A World War I propaganda poster warned that individuals failing to support war efforts would face future shame for cowardice. Combat required immense bravery. Today, democracy falters as Trump enacts deportations without due process and censors universities. Courage remains scarce. Will people standing silent now face judgment later?

What IS the Left? What should we fight for? How can we rebuild outside of the Democrats? Order my latest book “WHAT’S LEFT” here at Rall.com. It comes autographed to the person of your choice, and I’ll deliver it anywhere. Cost including shipping is $29.95 in the USA.

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Every once in a while our mad king hits on an accidentally poetic turn of phrase in one of his strangely punctuated missives. In one of this week’s movie-based announcements (not the one about reopening San Francisco’s notorious island prison, which apparently followed a showing of Escape From Alcatraz on the Palm Beach PBS station) (not PBS’ fault, support them here), he declared that he was henceforth “instituting a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands.”

It was the last phrase—“foreign lands”—that attracted me; it conjures up European monarchs of earlier centuries dispatching sailors to see if fountains of youth or dragons or some such might be found off the edges of existing charts. (No, as it turned out, just Indigenous people who could be forced to part with their “foreign lands”). It’s a reminder that for Trump, and for many of us, a myopic focus on what’s happening here is a mistake, because we’ve long assumed that we’re at the head of the world. That unconscious supremacy—born in the actual enormous lead we had in living standards in the rubble of World War II—no longer makes much sense. So just a quick survey of what those funny people in other places are up to.

The rest of the English-speaking world seems set to keep moving forward into a working energy future. And the rest of Europe too.

Take China, emerging as Earth’s first electro-state. The Wall Street Journal had an excellent account this week of just how far our economies are diverging. Autos are a key piece of technology, one that produces both a large supply and technology chain, and a clue to a country’s identity. In America, Peter Landers, pointed out, the “standard family choice” is a $50,000 gas-fired SUV; in China,

A majority of new vehicles sold in China are either fully electric or plug-in hybrids, and a look around the recent auto show in Shanghai showed that local makers have mostly stopped introducing new gasoline-powered models. In the U.S., by contrast, the traditional combustion engine still powers about 8 in 10 new vehicles.

The price difference is overwhelming. Chinese car buyers no longer need to debate whether an EV can be made affordable, not when a decent starter model costs $10,000 and a luxury seven-seater with reclining massage chairs can be had for $50,000. Because of customer demand, even the low-end models come with advanced driver-assistance software.

Ten thousand dollars for a “decent starter model.” We’re not talking junk: “a new Toyota electric-powered sport-utility vehicle for about $15,000, complete with sunroof and cup holders.” Some of this comes because Chinese automakers are paid less (enough, however, to afford a new car); some of it comes from increasingly roboticized factories; and some of it comes from government subsidy. Because the government has decided it wants to own the future: Whose cars do you think are going to do better in, um, “foreign lands”? Bloomberg, in March, reported that Chinese automakers were “taking over roads from Brazil to South Africa”:

In South Africa, China-made vehicles account for nearly 10% of sales, or about five times the volume sold in 2019. In Turkey, Chinese brands claimed an 8% share in the first six months of 2024, up from almost none in 2022. In Chile, they have accounted for nearly a third of auto sales for several years running.

China sends more vehicles abroad than any other country, and its passenger car exports surged nearly 20% to 4.9 million in 2024 alone, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers—from less than 1 million in 2020.

In Brazil,

Luiz Palladino, 61, an engineer who has owned GM and Honda vehicles in the past and currently drives a Haval H6 EV, compared the car with much more expensive luxury cars.

“The moment I got into the car I thought: It’s in line with BMWs, Audis, with top-notch car finishing,” he said. “It has everything I want.”

Ok, that’s China (where thanks to huge solar buildout the use of coal for electricity dropped 5% in the first quarter, even as electricity demand surged). Now let’s look at Britain, where humans first learned to burn fossil fuels in quantity in the 18th century. There, the Labor government is apparently set to announce that all new homes will come with solar panels up top.

Housebuilders would be mandated by law to install solar roof panels on new properties by 2027 under new rules, seen by The Times, which ministers have claimed would slash energy bills and reduce emissions.

The change was estimated to add about £3,300 to the cost of building a semi-detached or terraced house and just under £4,000 for a detached property.

However, it was expected that new homeowners would recoup the extra costs within four years, with an average three-bedroom semi-detached saving more than £1,000 a year on energy bills.

This makes eminent sense because

Fitting solar power during construction is much cheaper than adding it to older buildings, which requires costly scaffolding and often new wiring. The payoff will be lower bills for consumers and lower emissions from buildings, which have become the second-biggest carbon polluter after transport.

And it comes despite the efforts of former British Prime Minister (and current Saudi lobbyist) Tony Blair to scupper such advances. Keir Starmer has four more years on his electoral mandate; Canada’s Mark Carney five, and after last week’s smashing election win Australia’s Anthony Albanese has three; the rest of the English-speaking world seems set to keep moving forward into a working energy future. And the rest of Europe too.

In Germany, for instance, as many as 3 million apartments may now have “balcony solar” arrays, solar panels that can be bought for a few hundred euros at the equivalent of Home Depot, hung from the railing of your veranda, and plugged straight into the wall, where they provide a reasonable amount of power. As France 24 reported recently:

City authorities in Frankfurt gave Christoph Stadelmann, a 60-year-old teacher, half of the 650 euros ($676) he paid for his kit at the beginning of last year.

Stadelmann expects to make his money back within three years.

Mirjam Sax said she would recommend balcony solar panels in spite of Germany's sometimes grey weather.

"If you've got a balcony, if you've got a bit of sun, you can put up a panel or two to see if it's worth it," she said.
"It's easy, and there's a price for every budget."

You can’t do that in America, because our country has fallen behind these foreign lands. As Grist reported last week, Underwriters Laboratory, which certifies appliances, hasn’t bothered to do the work to approve the systems, which means they can’t legally be installed in most places.

These challenges will take time and effort to overcome, but they’re not insurmountable, advocates of the technology said. Even now, a team of entrepreneurs and research scientists, backed by federal funding, are creating these standards. Their work mirrors what happened in Germany nearly a decade ago, when clean energy advocates and companies began lobbying the country’s electrical certification body to amend safety regulations to legalize balcony solar.

In 2017, Verband der Elektrotechnik, or VDE, a German certification body that issues product and safety standards for electrical products, released the first guideline that allowed for balcony solar systems. While such systems existed before VDE took this step, the benchmark it established allowed manufacturers to sell them widely, creating a booming industry.

“Relentless individuals” were key to making that happen, said Christian Ofenheusle, the founder of EmpowerSource, a Berlin-based company that promotes balcony solar. Members of a German solar industry association spent years advocating for the technology and worked with VDE to carve a path toward standardizing balcony solar systems.

Happily, we have some “relentless individuals” here as well—Cora Stryker, for instance, who this year started Bright Saver—to bring the balcony technology to America. I talked with her at some length last week: I’ve stuck our exchange into question-and-answer format below

1. Is America finally getting balcony solar!? Tell me about how you heard about this new development and got involved.

Yes! We’re already doing installations in the SF Bay Area and we are looking for early adopters to help us start a “balcony” plug-in solar movement in this country like the one we are seeing in Germany. As you know, plug-in solar isn’t just for balconies. It can go almost anywhere—in the backyard, the side of a house, in front of a garage, etc. My cofounders and I started Bright Saver because we believe that the benefits of producing clean energy at home should be available to everyone, not just homeowners with good roofs who can commit to spending $20-30k, although our system is also great for folks like me who have maxed out our rooftop solar capacity and want more power. Rooftop solar is all or nothing—what we are offering is a more modular, lower-commitment, more affordable, and versatile solar option as an alternative.

In this political climate, I think we are all looking for solutions that give the power to us, literally, rather than relying on government to solve climate.

I first heard about balcony solar when you started writing about it, actually! Then I met my cofounders Kevin Chou and Rupert Mayer—tech entrepreneurs who got the climate call—and I joined as the long-time climate advocate among us.

2) What's your hope for this project—how big can this get?

We can get big. Really big.

Seventy percent of Americans can’t get rooftop solar, but millions in that group want it. How can we produce more clean energy nationwide? We believe the solution is to address accessibility first, giving everyone an option to produce solar at home. This will give millions of Americans an option to become primary producers of their own energy, saving on electricity bills, and, we believe, bringing millions into the climate movement, giving us all hope that the power to address climate rests in our hands.

If we do this right, we follow in Germany’s footsteps, and produce several gigawatts of clean energy annually. However, unlike Germany, we can’t take the risk of letting it take 10 years to ramp up because we don’t have 10 years when it comes to climate. That’s why we started Bright Saver—to make this happen more quickly than it would on its own.

3) The U.S. has different wiring than Europe—explain if this is a problem and how it's overcome?

That’s been a structural—pun intended—concern for some time. In Europe, you can buy plug-in solar units at the grocery store for a few hundred Euros, plug them into the wall, and you’re done. Unfortunately, we can’t use those European systems because, as you point out, we have a 120-volt electrical system and most of Europe is on a 230-volt system.

Here, we are limited in the number of systems that are compatible with our electrical system and they are expensive and not easy to install. We exist to eliminate these barriers to adoption. For instance, as a nonprofit, we keep our prices low and we install the system, a complicated process that requires a licensed electrician.

My job is to put myself out of a job—if we jumpstart this movement now, we get more manufacturers into the game; competition drives down prices and increases ease of use, which stimulates more widespread adoption; and the virtuous cycle continues on market forces without us. In this political climate, I think we are all looking for solutions that give the power to us, literally, rather than relying on government to solve climate.

4) What do you need from local authorities to really make this happen?

We are primarily installing units in the backyard or front yard, where we believe permits are rarely a concern. I have young kids, and I can’t think of any parents who got a permit to put a trampoline or a slide in the backyard. Similarly, the 800 watt units we are installing are impermanent structures which you plug into an outdoor outlet like an appliance. They are half the electricity load of a hair dryer, and we include a smart power meter to make sure they never backfeed into the grid.

What we need is local and state legislation like what just passed unanimously in Utah. As you know, that legislation eliminates the ambiguity when it comes to mounted plug-in systems so folks can put them anywhere that is convenient for them. In fact, part of our nonprofit’s mission is to build a national coalition of advocacy groups to help pass such legislation in all 50 states—so please get in touch if you know groups that might want to join our coalition!

5) Why do you need donations to get this started?

Without donations, we stay small and grow slowly. I’ve been approached by several venture capitalists who say to me, you have huge market potential—let’s talk! But we want to keep lowering and lowering prices as we get bigger, not feeling the pressure of investors wanting us to raise prices and increase profits. We are a nonprofit because, well, w're not here to profit—we are here to bring solar to everyone who wants it.

We have a big vision to give all Americans the option to become energy independent. We plan to include home battery storage in the future, but we are only four months old, we have limited funding, and we need to start somewhere. Donating or becoming an early adopter will make it possible for us to stay true to our mission of serving everyone with solar energy and growing the climate movement so that every household of every means can start producing their own energy from the sun.

Many thanks to Stryker and her friends for getting this off the ground (and if you think it tickles me that she first read about the concept in this newsletter, then you’re right; that’s why I do this).

And here’s the thing. Though Americans aren’t used to it, there’s sometimes something useful in being behind all those other foreign lands. They’ve figured out what needs to happen, and all we have to do is copy. That’s what China did for decades—maybe it’s our turn. And now I’m going to go watch a bunch of foreign movies before the tariffs kick in.

May is one of my favorite months to go walking through the forests near my home in Cedar Mountain, North Carolina. Up here, near the mountainous border between the Carolinas, the air smells sweet and clean this time of the year, filtered by the bounty of trees. I’ve gotten to know some of them like neighbors: the cucumber magnolias, maples, sourwoods, and, of course, dogwoods.

I am a lifelong lover of forests. I am also the executive director of the Dogwood Alliance, an environmental organization dedicated to preserving Southeastern forests. As such, I make sure to pay attention to the forests and the trees.

