“This is going to be great television.”

But it wasn’t great. It was tragic. U.S. President Donald Trump’s comment at the conclusion of his unprecedented public outburst directed toward Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy marked a milestone in a momentous week: Trump’s “America First” agenda became “America Alone… with Russia.”

Trump and Vice President JD Vance shouted at Zelenskyy—a beleaguered wartime leader struggling to defend his democratic nation against Russia’s invasion. They scolded him for not thanking Trump, who slowed to a trickle the flow of American weapons to Ukraine.

In rejecting Trump’s request, Zelenskyy joined Trump’s list of “enemies.” To get even, Trump is now helping Russia negotiate what it could not achieve after three years on the battlefield: the conquest of Ukraine.

Russian leaders could not hide their glee. On social media, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev posted: “The insolent pig finally got a proper slap down in the Oval Office. And @realDonaldTrump is right: The Kiev regime is ‘gambling with WWIII.’”

Democracies throughout the world rallied around Zelenskyy.

A Useful Idiot Throws a Tantrum

In the 1930s, Soviet President Joseph Stalin referred to Westerners who supported him as “useful idiots.” That description understates Trump’s value to Putin. Far beyond the praise that Trump lavishes on other dictators, Trump parrots Russian propaganda and ignores these facts:

• Russia invaded Ukraine, making it a victim of unlawful Russian aggression and alleged war crimes. But Trump claims falsely that Ukraine “started” the war.

• In 2019, Zelenskyy won a landslide victory with 73% of the vote in a free and fair democratic election. Russia’s 2022 invasion resulted in martial law, which made future Ukraine elections during wartime impossible. But Trump repeats another false Putin talking point that Zelenskyy is an illegitimate leader—a “dictator without elections.”

• Zelenskyy has an approval rating in Ukraine exceeding 50%. But contrary to the evidence, Trump says that it’s only 4%. He’s pushing Putin’s positions aimed at excluding Zelenskyy from settlement negotiations and destabilizing Ukraine: “I don’t think he’s very important to be at meetings,” Trump said in a February 21, 2025 Fox News interview. “He has no cards, and you get sick of it… And I’ve had it.”

Why has Trump turned against Zelenskyy and toward Putin? Observers say that it reflects Trump’s “transactional” approach. But that’s too benign. More likely explanations are that Trump is: 1) beholden to Putin, and 2) vindictive toward Zelenskyy.

Trump Owes Putin

Commentators have largely ignored the passages that are key to understanding Trump’s tirade.

“Putin went through a hell of a lot with me,” Trump told Zelenskyy.

“With me” is the key. In Trump’s mind, he and Putin together suffered through investigations into Russian election interference. As Trump explained, “He went through a phony witch hunt where they used him and Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia. You ever hear of that deal? That was a phony… And he had to go through that. And he did go through it. We didn’t end up in a war. And he went through it. He was accused of all that stuff. He had nothing to do with it.”

By adopting Putin’s positions, Trump and Vance have destroyed any leverage that Ukraine, Europe, or the U.S. had in negotiating a resolution of the war.

The truth is that Putin had everything “to do with it” and “went through” nothing, except perhaps delight when his candidate won the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Special counsel Robert Mueller and the Senate Intelligence Committee found that Russia wanted Trump to win and took steps to achieve that outcome. To this day, the factual findings remain unrebutted.

Russian intelligence officers hacked Democratic National Committee computer systems and spread disinformation on social media. Communications between the Trump campaign and Russians were numerous and frequent. And when members of the Russian parliament learned of Trump’s victory, they burst into applause.

But Trump is still pushing the lie that investigating Russian interference was a “witch hunt.”

For Trump, Everything is Personal

Another explanation for Trump’s explosion was six years in the making. Shortly after 9:00 am on July 25, 2019, Trump asked Zelenskyy for a “favor:” If Ukraine opened an investigation into Hunter Biden’s dealings in the country and thereby tarnished the likely Democratic presidential candidate, Joe Biden, Trump would release previously appropriated U.S. military aid.

Zelenskyy refused. Eventually, Trump was impeached over what he falsely described as his “perfect call” with Zelenskyy. And Biden won the 2020 election.

In rejecting Trump’s request, Zelenskyy joined Trump’s list of “enemies.” To get even, Trump is now helping Russia negotiate what it could not achieve after three years on the battlefield: the conquest of Ukraine.

For Trump, retribution was a no-brainer. He could please Putin while getting even with Zelenskyy. A two-fer.

Carrying Putin Across the Finish Line

Trump has told Zelenskyy to end the war on Putin’s terms or else. He “better move fast or he’s not going to have any country left,” Trump warned.

Vance relished his role as Trump’s attack dog. He asserted that Trump’s diplomacy would end the war and berated Zelenskyy for not thanking Trump. Zelenskyy responded with Putin’s track record of breaking prior diplomatic agreements and asked, “What kind of diplomacy, JD, are you speaking about?”

“I’m talking about the kind of diplomacy that's going to end the destruction of your country,” Vance said smugly. But he was actually referring to the kind of diplomacy that emboldens Putin’s self-proclaimed effort to recreate the Russian empire through brute force.

By adopting Putin’s positions, Trump and Vance have destroyed any leverage that Ukraine, Europe, or the U.S. had in negotiating a resolution of the war. Specifically, those positions include:

• Ukraine cannot join NATO;
• Ukraine must cede permanently portions of Ukraine that Russia has captured;
• Economic sanctions that are crippling Russia’s economy should be removed; and
• America should side with Russia against democracy—as it did on February 24 when the U.S. voted against a United Nations resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Ninety-three nations—including America’s most loyal allies—voted in favor of the resolution.

The Danger of Useful Idiots in High Places

Like a child with arrested development, Trump doesn’t care about the larger consequences of his actions. He has no global strategy for retaining democracy’s friends or resisting its foes. His goals in Ukraine are to help Putin and to humiliate Zelenskyy. The fact that he will make the world a more dangerous place does not factor into his limited thinking.

When asked whether sacrificing Ukraine would undermine European security, the NATO alliance, and America’s national interests, Trump said that the “big, beautiful ocean” would protect us. That strategy might have worked in the 18th century; it’s an absurd approach to protecting America today.

Apologists for authoritarians are nothing new. But now Putin’s most useful idiot ever occupies the Oval Office. Fear and personal ambition have caused Republicans in the legislative branch to abandon their constitutional responsibility to check him.

Only six weeks after Trump’s inauguration, the results for America and the world are already catastrophic.

It will get worse.

In 2015, writer Adrian Bott famously tweeted: “‘I never thought leopards would eat MY face,’ sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party.” This went viral, coining the phrase, “Leopards ate my face.” It’s so tempting to mock people who act against their own interests such as Trump voters.

Many people voted for Trump due to their perception of economic self-interest, as MAGA promised to restore America's economy and national pride after recent hardships. Additionally, Trump's charismatic leadership and the appeal of his nationalist and anti-woke rhetoric attracted widespread support among various segments of the population.

Wait, no. That’s my paraphrased analysis of how Adolph Hitler rose to power. I substituted Trump for Hitler, MAGA for Nazi Party, America for Germany, and woke for communist. I couldn’t resist. My bad. You can find the original source: How Did Adolf Hitler Happen? on the National WWII Museum website.

So how did Trump rise to power? In a November 13, 2024 article entitled What Trump supporters believe and expect, the Pew Research Center reported “[T]he economy was the most important issue for Trump voters this year. In a September survey, 93% said it was very important to their vote. Immigration ranked second, as 82% said it was very important to their vote.”

Many people voted for Trump due to his lies about immigration and the economy. He and his team effectively tricked people into believing that he would effectively address these issues. This, because his supporters see him as a decisive leader who would change America.

According to the same Pew Research article, among Trump voters: “92% believed that biological sex is not mutable. Just 7% said a person can be a man or woman even if that is different from the sex they were assigned at birth. 89% said gun ownership does more to increase than decrease safety. 83% viewed the criminal justice system as not tough enough on criminals. 75% did not think the legacy of slavery affects the position of Black people in American society today much or at all.”

So not all that much different from Hitler’s rise to power. Trump’s voters are already learning to their dismay that Trump’s fascistic attacks on trans people, immigrants, women, and minorities won’t do anything to help anyone.

Trump’s frantic dismantling of government and mass firing of public servants—including veterans—harm these essential government employees immediately. This anarchic frenzy will hurt all of us eventually, including Trump voters. His regressive, reckless policies certainly won’t lower the price of eggs which are far more likely to infect people with food borne diseases now that Trump fired inspectors charged with keeping our food safe.

Any way forward against fascism must repudiate faux populism by championing inclusive economic policies—such as a 21st Century Economic Bill of Rights based on FDR’s Second Bill of Rights.

Many Trump voters already realize that their lives are getting worse, not better, due to Trump’s assaults on education, science, health, and nearly every other essential government service. We may feel compelled to say, “We told you so!” to Trump voters and even to other people who didn’t vote for Kamala Harris. That’s understandable, perhaps unavoidable, but I think it makes more sense to commiserate with them. After all, so many of them already lament Trump’s eating their faces off.

After we commiserate, we could listen to Trump voters and others, learn why they voted the way they did. We could urge them to vote for better candidates to cure the harms their vote caused. If that prospect disgusts you, then we could consider learning from interviews with Trump voters and public opinion polling instead.

We could engage with persuadable Trump voters and persuade them to vote for candidates courageous enough to stand up to oligarchs and corporatists. We could listen to and learn from those who rejected Kamala Harris. Trump voters, Jill Stein voters, and those who stayed home have valid views about the weaknesses of Democratic candidates and policies. After we listen to them, we could ask them to help us make the Democratic Party better.

Alan Minsky explained how and why this makes sense as a viable theory of change in his article, Our 2 Choices: Join the Democratic Party to Transform It, or Acquiesce to Fascism published by Common Dreams last month. Minsky wrote, “Because of the structure of American society and politics, the Democratic Party is the only institution positioned to challenge, defeat, and reverse the Trump administration’s ongoing destruction of our constitutional order.”

Of course this prescription involves a powerful mass movement working inside and outside of the Democratic Party. This, to effectuate an evolution in the Party to reject neoliberal economics in favor of an enlightened economics of inclusion. One that fits neatly beside, rather than works at cross purposes, with the Democratic Party’s commitment to social inclusion. Good economic policy has always been good politics.

Alan Minsky added a post script, “The one thing I think I should have added—and which I will add at the top of my next essay—is that the Democratic Party right now is flat on its back. Now is not the time for progressives to abandon the party.”

Make no mistake, Trump’s economic policies elevate special interests and oligarchs above the needs of every day Americans at least as much as any other neoliberal scams. Also, as mentioned, Trump’s style of identity politics is at least as cynical as any Democrat’s. Much worse, Trump’s demagoguery instigates death threats, stochastic terrorism, and violence. Most notably the January 6th attacks against the U.S. Capitol seeking to halt the peaceful transfer of power after Trump lost the 2020 election.

Yes, they voted for Trump. Yes, Trump is eating their faces. Yes, we may feel an almost irresistible urge to wipe what’s left of their noses in the rotten fruits of their folly. That won’t help beat back Trump’s fascism or help us win elections.

Asad Haider, author of Mistaken Identity: Race and Class in the Age of Trump (Verso 2018), wrote a commentary published in Salon entitled Despite his loss, Bernie Sanders' campaign proved that organizing around class interests works. Haider explained, “First and foremost, liberals are constantly worried about people ‘voting against their interests.’ ... According to a certain liberal common sense, working class voters are continually supporting Republicans, against ‘interests’ which haven't yet been defined.”

I estimate that between a fourth and a third of voters actually believe that scapegoating and harming immigrants, minorities, women, disabled people—aka Trump’s anti-woke, anti-DEI attacks—are in their interests. Of course they’re wrong. Still, it may well be extremely time consuming and difficult to deprogram them and free them from their hatefulness.

That said, reaching out to such people with an economic message might help begin a constructive conversation, or it may not. Calling them “deplorable” etc. gains us little more than a feeling of moral superiority. Cold comfort for people subjected to Trump’s ruthless predation, including almost all of them and us sooner or later.

By my calculus, at least two thirds of voters remain open to listening to a progressive agenda. In fact, they’re eager to support candidates and policies that center the economic needs of the poor, the working class, and the increasingly insecure middle class. This, in a marked repudiation of Carter-Clinton-Obama-Biden neoliberal policies that favor greed and power of the economic elite over the vast majority of Americans.

Bernie Sanders proved outreach based on economic imperatives works. In an article entitled Bernie Sanders influenced US politics more than any other failed presidential candidate in the country's history published in 2020 by Business Insider, John Haltiwanger wrote:

His push for Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, and tuition-free college, among other policies aimed at eradicating inequality, has set the tone for the future of the party. This is evident via young leaders such as Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who volunteered on Sanders' campaign in 2016 before going on to win a shocking victory in the 2018 midterms.

Haltiwanger added, “Sanders has also set a new standard in the way campaigns raise money, rejecting high-dollar fundraisers while building a massive grassroots movement via small-dollar donations.”

Failing to make a Bernie Sanders-style economic appeal to voters, candidates running as Democrats keep ceding the high ground on economic inclusiveness. Trump took advantage of this failure. Other faux populists will continue doing so as well.

By running on identity rather than kitchen table issues, neoliberal Democrats squander political advantages on economics, the most important issues for many if not most voters. Candidates may shy away from inclusive economics, hoping to secure generous campaign contributions from oligarchs and elites.

In any case, the dismal results of this utterly failed approach speak for themselves. No amount of slick television ads or performative inclusion can overcome the stench of duplicitous neoliberal policies. Voters reject these broken promises. Bad economic policy remains bad politics.

Diversity, inclusion, and equity remain essential. That understood, absent a clear parallel commitment to economic inclusion, candidates relying on to DEI may appear out of touch. Worse, tokenism and other hollowly symbolic identity politics alienates increasingly cynical voters. This, including poor, working class, and middle class voters of all ethnicities, across all demographics.

Decades of bipartisan neoliberal repudiation of New Deal economic policies set the stage for Trump’s faux populism. Generations of Democrats’ failure to offer a competing inclusive economic vision opened the door for Trump’s fascism. This dismal dynamic creates an opportunity for a people-centered policy advocates. As Trump eats their faces, his voters are more likely to support proven effective progressive solutions to our shared challenges.

So-called “centrist” Democrats may try to camouflage their rob from the poor to enrich the rich policies behind a cheap and increasingly cynical strategy focusing on identity politics. That tactic isn’t working. Not as politics, nor as policy.

This approach keeps failing so spectacularly that I find it hard to imagine it’s any kind of accident. I blame million dollar a month consultants whose allegiance lies with billionaire benefactors. Their advice consistently prevents Democratic political victories. They must know this. Their income depends on it.

We can and will continue making social progress, and we must struggle for a more perfect union, no matter the backlash, and no matter how long it takes.

Overpaid pundits would rather lose to fascists like Trump than win by backing progressives like Bernie Sanders, A.O.C., and the rest of The Squad. So should people abandon the Democratic Party? As mentioned, Alan Minsky addressed that dilemma in his Common Dreams article Our 2 Choices: Join the Democratic Party to Transform It, or Acquiesce to Fascism.

