The conclusion that Donald Trump is a fascist has gone mainstream, gaining wide publicity and affirmation in recent weeks. Such understanding is a problem for Trump and his boosters. At the same time, potentially pivotal in this close election, a small proportion of people who consider themselves to be progressive still assert that any differences between Trump and Kamala Harris are not significant enough to vote for Harris in swing states.

Opposition to fascism has long been a guiding light in movements against racism and for social justice.

Speaking to a conference of the African National Congress in 1951, Nelson Mandela warned that “South African capitalism has developed [into] monopolism and is now reaching the final stage of monopoly capitalism gone mad, namely, fascism.”

Before Fred Hampton was murdered by local police officers colluding with the FBI in 1969, the visionary young Illinois Black Panther Party leader said: “Nothing is more important than stopping fascism, because fascism will stop us all.”

Do we want to be organizing against a fascistic militaristic President Trump, with no realistic hope of changing policies . . . or against a neoliberal militaristic President Harris, with the possibility of changing policies?

But now, for some who lay claim to being on the left, stopping fascism is not a priority. Disconnected from the magnitude of this fateful moment, the danger of a fascist president leading a fanatical movement becomes an abstraction.

One cogent critic of capitalism ended a column in mid-October this way: “Pick your poison. Destruction by corporate power or destruction by oligarchy. The end result is the same. That is what the two ruling parties offer in November. Nothing else.”

The difference between a woman’s right to an abortion vs. abortion being illegal is nothing?

“The end result is the same”—so it shouldn’t matter to us whether Trump becomes president after campaigning with a continuous barrage against immigrants, calling them “vermin,” “stone-cold killers,” and “animals,” while warning against the “bad genes” of immigrants who aren’t white, and raising bigoted alarms about immigration of “blood thirty criminals” who “prey upon innocent American citizens” and will “cut your throat”?

If “the end result is the same,” a mish-mash of ideology and fatalism can ignore the foreseeable results of a Republican Party gaining control of the federal government with a 2024 platform that pledges to “carry out the largest deportation operation in American history.” Or getting a second Trump term after the first one allowed him to put three right-wing extremists on the Supreme Court.

Will the end result be the same if Trump fulfills his apparent threat to deploy the U.S. military against his political opponents, whom he describes as “radical left lunatics” and “the enemy from within”?

Capacities to protect civil liberties matter. So do savage Republican cuts in programs for minimal health care, nutrition and other vital aspects of a frayed social safety net. But those cuts are less likely to matter to the polemicists who will not experience the institutionalized cruelties firsthand.

Rather than being for personal absolution, voting is a tool in the political toolbox—if the goal is to avert the worst and improve the chances for constructing a future worthy of humanity.

Trump has pledged to be even more directly complicit in Israel’s mass murder of Palestinian people in Gaza than President Biden has been. No wonder, as the Washington Post reports, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “has shown a clear preference for Trump in this election.” During a call this month, Trump told Netanyahu: “Do what you have to do.”

Palestinians, Muslim leaders and other activists in the swing state of Arizona issued an open letter days ago that makes a case for defeating Trump. “We know that many in our communities are resistant to vote for Kamala Harris because of the Biden administration’s complicity in the genocide,” the letter says. “We understand this sentiment. Many of us have felt that way ourselves, even until very recently. Some of us have lost many family members in Gaza and Lebanon. We respect those who feel they simply can’t vote for a member of the administration that sent the bombs that may have killed their loved ones.”

The letter goes on:

As we consider the full situation carefully, however, we conclude that voting for Kamala Harris is the best option for the Palestinian cause and all of our communities. We know that some will strongly disagree. We only ask that you consider our case with an open mind and heart, respecting that we are doing what we believe is right in an awful situation where only flawed choices are available.
In our view, it is crystal clear that allowing the fascist Donald Trump to become President again would be the worst possible outcome for the Palestinian people. A Trump win would be an extreme danger to Muslims in our country, all immigrants, and the American pro-Palestine movement. It would be an existential threat to our democracy and our whole planet.

Exercising conscience in the most humane sense isn’t about feeling personal virtue. It’s about concern for impacts on the well-being of other people. It’s about collective solidarity.

The consequences of declining to help stop fascism are not confined to the individual voter. In the process, vast numbers of people can pay the price for individuals’ self-focused concept of conscience.

Last week, an insightful Common Dreams column—entitled “7 Strategic Axioms for the Anxious Progressive Voter”—offered a forward-looking way to put this presidential election in a future context: “Vote for the candidate you want to organize against!”

Do we want to be organizing against a fascistic militaristic President Trump, with no realistic hope of changing policies . . . or against a neoliberal militaristic President Harris, with the possibility of changing policies?

For progressives, the answer should be clear.

Exactly one year ago today, on October 28, 2023, Bilal Saleh was shot dead by Israeli settlers while peacefully harvesting his olive trees. It happened near the field he had tended for years, with his wife and children as witnesses. He was unarmed. The settler who killed him walked free, back to Rehelim. The world barely noticed.

Cast into the shadow of the more than 40,000 Palestinian lives lost since the war on Gaza began, Bilal’s death is barely a blip.

Farmers won’t fight with guns, but they will plant. Again and again, they will plant.

But it’s a different kind of death, being murdered in an olive grove. It’s part of a larger colonial strategy of dislocation to sever the deep connection Palestinians have to their land. Olive trees, once symbols of peace, have become battlegrounds—and settlers, soldiers in this war of erasure. This year alone, 4,000 trees have been destroyed by settlers.

What does it mean to destroy a tree? It’s not just vandalism—it’s an attack on identity, history, and survival.

The Tree of Souls: Palestine’s Living Resistance

For Palestinians, the olive tree isn’t just a crop. It’s their Tree of Souls. Remember that scene in Avatar when the Na’vi fight the colonizers to save the giant, sacred tree that holds their entire world together? The olive tree is that for Palestinians.

For thousands of years, olive trees have provided food, oil, income, spiritual roots, and cultural pride. They have withstood droughts, fires, and wars; held back the desert; and kept the soil from vanishing into dust. And here’s another feather in their leafy cap: Each tree quietly absorbs around 75 pounds of carbon a year. So when 4,000 trees are destroyed in a single season, it’s like leaving 300,000 pounds of carbon hanging around. Worse still, the Palestinian Farmers Union estimates that since the occupation began, 2.5 million trees have been destroyed. That’s the carbon equivalent of millions of transatlantic flights.

All of which makes farmers like Bilal the last line of nonviolent defense—not just against the occupation but environmental disaster. Farmers won’t fight with guns, but they will plant. Again and again, they will plant.

Colonization 101: The Settler’s Guide to Killing Trees

Olive trees don’t just die by accident. They’re methodically cut down, one by one, in a calculated sweep of colonization. For years, Israel has leveraged an Ottoman law allowing the state to claim uncultivated land. By destroying olive trees—trees that take years to mature and produce—they clear a path for more illegal settlements. That’s the game. It’s a slow deliberate erasure.

If even a fraction of the $18 billion in U.S. military aid to Israel were spent planting trees, we’d have hundreds of millions of trees helping transform a polarized holy land into a prosperous heartland.

Each felled tree isn’t just about clearing the land or fouling the air. Passed down like heirlooms, the trees hold a different kind of currency: history, survival, pride. Destroy them, and you don’t just take away a crop, you sever a people’s claim to the soil and connection to their past.

Without their olive trees, Palestinian farmers lose their autonomy, becoming increasingly dependent on external aid and less able to resist the encroachment of settlements. The landscape changes—slowly at first, then all at once.

Planting is the New Protest

But here’s the thing—Palestinians refuse to disappear. When Bilal was killed, we at Treedom for Palestine worked with the Palestinian Farmers Union to plant a new “Freedom Farm” for his widow, Ikhlas. She’s now a caretaker, a breadwinner, and the steward of a new olive grove—one that will nourish her family and keep Bilal’s memory alive. The grove is surrounded by steel fencing, protecting both farmer and trees.

Today there are 70 Freedom Farms across the West Bank: 17,500 more thriving olive trees, each a source of income and prosperity in a region hungry for both. But the need for more is great. In plain numbers: $30 plants, irrigates, and protects an olive tree. If even a fraction of the $18 billion in U.S. military aid to Israel were spent planting trees, we’d have hundreds of millions of trees helping transform a polarized holy land into a prosperous heartland.

Resistance doesn’t have to be violent to be revolutionary.

The Global Cost of Colonization

Settler violence against olive trees isn’t just unsettling—it’s unsustainable. Each tree felled isn’t just a lost crop; it’s a severed connection to the past and a stolen future. For Bilal’s family, the loss is deeply personal. For the world, it’s a reminder that justice, equality, and sustainability are intertwined, like the vast mycelium network beneath the soil, linking trees together in profound ways and sustaining life. As below, so above.

Above ground, the consequences of this ecological warfare ripple outward. Climate change, biodiversity loss, environmental collapse. The destruction of olive trees in the West Bank is just one battle in a much larger war.

What’s happening in Palestine isn’t far removed from us. The violence against the land isn’t just about one place—it’s about the shared fate of people and the planet. Palestine is our Pandora. If we continue to let violence against their land and people go unchecked, we’ll all pay the price. But for now, Palestinians are teaching us an important lesson: When your roots run deep, you can withstand almost anything.

Do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.—Yale historian Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny

Once upon a time, in a world that feels so very far away, stories of courage by the reporters, editors and publisher at The Washington Post inspired a generation of young people to believe that journalism was a way—and maybe the best way—to change the world for good.

The pivotal scene in 1976′s All The President’s Men—which burnished both the facts and some legend about the Post, star reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, and their role in the Watergate scandal that took down Richard Nixon—takes place in the dead of night on the pitch-black lawn of top editor Ben Bradlee. The two journalists, fearful they are being bugged, relay their source Deep Throat’s warning that “people’s lives are in danger, maybe even ours.”

The cowardly Bezos can spend billions to erect a manmade projectile that sends him into space, but he’ll never have the cojones of a Katharine Graham.

In a famous monologue, Bradlee (played by Jason Robards, who won an Oscar) tells Woodward and Bernstein to keep reporting the story, that “nothing’s riding on this except the First Amendment to the Constitution, freedom of the press, and maybe the future of the country,” adding his trademarked newsroom cynicism, “not that any of that matters.”

Yet perhaps an even more revealing scene occurs earlier, when Nixon’s campaign manager John Mitchell—called by the reporters for his comment on a damning article—instead issues a warning to the Post’s trailblazing publisher, saying “Katie Graham’s going to get her [crude word for breast] caught in a big fat wringer if that’s published.” Katharine Graham’s Post had a lot at stake—federal regulators could strip her company’s lucrative TV licenses—yet both the story and the quote, minus the T-word, were published and the Post won a Pulitzer Prize for its relentless pursuit of Watergate.

These are the stories that journalists tell ourselves in order to live—so much so that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos felt compelled when he bought the Post from Graham’s heirs in 2013 to invoke them to reassure a wary newsroom that he would never diminish the Post’s reputation for courageous journalism. The $200 billion man wrote in a letter to staffers: “While I hope no one ever threatens to put one of my body parts through a wringer, if they do, thanks to Mrs. Graham’s example, I’ll be ready.”

Bezos was lying.

On Friday, the world’s third-richest person, his scandal-scarred British publisher Will Lewis, and the iconic newspaper they control stunned both the American body politic and the media world by spiking their editorial board’s endorsement of Kamala Harris for president. The move came just days ahead of an election defined by her rival Donald Trump’s increasing threats to impose a tyrannical form of government with mass deportation camps and arrests for his growing enemies list, including journalists.

Lewis’ utterly incoherent defense of the decision—ending a tradition of presidential endorsements the Post launched in 1976, the same year that All The President’s Men was released—did nothing to quell the rampant, informed speculation that his boss Bezos has killed the already-drafted editorial out of fear a revenge-minded Trump 47 could terminate the billionaire’s extensive business dealings with the federal government. It seemed all too fitting that Trump was in Austin meeting executives of Bezos’ space venture, Blue Horizon, at the same time as the endorsement kibosh.

If this looks like the latest saga of open corruption in a nation that’s become a billionaire kleptocracy, it is—but this moment is also so much more than that. America is witnessing the raw power of dictatorship some nine days before voters even decide if that will truly be our future path. The cowardly Bezos can spend billions to erect a manmade projectile that sends him into space, but he’ll never have the cojones of a Katharine Graham. He is obeying fascism in advance, and he is not alone.

Three thousand miles west, Bezos’ fellow billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong—owner of the Los Angeles Times since 2018—pulled essentially the same maneuver in killing his editorial board’s endorsement of Harris that had been in the works for weeks, and which followed months of editorials warning of the authoritarian dangers of a Trump presidency. Observers noted that Soon-Shiong is a longtime close friend to—you guessed it—another billionaire, Elon Musk, who is the world’s richest man and has thrown all his time and considerable dollars into getting Trump elected. (Soon-Shiong’s daughter insists the reason was both candidates’ failure to address the carnage in Gaza.)

While the moral center of the journalistic universe seemed to be collapsing, Trump told a rally in Tempe, Arizona that the media is “the enemy of the people, they are. I’ve been asked not to say it, I don’t want to say it. They’re the enemy of the people.” The Republican’s replay of this ominous language echoing dictators of the 1930s was quickly followed by a new threat to create licensing woes for CBS because Trump didn’t like its editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with Harris, and a lengthy post on Truth Social threatening to prosecute his enemies.

The message here is clear. The cowardice of the news organizations controlled by Bezos and Soon-Shiong has already taught Trump—in the words of Yale’s Snyder, a leading U.S. expert on fascism—what power can do, and if he prevails in next week’s election, he plans to bring that hammer down in full force. What happened at the Post and the LA Times was a stunning betrayal of journalism’s moral values, but in a strange way the papers did perform a public service: showing American voters what life under a dictator would feel like.