Lately, when I visit the forests, I see scars. I see the smoldering scars of the recent fires that sent my husband and me into a panicked evacuation. Or, I see the giant holes where trees used to be before Hurricane Helene, which devastated the area and kept me stranded in New York City for days unable to get in touch with my husband or my daughter. Ironically, I was at the annual gathering known as Climate Week as everyone learned that the Asheville area is not a climate haven. Nowhere really is. My neck of the woods is beautiful, but not invincible.

We’re not only fighting what’s bad but also working toward what’s good.

Still, when it comes to climate change, our forests are our best friends and biggest protectors. They can block the wind and absorb the water before it inundates communities. They’re also among the oldest and best tools in the toolbox when it comes to climate change because nothing—and I mean nothing—stores carbon like a good, old-fashioned tree.

And as destructive as the hurricane and the fires were, the biggest threat to our forests remains the logging industry. The rate of logging in our Southern U.S. forests is four times higher than that of the South American rainforests. Despite claims to the contrary, the logging industry is the biggest tree-killer in the nation.

The wood-pellet biomass industry is a major culprit. Over the last 10 years, our region has become the largest wood-pellet exporter in the entire world. Companies receive massive subsidies to chop our forests into wood pellets that are then shipped overseas to be burned for electricity. This process is a major waste of taxpayer dollars and produces more carbon emissions than coal.

And it seems that regardless of who is in charge at the state or federal level, they consistently fail to protect forests. Most recently, President Donald Trump signed executive orders that threaten to turbocharge logging and wood production while subverting cornerstone legal protections such as the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. The truth is that policies that increase logging and wood production will only make communities like mine even more vulnerable to climate impacts, while decreasing the likelihood of recovery. The Trump administration's efforts to ramp up logging and close environmental justice offices are especially troublesome given the disproportionate impact that the forestry industry has on disadvantaged communities.

It can be an alarming picture to look at, especially when I think about the communities that will be harmed the most: low-income communities of color. But, I’m not new to this movement. I’ve seen again and again, those same communities rise up and fight off some of the biggest multinational corporations on the planet and hold our elected officials’ feet to the fire.

We’ve successfully clawed back subsidies for the biomass industry, slowing the growth of wood-pellet plants, and sounded the alarm when these facilities violated important pollution limits. They’ve had to pay millions of dollars in fines, shut down plants, and scrap plans for expansion. This is what gives me hope for the people and forests of the South.

We’re not only fighting what’s bad but also working toward what’s good.

Just last month, Dogwood Alliance’s community partners in Gloster, Mississippi scored a major victory. The community exerted huge pressure on the state’s Department of Environmental Quality to deny a permit to expand wood-pellet production for Drax—one of the most powerful multinational biomass corporations—and won! This means that the town’s residents will not have to face increased air pollution, noise pollution, traffic, and the greater mutilation of their bucolic landscape. If Gloster, a town of less than 1,000 people, can beat a megacorporation, I know we can stand up to the Trump administration and continue to advance a better, more sustainable vision for the South.

Through my work, I have the absolute privilege of partnering with some of the most inspiring leaders in the environmental justice movement. For example, we are partnering with Reverend Leo Woodberry, a pastor in South Carolina, to create a community forest on the land where his ancestors were once enslaved. With the support of community-focused donors, soon the Britton’s Neck Community Conservation Forest will be full of hiking trails, camp sites, and an ecolodge for locals and tourists from around the world to enjoy. This rise in outdoor recreation and (literal) foot traffic will create a badly needed economic rejuvenation for the local community, thus turning standing trees into gold. After all, outdoor recreation creates five times more jobs than the forestry industry.

This is not an isolated story. Four years ago this month, the Pee Dee Indian Tribe cut the ribbon on their educational center and 100-acre community forest in McColl, South Carolina as part of their effort to create a regenerative economy that prioritizes ecological harmony. All across the South, people are protecting the forests that protect them through a new community-led Justice Conservation initiative, which prioritizes forest protection in the communities on the front lines of our nation's most heavily logged areas.

The other day, when I went for my walk, I noticed that the scars are starting to give way to shoots of new growth. This is the time of year when the trees come alive, lighting the forest with purple and pink and white blossoms. That, to me, is hope. That, to me, is a miracle.

Right now, it feels like the whole world is on edge, bracing for the next major weather event. I know how helpless it can feel to watch the communities you love experience severe damage, I’ve lived it. But we are our own best hope. Just like the trees in a forest, we’re stronger together. Whether you live here in the South or across the country, I invite you to join us in protecting our forests and supporting the types of projects we’re spearheading through the Justice Conservation initiative.

When Senate Republicans brought the so-called Antisemitism Awareness Act up for a committee vote last week, they were expecting an easy win. After all, the bill had the support of Senate Republican leaders, most Israel advocacy groups, and even some Democrats.

Yet the bill faced an unexpected problem that may ultimately doom its passage. During a markup hearing of the HELP Committee, two Republicans broke ranks, joining all Democrats in approving free speech amendments that undermined the true goal of the bill: requiring colleges and universities to conflate criticism of the Israeli government and Zionism with antisemitism.

The first amendment considered was HELP Chairman Sen. Bill Cassidy's (R-La.) manager amendment, which affirmed that “Nothing in this Act shall be constructed to diminish or infringe upon any right protected under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States."

While that vague reassurance passed with bipartisan support, most Republicans refused to support substantive amendments that explicitly referenced Gaza as an example of free speech, laid out examples of protected student speech, and prohibited retaliation against dissent.

If the true purpose of the Antisemitism Awareness Act was protecting Jewish students from illegal anti-Semitic discrimination, then none of these amendments should have been a problem.

At start of the hearing, ranking member Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) warned, “Unfortunately and unacceptably, the Antisemitism Awareness Act we are considering today would label speech that criticizes the Israeli government and Netanyahu’s horrific war in Gaza as antisemitic and a violation of civil rights laws, and that is an extremely dangerous precedent.”

Sanders then offered several amendments designed to reduce the risk that government agencies and educational institutions can use the bill as a new tool of censorship.

His first amendment clarified, "no person shall be considered antisemitic for using their rights of free speech or protest under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States to ... oppose Benjamin Netanyahu's led war effort, which has killed more than 50,000 and wounded more than 113,000, 60 percent of whom are women and children” and "oppose the Israeli government's devastation of Gaza..."

All Democrats voted in favor, which was itself a surprise given how many Democratic politicians have desperately avoided any criticism of the Israeli government. The bigger surprise came from Senator Rand Paul. He broke ranks with other Republicans and supported the amendment, ensuring its passage.

A second Sanders amendment declared that the federal government cannot force any school, college, or university to adopt a policy that a branch of the federal government may compel a school "to violate the rights of a student, faculty, or staff member under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States."

In a sane world, every Republican senator would have supported such a basic amendment. Yet all opposed it except for two: Sen. Paul and Sen. Susan Collins (D-Maine).

The third Sanders' amendment clarified that speech, such as distributing flyers, inviting guest speakers, or engaging in classroom discussions, is protected unless it involves true threats or incitement of violence. Again, Paul and Collins were the only Republicans to break with their colleagues to support it.

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) introduced an amendment prohibiting the federal government from detaining or deporting students based on protected political speech. That amendment passed by a single vote, thanks again to Senator Paul. Markey stated, “When a young person writes an op-ed in the student newspaper and get whisked off of the streets of Tuffs University to a prison in Louisiana with no charges that is what we are debating today.”

If the true purpose of the Antisemitism Awareness Act was protecting Jewish students from illegal anti-Semitic discrimination, then none of these amendments should have been a problem. They should have received universal support, and their approval should not have derailed the bill.

Yet the fate of the legislation is now up in the air.

HELP Committee Chair Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said during the hearing that, “Supporting these amendments is an effort to kill this bill.”

Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Ok.) responded the next day by telling Jewish Insider that “Rand Paul totally killed that bill.” Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) also said, “These amendments are dealbreakers.”

Why? Because the Antisemitism Awareness Act has never been about countering antisemitism or protecting Jewish students from discrimination; it is about silencing pro-Palestine students and protecting the Israeli government from criticism.

The bill would require government agencies and schools to enforce federal civil rights law using the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism—a vague and widely disputed standard that poses a mortal threat to First Amendment freedoms.

Kenneth S. Stern, the original drafter of the IHRA definition, has testified to Congress that, "My fear is, if we similarly enshrine this definition into law, outside groups will try and suppress–rather than answer–political speech they don’t like. The academy, Jewish students, and faculty teaching about Jewish issues, will all suffer." Stern has repeatedly stated that the definition was never meant to be enforceable law and that doing so risks unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination. That is precisely what this legislation seeks to achieve.

The IHRA definition declares that any student describing the founding of Israel as a "racist endeavor" has engaged in antisemitism punishable by their school and the government of the United States—even though racist militias and terrorist groups like the Irgun subjected Palestinians to a horrific campaign of ethnic cleansing and mass murder during the founding of Israel.

IHRA also declares anyone “applying double standards” to Israel is antisemtiic. If someone criticizes the Israeli government's war crimes in Gaza but hasn't made time to criticize the RSF's war crimes in Sudan, they must be antisemitic. Ditto for anyone “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis,” comparisons that--while controversial—have even been made by far-right supporters of the Israeli government.

As Sen. Paul noted during the hearing, these and other examples establish a dangerous double standard. No other foreign government is granted this level of immunity from criticism under U.S. civil rights law. If enforced through Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, these vague and politically motivated examples would transform legitimate political critique into grounds for federal investigations, and dissent into a punishable offense.

If passed, this bill—even in its watered-down form—would open the door for the Israeli government and its supporters to misconstrue American civil rights laws.

CAIR, like many other civil rights groups, has called on congress to not pass the Antisemitism Awareness Act into law, as it would give the Department of Education—under a Trump administration already targeting, arresting, detaining, and attempting to deport anti-genocide protesters—even more power to investigate, silence, and punish speech on campus critical of Israel. We are already seeing the consequences. More than 1,700 student visas have been revoked since January. Students like Columbia’s Mahmoud Khalil and Tufts’ Rumeysa Ozturk remain in ICE custody for nothing more than participating in peaceful, protected protest and speech. Others face deportation for daring to speak out. This is not theoretical. This is not speculative. It is happening now.

In its original form, the Antisemitism Awareness Act would have given the Trump administration even more power to escalate its attack on free speech for Palestine. Even with the addition of Sanders' amendments, the now-contradictory bill still threatens free speech protections by including the IHRA definition.

That's still not good enough for most Senate Republicans and pro-Israel groups pushing the bill. Now that the bill cannot be so easily weaponized to silence dissent against Israeli government's war crimes in Gaza or its founding ideology, at least some of its key backers are threatening to abandon it.

Congress must reject this bill in full. No amendment can salvage legislation built on an anti-democratic foundation. Americans have the right to speak out against injustice, whether it occurs in our own country or in Gaza.

We must be absolutely clear about what is at stake. If passed, this bill—even in its watered-down form—would open the door for the Israeli government and its supporters to misconstrue American civil rights laws. That is not only a betrayal of free speech. It is a threat to American sovereignty.

Americans must unequivocally oppose antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Black racism, anti-immigrant sentiment, and all forms of hate. But conflating antisemitism with opposition to Israel’s military occupation, apartheid policies, or the ongoing genocide in Gaza is not just dishonest. It is dangerous.

Congress must reject this bill in full. No amendment can salvage legislation built on an anti-democratic foundation. Americans have the right to speak out against injustice, whether it occurs in our own country or in Gaza.

Silencing speech does not stop hate. It only deepens injustice. And we should not stand by while our government attempts to criminalize moral clarity.

On April 3, Sen. Bernie Sanders forced votes on the floor of the Senate on two Joint Resolutions of Disapproval, specifically S.J. Res. 33 and 26, each intended to stop the transfer of particular weaponry to Israel. Sadly, only 15 senators* voted for them. It is likely that one or both of your Democratic senators (if you have any) were among the 31 who voted “no,” or “present,” or simply did not vote, in effect endorsing an additional export of massive numbers of U.S.-made bombs to Israel, bombs that will be used to blow up more Palestinian civilians, along with the few homes, hospitals, schools, farms, and bakeries still standing.