Bernie eschewed high priced consultants and relied on small donations. This lets Sanders and other progressive candidates shake off shackles of campaign contributions with strings attached, freeing them to advocate for policies that benefit everyone—not just the wealthiest elite. This is important.

Any way forward against fascism must repudiate faux populism by championing inclusive economic policies—such as a 21st Century Economic Bill of Rights based on FDR’s Second Bill of Rights. Alan Minsky and Professor Harvey J. Kaye wrote about this in their February 2022 Common Dreams article entitled A Call for All Progressive Candidates and Officeholders to Embrace a 21st Century Economic Bill of Rights.

Melding economic and social policies, Minsky and Kaye wrote, “We must guarantee all people residing in the United States the right to the essentials of a good life regardless of their income, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or country of origin.”

It’s true. People of color, immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, disabled people, and other Trump targets disproportionately suffer from neoliberal economic neglect. Promising people equal access to college means nothing when we can’t afford to feed ourselves or our loved ones, heat our homes, or even pay the rent—much less pay for tuition, books, room, and board.

Sadly, trying to impose enlightenment on an unwilling majority usually backfires. Trump’s two electoral victories, along with appallingly sweeping victories by hate-mongers like Ron DeSantis prove these points.

We can and will continue making social progress, and we must struggle for a more perfect union, no matter the backlash, and no matter how long it takes. As Dr. King said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

I hope those of us who warned against Project 2025 and the rest of the Trump wrought wreckage will extend an empathetic hand of welcome to all those who voted for Trump or failed to vote against him.

Progress toward economic and social justice makes winning culture wars more likely. By contrast, failure to address the economic needs of the majority makes social progress impossible. As the decades of New Deal coalition domination of U.S. politics proved, we can win elections and win over swing voters by addressing their economic needs. Bernie Sanders showed that the New Deal resonates as well today as it did from the 1930s all the way into the 1960s.

I hope those of us who warned against Project 2025 and the rest of the Trump wrought wreckage will extend an empathetic hand of welcome to all those who voted for Trump or failed to vote against him. This, in order to reclaim and remake the Democratic Party into a people’s party worth of the name. I hope this happens sooner rather than later.

Yes, they voted for Trump. Yes, Trump is eating their faces. Yes, we may feel an almost irresistible urge to wipe what’s left of their noses in the rotten fruits of their folly. That won’t help beat back Trump’s fascism or help us win elections. We’re better off offering the increasing numbers of repentant Trump voters a sweeping, common sense set of solutions to their economic woes. They’re our woes too.

An income tax rate of over 100% would be hard for anyone to sustain. At a rate a smidge over 100%, our deepest pockets might be able to get by if they drew down their wealth or borrowed against it. But keeping up, year in and year out, with an income tax rate of over 1,000%, 10 times income? That seems, on its face, totally implausible.

Yet the Washington, D.C.-based Tax Foundation would have us believe Warren Buffett did just that for at least five years running, all while enormously growing his own personal wealth.

This conclusion about Buffett’s tax situation emerges inescapably out of the claims the Tax Foundation makes in a research paper published just after last year’s November election. The paper’s title—America’s Super Rich Pay Super Amounts of Taxes, New Treasury Report Finds—could hardly lay out the Tax Foundation’s case more starkly.

Shareholders don’t pay corporate income tax obligations. Corporations do, from their corporate income.

But did the U.S. Department of the Treasury report the Tax Foundation paper references actually make such a finding? No, not even close.

The Treasury report does analyze the total tax payments of rich and ultra-rich taxpayers relative to their wealth. The report’s writers, all highly respected economists, took into account every tax that impacts a person’s wealth, directly or indirectly. One example: A corporate shareholder bears no personal responsibility for the payment of a corporation’s income tax. But the Treasury report attributes a proportionate share of that corporate tax to shareholders since corporate taxes reduce the value of shareholders’ holdings and, consequently, their wealth.

The Tax Foundation took this Treasury analysis of total tax payments by wealthy taxpayers and proceeded to blindly compare those payments to these taxpayers’ adjusted gross incomes. That comparison enables the Tax Foundation to insist, among other claims, that the nation’s richest 0.0001% of taxpayers are paying 58% of their adjusted gross incomes in taxes.

I didn’t find this specious Tax Foundation logic particularly surprising, given that I’ve commented in the past on the specious logic that runs through other Tax Foundation studies. But this new Tax Foundation paper vividly exposes how accepting the foundation’s logic and applying that logic to real life produces results so absurd that they demand some in-depth illumination.

Which brings us back to Mr. Buffett. Thanks to reporting by the independent news outlet ProPublica and publicly available information on the income tax payments of Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett’s corporate investment base, we have considerable data on Buffett’s adjusted personal gross income, his ownership interest in Berkshire Hathaway from 2014 through 2018, and the income tax payments Berkshire made in each of those years.

We don’t have full information about Buffett’s other tax obligations, but let’s assume those obligations amounted to zero, since any additional payments would only have driven Buffett’s effective tax rate, according to the Tax Foundation’s methodology, even higher.

Warren Buffett’s ownership interest in Berkshire Hathaway—as reported in SEC filings for the years 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018—amounted to 20.5% that first year, 19.6% the next, and then 18.7%, 17.9%, and 17.2% the last three.

According to the data service macrotrends, Berkshire Hathaway’s income tax payments minus refunds for those years totaled $7.9 billion in 2014, $10.5 billion in 2015, and $9.2 billion in 2016 before sinking into refund territory in both 2017 and 2018, with $21.5 billion in refunds the first of those two years and $321 million the second.

Applying the Tax Foundation’s methodology would attribute to Buffett a share of Berkshire’s taxes paid—and refunds received—by multiplying his ownership stake in the corporation for each of the years by the corporate tax payment made or refund received for that year. Doing the math, Buffett ends up with a personal tax liability from Berkshire of over $1.5 billion.

That figure tops by more than 10 times Buffett’s adjusted personal gross income of $125 million for that same period, according to a ProPublica review of IRS records. The bottom line: All these numbers that we get applying the Tax Foundation’s methodology bring Buffett’s effective personal income tax rate to just over 1,200%.

And Buffett would end up having paid taxes at that rate, according to the Tax Foundation methodology, at a time when Berkshire’s income tax payments, net of refunds, were running relatively low. In 2017, the massive hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria had Berkshire’s insurance businesses incurring huge losses. Without those losses, and the tax refunds resulting from them, Buffett’s effective personal tax rate—according to the Tax Foundation methodology—would have topped over 4,000%!

Impossible? Of course. So what sleight of hand is the Tax Foundation playing here? Corporate income tax payments do reduce the wealth of their shareholders. Attributing a share of those tax payments to shareholders, as the original Treasury Department study does, makes eminent sense. But shareholders don’t pay corporate income tax obligations. Corporations do, from their corporate income. The Tax Foundation, for its part, doesn’t attribute corporate income to shareholders. It only attributes corporate tax.

By taking into account corporate taxes while ignoring corporate income, the Tax Foundation’s methodology drives up effective income tax rates for the super rich only because these rich happen to own a massive amount of corporate stock. We can better understand the dynamics at play here by considering the tax situations of business owners far from billionaire status.

Consider this comparison: Taxpayers A and B each own a profitable business that generates $49,999 of income in 2025. They each reinvest all business profits in their businesses, living off the savings they have sitting in tax-exempt bonds. A and B each have $1 of other income. A, who owns his business directly, reports the profits on his personal tax return, along with his dollar of other income, and pays $10,500 in tax. His effective tax rate is 21%.

B, who owns her business through a corporation, reports the profits on the corporation’s tax return, and the corporation pays $10,500 in tax. Since B’s own adjusted gross income is just one dollar, B’s effective tax rate according to the Tax Foundation would be 1,050,000%, 50,000 times A’s effective tax rate.

In its reporting, ProPublica also considered Warren Buffett’s effective income tax rate. Taking his personal federal income tax payments as a percentage of his true economic income, including the $24.3 billion increase in his wealth between 2014 and 2018, ProPublica determined his effective income tax rate to be 0.1%. Quite a far cry from 1,200%.

Before the Super Bowl brought global attention and hundreds of thousands of visitors to New Orleans in February, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry cleared out over 100 unhoused people from downtown, busing them to an unheated warehouse miles away.

In our community of Indianapolis, advocates fear similar clear outs will happen when a planned city shelter outside the downtown area is finished.

Which makes me think of Stanley Milgram and Bryan Stevenson.

“On that fifth day, the weather was very cold and rainy. All I could think about was the young dad and his son without a home, with a job disrupted, and the young boy missing school.”

Milgram was the Yale University psychologist who conducted the famous experiments in the 1960s that showed a disturbing willingness of study participants to follow orders to administer what they thought were powerful electric shocks to other study participants.

The unsettling results remain widely known. But one component of Milgram’s experiments is less often discussed: The study participants were far less likely to administer the shocks if they could hear or see the victims of their actions.

Milgram used the word “proximity” to describe that variable. Which is the same term that Bryan Stevenson uses when he describes how we can change the world.

Stevenson is the attorney behind the book Just Mercy and the film of the same name, and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative. Stevenson traces his lifelong devotion to ending mass incarceration and promoting racial justice back to an event when he was still a law student. While interning for a human rights organization, Stevenson was assigned to go to a maximum-security prison in Georgia and deliver some procedural case news to a man on death row.

But the planned brief meeting turned into a three-hour deep, wide-ranging conversation. At the end of his time with Stevenson, the prisoner sang the hymn, “I’m Pressing on the Upward Way.”

Which launched Stevenson on his lifelong trajectory devoted to seeking justice. “It’s because I got close enough to a condemned man to hear his song,” he says. “When you get proximate, you hear the songs. And those melodies in those songs will empower you, they will inspire you, and they will teach you what doing justice and loving mercy is all about.”

What Gov. Jeff Landry, Stanley Milgram, and Bryan Stevenson can all tell us is this: The closer we get to the millions of people who are facing evictions or already unhoused, the more likely we are to be motivated to do something about it.

Carolyn Kingen can tell us that, too.

A retired critical care cardiac nurse, Kingen in 2020 joined some of her fellow members of the Meridian Street United Methodist Church in Indianapolis for a book study group that chose to read Matthew Desmond’s Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. After reading and talking about the horrors of our nation’s eviction crisis, where 3.6 million households face forced removal from their homes each year, the group decided to see for themselves.

On one of Kingen’s first visits to eviction court, she heard a father of a seven-year-old boy explain to the judge that he had fallen behind on rent because he had not received expected overtime pay from his job. But, the father said, the overtime boost would be coming through in his next paycheck, which was arriving in a week. He could catch up on rent then, and pay late fees too.

The judge, unmoved, ordered the family to be evicted within five days. “The entire case lasted three or four minutes,” Kingen recalls. “In those few minutes, the decision was made that an employed father and mother had to pack their belongings and get out.”

“On that fifth day, the weather was very cold and rainy. All I could think about was the young dad and his son without a home, with a job disrupted, and the young boy missing school.”

“I Could Be That Tenant”

Experiences like this spurred Kingen and the book group to create a Housing Justice Task Force in their church, and then join with other congregations of different faiths to create the Indiana Eviction Justice Network. I teach a law school clinic where my students and I represent people facing eviction in the same area. I can attest that the presence of court watchers changes the tenor of the proceedings, ramping up the respect paid to tenants facing the loss of their homes.

And the eviction court watchers go beyond the doors of the courtrooms. They take the proximity-provided lessons and use them to advocate with elected officials and the judges themselves. Rabbi Aaron Spiegel, who as director of the Greater Indianapolis Multifaith Alliance coordinates the court-watching program, connects the volunteers with lawmakers to push for housing reforms like mediation before eviction orders, sealings of past eviction records, living wages, and more and better affordable housing.

“Court watchers often know more about systemic housing issues than the elected officials they are talking to,” Spiegel says. Earlier this year, court watchers mobilized to lobby Indiana legislators in opposition to a bill that would have criminalized sleeping in public spaces. Last month, the legislation was withdrawn by its sponsor.

Court proceedings are open to the public, and several other communities across the country, in places like Greensboro, North Carolina; Houston, and Chicago, have court-watching programs, often connected to justice advocacy.

Kingen and many of the other court watchers are motivated by their faith or moral principles. “We are called to care for the poor, the orphans, widows—and in today’s society, we would include any group that is shunned or rejected,” she says. “I try to see Christ in the faces of every person I meet.”

Rabbi Spiegel says this same call to action crosses faith and moral traditions. “All religious traditions teach that we must take care of the ‘least among us’ and as such, housing is a human right,” he says.

The proximity Carolyn Kingen experiences in court allows her to see in those facing eviction not just the divine but herself as well. Kingen recalls a time when she could not pay her rent, but was fortunate enough to have a family member step up to help. “Each time I court watch, I try to remind myself that I could be that tenant appearing before the judge,” she says.

Placing herself in the shoes of those facing homelessness is far easier to do when she can be in the same room and hear their stories, Kingen says. Court proceedings are open to the public, and several other communities across the country, in places like Greensboro, North Carolina; Houston, and Chicago, have court-watching programs, often connected to justice advocacy.

Check and see if there is a program in your community. And if there isn’t, maybe consider helping start one yourself.

Full details are yet to emerge of the “peace plan” that the UK, EU and Ukrainian leaders worked out in London on Sunday, and are to present to the Trump administration. But from what they have said so far, while one part is necessary and even essential, another is obstructive and potentially disastrous.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said after the summit that the following four points were agreed: To keep providing military aid to Ukraine; that Ukraine must participate in all peace talks; that European states will aim to deter any future Russian invasion of Ukraine; and that they will form a "coalition of the willing" to defend Ukraine and guarantee peace there in future.

This, Starmer said, would mean a European “peacekeeping” force including British troops. However, he has previously said that it would be essential for the U.S. to provide a security “backstop” for such a force. In other words, after all the talk of Europe “stepping up” and the need for European security “independence” from the Washington, this would in fact make Europe even more dependent on Washington, because it would put European troops in an extremely dangerous situation from which (not for the first time) they would expect the U.S. to save them in case of trouble.

While negotiations continue, so should existing levels of Western military aid, for otherwise the Russian government may be emboldened to reject any reasonable compromise. The Russian government has however repeatedly rejected any peacekeeping force including troops from NATO countries, which for Moscow is simply the equivalent of NATO membership. Trying to insert this into a proposed peace settlement is therefore either pointless or a deliberate attempt to derail the negotiations.

There is also a risk that the Ukrainian leadership (which, as Friday’s clash with Trump demonstrated, is prey to some very serious illusions about its position) may be emboldened to reject a compromise peace, and thereby end up with a very much worse one.

The idea that a powerful Western military force is also necessary to “guarantee” a peace settlement against future Russian aggression is moreover based on the fundamental misconception that there can be in international affairs any such thing as an absolute and permanent “guarantee.”

My colleagues George Beebe, Mark Episkopos and I discuss the actual terms of a settlement in a new brief, “Peace Through Strength: Sources of US Leverage in Negotiations.”

