Do “We the People” govern ourselves, or are we ruled by concentrated power?

The local government rejected the unpopular project, and similar efforts are taking place across the country. In every place the message is clear: The people who live there, not a distant tech company, should be in charge of the community’s resources.

Rural communities are also taking on Big Ag. For example, Grassroots Organizing of Western Wisconsin brought residents together and passed local safeguards that limit threats from factory farms and support family farmers, clean water, and local infrastructure.

Iowans won a big victory against a global pesticide manufacturer. Knowing their state’s unusually high cancer rates, Iowa Farmers Union mobilized from the bottom up and blocked a law that would have shielded a billion-dollar corporation from accountability.

These patriotic efforts help fulfill the promise of “We the People.” They also show what’s possible when people come together to shape the decisions that affect our lives.

Unfortunately, few Americans feel in control right now. We face an unpredictable economy, cuts to healthcare, cruel and reckless Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, and attacks on mail-in ballots. Even that recent win in Iowa is in jeopardy—the Supreme Court just shielded the pesticide company from thousands of lawsuits brought by farmers and families who blame Roundup for their cancer.

These are all symptoms of a single disease: a nation where too much power rests with an elite few rather than with ordinary Americans. That’s exactly what researchers at Topos Partnership found. After listening to nearly 5,000 Americans, we heard one idea emerge: The people are supposed to be in charge.

The real story isn’t Democrats versus Republicans, or newcomers versus citizens, or some fabricated clash of civilizations. The real story—the one that unifies and energizes—is about who decides. Do “We the People” govern ourselves, or are we ruled by concentrated power?

Most Americans in our research recognize that the answer to that question is complicated, but also that being reminded of our defining story could help heal a fractured nation. As one moderate Colorado man expressed: “When everyday people don’t feel in charge, it creates anger, frustration, bitterness. But when everyday people feel like they’re having an impact, it creates a sense of belonging.”

When ordinary people organize, mobilize, and refuse to accept the dictates of an elite few, America moves forward. We’ve seen it in workers establishing safer workplaces and the civil rights movement expanding “who counts” in our country. We decided our nation belonged to us—and acted like it.

Let America’s history and recent successes be the inspiration. This July 4, the most patriotic thing we can do is remember whose hands this country is supposed to be in: ours. When we come together, the people are in charge.

From my living room window, I can see the yellow gate.

It stands on the main road linking several villages west of Bethlehem to the rest of the West Bank. To an outsider, it may look like an ordinary metal barrier. To those who live here, it has become something far more significant: a daily source of uncertainty that shapes routines, decisions, livelihoods, and even childhood memories.

My house sits beside the road. Every day, I watch people approach the gate not knowing what they will find. Will it be open? Closed? Will there be a checkpoint? Will they be delayed for minutes, hours, or forced to turn back altogether?

For many families, the first question of the morning is no longer about work, school schedules, or the weather. It is simple: "Is the gate open today?"

No child should become so familiar with a barrier that it earns a permanent place in his imagination.

Entire WhatsApp groups have emerged around that question alone. Residents exchange updates throughout the day. Someone reports that traffic is moving. Another warns of delays. A third shares a photo showing the road blocked.

These groups were not created to discuss politics. They exist because people need to know whether they can get to work, attend university classes, reach medical appointments, or visit relatives.

The gate has become a permanent presence in people's minds. When it closes completely, the scene changes instantly.

The drivers park their cars along the roadside and continue on foot. Students hurry toward schools and universities. Workers walk to avoid losing a day's wages. People carrying groceries, bags, or small children cross the distance that vehicles can no longer cover.

In the evening, many return the same way—tired, frustrated, and uncertain whether they will find the road open when it is time to go home.

Sometimes people ask permission to leave their cars near our house because they do not know when they will be able to retrieve them. On more than one occasion, I have watched strangers park, shoulder their belongings, and continue their journey on foot because there was no other option.

The visible inconvenience is easy to describe. The invisible burden is harder to measure.

What does it mean to organize your life around uncertainty? What happens when a routine trip to work, school, or a medical appointment becomes a daily calculation involving alternate routes, unexpected delays, and the possibility that the road ahead may suddenly close?

Over time, uncertainty settles into people's lives. It affects productivity, family plans, social commitments, and mental well-being. Conversations become dominated by road conditions and access restrictions. Schedules remain tentative. Even celebrations, weddings, and family gatherings are planned with the possibility of disruption in mind.

The impact extends far beyond transportation. It reshapes the way people think. And perhaps nowhere is that impact more visible than in the way children absorb the world around them. My son is 8 years old. Over the past months, he has drawn the gate more than 30 times. No one asked him to do so. No teacher assigned it. Yet the yellow gate keeps appearing in his drawings. Sometimes it is closed. Sometimes cars are waiting in front of it. Sometimes people are walking around it. Occasionally, there are figures standing nearby, watching.

Some of the drawings done by Mahmoud Ibrahim's son are shown.

At first, I barely noticed. Children draw what they see. But as the drawings accumulated, I began to pay attention. The same image returned again and again. A gate. A road. Waiting.

Children are supposed to fill their notebooks with football fields, superheroes, animals, friends, dreams, and imaginary adventures. Yet among my son's drawings, the gate had secured a permanent place. That realization stayed with me.

The true cost of restrictions is often discussed in terms of economics, mobility, or security. Those discussions matter. But there is another cost that receives far less attention: the amount of mental space occupied by obstacles that become part of everyday life.

When adults constantly discuss whether a road is open or closed, children listen. When plans are interrupted repeatedly, children notice. When uncertainty becomes normal, children absorb it as part of their understanding of how the world works.

The gate outside my window is made of metal. Yet its influence reaches far beyond the road it controls. It enters conversations around dinner tables. It dominates community WhatsApp groups. It influences work schedules, school attendance, and family visits. And, in my son's case, it appears repeatedly on sheets of paper scattered around our home.

Recently, I gathered several of his drawings and laid them side by side. There it was again: the yellow gate. In one picture it was closed. In another it stood across the road while cars waited. In a third, people walked around it.

I found myself asking a simple question: What would my son be drawing if the gate were not there? I do not know the answer. But I do know that no child should become so familiar with a barrier that it earns a permanent place in his imagination.

That is why I am writing this.

Not simply about a gate on a road near Bethlehem, but about how uncertainty seeps into daily life, settles into communities, and quietly shapes the memories of a generation growing up in its shadow.

This week, the Supreme Court dealt transgender Americans another devastating blow, upholding state bans on transgender athletes’ participation in girls' and women's sports. The decision represents the latest in a long series of attacks on trans lives, as we remain in the crosshairs of a manufactured culture war. The architects of these attacks usually wrap their bigotry in a familiar defense: “religious freedom.” They claim their faith compels them to legislate a strict, inflexible gender binary, and that any deviation from it is a threat to their religious liberty.

But as a trans Jew, and a leader of a major national Jewish organization, I have a question for them: What about my religious freedom? What about the freedom to live our Judaism?

My grandmother was born at home on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, spoke Yiddish as her first language, and was raised by immigrants who worked 12 hour physical jobs six days a week. She would not have known the phrase “gender identity” if her life depended on it. And yet, when I transitioned two decades ago, she did not hesitate. She took a deep breath, took a long look at me, decided it was still me she was seeing, and accepted me completely from that moment on.

When politicians attempt to ban gender-affirming care, bar trans kids from playing sports, and legally erase trans people, they are not protecting religious freedom. They are imposing Christian nationalism. Real religious freedom—the principle this country was founded on—only counts if it applies to all of us. Christian nationalists advocating against the rights of LGBTQ+ people are actively suppressing Judaism and other religions that don't neatly align with their theology.

We cannot let that vocal and well-funded Christian nationalist minority implement laws that endanger transgender people like me.

For years, the far-right has successfully monopolized the concept of religious liberty in this country, weaponizing it as a license to discriminate. But our past does not have to be our future. The theology they are attempting to encode into law is not a universal truth. In fact, it runs in direct opposition to my own religious tradition.

Judaism is a deeply embodied religion. It does not view the physical body as a prison, a shameful secret, or a rigid test of obedience; it delights in it. More than a thousand years before the advent of contemporary thinking about gender identity, the rabbis of the Talmud recognized seven different embodied genders. When faced with the reality of human diversity, they didn’t panic or attempt to legislate it out of existence. They acknowledged it, discussed it, and made space for it in Jewish law.

Today, the major streams of American Judaism, including the Reform, Reconstructionist, and Conservative movements, as well as plenty of Orthodox communities, explicitly affirm that being transgender is real, and healthy, and holy. And again, that affirmation is grounded in ancient theology and Jewish religious law.

At Bend the Arc, we organize progressive Jews because we understand attacks on trans people are a part of the authoritarian playbook. The very same political forces attempting to erase trans lives are the ones mainstreaming antisemitism, suppressing votes, abducting immigrants, and attacking reproductive freedom. They demand conformity because human diversity is a fundamental threat to their consolidation of power.

When I transitioned, my Jewish grandmother understood on a theological level that I was still me, and still made in the image of God. She also taught me that we do not abandon our people to appease bullies.

We cannot let a vocal and well-funded Christian nationalist minority dictate the narrative on religious freedom in America. We cannot let that vocal and well-funded Christian nationalist minority implement laws that endanger transgender people like me. LGBTQ+ people and everyone who loves us must wield our joy and pride every day as a weapon against Christian nationalism and authoritarianism, and we must stand unapologetically in our own traditions as we insist on living that joy in public.

My faith commands it. My humanity demands it. And our democracy depends on it.

How will we remember this Supreme Court term?

For Louisiana v. Callais, which demolished the 1965 Voting Rights Act. For near misses, too, as when the Constitution’s plain-language guarantee of birthright citizenship was recognized by only a bare majority of the justices. (As JD Vance crowed, that core protection is now “hanging by a thread.”)

I think the term may be remembered most as a time when the supermajority of very conservative, very pro-business justices bent the shape of American government. It was a power grab in legal garb, undermining Congress, granting presidents more authority, but with key decisions ultimately in the hands of the nine unelected officials now redesigning government.

In 2005, The New York Times Magazine published a story about a cadre of intense anti-government legal activists. They bemoaned “the Constitution in exile,” what they saw as an epic wrong turn in the 20th century. That was the era when Congress and presidents created expert independent agencies, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, to police Wall Street, and the Federal Trade Commission, to protect consumers. To most Americans, that was how we grew a modern, fair, prosperous economy. To those activists, it was all a terrible mistake.

A future president may be a populist progressive, now with new levers of power to address climate change or boost union power. To quote Justice Brett Kavanaugh, “What goes around comes around.”

One of the few adherents of this eccentric theory, the Times reported, was an unknown young federal judge named John Roberts. Soon he would become chief justice.

Trump v. Slaughter, announced on Monday, marked a key moment in Roberts’s long drive to write pro-business dogma into the Constitution. On this, Roberts is far from a Midwestern country club Republican cheerfully calling “balls and strikes.” This is not about wins or losses for Donald Trump. These justices have wanted to do this since Trump was cavorting at Studio 54.

Congress established the first independent agency, the Interstate Commerce Commission, to set railroad rates in the 1880s. Since then, laws created nearly 60 agencies to police the economy or serve as watchdogs over the government, and tried to wall them off a bit from political pressure and partisan politics.