The endorsement cancellations came with a heaping side order of nuance. One irony, as some observers pointed out, is that the expected endorsements of Harris from both editorial boards would have been a tiny blip on the political radar, compared to the earthquake of the owners’ interference. What’s more, there’s an intellectual argument—I once made it myself in a long-vanished blog post—that newspapers shouldn’t endorse candidates. If the Post or Times had announced such a decision a year ago—and not under the heat of the election’s final days, under pressure from self-interested billionaires—there’d be little controversy.

But these reversals, coming now and coming from the poisoned heart of American oligarchy, have instead confirmed the worst fears among an anxiety-wracked electorate that the core institutions that once saved U.S. democracy under the life-or-death pressures of Watergate—the Supreme Court, Congress, and an aggressive media—have morally imploded into empty shells.

Even worse, readers’ sudden sense of betrayal seems to have greatly accelerated the already steep decline of public trust in American journalism, with reports that both the Post and the LA Times have been bombarded with thousands of canceled subscriptions. Some have switched to news organizations like The Philadelphia Inquirer, which published a long and compelling endorsement of Harris at almost the exact moment the Post’s capitulation went public. But many readers will be lost for good. This will create even more layoffs, which will lead to even less accountability journalism in a crumbling democracy, which will create even more cynicism—the tainted gasoline that fuels autocracy.

It’s also critical to note that this fish stinks mainly from the head. The vast majority of working journalists—most of whom weren’t born yet when Woodward and Bernstein stood on Bradlee’s lawn—are just as outraged as their readers frantically hitting the “cancel my subscription” button. Scores of reporters, columnists, and others in the two newsrooms have bravely condemned their bosses’ decisions in online posts and in open letters. The editorial-page editor of the LA Times, Mariel Garza, resigned in protest—despite the horrendous journalism job market—and at least two other colleagues have joined her.

“I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not okay with us being silent,” Garza told Columbia Journalism Review. “In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up.” With the election little more than a week away, I hope that the brave actions of Garza and the words of those who are speaking out—a growing list that includes Woodward and Bernstein themselves—will be the ultimate takeaway, and not the craven corruption of a little man like Bezos.

This early sneak preview of what dictatorship actually looks like is also providing the most important lesson we could have right now, which is how to not obey in advance but stand up against strongmen and bullies. How all of us respond over the coming days and weeks will decide the fate of the First Amendment to the Constitution, freedom of the press, and maybe the future of the country.

And if any of that matters.

It’s 2029. JD Vance has been president for six months following Donald Trump’s second term in office. You’re waking up in a storm shelter in Georgia. You cowered all night as Hurricane Don smashed its way across the state.

You open the door to utter devastation—buildings destroyed, whole communities washed away, hundreds of people dead or missing.

Despite its Category 5 strength, Hurricane Don hit the Atlantic coast with little warning. Several years earlier, following the Project 2025 blueprint, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was privatized. Hurricane hunter planes were scrapped because they were unprofitable. And satellite data was sold to the highest bidder.

Back here in the present day, just days before Election Day, we should be clear-eyed about the consequences of a second Trump term.

Without NOAA forecasts, countless people were caught unprepared. They chose not to evacuate and tried to protect their homes.

In the days and weeks that follow, you realize that the federal government is not coming to help.

In line with Project 2025, emergency response activities were transferred to state and local governments. Federal disaster preparation grants have been eliminated. And the National Flood Insurance Program was wound down, leaving only the rich and lucky few who have private insurance with the ability to rebuild.

This was the consequence of electing Donald Trump and the fruition of his Project 2025’s extreme anti-people, pro-polluter agenda.

But there was more. Following through on his campaign promise, Trump delivered an oil and gas development frenzy with more fracking, more pipelines, and a battle plan to “drill, drill, drill.”

And Trump made quick work following through on his promise to oil executives that he’d block or reverse any environmental law they wanted if they donated $1 billion to his campaign.

Between 2025 and 2028, President Trump appointed two more justices to the Supreme Court. With an 8-1 conservative hegemony, the Supreme Court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency had no authority at all to address greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, the court rejected that climate change was even real.

As a result, all federal agencies were left unable to address any impact of climate change. Superstorms, extreme wildfires, category 5 hurricanes have become the new normal.

Back here in the present day, just days before Election Day, we should be clear-eyed about the consequences of a second Trump term.

We just saw Hurricane Milton intensify in the Gulf of Mexico at one of the fastest rates ever on record. It finally slammed into Florida as a powerful Category 3 storm, leaving at least 24 people dead, more than 3 million without power, spawning dozens of tornadoes and creating a once-in-a-thousand-year rain event.

Two weeks earlier, Hurricane Helene brought a 1,000-year rainfall event to North Carolina and Georgia. It was the deadliest storm to hit the U.S. mainland since Hurricane Katrina, leaving at least 230 people dead across six states and carving a path of destruction as much as 500 miles from any coastline.

Milton’s rapid intensification and Helene’s immense rainfall surprised some observers but both storms exemplify the effects of global heating driven primarily by digging up and burning fossil fuels.

For decades, scientists have predicted the increasing strength of such storms as governments fail to stop fossil fuel expansion and the planet keeps getting hotter. Continuing to burn ever more oil, gas, and coal means warmer oceans and warmer air. Warmer oceans provide immense energy that intensifies storms. Warming air holds more moisture, bringing heavier rainfall.

Rolling back every shred of climate progress and propping up rich polluters is going to make matters much worse for Georgia, Florida, and every other state on the Gulf and Atlantic coasts. Storms of the century will increasingly become storms of every few years—same goes for heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, and floods—with little relief or recovery in sight.

And Trump’s reckless plans to pull out of the Paris agreement again and throw sand in the gears of the international climate negotiations threatens world leaders’ long-overdue agreement last year to “transition away from fossil fuels.”

In a year of climate extremes, we’ve learned that nowhere is safe on a heating planet.

Hurricanes will keep happening, as they always have. But when you emerge after 2029’s Hurricane Don, do you want a government that acts on science to protect people and planet, making polluters pay for their destruction? Or one that sacrifices our lives and livelihoods to the highest bidder?

In August, climate activist and cellist John Mark Rozendaal was arrested and charged with criminal contempt for playing a few minutes of Bach outside Citibank’s headquarters in New York City. Rozendaal, 63, was prominent in the “Summer of Heat on Wall Street” campaign that targeted Citibank for its prolific financing of fossil-fuel projects. He and a co-defendant now face up to seven years imprisonment if convicted.

Meanwhile in Atlanta, more than 50 justice and environmental activists are awaiting trial on domestic terrorism and other charges arising from their years-long defense of the city’s South River Forest against the construction of an 85-acre police training center there. They are being prosecuted under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) law. Any of them found guilty of “racketeering” would have five to 20 years of imprisonment added to their sentences for the alleged underlying crimes.

Such situations are symptomatic of a grim trend in both the United States and Europe. Nonviolent, nondestructive climate protest is increasingly being subjected to criminal prosecution, while punishments are being ratcheted up to levels befitting violent and far more serious crimes.

The state abuses described in this article should be considered a preview of what is almost guaranteed to be even worse to come if Donald Trump does indeed retake the White House and the Republicans win majorities in the House and Senate.

Across the Global South, such environmental protests are all too often being met by corporate and state forces with extreme extrajudicial violence, especially in Indigenous communities. Here in the Global North, however, the clampdown on protest has largely been through legal action, at least so far. But that might—especially in an America with Donald Trump as its president again—only be a prelude to more violent kinds of suppression as global warming accelerates.

For embattled American climate activists, this trend further raises the stakes of the November 5 election. The crackdowns on climate protest are so far being carried out by state and local governments. But the state abuses described in this article should be considered a preview of what is almost guaranteed to be even worse to come if Donald Trump does indeed retake the White House and the Republicans win majorities in the House and Senate. As recently as October 13, in fact, Trump insisted that, once back in the White House, he’d call in the military to quash domestic dissent of any sort.

In addition, a Trumpian Congress would be likely to pass laws gutting federal climate policies and imposing extreme penalties on future climate protesters. Both prospects also feature prominently in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, produced in part by a gaggle of former Trump officials. That now-infamous blueprint for his possible second administration calls explicitly for—as the Center for American Progress describes it—“suppressing dissent and fomenting political violence.” Among other things, Project 2025 suggests that a future President Trump could invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807, which would indeed allow him to use the military to punish lawful nonviolent protest. And count on it, he’s almost certain to exploit that act if he does indeed become president again.

Gas, Oil, and Cars Over People

Since 2016, 21 states have passed a total of 56 laws criminalizing protest or dramatically increasing the penalties for engaging in it. To be sure, John Mark Rozendaal was arrested in New York, a city located in a blue state, but all the states that have adopted new anti-protest laws are governed by Republican-majority legislatures. And the specific activity most frequently targeted for prosecution is protesting the construction or existence of oil and gas pipelines. (Note that all state laws mentioned below are described in detail in a recent report by the International Center for Not-For-Profit Law, or ICNL.)

The state of Alabama, for example, can now punish a person who simply enters an area containing “critical infrastructure,” including such pipelines, with up to a year in jail and a fine of up to $6,000. If you go near a pipeline in Arkansas, you’re at significantly higher risk: imprisonment of up to six years and a $10,000 fine. Impeding access to a pipeline or a pipeline construction site in Mississippi carries a sentence of up to seven years. Do that in North Carolina as a member of a group and you’ve got even bigger problems. As the ICNL reports, “[A] group of people protesting the construction of a fossil fuel pipeline could face more than 15 years in prison and a mandatory $250,000 fine if they impede or impair the construction of a pipeline.”

Even as protest is being criminalized, assaulting protesters by car is, in effect, being decriminalized.

Many such sentences for protesting are wildly disproportionate to the severity of the act committed. In Florida, trespassing on property that contains pipelines can result in up to five years imprisonment, compared to only 60 days for trespassing just about anywhere else. Enter a pipeline facility in Ohio with the intention of tampering with it in any way and face a potential ten-year sentence. Simply spraying graffiti on an Ohio pipeline installation can carry a six-year sentence, while anyone who “conspires” with the person creating such graffiti could be fined an eye-popping $100,000.

Many climate marches or demonstrations involve walking or standing in roadways. Politicians have been exploiting the fact that “automobile supremacy is inscribed in law by every branch of government and at every level of authority” (in the words of law professor Gregory Shill) to pass highly punitive measures against street protests with little fear of having them overturned. In effect, the laws privilege fossil-fueled vehicles over the human beings who speak out against them.

In May, the Tennessee legislature passed a law that mandates a prison sentence of 2 to 12 years for protesters convicted of knowingly obstructing roadways. In Florida, groups of 25 or more protesters impeding traffic can be charged with “rioting” and face up to 15 years imprisonment. Anyone in Louisiana who does no more than help plan a protest that would impede traffic can be charged with conspiracy or with “aiding and abetting,” even if the protest ends up not hindering traffic or not occurring at all.

In Iowa, being on the street or sidewalk during a vociferous but nonviolent protest can cost you five years in prison, yet (believe it or not) a driver who runs into you during a protest, causing injury, is immune from civil liability if that driver can convince authorities that he or she had taken “due care.”

Laws that permit drivers to run into or over pedestrians engaged in protest have been passed in four states. Three of those laws hit the books in 2021 in the midst of a 16-month period during which American drivers deliberately rammed into groups of protesters a whopping 139 times, according to a Boston Globe analysis. Three victims were killed and at least 100 injured. Drivers were criminally charged in fewer than half of the ramming incidents and in only four was a driver actually convicted of a felony. In other words, even as protest is being criminalized, assaulting protesters by car is, in effect, being decriminalized.

Finally, Louisiana can file RICO charges against people who, as part of a “tumultuous” demonstration, block roads or damage oil or gas pipelines. And protesters beware, since that state’s RICO law carries the possibility of 50 years in prison at hard labor and a $1 million fine. (And yes, you read that right!)

Fresh Legislation, Ready in Minutes!

Many laws that impose severe penalties for protest were passed in the wake of the Indigenous-led campaign against the Dakota Access oil pipeline in 2016-2017. Hundreds of people were arrested in that struggle. More than 700 protesters with the Indigenous Environment Network have been criminalized for their untiring efforts to impede or halt pipeline projects across North America.

If the dozens of state anti-protest laws display many suspicious similarities, that’s no coincidence. In response to pipeline protests, oil and gas companies teamed up with the American Legislative Exchange Council, which draws up “model legislation” for Republicans in statehouses across the country to use as templates for bills that push various corporate and hard-right priorities. Once this genre of legislation was directed toward on-site pipeline protests and passed in state after state, it was also seized upon to criminalize street marches and demonstrations, including those against racist violence, fossil fuels, and other ills—all with “traffic safety” as a pretext.

Following the lead of their kindred state legislators, Republicans in Congress have proposed their own raft of bills criminalizing protest. Fortunately, they haven’t succeeded in getting any of them passed—yet. Many of the bills were prompted by campus protests against U.S.-supported genocide in Gaza or over climate policy and against the fossil-fuel industry.

Some of the congressional bills amounted to less-than-serious grandstanding. One, for instance, would have required a person convicted of “unlawful activity” on a university campus at any time since last October 7 to perform six months of “community service” in Gaza. But there were also dead-serious bills like the one prescribing a prison sentence of up to 15 years for inhibiting traffic on an interstate highway. Other proposed bills would have withheld federal funding (in one case, even pandemic aid) from states that refused to prosecute people who took part in protests on public roadways.

Smashing Human Rights in Europe

Punitive measures against climate protest are reaching new extremes in Europe, too. Since the British Parliament passed harsh new anti-protest laws in 2022, more than 3,000 activists associated with the Just Stop Oil movement have been arrested. According to CNN, “Most of those arrests have been for planning or carrying out direct actions, including slow marching,” which impedes traffic.