The Palestinian human rights organization with which I work, like many other pro-peace, anti-genocide organizations and individuals, urgently implored our Democratic senators to vote with Sanders, hoping that their oft-stated commitment to human and civil rights might extend to Palestinians. We were disappointed in our representatives; chances are, you were as well.**

Sen. Sanders has three more Joint Resolutions of Disapproval (JRDs) in the pipeline. When--and if--they will make it to the floor for a vote is unknown, though we hope it won’t be far off. What we do know is that U.S. weapons are being used by Israel each and every day to slaughter noncombatants in Palestine. Opposing the transfer of arms in the future, arms earmarked to complete the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the West Bank, may feel like the tiniest drop in the proverbial bucket, given the rise of lawlessness, fascism, and terror at home, but the two are intimately connected. Self-evidently, state-sponsored murder and kidnapping cannot reasonably be construed to signal the collapse of democracy in one instance and the defense of it in another. Heroics, like a 25-hour speech in the well of the Senate meant to stand against the takeover of the U.S. by actors hostile to our Constitution and laws, pales in power when it is followed a mere two days later by a vote to continue to facilitate the killing of blameless children in another country.

How can voting to provide more offensive military equipment to a country that has a long track record of using U.S.-provided materiel in the commission of gross violations of human rights align with any legislator’s essential commitment to the rule of law?

With upcoming opportunities for our senators to redeem their recent votes in favor of Israeli atrocities, my organization asked them to account for those votes and offered them context both political and factual. Israeli hasbara and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee have clearly swayed their understanding and actions, and while it is an uphill struggle to counter those fraudulent narratives, we try. Another drop in the bucket? Perhaps just one small way to stand against tyranny wherever it rears its head.

The letters we sent were tailored in response to our own senators’ defense of their votes; below we have written a generic version addressed to any and all of the Democratic senators who actively chose to consign more Palestinian children to the flames, to amputation without anesthetic, to living a literal hell on earth. If you are a reader here, you almost certainly know most of what follows by rote, but we thought to gather some of the pertinent facts and language in a document that would make it simpler to approach your senator should you care to. Please feel free to copy, mine, adapt, and enrich the letter. Please… use it! While this is admittedly nowhere near enough, there are times when every drop counts.

***********

Senator:

Your April 3, 2025 votes on Bernie Sanders’ JRDs left me with a number of questions as well as, quite frankly, a broken heart. I wonder why, when given the chance to take a minimal step that would slow the illegal slaughter all the world sees exploding in Gaza and the West Bank, you chose to underwrite these atrocities with more U.S. weapons.

Nearly a year ago, the Biden State Department found that Israel, using U.S.-supplied weapons, likely breached international and humanitarian law. Our own “Leahy Laws” prohibit the provision of military support to countries against which there are credible allegations of “gross violations of human rights” including: extrajudicial killings; forced disappearances; torture; rape by security forces; and other forms of cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment.

Numerous documented and ultimately undisputed instances of each of these have been perpetrated by the IDF against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Recently, the Israeli military killed 15 well-identified medics in Gaza by shooting them at close range while their hands were bound, subsequently burying both the humans and their vehicles in order to hide the war crime. Just last month, the IDF shot an unarmed New Jersey teen (and American citizen) in the West Bank. Omar Mohammed Saada Rabea was hit 11 times, and while he bled to death, Israeli soldiers actively prevented the 14-year-old from receiving medical attention.

Why, then, are you voting to arm a demonstrably corrupt regime that does not seek nor have the support of its own people in this matter?

So I ask: How can voting to provide more offensive military equipment to a country that has a long track record of using U.S.-provided materiel in the commission of gross violations of human rights align with any legislator’s essential commitment to the rule of law?

Some Democratic senators have suggested that heightened threats from Iran and its proxies require the provision of more arms to Israel so that it might defend itself from foreign attack. While I am not disputing anyone’s right to defend themselves, this seems to present another confounding misalignment between stated intent and the reality represented by “no” votes on S.J. Res 33 and 26.

The first of these, S.J. Res 33, would have blocked over $2 billion for the provision of 35,000 MK 84 2,000 lb. bombs and 4,000 I-2000 Penetrator warheads.

The second, S.J.Res.26, would have stopped almost $7 billion in funding for 2,800 500-pound bombs, 2,100 Small Diameter Bombs, and tens of thousands of JDAM guidance kits.

According to Sen. Sanders, “All of these systems have been linked to dozens of illegal airstrikes, including on designated humanitarian sites, resulting in thousands of civilian casualties. These strikes have been painstakingly documented by human rights monitors. There is no debate. And none of these systems are defensive, none of them are necessary to protect Israel from incoming drone or rocket attacks.”

The weapons you voted to provide to Israel are offensive weapons, not defensive in nature. Israel has demonstrated again and again that it is more than willing to use U.S.-supplied offensive weaponry to illegally kill, maim, and terrorize innocent civilians. A claim of self-defense against Hamas strains credulity when the death tolls as of over a month ago were: 50,021 Gazans (with actual numbers estimated as high as 250,000), and 1,605 Israelis. If it were up to me, no one would die in war. But the argument that the assault on Gaza is defensive lost any claim to legitimacy long since. True defensive weaponry, such as David’s Sling and the Iron Dome, have not been implicated in any of Sen. Sanders’ JRDs.

I would simply contend that additional lethal arms in the hands of a government that has used these same offensive weapons virtually every single day of the last 565—in clear violation of U.S. and international laws, as well as their own negotiated cease-fire agreements—is not the best way to support Israel’s security. If an Iranian attack is your concern, there are many other avenues to pursue that would directly support Israel’s ability to avoid or prevail in such a conflict. Israel, to date, has given the U.S. absolutely no reason to believe it will use further armaments to defend itself against Iran, and daily arguments to support the expectation that it will use them to kill Palestinian civilians and remove them from their homeland. Israel’s actions must be taken as the measure of their intent.

It is also worth noting that a recent poll by Israeli TV 12 found that 70% of Israelis do not trust their own government and, in opposition to the Netanyahu government’s push to fight on, want a deal with Hamas to end the war. In fact, increasing numbers of Israeli soldiers are declining to fight in a war they understand is being waged to solely benefit the president and his cronies instead of the country they have vowed to serve and protect.

Why, then, are you voting to arm a demonstrably corrupt regime that does not seek nor have the support of its own people in this matter?

Were you aware that here in the U.S., a March 2025 Economist/YouGov poll (page 90) found that just 15% of the American people support increasing military aid to Israel, while 35% support decreasing military aid to Israel or stopping it entirely? Only 8% of Democrats polled supported increasing military aid to Israel at this time.

In addition, a November 2024 J Street poll of Jewish voters tallied 62% of American Jews supporting withholding “shipments of offensive weapons like 2,000-pound bombs until Prime Minister Netanyahu agrees to an American proposal for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza in exchange for a release of Israeli hostages.”

Sen. Sanders’ JRDs do not undermine Israel’s right to exist or to defend itself. They attempt, rather, to bring the U.S. into compliance with its own laws, and in my view, actually support an ally by refusing to enable its illegal and immoral actions. History has shown us again and again that the road to peace and stability is not one that can feasibly be built upon a foundation of war crimes and the slaughter of a civilian population.

As Jack Mirkinson, an editor at The Nation wrote:

The violence is the direct result of some very basic realities—namely, that Israel has been occupying Palestine for 75 years, has been killing and oppressing Palestinians for just as long, and has created the world’s most enduring apartheid state. And the only thing that will really put a stop to the violence is if those conditions are ended. That’s really all there is to it. You can go through all of the twists and turns since 1948, but if you don’t come back to that fundamental truth, there’s no real conversation to have.

Sen. Sanders will undoubtedly be asking for your vote on further JRDs in the future, each of them targeting the sale of arms which Israel has habitually used to kill innocent civilians (including Americans) in both Gaza and the West Bank. I sincerely hope that you will reconsider sending more offensive weapons to Israel and will co-sponsor Sen. Sanders’ JRDs, or at very least vote against expanding U.S. complicity in Israel’s illegal assault on the people of Palestine. Show us, your constituents—who overwhelming oppose more arms to Israel—that you hear us, and perhaps most importantly, that you have the integrity to stand against tyranny and lawlessness wherever it exists.

Senator, do the right thing.

Sincerely,

A Heartbroken Voter

*Voted Yea: Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Andy Kim (D-N.J.), Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Peter Welch (D-Vt.). If one of these folks is your senator, a thank you would not go amiss.

U.S. President Donald Trump, casting a covetous eye on Greenland, has my attention. I have a history in that place, so little known to Americans in general, having spent the entire year of 1964 at Thule Air Force Base, now Pitufik Space Station, 250 miles north of the Arctic Circle. The road I’ve traveled since has me deeply concerned about Trump in every respect—believing that everything he represents and wants is contrary to the best interests of our country, the world, and mankind altogether, excepting perhaps oligarchs.

At Thule I was responsible for overseeing the maintenance of our air-to-air missiles and for supervising the loading of those missiles on board our F-102 fighter jets in the event of declared hostilities with our great “bugaboo,” the Soviet Union.

Many years later, after volunteering for and spending a year in Vietnam, I became a full-fledged “peacenik,” an adjunct professor of peace studies at the University of Maine, angry and in despair about this country’s militarism and particularly agitated about our vast empire of military bases on foreign lands. My experiences in Greenland and Vietnam were surely foundational to my conversion. I had become well-aware of the wide-spread, anti-base movement and sympathetic with the neighbors of these bases who, so often, experienced profound environmental degradation, noise pollution, and violence.

Speaking of Trump and his eye on Greenland, the senior statesman Aqqaluk Lynge had this to say on “60 Minutes”: “He mentioned Greenland like it was a toy or something. It was ugly!”

The heartless displacement of the Inughuit people of Thule, done without forenotice to enable the construction of a military base in 1951, 13 years prior to my assignment there, offers a good case in point. The place they called Uummannaq had been their home for centuries, and was the sacred burial grounds of their ancestors. In May of 1953, 300 men, women, and children, having been given four days to vacate their modest sod homes, set off by dogsled for a place called Qaanaaq, 150 kilometers across the icecap. No promised houses awaited them, and they were forced to live through the cold, wet summer in the tents they’d been given. They were denied the right to return to or hunt in their ancestral homelands.

I’d also learned that in 1968, a B52 had crashed on the icecap while attempting to make an emergency landing at Thule, spreading radioactive debris across the land. Four nuclear weapons were on board; one, never to be recovered.

This history and my developing curiosity about the real stories behind our military empire inspired my quest to visit Qaanaaq, a trip I was able to realize in 2008. That journey, and the people I met, provide the basis for my perspectives on Trump’s covetous ambitions.

The Principals

Aqqaluk Lynge: Former member of the Greenland Parliament, former chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council (1995-2002), member of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, honorary doctorate in humane letters—Dartmouth College (2012), and uthor ofThe Right to Return: 50 Years of Struggle by Relocated Inughuit in Greenland.

I had the good fortune to meet and to interview Mr Lynge, who at the time was a visiting scholar at Dartmouth College. He enabled my subsequent meetings with Qaanaaq people who had been among those evicted.

Uusaqqak Qujaukitsoq: Hunter, fisherman, and leader of the so-called Hingitaq 53, the group of nearly 500 Inughuits who launched legal proceedings against Denmark seeking their right to return. Uusaqqak had been a 12-year-old boy, living at Uummannaq, at the time of the eviction.

Tautianguaq Simigaq: Simigaq, a hunter, had been one of 13 Inuit who worked on the B52 crash site, 11 of whom had died by the time of my visit. He was among several hunters who reported seeing deformed walrus, seals, and foxes in the area of the crash in the years since.

It is no exaggeration that my visit with the people I met in Qaanaaq and Siorapaluk, the northernmost year-round inhabited settlement in Greenland, remain in my soul all these years later. Uusaqqak and his wife, Inger, invited me into their modest home and, though their English was limited, we spent many comfortable hours together, he sharing his life story to include the trauma of the dislocation, hunting and fishing, and education in Copenhagen. His travels had taken him far and wide. As a representative of the Inughuit people he had proudly once met Nelson Mandela. Their 30-year-old son, Magssanguaq, a virtual renaissance man, spoke English and Danish, and was a teacher, a musician, a poet, and an accomplished photographer. He had a keen sense of the injustices his people had suffered as victims of colonialism and would become my interpreter and guide.

Mags and I devoted much of our time in Qaanaaq to visiting and interviewing elders who had been victims of the displacement. Those sessions were, without exception, emotional in the telling and the listening.

