In December 2025, I volunteered on an educational mission with the Johns Hopkins Program for International Education in Gynecology and Obstetrics, or JHPIEGO, teaching neonatal ICU nurses in East Jerusalem about modern care of premature infants. As a neonatal and pediatric critical care nurse, this training meant a great deal to me. I knew it would help these nurses save the most fragile newborns. When I was offered the opportunity to return a few months later for additional educational work, I immediately took it.

I knew about the arbitrary and unpredictable barriers Israel erects in front of anyone trying to help Palestinians. Still, I thought that with my Jewish heritage and American citizenship, I would be the last person blocked from Israel-Palestine. I unfortunately learned that being of Jewish descent, an American, and a nurse affords no protection in the eyes of the Israeli or American governments. I was there to help Palestinian babies, so I was a threat.

My grandmother, Sylvia, was a genuinely beautiful soul. She was born in 1928 to an Ashkenazi Jewish family in London. I was born on her birthday, and we lived two houses down the street from each other, so naturally she and I became best friends. As a child I had tea with her almost every day after school. She loved to be silly and to laugh, but she also shared the pain of her childhood. She once told me about British Nazi sympathizers throwing rocks at her grandfather on his way to synagogue. Imagining her as a little girl, seeing her grandfather violently dehumanized like that, I wondered how anyone could be so cruel to another human being.

Because of my grandmother’s stories, visiting the DC Holocaust Memorial Museum as a child was deeply personal. What I experienced going through the museum shocked me, and I was left wondering what my grandmother couldn’t bring herself to tell me about that time in her life.

I felt a deep sense of responsibility to show the Palestinians that there is someone who does not look like them or speak their language, but sees them as human beings who are worthy of being supported and cared for.

What did it feel like to be dehumanized like that? To know that powerful “others” regard you as disposable? Grandma was the most childishly playful person I’ve ever known. Still, when I heard her talk about her own childhood, and what it was like to live in Jim Crow America, it was impossible to miss the pain of her own childhood.

Grandma knew nothing about the United States when she arrived here, and she quickly learned that her new country was far from the bastion of freedom she was expecting. Discrimination against African Americans in particular shocked her. Having been on the receiving end of European antisemitic racism, she simply couldn’t understand why people would hate others in this way. She would often remind me, “We all bleed the same color.” Despite—maybe because of—her having little formal education, Grandma could see toxic ideas for what they were.

Jennifer Arriaga's grandmother is shown as a young woman in London.

Since childhood I’ve cared deeply about the fight for human rights in my own country and the state of Texas. But before October 7, 2023, I paid no attention to Israel or the Palestinians. As much as I loved my grandmother, neither Judaism nor Israel were important in my upbringing or my adult life. But as I watched the assault on Gaza through my phone, I became disgusted by political leaders and those around me who blindly “stood with Israel.” In 2024 a neonatologist I worked with, Dr. Yassar Arain, volunteered in Gaza. When he returned we spoke about his time there, and about the complicity of the United States in the genocide.

Yassar’s descriptions of the conditions in Gaza were beyond anything I’d ever imagined. In my mind the kind of vicious dehumanization that allowed people to kill babies had been left in my grandmother’s past. Today we have the Geneva Conventions and iPhones. But as the assault on Gaza seemed to reach ever higher levels of depravity, I couldn’t take it any longer. By December 2024, I answered a call to volunteer for a medical mission to Gaza.

Gaza was my first time volunteering internationally. My family, friends, and co-workers were worried, but once I saw the call for volunteers I couldn’t ignore it. I didn’t really consider my distant Jewish heritage, but more so what Grandma would say about what I was doing. I guessed it would be something like: “The world has forsaken these children, just like it did my family. Go help them.”

As a nurse and a human being, it is ingrained in me that all people have a right to live. Seeing the attacks on innocents, even within the walls of hospitals, I felt a deep sense of responsibility to show the Palestinians that there is someone who does not look like them or speak their language, but sees them as human beings who are worthy of being supported and cared for rather than as “an infrastructure to be destroyed.”

Blocked

Israel controls all access in and out of Gaza. With the Rafah Crossing closed, entry for all humanitarian workers starts in Jordan. On January 22, 2025, I landed in Amman and met the team for the first time.

“We’ll get the final list late tonight,” our mission coordinator told us. “Someone always gets denied, so just be prepared for that.”

“Sorry,” I cut in. “Denied?”

“COGAT” she explained, referring to the Israeli military office, “will send a list of who was approved. Everyone else is denied.”

To tell a doctor or nurse that they cannot help someone punctures both their sense of self and their faith in humankind in ways that are difficult to explain or anticipate.

I didn’t know how to respond. Israel tells doctors and nurses where they can and can’t go? Who they can and can’t help? That night we learned three physicians and one nurse from our team would be blocked from entering Gaza. I was allowed in.

The effect on my colleagues was devastating. One might think it would be a relief to be blocked from entering one of the most violent places on Earth. But the moment one learns that their name is not on “the list,” issued by an unaccountable and faceless entity, is the moment a healthcare worker realizes something about themselves. Healthcare workers help people. We devote not only our careers but our whole selves to this pursuit. To tell a doctor or nurse that they cannot help someone punctures both their sense of self and their faith in humankind in ways that are difficult to explain or anticipate.

One of those blocked was Sandra (name changed). Sandra is a pediatrician, a Canadian citizen of Indian origin. She was enthusiastic and kind. Her smile was incredibly warm, and I could picture children responding to it and feeling safe with her. She and I were sitting next to each other at dinner when we were told she had been blocked.

I’ll never forget the shock and devastation on Sandra’s face. She tried to stay calm but burst into tears, trying to speak through them to say she was glad at least I would be able to go. More than a year later she still does not understand: “Why was I blocked from entering? What did I do?” She doesn’t understand that the simple fact is there’s only one reason to stop a pediatrician from doing their work: to enhance the suffering of children. In Gaza, my bunkmate was also a pediatrician. I remember her coming to our room at the end of every day, exhausted, and telling me how badly pediatricians were needed. After all, half of Gaza’s population is children, and by many measures they are the sickest and most traumatized kids on the planet.

John (name changed), a family doctor and wound-care specialist, had been to Gaza twice before. He left his wife and two toddlers to volunteer a third time. His first two trips showed him just how much damage Israel’s US-backed assault on Gaza’s healthcare system had done. Hoping to bring back useful solutions, he spent the eight months between his last trip and this one investigating wound-care techniques in resource-limited settings, knowledge he was eager to spread to his Palestinian colleagues.

John was so devastated by the news that he was being blocked from Gaza that, while everyone was focused on Sandra, he silently got up from the table and left to see his family in Amman. We did not see him again until we ran into him at the Jordanian border the next day. Instead of going with us to Gaza, he was going to attempt to visit Jerusalem.

This state of affairs seemed so outrageous that I couldn’t sleep that night. Sandra, John, and the others were not allowed to… heal people? Lying in bed I tried to convince myself: It can’t be just because we were going to heal Palestinians specifically. Right? There must have been some kind of security concern! But as I dragged my bags across Kerem Shalom, I had to face reality: That morning, both Sandra and John visited Jerusalem as tourists. How could they be security concerns in Gaza but not in Jerusalem?

Months later, John still refused to believe that anyone would deliberately stop a doctor from providing care. “Clearly I’m not a threat,” he told me, just before trying to return to Gaza again. “I was approved to enter Israel! It was just a mistake.” He signed up for another mission. On August 18, 2025, Israel blocked him from Gaza again.

I wonder if whatever Israeli bureaucrat at the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs came up with this particular assault on human dignity is proud of themselves.

“You Can Sleep Here or in Jail”

When I left Gaza, I promised my Palestinian colleagues I wouldn’t forget them and would bring their stories to my family, friends, and community in Texas. I organized speaking events at local churches to reach people who, like me, knew nothing about what Israel is doing to the Palestinians with our tax dollars and weapons. I signed an open letter to President Donald Trump, along with 151 other American healthcare workers who had volunteered in Gaza, telling him what we had seen with our own eyes.

Then, in August of 2025 I connected with a nurse practitioner who was looking for a neonatal ICU nurse to go to East Jerusalem for the JHPIEGO educational mission. I quickly signed up. As the trip drew closer, the possibility of being blocked started to worry me. I had come to know dozens of other healthcare workers who had been denied entry into Gaza, and Israel had started blocking healthcare workers from volunteering in the West Bank as well.

I entered Israel through Ben Gurion Airport with little difficulty. Meanwhile my co-volunteer Heather (name changed), a British physiotherapist who had never been to Israel or Palestine, was blocked from entering. At the end of that trip, JHPIEGO asked me to come back and teach again in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, just one month later. I happily agreed, especially since it seemed that I was one of the few people who could enter consistently.

How would my grandmother understand all of this? What would she think about her suffering being weaponized against her granddaughter and other healthcare workers because we internalized her love of humanity and refused to accept the dehumanization of others?

Five weeks after this educational mission ended, I landed at Ben Gurion Airport again, on January 28. I presented the visa I had been given in December. The agent asked me a series of questions and then told me her supervisor would like to speak with me. After two hours, I was called into a small office with one unidentified man, asking questions and writing my answers down on a scratch piece of paper. I was asked exactly the same questions as before and gave exactly the same answers.

Then I was taken to another holding area and told to wait. After about one hour the same man came over and handed me a piece of paper telling me I was being denied entry to Israel. The organization I was volunteering with, he said, was “blacklisted.” I explained that it was not blacklisted; they had an established office in Jerusalem. He insisted they were indeed blacklisted and told me to proceed with him to a detention area.

I called my team’s handler in the United States. “They’re saying JHPIEGO is blacklisted,” I told him. No, he explained, it most certainly is not. Another physician had entered with JHPIEGO one week prior and had been told the same thing. At that time JHPIEGO contacted Israeli border control, cleared up the misunderstanding, and she was allowed entry. I explained this to the nameless Israeli agent, who said it didn’t interest him. I contacted an Israeli lawyer who has helped international volunteers enter Gaza, but before I could explain the situation a new nameless Israeli agent showed up and demanded that I follow him to security for inspection.

It was now late at night, and the airport was mostly empty. The nameless agent took me, along with two elderly people who were also being deported, to an empty gate and told us to stay there until the morning. I managed a laugh and asked, “We’re sleeping in the airport?”

“You can sleep here or in jail.”

“Okay,” I said, taken aback. I would be fine, but it seemed like cruelty for its own sake to require an elderly couple to sleep on an airport floor. “Do you know how we can get our luggage?”

“Your luggage isn’t my problem.”

At that moment, my team called and said they had called the American embassy and asked them to explain to the Israeli government that JHPIEGO is not a blacklisted organization. “But”—my hopes were raised, only to be dashed—“the embassy wants nothing to do with this.”

After exhausting every avenue, reality started to set in. My Jewish heritage and my American citizenship wouldn’t help me help people, because I was there to help the wrong people. Suddenly I was overwhelmed, the same way Sandra and John had been when they were blocked from Gaza. Oscillating between anger and sadness, I broke down crying.

On May 18, a colleague of mine texted me, “I joined the club for people not allowed into Israel.” A blonde, blue-eyed, American-born nurse practitioner in her late 60, she has been working with the Palestinians since the 1990s. She has flown through Ben Gurion Airport more than a dozen times. This time, at the request of JHPIEGO’s East Jerusalem office, she was on a team of six healthcare providers traveling to the West Bank to teach the pediatric Fundamental Critical Care Support course offered from the Society of Critical Care Medicine. She would have taught Palestinians how to save the sickest children’s lives. Israel blocked 5 out of their 6 teachers. “No real explanation—except our visa was not the right one for a volunteer mission. Totally false.”

How would my grandmother understand all of this? What would she think about her suffering being weaponized against her granddaughter and other healthcare workers because we internalized her love of humanity and refused to accept the dehumanization of others? Would she even believe someone who told her that a self-declared Jewish state denies sick infants access to volunteer nurses and doctors?

Ali

In January 2025 I worked with a nurse named Ali Al-Najar in the pediatric ICU (PICU) at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, a city in the middle of the Gaza Strip. We were caring for a 3-year-old boy, Ibrahim (name changed), who had been shot. The physicians decided Ibrahim needed a CT scan, requiring us to transport this incredibly sick child to another building and back.

This is risky work under controlled circumstances. But in Gaza, where the elevator and electricity frequently fail and human resources are stretched thin, it seemed to me like an impossible task. But Ali reassured me: We can do it together. So, we made a plan: He would guide us down the stairs and through the hallways, while I would monitor Ibrahim. I would care for Ibrahim; Ali would care for me.

Ali picked Ibrahim up and placed him on a transport stretcher. I held onto the breathing tube in his throat, pushed oxygen into his lungs with an Ambu bag, and slung the intravenous drips of medications keeping Ibrahim alive and asleep over Ali’s shoulders. We carried Ibrahim down the stairs of the pediatric building, outside into the utter chaos of the strip, into the main hospital building, and over to radiology.

In Gaza, every step was fraught with uncertainty. But Ali, like everyone I met there, just kept moving forward.

While carefully walking down the many staircases, over the broken and uneven pavement, and trying to balance the stretcher with one hand and push air into Ibrahim’s lungs with the other, all the while blindly trusting Ali, my mind flashed back to when I saw Ibrahim rushed into the ED. I had watched him go through surgery for his gunshot wound and performed chest compressions on him when his heart stopped after surgery. He had been through so much in his short three years of life. “He survived all of that,” I told myself. “We will get him to radiology.”

When Ali placed Ibrahim into the scanner, the tech reminded him to avoid the bullet fragments lodged in the machine’s bed. Ibrahim was sedated and certainly wouldn’t comprehend English, but I talked him through what was happening anyway while continuing to push air into his lungs. Anywhere else in the world a lead apron would have been available to shield me from the scan’s radiation. When the scan was finished, we did the whole exercise in reverse, bringing Ibrahim back to the PICU. The excursion took well over 90 minutes, an eternity of risk for this fragile, grievously injured toddler.