In response to such repression, Michel Forst, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders, wrote that under the Aarhus Convention (a 1998 agreement most European countries have signed but not the United States), “Whether intended or not, any disruptions that [environmental] actions may cause, such as traffic jams or disturbances to normal economic activity, does not remove the protection for the exercise of fundamental rights during such action under international human rights law.”

In defiance of that principle, the new British laws prescribe a sentence of up to 10 years imprisonment for those convicted of planning protests judged to be a “public nuisance” (which often means disrupting traffic). Such prison terms, noted CNN, are comparable to those for aggravated robbery or rape under British law.

When the climate change group Extinction Rebellion announced an action near The Hague in September 2023, more than 10,000 people of all ages showed up. They’d come to protest the more than $40 billion in subsidies that the Netherlands government gives fossil fuel companies annually. The police blasted the crowd with water cannons, then arrested and hauled away 2,400 protesters, including children.

The group Climate Rights International (CRI) reports that “some democratic countries are even taking measures designed to stop peaceful climate protests before they start.” In June 2023, for instance, German police detained an activist before he could even leave his home to join a climate protest. Five months earlier, a Dutch activist was held in custody for two days to keep him from an action by Extinction Rebellion. He ended up being convicted of sedition (yes, sedition!) for encouraging others to attend the protest. None of that sounds like something “democratic countries,” as CRI called them, should be doing.

Protest as Necessity

People charged with nonviolent protest often invoke the “necessity defense,” declaring that they committed a minor law violation to stop a far greater crime. Unfortunately, that defense almost never succeeds and judges often forbid defendants from even explaining their motives during a trial.

That’s what happened to members of the group Insulate Britain who stood trial this year for a climate protest that disrupted traffic by nonviolently occupying streets and climbing onto overpasses along a major London ring road in 2022. The judge presiding over their trials ordered the defendants not to mention climate change in court. Several of the activists defied that order, citing the climate emergency as their motivation, so the judge promptly held them in contempt of court and sent two of them to jail for seven weeks.

One of the protesters cited for contempt, Nick Till, told CRI that, while trying to bar him and the others from explaining the purpose of their actions, the judge allowed the prosecutors to depict the defendants as threats to society. “There’s an attempt to insinuate we’re a ‘cell,’” Till said, “which is language that implies some kind of revolutionary group. They had an expert in counterterrorism testify. They tried to portray us as dangerous extremists.”

Though also being threatened with increasing penalties under state laws, Americans have somewhat stronger protections under the First Amendment.

In July, four people who planned the London protests were convicted and sentenced to a draconian four years in prison. A fifth defendant, Roger Hallam, one of the most prominent British climate activists, was sentenced to five years even though, bizarrely enough, he was neither a planner of the protest nor a participant. He was charged instead for a speech he gave regarding civil disobedience as an effective form of climate action in a Zoom call with that protest’s planners.

In their trial, the five defendants represented themselves. Over the course of four days, with the judge repeatedly trying and failing to silence them, they presented what could be the most extensive and compelling version of the necessity defense ever heard in a courtroom. (Later, in his prison cell, Hallam wrote up an account of the trial. It’s well worth reading.)

On both sides of the Atlantic, volleys of laws threatening long-term imprisonment for nonviolent dissent are being put on the books to cow the climate movement into silence. So far, European protesters who dare to resist are getting hit hardest with convictions and sentences. Though also being threatened with increasing penalties under state laws, Americans have somewhat stronger protections under the First Amendment. But how long will dissent continue to enjoy such protections in this country? That largely depends on how we all vote between now and November 5.

The richest man in the world is trying to buy the U.S. presidential election in order to bestow it, like a burnt offering, upon his preferred candidate.

Multi-billionaire Elon Musk is not only pouring $75 million of his own money into Donald Trump’s campaign. He is now offering payments to voters in swing states in the form of a “lottery” that skirts, if not violates, U.S. election laws. What started out as $47 for registered voters in Pennsylvania who endorsed his on-line petition has become a million bucks a day from now until the election to some lucky signatory in a swing state. Federal law prohibits such incentives to register to vote, but the penalty is minimal (for Musk) and in any case wouldn’t be assessed until after the election.

A billionaire, in other words, has gone all in to support a billionaire on behalf of billionaires the world over.

This billionaires-for-billionaires approach certainly has precedents in the United States. Right-wing plutocrats famously rallied behind Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election. But it’s Trump that billionaires have really glommed onto. For instance, casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam were key donors in Trump’s earlier runs. Trump’s current transition co-chair, Howard Lutnick, is a billionaire financier.

A comparably blatant effort to buy an election has been on display in Moldova. In this tiny country sandwiched between Ukraine and Romania, billionaire Ilan Shor sent $15 million to 130,000 citizens in exchange for their pledge to vote against pro-EU leader Maia Sandu and a referendum on enshrining the goal of EU membership in the country’s constitution. In a particularly unappetizing form of repatriation, some of that payola comes from the billion dollars that Shor stole from three Moldovan banks in 2014.

A “robbing hood,” indeed.

Half of Moldova turned out to vote in this critical election. Some showed up at the polls thinking that they’d be paid immediately, according to the BBC:

A BBC producer heard a woman who had just dropped her ballot in the transparent box ask an election monitor where she would get paid. When we asked directly whether she had been offered cash to vote, she admitted it without qualms. She was angry that a man who had sent her to the polling station was no longer answering her calls. “He tricked me!” she said.

Not only you, my dear.

The good news, in this out-and-out battle between billionaires and democracy, is that Shor failed. The referendum passed by the slenderest of margins (given the general popularity of the EU in that part of the world, the closeness of the vote was nonetheless sobering). And Sandu, the current president of the country, won the first round of voting convincingly with 41 percent, while Shor’s preferred candidate, the pro-Moscow Aleksandr Stoianoglo, garnered only 26 percent. Unfortunately, Sandu will face a united opposition in the second round.

Two elections this month in the former Soviet region—in Moldova and Georgia—showcase this war between wealth and commonwealth. The Russian-allied kleptocrats face off against the Europe-aligned democrats to see which way the post-Soviet space will turn. Ukraine, of course, is fighting an actual war along precisely those battle lines.

The Ukrainian scenario is the ultimate threat, even here in the United States. Democracy may well triumph over the billionaires in the U.S., Moldovan, and Georgian elections. But they will be Pyrrhic victories if the countries involved descend into the kind of armed conflict that Ukraine is currently experiencing.

Why Moldova Is Pivotal

Are you worried about how divided the United States is? It could be worse.

It could be Moldova.

In the early 1990s, a thin strip of the country tried to remain within the disintegrating Soviet Union, then launched a war of secession against the newly independent Moldovan government. The semi-autonomous “state” of Transnistria, where Russian is more commonly spoken than Romanian, emerged from a ceasefire agreement, and Russian “peacekeepers” are supposed to maintain the tenuous status quo. No UN member states recognize the “country” of Transnistria, and no legitimate governments appreciate the breakaway region’s anachronistic allegiance to a Soviet past and its current commitment to organized crime.

The Moldovan government faces another potential secessionist movement from the Gagauz, who speak a Turkic language and whose nationalism has brought them in alignment with the Kremlin. Russian leader Vladimir Putin has fostered close ties with Gagauz leader Evgenia Gutul to drive yet another wedge into Moldova.

In addition to supporting secessionist movements, the Kremlin has launched several other efforts to destabilize Moldova and bring it back into the Russian fold. In 2023, according to the Moldovan government, Russia directed cyberattacks and fake bomb threats at the country. Even as it was fighting in Ukraine, Russia plotted a coup to topple the EU-aligned government of Maia Sandu. Western governments have warned Sandu to expect more of the same if she wins reelection.

Ukraine is currently trying to prevent the expansion of the Russian empire and the consolidation of an illiberal zone on Europe’s edge. It has long wanted to join the European Union. Russia first seized Ukrainian territory to scuttle that bid back in 2014.

Now it’s Moldova’s turn to risk Russia’s ire by facing West. The future trajectory of Moldova will demonstrate whether Putin’s illiberalism or the EU’s liberalism has the upper hand in the region.

Meanwhile, in Georgia

Another country, another billionaire, another challenge to democracy.

In Georgia, billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili is the country’s richest person and the founder of the current ruling party, Georgia Dream. As with Ilan Shor, Ivanishvili parrots the Kremlin line that voters shouldn’t push their country into war with Russia by moving closer to the EU. Toward that end, the Georgia Dream government—over the objections of its own dissenting president—pushed through legislation patterned on Russia’s foreign agent law to reduce the influence of outside (read: Western) organizations on the country’s politics. But what such laws really do is reduce the influence of independent and dissenting voices within the country. Iskra Kirova of Human Rights Watch explains:

By stigmatizing independent civil society, media and other dissenting voices as “trojan horses,” “foreign agent” laws have offered a convenient framing to delegitimize and isolate them. In addition, they have also helped to impose harsh monitoring and reporting requirements and shut critics out of public life. As the promotion of democratic practices and human rights threatens authoritarians’ grip on power, “foreign agent” laws offer a handy tool to discredit these activities by equating them with promoting the interests of a foreign power.

Laws like these halted Georgia’s EU accession process.

The electoral choice this upcoming weekend will be just as stark as the one in Moldova: will voters reject the Kremlin or reject the EU? Georgia, like Moldova, is a divided country, with two secessionist regions—South Ossetia and Abkhazia—that receive Russian support. It’s not difficult to imagine a Ukrainian scenario for this country as well.

Salome Zourabichvili, the current president, has been trying to unify the opposition against Ivanishvili’s Georgia Dream. Unlike Maia Sandu, however, she doesn’t have much power at her disposal to counter the money and the manipulation of a single wealthy man. It takes more than pretty words to beat back billionaires.

From Democracy to Oligarchy

Billionaires are a trump card that can disrupt democracy by exploiting the dreams of some people to acquire enormous wealth, become famous, and break the law with impunity. Once billionaires win, however, they become the law. As in Russia, the oligarchs collaborate with the ruling party to transform politics into patronage and economics into outright theft.

To do this, they don’t have to break the law: they make the law.

In the United States, such an oligarchy would look a lot like the state of affairs at the impishly named X. An administration bought and paid for by Musk—and that reciprocates with lucrative contracts and tax cuts—would impose its definition of “free speech” by de-platforming (or jailing) all impertinent journalists. It would deregulate government by firing much of the civil service, eliminating all constraints on power and accountability. And it would pretend to run the economy like a business all the while piling up debt.

That’s what happens when infantile oligarchs are allowed to give full vent to their ids. That has been the single “greatest” contribution to politics of the Muskites—to somehow transform the concept of “good governance” into the epithet of a “nanny state.” Freed of any superego guardrails, they would dispense with the rule of law like a band of Bolsheviks bent on imposing the will of a minority.

Before the rise of social media, the increased availability of sophisticated firearms, and the deregulation of finance, democracy could have held off against these wealthy gunslingers. It could have been saved by the equivalent of the Magnificent Seven—Edward R. Murrow, Martin Luther King, Jr., Fanny Lou Hamer, Barbara Jordan, Frank Church, Cesar Chavez, Marian Anderson or some other combination of heroes—riding into town and disarming the bad guys.

Today, seven is not enough. What’s needed now, at minimum, is the Magnificent Millions. To save democracy in Moldova, Georgia, and elsewhere, only a boisterous majority of the voting population can effectively counter the handful of Bilious Billionaires.

Near dusk late last month, under an awning in Jackson, Mississippi, we bowed our heads in prayer. Our group was diverse: Black, white, women and men, Northerners, Southerners, Midwesterners, persons hailing from the Pacific Northwest.

An Attorney. A Pastor. A Hip-hop artist. Baby Boomers. Generation-Xers. Millennials. And there was blood beneath our feet. The bloodshed was not new. Yet, its presence heightened our urgency.

On June 12, 1963, around midnight, a bullet entered Medgar Evers’ back, ripped open his chest, and invaded his home. Despite his mortal wound, Evers attempted to reach his front door, dragging his body on the ground. Myrlie, his wife, found him dying near the front steps.

When juxtaposed, Medgar Evers’ life of service and sacrifice stands in sharp contrast to Trump’s vitriolic rhetoric and current ideas for America.

Evers’ blood painted the pavement red. Pools of blood left stains. Over 60 years later, as a group of us from the progressive evangelical organization Vote Common Good prayed, those stains remained visible on the pavement.

Evers once said, “You can kill a man, but you can’t kill an idea.” While gathered amid bloodshed, it was painfully clear that we still have a long way to go to perfect our union. Still, Evers’ great hope, the idea that we can and that we must become a nation that makes the promise of democracy accessible to all, is an idea that lives on. It is the very idea that brought us to Evers’ doorstep earlier this fall.

While our journey to Medgar Evers’ home further heightened our sense of urgency to work to mobilize voters to vote for the common good in this general election, our urgency was already heightened as these are consequential times. America has a major decision to make. Either send Donald Trump, a man who does not respect the rule of law and who conspired to overturn our last election, back to the White House, or elect Vice President Kamala Harris, a proven public servant, who, when elected, would possess more day-one experience than any other president over the past three decades.

When juxtaposed, Medgar Evers’ life of service and sacrifice stands in sharp contrast to Trump’s vitriolic rhetoric and current ideas for America. After three years of distinguished service in the U.S. Army while fighting in during World War II, Evers returned home and graduated from Alcorn State, one of our nation's finest historically Black colleges and universities. Trump routinely diminishes the sacrifices of our military, labeling those who die in battle as “losers.” And Trump’s idea to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education would end federal student lending and crush the dreams of low-income students—especially Black and brown students—who seek a college education.

Evers fought to secure rights for and to protect and improve the lives of Black Americans. Trump’s nominated judges, including those now serving on our nation’s highest court, are rapidly overturning rights, from abortion rights (which since Roe v. Wade ended in 2022 has resulted in increased childbirth deaths per 100,000 Black women in Texas from 31.6 to 43.6) to affirmative action.