My immersion into Inughuit culture, a deep one during my brief visit, but a lasting one of reflection, leaves me profoundly hopeful—believing that it will not come to pass that Trump’s rapacious nature shall determine the eventual fate of Greenland. I was made mindful of Syracuse University Scholar Philip Arnold’s The Urgency of Indigenous Values, in which he argues that the very future of the world is dependent upon the ascendency of “green values” of Indigenous populations everywhere, as opposed to the “raider” values of our dominant culture. The history of the Inughuits who had lived on their sacred lands at Uummannaq for centuries is known by all Greenlanders, 89% of whom are of Inuit descent. I would assert that Trump represents, even personifies, “raider” values, and is seen that way by a large majority of all people of Greenland.

I have recently read that Trump is bringing Columbus Day “back from the ashes.” Hmmm! How might that play with Indigenous people?

Speaking of Trump and his eye on Greenland, the senior statesman Aqqaluk Lynge had this to say on “60 Minutes”: “He mentioned Greenland like it was a toy or something. It was ugly!”

Watch it. They’re not words of casual sentiment.

On the heels of a new United Nations report finding that over 150 “unprecedented” floods, heatwaves, hurricanes, and other climate disasters struck in 2024, the Council on Foreign Relations has launched its new “Climate Realism Initiative.” The Initiative’s goals proffer a dangerous and ahistorical set of climate politics, washing the United States’ hands of any responsibility to clean up global emissions or cooperate internationally to prevent the catastrophic impacts of 3°C of warming.

In a recent article branding the Initiative, CFR fellow Varun Sivaram shamelessly lays out the three main pillars of so-called “climate realism”: (1) that the world will overshoot the Paris agreement’s target to limit warming to 1.5 and even 2°C, (2) that the U.S. should eschew its own emissions reductions in favor of investing domestically in new clean technologies that can compete globally, and (3) that the U.S. should lead international efforts to avert catastrophic climate change.

In light of the first and second, the hypocrisy of CFR’s third pillar is particularly absurd.

CFR’s agenda is as tone-deaf as it is without bearing in history, science, or morality.

On the first pillar, Sivaram argues we should simply accept and prepare for a world with 3°C of warming—his so-called “realism”—but doesn’t stop to share what such a “real” world would look like.

At 3°C, 3.25 billion people will be exposed to lethal heat and humidity every year. The number of people globally who lack sufficient access to water will double. The majority of coral reefs will die. Sea levels will rise, threatening low-lying islands like the Marshall Islands in the Pacific and coastal cities like Bangkok, Shanghai, Amsterdam, and New Orleans. Agricultural yields will tumble, with most crops across the world suffering.

Perhaps most terrifying, the risk of hitting irreversible and catastrophic climate tipping points—like the wholesale dying off of the Amazon or melting of the Arctic—significantly increases.

Stepping back for a moment, it’s important to remember that the Paris agreement’s 1.5°C target came to be because frontline countries demanded such a target. With the Global North coalescing around 2°C ahead of COP21 in Paris and anything more ambitious thus thought politically infeasible, small island countries stunned many observers in leading more than 100 countries in demanding “1.5°C to stay alive.” Such a target, many, like the Marshall Islands’ Tina Stege, argue is necessary to avoid inundating and erasing island nations and low-lying places across the world.

Yet, rich countries in the Global North—and notably the U.S.—have too often ignored these calls in favor of a target that enables the continued extraction and burning of fossil fuels, prioritizes profits today over catastrophe tomorrow, and maintains the enormous wealth gap between Global North and South. By arguing that the U.S. should cast off the world’s 1.5°C and even 2°C target, Sivaram simultaneously condemns the Global South to a future with catastrophic and irreversible warming, a world without islands, where the Marshall Islands as we know them simply cease to exist.

It is within this context, then, that Sivaram advances the Initiative’s second pillar by presenting the following chart. With it, he argues that reducing U.S. emissions won’t make a meaningful difference because they’re a small share of projected future total global emissions.

However, in so doing, Sivaram ignores—even obfuscates—historical emissions. Consider a different chart, this one from Climate Watch, which illustrates the U.S.’ and the broader Global North’s role in creating the climate crisis in the first place. Looking back to the late 1800s, the U.S. and the European Union are responsible for over 50% of historical global greenhouse emissions (in CO2e).

In contrast, Small Island Developing States (SIDS)—a group of 39 island nations, including the Marshall Islands, across the Caribbean, Pacific, Atlantic, Indian Ocean, and South China Sea—have collectively contributed less than 1% of global emissions. Yet, SIDS and their nearly 65 million inhabitants are on the frontlines of the climate crisis, threatened by intensifying hurricanes and cyclones, shrinking biodiversity, and rising seas that threaten to swallow them whole.

Thus, Sivaram’s imperial assertion that U.S. emissions aren’t relevant to a “climate realism” agenda ignores what climate justice advocates have been raising for decades: that those most responsible for climate change should, in turn, be most responsible for addressing it. Instead, Sivaram offers an ahistorical perspective on emissions in service of uncapped emissions and U.S. exemption from climate accountability.

And then, finally, Sivaram offers his astoundingly contradictory final pillar: that the U.S. should lead efforts to avert catastrophic climate change. With the U.S. already a historic laggard and obstructionist in global climate negotiations, it’s hard to imagine a world in which the U.S. could possibly be seen to lead on climate while ignoring its own emissions reductions and sacrificing broad swaths of the Global South to sea-level rise, deadly heatwaves, and cascading crises driven by climate.

CFR’s agenda is as tone-deaf as it is without bearing in history, science, or morality. This dangerous initiative is anything but realistic, instead smuggling in a blatantly imperial and morally bankrupt agenda in a grotesque attempt to curry favor with a nationalist and climate-denying American right.

The climate movement must swiftly denounce this agenda and work toward one that aims to avoid overshoot at all costs, repair historic injustice, and uphold the value and dignity of human life across the globe.

America in 2025 is safer than it’s been in years. After a devastating surge during the early pandemic—when the U.S. homicide rate rose more than 30%—homicide rates have since plummeted. In 2024 alone, they dropped 16% nationally, one of the sharpest declines since the FBI began keeping national data.

This progress isn’t happenstance. It’s the direct result of deliberate investments in policy, research, and community-led strategies that addressed the underlying reasons for crime and violence. This progress is now under direct assault as the Trump administration has moved swiftly to dismantle the vital systems that keep Americans safe. In the last two weeks, the Justice Department canceled hundreds of critical grants to local governments and community organizations that fund violence prevention and public safety programs. Hundreds of National Science Foundation grants were terminated, including my own, following infiltration from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. If these rollbacks continue, we risk reversing years of progress and returning to a more violent, less stable future.

In Camden, New Jersey—where I teach at Rutgers University and serve as director of research at the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center—the turnaround has been particularly dramatic. Just over a decade ago, Camden was written off as the “murder capital of the country.” In 2013, the small city of 75,000 people saw 57 homicides. In 2024, that number dropped to 17—a historic low. Today, fewer families are grieving, and fewer children are growing up in the shadow of violence. For a city long abandoned by political will and public imagination, this transformation offers a lesson in what’s possible when communities and institutions work together.

We must demand that our leaders defend our right to safety—not just from crime, but from neglect, disinvestment, and political sabotage.

The progress in Camden was not inevitable. It was built—piece by piece—through hard-won investments in community violence prevention and a complete overhaul of the city’s police force. And in recent years, we’ve seen similar progress unfold across the country in reducing violence—driven by a surge in federal investment and coordination.

In the wake of the pandemic, the Biden administration invested hundreds of millions of dollars into the kind of labor-intensive work that makes communities safer through the Community-Based Violence Intervention Initiative and provisions within the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. Laws were passed to extend background checks, implement life-saving red flag laws, and crack down on gun traffickers. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives regulated ghost guns and the kits used to assemble them, curbing the surge of untraceable firearms on our streets. The White House even established an Office of Gun Violence Prevention to lead these efforts. Federal funding allowed grassroots organizations to hire street outreach workers and get help to those affected by violence before more harm was done.

States and cities followed suit, creating their own offices of violence prevention and refocusing law enforcement efforts on the those at highest risk while improving community relations. For the first time in decades, a coherent, multi-sector approach to safety led by the federal government was beginning to take hold. It was working.

All of that is now under threat.

Since returning to office, President Donald Trump has moved swiftly to dismantle the vital systems that keep Americans safe. The administration’s attacks are wide-ranging but the bigger picture is what matters. These aren’t isolated cuts or rollbacks. Taken together, they amount to a deliberate dismantling of the very infrastructure that underpins public safety in this country.

On his first day in office, Trump shuttered the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention. In recent weeks, the Department of Health and Human Services initiated massive layoffs, including nearly the entire Division of Violence Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Programs that tracked injuries and deaths—like the Web-Based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS)—have gone dark. Researchers at universities across the country have had their federal funding frozen, stalled, or revoked, often with no official explanation. A group of House Republicans, led by Rep. Diana Harshbarger of Tennessee, has even called for a complete ban on federal research aimed at preventing gun violence—an attack not just on science, but on the very idea that violence is a problem we can solve.

The Department of Justice has also reversed course. A zero-tolerance policy for lawbreaking gun dealers, established under the Biden administration, has been eliminated. The result: Dealers who sell firearms without background checks or falsify records are now far less likely to lose their licenses. Attorney General Pam Bondi is reviewing lifesaving gun regulations, including a rule closing the gun show loophole and a ban on certain AR-style firearm attachments used in mass shootings. These policies were hard-fought and evidence-based. Now, they’re on the chopping block.

None of this is abstract. Research, policy, and funding are what make real-world safety possible. Without them, outreach workers and police officers can’t do their jobs. Emergency room partnerships break down. Communities lose tools to anticipate and prevent violence. Safety doesn’t just happen. It is produced through effort, coordination, and care. And when those systems collapse, people die.

Violence is not just a crime issue. It is a preventable threat to public health, even if the administration denies it. It spreads, it scars, and it sickens. It takes our children, hurts those who are most marginalized, and it divides us. The recent gains in safety are fragile—hard-earned, but easily reversed. If the systems that made that progress possible are dismantled, the violence will return. We can’t take this moment for granted, and we cannot afford to stand by while it’s undone.

We must demand that our leaders defend our right to safety—not just from crime, but from neglect, disinvestment, and political sabotage. The systems that protect our lives and our communities were built through years of tireless effort. They can’t be allowed to collapse overnight. The cost is too great. The consequences, unthinkable. It’s time to reclaim public safety as a public good, and to fight—loudly—for the systems that make peace possible.

American voters want an end to the war in Gaza and for President Donald Trump to withhold U.S. aid, if necessary, to pressure Israel to end it.

During last year’s campaign, Trump promised big changes in U.S. Middle East policy. He said that the Gaza war never would have happened had he been president; promised he would end it; boasted it was his pressure that forced Israel to accept a cease-fire; and then, as president, proposed the evacuation of Palestinians from Gaza to make way for a Riviera-like resort. Just before the 2024 election, we polled U.S. voters and found overall support for ending the war and using U.S. aid to Israel as leverage to press them to end the occupation of Palestinian lands and end the war in Gaza. This was true for strong majorities of Democrats, with some Republicans also agreeing.

We are now more than three months into President Trump’s second term, and Israel has ended the cease-fire, renewed its bombing campaign, instituted anew the mass forced “relocation” of civilians, and reimposed the blockade of food and medicine to the Palestinian population in Gaza.

While substantial majorities of Democratic voters and Independents have long parted ways with Israel over the Gaza war and the occupation, Republicans and their evangelical Christian base are now also losing patience with Israeli policies.

Last week, in a new poll we repeated these same 2024 questions. The overall results were about the same, but with one significant difference. Three months into his term in office, not just Democrats but President Trump’s own Republican voter base also want him to take a tougher stance to pressure Israel to change its behaviors.

This was one of the key findings in the poll released April 30 by the Arab American Institute Foundation. The foundation commissioned John Zogby Strategies to poll 1,000 American voters to assess their attitudes toward the Trump administration’s policies toward Israel’s war in Gaza.

