Not exactly a war, but a trade war — which will impose huge costs on both American consumers and on Canada.

As I said, Trump is now completely and utterly out of his mind.

The very idea of a trade war with Canada — our neighbor, our ally, our closest friend, a nation that’s peaceful and whose people have a reputation for kindness — is absurd.

But Trump is doing it anyway. He’s imposing a 50 percent tariff on goods coming from Canada — which, remember, is an import tax paid by you and me. The tariffs account for $20 billion of the $382 billion worth of products Americans bought from Canada last year and cover a wide array of goods (the full list of more than 500 products can be found here, here, and here).

Trump has singled out several Canadian industries — especially forestry, including building products like plywood.

The obvious effect will be to make it more expensive to build houses in the United States. Couple this with the rise in long-term interest rates — i.e. mortgage interest rates — courtesy of Trump’s war spending, his tax cuts mainly for the rich and big corporations, and the giant corporate AI debt (encouraged by Trump) — and the result will be to make housing even less affordable than it already is.

This is another example of Trump’s perverse rage. I say “perverse” because I’ve come to believe that his insanity is expressing itself in ways deliberately contrary to what’s expected of a president of the United States — ways considered wrong if not stupid by most serious observers — which makes him want to do it all the more.

He’s lost his war in Iran, most Americans are struggling financially, his mass deportations are unpopular — so what does he do? He flips the finger at Canada because Canada is exactly the kind of nation that an American bully targets. Bullies always go after targets that won’t or can’t fight back.

Trump has been bullying Canada since the start of his second term. Six months ago Trump suggested the border between Canada and the U.S. was an “arbitrary” line. He’s repeatedly proposed that Canada be annexed as the 51st state. He said he’s willing to inflict “economic pain” on Canada to get what he wants. On July 1, Canada’s national holiday, Trump declined to renew the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement on trade, which means the agreement will now undergo annual reviews.

Mostly, though, Trump is enraged that Canadian prime minister Mark Carney asserted in January at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that the U.S. is no longer a guarantor of stability in the world and that middle powers like Canada must unite in order to survive. It was a forceful speech — and the first time that a U.S. ally has stood up to Trump.

The day after Carney gave his speech, Trump told the same World Economic Forum:

“Canada gets a lot of freebies from us. By the way, they should be grateful also, but they’re not. I watched your prime minister yesterday. He wasn’t so grateful — they should be grateful to us, Canada. Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements.”

Trump is a peevish, angry, perverse child.

The question I ask myself is how much worse will his behavior have to get before Republicans and suck-ups around him take some action to stop him?

These days, there is not much that can really shock or surprise me. Political developments that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago happen on a regular basis. However, I was truly appalled to read a story in the New York Times on Sunday, August 23, by Maggie Haberman and Annie Karni (two of the best in the business) which reports that:

Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the House Minority Leader, met privately in recent weeks with Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and top outside adviser, and discussed potential areas of common ground, according to five people with knowledge of the meeting. The rare engagement was held in a private space in New York City, offered up by a mutual friend of the two men, according to two people with knowledge of the meeting and a third who was briefed on it. They and others were granted anonymity to discuss a meeting about which they were not authorized to speak publicly. Through aides, neither man would comment on the session, which was described by one person with knowledge of it as a broad conversation on a range of topics.

Kushner’s incentive to meet with Jeffries is self-evident. The consensus among most pollsters and political commentators is that the Democrats will capture a majority in the House of Representatives. Historical trends, the fact that president’s party almost always loses seats in the midterms, and Trump abysmal public opinion numbers almost guarantee a Democratic majority. So, from Kushner’s perspective, it makes a lot of sense for him to start negotiating the best deal that he can get from the man he assumes will be the new Democratic speaker.

What is the rationale for Jeffries to negotiate with Kushner? It is truly hard to fathom the logic on his part. Certainly, there is a time for talks with the Trump Administration. The time is clearly after the Democrats have won a majority in the House. You always want to be negotiating from a position of strength, not when you are trying to win an election.

Given President Trump’s record on negotiating to reach a compromise which is poor to non-existent, what faith does Jeffries have in any promises that Kushner might make?

It is interesting that the revelations of the Jeffries/Kushner talks come one week after Democratic leader publicly backed away from Medicare for All on NBC’s Meet the Press. Is this just a coincidence? Perhaps it is just a coincidence, but I would argue that it is part of a pattern. Jeffries to my mind is trying to stake out a position to the right of the progressive wing of his party by abandoning policy goals like Medicare for All.