Tragically, during Evers’ funeral, Black mourners were beaten by police in the streets. Trump’s big idea for the police is to grant federal immunity from prosecution. Trump has also voiced support for returning to the days of stop-and-frisk, which terrorized Black and brown communities.

Conversely, Vice President Kamala Harris embodies many aspects of Evers’ life and ideas. Harris has already brought nearly $170 billion in student debt relief for almost 5 million borrowers. And Harris, an HBCU graduate, has provided significant support to HBCUs. Harris will sign the John Lewis Voting Rights Act to enshrine voting rights for all Americans as soon as it reaches her desk in the Oval Office. And it is important to remember that Sen. Harris introduced the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act to reform policing in America.

For Black lives, for the survival of democracy, the decision could not be any clearer. Yet, some are still undecided. If only they could have journeyed with us to Jackson, Mississippi, to bear witness to Evers’ blood, I believe they would have a moment of clarity.

Martin Luther King, Jr., said, “We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now…This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action.” November 6 will be a critically important day for America. It will be the day after we saved democracy. Or it will be the day after we handed a match and gasoline to a madman to burn it down.

At the end of our prayer there in Jackon, I looked again at the blood. Then I turned to depart with my colleagues to do all we can to honor Evers’ sacrifice. Most assuredly, to do this: Turn out the vote.

And, most assuredly, we must ensure that Kamala Harris becomes the next president of the United States of America.

Most activists sense the dense web of connections linking social, economic and climate justice issues, yet stick largely to their own anchor points. It’s time to come unstuck. To make progress at a pace that matches the urgency of our problems, we must widen the circles of activism and invite everyone in.

“We need to take big leaps of faith,” says Akaya Windwood, lead advisor for Third Act and founder of the New Universal Wisdom and Leadership Institute. “There are enough of us now doing this work. We have everything we need in order to make transformation happen.”

To find out what it means to pull all the pieces together, we interviewed three members of the Just Economy Institute who are doing it: Windwood; Tzeporah Berman, international program director at Stand.earth; and Stephone Coward, economic justice director at the Hip Hop Caucus. Here are their insights on how to weave multiple worlds together to accelerate change.

Make Money’s Role Visible

Many fellows who came to our program with a social justice focus have dissociated from money. What they find, though, is that tracing its flow reveals hidden leverage points.

“There’s an opportunity to lean more into the power that people have through their money—even if they don’t have a great portfolio—to send a message that we can’t prioritize profit over people,” says Coward.

To that end, Coward recently launched Bank Black and Green, a multiyear campaign to rally impact investors to shift capital to Black-owned banks that pledge not to finance the fossil fuel industry or mass incarceration.

“These minority depository institutions are frontline actors in a just transition from the current extractive economy to a regenerative one,” Coward says. Meanwhile, “fossil fuel companies come into underdeveloped communities with the promise of good jobs and actually end up poisoning these communities, lowering the value of homes and local businesses, and driving away other forms of economic investment.”

Meet People Where They Are—Literally and Figuratively

“We need to bring the organizing away from the centers of power and into the centers of impact, where climate change is already hitting hard,” says Coward. “New York, D.C., L.A.—places like that are important, but the people who live in the Gulf states also want and need to be a part of this work. We have to build power and mobilize people in the South.”

That requires a long-term commitment, he adds—not just “parachuting into communities to do some type of vanity project and then leaving. And in order for us to do this financial activism and climate activism work together, we’ve got to understand where people are currently.”

“If we’re actually going to change things, we need to start finding honest common ground.”

This is true in every dimension of difference. “It’s been eye opening to me to understand that we are having two very different conversations generationally,” Windwood says, “and I'm coming to the understanding that cross-generational work is as essential as working across race, gender, and class—and perhaps more salient now than anything else.”

Doing that work, she adds, requires moving away from negative communication habits.

“One of the most toxic patterns in our social movements is the critiquing that we do, the contest to see who’s the smartest person in the room—and the way I can tell you that I’m the smartest person in the room is by tearing down your ideas,” Windwood says. “If we’re actually going to change things, we need to start finding honest common ground. Imagine going to a social justice gathering where we are welcoming and kind, and can disagree with some grace.”

Do the Work to Work Across Difference

“We have got to learn how to listen—listen to understand, not to respond,” says Berman, whose organization builds power side-by-side with the frontline communities most impacted by environmental crises.

“There is an inherent tension in the work we do, because when you work on environmental and climate issues, you always feel like you’re racing against the clock,” she says. “Yet true justice-based relationships that are not extractive take trust, and trust takes time.”

Building trust—especially with frontline communities—starts with the approach to developing the campaign, she adds: The most effective actions involve co-creating the strategy, not just giving people the opportunity to have a voice in it. Berman offers Stand.earth’s Amazon campaign, which persuaded banks to shift billions of dollars away from financing oil extraction.

“We built a resistance strategy jointly with Indigenous associations and leadership. And when we decided to try to convince banks to stop funding oil drilling in the heart of the Amazon, we weren’t just facilitating Indigenous leaders to do a speech to a bank,” Berman said. “Instead, our researchers briefed them on all the financial information and answered their questions so that when the Indigenous leaders showed up in a meeting with vice presidents of some of the largest banks in the world, they were negotiating with real information, and they were equal partners.”

“Those bank executives were hearing not just the story of impacts on the land and in the forest, but an assessment of their recent financial transactions in the oil trade and a direct request to stop this contract and no longer pursue this particular company. They didn’t expect that.”

Bring the Storytelling, the Hope and the Joy

Activism by its nature is focused on problems, and that can make the work feel grim to people who don’t do it for a living—and even to some who do.

“We need people to stay for the long-term. Our hope must be louder than the other side’s grievances,” Coward says. “We can use the power of storytelling to put out something aspirational, to talk about what a society that doesn’t prioritize profit over people looks like.”

Windwood echoes the need for “stories that tell us of possible futures,” along with an experience of community. “I think that’s why Third Act is so effective, and how we went from an idea two years ago to having over 70,000 members today,” she says. “When we say, ‘Let’s go sit in front of the banks in our rocking chairs,’ people want to do that. Why? Because it’s fun.”

Berman’s parting advice: “Find ways to experience joy together. It will do more to strengthen your work than anything else because joy is the justice we give ourselves in troubled times.”

It’s been a hell of a year for everyone. Record-breaking natural disasters have decimated entire cities, gun violence continues to plague our schools and public spaces with little-to-nothing done to stop it. Grocery and rent prices are high, wages are low, the U.S. war machine rages across the globe while we have no choice but to foot the bill, and yet another major election looms.

For disabled folks across the country, these issues and more have never been more amplified. The reality for our community is that disabled people are exhausted because we’re being left behind with no choice but to fight for our survival in a world that isn’t designed for it. We’re being forced to grieve because our friends and family are dying—deaths that are often avoidable. We’re still being misrepresented in the media, still without adequate access both in physical spaces and in the digital realm, and all the while our needs aren’t being heard. 2024 has proven, once again, that we as a community are being cast aside. But what those in power don’t realize is that while they ignore us, we’re organizing. We are making it known that we’re tired of being forgotten, and we’re ready to fight.

Right now in the final days of the election, we’re seeing politicians going about business as usual—touting plans for the country, states, and local communities that sound appealing but often lack substance and detail. That in itself is frustrating and disheartening, but disabled folks aren’t even seeing themselves in the conversation. We aren’t at the table in any way. Candidates aren’t including disabled people in decision-making processes when it comes to policy and campaign platforms. Disability orgs nationwide have approached campaigns to ask candidates about the issues facing our community, and are being met with lackluster responses; in many cases, no response at all. We are being neglected by those in power, even as we continue to raise our voices about what we need.

The disability community is not a monolith, but we are a legitimate voting bloc and one that demands to be taken seriously.

The recent devastating hurricanes across the South have shown us not just the horrific consequences of our inaction on climate change, but also that disabled folks are being boxed out of disaster preparedness measures and training. How can disabled people survive these storms if there’s no plan in place for how to save us? Saving ourselves only goes so far when there’s no consideration for our well-being in the plans that local and state governments make. Emergency resources are often inaccessible, leaving many out of reach of help that they desperately need. Disabled folks are two to four times more likely to die or be critically injured during a disaster—that in itself is a crisis, and one that we are being left alone to navigate.

Disabled people are also being forced into poverty at frightening rates. As the cost of living continues to increase across the board, the cost of survival for disabled folks is at an all-time high. People have to choose between full-time employment or government assistance for services they need to live; there is no middle ground here. Thousands of disabled people across the country are being paid subminimum wages, with hundreds of businesses allowed to do so thanks to the legality of 14c certificates. Over 700,000 people across the country are on waiting lists for in-home care Medicaid waivers that in many cases have left them with no choice but to live in nursing homes. All the while, states like Texas, which has over 300,000 people on its waiting list, boast budget surpluses in the tens of billions. Funding of these waivers are given the lowest priority, even while advocates beg lawmakers to do something. Anything.

For multiply marginalized disabled folks, like Black disabled people and trans disabled people, their lives are at greater risk due to law enforcement interactions and dangerous legislation than ever before. Fifty percent of those killed by law enforcement are disabled, and 55% of Black disabled men are likely to be arrested by 28 years old. The killing of Sonya Massey in July shows plainly, as do countless other examples, that Black disabled folks are not safe when interacting with police.

Legislation that targets the LGBTQ+ community has a significant impact on disabled folks as well, with the anti-trans legislation being introduced and enacted in states across the country leaving trans disabled folks at risk of not receiving care that they need. And we know that transgender people are more likely to be disabled than cisgender people.

And let’s not forget about one of the biggest threats to disabled autonomy that there is—voter suppression. Across the country, hundreds of anti-voter laws have been introduced and in many cases passed, which disproportionately affect disabled voters and prevent them from participating in Democracy. In Alabama, SB1 prohibited voters from receiving assistance with absentee ballots, which specifically targeted disabled Alabamians who rely on assistance from care workers to cast their vote in elections. SB1 is just one example of the over 400 anti-voter bills that have been introduced in recent years.

Where does this leave us today? Exhausted. But that doesn’t mean we’ve given up. The disability community is not a monolith, but we are a legitimate voting bloc and one that demands to be taken seriously. We are a powerful community of people with a shared identity that has empowered us like never before. The disability justice movement, which centers self-determination and emphasizes that ableism is a form of oppression that is linked to other forms experienced by the most marginalized among us, has grown exponentially in recent years. Activists across the country are fighting on behalf of all of us to be seen and heard. We’re working to shift the lens on disability—to be seen as more than just one thing. We’re running for office and assuming positions of leadership. We’re launching our own organizations, advocacy groups, media companies, and news publications because that’s what we need to do to make sure we’re being counted.

And so, in the last weeks of the election, if there’s one message the disability community has, it’s this: Don’t box us out. Don’t ignore us. Because we might be tired, but we’re here. We’re fed up. And we deserve the autonomy we’ve been fighting for day in and day out. We deserve to not just survive, but to thrive. And we’ll fight like hell, and vote like hell, until we get everything we deserve. 2024 be damned.

America’s morbidly rich billionaires are at it again, this time screwing the average family’s ability to have decent, affordable housing in their never-ending quest for more, more, more. Canada, New Zealand, Singapore, and Denmark have had enough and done something about it: We should, too.

There are a few things that are essential to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” that should never be purely left to the marketplace; these are the most important sectors where government intervention, regulation, and even subsidy are not just appropriate but essential. Housing is at the top of that list.

A few days ago I noted how, since the Reagan Revolution, the cost of housing has exploded in America, relative to working class income.

It seems that everywhere you look in America you see the tragedy of the homelessness these billionaires are causing. Rarely, though, do you hear about the role of Wall Street and its billionaires in causing it.

When my dad bought his home in the 1950s, for example, the median price of a single-family house was around 2.2 times the median American family income. Today the St. Louis Fed says the median house sells for $417,700 while the median American income is $40,480—a ratio of more than 10 to 1 between housing costs and annual income.

In other words, housing is about five times more expensive (relative to income) than it was in the 1950s.

And now we’ve surged past a new tipping point, causing the homelessness that’s plagued America’s cities since former U.S. President George W. Bush’s deregulation-driven housing- and stock-market crash in 2008, exacerbated by former President Donald Trump’s bungling America’s pandemic response.

And the principal cause of both that crash and today’s crisis of homelessness and housing affordability has one, single, primary cause: billionaires treating housing as an investment commodity.

A new report from Popular Democracy and the Institute for Policy Studies reveals how billionaire investors have become a major driver of the nationwide housing crisis. They summarize in their own words:

— Billionaire-backed private equity firms worm their way into different segments of the housing market to extract ever-increasing rents and value from multi-family rental, single-family homes, and mobile home park communities.
— Global billionaires purchase billions in U.S. real estate to diversify their asset holdings, driving the creation of luxury housing that functions as “safety deposit boxes in the sky.” Estimates of hidden wealth are as high as $36 trillion globally, with billions parked in U.S. land and housing markets.
— Wealthy investors are acquiring property and holding units vacant, so that in many communities the number of vacant units greatly exceeds the number of unhoused people. Nationwide there are 16 million vacant homes: that is, 28 vacant homes for every unhoused person.
— Billionaire investors are buying up a large segment of the short-term rental market, preventing local residents from living in these homes, in order to cash in on tourism. These are not small owners with one unit, but corporate owners with multiple properties.
— Billionaire investors and corporate landlords are targeting communities of color and low-income residents, in particular, with rent increases, high rates of eviction, and unhealthy living conditions. What’s more, billionaire-owned private equity firms are investing in subsidized housing, enjoying tax breaks and public benefits, while raising rents and evicting low-income tenants from housing they are only required to keep affordable, temporarily. (Emphasis theirs.)

It seems that everywhere you look in America you see the tragedy of the homelessness these billionaires are causing. Rarely, though, do you hear about the role of Wall Street and its billionaires in causing it.

The math, however, is irrefutable.