What comes through quite clearly is that between November 2024 and April 2025 the overall responses did not change significantly. What has changed is that Israel is losing favor with Republicans, who now want President Trump to take a stronger stance to rein in Israel’s behaviors. This, however, does not translate into a lack of GOP voters’ support for the president’s domestic policies on allegations of antisemitism, crackdown on universities, and deportation of students involved in pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel protests.

Here are the findings:

The poll finds that voters’ sympathy for Israel remains somewhat higher than for Palestinians. But by a significant 46% to 30% margin, American voters feel that U.S. Middle East policy is too one-sided in favor of Israel, with 39% of Republicans agreeing and 37% disagreeing. This represents a substantial shift from 2024 when only 33% of Republicans agreed that policy was too pro-Israel against 43% who said it was not.

By a 2 to 1 margin, American voters also agree that President Trump should “apply greater pressure on Israel to end its occupation of Palestinian lands and allow Palestinians to create an independent state of their own.” While this agree-disagree ratio largely tracks last year’s results, the major difference in this year’s findings is the substantial increase in Republicans who agree that the president should apply such pressure on Israel. In 2024, the agree-disagree split for Republicans was 37% to 40%. Now 49% agree that greater pressure should be applied as opposed to only 29% who disagree.

When asked whether the U.S. should always provide unrestricted aid to Israel or should restrict such aid if Israel “continues to operate in a way which puts civilian lives at risk in Gaza and Lebanon,” this year's overall results were essentially the same as last year’s. Twenty-three percent (23%) are in favor of unrestricted aid, while 53% are opposed.

A plurality of American voters also agree with the decisions of the International Court of Justice finding that Israel’s war in Gaza is tantamount to genocide and the International Criminal Court’s decision to issue an arrest warrant for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes.

The bottom line in these initial results is that while Americans remain sympathetic to Israel, they continue to be opposed to Israeli policies and want the president, whether a Democrat or a Republican, to use U.S. aid as leverage to change Israel’s actions. And importantly, now a plurality of GOP voters, including those who self-identify as “born again Christians,” also want the president for whom they voted to crack down on Israel’s policies of bombing civilians and occupying Palestinian lands.

The responses, however, are different when it comes to measuring voters’ assessment of President Trump’s handling of the domestic fallout of the war in Gaza. Pluralities disagree with the administration’s decisions to deport student visa holders for their involvement in pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel protests (saying that they “are antisemitic and pose a threat to the foreign policy of the United States”) or to cut funding from several universities charging that they have not agreed to demands that they do more to fight allegations of antisemitism. But there is a deep partisan split on these issues, with Democrats and Independent voters overwhelmingly opposed to the administration’s actions, and Republicans (including voters who are “born again”) strongly supportive of President Trump’s policies.

What comes through in all of these results is that while substantial majorities of Democratic voters and Independents have long parted ways with Israel over the Gaza war and the occupation, Republicans and their evangelical Christian base are now also losing patience with Israeli policies. What we don’t know is whether their change in attitude is due to greater frustration with Israeli behavior or whether it is that, with a Republican now in the White House, Israel is seen as making the job of the president more difficult. In either case, what the poll makes clear is that if President Trump has the will to act to rein in Israel, he will have substantial support from both parties to do so.

If you hit a wall with a sledgehammer with enough force there is a good chance you can eventually bring it down. If there is water behind that wall, that sledgehammer does nothing to stem the tide. You can flail away, but, at best, all you will become is tired and wet.

At worst? You drown.

Journalism and political opponents are still using the sledgehammer of facts, reason and logic, thinking that this will weaken, crack, and eventually destroy the dangerous political movement we are seeing in the U.S.

The problem? Trumpism-MAGA isn’t the wall. It’s the water.

You can’t defeat antidemocratic water by hitting it, but you can keep it back by building robust barriers in the form of laws, regulations, and rights.

The belief that a sustained appeal to facts, reason, and ethics was sufficient to undermine antidemocratic forces of the type led by U.S. President Donald Trump was charmingly romantic. It illustrated a commitment to the journalistic ideals of holding power to account, and the notion that politicians and their supporters would have enough shame and dignity to take responsibility for lies and corruption.

But it was, more importantly, dangerously naïve and irresponsible. It was precisely the belief that Trump could be treated like any other politician, and MAGA like any other political movement, that led media in the U.S. (and abroad) to mainstream and sanitize what was very clearly not a normal politician nor a normal political movement.

No matter how many times Trump’s lies, corruption, or incompetence were exposed during his first term, he maintained his popularly among Republican politicians and core voters. There was the clear sense that the hammering not only didn’t hurt Trump, it made him stronger. The liquidity of MAGA seemed obvious, yet journalism and political opponents continued to hammer away as if he were a solid. former President Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 seemed to offer proof that the hammering had actually worked. The façade had cracked, and MAGA was crumbling. The old order of walls had been restored.

But the radicalization of the Republican Party became even more apparent under Biden, and the 2024 election created not a tide of anti-democracy, but a tsunami. Rational arguments, fact-checking, and the forced “neutrality” of “both sides” journalism are now being drowned in the waves, currents, and whirlpools of half-truth, disinformation, and bullshit. MAGA flows and morphs daily.

Make no mistake, it’s important that journalism fact-checks things like Trump’s tariff percentages or Vice President JD Vance’s claims about freedom in Europe versus the United States. Citizens need to know the truth, and journalism must provide it. But we can no longer assume that exposing lies or debunking numbers is sufficient in the defense of U.S. democracy, because there will be no consequences.

So, if the institutions of journalism and politics operate on behalf of citizens in the service of democracy—and that is what both institutions claim to do on a regular basis—what is the response to a liquid threat?

Liquids cannot be fractured or broken by force, but they can be contained. They can dry up. For journalism, that could involve things like making a “Democracy” section of a newspaper in the same way that we have Sports, Culture, Travel, or Technology. To explain more regularly and in greater detail how laws work, and provide examples of how they can both protect and harm citizens. To cover more local politics. To give grassroots political or social movements the same volume of coverage given to the release of a new iPhone or an Elon Musk tweet. To not engage in “both sides” reporting when one side is attempting to undermine democracy (journalism has no obligation to amplify antidemocratic forces). To cover the power of media itself as a news story.

These things—understanding the law, understanding how democracy works, understanding how policy works, understanding citizen engagement, understanding rights, understanding media power, understanding the role of money in politics—help to stem the flow by creating dams. They encourage the idea that there are elements of democratic society that need to be protected. You can’t defeat antidemocratic water by hitting it, but you can keep it back by building robust barriers in the form of laws, regulations, and rights. Behind that barrier, exposed to the warmth and light of day, the liquid may evaporate over time. The first step in that building process, however, is awareness and understanding.

Journalism matters now more than ever. It just needs to distinguish between solid and liquid.

April 30, 2025 President Donald Trump The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20500 Re: Resignation-Legions of Impeachable Offenses Dear Mr. President: President Richard Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974, to avoid certain impeachment, conviction, and removal from office for obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and disobeying a congressional subpoena. The resignation…

Trump and his billionaire toadies like Howard Lutnik and Scott Bessent are peddling a dangerous lie to working-class Americans. They’re strutting around claiming their tariffs will bring back “good paying jobs” with “great benefits,” while actively undermining the very thing that made manufacturing jobs valuable to working people in the first place: unions.

Let’s be crystal clear about what’s really happening: Without strong unions, bringing manufacturing back to America will simply create more sweatshop opportunities where desperate workers earn between $7.25 and $15 an hour with zero benefits and zero security.

The only reason manufacturing jobs like my father had at a tool-and-die shop in the 1960s paid well enough to catapult a single-wage-earner family into the middle class was because they had a union — the Machinists’ Union, in my dad’s case — fighting relentlessly for their rights and dignity.

My father’s union job meant we owned a modest home, had reliable healthcare, and could attend college without crushing debt. The manufacturing jobs Trump promises? Starvation wages without healthcare while corporate profits soar and executives buy their third megayacht.

The proof of their deception is written all over their actions: They’re already reconfiguring the Labor Department into an anti-worker weapon designed to crush any further unionization in America.

Don’t be fooled for one second: the GOP’s plan to resurrect American manufacturing while continuing their war on unions is nothing but a cynical ploy to create an army of desperate, low-wage workers with no power to demand their fair share.

Joe Biden was also working to revive American manufacturing — with actual success — but he made it absolutely clear that companies benefiting from his Inflation Reduction Act and CHIPS Act should welcome unions in exchange for government support.

Trump and his GOP enablers want the opposite: docile workers grateful for poverty wages.

While Republicans babble endlessly about “job creators,” they fundamentally misunderstand — or deliberately obscure — how a nation’s true wealth is actually generated.

It’s not through Wall Street speculation or billionaire tax breaks. It’s through making things of value; the exact activity their donor class has eagerly shipped overseas for decades while pocketing the difference.

There’s a profound economic reason to bring manufacturing home that Adam Smith laid out in 1776 and Alexander Hamilton amplified in 1791 when he presented his vision for turning America into a manufacturing powerhouse. It’s the fundamental principle behind Smith’s book “The Wealth of Nations” that I explain in detail in The Hidden History of Neoliberalism: How Reaganism Gutted America.

A tree limb lying on the forest floor has zero economic value. But apply human labor by whittling it into an axe handle, and you’ve created something valuable. That “added value” — the result of applying human (or machine) labor to raw materials — is wealth added to the nation, often lasting for generations if the product endures. Axes made in the 17th century are still being sold in America; manufacturing can produce wealth that truly lasts generations.

Manufacturing, in other words, is the only true way a country becomes wealthier. It’s why China transformed from the impoverished nation I witnessed firsthand when I lived and studied there in 1986 to the economic juggernaut it is today. It’s why Japan and South Korea emerged from the devastation of war to become industrial powerhouses within decades.

This is not generally true, by the way, of a service economy, the system that Reagan and Clinton told us would give us “clean jobs” as America abandoned manufacturing in the 1980-2000s era.

If I give you a $50 haircut and you give me a $50 massage — a service economy — we’ve merely shuffled money around while the nation’s overall wealth remains unchanged. But build a factory producing solar panels, and you’ve created something from raw materials that generates power for decades: that’s real wealth that didn’t exist before.

Republicans used to understand this basic economic principle before they sold their souls to Wall Street speculators and foreign dictators who shower them with “investments.”

Service-only economies don’t generate wealth; they just recirculate existing money. This fundamental truth is the strongest argument for rebuilding American manufacturing capacity, yet it’s one that economists and political commentators almost never mention. Trump certainly doesn’t grasp it — or care — as he hawks Chinese-made MAGA hats while pretending to champion American workers.

It’s not “Making America Great Again” — it’s making America into exactly what their corporate donors have always wanted: a docile workforce with no voice, no protections, and nowhere else to go.

The hypocrisy is staggering. This is the same Donald Trump whose branded clothing lines were manufactured in China, Mexico, and Bangladesh. The same Republican Party that pushed “free trade” deals for decades that gutted American manufacturing communities. Now they’re suddenly tariff champions? Please.

So yes, let’s use thoughtfully designed tariffs and other trade policies to bring manufacturing back to our shores. Let Congress debate and pass these measures with 3- to 10-year phase-in periods so manufacturers can plan their transition to American production without the chaos of Trump changing his mind every time some foreign dictator slips another million into his back pocket.

But don’t be fooled for one second: the GOP’s plan to resurrect American manufacturing while continuing their war on unions is nothing but a cynical ploy to create an army of desperate, low-wage workers with no power to demand their fair share.

It’s not “Making America Great Again” — it’s making America into exactly what their corporate donors have always wanted: a docile workforce with no voice, no protections, and nowhere else to go.

We need manufacturing AND unions. Anything less is just another con job from the party that’s perfected the art of getting working class Americans to vote against their own economic interests.

Think resisting authoritarianism is too big of a lift? Think again. This spring, while the U.S. resistance movement may not be in full bloom, it is blossoming.

The “3.5 percent rule”—identified by political scientist Erica Chenoweth—should be on the lips of every American anxious about the Trump administration’s headlong drive to replace our democracy with authoritarianism. After studying more than 300 nonviolent resistance campaigns, Chenoweth and colleagues’ research revealed a startling truth: when just 3.5 percent of a population engages in sustained, strategic civil resistance, authoritarian regimes fall.

Think about it. Not 50 percent. Not 30 percent. Just 3.5 percent. The message is clear: when enough people turn out—repeatedly and nonviolently—democracy wins.