One of the guiding principles of the late Democratic Speaker of the House, Thomas “Tip” O’Neill, was that “all politics is local.” Democratic Leader Jeffries should remember this adage. The Democrats who will join the next Congress in January of 2029 are likely to support a leader who is committed to fighting against the Trump Administration and delivering on things like Medicare for All which is widely supported by the American people. Right now, it looks like Jeffries will not meet this bill.

As I get older, I understand impatience better than I used to.

Time feels less theoretical. Work we meant to do someday starts asking why it has not arrived. Impatience can clarify. It can push us to repair what can still be repaired, say what needs to be said, and act before the chance disappears.

But impatience can also corrupt judgment. It can turn urgency into recklessness. It can convince us that fast means right.

That matters because Americans have grown dangerously impatient with government. We want problems solved now. We want leaders who promise to cut through the noise, ignore the process, and deliver immediate results. Some frustration is warranted. Government can move too slowly. Bureaucracy can be maddening. In the face of fires, floods, pandemics, wars, economic collapse, and constitutional threats, government must act quickly.

But the American system was not designed primarily for speed. It was designed for friction.

Yes, friction sounds like failure, but in a constitutional democracy, friction can be protective. The founders built separated powers, checks and balances, courts, federalism, staggered elections, and constitutional limits. These were restraints, not efficiency tools.

James Madison put it plainly in Federalist No. 51: “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” The founders did not trust leaders to remain wise or restrained. They designed a system in which power would be checked by other power. The system was never meant to satisfy impatience. It was meant to survive it.

Donald Trump did not create American impatience, but he has weaponized it. His appeal rests, in part, on the promise that complex problems are simple, experts are unnecessary, delay signals weakness, and only he can deliver immediate results.

He said COVID-19 would “disappear,” even as scientists warned that the virus required testing, mitigation, vaccines, public communication, and time. He repeatedly promised to end Russia’s war against Ukraine quickly, saying he could do so in 24 hours, even before taking office. He claimed drug prices would fall by 1,200, 1,300, 1,400, even 1,500 percent, a mathematical absurdity. He promised prices would come down on “day one.” He said he could make Chicago safe in “one month.”

The pattern matters more than any single claim. Promise the impossible. Set expectations that no serious policy process can meet. When reality intrudes, blame rivals, judges, bureaucrats, governors, Democrats, immigrants, journalists, scientists, or an invented enemy within.

The same impatience appears in governance. The rushed, no-bid contract for the Reflecting Pool episode offers a cautionary example. Trump and his allies initially pointed to vandalism after the newly renovated Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool began peeling and turning green. A man was indicted. Yet prosecutors later sought to dismiss the case after new information indicated the damage stemmed from flawed or rushed contractor work, not vandalism. What evidence was presented before a citizen was charged? What evidence was missing?

The episode illustrates how the politics of speed can operate: rush the project, bypass safeguards, blame an enemy, and only later confront the facts. No-bid contracts may be justified in emergencies. But when used for vanity projects or politically favored priorities, they bypass the friction meant to protect taxpayers, expert review, and public trust.

This damages civic life. When leaders tell people that hard problems have instant solutions, they train the public to distrust any institution that moves cautiously. Courts become corrupt if they do not rule correctly immediately. Congress becomes useless if it debates. Scientists become suspect if they revise conclusions as evidence changes. Civil servants become saboteurs if they insist on law, data, procedure, or competence.

That cycle breeds anger, then apathy, and sometimes violence. People are promised salvation, only to be forced to live with disappointment when those promises collapse. Some give up on government. Others conclude the system has been stolen from them. A politics of impatience becomes a politics of grievance.

Science suffers because it rarely moves at the pace of political appetite. The scientific method requires hypotheses, evidence, peer review, replication, correction, and humility. Sometimes science moves fast, as vaccine development did during COVID. Even then, speed depended on decades of prior research, sustained investment, global collaboration, and careful testing.

The renewed vilification of Dr. Anthony Fauci follows the same pattern. Fauci’s record, like the country’s COVID response, can and should be scrutinized. But scrutiny is not the same as ritualized blame. Science advances through uncertainty, correction, and argument. A politics addicted to instant answers treats those virtues as evidence of deceit.

None of this excuses slow government when speed is required. Delay can be deadly. Leaders who hide behind process because they lack courage deserve criticism. But democratic slowness is not always dysfunction. Sometimes it is deliberation: hearing competing arguments, weighing evidence, protecting minority rights, identifying unintended consequences, and asking whether today’s satisfying answer will become tomorrow’s disaster.