Congress has now been blocked from imposing removal protections for the heads of most federal agencies, a critical bulwark against presidential meddling. Consider a consequential, complex current question: Could an effective new agency regulate artificial intelligence? The Slaughter ruling could make it considerably harder to insulate such a powerful body from political interference.

Of course, independent agencies are not a purely partisan issue. Over the course of American history, they have frustrated presidents of both parties, who want control of the sprawling federal bureaucracy.

The Slaughter ruling overturned a 1935 case, Humphrey’s Executor. William Humphrey was a reactionary and thoroughly unpleasant Federal Trade Commission member whom President Franklin D. Roosevelt wanted to fire. Humphrey kept going to work even after he was dismissed, then died while the legal challenge to pry him from his office was being heard. His heirs sued for his back pay.

The Supreme Court ruled that even FDR, at the peak of his power, could not fire grumpy old Mr. Humphrey. “That damn little case,” recalled FDR aide Robert Jackson (later a justice himself), “made Roosevelt madder at the court than any other decision... [He] thought they went out of their way to spite him personally.”

Slaughter is one of the most significant expressions of the pretentiously named “unitary executive theory.” This is the idea that because a single individual, the president, is elected to lead the executive branch, that means the whole executive branch serves at his whim. Of note, this case revolved around one aspect of it, firing of agency officials.

Indeed, the justices seemed to recognize the havoc their new doctrine would cause. On the same day, a different lineup of justices blocked Trump from firing Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook. The Fed, too, is an independent agency, signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson in the Progressive Era, but the rationale for independent central banking is well known. The Cook ruling mumbles about tradition and history, but the real answer for the divergent outcomes seemed to be, well, the Fed is just... different. (Of course, business interests revere the Fed and often loathe the FTC.)

A limited version of the unitary executive theory is not entirely crazy. We want a strong president able to guide the balky executive branch. But advocates have taken this idea to a dangerous extreme, turning it into a fancy cloak for an authoritarian executive. By their logic, if all federal employees work personally for a president, as if they were gardeners at Mar-a-Lago, that could demolish civil service protections and other rules that can keep government from being the instrument of executive whim.

Who knows how far this rhetoric of presidential power will go? Russell Vought, the White House budget director, says we live in a “post-constitutional time.” And in Trump v. United States, Roberts wrote that the president is “the only person who alone composes a branch of government.”

Policymakers now must grapple with the justices’ handiwork. How can we have strong inspectors general or independent military lawyers if a president can bark “you’re fired” at will? Can Congress step up by, say, giving the Government Accountability Office greater responsibility to police the executive branch? Such obscure questions will determine how government can work going forward. Necessary reforms can follow abuse and scandal. That’s what happened after Watergate. Now such safeguards must be designed in a world where the Supreme Court has supercharged presidential power.

Let’s not forget Donald Trump is a lame duck. (He is! Really!) A future president may be a populist progressive, now with new levers of power to address climate change or boost union power. To quote Justice Brett Kavanaugh, “What goes around comes around.” Of course, this court has also invented tools to stop policies it doesn’t like, such as the “major questions” doctrine it used to block Biden-era climate change rules. Stay tuned.

But it’s hard to escape the conclusion that this ruling will make government less effective, more chaotic, and more driven by politics and personality—steered there by a Supreme Court with too much power, now in thrall to an obscure and dangerous philosophy.

The Trump administration concluded a recent mineral deal with Kazakhstan that, not surprisingly, enriches not only President Donald Trump’s own family but that of his secretary of commerce, Howard Lutnick. Trump’s two eldest sons, part owners of Dominari Securities, are set to profit from the Kazakh tungsten deal. So is Cantor Fitzgerald, the investment firm run by Lutnick’s two sons.

As The New York Times pointed out in its investigation of the scheme, “Their sons were soon doing business with partners in a deal that their fathers were negotiating, continuing a pattern of self-enrichment in the second Trump administration that has few precedents in American history.”

The phrases “self-enrichment” and “few precedents” are interesting ways of characterizing this latest instance of the administration’s corruption. Isn’t self-enrichment a good thing, in the sense of profiting from your own hard work? By contrast, the article doesn’t mention the word “corruption” at all. Perhaps the Times is worried about getting hit by yet another Trump legal challenge (in October last year, Trump refiled a $15 billion defamation suit against the paper for its coverage of his 2024 presidential campaign).

There are indeed several precedents in American history for what Trump is doing. These previous corruption scandals—Credit Mobilier, Whiskey Ring, Teapot Dome—wrecked the reputations of presidents and cast long shadows over American politics. They also helped to produce the kind of safeguards that Trump is now destroying.

Foreign policy is a tool by which the administration levies a toll on any entity that has the temerity to be a country other than the United States.

As with much of Trump’s disrespect for norms, his corruption has been massive and largely in full view. The two outstanding questions are: Will Trump and company ever be held accountable for their graft and will this corruption have an enduring impact on political institutions in the United States?

Tracking the Damage

If scandalous behavior unfolds in full view of everyone, is it still a scandal? “Scandal” suggests something hidden, something whispered about, something revealed. Trump’s actions are full frontal. They are both brazen and matter-of-fact.

According to the Trump administration and its extended family, the money skimmed off the top of economic transactions is just smart politics. The administration has endeavored to negotiate every peace deal, trade agreement, investment arrangement, and mineral pact in such a way as to deliver Trump, his family, and their circle of close supporters a good chunk of change.

This is Trump’s interpretation of the American dream: Folks would be downright foolish not to profit from their position. All the great tycoons made their money, from railroads to AI, by being in the right place at the right time with the right amount of ruthlessness. In Trump’s case, however, he is using taxpayer money to cover the risk. And most the time, given the terms of the arrangement, there is hardly any risk because Trump is using his presidential power to game the system. That’s what he really means by the “art of the deal.” Trump only deals from a marked deck of cards.

The Center for American Progress runs Trump’s Take, which estimates that the president has received a little over $2.6 billion in cash and gifts since he took office in January 2025.

The graft is not secret, though sometimes the actual amounts involved are obscured by layers of complex finance. Trump’s recent mandatory financial disclosure offers some details. But thanks to a number of websites, it’s become quite easy to track in real time the growing amount of Trump’s slice of the pie.

The Center for American Progress runs Trump’s Take, which estimates that the president has received a little over $2.6 billion in cash and gifts since he took office in January 2025. Much of this money has come from various crypto schemes, including the Trump meme coin, but also such dubious ventures as the documentary about Melania Trump and a number of legal settlements (more colloquially known as shakedowns). Corruption Counter puts the value at $2.2 billion and includes such recent items as the $100 million savings for Trump from the recent effort to bar the Internal Revenue Service from auditing the president. (Courts blocked the overall $1.8 billion “settlement fund,” but the Justice Department is upholding the IRS amnesty.)

If you want to keep track just of the crypto deals, the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee maintain the Trump Family Digital Grift Wealth Tracker. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) keeps his own list, which highlights the insider trading around the Iran War and a defense contract with Dell after the president invested in the company. David Kirkpatrick, at The New Yorker, has been keeping a running total of Trump’s ballooning assets. In January, he updated his total to $4 billion, which details, among other things, the Gulf money flowing into Trump pockets. Meanwhile, at RepresentUS, you can find a timeline of shady deals, from the no-bid contract to a presidential supporter for the Reflecting Pool “upgrade” to an Air Force contract for drones awarded to a company backed by Trump’s eldest sons.

In May, Campaign Legal Center published a rundown of influence peddling—what Trump supporters get in return for their contributions—that includes Elon Musk’s DOGE appointment, Immigration and Customs Enforcement contracts for the Trump-supporting GEO Group, and the cessation of various lawsuits for Trump-friendly entities (Gemini, Robinhood, Coinbase). Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has its own tracker that keeps up with the number of major events held at Trump’s properties and the number of Trump-branded foreign projects developed during his second term (with a new Trump Tower planned for Tbilisi, Georgia, it’s now up to 25).

Sometimes it seems as though Trump administration policy is just a front for making money, much as a shell company provides a legitimate façade for organized crime.

Getting His Percentage

One of the sticking points in the current war with Iran is the latter’s attempt to control shipping in and out of the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran wants to charge a toll on ships passing through the Strait. Given that the strait is an international waterway—and not a canal—Iran’s bid violates international law.

Trump has opposed Iran’s gambit not so much because it violates the Law of the Seas but because Iran has borrowed a page from the Trump playbook. How dare they try to trump Trump! Indeed, the president has threatened a toll of his own if the ceasefire doesn’t hold: a take of 20% of regional revenues if the United States becomes “the guardian of the Middle East” by using military force to protect shipping in the region.

Foreign policy is a tool by which the administration levies a toll on any entity that has the temerity to be a country other than the United States. The Kazakh deal on tungsten is but one of several ways that the administration has cashed in on critical minerals. The Trump sons have a financial interest in 14 companies working with the US government on mineral deals that involve nearly $9 billion in federal funding. This includes $620 million Pentagon loan, fast-tracked by the White House, to a North Carolina rare-earth magnet company in which Donald Trump Jr.’s venture capital firm has invested. Several Trump associates stand to gain from any future deal involving Greenland minerals.

Trump has used tariffs to extract various concessions. In some cases, countries have responded by appealing to Trump’s self-interest. Vietnam, for instance, approved a Trump golf course and received a tariff reduction. Switzerland also enjoyed such treatment when it gifted Trump “a special Rolex desktop clock, a 1-kilogram personalized gold bar, and loads of flattery.” The message is clear: US trade policy is for sale.

Even peace agreements are not immune from the Trump treatment. The Gaza peace deal offers potentially lucrative opportunities for outside businesses to profit from the reconstruction of the rubble-strewn area. “Everybody and their brother is trying to get a piece of this,” one long-time contractor told The Guardian. “People are treating this like another Iraq or Afghanistan. And they’re trying to get, you know, rich off of it.” The executive board of Trump’s Board of Peace is dominated by titans of industry—Marc Rowan, Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner—all salivating at the prospect of using their insider position to profit (though, with progress stalled on the ground, the Board of Peace may end up doing corruption the old-fashioned way by just siphoning off the money up front and granting itself legal immunity to escape the consequences).

The deal that created a “Trump corridor” between Armenia and Azerbaijan was similarly projected to provide commercial opportunities to Trump cronies. But it has yet to get off the ground, another victim of Trump’s propensity to make a big splash with his agreements and neglect to secure the follow-through. Trump’s peace deal with Russia, negotiated on the backs of the Ukrainians, would have also meant a huge windfall for Trump cronies—in opportunities for reconstruction contracts in Ukraine and even larger profits for the commercial reengagement with Russia.

In The Atlantic, several months after Trump took office, David Frum summed up the corrupt activities of the administration this way:

Nothing like this has been attempted or even imagined in the history of the American presidency. Throw away the history books; discard feeble comparisons to scandals of the past. There is no analogy with any previous action by any past president. The brazenness of the self-enrichment resembles nothing seen in any earlier White House. This is American corruption on the scale of a post-Soviet republic or a postcolonial African dictatorship.

Frum served in the George W. Bush White House. A NeverTrumper, he nevertheless knows a little something about corrupt conservatives. Upwards of $20 billion of post-war reconstruction aid for Iraq disappeared into the ether of corruption (and the pockets of US firms, including Halliburton). Trump stands on the shoulders of giants.

Immunity and Impact

Donald Trump knows that he is a living, breathing violation of the law. That’s why he has gone to such lengths to ensure immunity—the Supreme Court decision providing presidents with immunity from criminal prosecution for their official acts, the attempt to secure exemption from IRS audits. Trump has also promised to pardon preemptively “everyone who has come within 200 feet of the Oval Office.”