Those terms that Russia could accept and that would provide reasonable hope of enduring peace are the following: Firstly, that Ukraine should continue to receive from the West and help to produce the defensive weapons with which they have so far fought the Russian army almost to a standstill and inflicted very heavy casualties: drones, anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles, landmines, 155 mm howitzers and the ammunition for them. Long-range missiles capable of striking deep into Russian territory should be excluded as part of the peace settlement, but with the proviso that the West would of course provide them if Russia resumed the war.

Secondly, there should be a United Nations peacekeeping force with soldiers drawn from genuinely neutral states from the “Global South.” Russia calls these countries “the Global Majority” and has made reaching out to them a central part of its international strategy. Several are also fellow members of the BRICS group. Indian, Brazilian and South African peacekeepers would not be able to defeat a new Russian invasion (or a Ukrainian resumption of the war) — but Moscow would be deeply unwilling to risk killing them.

Finally, and obviously, a stable peace settlement must be one that meets enough of Russia’s, and Ukraine’s, essential conditions. If they cannot be made minimally compatible, there will be no settlement. It is however utterly pointless for European leaders to go on imagining that a peace can somehow be imposed on the Russian government, and not negotiated with it. They should pay heed when Secretary of State Marco Rubio says that peace can only come to Ukraine if Putin is involved in the negotiations, and that Trump "is the only person on Earth who has any chance whatsoever of bringing him to a table to see what it is he would be willing to end the war on."

The behavior of the European governments is shaped by a belief in limitless Russian territorial ambition, hostility to the West, and reckless aggression that if genuinely held, would seem to make any pursuit of peace utterly pointless. The only sensible Western strategy would be to cripple or destroy Russia as a state — the only problem being, as Trump has stated, that this would probably lead to World War III and the end of civilization.

“There has almost always been an outright hostility that is shown towards people of the Christian faith,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said on a podcast recently. He was talking with Tony Perkins, a former Louisiana lawmaker and president of the Family Research Council, about freedom of religion and the actions of the second Trump administration.

I have to admit that such a statement from this country’s third most powerful politician and an avowed Christian nationalist almost takes my breath away. Of all the people facing hostility, discrimination, and violence now and throughout history, Christians like Mike Johnson rank low on the list. Still, his comment is consistent with a disturbing religious trend in the country right now.

As an early act of his second administration, President Donald Trump has created an anti-Christian bias task force to be chaired by Attorney General Pam Bondi. At the same time, he’s slashing federal jobs and programs, threatening Medicaid, Head Start, the Department of Education, affordable housing programs, accommodations for the disabled, environmental protections, public health and safety, Social Security, and Medicare, while scapegoating immigrants and trans kids. It’s particularly ironic that Trump, Johnson, and the people with them in the top echelons of power are targeting those that the Bible is most concerned about—children, the poor, immigrants, the sick and disabled, women, the vulnerable, and the Earth itself. Meanwhile, Elon Musk, the richest man ever to exist, who has built his wealth off exploiting the poor, goes so far as to call the impoverished “parasites.” After all, there are more than 2,000 biblical passages that speak about protecting the vulnerable, offering good news to the poor, stewarding God’s creation, and bringing judgment down upon those with wealth and power who make people suffer.

The Christian nationalism, exceptionalism, and white supremacy ascendant in Trump 2.0 has evolved from a long genealogy that has enabled an elite strata of mostly white Christian men to rule society and amass enormous wealth and power throughout American history.

Pope Francis himself has weighed in on the regressive policies and posture of the current administration. To America’s bishops he wrote, “The true common good is promoted when society and government, with creativity and strict respect for the rights of all—as I have affirmed on numerous occasions—welcomes, protects, promotes, and integrates the most fragile, unprotected, and vulnerable.” Indeed, if any Christians are under attack right now, it’s those included in what liberation theologians have called “God’s preferential option for the poor” (the very creation for whom God has special love and care) and those standing up with and for them.

The Pope hasn’t been the only one to challenge the use of religion in the Trump administration. Since the inauguration, the actions of Johnson, Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and others have been opposed and decried by people of faith of many persuasions. Remember Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde imploring President Trump to show mercy, especially to immigrants and LGBTQ+ people, at the Inaugural Prayer Service at the Washington National Cathedral? Since her gentle reminder that the Bible teaches love, truth, and mercy, she has received regular and credible death threats on a daily basis, even as people have also flocked to the cathedral and other houses of worship in search of moral leaders willing to stand up to the bullying tactics of Donald Trump, the richest man on earth Elon Musk, and their cronies.

In response to Trump’s threats of mass detention and deportation, especially removing “sensitive sites” status from houses of worship, schools, and hospitals, while threatening “sanctuary cities” with a loss of federal funding, 27 religious groups have sued the Trump administration for infringement of their religious liberty to honor and worship God by loving their immigrant neighbors. Kelsi Corkran, a lawyer with the Georgetown University Law Center’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection and lead counsel in that lawsuit, said that plaintiffs joined the suit “because their scripture, teaching, and traditions offer irrefutable unanimity on their religious obligation to embrace and serve the refugees, asylum-seekers, and immigrants in their midst without regard to documentation or legal status.”

Faith leaders are coming together to support and protect transgender and nonbinary people now under attack by the Trump administration as well. My colleagues Aaron Scott and Moses Hernandez-McGavin recently penned an article for Religion News Service where they affirmed the dignity of LGBTQ+ people, even as Christian nationalists continue to build their influence and power by damning LGBTQ+ communities, all while claiming to protect children and traditional family values. “Gender diversity,” they wrote,

is a fact of human existence older than Scripture and is thoroughly attested to in the Bible. Jesus’ teaching about eunuchs in the Gospel of Matthew makes clear there are human beings who exist outside of the gender binary from birth, as well as those who live outside the gender binary “for the sake of the kingdom.” In the story of the Ethiopian eunuch’s baptism, the Book of Acts lifts up the spiritual leadership of gender nonconforming people of African descent. In the Hebrew Bible’s Book of Isaiah, God affirms not only the sanctity but the spiritual importance of people outside the gender binary, promising us “a name better than sons and daughters.”… The Talmud reflects this affirmation of gender diversity, recognizing no fewer than seven genders.A Battle for the Bible in History

The battle of theologies taking place right now is anything but a new phenomenon, even if it’s at an inflection point, with life-and-death consequences for our democracy, Christianity itself, and those who are God’s greatest concern. The Christian nationalism, exceptionalism, and white supremacy ascendant in Trump 2.0 has evolved from a long genealogy that has enabled an elite strata of mostly white Christian men to rule society and amass enormous wealth and power throughout American history.

Such Christians have always anointed themselves with the lie of divine righteousness, while insisting that they are God’s chosen representatives on Earth. To maintain this charade, they have brandished the Bible like a cudgel, bludgeoning poor people, people of color, the Indigenous, women, LGBTQ+ people, and others with tales of their supposed sinfulness meant to distract, demean, divide, and dispossess. Therefore, if we are truly serious about confronting and countering the influence of such an authoritarian version of Christianity under Trump, Vance, Johnson, and their associates and followers, we must learn from how it’s been wielded (and challenged) in other times in history.

The roots of such idolatry reach back centuries, even before the founding of this nation, to the conquest of Indigenous lands by European invaders. In 1493, after Spain first sent its ships to islands in the Caribbean, Pope Alexander VI issued the Doctrine of Discovery, a series of papal bulls granting all newly “discovered” lands to their Christian conquerors. Those church documents asserted the supposed “godlessness” of Indigenous peoples, smoothing over the ruthless colonial campaign of extermination being waged with a veneer of moral virtue. Centuries later, the idea of “manifest destiny” drew on the same religious underpinnings as the Doctrine of Discovery, popularizing the belief that white Christians were destined by God to control and therefore redeem the lands of the West. Manifest destiny not only valorized the violence of westward expansion but sanctified and made exceptional the emerging project of American imperialism. God, the argument went, had chosen this nation to be a beacon of hope, a city upon a hill for the whole world.

Today, while the Trump administration continues to unveil new attacks daily on what the Bible calls, “the least of these,” it’s important to remember the prophetic tradition of faith leaders of the past as well as the heroic, if often unnoticed, moral organizing happening now.

Alongside the dispossession and attempted extermination of Indigenous peoples, invocations of God and the Bible were used to justify the enslavement of African peoples and their descendants. Slaveholders cherry-picked passages from the book of Ephesians—“slaves obey your earthly masters”—and lines from other epistles of the Apostle Paul to claim that slavery was ordained by God. They ripped out of the pages on the Exodus from Egypt, huge sections of the prophets, and even Jesus’ inaugural sermon praising the poor and dispossessed from the Bibles they gave to their enslaved workers. Those “Slave Bibles” would serve as evidence of just how dangerous the unadulterated gospel was to the legitimacy of the slaveholding planter class.

They also twisted theology to serve their political needs by obscuring the common interests of enslaved Black workers and poor Southern whites. Readings of the Bible that claimed God had singled out Black people for slave labor helped the Southern ruling class turn many of the region’s majority of poor whites into zealous defenders of a system that relegated them to marginal lands and poverty wages.

After the fall of the Confederacy, the Bible remained core to the new racialized divide-and-conquer system in the South. Pro-segregationist preachers, no longer able to use the Bible to defend slavery per se, turned to stories like the Tower of Babel to claim that God desired racial segregation and abhorred intermarriage across racial lines. In 1954, Baptist preacher Carey Daniel wrote a pamphlet entitled God the Original Segregationist in which he explained: “When first He separated the Black race from the white and lighter skinned races He did not simply put them in different parts of town. He did not even put them in different towns or states. Nay, He did not even put them in adjoining countries.” The pamphlet was distributed widely by White Citizens’ Councils and sold more than a million copies.

Parallel to the theological justifications for the system of segregation that came to be known as Jim Crow, a national theology of industrial capitalism emerged in the late 1800s and early 1900s. During the Gilded Age, a prosperity gospel and its theology of muscular Christianity flourished among the white upper class. Amid the excesses of the Second Industrial Revolution, they celebrated their own hard work and moral rectitude and bemoaned the personal failings of the poor. When the economic bubble finally burst in 1929 with the Great Depression and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal ushered in an unprecedented era of financial regulation and labor protection, the nation’s corporate class turned once again to the church to fight back and put a stamp of approval on its free-market aspirations.

As historian Kevin Kruse writes in One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America, in the 1930s and 1940s, “corporate titans enlisted conservative clergymen in an effort to promote new political arguments embodied in the phrase ‘freedom under God.’ As the private correspondence and public claims of the men leading this charge make clear, this new ideology was designed to defeat the state power its architects feared most—not the Soviet regime in Moscow, but Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal administration in Washington. With ample funding from major corporations, prominent industrialists, and business lobbies such as the National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in the 1930s and 1940s, these new evangelists for free enterprise promoted a vision best characterized as ‘Christian libertarianism.’”

The phrase “freedom under God” captures the tension at the heart of the long battle over the Bible in this country in which there have always been two diametrically opposed visions of freedom: on one side, the freedom of the vast majority of the people to enjoy the fruits of their labor and live with dignity and self-determination; on the other side, the freedom of the wealthy to control society, sow division, and hoard the planet’s (and in Elon Musk’s case, the galaxy’s) abundance for themselves. Poor people, disproportionately poor people of color, have always been on the front lines of this battle, as both canaries in the coal mine and prophetic leaders. Think of it this way in the age of Trump: As their lives go, so goes the nation.

Ordo Amoris and Other Theologies of the Day

This age-old debate is playing out in JD Vance’s recent statement about “ordo amoris” (or “rightly-ordered love“). Weighing in on cutting both domestic and global aid as well as scapegoating immigrants, the vice president wrote on social media, “You love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country. And then after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.”

Pope Francis offered a fitting rebuttal to Vance’s statement and the actions of the second Trump administration by summing up its deeply heretical nature and echoing a historic prophetic tradition of increasing importance again today. In his letter to the American bishops, urging them to reject Vance’s theology of isolationism and egotism, Pope Francis wrote, “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups. In other words: the human person is not a mere individual, relatively expansive, with some philanthropic feelings! The human person is a subject with dignity who, through the constitutive relationship with all, especially with the poorest, can gradually mature in his identity and vocation. The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan’ (cf. Lk 10:25-37), that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”

As this statement from the Pope reminds us, history is replete with examples of people from many religions who have grounded their struggles for justice in the holy word and the spirit of God, not just extremists trying to claim and justify their lust for power and avarice for wealth. Abolitionists, suffragists, labor organizers, student protestors, civil rights leaders, and various representatives of poor and oppressed people have insisted that divinity cannot be reduced to private matters of the soul and salvation. They have affirmed that truth, love, and justice, starting with the most vulnerable and marginalized, are what matter the most to God. They have insisted that the worship of God must be concerned with the building of a society in which all life is cared for and treated with dignity. In every previous era, there were courageous people for whom protest and public action were a form of prayer, even as the religious leaders and institutions of their day hid behind sanctuary walls—walls currently being torn down again to release forces devastating to the most vulnerable among us and to the planet itself.

Today, while the Trump administration continues to unveil new attacks daily on what the Bible calls, “the least of these,” it’s important to remember the prophetic tradition of faith leaders of the past as well as the heroic, if often unnoticed, moral organizing happening now. I return to my colleagues Aaron Scott and Moses Hernandez-McGavin who sum up the sentiment of many people of faith in our society today: “God’s love and truth are alive whether elected officials seek to legislate them out of existence or not. God’s Word continues to call for justice and mercy for all people regardless of the distortions of the Word by religious and political leaders obsessed with the worship of their own power. They are not God. And God will not, and cannot, be stopped.“

As they conclude, offering a message of hope and encouragement in these dark and dangerous days: “God’s liberating action will break through in this world through the steadfast work and witness of people of goodwill who are beholden to a higher law, who refuse to comply with unjust executive orders, who continue to defend the vulnerable against abuses of the powerful in courtrooms and school buildings and hospitals and in the streets across the country.”

The question then is: In the second age of Donald Trump, which side will you choose?

Donald Trump and Elon Musk keep claiming that their scorched-earth approach to remaking the federal government is made necessary by the prevalence of fraud and waste. Musk’s DOGE attack-squad tabulates its progress on a Wall of Receipts that currently purports to have saved Uncle Sam $65 billion.

That number appears to have been plucked out of thin air. The savings for the 2,300 individual contracts listed on the site add up to only $9.6 billion, and even that amount is shaky. For example, the single biggest savings, $1.9 billion, is attached to a Treasury Department contract that is reported to have ended during the Biden Administration.

DOGE gives no details of any fraud it may have found in the contracts. That is not surprising, since it is impossible to have done a careful examination of that many contracts in such a short amount of time.

Large numbers of the contracts are linked to agencies the Trump Administration is in the process of dismantling. USAID accounts for 246 contracts with total purported savings of $4.2 billion. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has 404 listings with savings of $109 million. The Education Department, reported to be headed for the chopping block, has 119 contracts with supposed savings of $659 million.

What we see in DOGE is instead the illusion of an attack on corruption that serves as a smokescreen for the Trump Administration’s scheme to dismantle large portions of the federal government.