My mission in Gaza ended before Ibrahim awoke, but on my way out of Gaza, as I was processing all the emotions from the trip—an impossible task, as one cannot exit Gaza without driving through the largest fields of rubble on Earth—I received a text from another nurse. It was Ibrahim, awake and smiling, drinking juice.

Transporting Ibrahim was one of the most stressful things I’ve ever done. In the United States we would have had a mobile ventilator, a respiratory therapist, and both myself and a nurse assistant. We would have had a working elevator, dependable electricity, a clear hallway, protection from radiation, and a CT scanner that worked reliably and hadn’t been shot. In Gaza, every step was fraught with uncertainty. But Ali, like everyone I met there, just kept moving forward. His family was displaced and homeless. He couldn’t assume he or any of his loved ones would be fed or alive when he returned “home” to his tent. But despite all of that, he dedicated himself not only to Ibrahim but even to me, making sure that I felt I could provide the best care possible in this healthcare nightmare.

A few months later, in Fort Worth, I took another patient to the CT scanner. As we raced through the halls of the hospital I couldn’t help but think of my time in Gaza with Ibrahim and Ali. I told my astonished co-workers what it was like to do this in Gaza, fondly recalling Ali’s guidance and care.

After my shift I couldn’t stop thinking about Ali. I texted him but got no response. I figured he was busy. But a few days later I saw a post about him on Instagram. On May 2, 2025, Israel murdered Ali and his brother, blowing them up with a drone.

Sylvia and Ali

Working with the Palestinians taught me more about the world than I expected. My grandmother was everything I knew about Judaism as a religion and Jews as a people. I simply cannot recognize her in the unnamed and casually cruel men at Ben Gurion Airport. I don’t see her in either the drone operator who pushed the button that ripped my friend Ali to shreds or in the state organizing and carrying out the genocide in which he was killed.

I see my sweet grandmother’s face in my memories of Ali. I see her in the nurses and doctors I met in Palestine, and in the mothers of Gaza who deprive themselves of everything to keep their children alive for just one more day. The beauty, resilience, and dignity that my grandmother carried in her heart and soul is found today in Gaza and throughout Palestine. And the ugliness of the neo-Nazis who threw stones at my great-great grandfather for being Jewish is manifest nowhere more than in the ultra-racist arrogance of Danny Danon, Bezalel Smotrich, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Daniella Weiss in Israel, and Ted Cruz and Randy Fine here at home.

A fanatically Jewish supremacist, “super-Sparta” state of Israel, serving as American gendarme over the people of the Middle East forever, is no solution to the problem of Jewish safety. Neither the United States nor this distorted and perverse conception of an exclusively Jewish state act to keep Jews safe.

We, and plenty of others, are not safe precisely because the United States and Israel insist on committing monumental crimes in our name.

I’m hardly the first person to say so. Jewish thinkers from Martin Buber and Hannah Arendt to Benjamin Balthaser, and Palestinian intellectuals from Walid Khalidi to Edward Said, have all argued as much far more convincingly than I can. Josh Nathan-Kazis recently noted that “Jewish establishment groups rushed to yoke themselves” to the illegal US-Israeli assault on Iran despite the obvious fact that “they are setting up American Jews to take the blame if the war goes badly, as it appears destined to do.”

I hope my experience can help others, especially those who can’t work directly with Palestinians, to see these simple truths. I’ve seen what occupation and genocide are, up close, if only for a few weeks. They are systems that prioritize state power and control over the welfare of children and the lives of healthcare workers. Israel’s own behavior convinced me that even the most cynical argument for why all of this is necessary—without it, the Jews will never be safe!—is absurd. We, and plenty of others, are not safe precisely because the United States and Israel insist on committing monumental crimes in our name.

Our real allies are the people who want what everyone wants: to live their lives in peace, to watch their children grow and thrive. Our real allies are the nurses at Nasser Medical Complex, not the thugs in Tel Aviv’s airport.

The 60-day extension of the ceasefire between the United States and Iran may lead to lasting peace or it may be over within a week, doomed by the dysfunctional alliance between the US and Israel. If it holds, it could mark the beginning of a transition away from the doctrine of “low-intensity conflict” that has shaped US foreign policy for decades.

Talks between the US, Iran, Pakistan, and Qatar began in Switzerland on June 21. But Iran was firm that it holds the United States responsible for Israel’s violations of the US-Iran memorandum and cannot move forward with other parts of the agreement until the US fulfills its part in Article 1, which requires an actual Israeli ceasefire and withdrawal from Lebanon.

If the memorandum agreed between Iran and the United States fails, the world will be left with vastly reduced oil and gas supplies and a regional war between Iran, Israel, and the United States from Lebanon to the Persian Gulf.

This entire crisis is one more devastating result of the world community’s failure to tame Israel’s war crimes and genocide or end its illegal occupation of Palestine and attacks and invasions in neighboring countries—all of which the United States continues to enable and support through its military and diplomatic alliance and arming of the Israeli military.

This moment could become a critical turning point in reining in US aggression and Israeli regional expansion.

President Donald Trump seems to understand the rapidly deteriorating position of the US and Israel, and to recognize that his own political future now depends on extricating the US from the war on Iran that he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cooked up. Voices of peace from around the world support the tentative ceasefire extension and oppose efforts to sabotage it by politicians in Washington and Tel Aviv.

But to understand the roots of this crisis in US foreign policy, we have to look back. Since the 1980s, aggressive US foreign policy has dragged the Middle East and much of the world into a state that US military planners call “low-intensity conflict” or “LIC.”

Under this doctrine, the United States, and now its protégé Israel, claim the freedom of action to use military force in flagrant and widespread violation of international law, while deterring the rest of the world from mustering the political will to enforce the law or hold them accountable.

The US doctrine of low-intensity conflict was a deliberate policy choice by the Reagan administration in the 1980s, after the US defeat in Vietnam. After President George Bush II and Vice President Dick Cheney’s catastrophic full-scale US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, Presidents Barack Obama, Trump, and Joe Biden reverted to low-intensity warfare, but globally expanded its scope.

This US choice to expand low-intensity warfare followed the example and the techniques of the British Empire in its final phase in the 1950s. From the Suez crisis to guerrilla war against communist revolutionaries in Malaya and Mau Mau torture camps in Kenya, the deliberate and deadly violence of Britain’s imperial policies was hidden from its own people and the world behind a tapestry of lies.

In 1989, Michael Klare and Peter Kornbluh edited a book titled Low-Intensity Warfare: How the USA Fights Wars Without Declaring Them.

They wrote that the official description of low-intensity warfare was deliberately broad and ambiguous, embracing drug interdiction in Bolivia; the occupation of Beirut; the invasion of Grenada; the airstrikes on Libya in 1986; as well as covert “special operations,” “special activities,” and “unconventional warfare.”

They concluded that low-intensity conflict was in fact “a strategic reorientation of the US military establishment, and renewed commitment to employ force in a global crusade against Third World revolutionary movements and governments.”

Today’s nominal but false ceasefires in Gaza, Lebanon, and the Persian Gulf fit squarely within that doctrine. They allow the US and Israel to continue illegal uses of force while appearing to respond to international demands for negotiations and diplomacy.

But the US involvement in low-intensity conflict today is not limited to the Middle East. It also encompasses the proxy war on Russia centered in Ukraine; the savage, deadly siege of Cuba; US and Western piracy on the high seas; the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela and his wife; and economic and financial coercive measures or “sanctions” that impact about 40 countries.

Today’s low-intensity warfare also includes deploying US special operations forces in up to 140 countries. Since 2001, US special operations forces claim to have suffered 40% of all US military casualties, including many of the 8,492 American deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Concentrating such a large share of US war casualties in such a small force—about 70,000 men and women at any one time—helps to give most American families the illusion of living in peace, even as the United States projects military force across the world and kills thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands, of people abroad.

The doctrine of low-intensity warfare depends on a fundamental assumption: that the countries targeted by the United States and its allies will remain too weak, too isolated, or too divided to effectively resist. But that assumption is increasingly being tested.

Iran has made great strides in developing effective military defenses and demonstrating to shocked US and Israeli officials that it can now defend itself. But the deadly results of false ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon stand as concrete evidence that Israel and the United States still favor low-intensity warfare over real peace.

Even as Trump presents himself as a peacemaker, he remains committed to funding an enormous war machine that can ratchet the intensity of military and covert operations up and down in different parts of the world as it adjusts to new forms of resistance and responds to fluctuating international diplomatic pressures.

But the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza opened the eyes of a new generation of people all over the world to the reality of US imperialism. The official lies that undergird low-intensity warfare are wearing dangerously thin. People are no longer swallowing the false narratives of US and Western politicians and establishment media.

US political, military, and business leaders face a crisis of credibility and legitimacy that only grows as they take off the gloves and ratchet up the intensity of these campaigns, from escalating the war on Russia and the brutal blockade of Cuba to murdering innocent fishermen and ferry passengers in the Caribbean and Pacific and threatening traditional allies like Canada and Denmark.

In the US-Israeli war on Iran and the negotiations to end it, we are witnessing a serious effort by an attacked country to stand up to the bullies, redress the imbalance of power, and uphold international law.

Whatever one thinks of the Iranian government, Iran’s pursuit of a durable peace based on sovereignty, security, and international law deserves the support of governments and people around the world, including Americans.

This moment could become a critical turning point in reining in US aggression and Israeli regional expansion. It could even give humanity a chance to end this cycle of endless war and begin working together to address the existential crises threatening the world in the 21st century.

As the people of the United States commemorate the 250th anniversary of its founding, and the violence of the US empire comes home to attack us and our neighbors in our own homes and streets, we should find common cause with, and learn from, our neighbors around the world who have been resisting US imperial violence for generations.

It is ultimately up to us to take our future in our own hands and begin the essential transition from empire to democracy.

That is why CODEPINK is calling for a Summer of Peace and Love, a time to reject fear, militarism and empire, and to organize our communities around the simple but radical demand that our country stop making war on the world and start investing in life.

Now that an initial diplomatic deal between the US and Iran has been signed and intensive negotiations are under way to fully end the war, Congress should do everything possible to ensure this agreement is fully implemented. While the agreement is likely to have imperfections—thanks in large part to President Donald Trump harming US leverage and interests with a disastrous war—it would be a massive mistake to attack the deal simply because it comes from this president. The key question to consider is what steps Congress can take to ensure it becomes a durable peace—rather than merely a pause before the next round of war.

With all the human loss, destruction, and global stakes, we must stop this war, but also ensure that the conditions of peace don’t lay the groundwork for a return to conflict—or inspire its repetition elsewhere. The political and financial cost of ending this war must fall on those who aided and profited from it. The question is whether we build the safeguards to make it last.

In June 2025, it was already clear that accepting President Trump’s false narrative of absolute victory (claiming to have fully obliterated Iran’s nuclear sites) would not end US-Iran tensions. Any peace will remain fragile if the conditions that produced the war persist: the might-makes-right mindset that proved hollow against Iran’s strategic resilience; the preference for militarism over diplomacy, from Trump’s Joint-Comprehensive Plan-of-Action withdrawal to Biden’s failure to pursue a serious alternative to “maximum pressure” sanctions; the unconditional support for Israel even when it runs counter to US interests.

It is highly possible that during the initial 60 days of negotiations contemplated in the MOU, Israel will continue military action against Iran or in Lebanon to provoke a reaction and restart the cycle. The US cannot fully control what Israel would do. But it can stop aiding and abetting the war, which would make it far more difficult for Israel to sustain a campaign to spoil diplomacy.

The problem is not a single president or party. It is the power structures that ensure those who profit from war never pay its cost, regardless of who holds office.

Military action against Iran failed at producing any of its intended objectives, while it incurred costs that are in some cases irreversible and in others generational. The lives lost will not come back. The destruction of civilian infrastructure will shape Iranian society for decades. And the war has granted perverse legitimacy to a brutal regime, recasting the government of the Islamic Republic not as the oppressor it is, but as David against Goliath, the underdog resistor against foreign aggression. Diplomacy produced better results at far lower cost on every measure that matters.

This war confirmed what few wanted to acknowledge: that US military bases across the Gulf, sold as a projection of strength, are also a profound vulnerability. Each base became a potential target, each host government a hostage to escalation. For many Gulf governments, American military backing is a useful substitute for political legitimacy at home. Yet the war exposed the limits of that bargain: The same shield that promised security also turned them into targets.

Turning the Strait of Hormuz into a battlefield made this dynamic undeniable. Its closure hit energy markets and created rare pressure for de-escalation from Gulf elites who felt the costs directly. But while some elites were squeezed, others made billions. The system is designed so the profiteers are never the ones paying the ultimate price. That is exactly why temporary market pressure is not a substitute for structural accountability to prevent future conflicts.

Those who profit from war have learned over many years that neither Republicans or Democrats will hold them accountable. A new Congress post November has a real opportunity to change that—to serve US interests, meaning the American people, not a select elite. With $72 billion spent on the Iran war, a $1.5 trillion military budget, and war contractors more powerful and unaccountable than ever, Congress needs to investigate all war profiteers, from arms contractors to companies like the drone firm backed by the Trump sons that sought to sell interceptors to the very Gulf states being attacked, a direct conflict of interest.

In a relatively new dystopian innovation in war capitalism during the war, prediction markets like Polymarket saw millions in bets on everything from the timing of strikes to casualty estimates. Suspected insider accounts netted $2.4 million on Iran War bets with a 98% win rate. This kind of betting on war outcomes by those with proximity to power blurs the line between forecasting and profiteering. It must also be addressed.