Thirty-two percent is the magic threshold, according to research funded by the real estate listing company Zillow. When neighborhoods hit rent rates in excess of 32% of neighborhood income, homelessness explodes. And we’re seeing it play out right in front of us in cities across America because a handful of Wall Street billionaires are making a killing.

As the Zillow study notes:

Across the country, the rent burden already exceeds the 32% [of median income] threshold in 100 of the 386 markets included in this analysis….

And wherever housing prices become more than three times annual income, homelessness stalks like the grim reaper. That Zillow-funded study laid it out:

This research demonstrates that the homeless population climbs faster when rent affordability—the share of income people spend on rent—crosses certain thresholds. In many areas beyond those thresholds, even modest rent increases can push thousands more Americans into homelessness.”

This trend is massive.

As noted in a Wall Street Journal article titled “Meet Your New Landlord: Wall Street,” in just one suburb (Spring Hill) of Nashville:

In all of Spring Hill, four firms… own nearly 700 houses… [which] amounts to about 5% of all the houses in town.

This is the tiniest tip of the iceberg.

“On the first Tuesday of each month,” notes the Journal article about a similar phenomenon in Atlanta, investors “toted duffels stuffed with millions of dollars in cashier’s checks made out in various denominations so they wouldn’t have to interrupt their buying spree with trips to the bank…”

The same thing is happening in cities and suburbs all across America; agents for the billionaire investor goliaths use fine-tuned computer algorithms to sniff out houses they can turn into rental properties, making over-market and unbeatable cash bids often within minutes of a house hitting the market.

After stripping neighborhoods of homes young families can afford to buy, billionaires then begin raising rents to extract as much cash as they can from local working class communities.

In the Nashville suburb of Spring Hill, the vice-mayor, Bruce Hull, told the Journal you used to be able to rent “a three bedroom, two bath house for $1,000 a month.” Today, the Journal notes:

The average rent for 148 single-family homes in Spring Hill owned by the big four [Wall Street billionaire investor] landlords was about $1,773 a month…

As the Bank of International Settlements summarized in a 2014 retrospective study of the years since the Reagan/Gingrich changes in banking and finance:

We describe a Pareto frontier along which different levels of risk-taking map into different levels of welfare for the two parties, pitting Main Street against Wall Street… We also show that financial innovation, asymmetric compensation schemes, concentration in the banking system, and bailout expectations enable or encourage greater risk-taking and allocate greater surplus to Wall Street at the expense of Main Street.

It’s a fancy way of saying that billionaire-owned big banks and hedge funds have made trillions on housing while you and your community are becoming destitute.

Ryan Dezember, in his book Underwater: How Our American Dream of Homeownership Became a Nightmare, describes the story of a family trying to buy a home in Phoenix. Every time they entered a bid, they were outbid instantly, the price rising over and over, until finally the family’s father threw in the towel.

“Jacobs was bewildered,” writes Dezember. “Who was this aggressive bidder?”

Turns out it was Blackstone Group, now the world’s largest real estate investor run by a major Trump supporter. At the time they were buying $150 million worth of American houses every week, trying to spend over $10 billion. And that’s just a drop in the overall bucket.

As that new study from Popular Democracy and the Institute for Policy Studies found:

[Billionaire Stephen Schwarzman’s] Blackstone is the largest corporate landlord in the world, with a vast and diversified real estate portfolio. It owns more than 300,000 residential units across the U.S., has $1 trillion in global assets, and nearly doubled its profits in 2021.

Blackstone owns 149,000 multi-family apartment units; 63,000 single-family homes; 70 mobile home parks with 13,000 lots through their subsidiary Treehouse Communities; and student housing, through American Campus Communities (144,300 beds in 205 properties as of 2022). Blackstone recently acquired 95,000 units of subsidized housing.

In 2018, corporations and the billionaires that own or run them bought 1 out of every 10 homes sold in America, according to Dezember, noting that:

Between 2006 and 2016, when the homeownership rate fell to its lowest level in 50 years, the number of renters grew by about a quarter.

And it’s gotten worse every year since then.

This all really took off around a decade ago following the Bush Crash, when Morgan Stanley published a 2011 report titled “The Rentership Society,” arguing that snapping up houses and renting them back to people who otherwise would have wanted to buy them could be the newest and hottest investment opportunity for Wall Street’s billionaires and their funds.

Turns out, Morgan Stanley was right. Warren Buffett, KKR, and The Carlyle Group have all jumped into residential real estate, along with hundreds of smaller investment groups, and the National Home Rental Council has emerged as the industry’s premiere lobbying group, working to block rent control legislation and other efforts to control the industry.

As John Husing, the owner of Economics and Politics Inc., told The Tennessean newspaper:

What you have are neighborhoods that are essentially unregulated apartment houses. It could be disastrous for the city.

As Zillow found:

The areas that are most vulnerable to rising rents, unaffordability, and poverty hold 15% of the U.S. population—and 47% of people experiencing homelessness.

The loss of affordable homes also locks otherwise middle class families out of the traditional way wealth is accumulated—through home ownership: Over 61% of all American middle-income family wealth is their home’s equity.

And as families are priced out of ownership and forced to rent, they become more vulnerable to homelessness.

Housing is one of the primary essentials of life. Nobody in America should be without it, and for society to work, housing costs must track incomes in a way that makes housing both available and affordable.

Singapore, Denmark, New Zealand, and parts of Canada have all put limits on billionaire, corporate, and foreign investment in housing, recognizing families’ residences as essential to life rather than purely a commodity. Multiple other countries are having that debate or moving to take similar actions as you read these words.

America should, too.

I have never subscribed to the idea that citizens who refuse to vote for a Democratic candidate in a tight race are somehow morally responsible for the election of a Republican, however bad that Republican might be.

If we are serious about liberal democracy, then we must recognize that every citizen has the legal, moral, and civic right to cast their vote as they choose, and that every single vote for every candidate must be earned. I may regret that many people voted for Ralph Nader in 2000 or Jill Stein in 2016. But it is wrong to presume that I can think or choose for others. The bottom line is that, given the arcane U.S. Electoral College system, the Gore campaign failed to win enough votes in 2000, and the Clinton campaign failed in 2016. It is not the fault of those progressives who refused to support them.

It is in this spirit that I write now.

I say that “some” should consider voting for Harris-Walz because I know that “Uncommitted” includes many thousands of individuals, each of whom has their own reasons—some of whom simply cannot in good conscience vote Harris-Walz—but I am hoping that many of these people might be persuaded to reconcile their conscience with such a vote. I say that such people “should consider” rather than “must” because the latter formulation is presumptuously categorical, and to speak in this way is both wrong and, quite frankly, more likely to turn people off than to persuade them.

In what follows, I will further explain why many “Uncommitted” voters should consider voting for Harris-Walz, by distinguishing between different kinds of “Uncommitted” voters and the different sorts of moral and political commitments that might lead them to be electorally “uncommitted,” and that also might lead them to commit the singular act of casting a vote for Kamala Harris.

My hope is that this will persuade at least some readers that the defeat of Trumpism is an urgent moral and political imperative that should be important even to many who are understandably outraged by the Biden administration’s deafness to the demands of “Uncommitted” citizens.

In a way, what I am saying is very similar to what leaders of the “Uncommitted” initiative have themselves said, by publicly refusing to “endorse Harris” but declaring that their movement “opposes a Donald Trump presidency, and urging supporters “to vote against him and avoid third-party candidates that can inadvertently boost his changes.” Indeed, Ilhan Omar, one of the strongest pro-Palestinian advocates in the U.S. government, has even endorsed Harris, even as she continues to support “Uncommitted” demands. Those leaders obviously have more credibility than I do, and what they are saying strikes me as wise. In what follows I simply elaborate on some of the reasons why others might consider it wise.

Those who are Palestinian-American or Arab-American and who have relatives or friends or friends of friends living in Gaza, or the West Bank, or Lebanon, or Israel proper, have every reason to be sickened by the war crimes daily committed by Israel’s Netanyahu government, by this government’s racist policies towards Palestinians, and by the Biden administration’s continued support of this government and its awful policies. If I were such a person, I would be outraged, and I would find it incredibly hard to justify doing anything to support the Harris-Walz ticket right now. I imagine I would feel a deep, perhaps even tribalistic, sense of frustration and anger towards anyone associated with current U.S. policy in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, Lebanon, or the greater Middle East.

Even here, I think there is a “lesser evil” argument to be made, as I will explain below. But I must first concede that no such argument is likely to convince many Arab-American citizens, and I understand that, and would never presume to tell them that their sense of identity is less important than any other. Arab-American fellow citizens have a right to feel outraged and ignored and to act accordingly.

Biden has been so obstinately “pro-Israel,” and so feckless in his occasional efforts to rein in Netanyahu, that it is easy to think that “it can’t get any worse.” But it can get worse, and it will, if Trump is returned to the White House.

At the same time, some of those Arab-American fellow citizens might feel outraged and ignored and at the same time, upon consideration, rethink their refusal to vote Harris-Walz.

One reason is because they are fellow citizens, Arab-Americans with hybrid identities—as most of us have—and while their “Arab” affinities are very real and should be honored, many of them also deeply experience their Americanness, as people who live and work and raise families in the U.S. and share a common fate with all fellow citizens, and who care about what happens here because here is where they are and here is where they want to be. Even if, on balance, there is no difference between Trump and Harris on the Middle East—and I think there is a difference—there are other ways that there are huge differences, and these might matter to many Arab-Americans because they are Arab but also American.

And this leads to the second reason: the differences between Trump and Harris are huge, in domestic and foreign policy. The former is obvious. For those who care about civil rights broadly, or women’s rights or worker rights, or climate change, or democracy, or are revolted by fascistic rhetoric and outright racist targeting of immigrants, Blacks, and Muslims, there is a world of difference between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. This difference will impact the lives of all fellow Americans including Arab-Americans, who have no reason to imagine that a Trump administration will show any respect at all for the rights of minorities—and Arab-Americans are an especially vulnerable minority.

Indeed, the differences are significant even in the realm of foreign policy. This is admittedly knotty, and Joe Biden has been so obstinately “pro-Israel,” and so feckless in his occasional efforts to rein in Netanyahu, that it is easy to think that “it can’t get any worse.”

But it can get worse, and it will, if Trump is returned to the White House.

Because if Biden has been deplorably supportive of the IDF, and fecklessly critical of Netanyahu, he has been sometimes critical, and he has tried, weakly, to exercise a modicum of restraint, in words and deeds, just as he has given at least lip service to the idea of Palestinian self-determination and even a Palestinian state. Netanyahu is playing a despicable long game, and part of his game is to make Biden look weak, because Netanyahu and Trump are ideological soulmates and political allies. And Trump has made very clear that if he is elected President, he will simply green light Netanyahu’s war efforts—efforts that involve not just the destruction and subjection of Gaza but the further repression and dispossession of Palestinians living on the West Bank. Netanyahu seeks to Make Greater Israel Great Again. He is the Israeli Trump, and he knows it, and Trump knows it.

Biden has been bad for Palestinians and all who care about their plight.

But Trump would be much worse, and emphatically so.

How can this be a good consequence for those who have been “Uncommitted?”

Further, Kamala Harris is not Joe Biden. It is perfectly understandable that most “Uncommitted” voters would be deeply disappointed by Harris’s refusal to do more to emphasize differences with Biden. It is equally understandable that they would be outraged that the Harris-controlled DNC would not even reserve time to a single Palestinian-American this past July. This was wrong and stupid, and Harris deserves to pay a political price. But if Trump wins, the biggest price on this score will be paid by Palestinians and their Arab-American relatives and allies.

Harris is navigating a very fine line. “Uncommitted voters” have every reason to take seriously their commitment—to refuse to vote for Harris unless she does something to earn their votes. But it is obvious that the race is incredibly tight, and Harris is afraid to make statements that will offend the millions of “pro-Israel voters” who are also strategically important in swing states. Many of these voters are linked to AIPAC and other Jewish groups. Many are Christian Zionists. Many are simply centrists who have long taken for granted the core foreign policy commitments of the U.S., one of which is the twisted idea that Israel is the preeminent U.S. ally in the Middle East. And however mistaken is this idea, it has a hold on many Americans.

Using the “Uncommitted” label to win primary delegates and place pressure on the DNC was a brilliant effort, and it is a shame that it did not bring better results. Loudly demanding more from Harris in the months following the DNC, and continually keeping the pressure on, has been a sensible strategy for effecting a change. And promising to continue such efforts until real results are achieved is praiseworthy.

But the primary season is over, the campaign is in its home stretch and the election is a dead heat. And in the coming weeks the symbolic value of votes will be overshadowed by their practical impact. And one thing above all will be decided by votes: whether the next president is Donald Trump or Kamala Harris.

I would think that many Arab-American fellow citizens who are sickened by the Biden-Harris administration can still appreciate that this choice is hugely consequential for the very things they care about. And while some will feel conscience-bound to abstain or cast a protest vote, others might reconsider, and think of their vote less as a moral statement than as a simple instrument that can at least help to prevent a very bad thing from coming to pass.

In the coming weeks the symbolic value of votes will be overshadowed by their practical impact. And one thing above all will be decided by votes: whether the next president is Donald Trump or Kamala Harris.

Many “Uncommitted” voters, of course, are not Arab-Americans motivated by a sense of a direct “stake” in the Middle East. They are fellow citizens motivated by a strong sense of justice, outrage at the terrible violence and destruction being exacted on Palestinian civilians by the IDF, and indignation at the hypocrisy of U.S. policy. Such a politics of solidarity is to be admired, and of course every citizen has the right to vote their conscience, whatever the basis of their commitment to a cause.

At the same time, “solidarity” is not a simple thing. For if there are Arab-Americans who are adamantly against any show of support for Harris, there are others who are not, either because Harris is a “lesser” evil or because there are actually some things about her candidacy that they like. From which “pro-Palestinian” Arab-Americans should allies take their bearings? Identity groups do not practice groupthink. Solidarity involves real judgments.