It seems clear DOGE targeted those contracts because of the agency involved, not any evidence of misconduct. Among the remaining 769 contracts, there are many that seem to be targeted for ideological reasons. They include numerous awards whose descriptions refer to now-taboo areas such as DEI or environmental justice.

There are more than 100 listings for subscriptions, especially for expensive services such as Politico, Bloomberg Law, and Lexis Nexis. Those may not always be worth the cost, but there is nothing corrupt about the need for an agency to have good access to information.

Then there are listings for contracts that have not gone into effect. The second biggest saving amount, $318 million, is attached to an Office of Personnel Management pre-award. How can there be fraud when there is no contractor yet?

DOGE’s list also contains numerous entries with obvious errors. These include instances in which there are two links pointing to different contract awards, making it unclear which one is meant to be included. For example, there is a $149 million savings connected both to a contractor called Advanced Automation Technologies Inc. (for three assistants) and to Airgas USA for refrigerated liquid gases.

By pointing to DOGE’s sloppy work, I do not mean to deny the existence of contract fraud. The problem is that Musk’s people, whether through ignorance or design, are looking in the wrong places. They seem to be ignoring the types of large contractors that have repeatedly been found to have cheated federal agencies.

The classic examples are the big weapons producers. As of now, DOGE lists only $8 million in savings from Defense Department contracts—and those are mainly from DEI awards and subscriptions. The same is true for the Department of Health and Human Services, even though healthcare is a major source of contractor fraud.

What gets forgotten in the claims about fraud coming from Trump and Musk is that the federal government already had a robust system for fighting contractor misconduct. Audits were done by agency inspectors general—who have now been fired by Trump—and prosecutions were launched by the Justice Department using the False Claims Act. Over the past decade, the DOJ has collected about $30 billion in fines and settlements.

That is serious fraud fighting. What we see in DOGE is instead the illusion of an attack on corruption that serves as a smokescreen for the Trump Administration’s scheme to dismantle large portions of the federal government. It remains to be seen how long they can keep up the charade.

This piece was originally published in the Dirt Diggers Digest newsletter.

The meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and President Trump at the White House devolved into a “shouting match” in the Oval Office. Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance criticized Zelenskyy’s approach, with Trump accusing him of “gambling with World War III.” Meanwhile, Zelenskyy voiced concerns that deals with Russia would not be kept and that Ukraine needed stronger security guarantees.

The recent clash between the two wasn’t merely a diplomatic hiccup; it was a stark illustration of the West’s eroding credibility and the precarious position in which Ukraine finds itself. The fallout from this meeting reverberates far beyond the walls of the Oval Office, exposing deep fissures and eliciting widespread repercussions that shake the very foundations of the global order.

The spectacle of a U.S. president publicly berating a wartime leader, culminating in Zelenskyy’s abrupt dismissal from the White House, shattered the carefully constructed image of unwavering Western support for Ukraine. This public display of discord sent shockwaves through the international community, raising serious questions about the reliability of U.S. commitments and the cohesion of the Western alliance.

The Trump-Zelenskyy clash serves as a stark warning.

For years, the West has presented a united front against Russia, pledging unwavering support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. This carefully crafted narrative, however, crumbled under the weight of the Trump-Zelenskyy confrontation. The heated exchange, marked by accusations of ingratitude and demands for concessions, exposed a stark reality: the West’s commitment to Ukraine is not monolithic, and national interests often trump shared values.

The incident has severely damaged Ukraine’s trust in its Western allies. Zelenskyy, who has tirelessly sought international support for his nation’s defense, was publicly humiliated by a U.S. president who prioritized his own political agenda over the plight of a war-torn nation. The abrupt cancellation of the critical minerals deal between the United States and Ukraine, while presented as diplomatic fallout, exposes a potentially darker reality: the exploitation of a nation in crisis. Instead of a mutually beneficial partnership, the deal’s collapse reveals the inherent risks of resource extraction during wartime.

Beyond the immediate impact on Ukraine, the Trump-Zelenskyy clash has widened the fissures within the transatlantic relationship. European allies, who have consistently demonstrated strong solidarity with Ukraine, watched in dismay as their most powerful partner publicly undermined a key ally.

The European Union has reaffirmed its unwavering support for Ukraine. Publicly, through statements and social media, EU officials emphasized solidarity and continued commitment to a “just and lasting peace.” This display of backing seeks to counterbalance the perceived U.S. shift, reassuring Ukraine of its enduring partnership. The EU’s message underscored Ukraine’s dignity and bravery, aiming to bolster morale and reinforce the notion that Ukraine is not alone. This strategic move highlights the EU’s attempt to solidify its role as a steadfast ally, amidst evolving geopolitical dynamics.

This incident has fueled anxieties about the reliability of U.S. leadership and the future of the transatlantic alliance. European leaders are now left to grapple with the implications of a more assertive and unpredictable US foreign policy, raising concerns about the West’s collective ability to respond effectively to global challenges.

The international community reacted to the White House debacle with a chorus of disapproval. Global leaders and commentators alike condemned the Trump administration’s actions, expressing concern over the erosion of diplomatic norms and the potential for further destabilizing the already volatile security environment. The incident has fueled criticism of the West’s handling of the Ukrainian crisis, with many questioning the efficacy and sincerity of Western support.

The repercussions of the Trump-Zelenskyy clash extend far beyond the immediate fallout. It has eroded trust in Western leadership, undermined the credibility of international diplomacy, and left Ukraine in a more precarious position. The incident serves as a stark reminder that the foundations of the global order are fragile and susceptible to the whims of individual leaders..

The Trump-Zelenskyy clash is not merely an isolated incident but a symptom of a deeper malaise within the Western alliance. The erosion of trust, the rise of nationalism, and the increasing divergence of national interests are all contributing to a weakening of the transatlantic partnership. This trend poses significant challenges to the West’s ability to address global threats.

For China, this diplomatic debacle presents a significant opportunity to observe the fracturing of Western unity. The visible discord between Ukraine and the United States reinforces China’s narrative of a declining West and a shifting global power balance. This perceived weakness in the Western alliance provides China with strategic leverage. The erosion of Western credibility also allows China to position itself as a more reliable partner for nations wary of Western influence, especially in the Global South. However, China must also be mindful that instability stemming from such discord could create unforeseen challenges for its own economic and geopolitical interests.

The Trump-Zelenskyy clash serves as a stark warning. It underscores the fragility of alliances, the dangers of unchecked nationalism, and the importance of upholding diplomatic norms. The international community must learn from this episode and work to rebuild trust, strengthen alliances, and reaffirm its commitment to a rules-based international order. The stakes could not be higher.

This past week began on a deeply disturbing note. Elon Musk reposted on X (formerly Twitter) a dangerously false attack on more than a dozen American entities who had received USAID or State Department grants over the past decade. The original post referred to the groups as “terrorist-linked.” In his repost Musk commented, “As many people have said, why pay terrorist organizations and certain countries to hate us when they’re perfectly willing to do it for free?”

The groups listed in the original post had apparently been compiled by an individual with an anti-Arab or anti-Muslim bias. He appears to have gone through a list of grant recipients and randomly culled out entities with “Arab” or “Muslim” in their name or who had done work in the Middle East. I don’t know all of the groups mentioned, but those I do know—for example, American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA)—have been in the forefront of providing lifesaving support to refugees or victims of war or natural disasters, and, in the process, building better ties between the U.S. and affected communities in need across the Middle East. Other groups I recognized had equally important, impressive records of service.

What was obviously most troubling to me was that my organization, the Arab American Institute, was second on the list. This was upsetting for two reasons: The charge was profoundly off-base and irresponsibly dangerous.

As welcoming and inclusive as the U.S. can be, we also must acknowledge that our country has a history of hate and violence, a disproportionate amount of which in recent decades has been directed at Arab Americans and supporters of Palestinian rights.

The fact is that the institute received a State Department grant in 2018 (during the first Trump administration) to create partnerships between Arab American elected officials and public servants with local elected officials in Tunisia. The institute, which was founded in 1985, has a proud history of encouraging Arab Americans to get elected to local office. As our work progressed, we realized that many of these young leaders had never been to the Middle East, and if they had gone at all, it had simply been to the countries from which their parents had come. I had long hoped to create a program that would enable them to both get exposure to and an understanding of the broader Arab World, and to be able to share their experiences and what they had learned in American political life with their counterparts in Arab countries.

The initial phase of the program was so successful that the State Department supported expanding it into Morocco and then Jordan. It was a delight to see these young Arab and Arab American participants working together in a collaborative manner, discussing problems they face in municipal governance and actions that could be taken to improve constituent services—how to address local needs and challenges. They worked together in building local democracy and finding solutions that made a difference in people’s day-to-day lives—issues like trash collection, creating community tech hubs, and providing support for families with disabled children. The program ended in 2023.

For an individual infected by an anti-Arab or anti-Muslim bias to identify these people-to-people efforts with support for terrorism is so wrong that it defies understanding. And for a person of Mr. Musk’s standing in this administration to have amplified this message with a repost and comment is irresponsibly dangerous.

As welcoming and inclusive as the U.S. can be, we also must acknowledge that our country has a history of hate and violence, a disproportionate amount of which in recent decades has been directed at Arab Americans and supporters of Palestinian rights. After a former employee of mine at the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee was murdered in 1985, I was asked to testify before the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and the U.S. Congress on hate and violence directed against my community. In my testimony I noted how the environment for hate crimes against Arab Americans was fostered by those who have incited against us. I observed that when we have been called terrorists or terrorist supporters (sometimes by respected pro-Israel groups), it has spurred some to use violence against us. I know this personally from the content of death threats I have received over the years.

In the last two decades alone, there have been four convictions of individuals who have threatened my life and the lives of my family and my staff. These threats have most often been accompanied by accusations of terrorism or support for terrorism.

And so, I take it seriously when a person as powerful and well-positioned as Mr. Musk irresponsibly charges my institute with being a supporter of terrorism. That his post has been viewed by nearly 20 million people makes it even more concerning, as it only takes one deranged individual who has read it to decide to respond by striking out in an act of violence.

Some have cautioned us not to react to Musk’s incitement, hoping that it would just fade away. I disagree. In the end, the best defense we have is to point out both how wrong he has been and the danger posed by his words.

In an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, the world’s richest person Elon Musk late last week called Social Security “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.” It was yet another “pot calling the kettle black” moment in the run-on sentence called Trumpism.

I say run-on sentence because it is important to highlight Trumpism as featuring a nefarious discourse self-consciously deployed by Donald Trump and his acolytes to normalize their extremism. Trumpism as a discourse obfuscates so as to legitimate what has become its extremist threat to the existing political system, the rule of law and U.S. Constitution. It is a distinctive way of speaking that facilitates highly questionable action. We see this repeatedly in the Trump era.

Trumpism as a discourse most prominently features three verbal maneuvers: gaslighting, coopting, and boomeranging. All three are intertwined in the disingenuous effort to overturn our liberal democracy and further the move toward a more illiberal autocratic political system, where Trump and his followers get to claim they are saving us from the failures of the current political system. Gaslighting is where you deflect a criticism by saying that the problem is something other than what the critic alleged, thereby insulating yourself from that criticism. For instance, the January 6th attack on the Capitol was actually an inside job perpetrated by the FBI. Coopting is where you adopt the language of your critics so that you are the one with the just cause and they are the one who is deserving of condemnation. The January 6th attack on the Capitol was an instance of Trump supporters standing up for democracy, not trying to undermine it. Boomeranging is where you send criticism directed at you right back at your critics. In this case, the claim is that the critics of the January 6th insurrection are actually the ones who are threatening democracy. These are all lies, aided by disinformation, consciously deployed to pollute public discourse and open the door to allowing Trump and is supporters to overthrow the existing constitutional order.

Why toss the Ponzi scheme boomerang now? Perhaps either because you do not know how Social Security works, or you don’t care because you are so keen to legitimate your extremist actions of illegally decimating the cornerstone of the U.S. welfare state.

With Trump’s second term as president beginning, the discourse of Trumpism has now become commonplace in American politics. It had worked effectively to help Trump regain the presidency. He now is abusing the powers of that office to among other things unleash Musk as a temporary advisor to the president to illegally and unconstitutionally begin without congressional authorization dismantling the federal bureaucracy and the programs its implements.

Musk has been recruited by Trump to take on the role of special advisor for allegedly seeking to root out waste, fraud and abuse from the federal bureaucracy, even as Musk’s private companies continue to profit in the millions of dollars from contracts from that bureaucracy. For some reason, Musk’s own contracts have been exempted from his investigations, but Social Security has not. Dismantling the most prominent social welfare program of the last century is undoubtedly an extremist undertaking and Musk is employing Trumpism as a discourse to help make that happen. Whether he succeeds is dependent in no small part on our ability to call out and resist his verbal jujitsu.

Dismantling Social Security would be very significant, for it not only provides major benefits to over 70 million retirees and persons receiving disability and survivor benefits (about one in five Americans). The program was enacted by Congress during the Great Depression with the Economic Security Act of 1935 (which quickly came to be known as the Social Security Act). It has become the cornerstone of the American welfare state, limited as it is compared to its counterparts in the rest of the developed world. It is nonetheless the most effective anti-poverty program in the history of the country, basically reducing the poverty rate among the elderly by half once its benefits started getting adjusted annually in 1972 to keep up with inflation. It has long been considered the “third rail” of American politics for any politician who tries to tamper with it usually ends up getting repudiated, just as President George Bush did when he tried to privatize it after winning re-election in 2004. Now Trump is going down that road but using the discourse of Trumpism to legitimate undermining this bedrock foundation of the U.S. welfare state.

Calling Social Security the “biggest Ponzi scheme in American history” is pure Trumpism. It is a boomerang. Many people have pointed out the Ponzi-scheme nature of Musk’s own preferred cryptocurrency Dogecoin. Dogecoin was the source for Musk calling his anti-federal government initiative “DOGE” (Department of Government Efficiency). Musk’s response was like him saying “no Dogecoin is not a Ponzi scheme, but Social Security is,” thereby redirecting the criticism of Dogecoin (and all cryptocurrencies) toward the government’s largest and most effective social welfare program. Cryptocurrencies, like Dogecoin, but also even more prominently Bitcoin, have been, for the last decade or so, very popular, especially with people who want to be free of having to rely on government-backed currency like the dollar. Cryptocurrencies have an anti-government elan that attracts all kinds of people, including libertarians and even anarchists. Calling Social Security the biggest Ponzi scheme in history is an anti-government boomerang perpetuated in the name of speculators who want to be free of government regulation.

Strictly speaking, a Ponzi scheme is where those who initially invest in some initiative reap profits from those who subsequently invest, and those subsequent investors will gain only if there are further investors. People are lied to in that there is no actual productive activity that is being invested in, contrary to what they were told. There is only a system of forwarding investments forward to the people who came before you. Once no new investors appear, the flow of profit stops and people are left with no returns on their investment. The largest Ponzi scheme ever was conducted by Bernard Madoff who for decades told people he successfully invested their money in stocks and other investments but actually just forwarded new investments to his clients until the flow of money stopped and he was revealed in 2008 to have defrauded people of tens of billions of dollars.