We do not even have to wait for elections in November to start this process. The growing support for War Powers resolutions with majority house support just this month, and the 40 senators backing the Joint Resolution of Disapproval to withhold certain arms from Israel, show what may be possible when Congress does its job. Congress should condition support, block escalation, and hold hearings on the legality of what has been done.

Such measures would serve a deeper purpose: signaling that a new Congress, and eventually a new administration, can offer something more than a return to the previous status quo: a set of concrete actions that change how war is authorized, how money is spent, and who benefits.

The problem is not a single president or party. It is the power structures that ensure those who profit from war never pay its cost, regardless of who holds office.

Corruption and war profiteering are not merely governance issues. They are theft from the American people, through unaccountable war spending, the unaffordable prices it produces, and an elite class that never pays for the policies it pushes. A Congress that treats corruption and war profiteering as harm against the public and responds accordingly would demonstrate what a functioning democracy actually looks like.

The running gag in America’s yellow-bellied war on migrants is that if you’re here legally, you’re welcome, but if you’re not, we’re coming after you. The discrimination is not that discriminating.

The reigning rule on the eve of the 250th anniversary of our vanishing republic is: If you’re brown, Black, or otherwise undesirable, we’re coming after you. If you support the wrong kind of liberation movement—like, say, Palestinian rights to avoid an Israeli holocaust—or if you say the wrong thing about MAGA America on social media, we’re coming after you pretty much by any means necessary.

Doesn’t matter if you have a Green Card. Doesn’t matter if you’re a naturalized citizen. We’re coming after you. I haven’t yet heard of a native-born American becoming an unperson, but that can’t be far off. When a country loses its civil liberties and defaults from human rights to demonization, all bets are off.

We’ve become shamelessly familiar with Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s pogroms of undocumented migrants, most of whom have never committed a crime. OK. Let’s concede that they crossed the border illegally or overstayed their visa, which makes them lawbreakers, even if they’re not criminals. If you really want to destroy the economy, lose your farmworkers, your cleaning crews, your roofers, your childcare workers and servers, you could argue that they should be thrown out, even if they’re law-abiding; even if they work harder than you, me, and our American neighbors put together; even if without them, Social Security would have already gone bankrupt because it’s thanks to them that we exploit their payroll and other taxes without having to pay them a dime. Let’s concede that. Let’s throw the fuckers out.

The New Colossus has been replaced by our new Caligula’s ass.

But racism is not that discerning. Not in the slyly fascist calculus that wants a certain type of foreigner out of here. Between executive orders and administrative rules, President Donald Trump is going after legal, documented workers from browner countries by eliminating their right to work in airports or day care centers, to enroll in schools and universities, to drive trucks or even fill high-skilled jobs Americans are apparently too dumb to hold.

For example, the administration is working to end the right even of American-born children of migrants to receive federal day care subsidies. A green card is supposed to give you all the rights of an American citizen short of voting, serving on a jury, or running for office. I had one. I knew what it felt like. But now, the administration is banning green card holders from receiving small-business loans. Our own Derek Barrs, who used to be a school board member here and who now works for Trump as the administrator of the trucking division of the transportation department, has signed off on a new rule that makes it far more difficult for migrants to get commercial drivers’ licenses, though trucking has been one of the great entry-level roads to migrants’ American dream. (Faustian bargains don’t become you, Derek.)

There’s the illegal arrests and attempted deportations of numerous pro-Palestinian green card holders who had the temerity to protest Israel’s genocide in Gaza, but not a single equivalent of pro-Israeli protesters succoring calls for a Palestinian genocide. There’s the new State Department rule requiring all visa applicants to reveal all their social media accounts and set them to “public.” The State Department uses the content to vet applicants and reject them based on past opinions, if those opinions don’t conform with MAGA ideology (calling Palestinians “animals” is fine. Calling Trump anything but god is not.) There’s the new rule requiring mere applicants for a green card to leave the United States first, which is just another way of weeding undesirables.

All that adds up to creative but sinister ways to send the message to non-Americans, especially non-Americans of certain pigments and origin, that they are not welcome, to force self-deportations, or to keep the downtrodden from imagining that Lady Liberty’s lifted “lamp beside the golden door” is still for them. The New Colossus has been replaced by our new Caligula’s ass. It’s working. Schools are emptying out. Universities, which used to be the crown jewel of American progress and unstoppable factories of Nobel prizes, are losing their brightest students to Europe and China. American innovation isn’t far behind, except in retreading xenophobic laws and methods better suited for Franz Kafka’s plots: Migrants, you’re all Joseph K now.

On this 250th anniversary, we are a diminished, insecure, fearful country, waging war on our greatest asset: our migrants, the people we once were, the people without whose ancestors none of us would be here. I’ll be celebrating in a couple of weeks. But it won’t be today’s America. It’ll be the America I came to as a migrant 47 years ago, and that me and my children hope to see again before we dig our shithole too deep to get out.

When looking at today’s Middle East, it is important to recognize that Israel is completely out of control, and no one has the will to rein them in.

This should have been understood back in July of 2024, in the waning days of the Biden administration, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to Washington to address a joint session of Congress. His government had already committed atrocious war crimes in Gaza and Lebanon. They had killed Iran’s Ayatollah and many of its political and scientific leadership. They had also occupied parts of Syria, destroyed much of that country’s military capacity, and were working to deepen Syria’s sectarian strife. At the same time, Israeli violent settlers, backed by the military, were running roughshod over the West Bank terrorizing Palestinians and systematically demolishing the homes of thousands.

In his address to the Congress, Netanyahu boasted that this murderous behavior demonstrated that Israel had become the dominant force in the Middle East fighting and winning on seven fronts. You are not defending us, he claimed, we are defending you—terming his bloody rampage across the region as Israel leading the effort to protect Western civilization against the barbarism of the East.

As inflammatory and disgraceful as his words (and the actions they described) were, he was applauded by Republicans and some Democrats, with only a handful of Democratic members of Congress vigorously protesting. For its part, the Biden administration left it to Vice President Harris to deliver a mild rebuke to Netanyahu.

During the past five US administrations, it has been precisely this pattern of behavior—whether outright support for Israeli crimes or silence and timidity in the face of them—that has fostered Israel’s impunity, coupled with a megalomaniacal sense of mission. President Clinton termed Netanyahu impossible or ridiculous; Obama considered him “incorrigible”; and even Trump has described his frustration with the Israeli leader in harsh, obscene language. But none have taken firm steps to rein him in.

In the wake of President Trump’s half-baked “deal” attempting to end his ill-considered, costly war with Iran, Netanyahu has been quiet. He has left criticism to ministers in his cabinet and opposition party leaders. Vice-President JD Vance’s rebuke of Israeli critics was noteworthy but absent threats of serious changes in policy Vance’s words will be dismissed as nothing more than words.

At this point it must be noted that Israel’s dangerous impunity and expansive sense of mission is not just a Netanyahu problem. It is a deeper Israeli problem that historically has manifested itself in two ways.

During the Clinton and Obama years, when the US wanted the Israelis to stop settlement expansion or honor terms of agreements that were being broken, their administrations hesitated to take tough measures against Israel, or even use tougher language, for fear that it would embolden Israel’s hardline right and end up being counterproductive. As a result, there were no crackdowns on Israeli governments led by Yitzak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak, Ehud Olmert, and Naftali Bennet.

This deference toward Israeli leaders, out of concern for the problems they would face from hardliners should we force them to make hard decisions, is never shown toward Palestinian or other Arab leaders. The result of this coddling has been the emboldening and empowerment of Israeli hardliners to the point where they and their espoused views are the dominant political current in today’s Israeli politics. This is not to say that there aren’t “liberals” contesting Netanyahu’s coalition government. But their liberalism is defined by their opposition to Netanyahu’s corruption, his authoritarian instinct, and his courting of the ultraorthodox and the religious policies they impose on the rest of Israeli society.

The opposition parties that will be contesting Netanyahu in the next election are not only not challenging his war policies, but also now posing as more hawkish than he is with regard to Israel’s wars and its treatment of Palestinians. In fact, all of the main contenders to head a post-Netanyahu Israeli government have roundly condemned his agreement to ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon. They have uniformly denounced what they’ve called his displays of subservience to US President Trump thereby making Israel appear to be a humiliated “vassal state.” All have criticized the recently announced US-Iran peace agreement, with the self-described “liberal” Democrat party blasting the deal by suggesting that it threatens to “erase all of the gains Israel had achieved” in their war on Iran.

All of this should make it clear to liberals in the US that the problem in today’s Middle East isn’t just Netanyahu. His defeat won’t mean “Happy Days Are Here Again.” It’s an entire political culture that has gone off the rails. The only way it will change is if we make Israel pay a price by ending aid and political and military cooperation, thereby creating a shock that will force a political reckoning in the country. On the other hand, if we don’t act, Israel’s out-of-control rogue behaviors will continue to set the Middle East on fire and we will be complicit in all that they do.

Remember Elon Musk running around in his DOGE garb with sunglasses and a chainsaw? The Republicans are hoping that you don’t.

The ostensible point of Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” was rooting out trillions of dollars of government waste, fraud, and abuse. Musk gathered together a group of “super-high-IQ” MAGA boys who worked 80 hours a week ransacking all the various government agencies and departments in this effort.

Musk promised to cut at least $2 trillion from the US budget with his DOGE gang. Musk came up largely empty-handed in this effort. He did manage to save around $20 billion a year by eliminating USAID, a program that provided health care and nutrition to millions of people in Africa. While this ended the Bush II AIDS program, PREPAR, which has saved tens of millions of lives, it did not do much to help US taxpayers. The $5 billion cost of the program was roughly 0.08 percent of federal spending.

It is impossible to believe that there is a large amount of fraud in government without also believing that Elon Musk is a total incompetent.

Mostly, what Musk ended up doing was creating chaos in programs that he seemed to not understand. He took credit for canceling contracts that were already completed, fired people who were subsequently rehired, and did things like end a screwworm monitoring program. This last move has led to a screwworm outbreak threatening the country’s cattle stock.

But the key point here is that Musk has a free hand and a chainsaw to pursue government waste, fraud, and abuse wherever he saw it. Everyone needs to keep that in mind when they hear Republican politicians yelling about how they will save us billions or hundreds of billions from various programs, not by cutting meat, but by rooting out fraud.

This means that when Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn claimed a few months back that 12 million people were fraudulently added to the exchange created by the Affordable Care Act, she was claiming that Elon Musk and his super-high IQ boys were too incompetent to find 12 million fraudulent enrollees. That is roughly half of all the people on the exchanges.

Similarly, when Speaker Mike Johnson claims that he will deal with a projected $370 billion annual shortfall in the Social Security program, for years 2033 and beyond, by eliminating waste and fraud, Johnson is claiming that Musk and the DOGE boys somehow missed this. That would be equal to roughly 15 percent of the program’s spending.

In the same vein, when Trump claimed that Minnesota had $19 billion in fraud in its Medicaid program, he was claiming that an amount roughly equal to the state’s entire annual Medicaid budget was going to fraud. This is despite the fact that Minnesota’s per capita spending on Medicaid is not out of line with other states. But more importantly, Trump had just sent Elon Musk and his DOGE boys looking into this, and they apparently found nothing.

At this point, it should be obvious to everyone, even elite reporters, that when Republicans yell about fraud, they are just doing a slightly more polite version of shouting the N-word. Fraud does exist in government programs, and we should do what we can to minimize it. This means the hard work that the Government Accountability Office does, as well as the work that was done by the 16 Inspector Generals fired by Trump just after he took office.

It’s also more often done at the high end with major companies ripping off the government, as Florida Senator Rick Scott did in his earlier career as an insurance company CEO. The high-end fraudsters who pocket the big bucks are more likely to be found on Trump’s pardon list or at parties at Mar-a-Lago than the receiving end of a Republican investigation.

But whenever Trump and other Republicans yell about fraud, it is important to remember that they handed over the keys of government and a chainsaw to Elon Musk and gave him a free rein. It is impossible to believe that there is a large amount of fraud in government without also believing that Elon Musk is a total incompetent. Logic doesn’t carry much weight in policy circles, but the rest of us should recognize this simple fact.

That subhead of mine is certainly repetitive of me (me, me), but how can you not be repetitive in the distinctly repeated world of Donald J. Trump (Trumped, Trumped)? I mean, twice already and who really knows what’s to come?

Here’s the question nobody seems to be asking right now, though: What country will Donald Trump attack next? Yes, at the moment, he’s still wildly wound up in his Iran war/truce/peace/or you name it (tomorrow). Yesterday, it was, of course, Venezuela, and next week it might be Cuba or Greenland, or who on (or off) this planet knows where? And I haven’t even mentioned his military’s ongoing bombing runs in Somalia, which are barely noticed in the mainstream media here. And who knows what I’ve forgotten or what to expect in this increasingly bizarre world of ours from the president who swore repeatedly in his third election campaign that he would never, never, never go to... yes, of course, war?

Hey, only the other day, Secretary of War (a title which, of course, couldn’t be blunter in the age of You Know Who) Pete Hegseth warned that “what happens with the future of Cuba is in the hands of the president of the United States and the leadership of Cuba. No matter what, the Department of War is going to be prepared and postured for any possible contingency.”

Ah, yes, any possible contingency except one, of course: victory (which, since the Second World War, just hasn’t been in the American vocabulary) or, for that matter, peace. I mean what could possibly go wrong in a world that now, remarkably enough, has its first trillionaire, Donald Trump’s (sometimes) buddy Elon Musk? (On that, Senator Elizabeth Warren commented all too aptly: “I want to be clear: This is not just some fluke. It is a feature of a rigged economy.”)