Let’s tackle Trump first. His immunity is not absolute. First, it does not cover “unofficial acts.” Depending on how courts define this category, Trump (and certainly his family) could be prosecuted for corrupt business dealings that are deemed “private.” Second, immunity doesn’t apply if it can be demonstrated that criminal prosecution poses no “dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch.” That’s another tough one to parse, and it will probably fall to future courts to define. But if something is demonstrably corrupt, then it should by definition fall outside the legitimate authority and functions of the Executive Branch.

Trump has already used his broad powers to pardon the January 6 rioters and other malefactors, including 22 corrupt politicians. Trump cronies must look at this record and feel pretty safe from future prosecution.

Donald Trump knows that he is a living, breathing violation of the law.

But presidential pardons also have their limits. Such pardons can’t violate the Constitution or criminal law—though Trump has challenged these strictures—and they don’t cover future crimes. More to the point, Trump’s pardons only apply to federal prosecution. Individuals can still be tried in various states (and overseas if their misconduct took place in other countries).

The impact of Trump’s misconduct is directly related to this question of immunity. If the president and his coterie “get away with it,” then the corruption they initiated will be much harder to root out of political institutions. Unprosecuted acts can harden into precedents. Throwing Trump and company into prison would be satisfying. Ditto clawing back their ill-gotten gains. From the point of view of democracy, however, even a plea bargain in which the malefactors stay out of jail and pay a nominal penalty in exchange for pleading guilty would be a victory.

It’s best to think of Trump as an aberration, however much his behavior can be traced to past scandals, the authoritarian tendencies of previous presidents, and the oft-corrupt workings of American capitalism. Democracy, like any fiction, requires the willing suspension of disbelief. Trump’s truly an unbelievable character. Once he’s gone, it will be time to pretend that the monster has been vanquished and the rule of law restored. Only in this way will America escape its semiquincentennial with its clothing muddied but its presumably good intentions intact.

As the United States approaches its 250th year as a nation, the festivities are widespread in DC. But even as Americans prepare to celebrate, the Trump administration is quietly working to expose some of our most treasured ocean places to harmful activities like mining, drilling, and industrial fishing.

We should be spending this anniversary lifting up our shared natural and cultural heritage. Instead, the Trump administration is spending this consequential year trashing the very idea of shared heritage by erasing history and selling out nature on land and sea. While there has been extensive coverage about how this erasure is playing out on land, the administration is also aggressively selling out our ocean heritage.

Having worked in the Biden administration and now both leading national conservation coalitions, we hear from communities across the country every day, who are trying to protect the ocean and coasts they love and depend on.

And what we hear is that communities don’t like what they are seeing from the Trump administration. They don’t want to be cut off from their own ocean backyards by corporate pollution. They don’t want dirty and destructive industry off their coasts. And they especially don’t want the Trump administration selling off public lands and waters to the highest bidder.

All of us who love the ocean have a chance now to be a part of the alliance to save its future.

In the Pacific Ocean, expedited permits for deep-sea mining make it easier to sell off the right to mine around the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, and American Samoa. Thousands of people in these US territories have made it clear that they oppose these mining ventures because these companies use unproven technology that jeopardizes their livelihoods. Our coalitions have engaged tens of thousands of people voicing their opposition, yet the administration has continued the process of selling off the seafloor to mining companies with little benefit to the communities that bear the risks.

The expansion of offshore oil and gas leases, which would open 34 new sales in waters off the coast of Alaska, California, and Florida, would also benefit just a handful of fossil fuel companies. In one fell swoop, they would sell out the climate; introduce the constant possible threat of an oil spill; and further threaten local fishing, recreation, and subsistence.

Reopening protected waters to industrial fishing is the same short-sighted story. Like our national parks on land, marine national monuments are protected as special places we safeguard for our children and grandchildren to enjoy. They are home to spectacular wildlife and important cultural heritage and history. However, Trump’s executive orders will lead to all of these monuments opening to industrial fishing—the largest rollback of protected areas in US history—endangering these special places and the diverse creatures therein.

Meanwhile, the federal workforce focused on public lands and waters has been decimated. If they weren’t fired through budget-slashing with the planning and accuracy of a 14-year-old playing laser tag, they quit to avoid carrying out unconscionable actions. Many of the staff who had relationships with communities are no longer in government service, replaced with corporate insiders.

These actions are as unpopular as they are destructive. Loving the ocean is as unique and universal as the American experience, and we relate to it in countless ways for sustenance, livelihoods, spiritual renewal, recreation, and more: the thrill of catching a fish for dinner, the magic of watching a whale breach, the way that just the smell of salty water can put us in a better mood. From the lush mangrove forests of the Florida Keys, to vibrant coral reefs of the central Pacific, to the rocky coastlines of New England, or the enchanting tidepools of the West Coast, there’s no reason to let the administration run roughshod over these simple, profound pleasures.

Collectively, we can push back on the Trump administration’s attack on the ocean. We’ve seen this administration abandon projects before, including the DOGE program. All of us who love the ocean have a chance now to be a part of the alliance to save its future.

For the last 250 years, past generations fought to protect our coasts and waters.

Now, it’s up to us to keep that tradition alive.

After musician after musician pulled out from President Donald Trump’s “Freedom 250” concert, he was left with Lee Greenwood, an opera tenor, a couple of military bands, and Kash Patel’s girlfriend. The anthem that made Greenwood a star, “God Bless the USA,” was written in 1985 during the height of the Cold War. It begins with the specter of loss—“If tomorrow—all the things were gone, I’d worked for all my life/ And I had to start all over with my children and my wife.” Then the wounds disappear before they’re felt: “I’d thank my lucky stars to be living here today/ Because the flag still stands for freedom and they can’t take that away.”

Ronald Reagan made the song his campaign theme while launching a new age of American inequality by systematically busting unions and cutting taxes for the wealthiest. Greenwood treats layoffs and the resulting toll on ordinary lives as a mere inconvenience. As the refrain shifts from violins and a church organ to a military march, he repeats, “I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free/ And I won’t forget the men who died who gave that right to me.”

Honoring those who died resonates powerfully. Those who risk taking bullets to defend our country deserve respect for their service and sacrifice. Yet this gives us no special grace over citizens of other lands. And doesn’t answer the question of whether or not it was necessary to put them in harms way to begin with. Because Greenwood says nothing about what freedom might demand of us, it becomes just an empty phrase, blessing all that our leaders may do, no matter how arrogant or destructive.

We were defending freedom in this view, when supporting dictators from Chile’s Augusto Pinochet to the Iranian Shah whose brutal rule laid the groundwork for the current theocracy and the war of choice that we hope has now finally ended. We’re supposedly defending freedom now as Trump cozies up to dictators like Russia's Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Recep Erdoğan, and Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman, and while Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents grab innocent people off America’s streets. When Greenwood sings, “There ain’t no doubt I love this land. God Bless the USA,” he never suggests what qualities of justice would redeem the love he declaims.

Hard as it is, we’re stronger for engaging the difficult questions about who we’ve been as a country and who we want to be.

Greenwood wrote the song after we invaded the 95,000-person country of Grenada, wanting to reflect “the spirit of America being proud.” Reagan made it his campaign theme, and Greenwood has been singing it at Republican rallies and conventions ever since. Trump calls it “the greatest hit of all time” and sold a “God Bless the USA Bible,” (printed in China) that contains the song. Because Greenwood says that just living in America makes us free, his version of patriotism gets reduced to signing a blank check for whatever our leaders choose to do. It’s a perfect match for this or any president who seeks to erase all limits on their power.

But Greenwood’s isn’t the sole patriotic ballad to choose from. The late Waylon Jennings’ “America” reached No. 6 on the charts the year “God Bless the USA” first came out. Written by Sammy Johns, the song affirms connection to native soil, as Jennings repeats, “America, America,” slowly and tenderly as if to a woman he loves; then admits, softly, “You’ve become a habit to me.” But he also makes tough demands—recounting his own history as an Anglo yeoman “from down round Tennessee,” then continuing, “But my brothers/ Are all black and white/ Yellow too/ And the red man is right/ To expect a little from you/ Promise and then follow through/ America.”

In a similar vein, “America the Beautiful” writer Katherine Lee Bates celebrated “purple mountain majesties,” but actively opposed America’s imperial adventures, so added lines like “God mend thine every flaw/Confirm thy soul in self-control/Thy liberty in law!” Bruce Springsteen’s whole career has been about honoring the courage and dignity of ordinary Americans, from “The Promised Land” celebrating those with “dreams that break your heart,” to “The Rising’s” portrait of 9/11 firefighters, to the “Streets of Minneapolis” chorus, “Singing through the bloody mist, we’ll take our stand for this land.”

Hard as it is, we’re stronger for engaging the difficult questions about who we’ve been as a country and who we want to be. Patriotic ballads don’t have to be political manifestos. But the best celebrate our diverse and contradictory land and acknowledge that true greatness does not flow like automatic grace. Rather, it’s fulfilled through honoring common responsibility and connection.

With democracy profoundly threatened, we need true patriotism more than ever. We can choose a patriotism of blind adulation. Or we can embrace the songs that demand the most of us.

An earlier version of this piece appeared in The Fulcrum.

As I noted in an article earlier this month, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the federal government will save $911 billion over 10 years and that 10 million people will lose health insurance as a result of Medicaid changes in H.R.1, aka the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). This bill requires near-poor, able-bodied Medicaid beneficiaries with incomes currently above the poverty line but under thresholds that depend on family size — $22,025 for an individual or $45,360 for a family of four — to navigate a maze of red tape and reporting requirements twice a year to remain enrolled. Disabled people on Medicaid, including those with cancer or end stage renal disease, will have to prove that they are too disabled to work in order to waive the work requirement.

An analysis by health policy organization KFF found that in 2023, 64 percent of adults 19 to 64 years of age enrolled in Medicaid were working either full or part-time. Nearly 30 percent were not working because of caregiving responsibilities, disability or school attendance — barriers to employment that typically exempt people from work requirements in programs that mandate them. Most of the 8 percent who were not working were retired or unemployed. The result is that only a small share of Medicaid enrollees will lose access to the program because they do not meet work requirements. However, many more will lose coverage because of the difficulty of navigating the reporting requirements and the administrative red tape built into the OBBBA for this purpose.

In June 2026, HHS released interim regulations for the changes to Medicaid that states must implement by January 1, 2027. The regulations are much more severe than the requirements in H.R.1, and have upended work that states had already done to be ready to comply by the January 1 deadline. This has forced states to scramble to be ready in just six months, an extraordinarily short window to prepare for the large changes in reporting requirements. Disenrolling people by mistake may mean the difference between life and death for Medicaid enrollees. The rollout of the new work and massively burdensome reporting requirements is likely to be bumpy.

ASPE Publishes Very Brief Fantastical Briefing Report

In conjunction with the release of the new eligibility and reporting requirements, the Department of Health and Human Services released a brief, prepared by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE), with the Orwellian title, “Medicaid Work Requirements Incentivize Employment and Are Estimated to Reduce Poverty.” The brief’s conclusion that pushing people off the Medicaid rolls will increase employment and reduce poverty is contradicted by an earlier assessment by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). CBO found that mandating work requirements would decrease what the federal government pays for Medicaid, increase the number of people without health insurance, raise costs for states, and wouldn’t increase employment.