Indeed, for those who are motivated by a sense of justice, a deeper question arises: should one, uncompromising version of “pro-Palestinian” solidarity, automatically trump other forms of solidarity?

Abiding outrage at the suffering of Palestinians is laudable. And disappointment, and even outrage, at the Biden administration’s Middle East policy, and Harris’s support for it, is fully warranted. Full stop.

It is also obvious that Trump would be no friendlier, no kinder, and no more interested in bringing an end to Palestinian suffering. His hostility to human rights defenders and progressive voices is well documented.

And, however lame the Democratic party establishment has been in pushing back against threats to civil liberties—and however much some leading Democrats have even supported awful crackdowns on pro-Palestinian protest last year—there is no comparison between Harris and Trump when it comes to the Constitution and to constitutional democracy itself. Trump has targeted Haitian immigrants; promised to deport over ten million immigrants through an elaborate regime of detention and forced expulsion; and called for periodic “rough days” in which police brutality would be encouraged. He has indeed called liberal and left opponents “vermin” and “enemies from within,” and expressed an open ess to using the National Guard or the U.S. Army to shut down critics—a group that obviously includes everyone active in the “Uncommitted” movement.

For those who are motivated by a sense of justice, a deeper question arises: should one, uncompromising version of “pro-Palestinian” solidarity, automatically trump other forms of solidarity?

Trump is indeed so dangerous that General Mark Milley—who served as Trump’s appointed Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—and General John Kelly—who served as Trump’s first Secretary of Homeland Security and then his Chief of Staff—have both recently stated that he is a “fascist.”

To be sure, Pro-Palestinian solidarity politics--and the politics of social justice and solidarity more generally--faces a huge uphill climb should the federal government be controlled by the Democrats. Many Democrats are no allies of such a politics. But the Trump-led, MAGA Republican party is the enemy of such a politics and all who practice it. Indeed, Trumpism is above all fueled by being against what the left is for, and by using the power of the state to actively support what the left is against—racism, xenophobia, militarism, and authoritarianism. I doubt that anyone who has admirably defined themselves as “Uncommitted” is truly undecided when it comes to everything that the toxic politics of Trumpism represents, or uncommitted when it comes to opposing these things.

It is with these things in mind that “Uncommitted” voters should at least consider voting for Harris-Walz.

The commitments of the “Uncommitted” are morally praiseworthy, deep, and involve sustained efforts that far exceed this year’s election. At the same time, in the coming weeks, how one chooses to vote will have major consequences on the very possibility of future activism. “Uncommitted” voters in some swing states, especially Michigan and Arizona, can turn the election for Trump or against him, and thus for racist authoritarianism or against it. Such voters can have an outsized influence on the future of American politics and thus the future of the world. There is an enormous political responsibility in this, a point recognized in an open letter circulated this week by Arizona Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and progressive Democrats and community leaders, which emphasizes that “voting for Harris is not a personal endorsement of her or of the policy decisions of the administration in which she served. It’s an assessment of the best possible option to continue fighting for an end to the genocide, a free Palestine, and all else that we hold dear.”

The commitments of the “Uncommitted” are morally praiseworthy, deep, and involve sustained efforts that far exceed this year’s election. At the same time, in the coming weeks, how one chooses to vote will have major consequences on the very possibility of future activism.

I hope that many “Uncommitted” voters will think hard about this, and then decide to cast their individual votes for Harris-Walz, while continuing to do all the other things they do collectively to advance the causes of Palestinian rights and justice more broadly. As Waleed Shaheed has recently said on X: “Voting isn’t about a declaration of faith—it’s about finding the coalition that can carry your struggle forward. It’s about leveraging what you have to make the change you seek, even when the choices feel flawed.”

Casting a vote for Harris-Walz might feel bad. But the election of Donald Trump as president would be bad. Very, very bad.

And it would be a pretty good thing if everyone who cares about justice, human rights, and simple human decency did what they could to prevent that from happening. And there is only one way to do this: by voting for the Harris-Walz ticket.

President Joe Biden has called America “the world power,” and has referred to his “leadership in the world.” If Biden does indeed see himself as a, or the, world leader, then he has been disappointing in his job and has mismanaged it.

The world today stands on the brink of larger wars, even potentially world wars, on two fronts simultaneously. That is, perhaps, a more precarious position than the world has found itself in in over half a century, since the Cuban Missile Crisis, and perhaps longer. Then, the danger came from a single front: today, there is danger on two or even three.

The Biden administration seemingly subscribes to a foreign policy doctrine of nurturing wars while attempting to manage them so that they remain confined to America’s foreign policy interests and do not spill over into wider wars. But such fine calibrations are not easily done. War is sloppy and unpredictable. Though a nation’s plans may be well understood by its planners, calibration of what might push the enemy too far and cause a wider war depends equally on your enemy’s plans, calibrations, passions and red lines: all of which are harder to profile or understand.

What is more, the contemporary culture of the U.S. foreign policy establishment seems dedicated precisely to excluding the kind of knowledge and empathy that allows one to understand an adversary’s mind, and instead to fostering ill-informed and hate-filled prejudice.

Calibrating how far you can push militarily or politically without tipping the balance of containment and triggering full-scale war is dangerously worse than tricky. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah badly miscalculated how far the calibrated strikes and responses with Israel could go before a controlled conflict became a larger war. The price of miscalculation was his life and a war in Lebanon.

Successive U.S. and European governments, and the NATO Secretariat, calculated that they could, through a series of steps, expand NATO into the former Soviet space without triggering a military response from Russia. The result of this miscalculation has been a war that has been disastrous for Ukraine and severely damaging for Western interests and that risks ending in either Western humiliation or direct war between Russia and the West.

Despite the fragility of such calibrations, they seem to have become the centerpiece of U.S. policy. In both the Middle East and Ukraine, the U.S. nurtured wars by sending weapons and discouraging diplomacy. And in both theaters, the U.S. prioritized containing the wars they were supporting and preventing them from becoming wider wars.

In the Middle East, the focus has been on balancing supporting Israel and its right to defend itself with preventing the war from escalating into a wider regional war. Biden insists that “we’re going to do everything we can to keep a wider war from breaking out.” In Ukraine, the focus has been on providing Ukraine with whatever it needs for as long as it takes to attain the strongest position on the battlefield to win them their freedom, their sovereignty and their territorial integrity while preventing the war from escalating into a wider war with Russia. “We will not fight a war against Russia in Ukraine,” Biden has said. “Direct confrontation between NATO and Russia is World War Three, something we must strive to prevent.”

But Biden’s strategy is on the precipice of disastrous failure on both fronts. On both fronts the calibrations have gone dangerously wrong. The war in Gaza has spread to Lebanon and is on a quivering edge in Iran. After Iran’s missile strikes on Israel on October 1, the world awaits, not only Israel’s response, but Iran’s response to that. The risk is not just an Israel-Iran war. With the U.S. sending, not only a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, advanced missile defense system to Israel, but about 100 American troops to operate it, there is the risk of the U.S. being drawn into a war with Iran. If that’s not bad enough, that war could then, conceivably, draw in Russia.

In Ukraine, too, the calibration quivers on the edge of a wider war. Zelenskyy daily lobbies the U.S. to erase all red lines and green light strikes deeper into Russian territory with Western supplied long range missile systems, that, as in Israel, would require U.S. involvement.

Russian President Vladimir Putin warns that such a green light would “change the very essence, the very nature of the conflict dramatically” because it would “mean that NATO countries — the United States and European countries — are at war with Russia.” If Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is correct that the U.S. is “seeing evidence” that South Korean and Ukrainian intelligence are right in their assertion that North Korea has sent 3,000 troops to Russia, then there is risk of a still wider war.

The Biden administration’s policy of calibrating how far you can nurture a war before pushing it over the precipice of escalation has gone badly and placed the U.S. on the edge of two wider wars. If Biden is the leader of the world, then he has recklessly and dangerously mismanaged it.

The October 19, 2024 endorsement of the Harris/Walz Democratic ticket for the Presidency and Vice Presidency by over fifty Lebanese Americans (perhaps some reluctantly) reads as if the Biden Bombs for Israel are not daily destroying more of Lebanon and its civilians with an emerging genocidal pattern as seen in Gaza over the past year. Israel’s terrorism against innocent civilians, health facilities, cafes, residential areas, schools, agricultural terrains, transportation routes, and even banks, are receiving so far the full, cruel support of the Biden/Harris Administration. So where is the storied Lebanese tradition of tough negotiation or bargaining?

The statement failed to condition this support on the White House’s making immediate enforceable demands on Israel to stop this mass annihilation, including women, children, the elderly, and hospital patients, immediately. There is no indication of any reciprocity, simply a plea without any display of political power on behalf of the Lebanese American community. After all, there are over a million Lebanese American voters that the Democratic Party should be keeping in mind.

The statement failed to condition this support on the White House’s making immediate enforceable demands on Israel to stop this mass annihilation, including women, children, the elderly, and hospital patients, immediately.

The letter should have given Bibi-Biden a sense of urgency by informing him that over 80,000 Americans reside in Lebanon and that there are two major educational institutions there – the American University of Beirut (AUB) and the Lebanese American University (LAU) with extensions in the Bekaa Valley, along with other American business, cultural and charitable enterprises. Any day now, Netanyahu’s murderous bombing raids against a totally defenseless country will claim the lives of Americans there. (Israel has already bombed the ancestral village of one of the signers of the letter.) The Washington Post reports that Israel has already bombed several Christian villages. What is Joe Biden going to do? The Lebanese American community should let Biden know he and Democratic candidates will pay a political price should he not put a stop to this indiscriminate air and ground attack on its ally and the additional violence against the United Nations peacekeepers in the south.

The letter has long-term proposals for peace and a rebuilding of Lebanon’s economy and governing institutions which are well taken. But as Martin Luther King Jr. once exclaimed: “THE URGENCY OF NOW” is on the table. History reminds us that Hezbollah was created in response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, dominating and abusing the unprotected Shiite Lebanese in the south. The Israeli practice of collective punishment and limitless civilian destruction over the years is now underway again in this small country. (The Washington Post reports 1.2 million Lebanese have been displaced in just one week).

The letter does not do justice to this slaughter that is going on right now with full Biden/Harris backing. It should have a follow-up addendum immediately for an emergency demand that Biden pressure Netanyahu to cease attacking an American ally. With consequences if denied. Now!

Don’t you think the bombarded Lebanese people expect at least that much from the signatories?

Postscript: One of the signers is Ralph Nader of New York City. The gentleman is no relation. There should be no confusion of names here.

Israeli officials keep repeating that Israel is fighting on multiple fronts. The truth is that Israel chooses to fight on multiple fronts. The two claims are fundamentally different.

Recently, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went as far as saying that his country is fighting on seven different war fronts, all driven by the objective of "defending ourselves against... barbarism."

These supposedly defensive wars are also carried out in the name of protecting "civilization against those who seek to impose a dark age of fanaticism on all of us," Netanyahu said in a speech in early October.

More wars for Israel also translate into more money.

There will be no need to counter Netanyahu's diatribes. It should be obvious that neither is genocide classified as self-defense, nor does preserving human civilization include burning people alive, as was the case with Sha'ban Al-Dalou, who was horrifically killed alongside his family in the recent Israeli shelling of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah.

But is Israel being forced to fight on seven fronts?

According to Netanyahu, but also other top political and military officials, the fronts are Iran, Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, and groups in Syria, Iraq, and the West Bank.

Though the major fighting is only taking place in Gaza and Lebanon, the official Israeli line is keen on exaggerating the number of war fronts to continue capitalizing on the generous U.S. and Western military and political support. More wars for Israel also translate into more money.

Of course, Israel is fighting actual wars too; a war of extermination and genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza, which has killed and wounded more than 150,000 people in the course of one year.

There is also a war in the West Bank, carried out with the precise aim of subduing all forms of resistance, so that Israel may accelerate its settler-colonial project in the occupied territories.

The above is not an inference, but a statement of fact, based on Netanyahu's own declared policies. "Israel must have security control over all the territory west of the Jordan," he said during a news conference last January. To be more precise, "between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty," he said. "Security control" is an Israeli euphemism for territorial expansion.

In an interview with the European public service channel Arte, Israeli Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich said Israel would expand "little by little" to eventually encompass the whole of the Palestinian territories, in addition to Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, and other Arab countries.

"It is written that the future of Jerusalem is to expand to Damascus," he said.

Religious prophecies are particularly dangerous when they are embraced by unhinged extremist politicians who wield the political clout and military power to put them into action.

Netanyahu is a leading member of the same group. He has already justified his genocide in Gaza and wars everywhere according to religious texts, where he sees his army as the Israelites fighting the Amalekites.

These religious sentiments are common in Israel's political discourses throughout history. However, they have taken center stage in recent years under a succession of far-right governments, mostly formed by Netanyahu. They see in the Gaza war an opportunity to bring about what Smotrich, then the vice-chairman of the Knesset, called in 2017 "Israel's decisive plan."

Ironically named "One Hope," Smotrich's plan is primarily centered on the annexation of the whole of the West Bank, which he, like Netanyahu and others, refers to as "Judea and Samaria." The plan entails "imposing sovereignty on all of Judea and Samaria," with the "concurrent acts of settlements," as in "the establishing of cities and towns," with the aim of "creating a clear and irreversible reality on the ground."

Smotrich's plan, which is being implemented, now that he is one of the two kingmakers in Netanyahu's government—the other is Itamar Ben-Gvir—was prepared years before the ongoing war on Gaza, and is being implemented, per his own admission, "little by little" ever since.

Israel may claim that it is fighting a war on seven or 70 fronts. It may also assign itself the role of the savior of civilizations. But the truth cannot be hidden, especially when the Israelis themselves are the ones who are disclosing their sinister intentions.