When people commit to showing up—demonstrating creatively and persistently—history is on our side. That should give hope to anyone worried about our nation’s future. It will be hard; the road will be muddy and rough. But, as Frederick Douglass reminds us: “Power concedes nothing without a struggle. Never has; never will.”

What’s needed now is not despair, but determination. Not hand-wringing, but hand-raising. Where I live, it’s one in every 28 standing up consistently and courageously as agents of change, transforming darkness into light. What is it where you live?

In western Massachusetts where I live, the combined population of Hampshire and Franklin counties is 232,000. Based on the 3.5 percent rule, that’s 8,000 people—not just activists and organizers—but everyday folks: teachers and health care workers; farmers and students; parents and grandparents. That’s 8,000 out of 232,000. One out of every 28. Doable.

Hardy Merriman, another vital voice in the study of civil resistance, reminds us it’s about more than rallies, marches, and highway overpass standouts. Civil resistance succeeds when it’s strategic, visible, and persistent—petitioning, striking, boycotting, creatively refusing to comply with unjust policies. It’s everyday people stepping into their power. That power is far greater than those trying to consolidate it.

Nonviolence trainer, activist, and writer Rivera Sun, whose YA novels address peace-building, highlights the “imagination” side of movements—that we must not only resist but also build the world we want to live in.

That dual work of resisting and reimagining democracy is already happening across America. Still unsure? Go on YouTube and watch Republican congressmembers' disastrous town halls. Then, check out Sen. Bernie Sanders and Cong. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's wildly popular rallies in red districts.

Here’s a sampling of communities around the country, including their political leanings:

Valdosta, GA (pop. 32,000): 3.5 percent = 1,120. Conservative/MAGA-supportive

Los Alamos, NM (pop. 35,000): 3.5 percent = 1,225. Moderate/purple-leaning

Santa Fe, NM (pop. 88,000): 3.5 percent = 3,080. Liberal/active resistance

Eau Claire, WI (pop. 70,000): 3.5 percent = 2,450. Moderate/purple

Charlottesville, VA (pop. 44,000): 3.5 percent = 1,540. Liberal/active resistance

Portland, ME (pop. 68,000): 3.5 percent = 2,380. The city strongly resists Trump policies and supports democratic norms. Maine’s unflappable Gov. Janet Mills has become an inspiration to the resistance movement, forcefully speaking out against Mr. Trump.

The movement is growing. Will Republicans join?

Alaska’s Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski recently voiced what many of her GOP colleagues fear to say out loud: standing up to Trump risks personal and political backlash. Her admission highlights a chilling truth: many elected Republicans are too afraid to uphold democracy. If they won’t stand up, it’s up to us to step up.

History backs us. Resistance movements have succeeded in Chile, East Germany, and Serbia, to name a few. When ordinary people refuse to be ruled by illegitimate power, the seemingly impossible becomes inevitable. We’re fortunate that Nobel Peace Prize-winning journalist, Filipino-American Maria Ressa, is a mentor to the U.S. movement, drawing on her still fresh experience standing up to authoritarianism in the Philippines.

The implications for the nation are profound. We’re a country of 330 million, so 3.5 percent equals 11.5 million people. That’s the number we need to side with democracy over authoritarianism. That’s not fantasy. It’s strategy. In many, many communities—well beyond western Massachusetts—it’s growing. Person by person; town by town.

From the hills of New England to college towns in Virginia; from the red-leaning plains to liberal cities by the sea, Americans are pushing back. The movement to defend democracy is pulsing with vitality. We are not helpless. We are not powerless. We are the nonviolent peace force we’ve been waiting for.

What’s needed now is not despair, but determination. Not hand-wringing, but hand-raising. Where I live, it’s one in every 28 standing up consistently and courageously as agents of change, transforming darkness into light. What is it where you live?

We’re growing our numbers. We’re refining our strategy. We’re exercising our moral imagination.

History is calling. Let’s answer.

Words matter. When the media points out Trump’s “potential conflicts of interest,” as it has in recent days when describing Trump’s growing crypto enterprise, it doesn’t come close to telling the public what’s really going on — unprecedented paybacks and self-dealing by the president of the United States, using his office to make billions.

The correct word is corruption.

Trump holds a private dinner at the White House for major speculators who purchase his new cryptocurrency, earning him and his allies $900,000 in trading fees in just under two days. One senator calls this “the most brazenly corrupt thing a president has ever done.”

He’s doing other things as brazen if not more brazenly corrupt.

He collects a cut of sales from a cryptocurrency marketed with his likeness.

He promotes Teslas on the White House driveway on behalf of a multibillionaire who spent a quarter of a billion backing him during the 2024 election.

He posts news-making announcements on Truth Social, the company in which he and his family own a significant stake. Truth Social thereby becomes the world’s semi-official means of knowing Trump’s thinking and policies.

Trump frequently mentions in his phone calls with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer that he’d like the signature British Open golf tournament returned to Trump’s Turnberry resort in Scotland (its home before Trump’s January 6, 2021, attempted coup). Trump’s team asked the British PM again during his recent visit to the White House.

To describe these as “potential conflicts of interest” misses the point. A “potential conflict of interest” sounds like an unfortunate situation in which it’s possible that Trump might choose his own personal interest over the nation’s. Stated this way, the problem is the conflict.

But Trump isn’t conflicted. He repeatedly chooses his (and his family’s) interests over the nation’s. He is using the authority and trappings of the presidency of the United States to make money for himself and his family. And in his second term, this corruption is more flagrant than it was in the first.

Some legal scholars say “corruption” occurs only after a court so rules. But this isn’t the common-sense definition, and the critical venue for restraining Trump is the court of public opinion. When Trump collects on a favor or engages in a quid pro quo deal for himself or his family — which he’s doing more and more often — the transactions are corrupt.

Trump’s venture into crypto has increased his family’s wealth by an estimated $2.9 billion in the last six months, according to a new report.

This estimate was made before the Trump family crypto firm, World Liberty Financial, announced that its so-called “stablecoin” — with Trump’s likeness all over it — will be used by the United Arab Emirates to make a $2 billion business deal with Binance, the largest crypto exchange in the world. The deal will generate hundreds of millions of dollars more for the Trump family.

We’re not talking about a “potential conflict of interest.” The Trump family is making a boatload of money off a venture backed by a foreign government. Hello? The U.S. Constitution's Emoluments Clause, Article II, Section 1, Clause 7, bars a president from receiving any compensation or other emolument from a foreign government.

The deal also formally links the Trump family business to Binance — a company that’s been under U.S. government oversight since 2023, when it admitted to violating federal money-laundering laws.

Meanwhile, Trump is instructing the government to ease up on regulating crypto. The Securities and Exchange Commission is ending its crypto fraud investigations. The Justice Department is terminating its enforcement actions against crypto.

A potential conflict of interest? Please. This is corruption, plain and simple.

Eric Trump, who officially runs the family business, has just announced plans for a Trump-branded hotel and tower in Dubai, part of the U.A.E.

The Trump family is also developing a luxury hotel and golf course complex in the Middle East nation of Oman, on land owned by the government of Oman. Oman also plays an important role in the Middle East, often serving as a middleman between the United States and Iran.

This project and three others are dependent on a Saudi-based real estate company with close ties to the Saudi government. Saudi Arabia has a long list of pressing matters before the United States, including requests to buy F-35 fighter jets and gain access to nuclear power technology.

In two weeks, when Trump travels to Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. to meet with their heads of government and that of Oman, is this a “state visit” or a business trip? Obviously, it’s both — which underscores the self-dealing.

There’s no “potential conflict of interest” here. It’s pure corruption.

Trump is the most corrupt president in American history. His self-dealing makes Warren G. Harding’s look like a child shoplifting candy.

Why isn’t the media calling this what it is? Americans deserve to know.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents grab college students and migrants from American city streets, igniting fury over reckless tactics. Plainclothes agents, lacking uniforms or visible badges, use unmarked vehicles to detain people like a Tufts student in Massachusetts and a Columbia graduate in New York, often targeting visa holders tied to protests. Fears are rising that unclear identity risks deadly mix-ups. Some warn that a detainee, mistaking agents for thugs, might claim Second Amendment self-defense, sparking violence. Communities demand clarity as tensions climb. With over 32,000 arrests since January 2025, debate rages: lawful action or wild overreach? The nation braces for what looms in this heated clash.

What IS the Left? What should we fight for? How can we rebuild outside of the Democrats? Order my latest book “WHAT’S LEFT” here at Rall.com. It comes autographed to the person of your choice, and I’ll deliver it anywhere. Cost including shipping is $29.95 in the USA.

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UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said Friday that “Malnutrition is … on the rise. More than 9,000 children have been admitted for treatment of acute malnutrition since the beginning of the year.”

At least 10 NGO aid kitchens have closed in recent weeks for lack of food, and 25 UN bakeries haven’t been operational for a month. The Israeli military has for two months been committing a war crime in preventing shipments of food from entering Gaza.

Meanwhile, a medical source in Gaza told the Anadolu Agency that on Saturday, a child “died from malnutrition and dehydration at Al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital in Gaza City.” Gaza medical authorities have documented 57 deaths from malnutrition in Gaza during the current conflict.

UNICEF says that over 75% of households in Gaza have reported declining access to water. Russell explained that many families with children have to choose between drinking, bathing and cooking.

Because of the lack of clean water, Russell explained, “acute watery diarrhea … now accounts for 1 in every 4 cases of disease recorded in Gaza. Most of these cases are among children under five, for whom it is life-threatening.”

UNICEF’s Russell said, “For two months, children in the Gaza Strip have faced relentless bombardments while being deprived of essential goods, services and lifesaving care. With each passing day of the aid blockade, they face the growing risk of starvation, illness and death – nothing can justify this.”

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in its weekly report on Gaza on Wednesday that “On 25 April, the World Food Programme (WPF) reported that its food stocks in Gaza have been depleted, as the agency delivered its last remaining supplies to kitchens preparing hot meals. WFP additionally highlighted the impact of deteriorating nutrition on vulnerable groups, including children under five, pregnant and breastfeeding women, and the elderly, warning that the situation has again reached ‘a breaking point.’”

OCHA added that “Between 18 March and 27 April, the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) recorded 259 attacks on residential buildings and 99 on IDP tents. Most of the attacks resulted in fatalities, including of women and children. Among the strikes on IDP tents, 40 reportedly took place in Al Mawasi area, in Khan Younis, where the Israeli army repeatedly directed civilians to seek refuge.”

Over 400 Palestinians seem to be being killed each week by Israel's bombardment of the Gaza Strip, the vast majority women and children. Thousands have been wounded in the two months since the government of Benjamin Netanyahu breached the January ceasefire.

OCHA writes, “On 27 April, at about 20:10, 13 Palestinians, including a woman and her six children, were reportedly killed and others injured when a residential building was hit in southern Khan Younis. On 28 April, at about 00:30, 10 Palestinians, including at least three children, were reportedly killed and others, including a seven-year-old girl, were injured when a residential building was hit in Al Fakhoura area, west of Jabalya refugee camp, in North Gaza. On 28 April, at about 00:30, 10 Palestinians were reportedly killed and others injured when a residential building was hit in Al Karmah area in northwestern Gaza city.”

Israeli forces have been firing on Palestinian fishing boats, as fishermen desperately attempt to bring in some protein for their families.

In March, U.S. President Donald Trump issued an executive order titled Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History, targeting the Smithsonian Institution and its museums—including the National Museum of African American History and Culture—for promoting “divisive narratives.” In doing so, Trump continues a pattern of erasing federal websites about notable African Americans and undermining institutions that honor our full national story.

Trump’s campaign echoes other recent efforts to whitewash the past. For example, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves proclaimed April as Confederate Heritage Month, and recognized Confederate Memorial Day as a state holiday—one of several Southern states that continue to honor the Confederacy. These endeavors are part of a coordinated attempt to revise the Confederacy’s racist history and diminish the impact of slavery in the Civil War.

Last month, reports emerged of historic artifacts being removed from the African American History Museum. In response, civil rights leaders have formed a coalition and will hold a “Freedom to Learn” campaign and march at the museum. They know what I do: that the GOP’s coordinated efforts to whitewash the past cannot erase the truth we carry within us.