The four-and-a half page ASPE brief has few citations for its assertions about how cutting access to health insurance for poor people will magically produce jobs for those disenrolled from Medicaid. While the authors say they have reviewed three decades of literature on work requirements in social programs, and they have an online bibliography with more than 130 references, they cite only 10 papers in the brief. As NOTUS observes, the researchers that produced the 10 papers cited in the brief are crying foul, claiming that their studies are being misused, and in some cases are being used to support conclusions that are the opposite of what the studies show. In other cases, researchers complain that while the findings of their studies may not be distorted, crucial job search supports for job seekers in their studies that are not available to people facing disenrollment from Medicaid in 2027 are ignored in the ASPE brief.

As noted in a technical analysis of the ASPE brief published in Health Affairs, the brief assumes totally unrealistic employment effects. It considers two scenarios. In the first, all 5.8 million people on Medicaid — who the brief assumes will not meet the new work requirements and are not exempt from them — will increase their work effort. The report does not spell out where the 5.8 million figure comes from, but a back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests it includes about 4.2 million people enrolled in Medicaid who are working part-time and 1.6 million who are retired, unemployed or otherwise not working. The brief assumes that these Medicaid recipients will increase their hours of work at their current wage or at the average wage among similarly educated Medicaid-eligible individuals.

Part-time workers are assumed to increase their hours and those who are not working are assumed to find jobs. Unbelievably, the change in employment participation is assumed to be 100 percent in the first scenario. This is more than 23 times higher than the 4.2 percent increase the ASPE brief authors report for welfare-to-work experiments that, unlike Medicaid work requirements, involved cash assistance and provided people leaving welfare programs with substantial help for finding work.The help included employment services such as transportation and job search assistance and case management services to assist people in meeting work requirements. In the second scenario, the brief’s authors assume that 80 percent of the 5.8 million people they believe will not meet the work requirements will succeed in finding employment. This is a 57 percent increase in participation and is 13 times the welfare-to-work effect.

The reductions in poverty cited in the ASPE brief are not calculated independently, but follow from the entirely unrealistic assumptions about the increases in work participation. The earnings increase on average per family is $16,780 — a result of the built-in employment and wage assumptions. Net of the loss of benefits as their incomes rose, families of Medicaid recipients whose work participation rises experience an increase in resources or $12,034. In the first scenario, this reduces poverty by 2.9 million people; in the second, by 1.6 million.

Arkansas’ Experience with Work Requirements

The ASPE brief omits any mention of the one instance where a state — Arkansas — implemented work requirements in 2018. This is a glaring omission in a report on the effects of work requirements in Medicaid, and suggests the brief’s authors may not have wanted to report the disastrous results of this introduction of work requirements.

The application of work requirements to Medicaid is a new development and there are just a few empirical studies of the Arkansas case. A cutting edge 2026 analysis by Harvard Medical School researcher Yuji Mizushima found that total Medicaid participation declined sharply during the months in which the mandated work requirements were in effect. Mizushima examined two groups of people — those on Medicaid who were disenrolled because they didn’t meet the work requirement, and those in the general population who failed to enroll in Medicaid because of the work requirement. The author found that participation in Medicaid fell by about 28,810 adults — 18,164 who were disenrolled and more than 10,500 who did not apply or reapply for Medicaid. There was no discernible change in the number of hours worked and no increase in employment or in participation in the labor force of the Medicaid population in the months leading up to, during, or following the enforcement of the work mandate. This supports similar findings in research on the Arkansas experience in other studies. A year after Arkansas implemented work requirements, the poor results led a federal judge to pause and later to strike down the work requirement.

Conclusion

The introduction of work requirements in Medicaid in Arkansas during the first Trump administration led to a disastrous decline in access to health insurance for people who had relied on Medicaid for health care, but did not increase hours of work or employment. This stands in direct contradiction to the wishful thinking and wildly unrealistic assumptions embodied in the two scenarios in the ASPE brief, and raises unavoidable questions about why the authors failed to examine the Arkansas experience.

On June 4, 2026—after nearly 1,000 days of genocide in Gaza—Smith College asserted that the concern of Smith students and alumni about the college’s complicity in shipping weapons into the genocide, “is not directly aligned with the college’s core mission, values, operations, and strategic priorities.” This despite pride that Smith’s leadership takes in its divestment from companies doing business in apartheid South Africa in 1985-86.

This statement came from Smith’s Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility (ACIR), a subcommittee of the Investment Committee of the Board of Trustees. The ACIR’s statement rejected a 32-page proposal (“Smith College Ethical Investment Policy & Procedure”), submitted in November 2025 by Smith Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Alums for Justice in Palestine (AJP). The proposal requested that Smith divest its $2 billion endowment of stock in corporations supplying weapons and other support for Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people and create an ethical and transparent investment policy.

This is the second time that Smith’s Board of Trustees has refused to divest from genocide. In 2024, after a 13-day occupation of the College Hall administration building by some 50 members of SJP, the ACIR ruled that SJP’s earlier divestment proposal, “did not meet the threshold for taking action.” (To see, in their entireties, the November 2025 AJP-SJP Ethical Investment Policy and the ACIR rejection of it, as well as an alum sign-on letter pledging to withhold donations to Smith until it divests, please visit the linktr.ee of Smith AJP.)

Ongoing Slaughter in Palestine, Lebanon, Iran

A sign is seen on the grass at Smith SJP's People's University, Chapin Lawn, April, 2026. (Photo by Jennifer Scarlott)

As Smith AJP and SJP pointed out in a June 10 press release, the ACIR’s denial came amid the US-Israeli war against Iran; ongoing strikes in Lebanon and Gaza in violation of ceasefire agreements; and land theft and violent displacement of Palestinians and Lebanese by Israel in Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank. Between February and June 2026, US-Israeli attacks have killed at least 3,468 people in Iran and 3,371 people in Lebanon, displacing over a million in Lebanon. Since October 2023, the US-Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza has taken at least 100,000 lives and probably many more, a significant number of them women and children. New reports document Israel’s targeted killing of children in Gaza (under the age of 18) and deliberate reproductive genocide in Gaza. Between 9-10,000 Palestinians, including children, are imprisoned by Israel—often without charge or any legal recourse and under the direst of conditions including torture and rape. Earlier this year, the Israeli Knesset passed a racist death penalty law applying only to Palestinians.

Smith will celebrate its students, alumni, faculty, and staff who fought courageously for Smith’s future and for a just and safe future for Palestinians and all people. One day, Smith officialdom will cite it as a reason to attend the college.

Israel has damaged or eradicated more than 81% of built infrastructure in Gaza, including 22 of 38 university campuses. This scale of destruction is enabled by companies the AJP-SJP Ethical Investment Policy would have eliminated from Smith’s portfolio (see the United Nation’s list from 2025 for examples). Many of these entities are also guilty of human rights violations in the United States. Palantir, for example, is one of the largest contractors for the Department of Defense and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Ending economic support for imperial violence around the world is “a necessary step to end the genocide and dismantle the global system that has allowed it,” explains Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur for the Palestinian Territories.

A close look at the June 4, 2026 ACIR statement rejecting the November 19, 2025 AJP-SJP Ethical Investment Policy provides a clear understanding of the failed leadership of Smith College:

Rejection of the Proposal: Trustee Claims vs. Reality

A sign is displayed at Smith SJP's People's University, Chapin Lawn, April, 2026. (Photo by Jennifer Scarlott)

1. Societal Significance & Impact: Human Rights and Genocide in Gaza

Trustee claim: In one portion of its response regarding the “societal significance” of the AJP-SJP proposal, the ACIR stated:

In explaining the societal significance of the issue at the heart of their proposal, the petitioners cite the broad impacts of global human rights violations tied to weapons production and proliferation and the relationship to harming women. [We] concluded that such human rights violations are significant to society at large and can cause broad economic, environmental, health, or social impact. This is true not only of the violations occurring in Palestine, but of similar violations occurring throughout the globe. The proposal aligns with ACIR’s principles and guidelines on this matter.

Apparently not entirely comfortable with this ethical assertion, the ACIR then rushed to contradict itself by denying the AJP-SJP contention that “academic institutions carry an outsized symbolic and structural role capable of reshaping market demands.”

“While Smith’s endowment could be considered large in the context of higher education endowments,” the ACIR opined, “it is not large enough in the context of the broader investment arena to influence demand in any noticeable way… [therefore we] conclude that the proposed action would not measurably affect social change.”

Reality: In making this remarkably limp, amoral, and contradictory assertion, the ACIR ignores a common-sense argument presented to it in the AJP-SJP proposal:

Smith has a chance to make history by taking a principled stance against mass atrocities devastating racialized peoples worldwide and becoming the first historically women’s college and "Seven Sister" to do so—joining institutions such as King’s College, Cambridge; the California Institute of the Art; and the University of San Francisco in committing to an ethical investment policy.

A current student said, “You cannot be an institution that raises up the voice of activist alums, using them as examples of what this institution creates and stands for, and continue to invest in the war machine that these activists spend their lives advocating against.”

SJP noted that the ACIR recently added a new statement to its website: “The endowment is not a tool for responding to global events.” In fact, however, the ACIR itself was created because of student organizing to combat global climate change—which in turn led to Smith’s announcement in 2019 that it would divest from fossil fuel companies within 15 years.

And what about SJP-AJP’s expression of explicit concerns, throughout the Ethical Investment Policy, about the genocide in Gaza? Here, the ACIR doubled down on its hedging. While it acknowledged that SJP and AJP expressed concern about the genocide in Gaza, it deflected, noting that there are many human rights violations “occurring throughout the globe.” This is an all-too-familiar talking point used by Zionists trying to deflect attention from the Gaza genocide.

At this point, the ACIR threw on the brakes, refusing to refer to the Israeli-US slaughter in Gaza as a genocide at all. Instead, it referred to the genocide as "violations occurring in Palestine" and "the issue," and then stated that those “violations” and that “issue” fail to rise to a level of sufficient alignment with the “values” and “priorities” of the college.

The UN Special Committee on Israeli Practices, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention, Genocide Watch, Amnesty International, Doctors Against Genocide, Human Rights Watch, Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres), Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, B’Tselem, and other organizations have officially concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

Is the leadership of the College unaware that numerous expert global organizations identify the war on Gaza as a genocide?

Do the Trustees know better than the organizations listed above?

Does the leadership of Smith College deny that genocide is occurring in Gaza?

2. Financial Impact & Fiduciary Duty

Trustee claim: In the June 4 rejection, the ACIR argued that 1) because Smith’s weapons investments are commingled with other stocks, divestment “would force the college to exit premier, diversified commingled (investment) funds…; 2) “Additionally, the endowment does not include direct investments in any businesses, so divesting from specific businesses is not possible”…; and 3) [divestment] would impair the Investment Office’s ability to retain top-tier asset managers, a direct conflict with the board’s legal obligations to steward the financial health of the endowment in perpetuity.”

Reality: All three parts of the above statement are an obfuscation (arguably, deliberate attempts to mystify the investment process), amounting to outright falsehood. And, it would seem, Smith’s Trustees are laboring under outdated understandings of ethical investment practices—which they don’t seem to be laboring under where divestment from fossil fuels is concerned.

We interviewed an investment professional who confirmed what all honest investment professionals know and that can easily be researched—Smith’s assertion regarding commingled investments is a “red herring.” “A competent investment manager,” she said, “can readily create accounts that filter out weapons makers and other corporations that are complicit in genocide.”