What, in fact, could possibly go wrong on such a rigged planet? I’m sure Donald Trump and Elon Musk couldn’t imagine. What could go wrong on a world in which no American president ever seems to realize that wars are simply never to be won by this country, no matter its power and the ever-ballooning size of the Pentagon budget, now possibly heading for -- ah, yes, talking about trillionaires! -- $1.5 trillion yearly (and, no, that is not a typo), if Donald Trump has anything to say about it? And in Congress, mind you, that’s still referred to as “defense” spending.

What could possibly go wrong when launching a war on Iran, a country that’s slightly less than 6,500 miles from Washington, D.C.? That’s so much less dumb of Donald Trump than Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch a disastrous war right on his country’s border with Ukraine. At least, Iran is so far away that you could ask: Whose lives could possibly be disturbed by it (other than Iranians, their neighbors, or of course, anyone who drives a car or a truck that isn’t electric and has had to pay for the gas that hasn’t been making its way through the Strait of Hormuz these days, months, or for all we know years)?

In fact, here’s a suggestion for President Trump: at only 6,500 miles, Iran really shouldn’t be considered quite far enough from Washington to truly, truly count as the world’s best enemy. What about Pakistan instead, since it’s 7,000 miles away? Wouldn’t that make better sense? Especially since, as Zia ur-Rehman of the New York Times reported recently, with the planet heating up as distinctly as it is, one district in southern Pakistan hit a record 124.7 degrees Fahrenheit as May ended. And you (and Donald Trump) know just what that means: ever more Pakistanis will feel that they have to leave their country and head elsewhere and why not head for the United States of America, only 7,000 miles away? So, Donald, how about starting another war there and while you’re at it, as wars do so effectively, pour yet more fossil fuels into the atmosphere, ensuring that Pakistan will indeed get ever hotter (and hotter and hotter) even faster (and faster and faster)?

And honestly, to ask a perfectly realistic question: if President Trump can’t continue to stack up wars one atop another, how in the world will he ever get Congress to pass his next Pentagon budget for that $1.5 trillion? We certainly need another war (or two or three) for that to happen and, honestly, Greenland’s too damn cold and minimally populated and Cuba’s too close and a mere island to truly count.

Wait! Let’s look at the positive side of things for a moment. With Trump and crew ready to fossil-fuelize this planet in striking ways, as the Department of War has made clear, “President Donald J. Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth are ushering in a new era characterized by peace through strength.” And what more could you ask for than that, though “peace,” of course (because definitions matter) should be “war” and “strength” should mean another 1.5 trillion taxpayer dollars for the Pentagon to blow on yet more disastrous conflicts globally, right?

Who could possibly disagree with such a definition of peace? Anyone who does deserves to be sent to Iran, Greenland, or Cuba, just to find out what peace truly feels like.

Yes, give our president full credit. He lends “brink” new meaning and what could possibly go wrong on a planet distinctly on the brink of... well, who knows quite what but nothing good -- that indeed did just get its first trillionaire. I can’t imagine, can you?

And given all of that, let me end on a little more upbeat news. As the BBC recently reported, “The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has declared that El Niño conditions are now under way in the tropical Pacific [Ocean], with sea surface temperatures having risen sharply in recent months.” And even better, assume that it could prove to be “a so-called ‘super’ El Niño,” and even possibly “among the strongest ever recorded.”

So, count on this: our planet is going to get hotter and hotter and hotter. And Donald Trump is still doing his damnedest to shut down green energy of any kind and make more war. So, what could possibly go wrong when we have a president at the brink (of who knows what) and a planet at the brink (of who knows what’s next)?

Referring to the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall, Minnesota governor Tim Walz commented on X: “Found an imaginary problem, said only they could fix it, didn’t listen to experts, hired buddies who grifted millions, failed miserably, bragged how great it went. The entire Trump presidency in a nutshell.” (Walz could have added: “blamed others for his failure, conjured up a conspiracy, then prosecuted them.”)

One remarkable aspect of Trump’s horrendous reign is how many crises and problems he’s brought on himself—created them out of thin air. Then he brags about how well he’s handled them. And when they go wrong—as they inevitably do—he casts blame on others or on his political opponents.

Four examples from the last few days:

I. The Return of Operation Metro Surge

US prosecutors in Minnesota on Tuesday announced charges against 15 people they say conspired to “violently oppose immigration law enforcement.”

But when repeatedly questioned by the press, US Attorney Daniel Rosen failed to describe a single example of injuries to federal agents.

Rosen has a dubious track record with this kind of prosecution. In the months after “Operation Metro Surge,” launched by the Trump regime last December, federal prosecutors charged three dozen Minnesotans in a first wave of cases allegedly involving assaulting or impeding federal immigration agents. Most were dismissed or downgraded.

So why is Minnesota’s US attorney announcing new charges? Rosen’s predecessor as US attorney, Joseph Thompson, said he doesn’t understand it. “I think most people, on both of the sides of the political aisle, viewed [Metro Surge] as a disaster for the administration,” Thompson told The Wall Street Journal. “Why you would want to go back and re-litigate this is beyond me.”

One clue lies in the timing of the new charges—coming just two weeks after the John F. Kennedy Library awarded its 2026 Profiles in Courage Award to the people of the Twin Cities for their resistance to Operation Metro Surge.

A bipartisan committee praised the community for defending constitutional rights and demonstrating civic courage:

“Tens of thousands took to the streets to peacefully protest federal overreach and threats to immigrant families and constitutional protections, while others documented enforcement activity and alerted neighbors to federal agents’ presence. Faith leaders organized demonstrations, community groups built rapid-response networks, labor leaders and small business defended workers, and volunteers provided critical support and resources. Across religious, racial, and political lines, a broad coalition of residents of the Twin Cities and surrounding suburbs united in peaceful resistance despite violent confrontation and real personal risk, defending their neighbors’ rights and strengthening the national movement to protect American democracy.”

Trump is presumed to have a grudge against the John F. Kennedy Profiles in Courage Award because last year’s award went to his former vice president, Mike Pence, for explicitly resisting Trump's demands to overturn the 2020 election results on January 6, 2021.

II. Trump’s Unending War in Iran

On Sunday, negotiators for Iran and the United States met in Switzerland for a little over an hour. No progress was made. Iranian negotiators insisted on an end to the war between Israel (a US ally) and Hezbollah (an Iran-backed militant group in Lebanon) as a condition for further talks, according to Iranian state media.

The talks were also strained by Trump’s renewed threats against Iran. Fox News reports that Trump, in an interview, said he had spoken with Iranian officials Saturday night and warned them not to close the Strait of Hormuz. “You close it, and you won’t have a country,” Fox said, quoting Trump. “You won’t even make it back to your f—ing country.”

The Iranian delegation in Switzerland decided to suspend the talks due to Trump’s threats, according to Nour News, which is affiliated with Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. IRIB, Iran’s state broadcaster, said it was unclear if the talks will resume.

Iran’s lead negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said on social media that the United States should be careful about issuing threats, adding that Iranian armed forces were prepared to respond. “No matter how much they talk, it is we who act,” he wrote.

Iran says the strait is once again closed. World oil prices are again rising.

One Republican senator described the war in Iran and the sputtering peace talks as “the worst foreign policy blunder in decades.”

Trump continues to look for a way out, at least for himself. “If it works out, I’m going to take the credit,” Trump said of the peace agreement, only half in jest. “If it doesn’t work out, I’m blaming JD.”

III. Prices Continue to Rise

On Sunday, Trump celebrated Father’s Day with a social media post touting that the USUS has the “BEST ECONOMY EVER.”

“Happy Father’s Day!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Our Country is doing GREAT. Record Jobs Numbers and Stock Market, BEST ECONOMY EVER! Greatest Military in the World, by far. We are WINNING on all fronts, WINNING LIKE NEVER BEFORE. GOD BLESS YOU ALL!!!”

Inflation in May increased to 4.2 percent, its highest point in three years, with the food index seeing a 3.1 percent increase over the past year and a nearly 4 percent bump in energy prices. Wages are not rising as fast, which means most Americans are becoming poorer.

The latest NPR/PBS News/Marist poll released last week shows that only 33 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, his lowest point in both of his terms and 3 points lower than former president Biden at his all-time low.

Trump has long dismissed “affordability” as an issue Americans are concerned about, saying last week that affordability is a “fake word, made up by the Democrats.”

IV. The Reflecting Pool Worsens

All of which brings us back to the Reflecting Pool. Two weeks ago, Trump declared that his decision to repaint the Pool “American Flag blue” was not simply a “paint job” but “highly sophisticated material, industrial strength, that could last for 100 years.” The dark blue paint that Trump insisted on is now peeling, and green algae are returning.

But the blue paint is now peeling and the algae are back.

On Friday night, Trump blamed “Radical Left Lunatics, most likely Dumocats [sic], who have spent their lives trying to ruin our Country” for “some real problems with Vandalism at the beautiful Reflecting Pool” and linked it to the etching of “8647” into the grass on the National Mall days earlier, adding that law enforcement is investigating.

Then on Saturday, Trump doubled down, claiming that “multiple individuals” had taken “some form of knife or blade, and put a 250 foot long gash into the beautiful facade of what took so much work, competence, and money to build and complete. These are very serious crimes having to do with the destruction of National Monuments. Years in jail! Work will begin immediately on its repair.”

So far, five people have been arrested for vandalizing the Reflecting Pool, according to Trump officials. But the evidence against them is weak at best. For example, former Olympic canoe racer David Hearn, 67, was arrested after he touched a flap of blue material partially detached from the bottom of the pool. Hearn, who says he has a background in material science, told CNN he checked out the pool after reading reports of algae in the water and paint or sealant peeling off the bottom. “I didn’t vandalize anything,” Hearn told The Washington Post. “I didn’t destroy or break or peel anything. By the time I realized what was going on, I was being put in handcuffs.”

Yet the Reflecting Pool’s new blue surface isn’t plastic like a typical pool lining, which can be cut. It’s a coarse coat of dark blue paint. It’s peeling because the paint job—done by a Trump donor who had been given the no-bid contract—was obviously done badly, as well as being way over budget. And the algae have returned not because of vandalism but because the dark blue paint has trapped more heat, rapidly creating a friendly habitat for the algae.

As Tim Walz says, it’s the entire Trump presidency in a nutshell.

I dream of seeing the title of this post on bumper stickers, billboards, and personal tattoos. The slogan “Tax the rich and save the world” comes from a message from the Patriotic Millionaires—a group of more than 200 high-net-worth Americans, from investors and executives to filmmakers and heirs, who are actively lobbying Congress to raise their own taxes.

Millionaires are watching billionaires pull further ahead financially, and watching their coastal properties sink closer to the waterline as unchecked carbon emissions push sea levels higher. As ecological economist James K. Boyce explains, the concentration of wealth that drives carbon-intensive consumption is the same force blocking the public investment needed to address it: The ultra-wealthy have the resources to protect themselves from environmental degradation, as well as the political power to resist dealing with it. Taxing the rich could help keep the planet livable for the rest of us.

The growing visibility of wealth concentration is rousing a coalition of economists, lawmakers, labor unions, and the worried rich who are pushing back against four decades of trickle-down orthodoxy. Their message is gaining traction: the ultra-wealthy are not paying their fair share, and working-class voters are getting shafted.

The Myth of 40%

A useful place to start is with a number you've probably heard: According to the Wall Street Journal, the top 1% of taxpayers pay about 40% of all tax revenue. Jeff Bezos recently reiterated this scandalously misleading claim. The figure applies only to federal income taxes, ignoring both Social Security taxes and state and local taxes. The Congressional Research Service estimates that about 63% of US tax filers pay more in payroll taxes—Social Security and Medicare—than they do in federal income taxes. In addition, state sales taxes and local property taxes eat up a larger percentage of the income of low and middle-income families than those at the top.

When the full tax picture is considered, the wealthy's "fair share" argument really falls apart. Paul Krugman dissects Bezos's claims in detail, and John Miller examines the Wall Street Journal's panicky response to Republican Mitt Romney's proposed tax reforms. The structural roots of the problem are powerfully explained by Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman in The Triumph of Injustice, which documents how the US tax system systematically privileges income from capital over income from labor. The most striking and consequential strategy rests on wealth accumulation: the very rich let their assets grow, untouched and tax free (capital gains aren’t taxed unless and until assets are sold for a profit). When the very rich need cash, they borrow against those assets at interest rates far below the income tax rate on wages—allowing wealth to compound while generating no taxable income at all. Capitalists have good reason to love capital.

California in the Headlines

In a Left Hook post last October, I described some important steps toward "taxing the top." Now California has captured national attention with a ballot initiative that could make history. This coming November, voters in the state will decide on the 2026 Billionaire Tax Act—a one-time levy of 5% on billionaire wealth, spread over five years. If passed, it would be the first tax anywhere in the world explicitly targeted at the combined personal and business wealth of billionaires. The initiative was drafted with input from Saez and Zucman and last week submitted enough certified signatures, more than 875,000, to qualify for the ballot.

The case is straightforward. California's roughly 250 billionaire households—0.001% of the state's families—now hold wealth equal to more than half of California's entire annual economic output. Yet from 2019 to 2025, while their wealth grew an average of over 15% per year, they paid on average just 0.26% of their wealth annually in state income taxes. The four wealthiest Californians—Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Jensen Huang, and Mark Zuckerberg—paid an effective tax rate of just 0.07% of their wealth. Because they didn't sell their stock, its rising value was simply never taxed.

The proposed tax would raise approximately $100 billion—enough to offset the federal health care and social program funding that the Trump administration has stripped from the state. Critics warn that billionaires will flee to Nevada or Florida, but Saez and Zucman have done the math: even if every single California billionaire departed, it would take 25 years for the resulting loss in tax revenue to exceed the one-time haul from the wealth tax. Washington state has already passed a millionaires' tax, and New York City's mayor is proposing a 2% levy on residents earning over $1 million—California is widening a door that other states can walk through.