Actually, neither Social Security nor cryptocurrency is necessarily a Ponzi scheme. Crypto investors are not usually lied to that there is some supposed productive enterprise they are investing in, and Social Security recipients are told that will receive government guaranteed benefits regardless of how their contributions are invested or not. In both cases though, current contributions are used to pay out benefits to people who paid in previously.

In an attempt to make Social Security seem all-American, individualistic and capitalistic, it was originally sold to the American public as a “social insurance” program making it seem like it was no different than private insurance where people pay in to finance their own benefit. This sleight of hand was called the “insurance myth,” for people were never really financing their own benefit but contributing to a collective funding of the program overall. Social insurance is simply not the same as private insurance. It is more a collective than individual effort.

Yet, what is important here regarding the boomerang is that Social Security is in fact superior to cryptocurrencies just because it provides government backed, guaranteed benefits. The anti-government posture of cryptocurrencies, including Musk’s preferred Dogecoin, makes them vulnerable to being seen as way riskier than Social Security. Musk’s boomerang fails, Dogecoin is more like a Ponzi scheme than any government guaranteed benefit.

It is true that Social Security periodically needs tweaking by Congress to ensure that contributions keep up with what is needed to pay out to retirees and others. But that has consistently been done for almost a century. Why toss the Ponzi scheme boomerang now? Perhaps either because you do not know how Social Security works, or you don’t care because you are so keen to legitimate your extremist actions of illegally decimating the cornerstone of the U.S. welfare state. Is it because Musk as an adult immigrant never bothered to learn American public policy while in college or later, or because Musk just wants to destroy the government in the name of his libertarian fantasy? In any case, his Ponzi-scheme boomerang might to some degree work with segments of the public. For that reason alone, we need to highlight this particularly pernicious instance of Trumpism as a dangerous discourse.

When there were rumors that ICE agents were in the neighborhood, I called my mom to see if she could drive around and verify.

Such activities have been common to rapid response for years, even decades, as I learned when I first volunteered with immigrant rights groups that were organizing in response to the Bush administration’s workplace enforcement actions. Then, as now, people filled church basements with other community members for “know your rights” trainings. We were given red cards, which list the rights migrants have in the event that ICE detains them, to pass out to undocumented workers in our neighborhoods. Just a couple weeks ago, I attended a similar meeting in Oakland, California. We went over many of the same materials. The red cards are back. Also like years ago, the room was filled with that same intergenerational mix of people, including immigrants and their families, and people of faith.

But the difference this time is how everyone has cell phones. We exchanged information, not only contacts, but for websites. We set up text groups. And now, we communicate, not only in our neighborhoods, but with similarly minded people from around the country. In fact, while I live in California, my mother is in Wisconsin. Organizations, such as the Immigrant Legal Resource Center and American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), have facilitated these nationwide networks, mobilizing since President Donald Trump took office to host virtual and in-person trainings on themes such as how to monitor ICE if they appear in your neighborhood, why 287g agreements ought to be opposed, and what rights undocumented immigrants have.

Trump and Homan are not enforcing laws, but using the state to commit acts of violence that spread fear and terror.

Just as important as the knowledge we circulate is how our networks are built on the firm foundation of trust and care that exists within our neighborhoods. With a budget working through Congress potentially allocating $350 billion for more detention facilities and to hire more ICE agents, our networks are ready to protect our families and neighbors.

Besides concern for our neighbors and loved ones, we also see through the Trump administration’s bald-faced lies. The most ready-used lie, whether spouted by Trump himself, or his “Border Czar,” Tom Homan, is that they are going after “the worst first.”

Case in point of the administration’s mistruths on immigration enforcement was seen in the deportation of Luis Alberto Castillo from Venezuela, who had the misfortune to cross the border shortly before Trump to office, and then found himself in the Guantánamo Bay detention camp. Castillo was sent to Cuba because immigration officials believed that one of his tattoos indicated that he was a gang member.

So much for due process.

Similarly, reporting shows that nearly half of the people arrested in Chicago a few weeks ago had no prior criminal record. Homan legitimizes these as “collateral arrests.” The rationale, according to Trump’s enforcer, is that ICE is forced to go out into the communities to find people because sanctuary cities release criminals from jails if they are arrested.

Again, smarter minds should wonder about the veracity to the logic Homan uses.

Think about it—what kind of police force, when looking for a particular suspect, would do blanket arrests of people in an area?

Supporters of mass deportation are quick to note that if a person is in the country without legal status, then they are subject to arrest and possibly deportation. Technically, they are right, as according to the U.S. Civil Code, anyone who enters the country without authorization is subject to removal.

But let’s be honest—the real reason for carrying out “collateral arrests” and deporting people trying to make a better life for themselves is to carry out a political agenda. Even before taking over, Homan broadcast that Chicago would be targeted and made the initial focal point of Trump’s mass deportation efforts. Moreover, the call for mass deportation plays directly into the right-wing “law and order” fantasy, connecting nicely with the other heavy-handed approaches to crimes such as increasing penalties for minor infractions like shoplifting.

The reality is that people come to the U.S. for a variety of reasons, with many forces, such as poverty, pushing them across borders and making them ineligible for asylum. “To do it the right way,” as others would encourage, is not possible for most because of our outdated immigration laws. Dating from a time when immigration was minimal, our laws place unreasonable limits on the number of people who could legally come to the U.S. from neighboring countries, creating the millions of undocumented immigrants who now reside in the country. Adding insult to injury, our laws are broken just as much by employers as by their workers. As both political parties have passed the buck for years on figuring out a legislative answer to this reality, the average time an undocumented person is in the United States has become 16 years.

Such a scenario calls not for enforcing the laws, but for reforming them. Our immigration system, as it currently exists with so many responsible for its failing, is illegitimate. Trump and Homan are not enforcing laws, but using the state to commit acts of violence that spread fear and terror.

Fear empowers those who wield it by isolating and freezing those who feel it. But fear becomes courage when we come together to share our experiences, whether in church basements, living rooms, school libraries, or coffee shops. Given that it is in human nature to live, love, work, and play together, courage will beat back fear. So, when serious politicians return to public life and show their readiness to work on real policies to address our decades-long immigration crisis, we will be ready to work with them. Until then, we will fight; just ask my mom.

“The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible.”

The words are from George Orwell’s 1984 (where else?), explaining the root causes of a dystopian world. The book may be a work of fiction, but his words are deeply embedded in reality—we need enemies, the worse the better! This certainty may well be humanity’s most profound existential threat. I fear it could be “the meteor” that hits Planet Earth, ultimately spelling extinction for the dominant species.

Mostly what we do is prepare for—and wage—war. We always wage it in self-defense, even when in retrospect its motivating factor is colonial conquest. When it comes to the manifestation of power, at its core are the words “us vs. them.” That captures the public spirit so much more fully than cooperation, connection, understanding... or, groan, love.

Waging war poisons the world; it perpetuates and intensifies the problems it purports to be eliminating.

As far as I’m concerned, this is humanity’s primary challenge of the moment. It’s time to transcend war, the meteor of our own making.

As we all know, wars are waging across the planet right this moment. Unless we’re directly affected by the violence, we can easily reduce it to an abstraction, usually with the help of the words “self-defense”—a particularly egregious term when used by the one inflicting the most harm. And for some reason, the name George W. Bush comes to mind—the guy who bequeathed us the “Axis of Evil” as our current reason to be afraid.

But an inescapable fact of American history is the long trail of evil enemies who have helped define us over the centuries. As Jérôme Viala-Gaudefroy writes:

...the American identity is probably the best example of a “self” understood through “otherness.” Research in various disciplines has shown that Americans have long defined themselves through a binary narrative of “us” versus “them.“ Whether it takes the form of the American Indians of the Frontier, the British during the American Revolution, the immigrants in the early 20th century, the Nazis, the communists, and more recently the terrorists...

He also notes, a la Orwell, that our enemy of the moment “has three constant characteristics: It is always deemed a threat, somewhat uncivilized and evil, and serves to define national identity by demarcating... ’ a self’ from an ‘other’... “

Nations are essentially random creations. In order to unify socially into actual entities, their populations have to have a clear sense of who they aren’t. I would add to the above list of “others,” the country’s long history of racial exclusion, which of course begins with the importation of slaves, who were property, not actual human beings. “White” was a word bequeathed to us by God, apparently, and even though moral sanity has been slowly seeping into our national identity, whiteness still plays a significant role in the national task of othering. Think about the “invasion” going on at our southern border, for instance.

And, oh yeah, there’s also that war on Gaza—by which I mean genocide—that we’re playing a key role in sustaining, But as President Trump 2.0 keeps telling us in various ways, we also have a lot of work to do “Americanizing” the Western Hemisphere, from reclaiming the Panama Canal to... uh, seizing Greenland? And then there’s the recent decision by the State Department to officially designate some major Mexican drug cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs). Yikes, that means they’re really, really evil.

As Jon Rainwater writes, this isn’t just a symbolic gesture. Doing so “opens the door for military intervention under the guise of counterterrorism. The U.S. could justify drone strikes or cross-border raids without Mexico’s consent—a blatant affront to its sovereignty.”

What could be wrong with that? Come on, we have the most powerful military in the world; it’s up to us to decide how and when to use it, right? No matter, as Rainwater points out: “Combining the failed strategies of the war on terror and the war on drugs is not just misguided—it’s doubling down on failure.”

And not only that. “Designating cartels as FTOs,” he goes on, “feels like another chapter in this playbook: framing another country’s problems as existential threats to justify American imperialism. So long liberal internationalism, hello Make the Monroe Doctrine Great Again.”

No matter that war is hell. No matter that the problems humanity faces are basically the problems it created—and they’re serious. Waging war poisons the world; it perpetuates and intensifies the problems it purports to be eliminating. I open my soul with a shout into the darkness. We live, as Rainwater notes, in an interconnected world—a world of complex wholeness. Creating borders can be a reasonable way to get a handle on that complexity, but only—only—if we can also see beyond the borders we’ve created and embrace the wholeness we’re still trying to understand.

What does this mean? As much as I want it to mean. oh, let us say a high-five with God, it often means—as we struggle to transcend our impulsive violence—far quieter, almost unrecognizable change, if any change at all. Consider, for instance, Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) recent opposition to the latest U.S. sale of weapons to Israel to keep its evisceration of Gaza going. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee now has to consider the merit of his Joint Resolutions of Disapproval, or JRDs. Last November, Sanders also filed JRDs regarding the latest Biden administration’s weapons sale to Israel. When the Senate voted on them, the resolutions lost; only 19 senators voted in support, which can easily feel like nothing more than a pathetic loss.

But maybe it was more than that. “...never before have so many senators voted to restrict arms transfers to Israel,” noted the senior policy adviser for the organization Demand Progress. He called the vote “a sea change” among congressional Democrats—an awakening, an infusion of... do I dare say: moral sanity?

This doesn’t stop the slaughter. This doesn’t stop the hell. But let it give us the will to keep trying.

On Saturday, February 22, one of America’s great civil rights and labor activists was laid to rest in Greensboro, North Carolina. It’s possible you haven’t heard of Reverend Nelson Johnson, though Reverend Dr. William Barber II, the dynamic founder of Repairers of the Breach, the “co-anchor” of the new Poor People’s Campaign, and professor of the practice of public theology and public policy, places him (and his wife Joyce Johnson) in the rank of “Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, Mother Jones and Martin Luther King Jr.” It’s salient in this moment, too, that the social, racial, and economic rifts that sparked the 1979 Greensboro Massacre and claimed the lives of five of Reverend Johnson’s fellow activists—scarring him for life—continue to divide our country today.

His clarifying insistence on truth telling will be sorely missed during a time when people are being threatened, demonized, and fired for telling American history’s multiple truths. Given this, it’s imperative to correct the historical errors and omissions in a recent New York Times obituary for Reverend Johnson.

The obituary reports that when, just prior to the November 3, 1979 murders, a caravan of Ku Klux Klansmen and American Nazis arrived at the start of a march Nelson Johnson and his fellow communists were mounting against racism, the police were “standing nearby.” This isn’t true. The police were, by official order, absent and out of sight and therefore unable to stop the approaching violence. What makes this particularly alarming is that at least three law enforcement agencies—the Greensboro Police Department, the FBI, and the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms—had elicited enough information from informants and infiltrators to stop the white supremacist attack before it happened. Every serious investigation of the November 3, 1979 events over the last quarter century acknowledges this.

When the facts of the Greensboro Massacre are presented clearly, it’s easy to see how the white power politics, law enforcement bias, and political opportunism that led to that tragedy illuminate the time we are in.

Klansmen and Nazis inflicting violence on African Americans, Jews, Catholics, Latinos, Native Americans and left activists is a horrific though unsurprising fact of American history. However, we must not omit from this history the responsibility of the public officials charged with protecting and serving all our citizens. The very foundation of our democratic system rests on the implicit and explicit trust we place in state officials and institutions to protect us in situations like the one that led to the Greensboro Massacre.

The Greensboro Massacre reminds us, as we are being reminded again today, that the only way to preserve that trust is to hold officials accountable when they betray it and commit crimes. Sadly, our justice system did not find the vigilante white supremacists or complicit officers of the law criminally responsible for the November 3, 1979 murders. Only a federal civil suit brought a sliver of justice to the tragedy. The New York Times obituary notes the civil judgement that found eight defendants liable for death but does not tell readers who they were: Five were Klansmen and Nazis, one was a police informant (and former FBI informant), and two were Greensboro police officers. This judgement reminds us that we must continuously resist the influence of reactionary white supremacist politics in our law enforcement agencies and justice system.

The obituary concludes with the installation of the 2015 North Carolina state historical marker commemorating the massacre. Left unreported, however, is the tenacious and hopeful work, not only by Reverend Johnson, but by Greensboro’s civil society, to set their history right. Thanks to these groundbreaking efforts, which included a two-year Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the City of Greensboro offered two apologies for the massacre: one in 2017, following the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, and another in 2020, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. This second apology explicitly acknowledged that the Greensboro Police Department could have prevented the violence on November 3, 1979. Movingly, the city established a scholarship fund in the names of the five slain activists.

When the facts of the Greensboro Massacre are presented clearly, it’s easy to see how the white power politics, law enforcement bias, and political opportunism that led to that tragedy illuminate the time we are in.

It’s also important to remember, however, that Reverend Johnson’s historical significance is far greater than the trauma of November 3, 1979. His 60 years of racial and economic justice activism may be seen as an essential bridge, spanning from the revolutionary visions of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X to Dr. William Barber’s current mobilizations on behalf of our nation’s poor. Like both these leaders, Johnson saw race and economics as inextricably linked. And like them, he never stopped trying to fix the root causes of inequality in America for all people suffering predatory capitalism. He came to consider demonizing others, even one’s enemies, as a mistake. That revelation would lead him away from communism to liberation theology and the idea of revolutionary, Christian love. This philosophical shift, however, didn’t transform Johnson from radical to reformer; he never stopped believing that true equality and justice in the United States will only come with fundamental changes to our values, our institutions, and our economy.