I did not have to go to the Smithsonian’s National African American History Museum to learn this history; it is seared in my memory and encoded in my and this nation’s DNA.

As an African American originally from Memphis, Tennessee, I learned about our nation’s complicated history from a young age. I grew up in the city where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, where my parents were born under the yoke of Jim Crow segregation, and where cotton was king during slavery.

Some of that history I learned in school. Most of it came from my family who lived that history. They taught me not just to remember, but to bear witness.

Even the physical landscape of the South helped tell the story: Confederate monuments, parks, and highways named after Confederate generals. I saw the Confederate flag and “Riding with Forrest” bumper stickers, referencing Nathan Bedford Forrest, who helped found the Ku Klux Klan. They were everyday reminders of the brutal history of slavery that refused to stay buried.

I did not have to go to the Smithsonian’s National African American History Museum to learn this history; it is seared in my memory and encoded in my and this nation’s DNA. That’s why the GOP’s campaign to rewrite history will fail.

Recently, I visited D.C. with my 73-year-old mother. I was there to give a talk about my book, which examines how race and immigration status have affected access to healthcare. We visited the African American History Museum and Culture on a Monday. The line stretched outside, as it often does. Since opening in 2016, it has welcomed more than 12 million visitors—Black, white, young, old—each one seeking a fuller understanding of our shared past.

I had visited the museum before. But Trump’s latest threat made me want to return—and to bring my mom. As a child, she picked cotton and endured taunts from white kids as she and her siblings walked to their segregated school. She didn’t need the museum to validate her story. But it did. It also validated mine.

Inside, I stood with her in front of exhibits honoring W.E.B. DuBois and Ida B. Wells. Their legacy helped shape my career. As a sociologist, I teach about many of the historic events covered in the museum’s exhibits, which don’t shy away from the ugly contradictions of America’s founding ideals. Instead, they make them plain.

Etched inside the building is a quote from founding museum director Lonnie Bunch III: “[T]here is nothing more powerful… than a nation steeped in its history. And there are few things as noble as honoring our ancestors by remembering.”

That’s what this new wave of revisionism seeks to stop: truthful remembrance. But history doesn’t disappear when you shut down a website, threaten a museum’s funding, or remove museum exhibits. Despite banning books, stifling academic freedom, and targeting scapegoated groups that culminated in the genocide of European Jews, we still know about the Holocaust. Why? Because survivors carried that truth forward.

As we left the museum, another African American family was entering. The father asked me, half jokingly, “Have they changed anything in the museum yet?”

“No,” I said, “but that’s exactly why we came—before he [Trump] can.”

We smiled in shared acknowledgment. That exchange shows why the GOP’s efforts to erase the truth are sparking the opposite effect: a renewed urgency to preserve it.

Regardless of what happens to the museum or Confederate Memorial Day commemorations, that unfiltered history lives in us. In the words of James Baldwin, also etched on the museum’s walls: “The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it… history is literally present in all that we do.”

Almost everyone I know loathes U.S. President Donald Trump—and I don’t even live in the U.S. (I am Australian) They see him as a disaster for America and the world. Some denounce him at social gatherings, confident that no one will disagree. I do disagree—in a way—but I have realized that it is impossible to talk people out of their loathing.

Trump’s achievement was to demolish the political status quo. It was failing before Trump and had been for decades. Trump finished it off, although many within the system still don’t see it. Trump is an intensification—perhaps inevitable, perhaps necessary—of a decline in American society that deserves much greater attention. This decline represents the “deep politics” behind Trump’s success. And it is this politics I want to discuss: not the man, or his policies, but the deeper story behind his emergence and domination of U.S. politics.

Let me be clear about this. I want to transcend the furious debate about Trump and his administration. I am not denying the dangers and risks his election creates. But I want to examine something else that is almost wholly overlooked in the debate: the chance he provides to reassess the capacity of the U.S. political system to respond effectively to the foundational challenges it confronts. Destroying the status quo does not mean Trump himself will provide the answers America needs. More likely, his contribution will be to create the opportunity for others to do this.

Trump’s call to “Make America Great Again” resonated with many people because it acknowledged a sense of loss and decline, whatever the merits of his policies.

An international survey, published early last year, revealed starkly the political mood Trump tapped into, and the Democrats ignored. It found almost two-thirds of Americans believed the country was “in decline” and their society was “broken.” “Trump captures the prevailing zeitgeist as the champion of a broken country,” the report says. “Biden, in contrast, is the quintessential establishment candidate. Which worldview will prevail?” Well, now we know. The Democrats should be ashamed that they were seen as the establishment in today’s fraught world.

They ran a shockingly weak campaign, offering in former President Joe Biden an ailing, old man. What’s worse, they tried to deceive the voters by hiding his cognitive decline, and then replaced him too late with the vice-president, Kamala Harris, who was tied to Biden’s policies. If Harris had won the election, America would have maintained the status quo, its business-as-usual politics.

What were they thinking? How did they fail to see what was happening? No wonder there are reports of “a civil war” within the party. The many thousands who have attended the “Fighting Oligarchy” political rallies of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who is on the more radical wing of the Democrats, suggest the party is being stirred into more effective action.

The world—and the West in particular—is mired in crises it refuses to acknowledge, at least at the political level. I see this because my work concerns human progress, well-being and futures. To me, politics and the mainstream news media are locked in mutually reinforcing cultures that maintain the status quo, largely ignoring—or at least underestimating—our predicament. Politics may claim to be addressing the crises, but it is not. It took Trump to expose the pretence.

Trump’s First Term: a Missed Opportunity

I wrote in 2022 about the social and political antecedents of Trump’s first term as president. I said that the liberal media and Democrats, instead of seeking to understand what was troubling America and lay behind his victory, spent four years trying to remove him from office.

Trump’s relationship with the liberal media became one of mutual loathing and goading; it was hugely destructive. In showing such contempt for Trump, the liberal media also derided his base, deepening the national division they accused Trump himself of provoking. Politics and the media “zeroed in” on him when they should have also “drawn back” to consider the larger social context.

I said at the time liberal commentary took as a benchmark, a frame of reference, the old political status quo. It was as if they had forgotten the legitimate grievances that took Trump into office, and believed the task was to restore politics to what it had been before his election, even though everything had changed and needed to change. Much of the coverage implied that there was little wrong with the U.S. that removing Trump would not fix.

The liberal media embraced Joe Biden’s election victory with sighs of relief over his centrist policies and a return to political normalcy. “Cometh the hour, cometh the man,” The Guardian proclaimed. But the story did not end with Trump’s eviction from the White House. The liberal media’s celebration of Biden’s victory was another aspect of their failure to understand how profoundly things were changing.

Nothing had been settled, I warned. And so it proved.

Environmental writer and activist Joanna Macy expressed the opportunity succinctly at the time: Trump’s election was “a very painful waking up” she said; if Hillary Clinton had won, “we would have stayed asleep.” This was a relatively common view among environmental and leftist commentators around the time of the election. They saw Trump’s victory as exposing the failings of the entire U.S. political system and its pursuit of a capitalist, imperialist agenda. And they were scathing of the Democrats, notably Clinton and former President Barack Obama, for their complicity and collaboration with this agenda.

It looks today like America has been given a second opportunity to “wake up.” Can the Democrats do this? Can they build on the Sanders-AOC rallies?

2024—a Second Chance to “Wake up”

Trump’s resounding election victory should not have surprised us. He has an extraordinary ability to connect with people and to acknowledge their unease about their lives. This unease goes deeper than the issues that the election campaign focused on, such as the economy, immigration, or reproductive rights. These may be what politicians and commentators believe matters most. Even voters may say these are the things that mattered to them. But this is, at least in part, because this is what pollsters, strategists, journalists, and politicians talk and ask about. They set the parameters of debate, which is framed in these terms. But I don’t believe people’s lives, the quality of their lives, can be captured so easily.

In my 2022 essay, I argued there were other ways of thinking about America and the challenges it faced. It was an attempt to consider what was happening from a different perspective. What I sought to articulate then, and seek to do again now, is the need to close the widening gap between a scientific view of the world and the prevailing political one, between a view that demands a transformation in our way of life if we are to meet the challenges we face, and an essentially business-as-usual politics.

Political debate needs to focus on this gap, on opening up the potential for radical changes in political priorities.

America and the West need a rupture or discontinuity in what people want, and who they want to be.

My interest is in why so many Americans voted for Trump, regardless of his character and perhaps even his policies. My analysis falls well outside mainstream media opinion in that it has to do with the entirety of the American way of life, not specific issues—economic, social or environmental. Thus, it goes beyond the domain of policy to embrace questions of vision and narrative. Trump’s call to “Make America Great Again” resonated with many people because it acknowledged a sense of loss and decline, whatever the merits of his policies.

This deeper context also explains the widespread mistrust, frustration, and disillusionment with institutions, especially government, with their specific purposes and inevitable inertia. And it explains how Trump sidestepped this hostility. Most political leaders are “organization people” chosen by their parties to represent their politics. Trump is not a party man; he chose his party, conquered it, and remade it to fit his vision of America.

I said in 2022 that a deep and dangerous divide existed in liberal democracies between people’s concerns about their lives, their country, and their future, and the proclivities and preoccupations of mainstream politics and news media. The cultures of politics and journalism were too constrained and limiting to face up to our predicament. Those working within these cultures can’t see it, or if they can see it, they can’t imagine what it takes to address it.

My story drew on people’s profound disquiet about life in America and the existential challenges America faced, both physical and social. This condition was also true, to differing degrees, of other liberal democracies and beyond. I presented a lot of evidence of this. For example, a 2015 study I co-authored investigated the perceived probability of future threats to humanity in four Western nations: the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia. Across the four countries, over a half (54%, U.S. 57%) of people rated the risk of “our way of life ending” within the next 100 years at 50% or greater. Three quarters (79%, U.S.75%) agreed that “we need to transform our worldview and way of life if we are to create a better future for the world.”

We had to place the fundamental frameworks of how we understand the world at the center of political debate, I said. The interconnected risks facing humanity could not be solved by focusing only on the discrete, specific issues that characterized and defined today’s politics, however legitimate the concerns were in themselves. Trump offered, however negatively, at least a small chance of triggering systemic change.

Existential Risks

Decades of political action (or inaction) have failed to meet the challenges posed by climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution and other environmental problems; declining population health and well-being; growing technological anarchy where we lose or cede control of new technologies like AI; the growth of corporate political power and the concentration of wealth in fewer hands; the risk of spreading warfare, including nuclear war; and the emergence of a multipolar world in which America is losing its dominance.

These and other challenges pose a risk of societal and even civilizational collapse, as I have discussed in recent writing; the collapse may already have begun. America and the West need a rupture or discontinuity in what people want, and who they want to be. This includes politically.

Several reports published in the past two years have highlighted the human predicament. An international team of scientists has provided a detailed outline of planetary resilience by mapping out all nine boundary processes that define a safe operating space for humanity. Human activity affects the Earth’s climate and ecosystems more than ever, which risks the stability of the entire planet. For the first time, all nine planetary boundaries have been assessed, six have now been crossed. These include climate, biosphere integrity, land systems, freshwater, and biogeochemical flows (nitrogen and phosphorus).

Progressive politics must offer a vision of America that is as bold as Trump’s, but radically different, a vision that is a sort of Newtonian “equal and opposite reaction.”

“This update on planetary boundaries clearly depicts a patient that is unwell, as pressure on the planet increases and vital boundaries are being breached. We don’t know how long we can keep transgressing these key boundaries before combined pressures lead to irreversible change and harm,” says co-author Johan Rockström, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the Stockholm Resilience Centre in Sweden.

Member nations of the United Nations adopted in 2015 a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals, to be met by 2030. The goals aimed to end poverty, improve health and education, and reduce inequality—while tackling climate change and preserving our oceans and forests. An assessment in 2023, the halfway point, found that the world was not on track to achieve any of the 17 goals.

A major review, “Earth at Risk,” published in 2024, says human development has ushered in an era of converging crises: climate change, ecological destruction, disease, pollution, and socioeconomic inequality. The review synthesizes the breadth of these interwoven emergencies and underscores the urgent need for comprehensive, integrated action. “The imperative is clear: To navigate away from this precipice, we must collectively harness political will, economic resources, and societal values to steer toward a future where human progress does not come at the cost of ecological integrity and social equity,” the review states.