In addition, the expert pointed out, “Investing in corporations implicated in ‘grave human rights abuses’ fails commonly accepted ESG (environmental, social, and governance) risk assessments intended to protect investors and society at large.”

Among the genocide-complicit companies Smith invests in through commingled funds are Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon RTX, L3Harris (now partnering with Palantir on various projects), Northrup Grumman, Hexcel, and General Dynamics. Case closed.

A further reality around financial-fiduciary ethics and responsibility must be grappled with by the Smith College community: In rejecting the November 2025 AJP-SJP Ethical Investment Policy, the ACIR failed to acknowledge that at least 10 of the 30 members of the Board of Trustees have financial connections with Israel. The following sample is indicative of this reality among at least one-third of the Trustees:

• Susan May Molineaux, chair of Smith’s Board of Trustees, is a member of the board of directors of Geron biopharmaceutical company. Geron’s largest shareholders—RA Capital Management, BlackRock, and Soleus—invest in Israeli firms. BlackRock is a major investor in arms corporations providing weapons to Israel.
• Anu Aiyengar, vice chair of the Board of Trustees, is the global co-head of mergers and acquisitions at J.P. Morgan Chase, which, the company says, has been “committed to serving clients in Israel since the 1960s.” (J.P. Morgan Chase is the world’s leading investor in fossil fuel companies. Aiyengar’s position is also notable given that Smith began the process of divesting from fossil fuels in 2019.)
• Andrea Auerbach, chair of Smith’s Investment Committee and ACIR, is a partner in and head of global investment for Cambridge Associates, a firm that provides investment services in Israel and is partially owned by two entities doing business in Israel: the Belgian investment firm Sofina, and, according to Cambridge Associates, “the Rothschild family.” Ms. Auerbach is also on the board of the UCLA Investment Company, managing UCLA’s $5 billion stock portfolio. UCLA has refused to divest from genocide despite an active campus movement in favor of divestment.

3. Community Consensus

Trustee claim: In its June 4 rejection of the divestment proposal, the ACIR contended that it “does not meet the necessary threshold of community consensus,” apparently at least in part because some in the Smith community do not support it. This begs the question, how does one define consensus?

Reality: The Ethical Investment Policy was developed by Smith community members over the course of more than 14 months. This process was led by current and former students in direct consultation with faculty and other Smith community members, as well as via meetings with the administration throughout the summer of 2025. During the 14 months that the proposal was being developed, including in the six months after its submission in November of 25, Smith community members took many actions demonstrating support for it. In so doing, they established broad-based consensus for both divestment and for an ethical and transparent investment policy that culminated in an eight day People’s University on Chapin Lawn in May.

In the spring of 2024, after the SJP occupation of College Hall, a campus-wide student body referendum was held in which 89% voted for divestment. AJP circulated a statement among alums in which signatories pledged not to donate to the college until it agrees to divest—over 830 alums representing 50 years of graduating classes have signed the pledge thus far.

SJP circulated two petitions for divestment, one in November of 2025 and one in the spring of 2026. Each petition was signed by slightly more than 500 people. In the second spring 2026 round, 56 campus organizations also signed the petition.

Repression on Campus

A sign announces Smith SJP's People's University, Chapin Lawn, April, 2026. (Photo by Jennifer Scarlott)

It is important to note that since the 2024 occupation of College Hall, the Smith administration and Board of Trustees joined with the leadership of many US colleges and universities angered by student activism for Palestine in the spring of 2024 by taking steps to limit speech and “expressive activity” on campus. In October of 2025, president Sarah Willie-LeBreton issued a new “Policy Governing Time, Place, and Manner of Expressive Activity.” The euphemistically titled policies are repressive and draconian. According to many at Smith, they were not developed in full consultation with the Smith community, as Willie-LeBreton claimed in a campus-wide message. Fourteen members of the editorial board of The Sophian objected to the policy and its manner of development and implementation.

The new policy, the impact of which the ACIR does not acknowledge in its rejection of the Ethical Investment Policy, has instilled fear among Smith students and the broader college community and dampened activism.

An example of the impact of the new policy: During the eight day SJP-established “People’s University” on Chapin Lawn in May of this year, students faced intimidation tactics by the college. Some Smith Campus Safety officers and administrators followed students entering and leaving the People’s University; used surveillance cameras, student card readers, and cell phone locators to track student movements; and addressed students by their names despite their use of face masks and head coverings to shield their identities from the administration and its Conduct Board.

One student stated: “We remain committed to pursuing change at Smith, despite efforts to silence us. The school has begun the process of punishing individuals and Smith SJP as a whole for the People’s University. On June 4, three minutes before communicating the ACIR’s rejection of the November 25 proposal, the school emailed SJP that we would be required to appear before Smith’s ‘Conduct Board’ in the fall to determine our punishment. The Conduct Board process is a very isolating experience, but we are working hard to protect our community in the face of administrative attacks.”

Where Does Smith College Go from Here?

It is difficult not to conclude, both from Smith’s repeated rejections of divestment from genocide and from its punitive responses to student activists, that the leadership of the college hopes to produce graduates who will fit smoothly into the current US ruling class, with all of its racist, imperialist, militarist, extractivist, and even genocidal values.

We are horrified that the Smith administration and Board of Trustees are comfortable with limiting their students’ First Amendment rights and seeking to deter them from the justice- and human-rights-based consciousness and activism so deeply needed on campus and in the wider world the students will soon move into.

As residents of the Western Massachusetts communities in which Smith is embedded, we are profoundly concerned with the future of the college and its students. We are urgently committed to the popular uprisings—so often led, throughout history, by students—needed to end the mass killing by Israel and the US in Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, Yemen, and elsewhere. Tragically, however, through the June 4 ACIR statement, Smith College expresses,

1. A lack of concern about genocide, apartheid, and occupation;
2. Disinterest in the ways in which the refusal to divest lead to Smith’s complicity in genocide, apartheid, and occupation; and
3. Dismissal of conscientious and courageous student activists and alums.

We echo Katherine Sullivan, class of 1975:

I can’t think why a liberal arts institution like Smith College, founded on lofty ideals and now committed to such noble aims as equity, inclusion, diversity, and excellence, would want to be invested in weapons or technologies of war, genocide, and environmental devastation. Ever. Let’s put our money where our mouths are. Let’s invest in green technologies, innovative health and medical initiatives, and other activities that benefit humankind. Let’s be a light in this dark world.

Ultimately, we know, as author Omar El Akkad stated in the title of his 2025 book on Gaza’s genocide—One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This—that Smith will celebrate its students, alumni, faculty, and staff who fought courageously for Smith’s future and for a just and safe future for Palestinians and all people. One day, Smith officialdom will cite it as a reason to attend the college. May that day come soon.

But it will not come under the college’s current leadership. At this juncture, nearly 1,000 days into the current genocide in Gaza, we call on the Smith Board of Trustees to resign, and for the college to undertake a process that will lead to truly democratic and ethical governance and education.

As new parents, we cherish the fleeting firsts: the first laugh, the first unsteady steps, and the first foods at family dinners. We research, we plan, and we try to give our babies the healthiest start possible. And in the swirl of advice from every direction, we often lean on what feels familiar and trusted.

For generations, store-bought baby food provided some of the earliest meals for babies across the country. The distinctive, petite glass jars have long symbolized the kind of wholesome, uncomplicated nourishment many parents reach for when they want something healthy and reliable.

Over time, many of these glass jars were replaced with plastic pouches—but plastic food containers have given us something new to consider.

Many of us think of plastic as a simple, single material. It is not. It is made from more than 16,000 chemicals, including 4,200 known to harm human health. And plastic doesn’t truly break down; it breaks into microplastics—tiny plastic particles less than 5 millimeters in size—that can leach into packaged food, inadvertently adding a large number of health concerns.

Parents should not have to be scientists to feed their children safely.

None of that belongs anywhere near a baby's meal.

Babies are uniquely vulnerable: Their organs and nervous systems are developing rapidly, and even small exposures to certain chemicals—such as the hormone-disrupting chemicals found in plastics—during these formative months can have lifelong effects on growth, metabolism, and reproductive systems.

Previous research found significant microplastic contamination of baby formula from many different brands. And now, a recent report produced by our colleagues highlights lab testing that found microplastics in the pouches of two of the world’s leading baby food companies: Gerber and Happy Baby Organics. A single pouch of Gerber baby food contains an estimated 5,000 microplastic particles, with the plastic lining likely the source. One gram from the Happy Baby Organics pouch (the weight of a small raisin) contained up to 99 microplastic particles, on average—the equivalent of up to 495 microplastics per teaspoon.

And it’s not just these two food products. Much of today’s baby food aisle is wrapped in plastic—from the now-ubiquitous squeezable pouches to purées in plastic tubs and packaged snacks. Single-use squeezable plastic pouches exceed all other forms of baby food packaging, with production growing year on year by over 8%. Millions of single-use baby food pouches are used daily, meaning that every day, millions of babies may be ingesting invisible contaminants along with their plastic-packaged food.

In addition, it’s forecast that the market for all types of multilayered flexible plastic packaging—the most notoriously problematic and polluting form of plastic packaging—will grow by 5.3% year-on-year through 2035.

No parent should have to confront the risks of all that microplastic and chemical exposure. Amid navigating near-constant decisions about our babies’ health, parents should not have to be scientists to feed their children safely.

The current US administration campaigned on protecting Americans’ health, especially children's, under its Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) agenda. It even declared a war on microplastics. Yet parents across the political spectrum are still waiting, with many in the MAHA base voicing frustration about the slow pace of change on chemicals and plastics.

Instead of meaningful protection, we’ve seen failed promises, gutted agencies, and announcements about more research at a time when many families are calling for concrete action. Our babies don’t have time for more research. More importantly, they should not be subjects in a science experiment to which they did not consent.

Current scientific evidence on microplastics and plastic chemicals justifies global and national precautionary action to drastically reduce and ultimately eliminate babies’ exposure to plastics-related contaminants. Research on microplastics is still emerging, but decision-makers have enough information to act. Yet, regulation has not kept pace, and does not protect people’s health from microplastics and hazardous chemicals in food packaging, failing to account for the unique vulnerability of babies in particular.

We have a real opportunity right now: Congress can close a decades-old loophole in our food safety system. Under current rules, plastic producers and food companies determine for themselves whether the chemicals in packaging are “safe.” Congress could finally close that gap and help prevent exposure to microplastics, particularly for children—but the real question is whether they will honor their promises to protect the most vulnerable among us.

We’ve risen to moments like this before—pushing to eliminate lead from toys and teething products, demanding safer cribs and bedding materials, and adopting modern car safety standards that have saved countless children’s lives. This crisis calls for the same resolve. Ours should be the last generation of babies forced to grow up in a food system that puts plastic and profits over their long-term health.

When my son was three years old, he insisted upon hearing Horton Hears a Who! every night. Twice. As this lasted for several months, I got pretty good at reading quickly, tearing through the opening page in one breath—"On the 15th of May, in the Jungle of Nool, In the heat of the day, in the cool of the pool"—so that the words ran together, like a kind of Dr. Seuss verbal soup. Horton is a sweet story about a keen-eared elephant determined, against all odds,to save the diminutive Whos, despite being ridiculed because no one else could hear them.