The Momentum in Washington

While private wealth has been concentrating for some time, the policies of the Trump administration have dramatized the dynamics. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) has done the unglamorous work of actually following the money—and its findings are striking. All but the richest 5% of Americans are paying higher taxes on average than they did last year.

Elected officials are taking notice. The 118th and 119th Congresses have seen a cluster of Democratic-sponsored bills targeting capital income and accumulated wealth. None has advanced out of committee under the current Republican majority, but together they represent the most sustained and varied legislative push on this front in a generation. Four proposals stand out:

Senator Markey's (D-MA) Equal Tax Act would require millionaires and billionaires who earn most of their income through investments to pay the same tax rates as wage earners and would close loopholes that allow the super-rich to shelter income from taxation entirely. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is a cosponsor, and the Patriotic Millionaires have energetically lobbied for it.

The Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act of 2026, sponsored by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Representatives Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and Brendan Boyle (D-PA) with more than 45 cosponsors, would impose an annual 2% tax on the net worth of households and trusts exceeding $50 million, with an additional 1% surtax on wealth above $1 billion. To discourage tax avoidance through expatriation, it includes a 40% exit tax on any US resident worth more than $50 million who renounces citizenship.

The Billionaire Minimum Income Tax Act, promoted by Representatives Steve Cohen (D-TN), and Don Beyer (D-VA) would require households with a net worth exceeding $100 million to pay a minimum annual 25% tax rate on their full income—including unrealized capital gains. Under the current law, gains on assets that are never sold are simply never taxed; this bill closes that gap.

The ROBINHOOD Act—introduced by Representative Dan Goldman (D-NY), a multimillionaire who acknowledged the bill would raise his own taxes—targets the "buy, borrow, die" strategy directly, imposing a 20% excise tax on loans and lines of credit backed by capital assets such as stocks, bonds, and real estate. It is the most targeted legislative response yet to the borrowing-instead-of-selling loophole described above.

Crossing the Divide

A majority of working-class Trump supporters may already agree with the core of this agenda. Research suggests that more than half—53%—of white working-class Americans, a core MAGA constituency, believe the best way to grow the economy is to raise taxes on wealthy individuals and businesses and invest in education and infrastructure. A 2025 poll by The Working Class Project found that working-class voters overwhelmingly believe the GOP is looking out for the wealthy, billionaires, and big corporations—not them.

Researchers who study the MAGA coalition identify a significant segment they call "Anti-Elites"—voters who are genuinely suspicious of concentrated power, supportive of economic redistribution, and persuadable on tax policy. Both the California initiative and the national legislative push offer a rare opportunity to speak to these voters on their own terms. Why should a nurse or a truck driver pay a higher effective tax rate on their income than Mark Zuckerberg pays on his? Why should billionaires be able to borrow billions against untaxed stock gains while working families lose Medicaid?

Even millionaires stand to gain from a more sustainable economic environment. Morris Pearl, chair of the Patriotic Millionaires, is refreshingly candid about his motives: "Millionaires like me want less inequality because we and our families will be better off in a society with less economic disparity. I'm not any more altruistic than the next person—I'm just greedy for a different kind of country."

Now there's a form of greed that might actually do some good. The California ballot initiative, the cluster of bills in Congress, and the polling that reveals some political realignment—these are not isolated developments. They are pieces of a gathering challenge to four decades of upward redistribution. It might even be a gathering storm.

There is a dangerous myth embedded in the fight for reproductive justice: that the battle is solely about women, or even solely about those who can become pregnant. It is not. It is equally about men, especially those who hold power, and perhaps more critically, those who choose not to use it, because silence, in this moment, is not neutral. It is consequential.

Across the United States, reproductive rights are being dismantled by legislative bodies that remain overwhelmingly male. Men still make up roughly 73% of Congress, while some state legislatures, particularly those passing the most restrictive abortion bans, exceed 80% male representation. The result is accelerating policy built on distance: lawmakers regulating bodies they will never inhabit, consequences they will never personally endure.

As educator and activist Jackson Katz has long argued in his work, including his TED Talk “Violence Against Women, It’s a Men’s Issue,” gender-based injustices are too often framed as “women’s issues,” allowing men to disengage. Katz argues that the silence of men who consider themselves allies is itself part of the system that allows harm to continue. In the context of reproductive rights, that silence has had profound consequences.

And yet, there is a growing body of work challenging exactly this imbalance, calling attention to the role men play not just in policy, but in pregnancy itself. In Ejaculate Responsibly, author Gabrielle Blair reframes the abortion debate with striking clarity as an advocate for condoms and vasectomies; she says, “Women are expected to practice and learn how to use birth control, I don’t think it’s unrealistic to ask men to learn how to use their birth control options.” The premise is simple but often ignored: Pregnancy does not occur without male participation, and yet responsibility overwhelmingly falls on those who become pregnant.

This Father’s Day, men have a choice: to continue benefiting from silence and distance, or to finally recognize reproductive justice as their fight too.

Blair further notes that men are fertile continuously and capable of causing multiple pregnancies, while women and other people who can become pregnant have limited reproductive windows. Yet public policy overwhelmingly regulates the latter, not the former.

At the ground level, the Women’s Reproductive Rights Assistance Project (WRRAP) knows the human impact. Funding abortion care from coast to coast and working with more than 700 clinics nationwide, WRRAP supports thousands of patients each year, many navigating financial hardship, domestic instability, or complete abandonment by their partners.

WRRAP’s experience consistently reflects a painful pattern: Patients are often left carrying the financial burden alone after disclosing a pregnancy. Costs related to transportation, childcare, lodging, lost wages, and medical care frequently fall entirely on the pregnant person, even though pregnancy itself involves two people.

This is where the conversation about men must deepen, because while men are part of every pregnancy, they are often absent from its consequences. For WRRAP, 69% of patients have had their partner abandon them, placing the financial burden on the patient.

What would it look like if that changed? What if men were held financially accountable for pregnancies from the moment they occur, including the cost of abortion care? What if responsibility extended to ensuring that the pregnant person had the resources to make the decision that is right for them?

It is a question that exposes a fundamental inequity. The current system allows men, whether lawmakers or partners, to exert influence without bearing equivalent responsibility. They can legislate restrictions without experiencing the outcomes. They can disengage from pregnancies without absorbing the costs. And when they do neither, when they simply remain silent, the system continues unchecked.

The political reality is impossible to ignore. Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, more than 1,500 politicians, overwhelmingly male, have supported abortion bans or severe restrictions.

Meanwhile, public opinion data from Pew Research Center show that a majority of men support legal abortion access in at least some circumstances. Yet support in polling has not translated into sustained advocacy, organizing, or political pressure.

Katz’s work emphasizes that change requires more than awareness, it requires action. Men must see themselves not as peripheral to this issue, but as central to it. They must challenge harmful narratives in their own circles, advocate for policies that protect access, and support organizations like WRRAP doing the work.

Because reproductive justice is not just about access to care, it is about who bears the burden. Right now, that burden falls disproportionately on pregnant people: those navigating financial instability, healthcare barriers, social stigma, and abandonment, often without support.

If men are part of the equation, and they are, then they must also be part of the solution. Not quietly. Not passively. But visibly, vocally, and materially invested in the fight for reproductive justice.

This Father’s Day, men have a choice: to continue benefiting from silence and distance, or to finally recognize reproductive justice as their fight too through advocacy, accountability, and even shared responsibility for preventing pregnancy, including vasectomies.

This piece was provided by American Forum.

Back in 2012, over the course of two days, water, wind, and rain flooded my neighborhood.

At that time, I was living in the Baruch Houses on Manhattan's Lower East Side while working as a babysitter in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Unlike the families I was working for, my neighbors and I didn’t have the luxury of leaving our homes to seek refuge in a safe place. So we stayed.

That night I watched as a green flash cracked across the sky before everything went dark. I didn’t know it at the time, but I later came to find out the Con Edison plant just six minutes away from my building had exploded. The feeling of loss and fear that day didn’t just happen to me: Over 69,000 units were damaged and lost, thousands of New Yorkers were displaced.

Thirteen years later, these vulnerabilities revealed within our infrastructure still remain today, and with every major storm or heavy rainfall, our subways and homes continue to flood. Yet, with the new passage of the New York State Budget and the rollbacks on our climate goals, Albany has chosen to weaken key environmental commitments.

People that look like me pay for fossil fuels with our health, our safety, our democracy, and our children's right to a clean and healthy future.

While the budget still has some investments in clean energy, it also delays our committed climate benchmarks and measurements. Essentially, this budget moves us further away from the emissions goals we’ve legally bound ourselves to. Instead of focusing on meeting these goals already established under state law, Albany has chosen to move the goalposts.

Changing the ways in which we measure our emissions may make progress look better on paper, but it doesn't reduce the actual consequences of climate inaction.

For decades, communities that look like mine have felt the ramification of climate change more harshly. Oftentimes, these ramifications result in not just the physical terror like I and many experienced during Hurricane Sandy but can also manifest in poorer health outcomes.

The fossil fuel sector is literally choking us to death with no regard to how they contribute to the exacerbation of other conditions in my community. Fossil fuel consumption in New York City makes up for 70% of our local greenhouse gas emissions. It also causes around 2,400 premature deaths annually due to air pollution.

So, instead of moving the goalposts and relying on numbers that make our progress appear better on paper, Albany should focus on the investments that actually protect New Yorkers. And, even though with the recent announcement of the $100 million commitment for climate resiliency projects through the Environmental Bond Act is a step in the right direction, we still need to go even further by fully funding and accelerating the comprehensive flood protection plan. This includes the Lower Manhattan Coastal Resiliency Program aimed at strengthening flood resilience, modernizing infrastructure, and safeguarding our communities.

While we associate fossil fuel costs with our utility bills, people that look like me pay for fossil fuels with our health, our safety, our democracy, and our children's right to a clean and healthy future. We can not afford to sacrifice any longer or delay any further the commitment we made to reduce emission. As storms become stronger, and infrastructures continue to decay, the greatest impacts will be on forgotten neighborhoods like mine. And whether I’m elected to represent this district in Albany or not, I will continue to push for the funding we need to no longer live in survival mode every time a storm occurs.

As Congo faces the world’s third-largest Ebola outbreak, treatment centers have been attacked, masks and boots are running out, and entire communities are left vulnerable amid ongoing conflict and international neglect. This disaster is possible due to centuries of exploitation that amplifies the spread. The trail of inhumanity and structural violence is very scary and needs to end.

History shows that this country has been ravaged by colonial violence and foreign profiteering. Under King Leopold II of Belgium, an estimated 10 million Congolese people were murdered, mutilated, and terrorized as rubber and ivory were extracted for enormous profit. As a matter of policy and to enforce quotas, colonizers cut off limbs and heads.

Congo was also plundered by the transatlantic slave trade, which kidnapped, displaced, and enslaved millions of Congolese people.

Later, global demand for diamonds, gold, coltan, and other conflict minerals remade the region into a site of ongoing wars and labor exploitation. Much of this extraction still occurs through artisanal mining, a form of labor whereby individuals risk their lives to extract these valuable and raw natural resources under dangerous conditions.

The extreme situation in Congo did not develop in a vacuum; rather, it has formed from centuries of cruel and callous structural-based and enduring violence.

Cobalt, a rare and toxic metal essential to smartphones, electric vehicles, AI, and other technologies, reveals this contradiction at the center of our global economy. Our demand for these goods relies on the same brutal dynamics that have played out for centuries in this land: environmental harm, contamination of land and water, child labor, gender and sexual-based violence, and the exploitation of class under-resourced people of color in Congo. Wealthier people get the goods while the output biases in our systems of production allow us distance and plausible deniability in the face of untold suffering. When we look at our own commodity chains, the often hidden trails of our batteries and other electronic products in time and space before they got into our hands, we can trace many of our products to Congo. We are materially connected, whether we acknowledge it or not.

Congo has an estimated $24 trillion in untapped natural reserves. It is one of the most inherently valuable places on Earth. Yet, due to these longstanding and asymmetrical power relations, it is simultaneously extremely vulnerable. In 2020, 85.3% of the population in Congo lived on less than $3 a day. By 2026, projections estimate that fully 94.9% of the population will be at or below this international poverty threshold.

But, it doesn't have to be this way. We can do more than express fear and enforce travel bans and restrictions.

We can understand the Ebola outbreak as a medical crisis shaped by structural violence in which we are all complicit.

If we can recognize how we are connected to these systems, then we can take responsibility and action to change them. We can reinvest in funding the United Nations and support long-term healthcare infrastructure. We can become more socially and environmentally sustainable by holding corporations and governments accountable for exploitative labor and harmful environmental practices. We can demand more ethical and transparent supply chains. We can recognize that racism and environmental racism enable this disproportionate harm and take steps to do better. We can vote for people who have a world systems view, who understand that global trade, politics, and public health are connected. Leaders of this era need to understand that what we do, and how we do it, matter in life-and-death ways for people beyond our local contexts.

The extreme situation in Congo did not develop in a vacuum; rather, it has formed from centuries of cruel and callous structural-based and enduring violence. This cycle can end, if only we can align our shared values of more sustainable and equitable practices with our political will.

A virus with a potential mortality rate of 90% should concern us all. We should all fear and work to stop this outbreak. We should also be willing to fear and confront the conditions that enabled its devastation. And, we need to engage in the transformative justice required to facilitate sustainable social and environmental ways rather than those of depravity.

As I get older—my big eight-oh is virtually two months away—I find myself sloshing through my childhood, my awkward youth, with ever-increasing awe. I’m not talking so much about “memories” (that time I broke my finger playing football, let us say, or that crush I had on Patty in first grade), but something larger, quieter, less clear: moments of unexpected awareness.

These are moments of becoming. And they’re still with me. They’re still creating who I am, which is why I’ve decided to write about them again. I tossed a few of these moments out into the world a couple years ago, but since they’re still relevant to the world of today, I’ve decided to revisit them.