This scientific understanding helps to explain survey findings of public attitudes. For example, the study cited earlier of 28 countries across the globe by polling company Ipsos, conducted in late 2023 and published early in 2024, is especially revealing. It explains better than all the political polling the mood behind Trump’s success (a mood not confined to the U.S.).

The survey found across the 28 countries, 58% (59% in the U.S.) believed their country was “in decline,” 57% (U.S. 65%) that society was “broken,” and 67% (U.S. 66%) believed “the economy is rigged to advantage the rich and powerful.” Two-thirds (67%, U.S. 60%) believed the main divide in their society was between “‘ordinary citizens and the political and economic elite.” A similar number (63%, U.S. 66%) said their country needed “a strong leader to take the country back from the rich and powerful.”

The Ipsos survey highlights the appeal to populism as a response. But it is wrong—or at least incomplete—to focus, as liberal commentary has, on populism as an illegitimate or bogus political stance. We also need to explore, as I do here, the validity of people’s perceptions about their countries.

Much has been spoken and written about Trump’s billionaire backers. But more billionaires backed Harris than they did Trump; they did very well under the Democrats. Sanders (who is an independent but caucuses with the Democrats) said in a recent CNN interview: “In the Democratic Party, you've got a party that is heavily dominated by the billionaire class, run by consultants who are way out of touch with reality… the Democratic Party has virtually no grassroots support.”

I wrote in my 2024 essay about the powerful influence of neoliberalism, a variation of capitalism that has captured government in the interests of those with money and power. Many of the problems we face began or escalated with the neoliberal ascendancy that began in the West in the 1980s.

Given the scale and urgency of our situation, I said, we needed to use every (nonviolent) means—legislation, legal action, protest, civil disobedience, public humiliation—to reduce, even eliminate, the political power of corporations, especially the huge global corporations, which held so much sway over democracy, government, and our lives, and so often acted against our common interests. This must become the focus of political debate and action.

Transcending today’s turmoil

Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon reportedly said in 2018 that the opposition was not the Democrats, but the media. “And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.” This is what is happening, much more so now than during Trump’s first term. And it isn’t just the Trump camp. Both the liberal- and right-wing media are wallowing in the muck—in conflict, contradiction, conjecture, speculation and, yes, nonsense and trivia—that makes up much of the public debate about Trump. Part of my Trump watching is via MSN (a Microsoft portal), which scans many news sites, both on the left and right. Trump’s every move and utterance is scrutinized, praised, or condemned; positions have become more entrenched and closed. America seems to be caught in a vortex of mass insanity, with Trump at its center.

What Trump does in his second term depends not only on him, but also on how the people, Congress, the media, and others respond. This response must be different from the way they reacted to his first term. It should accept the legitimacy of the deep-seated unease and anger that swept him into office, however flawed his policy responses might be.

In crushing the political status quo, Trump has broken the center left and center right’s hold on power. He has championed the far-right; in doing that, he has also created opportunities for the left. Specifically, progressive politics must offer a vision of America that is as bold as Trump’s, but radically different, a vision that is a sort of Newtonian “equal and opposite reaction.” Or to quote the poet William Butler Yeats: “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.”

Political debate in the U.S. has become unanchored, untethered, from a shared story, a common cultural understanding of reality, as the Western narrative of progress becomes increasingly contested, and the American Dream fades. The current debate is so awful that it has become further evidence of a country in decline, a society that is broken. It may already be too late to change this situation, but America must keep trying. Out of the chaos of the times, something better might yet emerge.

Nonprofits and advocacy groups are in the midst of a mounting crisis: Social media giants are growing more chaotic, untrustworthy, and dangerous.

Just consider what’s happened in the past few weeks. Without warning, explanation, or human review, Meta suspended the Instagram account of Presbyterian Outlook—a progressive, well-established news outlet for the Presbyterian Church. The outlet noted that it had thoughtfully invested in the platform to expand its reach, but would not return given the possibility of another abrupt cancellation.

Then, weeks later, X—which has been plagued by reports of increasing misinformation and amplifying far-right accounts—was hit with cybersecurity attacks that downed the platform.

Just as social media platforms revolutionized our world decades ago—we are in the midst of another pivotal technology movement.

And Meta recently announced that it would draw from X’s technology to employ “Community Notes” on its platforms—which are purportedly meant to fill in the gaps left after the company fired its fact-checking team. Experts have warned that such a system could easily be exploited by groups motivated by their own interests.

These events are just the latest in a growing pile of evidence that organizations and advocates can’t count on social media giants like they once did. They’re fueling misinformation, inflammatory perspectives, and partisan divisions—all in the name of profits.

To continue to be effective in our increasingly digital world, organizations will need to adjust to this new landscape.

Unquestionably, charting the path forward is challenging. Many organizations and advocates have spent years investing in and building profiles on established media platforms. These groups depend on this technology to share their messaging, organize, provide educational tools, fundraise, and more. It’s difficult to shift all these resources.

Other organizations have yet to build up a robust digital presence, but don’t know where to begin, especially in today’s chaotic climate.

Wherever nonprofits and advocates fall on this spectrum, they can and should invest in technology. Here’s how they can be most effective.

First, organizations must recognize that—just as social media platforms revolutionized our world decades ago—we are in the midst of another pivotal technology movement. Given all the upheaval in today’s landscape, organizations must ensure they can reach their audiences in a multitude of ways, without relying on a single platform.

As such, they should build out opportunities for subscription-based data creation. That means reinvesting in collecting more traditional contact methods—like emails and phone numbers. It also means investing in technologies that allow them to share their messages without censorship from outside sources. Blogs and newsletter platforms can be powerful tools to communicate with audiences and provide rich discourse free from external interference.

Protected digital communities—which are only open to certain groups or are invitation-based—can also help strengthen connections between an organization’s supporters. We’re starting to employ this strategy at the Technology, Innovation, and Digital Engagement Lab (TIDEL), which is housed at Union Theological Seminary. Right now, we’re working with a cohort of faith and social justice leaders to deploy new technology to advance their missions.

We’ve recommended a platform called Mighty Networks, which uses AI to help creators build and manage online communities. Two of our fellows are using this service to support Black clergywomen through education and practical application, focusing on mental health awareness and balance. Another pair of fellows is aiming to use the platform to deliver digitally-based educational programming and sustain a community of care professionals committed to improving access to spiritually integrated, trauma-informed care.

Make no mistake: Nonprofits and advocacy organizations need a digital presence to be effective. But they’ll have to adjust to shield themselves from the chaos and malice of social media giants.

U.S. President Donald Trump directed Attorney General Pam Bondi “to seek sanctions against attorneys and law firms who engage in frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious litigation,” including legal filings for improper purposes and statements that are not based on evidence.

Bondi should start with the White House attorneys who drafted Trump’s executive orders targeting Big Law firms—and her Justice Department lawyers trying to defend them.

Did Real Lawyers Write These Orders?

Cloaked in empty rhetoric about “conduct detrimental to critical American interests,” retribution is at the core of Trump’s edicts.

For example, the only detailed rationale for Trump’s Jenner & Block order was the firm’s association with Andrew Weissmann, who returned to the firm in 2020 after completing his work for Special Counsel Robert Mueller on the Trump-Russia investigation. Other than the Weissmann diatribe, Trump’s order merely recited vague and unsupported assertions about alleged “partisan ‘lawfare,’” “abuse of its pro bono practice,” and “racial discrimination.”

But on that basis, Trump directed all federal agencies to: 1) limit the entire firm’s engagement with federal employees; 2) limit the entire firm’s access to federal buildings; 3) suspend the entire firm’s security clearances; 4) terminate the firm’s government contracts; and 5) require all government contractors to disclose any business that they do with Jenner—with an eye toward terminating those contracts as well.

Zealous advocacy on behalf of any client—even the president of the United States—has limits.

Four law firms have challenged Trump’s similar orders. In stark language, four separate federal courts have granted immediate relief:

• “Disturbing”

• “It sends little chills down my spine.”

• “It threatens to significantly undermine our entire legal system and the ability of all people to access justice.”

• “There is no doubt this retaliatory action chills speech and legal advocacy, or that it qualifies as a constitutional harm.”

• “The framers of our Constitution would see this as a shocking abuse of power.”

In three recent hearings, Deputy Associate Attorney General Richard Lawson—Bondi’s longtime Florida colleague and Trump loyalist—struggled to answer judges’ basic questions about the orders targeting Perkins Coie, WilmerHale, and Jenner & Block:

• Do law firms have to make deals with Trump to avoid executive orders?

• “I can’t speak to that.”

• Are the deals in writing?

• “I have not been privy to this.”

• Has Trump achieved $1 billion in deals yet?

• “I do not know.”

When Lawson argued that Trump could target Jenner because it “discriminates against its employees based on race,” U.S. District Court Judge John Bates, an appointee of President George W. Bush, snapped back, “Give me a break.”

In fairness to Lawson, Trump and his White House attorneys who wrote the orders hadn’t given him much to work with.

Jenner: A Case Study

Take a closer look at Jenner’s claims, followed by selected highlights of the government’s 37-page response:

The First Amendment:

• Prohibits retaliatory actions for protected speech and viewpoint discrimination;

• Bars government interference with a client’s right to associate; and

• Prevents the government from imposing unconstitutional conditions on access to government services and benefits.

The government says that Trump was just exercising his free speech rights. It asserts that Jenner’s lawsuit “carries with it a dangerous risk of muzzling the Executive.” The government also argues that Jenner’s speech is not protected insofar as it “consists of employment practices involving racial discrimination [favoring women and minorities].”

The Fifth and Sixth Amendments guarantee a litigant the unfettered right to the effective assistance of counsel of his or her choice.

The government says that: 1) clients (not law firms) have to assert such claims; 2) any impact of barring Jenner from federal buildings or its clients from federal contracts is speculative; and 3) Trump’s order does not violate those rights in any event.

Due Process is required before the government can deprive a person of liberty or property interests. It requires notice of the claims, clarity about their meaning, and the opportunity to be heard before the deprivation occurs. None of that occurred. The resulting harm, including damage to the firm’s reputation, was immediate and ongoing.

The government says that: 1) the order is sufficiently clear; 2) it has not yet harmed the firm; and 3) the firm will receive any required notice before the order actually injures it.

Equal Protection requires the government to treat similarly-situated entities similarly or, at a minimum, have a rational basis for failing to do so.

The government insists that Jenner is not being singled out for unfair treatment.

The Constitution’s Separation of Powers prohibits Trump from acting as accuser, prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner. But he wore all of those hats in his executive order.

The government says that Trump’s order is an appropriate exercise of presidential power.

Attention All Trump Lawyers: It’s Time for a Gut Check

Zealous advocacy on behalf of any client—even the president of the United States—has limits. Upon admission to the bar, every attorney swears an oath to defend the U.S. Constitution and to uphold the rule of law. A code of professional ethics requires any legal argument to be “warranted by existing law or by a nonfrivolous argument” for changing it. Attorneys must ensure that their statements about facts are “reasonably based” on evidentiary support.

Trump’s retaliatory orders seek to intimidate lawyers and law firms into submission and thereby undermine the legal system. His own conduct refutes his lawyers’ contrary arguments. As other firms have capitulated, pledged “political neutrality,” and collectively committed to provide almost $1 billion in free legal services to Trump-designated causes, his executive orders’ stated concerns about those firms’ “conduct detrimental to critical American interests” miraculously disappeared.

Trump even boasted, “And I agree they’ve done nothing wrong. But what the hell—they give me a lot of money, considering.”

In one of the many amicus briefs supporting Jenner’s challenge, more than 800 law firms—including Deputy Associate Attorney General Lawson’s former firm, Manatt, Phelps, & Phillips—urged that Trump’s executive order “should be permanently enjoined as a violation of core First, Fifth, and Sixth Amendment guarantees, as well as bedrock separation-of-powers principles.”

“But something even more fundamental is at stake… [Trump’s] Orders pose a grave threat to our system of constitutional governance and to the rule of law itself.”

I don’t know what Trump’s lawyers see when they look into a mirror. But I know this: History will not be kind to them.