Even the ongoing war on Lebanon, which Israeli leaders, along with their U.S. backers, have dubbed a defensive war, is now being promoted by some Israeli politicians and their right-wing supporters as another expansionist war, or more accurately a quest for "Greater Israel."

There is a difference between a country fighting a defensive war on multiple fronts and another fighting for colonial expansion, for regional hegemony, and for military dominance driven by religious prophecies. Those who have chosen the latter path, as Israel has, cannot claim to be in a state of self-defense.

"Self-defense in international law refers to the inherent right of a state to use of force in response to an armed attack," the International Red Cross states on its website. This definition does not apply to a state that is itself a military occupier, thus is in an active state of hostility and unlawful use of violence.

Netanyahu and Smotrich, however, are hardly concerned about international or humanitarian laws. They are driven by ominous, expansionist agendas. If they succeed, more deadly wars are sure to follow. The international community must do everything in its power to ensure their failure.

This month, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin authorized the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system to Israel, along with American personnel to operate it. According to observers, between October 14 and 21, a record 26 U.S. military transport flights landed in Israel, delivering personnel and equipment to set up the THAAD system. Satellite images confirm that the system is now fully operational, with all its components, including radar and missile launch platforms, positioned and ready. By placing U.S. troops and assets in a volatile conflict zone, the Biden administration risks exposing American military personnel to potential attacks, and further destabilizing the Middle East, all without explicit congressional authorization for such combat missions.

In the past year, the attacks between Iran and Israel have increased with escalating tit-for-tat exchanges. What began as smaller retaliations has evolved into direct strikes on critical targets. In April 2024, Iran responded symbolically to an Israeli attack on its consulate in Syria, which killed eight officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, by launching a coordinated missile and drone attack on Israel from its territory.

On October 1 2024, Iran responded to an even more provocative Israeli attack in August 2024, which killed Palestinian leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, deploying maneuverable hypersonic missiles that successfully evaded Israel’s defense systems, showing its capability to strike deep within Israel’s heartland. Since then, the world has waited with bated breath to see how Israel will, in turn, attack Iran. Israel has massively expanded its military assault on Lebanon and Palestine, where it has intensified its genocide in Gaza with an unprecedented ethnic cleansing campaign in its northern parts.

The Biden administration reportedly has urged Israel to ratchet down the conflict with Iran, particularly in the lead up to the election, encouraging it instead to “take the win” in Lebanon. As usual, however, the Biden team’s actions speak louder than words, because by announcing it will deploy THAAD missiles to Israel, it is enabling Israel to pursue a potentially catastrophic offensive against Iran, assured by the backing of U.S. technology and personnel.

By announcing it will deploy THAAD missiles to Israel, it is enabling Israel to pursue a potentially catastrophic offensive against Iran, assured by the backing of U.S. technology and personnel.

Far from being a stabilizing force, the deployment of these missiles raises the stakes for everyone involved, including American military personnel and bases stationed in the region. The U.S. has already crossed the line to become a party to Israel’s war in the region, including by providing Israel with targeting and intelligence support, launching offensive attacks on Yemen to punish them for their support of Palesitnians, and shooting down Iranian missiles from Jordan. By escalating the engagement of U.S. military personnel to assist Israel with this much broader deployment of U.S. missiles to be operated by U.S. personnel, U.S. forces are now legitimate targets of attack themselves.

These combat actions are taking place without the necessary legal permissions under the War Powers Resolution (WPR), which requires the President to notify Congress within 48 hours of deploying forces into hostilities. Without an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) or a declaration of war, U.S. forces cannot engage in hostilities beyond 60 days, with an optional 30-day extension for withdrawal. The Biden administration crossed this threshold in April 2024, spending nearly $1 billion to intercept Iranian missiles and drones during attacks on Israel. These extensive combat operations constitute active hostilities, meaning the 60-day WPR limit has expired without congressional approval, violating constitutional checks on war powers.

According to Brown University's Costs of War Project, the U.S. has spent over $22 billion and counting on Israel's military operations and related U.S operations in the region, including $17.9 billion in approved foreign military financing since October 2023—the most military aid the U.S. has ever sent to Israel since it began providing financial support to the Israeli military. This aid has been used in operations widely condemned for committing war crimes and crimes against humanity and part of the International Criminal Court’s ongoing case, which has resulted in the indictment requests of Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

Instead of sending more weapons and further fueling escalation, the U.S. should push for a ceasefire in Gaza, which remains the key to defusing the broader regional conflict.

Continuing to send weapons to a country involved in such actions undermines U.S. credibility and also violates the Foreign Assistance Act, which prohibits military aid to foreign forces engaged in gross violations of human rights or obstructing humanitarian assistance. Israel continues to block humanitarian aid to Gaza while intensifying its war crimes on a daily basis, and the U.S. continues to transfer weapons—implicating itself in these violations too.

The United States should resist this reckless course of action. It is not in America’s interests to get entangled in another Middle Eastern war, especially one undertaken without public debate, congressional approval, or a clear exit strategy. Instead of sending more weapons and further fueling escalation, the U.S. should push for a ceasefire in Gaza, which remains the key to defusing the broader regional conflict. A ceasefire would halt the immediate bloodshed and prevent the cycle of retaliation from dragging the entire region into war.

Has there ever before been a wannabe tyrant as open about his intentions as Donald Trump? This transparency—absent in everything else in his politics and his life—is nothing short of astonishing. This is a man who lies every time he opens his mouth. Yet, as to this one, immeasurably important, subject he’s been remarkably frank, openly embracing one characteristic of an authoritarian after another. He even expressly announced his desire to be a dictator, if only for one day.

One cannot help but wonder if this openness is because the drive to be an autocrat is one of the few things to which he has ever been deeply committed.

He makes no effort to hide his distaste for the rule of law, bragging publicly about plans to turn the Justice Department into his personal avenger, prosecuting and jailing his political opponents. These will be prosecutions not intended to prevent or punish crime, but as a means of attacking those with the nerve to oppose him.

The same is true of his lust for political violence, another classic authoritarian trait. He has repeatedly, and again openly, encouraged his followers to engage in political violence—famously telling the crowd at one of his rallies in 2016 to “knock the crap” out of a heckler. And, of course, there is the granddaddy of all political violence—sending a fired-up crowd to the capital on January 6, 2021, with orders to “fight like hell.”

He is a man who regularly celebrates dictators. The only foreign leaders he seems to be comfortable with are totalitarians, people like Viktor Orban, Vladimir Putin, and, of course, his favorite squeeze (“We fell in love”) Kim Jong Un.

Yet despite all this, some progressives still intend to either stay home or cast a protest vote for a minor-party candidate. And in a close election like this, if enough people in the wrong states do stay at home or vote for a third-party candidate, Trump could win because of it. And if that’s the choice you make, which is certainly your right, all I can say is enjoy casting your protest vote, savor the experience, because if Trump wins it is likely to be the last act of protest you will ever participate in where you won’t be putting your life on the line or risking a long prison sentence.

The ugly truth is that if Trump becomes president, especially if he has a Republican Congress to work with, he will have all the power he needs to rig the game such that he, or his chosen successor, will be all but guaranteed to win future elections. That is precisely how Orban ended meaningful democracy in Hungary.

Trump has been up front on this subject as well. If people protest his actions, he intends to call out the national guard, or even the military, to shut them up. To shut you up. Although it is hard to see why he would bother with the military. Trump already has no shortage of thugs, his own personal Brownshirts, who would be more than happy to beat the life out of a few liberals. After all, if they get arrested he can just pardon them in the same way he is promising to pardon the January 6 rioters.

Trump has studied at the feet of authoritarian masters—often taking his lead from the likes of Orban, Putin, and Kim Jong Un. At the same time, hundreds of Americans in right-wing think tanks and other far-right institutions are working hard, preparing to move quickly when Trump takes office. Don’t underestimate their goals. They are fighting for nothing less than revolutionary change, including election fixes that will guarantee that once in power they will remain in power indefinitely.

In most elections there are several weighty issues at the center of the campaign. But this time there is really only one issue—will the United States remain a liberal democracy. In saying this, I am in no way suggesting that other issues, such as a woman’s right to control her own body, are not critically important. They are. What I am suggesting, however, is that in this election all of those other issues of concern to progressives are wrapped up inside this one issue. If Trump wins, he will saturate executive departments, including the Justice Department, the FBI, the military leadership, the CIA, and many regulatory agencies with far-right fanatics—not to mention continuing what he started in his first term in packing the courts with even more far-right fanatics.

What chance will abortion rights, and other progressive causes, have in the United States then?

I understand that for some people casting a vote for someone they regard as “the lesser of two evils” will be personally offensive. I don’t feel that way in this election, but if you are one of those people, I understand where you are coming from. But do me a favor and make a list of all the things you love in this country that depend on federal action.

Please think twice before assuming that people are exaggerating the danger, or that we can get by and then vote the far right out of power in later elections.

If you try, you will have no problem coming up with a long list. Perhaps your list will include preservation of national parks and wilderness areas. Or maybe the protection of endangered species. Public education? Union rights? Fighting climate change? Fighting other forms of pollution? Protecting consumers from fraud and dangerous products? Then once you’ve made your list, take a moment to think about what will become of those things in a Donald Trump America.

Take that list with you when you go to vote and look at it one last time before voting, then hold your nose and mark your ballot for Kamala Harris.

One last point: Please think twice before assuming that people are exaggerating the danger, or that we can get by and then vote the far right out of power in later elections. The ugly truth is that if Trump becomes president, especially if he has a Republican Congress to work with, he will have all the power he needs to rig the game such that he, or his chosen successor, will be all but guaranteed to win future elections. That is precisely how Orban ended meaningful democracy in Hungary: after gaining power through elections, he used that power to change election rules, weaken the courts, and damage his opponents in other ways. Trump supporters have already started paving the way for such an assault in the 2025 Plan.

What this means is that if we lose our democracy in this election, we are unlikely to get it back, or at least to get it back anytime soon. As described in Anne Applebaum’s book, Autocracy, Inc, once an authoritarian gains power though elective office, it becomes remarkably easy for that autocrat to extend that power.

In other words, we only have one chance to get this right.

Kamala Harris has a plan to expand Medicare to include home care. If Harris is elected president and signs her plan into law, it will be life-changing for millions of seniors and people with disabilities. Importantly, it builds upon President Franklin Roosevelt’s vision for a New Deal for the American people.

Vice President Harris should get enormous praise for her groundbreaking proposal. Long-term care is a looming challenge that’s barely getting discussed. Harris recognizes this challenge and is offering an important solution: Medicare At Home.

Harris’s Medicare At Home plan would expand economic security by creating a new universal benefit, in the grand tradition of President Franklin Roosevelt and his visionary Secretary of Labor, Frances Perkins.

In 1934, President Roosevelt considered adopting a comprehensive cradle-to-grave program of economic security. Ultimately, he decided to start more slowly and incrementally with what became the Social Security Act of 1935, which, among many other achievements, created Social Security and unemployment insurance. He recognized that Social Security was too important to risk failure by beginning too ambitiously.

A decade later, in 1944, having just been elected for the fourth time, FDR built on this legacy by calling for an economic bill of rights in his State of the Union address. This so-called Second Bill of Rights would give every American the right to comprehensive economic security, including a first–rate education; guaranteed employment at a living wage – “enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation”; a decent home; “adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health”; as well as “adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment.”

He understood, as Vice President Harris does, that people want the right, the ability, and the assistance necessary to age in place, with dignity and independence. In a capitalist system like ours, where working families are dependent on wages, economic security requires insurance against the loss of those wages, which Social Security and Unemployment Insurance provide. That is necessary, but it is not sufficient. Economic security and a decent and dignified life also require getting the care you need, including home care.

Medicare provides health care to Americans over age 65 and people with disabilities, but it has a huge gap: Long-term care. Most people think that Medicare covers long-term care, only to face a devastating shock when they (or a loved one) are in need of care.

Long-term care costs around $100,000 per year, so almost no one can afford it. Currently, the only program that covers long-term care is Medicaid. But unlike Medicare, which is universal, Medicaid is means-tested. As a result, seniors and people with disabilities are forced to “spend down” all of their assets, including property, before they can qualify for long-term care through Medicaid.

Sometimes, people must even divorce their loving spouses in order to qualify for long-term care coverage. And even then, after breaking up families and depleting their nest eggs, they may wind up in a dehumanizing corporate nursing home that exists to exploit patients for profit, because that’s still all they can afford.

In one heartbreaking instance, physicist Leon Lederman was forced to sell his Nobel Prize medal for $765,000 to pay for his care — and he still ultimately wound up in a nursing home.

Medicaid was not enacted as a long-term care program, but that is what it has become by default. And because it was not structured to be a long-term care program, it forces middle class seniors to bankrupt themselves so that they can receive care. It forces seniors and people with disabilities into nursing homes when they are healthy enough to remain at home.

This is a system that is fundamentally broken in this country. But Kamala Harris’s new plan for a universal Medicare At Home benefit would finally begin to change all that.

Those who have responsibilities for aging parents are also often caring for young children. Many other Americans are caring for a spouse while also dealing with their own health challenges. Kamala Harris’s Medicare At Home plan would benefit the entire family. It would empower seniors and people with disabilities who are healthy enough to age in place but can’t afford the care they need to remain at home.

Before the creation of Social Security, it was routine for parents to live with their adult children. Those who did not have children, or whose children were unable or unwilling to care for them, were forced into poorhouses.

FDR and Frances Perkins saved millions of seniors from the poorhouse. Now, Kamala Harris has a plan to save them from another form of institutionalized care, the nursing home.

Her plan is completely affordable because the Biden-Harris administration finally stopped letting Big Pharma rip Americans off. Kamala Harris would pay for this new Medicare At Home benefit, along with adding vision and hearing coverage to Medicare, with the savings from Medicare negotiating lower prescription drug prices. Big Pharma will continue to profit, just not at unconscionably exorbitant rates.