One such moment occurred after I had a punch-out with a friend after school. Then I bicycled home, with bruised knuckles, a torn pant leg. I parked the bike behind our house and as I dismounted, I felt consumed by an awareness I couldn’t shake off. Gosh, that was stupid.

Maybe fighting is part of kid life, but it’s also utterly valueless. I got hold of myself, calmed down... and decided I would never fight again. This wasn’t a flimsy, breakable rule I decided to impose on myself—you know, try to behave better—but something much, much bigger. In that moment, I claimed, well, partial agency over my own hot temper, and eventually beyond that: over the collective anger that had a grip on so much of the world. I decided I didn’t want to be a part of that anymore. This was well before I was in any way “political.” I was 11. I read the sports pages; that was it. But the stupidity of real-life fighting remained a scar on my psyche for the rest of my life.

Everyone is a genius. Everyone matters. We all have a unique perspective on the unknown.

When I was 13, I had another stunning moment of becoming. This one was far stranger, far less obvious. I hardly understood it. It was caused by a movie. The year was 1959. My mother, sister and I went to the local theater one Saturday afternoon and saw—I have no idea why—Imitation of Life. It wasn’t funny or cowboy-and-Indian exciting. It was a social drama about, for God’s sake, race: a black woman who works as a maid, whose daughter is light-skinned enough to pass as white and chooses to do so, separating herself from her mom.

I’m not sure if the movie is any good, but I did watch a small piece of it a few hours ago and was pulled deeply in. Indeed, I was shocked—the ending slashed my heart: At Annie’s, the mom’s, funeral, Sarah Jane, the estranged daughter, pushes through the crowd of mourners and clutches hold of the casket, crying for forgiveness. She had pushed her mom—who loved her dearly—out of her life so she could live as a white person. As she lies atop the casket, she cries, “I killed my mother.” And the movie ends.

As I say, I was 13. The civil rights movement had started up in the South, but I had no connection with it whatsoever. I was a teenage white boy living in an all-white suburb in the Midwest. I knew there were bad people around who did racist things, but what did that have to do with me?

So the movie hit me by surprise. I’m sure I had no emotional protection from its heart-cutting ending, nor did I have the ability to wrap it up mentally under the label “race,” stash it away, and move on. I was simply... well, troubled. And I’m sure we didn’t talk about it. We just headed home.

But then something happened—which had nothing to do with the movie. We had car trouble. Mom pulled into a garage so we could get the matter fixed. It apparently was not a big deal. They started working on it, and we just sat there waiting. I’m sure I was doing my best to put the movie and the emotions it stirred out of my mind, but there’s no doubt something deep had just opened in me. I didn’t know what.

The car was ready. We started driving home. And boing went my mental lightbulb. I had a thought, and the thought is beyond strange. It seems to have had no relationship to the movie per se, though apparently it emerged from the troubled confusion I was feeling. Even now it makes no sense. I silently told myself: I’m a genius.

Huh?

I can only guess what that meant, but I’m sure it had nothing to do with being measurably super-smart. Rather, somehow, I was suddenly aware... of God knows what. Perhaps the value of life. I had just seen over the edge of ordinary, over the edge of what we’re supposed to believe, into a deep unknown. I had seen beyond the answer to the question.

In retrospect, I believe this moment pushed my sense that I was a writer, and that life was mine to discover, not simply “be taught.” I also believe the takeaway from it was: Everyone is a genius. Everyone matters. We all have a unique perspective on the unknown. As I rode home with Mom and Sis, I clutched this like a precious stone, a blue pearl, perhaps, hovering in my psychic void.

And finally, three years later: Here’s me at age 16, about to have another moment of awareness—thanks to an encyclopedia salesman. Actually, I think it was just Volume A, which we got in the mail after joining a book-of-the-month club. Ever the eager learner, I started scrolling through the volume and came across a description of the book The Age of Reason, by Thomas Paine. I was intrigued, and on Saturday I went to the public library and checked out a copy.

I spent the rest of the day in bed and read the whole thing. Oh my God (so to speak). I had grown up in a churchgoing family and had never particularly questioned religion, but Paine’s critique of Christian theology hit me hard, in particular because I had also recently read the book Exodus, by Leon Uris—another book-of-the-month arrival. That book had opened my awareness of the creation of Israel (I’d no doubt get extremely frustrated with it today) and Jewish people in general. I knew nothing more about this than I did about civil rights, but I felt moved by Uris’ story.

And the two books in tandem opened up an awareness I couldn’t tolerate. According to what we’re told to believe, nonbelievers—that includes Jews, all of them—go to hell. In no way, no way, did I give any credence to this, and because I was the person in charge of my own beliefs, I immediately decided to leave the church. The next morning I told my mother, who was shattered. She also loved me dearly, and we struggled for years over this—and eventually our relationship transcended all theology. Our love for one another was bigger than that. And I began calling myself a “trans-believer”: curious about every religion, open to spiritual wisdom wherever it comes from.

And I couldn’t be happier, or more grateful, for these moments of awareness, which, as I wrote, are still creating me. And they support my core belief about life: All humans are created equal.

The mainstream media has no problem guesstimating the deaths (500,000) from the Assad Dictatorship’s Civil War in Syria, nor the estimated deaths in the wars in Ukraine, Sudan, or Iran.

Somehow, media editors do not let their investigative reporters assess the extent of Israel’s mass murder of civilians in Gaza—an exposed, defenseless population of 2.3 million people in an enclave the geographic size of Pennsylvania. The Associated Press notes that U.S. military historian Robert Pape believes, “Gaza is one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history” and that, “It now sits comfortably in the top quartile of the most devastating bombing campaigns ever.”

Why? One reason is that the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health certifies deaths in Gaza based on reports from hospitals and morgues that were mostly blown up well over a year ago. (They report presently around 73,000 fatalities.) But Hamas has admitted that there are tens of thousands of bodies under the rubble, thousands more blown into bits or incinerated and unidentifiable. They also say their figures do not include the collateral deaths (e.g., spreading fires) from the Israeli military F-16 bombings and relentless shelling of the people of Gaza or the deaths caused by the Israeli government-imposed blocking of food, medicine, healthcare, water, fuel, electricity and shelter. From other conflict zones around the world, the ratio of collateral deaths is anywhere from 3 to 13 times the deaths by violent weaponry.

The Israeli regime is fine with the Hamas undercount because they and the U.S. State Department know the real death toll (along with the injury count) is much, much higher. Hamas knows that on October 7, 2023, the multi-layered Israeli border security apparatus was shaky. They then launched what turned out to be a suicide-homicide assault over the border, resulting in some 1400 deaths as compared with the nearly 1200 people—about 400 of them soldiers and police—shot by the Hamas raiders. To this day, with most Israelis skeptical, Netanyahu has blocked an independent official investigation of the mysterious collapse of the multi-tiered Israeli border security complex.

Netanyahu attributes it to negligence. There were, however, too many separate warnings, including 24-hour Israeli spotters from the Israeli side, plus Israel having the Hamas plans a year earlier, to accept that improbable pretext.

Hamas, on the other hand, doesn’t mind the world media repeating again and again their minimal, identifiable death count. They certainly do not want the realistic estimate death count to further outrage their subjects because Hamas did not protect the civilian population, and did not have any air-raid shelters. Hamas certainly knew what was coming from the ultra-modern, savage Israeli military backed by co-belligerent Joe Biden’s U.S. ultra-modern and lethal military industrial complex.

There is another media reluctance operating. The reports by eyewitnesses, and scholarly and military weaponry specialists, who arrive at minimum and maximum ranges of deaths (most of whom are children and women) bring repulsive denunciations and charges of anti-Semitism.

Moreover, apologists for endless Israeli slaughter, like Bret Stephens, the mouthpiece of Netanyahu on the New York Timesopinion page, have used the low Hamas figures to counter charges of Israeli genocide. If it was genocide, they inaccurately claim, the death toll would be much higher. In 2025, two major Israeli human‑rights organizations – B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel – each issued reports concluding that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza (see reporting from Amnesty International).

Well, the death toll is much higher, over 600,000 lives destroyed or over 25% of Gaza’s original population. This leaves an improbable nearly 75% still alive, though most are sick, injured, or dying. Reporting reality would intensify the political, diplomatic, and civic determination to stop the killing, let in adequate humanitarian aid, and move toward resolving this conflict.

Analysts reported by The Lancet, international relief organizations, universities, and UN agencies all estimate hundreds of thousands of dead Palestinians from violent bombs, artillery, snipers, and the resultant, related secondary effects noted above.

For example, Professor Emeritus Paul Rogers of the University of Bradford in the UK, back in April 2025 estimated the tonnage of explosives dropped on Gaza was the equivalent of six Hiroshima bombs, but more lethal because these daily projectiles are more targeted. Tarek Loubani, a Canadian physician who has served tours of duty at crumbling Gaza hospitals, puts the estimate at “hundreds of thousands of dead.”

In a detailed, footnoted series of reports (“The Truth About Gaza’s Dead”), Feroze Sidhwa, an American trauma surgeon who worked in Gaza’s killing fields, has published much probative evidence by dozens of other health workers who experienced the ghastly horrors. These included the deliberate targeting by Israeli terrorist snipers of little children receiving bullets in their brains and hearts. (See Foreign doctors say Israel systematically targeting Gaza’s children: Report – Al Jazeera, September 14, 2025).

The recent report by Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, referred to a consensus of 680,000 deaths.

The respected chair of Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh, Professor Devi Sridhar, long ago was offering estimates far higher than those of Hamas.

The Hill reported that in November 2023, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf testified to a House committee that the actual number of Palestinians killed in Gaza was likely higher than the figures then being reported by Gaza health authorities at that time. She was immediately silenced and never again spoke about Israel’s genocidal casualties. The State Department has been blocking a Freedom of Information demand for two years.

The huge Israeli bloc in Congress, of course, has allowed no hearings on the toll made possible by deadly U.S. weapons (including shipping over white phosphorus artillery shells)— costing billions of dollars paid for by U.S. taxpayers. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have reported that Israel used white phosphorus munitions in military operations in Gaza and along the Israel–Lebanon border shortly after the October 7 Hamas attacks.

Reporters could have gotten informed assessments and estimates about the Israeli-inflicted carnage in Gaza from Doctors Without Borders, Save the Children, the World Central Kitchen, and other aid groups. Scores of infants and children in Gaza are dying every day from disease, malnutrition, and untreated injuries. There are no healthcare facilities for them. The shameful U.S. newspapers, magazines, television, and radio disrespect the Palestinians in both life and death, something they would never dare to do if the shoe were on the other foot!

Why aren’t brave reporters like Ryan Grim, Jeremy Scahill, Amy Goodman, and Sy Hersh looking deeply into the ghastly indifference to the undercount in Gaza? Truth and the mournful survivors need you!

President Donald Trump has baselessly claimed that there was fraud in California’s recent elections. The Department of Justice sent a federal prosecutor to observe ballot processing in Los Angeles, and the US attorney appointee has said there are “multiple election fraud investigations under way.”

These false allegations levied for years against our election systems by Trump are taking their toll on voters. New data find that Americans’ concerns about political violence, democratic participation, and safety at the polls remain alarmingly high.

This constant stoking of fears over nearly nonexistent voter fraud by Trump and other political figures is harming people’s faith in the system: 44% of Americans across the political spectrum are not confident that our elections will be free and fair, and 59% are now afraid of voter fraud either by ineligible individuals or election officials. People are afraid of each other.

Worse, voters are fearful of exercising their rights and have multiple concerns about involvement in the democratic process. In political situations, only 48% of respondents feel completely safe going to their polling place. Only 22% feel completely safe at events like political rallies and candidate forums, and only 17% feel completely safe attending a demonstration or protest. These numbers are alarming and speak to the lack of trust in our institutions and could be an indicator of significant unwillingness to participate in important aspects of our democratic processes.

When those people were asked who or what was to blame for the divisions, the top answer was President Trump and the Republican Party.

Most concerning is that a full 15% of voters would leave without voting if they witnessed or experienced harassment or intimidation at the polls. That includes 21% of Black people and 22% of Latinos compared with 11% of white people. And 19% of Gen Z and 23% of Millennials would leave. This obviously presents a challenge at a time when it’s imperative that young people are brought into the democratic process and their faith in the system is bolstered.

The Trump administration’s immigration crackdown is also stoking fear. A disturbing number, 33% of Americans, say they are very worried about future violent attacks by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), higher than fear of groups like the white supremacist Proud Boys at 26% or armed militias at 27%. When asked about an ICE attack, 70% of Black and Latino people reported being worried, while 49% of white people did so.

Of those who feel less safe than in 2022, mass shootings at 57% and general crime at 52% are the top two reasons, as would be expected, but continued political divisiveness is blamed by 51%, right behind crime. Tragically, 70% of Gen Z feel less safe because of mass shootings. And a third of respondents cite the cultural divides created by targeting specific groups as bad for the country. Another third blame fear of extreme right-wing groups as a reason for feeling less safe, compared with 17% who named fear of extreme left-wing groups.

At this moment, the political landscape of America seems to be one where acts of violence and unrest are expected. Furthermore, expectations of disruption, dispute of election results, and even the advent of another January 6 following the next presidential elections are high. Throughout the survey, people cited political and racial divides as areas of concern when it comes to fears and violence. When asked if our nation and people are as or more divided as we were at the Civil War, 69% said yes. The response was 68% four years ago.

And when those people were asked who or what was to blame for the divisions, the top answer was President Trump and the Republican Party. The number has risen to 52% in 2026 from 41% in 2022. Most significant are the changes in the Republican and Independent responses since 2022. Republicans reported a sharp increase from only 8% in 2022 to 19% in 2026 saying that Trump is to blame for the nation’s divided nature. And Independents went from 38% to 50% blaming Trump in 2026.