Reverend Johnson’s community-based work has inspired labor and racial justice leaders all around the country. Though his name might not, until now, have been known widely, his work with unions and churches and social justice organizations has been buttressing grassroots democracy for decades.

The life of this big-hearted farm kid from the Airlie, North Carolina expands the geography, timeline, and scope of the conventional civil rights story. Getting his story right broadens our understanding of American history’s lessons, affirms a powerful faith in equal justice and democracy, embraces the power of community, and rejects the repression of our country’s truths.

That Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy killed a large, majestic Alaska brown bear simply for his amusement, ego, and bragging rights, then had the hide mounted prominently in the Anchorage International Airport for all to see—complete with a photo of the governor posing with his kill, and an advertisement for the Safari Club International, whose “generous contribution” paid for the sordid display—is a perfect embodiment of the State of Alaska’s disgraceful treatment of its world-renowned wildlife.

The governor’s kill was one of the 1,200-1,900 permitted trophy brown bear kills in Alaska every year, mostly by non-residents. These kills are not for food or subsistence (the state says fewer than 10 brown bears a year are killed for subsistence purposes), but just for hides, trophies, and the "joy” of killing. This includes bears that gather to feed on salmon runs in protected areas such as Katmai National Park and McNeil River State Game Sanctuary—to the delight of thousands of paying visitors—that are then targeted by trophy hunters as they disperse after the salmon runs end. The skinned carcasses of these bears are mostly discarded and left to rot—the very definition of wanton waste. The hides are apt to end up on the living room wall of a vain, rich Texan to brag about at cocktail parties.

Further, Gov. Dunleavy’s administration has recently shot and killed hundreds of brown bears (many of them newborn cubs), black bears, and wolves in its unscientific and futile aerial predator control effort; permits “hunters” to bait bears; permits killing of bear mothers and cubs using artificial lights at dens; permits killing wolves and coyotes and their pups at dens; and its Board of Game is a special-interest travesty.

It takes a very small man indeed to kill an innocent animal simply for a sadistic sense of pleasure, a trophy, and bragging rights.

Now, this depravity is on full display—along with the many other dead, snarling animals displayed around the airport—for thousands of visitors to see as they first step foot in the state, most coming here specifically to view Alaska’s spectacular wildlife (which contributes twice the revenue to the state’s economy as does recreational hunting), and many specifically wanting a chance to see our iconic brown bears in the wild—alive, not stuffed in a glass case. Instead of admiration and awe, many visitors will react to this display with disgust, seeing the governor’s trophy as an example of the shameful way wildlife are treated in Alaska. People increasingly feel that bears deserve better than to be killed merely for human ego, and want trophy hunting banned.

Psychologists say that this sort of trophy hunting derives from narcissism, an inflated sense of self, an infantile ego craving attention; a deep-seated psychopathy, incapable of empathy; and virtue-signaling to those from whom one is desperate for admiration and validation. And there may be a peculiar religious component to such killing, as it accords with the perverse biblical instruction for man to “subdue… and have dominion over… every living thing that moveth upon the Earth.” And perhaps such trophy killing simply provides a brief dopamine hit—a momentary, physiological high—desired by our Paleolithic ancestry.

To trophy hunters like Alaska’s governor, killing large animals, particularly predators, is a feeble attempt to project superiority, power, machismo, wealth, and prestige. Even though the governor may be a full-time office bureaucrat, he’s desperate to be seen as a courageous, tough Alaska man right out of a Jack London novel. In fact, it shows just the opposite.

Killing an innocent brown bear for fun, with a high powered rifle, from a distance, with a professional guide leading him to the bear, and then displaying the mounted hide in a public commons for all to see, projects a pathetic, disturbing emotional insecurity. While trophy hunting is increasingly being banned around the world (recall the global outrage to the 2015 killing of Cecil the lion by an American trophy hunter in Zimbabwe), not here in the “lost frontier,” where it still serves the insecure egos of many clinging to the 19th-century image of the great white hunter, the buffalo hunters, conquering an untamed wilderness.

It takes a very small man indeed to kill an innocent animal simply for a sadistic sense of pleasure, a trophy, and bragging rights. Now thousands of Alaska visitors will see this psychopathy on full display at the Anchorage airport, where the governor’s trophy stands as a monument to arrogance, special interests, phony masculinity, contempt for nature, and the State of Alaska’s tragic mismanagement of wildlife.

Donald Trump’s power has thrived on the economics, politics, and culture of war. The runaway militarism of the last quarter-century was a crucial factor in making President Trump possible, even if it goes virtually unmentioned in mainstream media and political discourse. That silence is particularly notable among Democratic leaders, who have routinely joined in bipartisan messaging to boost the warfare state that fueled the rise of Trumpism.

Trump first ran for president nearly a decade and a half after the “Global War on Terror” began in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The crusade’s allure had worn off. The national mood was markedly different than in the era when President George W. Bush insisted that “our responsibility” was to “rid the world of evil.”

Working-class Americans had more modest goals for their government. Distress festered as income inequality widened and economic hardships worsened, while federal spending on war, the Pentagon budget, and the “national security” state continued to zoom upward. Even though the domestic effects of protracted warfare were proving to be enormous, multilayered, and deeply alienating, elites in Washington scarcely seemed to notice.

Donald Trump, however, did notice.

Pundits were shocked in 2015 when Trump mocked the war record of Republican Senator John McCain. The usual partisan paradigms were further upended during the 2016 presidential campaign when Trump denounced his opponent, Hillary Clinton, as “trigger happy.” He had a point. McCain, Clinton, and their cohort weren’t tired of U.S. warfare — in fact, they kept glorifying it — but many in non-affluent communities had grown sick of its stateside consequences.

Pretending that militarism is not a boon to authoritarian politics only strengthens it.

Repeated deployments of Americans to war zones had taken their toll. The physical and emotional wounds of returning troops were widespread. And while politicians were fond of waxing eloquent about “the fallen,” the continual massive spending for war and preparations for more of it depleted badly needed resources at home.

Status-Quo Militarism

President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton represented the status quo that Trump ran against and defeated. Like them, he was completely insulated from the harsh boomerang effects of the warfare state. Unlike them, he sensed how to effectively exploit the discontent and anger it was causing.

Obama was not clueless. He acknowledged some downsides to endless war in a much-praised speech during his second term in office. “Our systematic effort to dismantle terrorist organizations must continue,” he affirmed at the National Defense University. “But this war, like all wars, must end. That’s what history advises. That’s what our democracy demands.”

New Yorker journalist Jane Mayer hailed that instance of presidential oratory in a piece touting Obama’s “anguish over the difficult trade-offs that perpetual war poses to a free society.” But such concerns were fleeting at the White House, while sparking little interest from mainstream journalists. Perpetual war had become wallpaper in the media echo chamber.

President Bush’s messianic calls to rid the world of “evil-doers” had fallen out of fashion, but militarism remained firmly embedded in the political economy. Corporate contracts with the Pentagon and kindred agencies only escalated. But when Hillary Clinton ran for president in 2016, being a rigid hawk became a negative with the electorate as pro-Trump forces jumped into the opening she provided.

Six weeks before the election, Forbes published an article under the headline “Hillary Clinton Never Met a War She Didn’t Want Other Americans to Fight.” Written by Doug Bandow, former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan, the piece exemplified how partisan rhetoric about war and peace had abruptly changed. Clinton “almost certainly would lead America into more foolish wars,” Bandow contended, adding: “No one knows what Trump would do in a given situation, which means there is a chance he would do the right thing. In contrast, Clinton’s beliefs, behavior, and promises all suggest that she most likely would do the wrong thing, embracing a militaristic status quo which most Americans recognize has failed disastrously.”

Clinton was following a timeworn formula for Democrats trying to inoculate themselves against charges of being soft on foreign enemies, whether communists or terrorists. Yet Trump, deft at labeling his foes both wimps and warmongers, ran rings around the Democratic nominee. In that close election, Clinton’s resolutely pro-war stance may have cost her the presidency.

“Even controlling in a statistical model for many other alternative explanations, we find that there is a significant and meaningful relationship between a community’s rate of military sacrifice and its support for Trump,” a study by scholars Douglas Kriner and Francis Shen concluded. “Our statistical model suggests that if three states key to Trump’s victory — Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin — had suffered even a modestly lower casualty rate, all three could have flipped from red to blue and sent Hillary Clinton to the White House.” Professors Kriner and Shen suggested that Democrats might want to “reexamine their foreign policy posture if they hope to erase Trump’s electoral gains among constituencies exhausted and alienated by 15 years of war.”

But such advice went unheeded. Leading Democrats and Republicans remained on autopilot for the warfare state as the Pentagon budget kept rising.

On the War Train with Donald Trump

In 2018, the top Democrats in Washington, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, boasted that they were fully aligned with President Trump in jacking up Pentagon spending. After Trump called for an 11% increase over two years in the already-bloated “defense” budget, Pelosi sent an email to House Democrats declaring, “In our negotiations, congressional Democrats have been fighting for increases in funding for defense.” The office of Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer proudly stated: “We fully support President Trump’s Defense Department’s request.”

By then, fraying social safety nets and chronic fears of economic insecurity had become ever more common across the country. The national pattern evoked Martin Luther King’s comment that profligate military spending was like “some demonic destructive suction tube.”

In 2020, recurring rhetoric from Joe Biden in his winning presidential campaign went like this: “If we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House, he will forever alter the character of our nation.” But Biden said nothing about how almost 20 years of nonstop war funding and war making had already altered the character of the nation.

At first glance, President Biden seemed to step away from continuing the “war on terror.” The last U.S. troops left Afghanistan by the end of August 2021. Speaking to the United Nations General Assembly weeks later, he proclaimed: “I stand here today, for the first time in 20 years, with the United States not at war.” But even as he spoke, a new report from the Costs of War Project at Brown University indicated that the “war on terror” persisted on several continents. “The war continues in over 80 countries,” said Catherine Lutz, the project’s co-director. The war’s cost to taxpayers, the project estimated, was already at least $8 trillion.

Biden’s designated successor, Vice President Kamala Harris, displayed a traditional militaristic reflex while campaigning against Trump. In her acceptance speech at the Democratic convention she pledged to maintain “the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.” Such rhetoric was problematic for attracting voters from the Democratic base reluctant to cast ballots for a war party. More damaging to her election prospects was her refusal to distance herself from Biden’s insistence on continuing to supply huge quantities of weaponry to Israel for the horrific war in Gaza.

Supplementing the automatic $3.8 billion in annual U.S. military aid to Israel, special new appropriations for weaponry totaling tens of billions of dollars enabled mass killing in Gaza. Poll results at the time showed that Harris would have gained support in swing states if she had called for an arms embargo on Israel as long as the Gaza war continued. She refused to do so.

Post-election polling underscored how Harris’s support for that Israeli war appreciably harmed her chances to defeat Trump. In 2024, as in 2016, Trump notably benefitted from the unwavering militarism of his Democratic opponent.

Overseas, the realities of nonstop war have been unfathomably devastating. Estimates from the Costs of War Project put the number of direct deaths in major war zones from U.S.-led actions under the “war on terror” brand at more than 900,000. With indirect deaths included, the number jumps to “4.5 million and counting.” The researchers explain that “some people were killed in the fighting, but far more, especially children, have been killed by the reverberating effects of war, such as the spread of disease.”

That colossal destruction of faraway human beings and the decimation of distant societies have gotten scant attention in mainstream U.S. media and politics. The far-reaching impacts of incessant war on American life in this century have also gotten short shrift. Midway through the Biden presidency, trying to sum up some of those domestic impacts, I wrote in my book War Made Invisible:

“Overall, the country is gripped by war’s dispersed and often private consequences — the aggravated tendencies toward violence, the physical wartime injuries, the post-traumatic stress, the profusion of men who learned to use guns and were trained to shoot to kill when scarcely out of adolescence, the role modeling from recruitment ads to popular movies to bellicose bombast from high-ranking leaders, and much more. The country is also in the grip of tragic absences: the health care not deemed fundable by those who approve federal budgets larded with military spending, the child care and elder care and family leave not provided by those same budgets, the public schools deprived of adequate funding, the college students and former students saddled with onerous debt, the uncountable other everyday deficits that have continued to lower the bar of the acceptable and the tolerated.”

While the warfare state seems all too natural to most politicians and journalists, its consequences over time have been transformational for the United States in ways that have distinctly skewed the political climate. Along the way, militarism has been integral to the rise of the billionaire tech barons who are now teaming up with an increasingly fascistic Donald Trump.

The Military-Industrial-Tech Complex

While President Trump has granted Elon Musk unprecedented power, many other tech moguls have rushed to ingratiate themselves. The pandering became shameless within hours of his election victory last November.

“Congratulations to President Trump on a decisive victory,” Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote. “We have great opportunities ahead of us as a country. Looking forward to working with you and your administration.” Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon, Whole Foods, and the Washington Post, tweeted: “wishing @realDonaldTrump all success in leading and uniting the America we all love.”

Amazon Web Services alone has numerous government contracts, including one with the National Security Agency worth $10 billion and deals with the Pentagon pegged at $9.7 billion. Such commerce is nothing new. For many years, thousands of contracts have tied the tech giants to the military-industrial complex.

Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, and smaller rivals are at the helm of corporations eager for government megadeals, tax breaks, and much more. For them, the governmental terrain of the new Trump era is the latest territory to navigate for maximizing their profits. With annual military outlays at 54% of all federal discretionary spending, the incentives are astronomical for all kinds of companies to make nice with the war machine and the man now running it.

While Democrats in Congress have long denounced Trump as an enemy of democracy, they haven’t put any sort of brake on American militarism. Certainly, there are many reasons for Trump’s second triumph, including his exploitation of racism, misogyny, nativism, and other assorted bigotries. Yet his election victories owe much to the Democratic Party’s failure to serve the working class, a failure intermeshed with its insistence on serving the industries of war. Meanwhile, spending more on the military than the next nine countries combined, U.S. government leaders tacitly lay claim to a kind of divine overpowering virtue.

As history attests, militarism can continue for many decades while basic democratic structures, however flawed, remain in place. But as time goes on, militarism is apt to be a major risk factor for developing some modern version of fascism. The more war and preparations for war persist, with all their economic and social impacts, the more core traits of militarism — including reliance on unquestioning obedience to authority and sufficient violence to achieve one’s goals — will permeate the society at large.

During the last 10 years, Donald Trump has become ever more autocratic, striving not just to be the nation’s commander-in-chief but also the commandant of a social movement increasingly fascistic in its approach to laws and civic life. He has succeeded in taking on the role of top general for the MAGA forces. The frenzies that energize Trump’s base and propel his strategists have come to resemble the mentalities of warfare. The enemy is whoever dares to get in his way.

A warfare state is well suited for such developments. Pretending that militarism is not a boon to authoritarian politics only strengthens it. The time has certainly come to stop pretending.

Trump has mused publicly about his fondness for Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s “elected” dictator, and how he accomplished commanding control over his people. Trump and his loyal Trumpeteer and Musketeer cohorts are taking an American-style approach, step by faster step, far ahead of the conventional resistance.