Given all the great picture books around, this restrictive reading diet left me perplexed. Was its appeal that it was set on May 15, the day before my son’s birthday? (To this day we all mark “Horton’s Day” with a round of silly texts.) Or that it was the teensiest Who whose off-hand “yopp” finally nudged Whoville past the aural threshold? Perhaps it was Horton’s stalwart conviction that "a person’s a person, no matter how small," a sentiment that must have enchanted a small boy stuck in a land of grownups. I venture it’s all three.

The feeling the story evokes so well—that of being invisible, and, in this case, inaudible—is universal. Everyone who was once a child has been there. Despite writing a bunch of books and giving all sorts of talks, this feeling now resonates far more than when I was a young mom speed-reading to my toddler. For you don’t need to live on a speck of dust to know that today, more than ever, little people aren’t seen and their concerns rarely get heard.

We are all Whos now.

There is indeed a crescendo of voices railing against the spoilage and surrender of nature for tech.

One scenario that really makes me feel like a Who—pounding brass pans so that someone, anyone, listens—is the way new technology buildouts are harming the natural world. Here in New England, forests and once-productive farms are being cleared for solar, while water-hungry data centers claim chunks of land in areas vulnerable to drought. Around the globe—from India to Mexico, Papua New Guinea to Mongolia—entire areas are rendered toxic due to mining the metals that animate our devices. In several places, most notoriously Congo’s cobalt mines, children as young as six spend their days in tunnels plying ores with their bare hands.

In the book, Horton is repeatedly mocked for tending the particle upon which the Whos live. The mama kangaroo and her joey say, "Humpf!" and the gang of monkeys calls the existence of Whos “nonsense”—before conspiring to drop the speck in a sea of clover. Here in our jungle equivalent, hostility to tech infrastructure is derided as “NIMBYISM” and those opposed to it scorned as Luddites. Expanding computation and energy capacity is vital for progress, even marquee environmentalists tell us. As for the ecological and human cost, well, we can’t achieve a “green energy transition” without making a bit of a mess.

We also hear from our political reps, many of whom stand to benefit handily from AI expansion, that the spread of resource-intensive computational apparatus is “unstoppable” and “not going away.” Really? The truth is: People don’t want this. At college commencements, tech titans called in to inspire new graduates about AI’s rosy future have been met with boos. But you have to listen hard, past the din of machines and the money—a bunch of zeros on a screen—that feeds them. It seems the plan is to ram all this development through so that a critical mass are dependent on the technology and the rest of us have no choice but to use it. “Inevitable,” indeed.

We need to keep listening—and we need to keep speaking. For we don’t know whose “yopp” or “yapp” or any other utterance will break through the racket. It could be the cries of juvenile sea turtles that drift about the Blake Plateau, a biodiverse undersea basin now eyed for mining nodules rich in rare metals. Or the weeping of Gullah-Geechee ancestors, thousands of whom died here during the Middle Passage en route to Charleston. Or the plaint of hundreds of villagers in a 1,000-year-old Scottish village gathered to call bullshit on claims that a massive new “hyperscale” data center would serve the community. Or the high-pitched cackle of the Andean Flamingo: outrageously pink on stick-thin legs—Dr. Seuss would have had fun drawing them. The birds are lamenting that their wetland habitat in the Atacama Desert highlands is being pumped to produce the lithium essential for energy storage.

There is indeed a crescendo of voices railing against the spoilage and surrender of nature for tech. Just like the townsfolk of Whoville, we need all of us to exclaim, "We are here! We are here! We are here!"

President Donald Trump used red-scare rhetoric to denounce the progressive winners in New York's Democratic primary last week as "godless communists." Rather than explaining that the progressives are not communists in the vein of the Soviet Union or communist China but social democrats in the vein of Scandinavia, a group of so-called "moderate" Democratic politicians piled on to Trump's red-baiting.

Two days after the primaries, this group of 15 corporate Democrats (let's just call them what they are) attacked the winning Democrats in an open letter drafted by Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi of New York proclaiming, "we are capitalist, not socialist." In an interview with the New York Times, Suozzi added “that message from Tuesday is not the message that I embrace.”

It's one thing for corporate Democrats and progressive Democrats to debate policy differences between them during primaries. But once Democratic voters have chosen their primary winners, it's destructive to continue to attack the winners as some kind of semi-commies. The right-wing will do plenty of that. If they want to win a majority, Democrats shouldn't be piling on. (I would add that after the primaries and before the general election, progressives shouldn't be ideologically attacking moderate Democratic nominees as corporate dupes, either.)

It's ignorant and deceptive for moderate Democrats to declare they are "capitalist." What do they mean by "capitalist" anyway? The US, like every developed democracy, is a mix of capitalist and socialist. Are the "moderates" opposed to such "socialist" policies as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, free public education, anti-trust enforcement, and environmental regulation? If they are, they should say so. If they're not, they should stop declaring themselves as "capitalists" and denouncing "socialism."

Indeed, the Bernie Sanders-styled "democratic socialists" are not really socialists at all. They do not call for government ownership of the means of production. They are, as they largely identify, social democrats in the vein of Scandinavian countries and Democratic hero Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

In a recent email to his supporters, Sanders wrote: "Today, we have unprecedented income and wealth inequality with the rich getting much richer while working families struggle to survive. We have a corrupt campaign finance system which allows billionaires to buy elections and undermine our democracy. Our health care system is broken and wildly expensive. We have a major housing crisis with 800,000 homeless and millions of families spending half their incomes or more on housing. People are deeply worried about the impact that AI and robotics will have on their lives."

What part of this message do "moderates" like Suozzi think Democrats should not "embrace"? Are they opposed to Medicare for All, higher taxes on billionaires, strong anti-trust enforcement, and tough environmental regulations? If they oppose such progressive policies, then should have the courage to say so and propose what they consider to be more "capitalist" policies. It they can't do that, then they should stop their red-baiting rhetoric which only helps MAGA.

Brad Lander, a self-described democratic socialist who beat self-described "moderate" Dan Goldman in the New York primary and will almost certainly be going to Congress, said that he hoped Democrats would “spend more time building a unified Democratic message” than on “factional infighting.” Lander made clear that voters "want to see people who fight harder for working families. And that should unify the Democratic Party."

"That’s not progressives versus moderates," added Lander. "That’s fighters versus folders.”

As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of America, it’s essential that we look to the past for lessons on how we should move forward during politically turbulent times marked by Americans holding little trust in historically respected institutions, including the federal government.

In 1796, our nation’s first president, George Washington, published his farewell address and in it, he declined to run for a third term despite many Americans wanting him to remain president indefinitely. Washington wanted to be clear that being president was not a lifetime appointment and that America was not a monarchy.

In this address, he also gave us a lesson that too many leaders seem to forget today: that the things we lead do not belong to us. Stewardship is the real assignment.

Recently, when a federal court ordered President Donald Trump’s name removed from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, it did more than settle a legal dispute. It served as a reminder that public institutions belong to the people they were created to serve, not to the ambitions of those temporarily entrusted with their care.

As we look ahead to the next 250 years of our nation, America’s leaders must understand that their job is not to leave their name on an institution, but to leave the institution stronger than they found it.

I learned this lesson when I served on the President’s Advisory Committee on the Arts. As an appointee of President Barack Obama in 2011 and later as chair of the committee, I had the privilege of working alongside artists, educators, philanthropists, and public servants who understood that institutions endure only when leaders respect the purpose for which they were created.

The Kennedy Center was established by Congress as a living memorial to President John F. Kennedy. Its mission was never to advance the ambitions of a particular board, administration, or political figure. It was created to serve the American people.

For more than 50 years, it has welcomed families, students, artists, and visitors from every corner of the nation. It has remained open through changing administrations, economic downturns, and periods of national division. Its purpose has endured because generations of leaders understood that they were caretakers of something larger than themselves.

Today, we see conservatives engaging in a hostile takeover of many of our nation’s key institutions by pushing an ideological agenda that refuses to tell the full, and complicated, story of our nation’s history.

At Smithsonian museums, references to President Trump’s two first-term impeachments have been removed, and the Trump administration issued an executive order that would review and remove exhibits from the Smithsonian Institution that contradict the administration’s distorted view of American history.

In our education system, higher education institutions are threatened with lawsuits and funding cuts for policies and programs that ensure all students have the opportunity to succeed. In states across the country, including Georgia, we have witnessed the passage of laws that restrict an honest and full teaching of our nation’s history—failing to give our children a true understanding of our nation and how we’ve overcome moments of grave injustice.

The understanding that President Washington had in 1796 that our nation’s institutions should not be reshaped in the image of our leadership seems increasingly absent from public life. Too often, leadership is confused with ownership and the focus shifts from mission to personality. Stewardship to control.

Strong leaders do not ask only what they have the power to do. They ask what responsibility requires of them. They understand that power is not permission, popularity is not wisdom, and institutions entrusted to their care are not personal possessions to be reshaped according to their preferences. Institutions thrive when leaders serve the mission. They struggle when the mission begins serving the leader.

When the distinction between serving an institution and owning it disappears, public trust begins to erode. That lesson has remained true since the inception of our nation, and it will remain true for the next 250 years. Once that trust is lost, it can take generations to rebuild.

As workers continue removing the lettering from the Kennedy Center façade, they are carrying out a court order.

But they are also delivering a reminder.

Public institutions belong to the people they were created to serve, not to the ambitions of those temporarily entrusted with their care.

As we look ahead to the next 250 years of our nation, America’s leaders must understand that their job is not to leave their name on an institution, but to leave the institution stronger than they found it.

Yes, I’ve written about it before (and before that, too), but it still strikes me whenever... oh, sorry, this almost 82-year-old just nodded off (like “our” President Donald Trump in the middle of a thought)... I was going to say, whenever I read about him closing his eyes and dozing off during some meeting or at some other moment of significance.

I mean, what can you expect from the man who, if he truly lasts until January 2029, will indeed be the oldest president in American history (although give Joe Biden full credit, he at least came close)? On the first day of Biden’s presidency, in fact, he was 78 years and 61 days old. On Donald Trump’s first day (the second time around), he was 78 years and 220 days old. And to put that in perspective, only two other presidents in our history came even faintly (and I want to emphasize that “faintly”!) close to either of them: Dwight D. Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan. Eisenhower was 70 years and 98 days old on the last day or his presidency, and Reagan was 77 years and 349 days old on his final day. And don’t think it means nothing that the leadership of what, in this century (and much of the last one), was the greatest power on the face of the Earth (and probably in all of human history), is now aging presidentially in quite such a striking fashion. Sometimes, believe it or not, the most ridiculously symbolic things turn out to have meaning.

And of course, don’t think it was a mistake or purely happenstantial either. The American people had a choice and still went for the oldest person in the room (three times in a row). So, at some deep level, our voters must know (or at least sense) something about what’s happening to this country of ours, especially older voters who (unlike me) significantly favored a Trump presidency. As a great power on this planet of... well, I was going to say “ours,” but these days whether it’s really ours or not couldn’t be more up for grabs.

Nonetheless, it, too, seems to be growing older by the second. Or, thought of another way, while electing essentially the oldest president imaginable a second time, Americans have also supported a man who seems distinctly intent on turning this planet into... well, an old fart of a place that will be hotter than hell and possibly ready for the garbage heap of history.

And let me tell you, when you get into your very late seventies and early eighties, even when your brain is still more or less working, it’s distinctly not the same as it once was. It is indeed easier to get confused and tired out.