Given these fears, what can secretaries of state and election officials do to ensure voters feel safe exercising their rights? Well, there is one issue that is broadly agreed to by those polled: 68% of Americans fully support banning guns within 100 feet of polling stations, including 62% of gun owners. Black and Latino Americans report their greatest fear is others carrying guns at the polls. Today, 17 states have prohibitions on open and concealed carry of firearms at polling places and a total of 20 ban concealed carry. That’s up from 12 states in 2022.

Based on this alarming data, we recommended to secretaries of states across the country earlier this month that states:

• Ban all weapons in and around polling places;
• Communicate early and clearly plans and assurances that the elections will be fair and honest;
• Use the authority of the secretary of state offices to counter any misinformation about the elections;
• Communicate to the public instructions for what a voter should do if intimidated or harassed; and
• Reject any possible federal efforts to place ICE or other federal agents near the polls.

In addition to stopping the false election fraud narrative, taking these actions is critical to protect voters, especially as President Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) has not taken the usual steps to establish a “command center” to monitor and address the typical emergencies that pop up around Election Day, and which would address things like voter intimidation and targeted disinformation meant to interfere with a fair process.

The DOJ has also canceled election-integrity training sessions for prosecutors and FBI agents, deleted a 281-page guide to prosecuting elections offenses, fired most of the lawyers in its Public Integrity Section, and failed to replace the director of its Election Crimes Branch. It is up to state governments to fill the breach.

As a nurse educator and a psychiatric-mental health nurse, we have built our careers on evidence-based practice, ethics, and compassion when caring for patients. Politics never entered the picture. Our responsibility has always been to provide care guided by science, professional standards, and the individual needs of our patients, not political ideology or partisan priorities. That is why the Office of Management and Budget’s proposed rule, Docket OMB-2026-0034, which would hand healthcare funding decisions to political appointees, stops us cold.

At first glance, this proposal may sound administrative or technical. In reality, it would fundamentally alter how federally funded healthcare, nursing education, behavioral health programs, and scientific research are approved, monitored, and terminated. Under rule §200.340, any grant can be ended at any point if it no longer aligns with the priorities of the administration. That is not oversight. It is political control.

For nurses, the consequences would not be abstract. They would be immediate, personal, and dangerous for the patients we care for.

Psychiatric nursing already operates within a fragile system. Across the United States, communities face severe shortages of mental health professionals; long wait times for psychiatric care; rising suicide rates; surging substance use disorders; and escalating mental health crises among children, veterans, and older adults. Nurses are often the last line of support for patients who have nowhere else to go.

Healthcare funding decisions should be based on patient outcomes, workforce needs, public health evidence, and community impact, not whether a program aligns with the political priorities of whichever party holds power.

Every day, we talk with parents who are doing everything they can to find behavioral care for their children, but too often they feel frustrated and alone. Parents often share that they spend months calling providers, sitting on waitlists, and navigating insurance paperwork, all while trying to support their child through daily challenges at school and at home.

Hospitals are faced with the daunting task of finding inpatient services for patients in crisis. Sometimes the search for placement takes hours or even days, resulting in patients, many of them young people and the elderly, sitting in over-crowded emergency departments, waiting for care that may never come.

Many of the programs that train psychiatric nurses, support community mental health services, fund suicide prevention initiatives, and expand rural behavioral healthcare depend on federal grants and cooperative agreements. Under §200.205, the proposed OMB rule places a single political appointee in control over those funding decisions, with the power to override independent scientific and professional review.

This should alarm every American, regardless of political affiliation.

Healthcare funding decisions should be based on patient outcomes, workforce needs, public health evidence, and community impact, not whether a program aligns with the political priorities of whichever party holds power. Mental healthcare especially requires stability, continuity, and trust. When funding becomes politicized, patients inevitably suffer.

We are equally concerned about the chilling effect this rule would have on nursing schools and healthcare education programs. Federal support helps nursing programs prepare students to work in underserved communities, conduct behavioral health research, develop telepsychiatry services, and address disparities in care. Under §200.206 a political appointee could deny funding to any institution deemed “un-American,” a standard so vague it could be applied to programs addressing mental health disparities, harm reduction, or any work that falls outside current political favor.

We encourage nurses, educators, researchers, and the general public to join us and submit public comments on Docket OMB-2026-0034 before July 13, 2026, urging federal officials to reject these policies.

The proposed rule threatens the integrity of evidence-based practice itself. Nursing education is built on teaching students how to evaluate research critically, apply best practices, and advocate for patient-centered care. We cannot tell future nurses to “follow the science” while simultaneously allowing political officials to override scientific peer review and the expertise of those closest to patients.

We know what happens when systems become unstable. We witnessed it during the pandemic. Burnout rises. Staffing worsens. Experienced clinicians leave. Patients wait longer for care. Rural communities lose services first. One of us lived through the 2025 Southern California wildfires. Vulnerable populations suffer most. The mental health system was already stretched thin before the flames arrived.

This OMB proposal risks accelerating those exact outcomes.

Public trust in healthcare depends on the belief that medical and scientific decisions are guided by expertise rather than ideology. Once political influence is written into the structure of healthcare funding, that trust may never be fully restored. Mental health patients already fight stigma, long waits, and shrinking access to care. They should never have to wonder whether a political appointee is shaping the care available to them.

Nurses are educated to protect human dignity, promote health equity, and uphold evidence-based care. Those values do not change depending on which party controls Washington. They are foundational to the nursing profession and guide how nurses advocate for patients, families, and communities every single day.

The OMB proposal is framed as a restructuring of federal financial assistance, but for healthcare professionals on the ground, it represents something much larger: a deliberate shift away from independent expertise and toward political control over healthcare priorities. That does not strengthen nursing, mental healthcare, or public health. It dismantles all three.

We encourage nurses, educators, researchers, and the general public to join us and submit public comments on Docket OMB-2026-0034 before July 13, 2026, urging federal officials to reject these policies. If we allow political ideology to dictate which healthcare programs survive, which research is funded, and which communities receive support, we risk abandoning the very people the healthcare system exists to protect.

Nurses stand at the bedside of patients during their most vulnerable moments, regardless of politics, income, geography, or background. Federal healthcare policy should reflect a similar commitment. The future of mental healthcare, nursing education, and public trust in science depends on preserving independent, evidence-based decision-making free from political interference. Our patients deserve nothing less.

I was only an infant when my family slipped into a weathered wooden boat under the cover of darkness in 1978. Our journey across the mighty Mekong River was wrapped in an eerie, suffocating stillness as my parents, older brother, and I fled Laos. Whenever my mother recounts that night, she always ends with the same whispered awe: “It is a miracle you and Alex didn’t make a sound. I was terrified we wouldn’t make it.”

It would be decades before I fully grasped the terror of that treacherous crossing, the complex geopolitical forces at play, and the shared history between the US and my birth country that forced us out into the night.

I think of that river escape every year on World Refugee Day. It is a day to honor the immense courage of those forced to flee everything they know. For me, it is also a day that demands a deeply honest look at how we treat people once they arrive on our shores.

Following the violence that consumed Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam in 1975, millions fled, culminating in the largest refugee resettlement in American history. We arrived first through sponsorship programs, and later through the Refugee Act of 1980, laying new roots across the US. Today, our Southeast Asian American community has grown to over 3 million, with vibrant enclaves from California to Minnesota, and my home here in Ohio.

Instead of tearing families apart here at home, the United States must commit to fully funding the removal of unexploded ordnance in Laos until the job is done.

My family is one of the lucky ones. After years of hardship, Columbus welcomed us and helped us plant our roots. Today, I am full of gratitude for my parents' sacrifice, and we are proud to give back through family businesses we built and by serving on nonprofit boards like the annual Columbus Asian Festival and Legacies of War.

Not every story mirrors ours.

Many Southeast Asian refugees were resettled in severely under-resourced, over-policed neighborhoods without the support necessary to heal from the invisible, lingering wounds of war. Forced to navigate poverty and systemic barriers, some young refugees became entangled in the criminal justice system. Decades later—long after they have served their time, rehabilitated, and built families—they are being subjected to a cruel double punishment.

Since 1998, over 17,000 Southeast Asians have received deportation orders. Many have lived here for decades; the United States is their chosen home, and often the only home they have ever known. Once someone is deported, there is almost no way back, severing families permanently. These policies do not make America safer. They merely manufacture new trauma, uprooting lives all over again.

The tragic irony of these deportations is impossible to ignore. We are sending refugees back to a country still littered with the very weapons that drove their families into the dark to begin with.

Laos remains the most heavily bombed country per capita in history. From 1964 to 1973, in a covert effort to destroy traffic along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the US dropped at least 2.5 million tons of ordnance across 580,000 bombing missions. That is the equivalent of a planeload of bombs falling every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years. Even today, unexploded ordnance continues to claim civilian lives, with children making up over 60% of those harmed.

True accountability requires a different path. It requires cleaning up the remnants of war that America left behind in Laos and honoring the humanity of those who survived it. For decades, US programs have addressed these lasting legacies. These efforts not only save lives and support vulnerable communities, but they also bolster years of diplomatic progress in a region of immense strategic importance. Foreign aid is not charity—it is a strategic investment for our country. US assistance in Southeast Asia consistently garners bipartisan support precisely because it yields clear, tangible benefits: enhanced safety, economic stability, and strengthened bilateral cooperation.

Instead of tearing families apart here at home, the United States must commit to fully funding the removal of unexploded ordnance in Laos until the job is done. I urge members of Congress to join the UXO and Demining Caucus and support legislation like the Southeast Asian Deportation Relief Act. We must end this cycle of displacement and keep our communities whole.

The United States was forged by those seeking a better life. This enduring legacy is embodied by the Statue of Liberty, our "Mother of Exiles," who stands as a beacon of hope for people escaping persecution and war.

World Refugee Day was first celebrated 25 years ago. This year’s theme, "solidarity with refugees," calls on us to recognize that true compassion does not end at the border. It means standing by refugees as they build their lives, acknowledging the full weight of our shared past, and ensuring that no one who seeks refuge from danger is ever forced back into harm’s way.

Two years ago, the International Accountability Project, or IAP, first launched the Energy Finance Tracker, or EFT, and Energy Finance Tracker Report, as the accompanying analysis of energy investment trends between 2022 and 2023. The goal of EFT was to provide a tool for movements and communities to follow the money, hold 16 major development banks accountable for their role in the global energy transition, and push them to support priorities for a just energy transition. However, that direction looks less certain. As we dug deeper into the data from January 2024 to December 2025, we noticed that development banks still favor privatization and promote greenwashing and false solutions.

In just four years, EFT tracked 2,119 projects related to energy financing. We noticed a staggering increase in development bank funding toward energy projects, with total investment increasing from US$ 139.8 billion (as of December 2023) to US$ 304.3 billion (as of December 2025). However, we argue that this increase does not represent a victory for the climate and communities. Instead, we find that this capital is flowing into an increasingly privatized landscape. The share of public sector funding has slipped to just 30.1% (US$ 91.5 billion as of December 2025), as development banks increasingly prioritize private sector interests that now command nearly 69% (US$ 209.5 billion as of December 2025) of the total portfolio.

The EFT also tracked a surge in high-risk (Category A) projects, which jumped from 9.9% (92 projects as of December 2023) to 14% (297 projects as of December 2025) of total investments by development banks. We argue that this shows a dangerous trend where development banks accelerate large-scale energy infrastructures by sidelining environmental and social safeguards. Such a rush replicates extractive colonial models that promote greenwashing and false solutions, which bring harsher impacts on local communities’ livelihoods, lands, and resources.

A prime example is found in Brazil’s Alto Jequitinhonha region, where International Finance Corporation (IFC) has provided a US$ 155.64 million loan, complemented by up to US$ 117,2 million (€100 million) from other lenders, to expand Aperam BioEnergia’s large-scale eucalyptus plantations and charcoal production for the steel industry. While marketed as a “sustainable” project eligible for carbon credits, the operation of Aperam BioEnergia has been criticized as a “greenwashing” that functions more like an ecological desert than a forest. The expansion of this project impacts more than 30 local communities, including four Quilombola groups. These groups reported that the eucalyptus plantations strain and pollute their water sources, and further damage their health and traditional livelihoods. Beyond these human impacts, the project also causes significant biodiversity loss. Researchers have found that non-native eucalyptus monocultures are known to harm the local ecosystems they replace.

We believe that a just transition requires a shift to supporting decentralized, community-led renewable energy through direct grants rather than debt-intensive loans.

The preference for greenwashing and false solutions also still pertains elsewhere. Despite the severe harm and rising tensions reported by local communities, IDB Invest has proposed a US$ 150 million loan to AES Colombia and the oil company Ecopetrol SA for large-scale wind farm projects in the Upper and Middle Guajira region of Colombia. While framed as Colombia's just energy transition initiative, the project actively threatens the traditional livelihoods of the Indigenous Wayúu people and has proceeded without their Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC). IDB Invest is moving forward with this funding even though this negligence has caused dangerous levels of conflict. The Indigenous Wayúu people, who maintain deep spiritual and customary law over their lands, have made it clear how far they will go to protect their home. One community leader stated, “The Wayuu defend their territory with blood and death, if necessary.”

The threats to the region extend beyond wind farms, as La Guajira is also being designated as a hydrogen production hub to supply Europe with “green” fuel through the European Union’s Global Gateway program. This initiative has been criticized as neocolonial because it prioritizes European energy needs over local rights in a region that already suffers from some of the lowest energy access rates in Colombia. A community leader from the Indigenous Wayúu people, Eliel de Jesus Castillo, denounced the injustice by saying, “While large electricity projects are being installed in our territories, we have no energy in our homes.”