Step One is to announce that you are a STRONGMAN ruling by largely unlawful Executive Orders and ignoring the laws that demand congressional action.

Step Two is to dominate the news cycle and expand your own “news” media, such as Trump’s for-profit company Truth Social. Trump is a juggernaut of declarations, attacks on perceived opponents or “woke” activity, and he lies about conditions in the country and the world, and more lies about his false successes. He has regular meetings at the White House with apprehensive reporters who know they are getting played, but relay his sound bites, often unrebutted to the people (such as his false outbursts about U.S. AID’s activities abroad).

Step Three is to always be on the offensive and never admit mistakes or to being wrong or ignorant about anything. This puts the resistance on the defensive, reacting instead of proactively keeping Trump off balance.

Will Trump get away with what he is wrecking and self-enriching?

This tactic is working to keep the hapless Democrats still in disarray, like “deer-in-the-headlights.” This freeze led to the Democrats’ ignominious defeat on November 5 by the most politically vulnerable GOP presidential candidate ever.

The Democrats blew an opportunity to use the two month interregnum between the election and Trump’s inauguration to hold public hearings in the Senate laying down challenges on very popular agendas opposed by the GOP (to raise the minimum wage, expand the child tax credit, increase social security benefits frozen for over forty years, tax the under-taxed, sometimes zero-taxed, super rich and giant corporations, and crack down on corporate crooks exploiting consumers and workers, especially on health insurance and credit transactions.) Instead, the Democrats disgracefully took their vacations and departed with a whimper on January 20th.

Step Four is to push ferociously plutocratic redirection, disruptions and suspensions of federal agencies so as to benefit enriching the super-rich like Musk and Trump. This means firing the law enforcers against corporate crime, such as major contracting fraud, and stealing from Medicare, Medicaid, and the bloated defense budget.

Step Five is to redirect massive monies (such as from Medicaid) from America’s social safety net to pay for even more military dollars and tax cuts for the rich and big corporations than Trump gave them in 2017. These cuts were never seriously challenged by the Biden Administration or Congressional Democrats like House Ways and Means Chair Rep. Richard Neal (D – MA). This brazen move is so cruel that some GOP Congressional toadies are beginning to quiver since many Medicaid recipients were Trump voters and people are turning out at crowded town meetings to loudly berate the surprised Republicans.

Step Six is to deeply consolidate Der Fuhrer’s power inside government and outside countervailing forces. Trump fired top military generals without cause, pushed out the chief lawyers for the three military services and replaced them with heel-clicking loyalists ready to obey any illegal order in violation of the Nuremberg rules. Remember that the unstable Trump has his finger on the nuclear trigger.

Throwing out competent civil servants in agencies dedicated to helping Americans in need (Meals on Wheels, Head Start) and replacing them with clenched-teeth Trumpers now wrecking or illegally closing down federal agencies (the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) devoted to auto safety, airline safety, workplace safety, environmental, climate, health protection, pandemic preparedness, and consumer protection from relentless profiteering, and protection of fair labor standards and practices.

Step Seven is using the withholding of federal grants and spewing of propaganda to reduce important research and free speech on university and college campuses, intimidating and suing the corporate owners of the mainstream media to get in line or else face exclusion from the White House press corps and face FCC investigations of the radio and TV business, including NPR and PBS.

Who’s left, you might say, to stop Trump, who is on the road to a deep corporate fascist state?

The answer is: THE PEOPLE, taking their sovereign power under the Constitution to protest with specific demands, and to fully use the courts, give backbone to the media and launch a giant “You’re Fired” march on Washington in the Spring for a groundswell behind Impeachment. Trump is harming all Americans – Red State, Blue State, conservatives and liberals which can bring together a left/right movement changing Congress in the 2026 elections.

He is rescinding huge grants on renewable energy projects mostly going to Red States. He is canceling or suspending millions of government contracts to small business contractors or subcontractors. He is unemploying thousands of their workers every day, fueling inflation with steep tariffs, shaking the stock markets, fomenting chaos, anxiety and dread through American households and the business community itself.

Will Trump get away with what he is wrecking and self-enriching? Trump and his crew of demolitionists, led by the Musk and his poisonous Tusks recognize no boundaries, no legal or moral limits. My sense is NO. This guess is based on the immediate energy, courage and smart defiance by the growing resistance from all backgrounds around the country. Time is of the essence before the next step toward a dangerous police state arrives.

A CLARION CALL FOR LARGE ORGANIZED RALLIES BACK HOME WHERE THE PEOPLE ARE AGAINST THE CRIMINAL, UNCONSTITUTIONAL DICTATORSHIP OF THE TRUMP/MUSK ONGOING WRECKING OF AMERICA AND AMERICANS.

CRITICAL PROTECTIVE LIFELINES ARE BEING ELIMINATED IN ALL STATES – RED AND BLUE – endangering the health, safety, and economic, well-being of Americans – workers, small business, the elderly, the infirm, the children, the air, water, and undermines protection against rising epidemics and violent climate damage to communities. TRUMP/MUSK are slashing emergency services provided by our federal workers from the FAA to FEMA to EPA the monitoring of dangerous hotspots of toxic chemicals.

TRUMP/MUSK are already unlawfully violating contracts and cutting off millions dollars in federal payments for small business contractors. This, of course, harms the workers in these firms. Efforts for cleaner air and water, and key farm programs are being dismantled.

To enrich themselves and other billionaires, TRUMP/MUSK are cutting thousands of skilled IRS investigators focused on big-time tax evasion by the Super-Rich. There is a criminally insane takeover of our government that every day is dictating, without Congressional authority, deadly actions that amount to a dictatorship. TRUMP/MUSK are the “an enemy of the people.” This is not what Trump supporters voted for. They did not vote for a Kleptocracy that goes after people’s programs and that does nothing to stop the hundreds of billions of dollars of corporate welfare, corporate crime against US taxpayers (such as fraud inflicted on Medicare and Medicaid), and bloated big business contracts with Uncle Sam that are now not being investigated.

Saving our country from the cruel and vicious dictatorship seizing our government can only come from the people—Americans of all political backgrounds who show up and speak up at rallies, preferably outside local Congressional offices (with their Senators and Representatives invited)—rural, suburban, urban communities nationwide.. The TRUMP/MUSK overthrow of the existing corporate state, can soon become a POLICE STATE. Actions by citizens must expand rapidly before the egomaniacal, openly lying, vengeful TRUMP throws our beloved country into anarchical convulsions leading to massive disasters.

The Founding Fathers freed America from the tyrant King George III and gave us the Constitution to block any future Kings. Trump, who wants to be a King said, “I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.”

Respect the trust bequeathed to us from our first Patriots in 1776 and 1783. Mobilize and galvanize NOW.

On February 11, without providing any evidence, U.S. President Donald Trump declared that the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE, was in the process of eliminating “billions and billions of dollars in waste, fraud, and abuse” in the federal government. This is an old, but politically persuasive claim Republicans and their Heritage Foundation allies have made for decades.

The problem is, as some have no doubt realized, that DOGE is not about waste and inefficiency in government. It’s the culmination of a very long-standing neoliberal strategy to get rid of a federal government that can provide help to a wide variety of people in need, limit the worst excesses of the private sector, and shore up stressed local communities, among other good causes that the private sector is notoriously unable to accomplish.

Some of you may remember former President Ronald Reagan’s quip, “Government is not the solution; government is the problem.” Well, we’ve lived 45 years under that hoariest of myths, and most Americans have paid a heavy price for it.

In brief, we have government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.

How does the Trump administration and its hatchet man, Elon Musk, fit into this? Most obviously through their massive layoffs of federal employees and by eliminating or slashing federal program after federal program. The effects of DOGE will be felt by a vast majority of non-wealthy Americans: veterans, workers, children, people who are sick or need healthcare, the elderly, people with low-to-modest incomes, people victimized by the rapidly increasing environmental disasters, local communities; the list goes on and on. Lumped under the “waste and inefficiency” category are the thousands of arbitrarily fired public employees who have served the public with dedication and integrity.

In reality, DOGE has two aims: The first is to make government so inept that more and more people will wonder why they’re paying taxes for a seemingly incompetent government. DOGE should really be called DOGI—the Department of Government Ineptitude. That would fit nicely with the host of misfits and incompetents Trump has appointed to head various federal departments.

But the other clear objective is that, in addition to hurting everyday folks, these federal budget cuts will provide cover for the huge tax cut for wealthy Americans the Republican House just passed. As in the past, the tax cut will likely give people in the lower 90% of income levels an extremely modest tax cut, but the real beneficiaries will be the wealthiest Americans who already enjoy wealth most people can’t even imagine. And, as in the past, the tax cuts will be “justified”by the myth that cutting taxes for the wealthy and corporations will generate economic growth—i.e., jobs.

Unfortunately, we’ve been here before. The Reagan administration slashed taxes for the wealthiest Americans and corporations, thereby creating a huge federal deficit, yet the tax cuts failed to generate significant job growth. Instead, they ushered in the era of enormous inequality that is still with us. Most Americans saw no increase in their incomes. The George W Bush pro-rich tax cuts had similar effects, as did the huge pro-rich tax cuts of the first Trump administration. One result is that wages for most Americans have been largely stagnant for 50 years. There is no economic growth magic in these kinds of tax cuts.

But “tax cuts” sound good to people who struggle to make ends meet, and therein lies their appeal. However, the real problem isn’t the level of federal taxes, it’s the inequality in who bears the burden of those taxes.

Like many things in the U.S., taxes impose the heaviest burdens on those with modest incomes. This wasn’t always the case, of course. From the 1940s to mid-1960 the richest Americans were taxed at a 91% rate on taxable income. Today, thanks to these tax cuts, their rate is 37%. Similarly, the capital gains tax, corporate taxes, and estate taxes have all been significantly reduced, benefitting you know who.

Thanks to these tax cuts, the growing inequality in wages and salaries, and an all-out attack on labor union organizing over the past 45 years, we have witnessed a massive transfer of wealth from the middle class to the wealthiest families in America—one reason we hear so much about billionaires these days. In fact, a recent study published in The New York Times, reported that, for the first time, billionaires paid a lower effective tax rate than working class Americans.

Beyond the grotesque unfairness of this system, the truly ominous outcome is what this means for “our” government. Thanks to Republican-appointed Supreme Court majorities, campaign contributions have been classified as “speech,” meaning that restricting campaign contributions violates the First Amendment, no matter what this does to democracy. And so, in 2024, 150 billionaires contributed a total of $1.9 billion to political campaigns. In brief, we have government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.

If you feel the government has passed you by, welcome to the majority of Americans who don’t really have much of a voice in our political system. That, rather than alleged “waste, fraud, and abuse,” is what is wrong with our government.

The news came late Thursday afternoon that the Musk tornado had reached NOAA, the government agency responsible for, among many other things, warning us about actual tornadoes. Ten percent of the staff was instantly given pink slips, and an hour to leave; with thousands more firings expected imminently. The wording on the termination letters seems to have been uniform; the work these people were doing was not considered “in the public interest.”

I want to bear a little witness to the people fired from NOAA and so many other places—and even more to the long and careful tradition of which they were a part. For the moment I don’t know what we can do to protect those people or that tradition—there will be court battles, and we should support them; general defense against President Donald Trump’s absurd and illegal destruction is ongoing at places like Third Act and Indivisible and you should join in. But for now, I simply want to explain what’s being destroyed.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was founded in 1970, but its roots go back to 1807, when Thomas Jefferson formed the “Survey of the Coast,” noting the importance of “waterborne commerce” to the new nation. Over the following decades it produced the first nautical maps, and then early tide tables, and then began to figure out how to locate and map underwater obstructions. Though I now live in landlocked Vermont, I was a Sea Scout when I was a boy and I remember navigating with those blue and tan charts, walking the parallel rules across the chart, always with an eye to the compass rose at the bottom, all painstakingly marked with hazards and aids to navigation.

Musk is an impulsive child who has been handed an intricate toy, and whose only impulse is to break it, for the pure satisfaction of the crash.

It became the Coast and Geodetic Survey later in the 19th century—geodesy was the “science of accurately measuring and understanding the Earth's geometric shape, orientation in space, and gravity field,” and if like me you are a hiker you have doubtless encountered their brass markers on the summits of mountains. Other agencies—the Weather Bureau chief among them—grew up over the first two centuries of the republic to track the hazards of the continent. By 1970, in the wake of the first Earth Day, then-Republican President Richard Nixon combined all of them in this new National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency.

Nixon was not an honest or good man, but he was an intelligent one, in an intelligent era. Here’s how he described the rationale for this new agency:

The oceans and atmosphere are interacting parts of the total environmental system upon which we depend, not only for the quality of our lives, but for life itself. We face immediate and compelling needs for better protection of life and property from natural hazards, and for a better understanding of the total environment—an understanding which will enable us more effectively to monitor and predict its actions, and ultimately, perhaps to exercise some degree of control over them.

If that was true then, then it’s triply true now. It’s NOAA that keeps track of the rapid heating of our planet, with all its attendant dangers. And now it will be reduced to a shadow of itself, just as Project 2025 promised. Why would any rational person do this? Over two centuries it worked to understand the world around us, and that understanding was, among other things, key to our prosperity.

Because it committed the sin of helping to figure out the greatest danger to that prosperity: It was NOAA, after all, that maintained the world’s most important scientific instrument, the carbon dioxide monitor on the flank of Mauna Loa that first disclosed that carbon dioxide was accumulating in the atmosphere as we combusted coal and gas and oil. And it’s maintained the network of weather stations, satellites, and marine buoys that have shown that that carbon is driving a pervasive shift in our climate, one that is melting the poles. This is the very definition of “the public interest,” but it cuts against the private interest of the fossil fuel industry, and so it must be neutered. Elon Musk can insist all he wants that he’s doing it to save the taxpayers money, but the agency in total costs barely $6 billion a year—or one-sixth the cost of the federal government’s contracts with Musk’s agencies, which The Washington Post detailed in an important investigation Wednesday.

Once this agency is broken, it won’t be rebuilt. Its centuries of institutional memory will be slowly forgotten. (There are good histories of NOAA on its website, here and here; if they’re of interest, download them right now). Musk is an impulsive child who has been handed an intricate toy, and whose only impulse is to break it, for the pure satisfaction of the crash. And so he can get a tax cut, and yet more money, whatever that even means to someone approaching the half-trillion dollar mark.

If you want just one tiny example of what he is destroying, look through the Bluesky feed of Zack Labe, a young climate scientist laid off Thursday afternoon. He was not just good at his job, he was good at explaining it: Day after day he would lay out the latest news from the cryosphere, explaining in careful detail what was happening on the frozen portions of this Earth. On Wednesday, for interest, he’d explained that Arctic sea ice was setting new lows for this date; on Monday he’d produced a graphic showing the steady loss of ice in glaciers around the world. He is our chronicler of thaw, of melt—and what could be more important, since that thaw and melt raises sea levels, disrupts the jet stream and the Gulf stream. He wasn’t an activist or an advocate, unless you count charting, say, the increased methane in the atmosphere as activism. Clearly the oil industry does; Project 2025 had promised to gut NOAA precisely because, as it put it in a moment of complete candor, those measurements are “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry.”