Seniors get to pay lower prescription drug prices, and also receive new hearing, vision, and home care benefits. And the so-called sandwich generation will have more time and resources. Moreover, states will benefit because the proposal will reduce their hard-pressed budgets, which are heavily burdened today by the long-term care costs funded by Medicaid. Harris’s proposal is a win-win for everyone (except for Big Pharma CEOs).

Kamala Harris’s Medicare at Home plan is a big step toward fulfilling Medicare’s promise of a simple, universal benefit. When she signs it into law, it will bring us far closer to the grand vision of full economic security first imagined by President Roosevelt and Secretary Perkins.

The 2024 U.S. presidential election is a referendum on whether or not America will be a partner or a roadblock to global climate action. Just a week after the U.S. election, the next global climate conference will work out the technical details and new global climate finance goal at Baku’s COP29. The U.S. election will set the tone and tenor of this important meeting. Whoever wins in November will determine if the United States will be a global partner to the diverse issues connected to climate, energy transition, and development finance—or a nation withdrawn at best and a hostile actor at worst.

Globally, climate-fueled events are costing us all $16 million per hour through wildfires, storms, and drought—amplifying livelihood insecurities and potentially putting the global sustainable development goals out of reach. The majority of Americans polled want to see climate policies that can address the climate shocks being felt today. But only the Democratic ticket of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz has a plan to address these challenges.

The climate crisis does not exist in a political vacuum. That’s why the Biden-Harris administration has centered climate in various arenas: international aid, foreign policy, conservation, energy, and so much more. On President Biden’s first day in office, the administration rejoined the Paris Agreement and reversed many of the environmental rollbacks President Trump enacted. As Vice President, Kamala Harris worked tirelessly to pass the monumental Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The IRA is among the world's largest single investment in climate to date, including incentives for renewables and expanding on programs for communities coping with climate and environmental injustices. A Harris-Walz administration would continue and expand off the IRA to address the climate and environmental challenges Americans are facing at home while maintaining emissions reduction targets that meet global climate goals.

A future President Harris would see America continuing its leadership role in global climate forums. She would address the myriad of climate challenges as economic opportunities that can be interwoven throughout domestic and global endeavors. A future President Harris would continue policies normalized around the world—like participating in the World Bank and in global climate forums in partnership. This is a future where the United States continues to wield influence and shape agendas on climate, security, and international development. This is in sharp contrast to what the other side is offering.

As president, Trump took the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement, expanded oil development on previously protected lands, and slashed environmental protections that protect Americans from unsafe air and water. Environmentally, we can expect the same and much worse from a second Trump administration.

The Republican Platform this year was limited on details, but outlined core goals that align with the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 playbook. In the past, republican presidents have aligned and adopted the Heritage Foundation’s agendas. For instance, President Reagan adopted roughly 60% of their Mandate for Leadership.

If Project 2025 is implemented it would represent an America in retreat. It would harm global cooperation on climate and potentially break multilateral forums. A Trump-Vance ticket is offering an America unmoored from geopolitical and economic reality; a future where the U.S. removes itself from the International Monetary Fund, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the World Bank. Without U.S contributions to these institutions, though all must do more and reforms remain necessary, global climate action would be strained for most emerging and developing countries. Today, the U.S. is the largest contributor to the World Bank, which provides the lion’s share of global climate finance, amounting to $38.6 billion in 2023.

A Trump-Vance administration would—once more—remove the U.S. from the Paris Agreement and depart from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Detaching the United States from global climate frameworks would mean global climate goals are unlikely to be met. Coal-reliant nations like China, Australia, and India would have a free pass to continue to exploit coal despite the costs and risks, both nationally and globally. An unsustainable path towards 2.0°C or 3.0°C would become more likely.

America and the world cannot afford to ignore climate, especially when it’s cheaper, more beneficial economically, and avoids the worst climate consequences to face our climate reality head on. The world cannot afford a prospective U.S. presidential ticket hellbent on fostering global and domestic instability across the board. A ticket that considers science as fiction cannot act in the best interest of the American people at home nor abroad.

Elections are about the future, juxtaposed against the challenges of the present. Climate is today’s challenge and opportunity. A Trump-Vance ticket would be a scorched earth reality for our climate, inevitable energy transition, and the financing developing nations need. It is no competition—the world needs a future President Harris.

Note: The opinions expressed are solely that of the author and do not represent an endorsement from any of her current or past affiliated organizations.

This year marks the 107th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. In the evening of October 25, 1917, the Winter Palace in Petrograd (today’s St. Petersburg) was stormed. This event marked the beginning of the Great October Revolution, one of the most significant political events of the twentieth century that shaped the course of history for decades ahead.

Leading up to the events of October 25 was another revolution in late February 1917, which brought to power a group of leaders from bourgeois political parties that formed a provisional government headed initially by Georgy Lvov, a liberal reformer, and then by Aleksander Kerensky, a social democrat who as Prime Minister from July to October 1917 continued Russia's involvement in World War I despite that being very unpopular among the soldiers and with the masses in general. In early March of that year Tsar Nicholas II, who had ruled imperial Russia since 1894 but had managed to make autocracy the most unpopular it had ever been, abdicated. Five months later, Russia was pronounced a republic.

Although the provisional government did introduce some reforms on the political front, prompting even Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin to declare Russia in April 1917 “the freest country in the world”, it was the Red October Revolution that turned the old order completely upside down by inaugurating a socialist regime and making Soviet-style communism a global ideological and political force that lasted until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991.

Still, more than one hundred years later, the rise of the Bolsheviks to power continues to divide scholars, the chattering classes and even the educated public. There are several issues that are particularly divisive, such as whether the October Revolution was a popular insurgency or essentially a coup, and whether Stalinism evolved naturally from the basic principles and political strategies of Lenin or was an unexpected development.

Likewise, there is still a great deal of ambiguity, disagreement and confusion over the nature of the regime that flourished in the Soviet Union after Lenin’s death in 1924. For example, did the Soviet Union represent an “actual socialist society”, a “degenerated workers’ state”, or simply a “totalitarian state economy” in which the communist ideology functioned as a mere instrument of political legitimization and imperial rule?

When it happened, the Great October Revolution produced global hysteria, untamed enthusiasm and hope about the possibility of the creation of heaven on earth (a new utopia) in equal measures. For the bourgeois classes everywhere, the inauguration of the Soviet regime was anathema to core values of the “western civilization”, while for radicals and communists it signified a natural culmination of the inevitable march of history towards human freedom and a social order devoid of exploitation.

However, an objective evaluation on socialism and the legacy of Soviet communism gives no room for mourning or celebration. It was essentially the epic story of an impossible dream that turned in due time into a political and historical nightmare because of the interplay of a vast array of factors that included “backward” socioeconomic conditions, outside intervention, an absence of democratic traditions, and misconceived notions about socialism and democracy. Hence, while one can easily romanticize about the October Revolution, the cold reality of history smacks you in the face.

For starters, the Great October Revolution was unlike the February Revolution which erupted as a result of spontaneous action by hundreds of thousands of hungry and angry men and women workers and militant troops. What happened in October 1917 was the outcome of a well-designed strategy on the part of the leader (Lenin) of a minority party (the Bolsheviks) to wrest control from the provisional government because of a strong ideological aversion to “bourgeois democracy” and desire for power. Unsurprisingly Lenin’s call for “all power to the Soviets” ended up being something entirely different: all power went to the party and its politburo.

The October Revolution was not a coup in itself, but neither was it a popular uprising that enjoyed the kind of mass support that the February Revolution had. In fact, it was not until the autumn of 1917 that Lenin’s “land, peace, bread” slogan had been embraced by some workers in St Petersburg and Moscow.

Yet, even this does not mean that the Bolshevik program and Lenin’s ideas of rule were accepted by the majority of the Russian people: In the November 1917 elections, the first truly free election in Russian history, Lenin’s party received only one quarter of the vote, while the Social Revolutionaries managed to receive over 60 percent.

Lenin had stomach neither for parliamentary democracy nor for sharing power with any other political organization. His unwavering intent to establish socialism in Russia, regardless of the ripeness of the social and economic conditions, and his firm conviction that only the Bolsheviks represented the true interests of the workers, would compel him to adopt strategies and policies that would soon deprive the Revolution of whatever potential it had originally had for the establishment of a new social order based on workers’ control of the means of production and democracy (which Lenin, sadly enough, associated with the “dictatorship of the proletariat”).

Indeed, not long after the November elections, Lenin would ban several opposition newspapers and unleash a campaign of “Red Terror” against all class enemies (with the Social Revolutionaries being the first victims following their uprising in Moscow in early July 1918). The orchestration of the “Red Terror,” which lasted until the end of the Russian civil war, was assigned to Cheka (a Bolshevik police organization that reported to Lenin himself on all anti-communist activities), thereby laying the foundations for the emergence of a full-fledged police state under Stalinism.

The clearest illustration of how far to the “right” the Bolsheviks had moved following the outbreak of the October Revolution is the brutal repression of the Kronstadt rebellion in 1921 by Red Army troops. Disheartened by the Bolsheviks’ dictatorial tendencies, a garrison of the key fortress of Kronstadt revolted in March 1921 against the communist government and the ideas of “war communism” – even though the Kronstadt sailors had been, back in 1917, among the strongest supporters of the October Revolution and the idea of “Soviet power”. To be sure, they were, until then, in Lev Trotsky’s own words, “the pride and joy of the revolution”.

With the suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion, it became clear that Lenin’s concept of the “vanguard party” and his understanding of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” did not permit dissent of any kind and that a socialist political order was to be based on one-party rule.

As for the policy of “war communism”, it ended a complete disaster. Lenin himself admitted as much in a speech on October 17, 1921, when he said, “we made the mistake of deciding to go over directly to communist production and distribution”.

But this did not mean that all Bolsheviks shared Lenin’s views on “war communism” or that they embraced the policy that was followed in the 1920s by a partial return to the market system of production and distribution. The soon-to-be “new Tzar” Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, regarded the New Economic Policy as the betrayal of the October Revolution. His “revolution from above”, launched in 1928 with the policy of collectivization and dekulakization (a campaign of political repressions, including arrests, deportations, and executions of millions of the more “well-to-do” peasants) reopened the gates of hell and converted Soviet socialism once and for all into a barbarous and murderous regime.

Stalinism did not merely formalize the worst aspects of Leninism but became, in reality, an actual stumbling block for the transition into socialism both inside the Soviet Union and throughout the rest of the world where the ideas of social justice and equality continued to move the minds and hearts of millions of decent people.

Hence, the end of Stalinism and the collapse of Soviet communism (which in the course of its 74 years did manage to turn a “backward” country into an industrialized nation that was able to defeat Nazism and make undeniable advances on several economic, cultural, and social fronts) mark simply the end of a dream turned into a nightmare.

In this context, the legacy of the Russian Revolution obliges, 107 years later, neither celebration nor mourning. Dreams are surely renewable, and a new world is waiting to be born as neoliberalism, militarism, and the climate crisis are wreaking havoc on the planet, but the possibilities available to create an egalitarian, socially just, ecologically friendly, and decent society lie today outside the ideas, practices and policies of the October Revolution.

Climate is at number nine among the top issues that voters care about in this election. So it was no surprise that the candidates hardly mentioned climate change as two ferocious hurricanes—both fueled by elevated sea surface temperatures—pummeled parts of the Southeast in the closing months before the election. In the Western states, we are getting to the end of another big fire season after losing 8 million acres to wildfires this year alone. Climate-driven disasters like these are clearly not enough to make climate a top election issue in the current political environment.

The challenge for political leaders who want to address the climate crisis is to campaign as if it was not an existential threat and then somehow mobilize action across government and the private sector once they are elected to office. This is the needle that Joe Biden has tried to thread, with remarkable success. With the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the U.S. is now on a legitimate path to net zero emissions by 2050, which is a prerequisite for staying within the critical 2 degrees Celsius temperature increase.

Donald Trump has made it exceedingly clear that he does not believe climate change is even a problem.

But the IRA loses steam after 2030 and additional climate policies will need to be incorporated into the net zero plan on a regular basis to keep us on track for the net zero target. The Biden administration has already lined up several key regulations that should help, including new fuel economy standards and limits on tailpipe emissions starting in 2027, a cap on power plant emissions by 2039, and faster federal permits for major transmission lines to get renewable power into the grid with more ease.

The next president will either accelerate this progress or bring it to a screeching halt.

Given Kamala Harris’s support for climate action, the clean tech industry, and climate activists have given her plenty of space to campaign on other issues while staying largely silent on climate. If elected, it is reasonable to expect that Harris will build on the Biden administration’s work and keep the U.S. on the net zero path. A clean energy economy—built on electrification and emissions-free energy—should be a relatively easy sell as a job creator, cost reducer (yes, electrification saves consumers money in the long run), and a competitive advantage against countries like China.

We are going to be voting for the world’s climate future even if we are reluctant to admit it.

Donald Trump has made it exceedingly clear that he does not believe climate change is even a problem. Between Project 2025 pushing for a “whole-of-government unwinding” of U.S. climate policy and the fossil fuel industry drafting detailed plans to dismantle the Biden administration’s climate rules, it is a safe bet that we will no longer be on a trajectory to net zero emissions if Trump is back in the White House. If the official climate policy of the world’s second largest greenhouse gas emitter is no policy at all, then it is anyone’s guess what it will take to get the world on track to prevent the worst impacts of a rapidly warming planet.

But the danger does not end there. Given the previous Trump administration’s record of sidelining climate scientists and deleting mentions of climate change in scientific reports, we should also be concerned about not having access to timely and accurate climate-related data and analysis from key government agencies and national labs in a second Trump administration. Without reliable data from entities such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Energy Information Administration (EIA), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), effective climate research and action will be that much harder even outside the government.

The enormity of the danger hiding behind the climate silence in this election can not be overstated. We are going to be voting for the world’s climate future even if we are reluctant to admit it.