But perhaps we Americans—those of us, at least, who voted for Donald Trump the second time around (and, of course, I wasn’t one of them)—are indeed ready for this country to go down, down, down and, thanks to Donald J., ever more weirdly so. I mean, how many of us would celebrate turning 80 with an Ultimate Fighting Championship match on the White House lawn in “an eight-sided cage wrapped in cryptocurrency advertisements”? Not me, I’ll tell you that!

Can there be any question that the 47th president of the United States is a genuinely weird old man? I doubt it. Once upon a time, if you had written a piece about the future presidency of Donald J. Trump, it would have seemed like the most ridiculous satire of all time. Abraham Lincoln and Donald J. Trump? John F. Kennedy and Donald J. Trump? Okay, I won’t go on, but you get the idea, right?

In short, we are now distinctly in an all-too-weird world. And although it’s a term he complains about and blames on other people, we are indeed in a world where “Trump derangement syndrome” seems ever less like a fantasy term. In fact, by now, as Aaron Blake of CNN recently reported, 61% of Americans and even 30% of Republicans believe that President Trump has indeed become “more erratic with age.” And that’s mighty polite of them, don’t you think?

And imagine that this is the very man who now runs (walks, limps, staggers?) the United States of America and, barring a surprise, will do so for the next two and a half years. As far as I’m concerned, that gives the phrase “what a world!” new meaning.

Yes, his version of fighting was recently on the White House lawn, but let’s be clear, he’s also been boxing (okay, in a different sense than on that lawn) in this country and the world in an all too literally striking fashion, including by launching another war against Iran essentially out of the blue, ensuring that the Strait of Hormuz would be closed for weeks, if not months, and that the global economy would be pushed to the very edge of recession, if not—to use a term he brought up recently—a “worldwide depression,” before, in true Trumpian fashion, changing his mind in the face of Iranian opposition and signing a 14-point agreement with that country to (at least theoretically) reopen the Strait of Hormuz, while claiming a “major win” for the United States (not that anyone in this country filling their car with gas or buying groceries would have thought so).

Phew! That was one long sentence, but let’s face it, Donald J. Trump is proving to be a genuinely long haul of a president.

And it doesn’t matter where you look, things are just getting grimmer and stranger by the month. Why, only the other day, the Trump crew redirected $352 million of your tax dollars, previously designated for the Secret Service, to fund the building of Trump’s fantasy White House ballroom. (But of course, what else could they possibly have done when Congress refused to put the necessary money into that crucial building project, which Trump had previously been claiming would be financed by private funders?)

And imagine this: all of that (and undoubtedly so much more to come in this ever-stranger world of ours) has been happening due to the whims of just one old man—Donald J. Trump, who distinctly has our world by the throat. So, yes, let me wish you (just a little late) a truly happy 80th birthday, Donnie! For all we know, in this ever-stranger world of yours (and, ever so sadly, ours, too), you may even have the urge to be president a distinctly unconstitutional third time, so that some distant day, you can dance (and even doze off) in that ballroom of yours. (God save us!)

On June 30, the Supreme Court struck down President Trump’s executive order limiting birthright citizenship.

This is the obviously correct decision. The 14th Amendment is abundantly clear: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”

The Trump administration’s argument that undocumented immigrants and their children are not “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” was baseless from the start. Not only did it lack any foundation in the Constitution or statutory law, but the meaning of that phrase was never in dispute. Those “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” include everyone born in the US except the children of foreign diplomats, enemy invaders during a hostile occupation, and those born in unincorporated territories of American Samoa (they are considered “noncitizen nationals”).

After several disastrous Supreme Court rulings on Temporary Protected Status (TPS), asylum entries, transgender athletes, campaign finance restrictions, and presidential firing power, it may be tempting to see this decision on birthright as a glimmer of hope. Unfortunately, there are reasons to be concerned.

The Supreme Court is effectively one vote away from fundamentally changing who is entitled to US citizenship and what it means to be an American.

While six justices found Trump’s executive order to be unlawful, only five justices—John Roberts, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Amy Coney Barrett—believe that it violates the Constitution.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh argues that it only violates federal law. He writes: “In my view, the Executive Order does not violate the Fourteenth Amendment. But the Order does contravene a federal statute, 8 U.S.C. §1401(a). Congress could—consistent with the Fourteenth Amendment—amend §1401(a) or otherwise enact new legislation establishing exceptions to birthright citizenship for children born to foreign citizens unlawfully or temporarily in the country. But Congress has not yet done so.”

In his dissenting opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch argues that the 14th Amendment clearly does not extend to children of temporary visitors. Yet, he “harbor doubts” whether the same is true for children of undocumented immigrants “who have long chosen to make this Nation their permanent home.”

The issue of a “permanent home” (or “domicile”) was a core component of Trump’s anti-birthright argument. The Trump administration argued that to be “completely subject” to the “jurisdiction” of the US means one must owe “direct and immediate allegiance” and receive “protection” from it. The children of US citizens, permanent residents, and formerly enslaved persons meet this standard because they “have a permanent domicile.” By contrast, the children of undocumented immigrants “do not owe primary allegiance to the United States by virtue of domicile, for illegal aliens lack the legal capacity to establish domicile here.”

Before the Supreme Court, Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that the Trump administration’s “point [is] that allegiance is what the word jurisdiction means.” He further contended that, “For aliens, lawful domicile is the status that creates the requisite allegiance and the text of the [Citizenship] Clause presupposes domicile.”

Notably, Gorsuch does not explicitly reject this argument. What’s more, he, along with Justice Clarence Thomas, believes that the Citizenship Clause does not immediately extend to everyone born on US soil. It requires, as the Trump administration argues, possessing a “permanent domicile.”

Justice Samuel Alito likewise concurs with the Trump administration’s argument but emphasizes the allegiance component. In his view, “the Fourteenth Amendment confers citizenship on only those children who, at birth, owe allegiance solely to this country.” Being born in the US is not enough.

Where this leaves us is at a far more precarious crossroads. Only five justices believe that the plain text of the 14th Amendment automatically guarantees citizenship to everyone born in the US.

Kavanaugh believes that Congress could limit birthright citizenship themselves. A constitutional amendment would not be needed.

The same is arguably true for Gorsuch, Thomas, and Alito. If Congress were to pass legislation that codifies Trump’s Executive Order and formally defines “domicile” status in a way that excludes undocumented immigrants and temporary visitors, then those four justices would likely uphold it.

Ultimately, the problem is that this decision does not settle the issue once and for all. What we needed was a clear 7-2 decision (Thomas and Alito were always going to dissent). One that acknowledged what the Constitution plainly says and what it obviously grants—namely, that if you are born here, you are from here. Nothing else matters; not “domicile” or “allegiance.”

As things stand, however, the Supreme Court is effectively one vote away from fundamentally changing who is entitled to US citizenship and what it means to be an American. While birthright citizenship survived today, this ruling exposes how fragile its guarantee has become. This fight is far from over—Republicans will try again, and next time they might succeed.

We cannot let this happen. Now more than ever we need a left-wing wall in Congress to stop Trump’s assault on our rights, protect birthright citizenship, and defend the Constitution.

The six unscrupulous Republicans on the Supreme Court—over the loud objections of the three true constitutionalists on the court—are aggressively dragging America back not just to the 1950s but, as of Monday, to the 1830s.

Arguably the most depraved president in American history, Andrew Jackson (aka “The Indian Killer” a title he gave himself), President Donald Trump’s favorite, whose picture he hung in the Oval Office, invented what came to be called the “Spoils System.”

If you wanted a job in the federal government, or a favorable ruling from one of the then-few federal agencies, all you had to do was give a big enough gift to President Jackson, or pledge your loyalty to him instead of the Constitution and the people, and your wish would be granted.

Prior presidents, particularly among the Founding generation, were generally strongly opposed to such a corrupt system.

On Monday those six Republican lickspittles on the Supreme Court universalized the new, Trump-era Spoils System by ruling that Trump can replace the heads of any federal regulatory agency (with one exception) with his own toadies.

Weeks after Thomas Jefferson was sworn in as president in 1801, the merchants of New Haven, Connecticut wrote a letter to the new president worrying out loud that he’d install loyalists rather than capable administrators who may have some oversight of issues like duties and tariffs that would impact them. Jefferson replied:

The remonstrance [your concerned letter] laments "that a change in the administration must produce a change in the subordinate officers;" in other words, that it should be deemed necessary for all officers to think with their principal [the president].

Jefferson then implicitly referenced the integrity of President George Washington, whose closest advisor, speechwriter, and Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton wrote of Washington’s hiring process:

He will... investigate with care the qualities requisite to the stations to be filled, and to prefer with impartiality the persons who may have the fairest pretensions to them.

And Jefferson pointed to the occasional corruption of President John Adams (who Jefferson had beat in that election of 1800, as Dan Sisson and I wrote about in The American Revolution of 1800: How Jefferson Rescued Democracy from Tyranny and Faction and What This Means Today), writing that his administration:

[S]hall return with joy to that state of things, when the only questions concerning a candidate shall be, is he honest? Is he capable? Is he faithful to the Constitution?

On Monday, however, in a shocking turnabout, the six corrupt, on-the-take Republicans on the Supreme Court—placed there via a 50-year-long project funded by America’s morbidly rich oligarchs—started America back down the road to Jackson’s corrupt Spoils System… except for the Federal Reserve (more on that and why it’s so mind-bogglingly corrupt in a moment).

Ironically, Jackson’s spoils system was ended in the late 19th century as much to protect the president from harm as to discourage the naked corruption it represented.

Back in 1881, a man named Charles Guiteau thought he’d properly bribed President James Garfield by giving the president, during an in-person visit in the White House, a speech he’d written for Garfield to use. Garfield was polite but refused to offer Guiteau the federal speechwriter’s job he was seeking, which provoked Guiteau to a murderous rage: shortly thereafter, Guiteau met Garfield’s train and shot him twice, killing him.

After Guiteau failed to gain his “spoil” or “patronage” from Garfield and killed him, President Chester Arthur oversaw the writing and passage of the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883.

It separated all those government jobs from the administration in power, turning federal workers from patrons of the president into permanent bureaucrats, whose first loyalty was to the nation instead of to the guy who happened to be in the White House at any particular time. It realized the vision Hamilton described, that Washington had tried so scrupulously to follow.

It also explicitly outlawed bribing the president to get a job or other federal favors. The goal, which it accomplished and held for 143 years, was to end corruption in the bureaucratic branches of the federal government that the Constitution requires the executive branch—the president’s branch—to oversee and “faithfully execute the laws” and administer the agencies Congress had passed and created.

But, like Jackson, Donald Trump wanted to functionally end or at least cripple the Civil Service system with a modern version of the Spoils System and replace the top levels of the nation’s 2.7 million federal workers with people loyal exclusively to himself, essentially overturning the Pendelton Civil Service Act, at least for senior officials.

He tried to do this in the last months of his first presidency through an October 21, 2020 executive order, Schedule F, that reclassified those workers out of their Civil Service jobs and into political appointee positions, doing the same work but now entirely dependent on the good will of the president himself to keep their jobs.

President Joe Biden overturned Trump’s executive order creating Schedule F on his first day in office, restoring honesty and integrity to the executive branch across the entire federal bureaucracy, but last month, on June 3, Trump reinstituted Schedule F, reestablishing the essence of the Spoils System.

When Trump tried to replace Federal Trade Commission member Rebecca Slaughter, she sued, claiming he was violating the FTC Act of 1914 which Congress created as an independent agency free from presidential coercion.