In other words, Big Oil is trying to wrap a blindfold around the eyes of the nation, so it won’t see what’s happening. I confess to feeling a quiet rage at this vandalism (some of which is almost literal—the administration is disconnecting EV chargers, already bought and paid for, from federal parking lots). It won’t work, not in the long run—people will notice when their neighborhoods burn and flood. But it will make it harder to understand what’s going on, and to pin the blame where it belongs. The fossil fuel industry is committing an ongoing crime against the planet; this is an effort to paint over the lens of the security camera that’s been recording its trespasses.

At least as of this morning the vandals at DOGE hadn’t managed to sack the NOAA website. It was still reporting on the hottest January in history, and offering guides to “building climate resilience in your community.” As they had for 218 years the people in this enterprise were serving their fellow citizens with the information they needed to survive and to thrive. Take a look at it if it’s still there, just to remind yourself what good things humans are capable of. It will inspire you to fight harder against the bad things humans—in this case Musk and Trump—are capable of.

They’re lying to us again. The American government isn’t too big or too bloated: it’s too small. And the result of it being too small is a steady erosion of Americans’ freedom over the past forty-four years.

As Franklin D. Roosevelt said in his March, 1933 inaugural address:

“A necessitous man is not a free man.”

And here's what that means:

• If you or your children are sick but afraid to go to the hospital because you know the bills will leave you broke and homeless, you’re not free.
• If you need to go to college or trade school to get a better life but can’t afford it, you’re not free.
• If you’re hungry and can’t buy food for your family, you’re not free.
• If you can’t afford housing and have to live in a tent on the street or constantly one step ahead of eviction, you’re not free.
• If you’re afraid every day that your child may not come home from school because Republicans have saturated the nation with deadly weapons, you’re not free.
• If you’re old and broken but still having to work because you can’t live on Social Security, you’re not free.
• If your bank and insurance company are ripping you off and you have no recourse, you’re not free.
• If your voice and vote are drowned out because billionaires, AIPAC, and giant corporations are pouring cash into elections, you’re not free.
• If your boss refuses to let you and your fellow workers unionize and punishes you for demanding better wages, working conditions, and benefits you’re not free.

These are all things, including safety from gun violence, that are traditionally provided by “big government.” And the governments of most every other advanced democracy in the world do provide these things to their people.

But not America, because our government is too small.

Today’s U.S. government is simply too small relative to GDP to provide the level of public services that other advanced democracies offer their citizens.

And it’s been shrinking steadily ever since the Reagan Revolution took an axe to federal programs to pay for his tax cuts for billionaires. The year the Gipper was inaugurated, federal workers made up 2.6% of the total U.S. workforce; today’s they’re 0.87% of all American workers.

Too small.

Our population has grown steadily, while — as a result of repeated Republican austerity cuts to the federal workforce over four GOP administrations — the number of people who keep us safe and guarantee a middle class lifestyle has shrunk.

• That’s why it takes forever to get ahold of anybody at Social Security, the IRS, or Medicare to answer a question or help out.
• It’s why it’s mind-mindbogglingly difficult to report to the feds that your bank is trying to rip you off.
• It’s why polluters skate while Americans in cancer alleys and toxic dump areas die.
• It’s why we have tent cities along our streets and highways.
• It’s why drug and insurance companies rip us off daily.
• It’s why employers like Bezos, Trump, and Musk get away with denying their workers union representation.

The simple reality is that the only way to have a strong, vibrant middle class is to have a strong, activist federal government. And without a strong, vibrant middle class you don’t have a free nation.

For decades, American political discourse has been dominated by the idea that “big government” is a problem. From Ronald Reagan’s famous quip that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem” to today’s Musk- and GOP-led efforts to slash government spending, Americans have been conditioned by the rightwing media machine to view a larger government as an inherent threat to liberty and prosperity.

But this fundamental assumption is wrong. If we’re truly committed to America being the “land of opportunity” with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness at its core, the U.S. government is far too small.

Comparing the United States to other wealthy nations, particularly European and Scandinavian countries, reveals a stark contrast in how governments serve their citizens.

Those nations enjoy a higher quality of life, better health outcomes, lower poverty rates, and more economic security — because their governments do more. They provide universal healthcare, generous paid family leave, free or low-cost higher education, and strong worker protections.

And contrary to the uniquely American (and now Argentinian) conservative argument that big government means less freedom, these policies actually increase individual freedom, allowing people to live healthier, more secure, and more fulfilling lives.

A good measure of a government’s size is its spending as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP); this metric lets us to compare how much a nation invests in public services relative to the size of its economy.

According to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the U.S. government spends about 37% of GDP on public expenditures, including Social Security, Medicare, defense, and other services. In contrast, European nations typically spend between 45% and 55% of GDP.

Scandinavian countries — Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland — allocate an even larger portion of their GDP to public services, often well exceeding 55%. Their governments play an active role in ensuring citizens have access to high-quality healthcare, education, housing assistance, childcare, and more. In these nations, individuals do not have to worry about medical bankruptcy, crushing student debt, housing, or lack of parental leave.

Greedy billionaire “conservatives” and their paid media shills, their Republican politicians, and their think tanks argue that “smaller government leads to more freedom.” It’s complete bullshit (unless you’re a billionaire), and needs to be called out every time they try pushing it on us.

In reality, the Republican model of small government restricts the freedom of ordinary people by tying necessities such as healthcare, education, and retirement security to personal wealth.

In today’s post-Reagan America, you’re only free if you’re rich.

By contrast, European- and Canadian-style social democracy increases the freedom of working class people by ensuring that their basic human needs are met, allowing citizens to pursue careers, start families, and enjoy life without constant economic anxiety.

Take healthcare as an example. The U.S. is the only wealthy country in the world that does not provide universal healthcare. As a result, Americans live in constant fear of medical bills. A single illness can lead to bankruptcy, forcing families to make impossible choices between healthcare and basic necessities.

How the hell does that help create or expand “freedom”?

In European countries (and Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Australia, and Costa Rica), healthcare is a right, not a privilege. No one has to stay in a job they hate just to keep their insurance. No one has to choose between paying rent and buying life-saving medication.

That is real freedom.

In the United States, college tuition has skyrocketed over the last few decades, forcing students into lifelong debt just to get an education. In contrast, European nations — particularly in Scandinavia and Germany — offer free or low-cost higher education, allowing young people to focus on learning rather than worrying about how to pay off loans for decades.

Work-life balance is another major issue. The U.S. has no federally mandated paid parental leave, forcing millions of Americans to return to work almost immediately after childbirth. European countries, by contrast, guarantee generous paid family leave, enabling parents to care for their newborns without financial ruin.

Which system provides more real freedom?

Because the U.S. government is too small relative to GDP, the American middle class is stretched thin in ways that just never happen in other wealthy democracies. Housing costs are skyrocketing, wages have stagnated, and basic services like childcare and elder care are prohibitively expensive.

The result is that millions of Americans live paycheck to paycheck with massive debt, with little opportunity to build wealth or even achieve basic economic stability.

Consider retirement security. Social Security is one of the most effective and popular government programs in American history, yet Republicans consistently push to cut or privatize it and Musk’s teenagers are working hard to find ways to cut it even further.

Meanwhile, pensions have all but disappeared in the private sector, leaving most workers dependent on 401(k)s, which are subject to the volatility of the stock market. In contrast, European nations provide generous public pensions — their equivalent of Social Security — that ensure seniors can retire with dignity and without fear of poverty.

Opponents of “Big Government” often point to higher taxes in Europe as a reason to reject their model. And, yes, taxes are higher in those countries (particularly on the rich) — but in return, citizens receive significant benefits that eliminate major out-of-pocket expenses and expand their personal freedom.

When those costs are factored in along with billionaire tax-avoidance schemes and loopholes, middle-class Americans pay more taxes in total than Europeans, but receive far fewer benefits.

And Scandinavian citizens are consistently ranked among the happiest in the world, according to the World Happiness Report because they experience significantly lower levels of economic stress. They don’t have to worry about medical bills, student debt, or retirement insecurity. Instead of spending their lives with financial anxiety, they can focus on personal fulfillment, family, and community.

Years ago, I was up late one night in an Asian city (Taipei, as I recall) watching the financial news on a hotel TV. A young American host was interviewing a very wealthy German businessman at a conference in Singapore.

Amidst questions about the business climate and the conference, the host asked the German businessman what tax rate he was “suffering under” in his home country. As I recall, the businessman said, “A bit over 60 percent, when everything is included.”

“How can you handle that?” asked the host, incredulous.

The German shrugged his shoulders and moved the conversation to another topic.

A few minutes later, the American reporter, still all wound up by the tax question, again asked the businessman how he could possibly live in a country with such a high tax rate on very wealthy and successful people. Again, the German deferred and changed the subject.

The reporter went for a third try. “Why don’t you lead a revolt against those high taxes?” he asked, his tone implying the businessman was badly in need of some good old American rebellion-making.

The German businessman paused for a long moment and then leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees, his clasped hands in front of him pointing at the reporter as if in prayer.

He stared at the young man for another long moment and then, in the tone of voice an adult uses to correct a spoiled child, said simply, “I don’t want to be a rich man in a poor country.”

There are a few wealthy Americans who understand this. Like the Patriotic Millionaires group, they embrace an opportunity to help our country, often via Democratic politicians.

But the billionaires who fund the Republican Party and own right-wing media believe it’s perfectly fine to rip the moral and political guts out of their own nation, condemn its future to severe weather, and turn its people against each other if it helps them fill their money bins.

For too long, the economic and political debate in the U.S. has been framed around whether government is “too big” or “too small.” But the real question should be: Does our government serve the needs of our people?

The evidence suggests that it does not. Today’s U.S. government is simply too small relative to GDP to provide the level of public services that other advanced democracies offer their citizens. And Trump and Musk are dedicated to cutting it even further so they can fund more tax cuts and business subsidies for billionaires.

To change this, we must rethink our priorities. Expanding government programs in healthcare, education, paid leave, childcare, and retirement security would not make us “less free” — they would actually increase our freedom. They would relieve financial burdens, provide greater security, and allow more Americans to pursue their dreams without constant economic anxiety.

The Scandinavian and European models prove that a strong, active government can create a fairer, freer, and happier society. The U.S. hardly lacks the resources to build such a system: we simply lack the political will to tax the rich and turn that into a foundation for a vibrant middle class.

Once we’re past this current crisis of democracy (fingers crossed), we need to focus on changing that. It’s time to recognize that our government should not just be big enough to fund the military and bail out massive banks; it should be big enough to ensure that every American can live a life of dignity, security, and opportunity.

As I lay out in The Hidden History of the American Dream, that’s the real American dream, and it’s one worth fighting for.

The past few weeks have seen a deluge of devastation from the second Trump administration, which in less than a month has broken many democratic norms and customs and even ignored the Constitution in several ways.

During these head-spinning times, it's more vital than ever to zero in on the threats to our democracy. Today, one of the worst challenges we're up against is increasingly widespread voter suppression—a peril accelerating under President. Donald Trump and easy to lose sight of amid the chaos.

As we write, Congress is trying to pass the SAVE Act, which would require all citizens to produce a document such as a passport or birth certificate when they register to vote. It would apply even when they re-register after a move or, as many do, between elections. This new and unprecedented national requirement would severely limit online, mail-in, and automatic registration and has the potential to block millions of eligible Americans from casting ballots.

Universal suffrage is the heart of democracy but deeply threatened today.

The now almost-official Trump doctrine, Project 2025, also promises potentially disastrous consequences related to suffrage. The Department of Justice's Criminal Division would become responsible for investigating voting offenses, likely leading to bogus prosecutions of voters and election officials. The government would also gain access to voter lists that could facilitate purges of minority voters. Project 2025 also proposes restricting or abolishing programs that encourage voter registration.

We need to acutely oppose these potential dangers. To do that, it's helpful to understand the history of suffrage in our country.

America began its democratic experiment in the 1700s with a small demographic of eligible voters: white, male landowners. Voting rights were not directly in the text of the Constitution, but instead left to the states to decide.

While Americans no doubt rightly lament that voting was so restricted, it's worth recognizing that the very idea of suffrage was an audacious departure in and of itself—a profoundly progressive advancement that pivoted away from predatory monarchy with aristocracy that dominated the European continent. Indeed, some of the Founders expressed remarkably enlightened views on voting. Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1776 that "the influence over government must be shared among all the people."

Even though our democracy was—and still is—deeply flawed, suffrage has always been its bedrock. Throughout our history advocates have fought to expand and enshrine suffrage, and today most state constitutions protect the right to vote. After the Civil War, several constitutional amendments codified and extended voting rights and since then legislation, such as the 1965 Voting Rights Act, has added further protections.

Sadly, however, voices from our country's Founders ring hollow when looking at our recent presidential election, which saw unprecedented organized voter suppression by the Republican Party.

Consider a report released this month by Greg Palast, acclaimed investigative reporter, forensic economist, and statistician. Using data from the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission, he found that voter suppression led to 14.1 million voters being deemed ineligible or having their ballots disqualified. Note that Trump won by a margin of only 2 million votes.

Almost 5 million voters were purged from voter rolls without credible evidence, and another 2 million mail-in ballots were disqualified for minor clerical errors, e.g. postage due. Almost another 800,000 ballots were disqualified or rejected for other, non-credible reasons, and over 3.24 million new registrations were rejected without credible evidence.

Palast points out that historically organized voter suppression was overwhelmingly directed at Black and Latino voters such as Jim Crow Era literacy tests and poll taxes.

How did we get here?

In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court changed course from its history of protecting voter rights when it debilitated the Voting Rights Act of 1965, removing the requirement that jurisdictions with histories of racial discrimination obtain federal approval for new voting procedures. The result is a pernicious plethora of conservative state laws undermining or restricting voters.

A 2024 Brennan Center for Justice report found voter suppression has dramatically increased in the last 20 years. Many conservative states created obstacles by imposing unreasonable voter ID laws, and decreasing early voting times.

Unsurprisingly, voter suppression laws disproportionately impact communities of Black and Latino voters. For example, a 2022 Washington state audit reported that Black voters were 400% more likely than white voters to have their mail-in ballot rejected.

Universal suffrage is the heart of democracy but deeply threatened today.

What then is to be done to end this scourge of voter suppression by Mr. Trump's neofascist's advocates? Amid the chaos of the first hundred days of the second Trump administration, let us focus on defending these rights. If the present strategy of voter suppression by the Republican Party is not stopped, the results of the midterms in two years and the 2028 presidential election are already decided.

We are heading down a dark path reminiscent of a troublesome past. But we can be motivated by really great successes made possible by people's movements: The right of Blacks to vote was driven by inspiring and hard-won action, and women's suffrage struggles were also achieved through grassroots organizing.

The time is now. It will take all of us, joining in mass demonstrations and pushing our elected leaders to withstand the pressure and do everything in their power to block legislation and eliminate existing voter suppression regulation when—and wherever possible—before it's too late.