The words of Indigenous Wayúu leader Eliel de Jesus Castillo are a stark reminder for development banks, corporations, and governments that the current energy transition often perpetuates deep injustices against the very communities whose resources are being extracted. Instead of replicating extractive models, development banks must stop promoting false solutions that are implemented without community consultation, cause environmental damage, and lead to the further grabbing of local lands and resources.

We believe that a just transition requires a shift to supporting decentralized, community-led renewable energy through direct grants rather than debt-intensive loans. A successful example of this approach is found in Nepal, where a local initiative supported by the Community Empowerment and Social Justice Network (CEMSOJ) developed a community-based renewable energy project for the Indigenous Tamang and Chepang communities. Additionally, it is also evident in Malaysia.

We further believe that a just transition can finally serve the people it claims to help by prioritizing the voices of those promoting climate justice and being community led. If the system continues to favor corporate profit over human rights and the environment, we are forced to ask: Whose transition is it anyway? Because at the end of the day, the word “just” before transition means changes must ensure that the “whole of society is brought along in the pivot to a net-zero future,” rather than shifting power into the hands of a few.

For the past year, the Trump administration has undertaken a lethal campaign of strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, killing at least 200 people. It could soon gain a major new ally in this fight in Colombia, where the leading candidate in Sunday's presidential elections has promised to break with his dovish predecessor and wage an all-out war on drug trafficking.

As a regional war on drugs takes shape, there is no better time to ask the question: is a military campaign really the most effective way to stop the flow of narcotics from Latin America?

My new Quincy Institute brief addresses this question head-on, finding that the White House’s militarized “war on narco-terror” across the hemisphere is unlikely to produce durable results. In its place, I recommend a concrete road map for sustainably reducing Colombian coca production and cocaine trafficking to the US.

An analysis of 25 years of evidence since the the passage of the multi-billion dollar Plan Colombia aid package reveals that a winning strategy for fighting drug trafficking must bolster state presence, rural development, and the rule of law in drug-producing areas; sequence manual eradication campaigns alongside legally enforceable negotiations with some armed groups; and tackle more profitable nodes of drug supply chains while countering illicit financial flows.

Colombia—where over two-thirds of the world’s cocaine, and 90% of cocaine that enters the US, is produced—forms the nucleus of the Andean drug trade and is by far Washington’s’ most important counternarcotics partner in the Western Hemisphere. Yet nearly $15 billion in US security, counternarcotics and development assistance over the past quarter century has largely failed to curtail Colombia’s cocaine economy, which is now witnessing all-time highs in hectares under cultivation and potential production.

Past strategies, such as aerial fumigation with glyphosate, which was banned in Colombia in 2015, significantly reduced coca crop coverage in the early 2000s but failed to halt production. As farmers became more productive and adaptive, cultivation shifted to Peru, and the chemicals sprayed left indelible harm on the environment and public health.

Surges in US military aid, particularly under the aegis of Plan Patriota, led to the professionalization of Colombian security forces, improved their aerial and intelligence capabilities, and brought the FARC guerillas to the negotiating table. But this approach also fueled instability near military bases — as extrajudicial killings by security forces and paramilitary violence rose to unprecedented levels — and failed to meet its counternarcotics objectives.

The “kingpin strategy,” meanwhile, focused on extraditions of drug bosses. This tactic, which soared under President Alvaro Uribe as he sought to demobilize Colombia’s largest paramilitary organization and has continued to this day, has produced the fragmentation, expansion and specialization of newer criminal outfits, contributing to increased cocaine production as groups devised new trafficking routes and illicit rents to exploit, from gold mining to extortion, kidnapping, wildlife trafficking, and human smuggling.

Other approaches, however, have proved more successful and are correlated with modest declines in coca cultivation, potential cocaine production, and trafficking to the US, particularly in the late 2000s and following the signing of the 2016 peace accords between the government and the FARC.

The strongest recipe for slowing the drug trade has focused on incentivizing viable economic alternatives to coca and reducing the power and influence of illicit armed actors. Under initiatives like the Plan de Consolidación Integral de la Macarena, Familias Guardabosques, and Colombia Transforma, Colombian authorities have boosted state presence, invested in rural development, and bolstered rule of law in drug-producing areas, all while maintaining a credible security posture focused on improving public safety.

A complementary approach involves manual coca eradication campaigns. While time consuming and sometimes risky for communities and security forces alike, these efforts have proven effective when sequenced by first establishing police presence and investing in productive infrastructure and services before forcibly — or, ideally, voluntarily — uprooting coca plants. When combined with strategically designed and legally binding, enforceable negotiations with some armed actors in localized settings — as the administration of President Gustavo Petro has pursued more recently as its Total Peace plan flounders — this approach can incentivize armed groups to pursue industrial-scale eradication themselves. They do this by tying non-compliance to credible threats of targeted offensives.

Lastly, later-stage drug interdictions, increased inspections of larger vessels, and enhanced regulatory integration and coordination against money laundering and other illicit financial flows are essential for stemming cocaine trafficking to the US and disrupting the global networks underpinning it. Fortunately, this approach continues to occur alongside the expensive, legally questionable, and likely ineffective boat strike campaign, which could explain why even top administration officials admit it’s “not the answer … [or] the most effective tool."

These lessons have clear implications for Colombia’s next president and US drug policy moving forward. A balanced strategy is bound to yield more favorable outcomes for both left-wing candidate Iván Cepeda, who seeks to follow Petro’s negotiations with armed actors and voluntary illicit crop substitution programs, and right-wing candidate Abelardo de la Espriella, who seeks to accelerate low-level arrests and increase the military’s role in targeting drug production and trafficking.

To date, neither the left’s hesitation to implement a credible supply-side counternarcotics agenda nor the right’s militarized approach to curbing coca cultivation has led to durable results. In fact, the lack of a viable, well-articulated strategy strengthens the hand of irregular armed actors, exacerbates a deteriorating security landscape across the country, and gives the Trump administration greater leverage to dictate its preferred approaches, regardless of their empirically poor outcomes.

Despite the US administration’s insistence on applying “systemic friction” to designated foreign terrorist organizations across the hemisphere, this overly militarized strategy is already leading groups to adapt to new illicit industries, divert trafficking routes, diversify economic portfolios, and expand operations to new subregions, resorting to more covert and asymmetrical forms of violence against states and competitors, as a recent surge in drone activity in Colombia has shown.

Aside from proving woefully ineffective at reducing drug production and trafficking, Washington’s militarized campaign, carried out in conjunction with regional governments, also risks increasing extrajudicial killings of unarmed civilians, fueling insurrectionary and anti-US sentiment, undermining the rule of law across the hemisphere, and reversing years of progress in Latin America’s fraught civil-military relations.

Ultimately, without credible government presence, viable economic opportunities, and even rudimentary judicial institutions in drug-producing subregions throughout Colombia and elsewhere in Latin America, illicit economies and the irregular armed actors feeding off them will persist, regardless of military pressure.

Raiding artisanal drug labs, fumigating small-scale farmers or extraditing kingpins have not proved particularly significant in advancing durable policy outcomes. And there’s little evidence to show that bombing alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean or Eastern Pacific will work either, despite some Trump administration officials’ claims.

Assisting our Colombian partners in formulating a credible security posture against armed non-state actors is crucial to US counternarcotics goals. But in tandem with this approach, we must seek to safeguard development assistance for coca-growing communities; sequence manual eradication campaigns with prior investment in infrastructure; boost interdictions of more valuable drug supply; and counter impunity and corruption by political and business elites.

Colombia’s high-stakes presidential elections could well accelerate a remilitarization of the regional drug war. It is therefore urgent that analysts and officials evaluate the effectiveness of diverse counternarcotics strategies in Colombia over the past quarter century. If reducing the flow of drugs to the US is truly the Trump administration’s objective, then US officials must learn from decades of failure and chart a new course.

On June 15, Immigration and Customs Enforcement released new rules governing immigration jails intended to “streamline requirements” and “reduce the burden on our detention operators.”

The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that during the revision process, The GEO Group, one of the biggest private prison firms in the country, requested that ICE make changes that would benefit its businesses and court cases.

The GEO Group has significant ties with the Trump administration. It was a major donor to President Donald Trump’s 2025 inaugural fund and Trump-aligned super PAC. In 2025, they spent more than $3.6 million on lobbying expenditures. Perhaps most importantly two of Trump’s top immigration officials—Border Czar Tom Homan and Acting Director of ICE David Venturella—were previously employed by them.

In a statement, ICE claimed it “consulted with a variety of stakeholders, including facility operators responsible for implementing the standards,” and “considered that input” during the revision process. The end result, however, is a series of policies that overwhelmingly benefit private prisons.

Detention centers have always been inhumane institutions by design. Under Trump, they are becoming even worse.

This includes: first, clarifying that detainees “are not considered facility and/or government employees and are not entitled to wages or benefits.” This effectively eliminates a prior rule that stipulated that detainees “shall receive monetary compensation of not less than $1.00 per day for work completed.”

That change alone is a major win for private prisons. The GEO Group has faced multiple lawsuits for violating minimum wage laws. In 2023, the Washington Supreme Court ordered the company to pay $17.3 million to hundreds of detainees in back pay.

By designating detainees as non-employees, ICE is providing private prisons with the legal excuse needed to engage in even more egregious wage theft.

Second, the new guidelines specify that detention centers do not “have a right of refusal for any ICE detainee that ICE decides to detain.” As such, they will likely be forced to admit people who are severely ill or injured, regardless of whether they are able to provide appropriate medical care.

A related rule change notes that “in cases where a detainee has medical or mental health needs that exceed the capabilities of the facility, the facility shall notify ICE and request a transfer.” This process may take days—time that a detainee with a life-threatening condition may not have. To date, at least 50 people have died in ICE detention since the start of Trump’s mass deportation campaign in January 2025.

Notably, last year, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funneled $10 billion through the Navy to accelerate the construction of new detention centers that could house as many as 10,000 people each. Under the Navy’s terms, contractors building and staffing those new facilities do not have a “right of refusal and shall take all referrals from ICE as applicable.” ICE’s new guidelines expand that “right of refusal” to existing immigration centers.

This sets a dangerous precedent at a time when more US citizens are being swept up in ICE’s immigration raids. This includes people like Dulce Consuelo Diaz Moralez, a US-born citizen, who was wrongfully imprisoned by ICE for 25 days late last year. Denying detention centers a “right of refusal” will likely protect them from any lawsuits resulting from US citizens arrested and held by ICE.

Third, detention centers are permitted to use “machine learning-based translation or generative AI” for “non-critical communication (i.e., those of moderate importance, urgency, or significance) or during informal interactions with detainees.” This includes “reviewing and responding to a detainee’s non-English grievance or other request related to basic issues/concerns within detention.”

As Dr. Homer Venters, an expert on correctional healthcare, remarks, such grievances often include “very urgent or even emergent information such as when a patient has been denied lifesaving care.”

Many detainees have reported that guards routinely ignore their pleas for medical care and assistance. In May 2026 at The GEO Group-operated Delaney Hall, one detainee, Elder Guerra, suffered a seizure after falling and hitting the back of his head. It was only after detainees begged that guards finally called an ambulance for him. According to his relative, Guerra’s condition continues to worsen.

Substituting human translators with AI provides guards with a built-in excuse for their lack of responsiveness. Going forward, they can simply claim that the translation tool failed to communicate the urgency of their request, which led to inaction on their part.

After all, such tools are far from infallible. For instance, volunteers with Respond Crisis Translation, an organization that offers human translation and interpretation services for migrants and refugees, described a case where a woman seeking asylum due to domestic abuse used the phrase “mi jefe” to describe her father—a common colloquialism in her country. The AI tool translated the phrase literally as “my boss,” and her application was denied.

The basic problem is that machine learning algorithms are trained on datasets consisting of whatever is most represented in digital sources. While there are over 7,000 languages and dialects spoken worldwide, the vast majority of digital content is written in English, French, German, Spanish, Mandarin, and Russian. This limitation means that AI tools will be far more prone to error when it comes to translating idioms from underrepresented parts of the world as well as underrepresented languages, such as Wolof or Hausa.

Given that the new guidelines do not require any form of human oversight for AI translations, if the AI makes a mistake (and it will), that error may never be corrected. What’s more, if that error has serious consequences for a detainee, it’s unclear who, if anyone, would be held responsible.

ICE claims that it is constantly reevaluating its detention centers “to ensure we are providing the best care to illegal aliens in our custody.” And yet, while there have been hunger and labor strikes at three The GEO Group-operated immigration jails within the last three months, none of the new guidelines address those systematic failures.

This is not surprising, however. Since Trump retook office, DHS has eliminated and restricted oversight, while also rescinding regulations meant to hold detention operators responsible for their mistreatment of detainees. On June 4, ICE announced it will no longer investigate or report the deaths of those who have been recently released from their custody. This move is meant to absolve ICE of responsibility for the deaths of people like Daphy Michel. A medical examiner said Michel, a Haitian asylum-seeker, was “suffering from untreated severe mental health issues and a significant language barrier.” Despite this, ICE agents released her 25 miles away from Pittsburgh in the middle of winter without a coat or any regard for how she would get home. She died of hypothermia three days later.

Neither DHS, The GEO Group, nor any private prison firm care whatsoever about the health and well-being of detainees. On June 8, The GEO Group filed a lawsuit against Colorado challenging a new law that requires them to always have medical and mental health professionals available at their detention facilities. It is currently being sued by the state of New Jersey for refusing to allow its Department of Health to conduct a full inspection of Delaney Hall.

These new guidelines are a gift for private prison companies. By lowering standards across the board, ICE is empowering them to more thoroughly exploit detainees without fear of legal ramifications.

Detention centers have always been inhumane institutions by design. Under Trump, they are becoming even worse. There is only one viable solution here: abolish detention centers; abolish ICE.