While the court didn’t specifically rule based on the Pendleton Act (she was a Senate-confirmed appointee, not a civil servant), the principles are similar and point to how future all-Republican rulings by this court could affect the Civil Service itself.

And, sure enough, on Monday those six Republican lickspittles on the Supreme Court universalized the new, Trump-era Spoils System by ruling that Trump can replace the heads of any federal regulatory agency (with one exception) with his own toadies, who can then turn the agencies away from their job of protecting our democracy, our public lands, our people, and our environment into new ways to enrich himself, his family, his Epstein-billionaire class, his corporate donors, and his cronies.

That one exception was that on Monday the court also ruled, 5-4 with two Republican appointees joining the three Democratic ones, that Trump can’t fire Lisa Cook on the Federal Reserve, who holds a position eerily similar to that of Rebecca Slaughter on the FTC.

Why the difference?

The Federal Reserve protects the nations’ banking system and thus ensures stability and prosperity for America’s billionaires and the companies that made them that way. By blowing up Trump’s attempt to remove the Fed’s one Black governor (presumably as part of his and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Make America White Again campaign), the Republicans on the court defended America’s oligarchs.

The other federal agencies, like the FTC, mostly protect you and me. They oversee our environment, consumer product safety, the purity of our food and drugs, and so on. If anything, America’s oligarchs consider them a pain in the ass.

Republicans, who—with the conspicuous exception of Dwight D. Eisenhower—have been exclusively serving the morbidly rich and powerful since the election of Harding in 1920 (he cut the top tax rate from 90% to 25% and instituted massive deregulation of the banks, leading straight to the Republican Great Depression) are cheering.

But, as we approach America’s 250th anniversary, the rest of us should be outraged.

The next time Democrats have true power in Washington, DC, overturning Slaughter and other corrupt all-Republican Supreme Court decisions (particularly Citizens United) must be Job One.

On July 4, 2026, the United States of America turns 250 years old. Should the Left celebrate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States with the signing of the Declaration of Independence? After all, this is a nation with a very dark and ugly past—with racism, genocide, and imperialism deeply embedded in its psyche.

Surely Native Americans have no reason to celebrate. The history of the United States government’s treatment of Native Americans is one of cruelty, oppression, and extermination. Leaving aside the 56 million Indigenous people that were killed by European settlers across the Americas by 1600, since its independence in 1776, the US government has launched more than 1,500 attacks against various Indigenous people, slaughtering them, and taking their lands. Native Americans in the US continue to face oppression, poverty, and discrimination, and rank near the bottom of all other groups in terms of health, education, and employment.

What about Black Americans? Do they have a reason to celebrate a nation that denied them their humanity for much of those 250 years, while they continue to experience racial discrimination to this day? Racism against Black people remains very much widespread in the Good Ol’ USA.

Should American women have a reason to celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday? They have been treated as second-class citizens until fairly recently, and while many countries around the world have or had female leaders, it is a widely shared belief that the US is still not ready for a woman president.

The Declaration of Independence should serve as a stark reminder of the need for a call to action when a government, like the one represented by Donald Trump, acts illegally and unconstitutionally to weaken democratic institutions.

If anything, a major milestone like the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence should be an opportunity to confront the nation’s dark and ugly past and reflect on what has gone wrong with US democracy and what we can do about it. After all, isn’t it a tragic irony that the celebration of America’s 250th birthday, which is supposed to honor the principles of liberty and equality upon which the nation was allegedly founded, will take place with an administration in power whose own beliefs and actions embody the very tyrannical rule that the Declaration of Independence sought to overthrow?

What manner of national progress is this?

But history is not a linear progression. Nor is it guided by the realization of freedom and rationality, as Hegel thought. Human history moves in a spiral, and irrationality makes up a great part of human life and history. Moreover, not only does the value of ideals vary greatly (Nazism and imperialism were as potent ideals as those of democracy and self-determination), but there is usually a disconnect between ideals and political reality. Some of the lofty principles in the Declaration of Independence, such as “all men are created equal,” collided with the facts on the ground and, in fact, had a very narrow interpretation when they were written, as they applied only to white, propertied men.

Indeed, in 2026, we have a president who likes to govern like a king, or a dictator. As a matter of fact, the Supreme Court has given Donald J. Trump king-like powers. Thus, it is hardly surprising that Trump 2.0 has demolished democracy by initiating a new age of authoritarian rule with civil- and human-rights rollbacks, weaponizing the federal government against the president’s political rivals, and unleashing a paramilitary squad of fascist thugs into communities across the nation. It is also hardly surprising that Trump has become the most corrupt president in US history. He is exploiting shamelessly the highest office in the land to enrich himself and his family.

Trump’s enablers extend beyond today’s Supreme Court, which has moved so far rightward that it qualifies as the most reactionary in the nation’s modern history. It includes the plutocrats, media conglomerates, evangelical Christians, and pro-Israel political networks. Retail corporations, major law firms, and academic institutions capitulated with such ease to Trump’s bullying tactics that they made a mockery of liberal ideals.

All that being said, it is difficult not to appreciate the importance of the Declaration of Independence. It is indeed one of the most important documents in the history of politics and ideas for the simple but radical fact that, by articulating the intention of the American colonies to separate from British rule, it established the principles of self-government and individual rights while connecting equality and freedom.

Being profoundly influenced by the philosophical thinking of John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (unlike contemporary US leaders, the likes of Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams were deeply learned men and had extensive knowledge of history and philosophy), the Declaration of Independence solidified the claims of social contract theory—that is, the idea that governments receive their just powers from the consent of the governed—and justified rebellion against tyranny. Within just a couple of decades, the Declaration of Independence inspired revolts across the globe. It had great impact on political and philosophical debates leading up to the French Revolution (1789) and served as a reference point behind the slave revolt against French colonial rule in Haiti in 1791 and the Irish rebellion against British rule in May 1798.

When Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnam an independent nation on September 2, 1945, he paraphrased the US Declaration of Independence. He opened his declaration of independence with the statement from the 1776 Declaration: “All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” But then he updated those words by saying, “In a broader sense, this means: All the peoples on the Earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have the right to live, to be happy and free.”

Indeed, the Declaration of Independence served as a “universal blueprint” for the anti-colonial struggles that occurred after World War II. It is indeed a radical document. One of its foundational principles is that “it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish” governments that become destructive to their fundamental rights. This principle is a cornerstone of democratic theory and should never be forgotten.

Ironically enough, all US administrations have largely abandoned the fundamental principles underpinning the Declaration of Independence—and none more so than President Donald Trump’s administration. The country is on a very slippery path under Donald Trump’s imperial proto-fascism. Democracy is dying before our very own eyes, and Trump’s desire to reshape the world order not only creates more uncertainty and instability but risks opening a Pandora’s box.

It is in this context that the Declaration of Independence should serve as a stark reminder of the need for a call to action when a government, like the one represented by Donald Trump, acts illegally and unconstitutionally to weaken democratic institutions and engages purely in self-dealing while endangering our communities. We have a monstrous, tyrannical government in power that the People must stand up to with all their might before it ruins everything.

If we must, what we need to celebrate on the 250th anniversary since the signing of the Declaration of Independence is nothing more and nothing less than the basic principles and ideas behind this document, in an updated manner, of course, à la Ho Chi Minh, while being fully cognizant of the fact that we still have a long way to go to achieve equality in this country. That was not the intention of those who drafted and signed the Declaration of Independence; nonetheless, they gave the world a political and philosophical document for the ages.

The Watergate scandal revealed President Richard Nixon’s contempt for the Constitution and his systematic abuse of power. At the time, it was one of the darkest chapters in US history, resulting in the first-ever resignation of an American president.

But on June 25, Vice President JD Vance told his audience at the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library and Museum that Nixon got a bum rap. The uncontested historical record proves otherwise. Vance’s contrary view demonstrates the depths to which he and President Donald Trump have taken the country.

“Facts Are Stubborn Things”

1. In May 1972, a group of men connected with the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP) burglarized and wiretapped the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex. One of the wiretaps didn’t work, so on June 17, 1972, they broke in again with a new microphone. A security guard saw door locks that had been taped open and called the DC police, which caught them red-handed. Among the burglars’ possessions was a White House phone number.
2. After declaring falsely that no one on the White House staff was involved in the crime, Nixon acquiesced as his aides provided hundreds of thousands of dollars in “hush money” to the burglars. Then Nixon and his top advisers developed a plan to get the CIA to obstruct the FBI’s investigation into the matter.
3. As Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein pursued the story, a DC grand jury summoned witnesses who cracked. Nixon aides—including White House counsel John Dean—testified in nationally televised hearings where Sen. Howard Baker (R-Tenn.) asked, “What did the President know and when did he know it?” The answer was “a lot.”
4. With the revelation that Nixon had taped his conversations about the cover-up in the Oval Office, the president sought valiantly to block their production.
5. When special prosecutor Archibald Cox sued to obtain the tapes, Nixon instructed Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire him. In what became known as the “Saturday Night Massacre,” Richardson refused and resigned. Nixon then told Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox, but he resigned too. Finally, Nixon turned to the third highest official in the Justice Department, Solicitor General Robert Bork, who carried out the order.
6. Firing Cox was the futile act of a desperate man. Bork appointed Leon Jaworski as Cox’s successor, and Jaworski continued to press his case to the US Supreme Court. In a unanimous decision, the court ordered Nixon to release the tapes, and the public could hear Nixon’s own voice incriminate him.
7. On July 27, 1974, the House Judiciary Committee recommended articles of impeachment. On August 7, Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.), Sen. Hugh Scott (R-Pa.), and Rep. John Rhodes (R-Ariz.) visited the White House to give Nixon the bad news: The full House was going to impeach him, and the Senate would convict him. The next day, Nixon resigned.

Vance’s “Deep State” Fantasies

Vance claimed that Nixon was the victim of a “deep state” conspiracy.

“If you look at the story of how the deep state took down Richard Nixon,” Vance continued, “it’s not all that different from what the same groups of people, the same institutions, tried to do to Donald Trump in the first Trump administration.”

But the supposed “deep state” actors to which Vance referred consisted of Nixon’s top advisers who turned on him, the most conservative Republicans in Congress, a unanimous US Supreme Court, and two intrepid reporters at The Washington Post.

Timothy Naftali, a historian at Columbia University’s School of International Public Affairs and the former director of the Nixon library, told The New York Times: “We have more than enough information from the Nixon era to know that there was no intelligence conspiracy against Richard Nixon. He brought his house of cards down upon himself.”

“You can hear him suborn perjury on the tapes,” Naftali told The Washington Post. “He’s telling an intermediary, what to tell someone who’s about to be interviewed by the FBI, what to say and what not to say. You can hear Nixon being told that money had been found to hire teamsters to go and break the bones of demonstrators. That’s all illegal.”

Lies Reveal Character

Prof. Naftali observed that, curiously, Vance had likened Trump to a president who had directed the CIA to subvert the Constitution.

“It’s not as if [Watergate] is a matter of partisan interpretation,” Naftali said. “The evidence is overwhelming. If [Vance] does know all of this, he’s telegraphing the kind of president he hopes to be.”

Vance also claimed that Watergate would have been a 12-hour news story today. He may be correct, but that does not diminish the seriousness of Nixon’s crimes.

As prof. Naftali observed, “It’s not that Nixon looks better in retrospect, it’s that we look worse.”