We live in a culture shaped by technology’s impatience. Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg once celebrated the motto “Move fast and break things.” In business, that mindset can drive innovation. In government, the stakes are higher. When government breaks something, people may lose health care, rights, homes, jobs, legal protections, or even their lives.

Impatience asks, “Why is this taking so long?”

Democracy asks, “What happens if power moves too quickly?”

As citizens, we need a longer horizon. A republic cannot be run on impulse, grievance, or magical promises. Some things must be done quickly, but when rights, law, science, power, and the public good are at stake, the better standard is not speed. It is judgment.

After World War II, most of the world and many Holocaust survivors looked at the genocide in Europe and declared that nothing like that should ever happen again. But the country with the most Holocaust survivors today is led by people who, at least in part, viewed genocide as something to emulate and perhaps even perfect.

The post Same Atrocity, Different Responses appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

For many, summer is a time for refreshing salads, burgers with lettuce, and fresh berries. But multiple growing outbreaks of cyclosporiasis are draining that summer fun, forcing people to look at fresh produce and wonder, “Will this give me explosive diarrhea?”

These outbreaks, now making up the biggest in US history, weren’t inevitable. They’re linked to President Donald Trump’s funding cuts, Big Ag’s control of our food supply, and yes, even climate change.

This cyclosporiasis outbreak is a bright red, flashing warning light. Without quick action and systemic changes to our food system, the next outbreak could be much, much worse.

What Brought This Sh*t On?

Cyclosporiasis is an intestinal infection caused by the parasite Cyclospora cayetanensis. It contaminates and lays eggs on produce including leafy greens, raspberries, snow peas, basil, and other herbs. Eating those eggs can cause us intestinal pain, low-grade fever, explosive diarrhea, and other medical problems.

Cyclospora is sending us a dire warning that our leaders must heed: We need to invest in public health, climate change response, and a sustainable, diverse food system that bucks corporate control.

From May 1 to August 4, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed over 10,000 lab-tested cases of cyclosporiasis and 517 hospitalizations. Forty-seven states are reporting cases, with the largest outbreak spanning 15 states. Michigan health officials have reported over 12,000 cases in that state alone. In August, Michigan reported the first and second deaths from this outbreak.

Handwashing and washing produce aren’t entirely effective in eliminating Cyclospora—only cooking produce to at least 158°F can kill the parasites. That, plus the ongoing confusion on where these outbreaks originated, has contributed to this summer’s continuing unease around leafy greens and other produce.

Overwhelming evidence for the Midwest outbreaks points to shredded iceberg lettuce from Taylor Farms de Mexico. Taylor Farms is not a new name in food safety headlines. In fact, from 2009 to 2026, its products have been implicated in more than a dozen foodborne illness outbreaks, ranging from deadly E. coli outbreaks to Listeria, Cyclospora, and Salmonella.

Just this month, in addition to their connection to the historic Cyclospora outbreak, Taylor Farms is now involved in a Salmonella outbreak affecting 27 states and about 345 people. This summer of sickness highlights the role Taylor Farms has played in sickening thousands of individuals across the United States over the years, with little to no significant repercussions from the federal government.

How Trump’s Cuts Made This CyclosporaOutbreak Worse

The US has established programs designed to study, track, and help contain foodborne illnesses. But in recent years, funding for these programs has failed to keep up with the need. And the Trump administration has only made things worse by slashing staff and funding.

The Trump administration cut key grant and funding programs that state health departments rely on to track foodborne illnesses. Last year, due to staffing cuts, the Administration paused a quality control program conducted through the FDA’s Food Emergency Response Network (FERN) at least through September 2025. This program included quality control work on lab testing for Cyclospora in spinach. It’s unclear whether the program is back up and running today.

Rather than Make America Healthy Again, Trump’s cuts show blatant disregard for food safety and public health.

FERN’s system of federal, state, and local laboratories defends and responds to contamination in the food supply. It tests food samples during large-scale outbreaks to help identify the source of contamination.

Meanwhile, at the CDC, Trump’s budget and staffing cuts have led to downgrades to the FoodNet program. FoodNet tracks long-term trends in foodborne illness rates across 10 states. But with Trump’s cuts, FoodNet was forced to stop tracking 6 of the 8 pathogens it has historically tracked. Cyclospora was 1 of the 6 on the chopping block.

Collectively, those six pathogens cause an estimated 111,000 hospitalizations and 418 deaths each year. One of them, Campylobacter, causes up to $6.8 billion in economic damages every year.

Rather than Make America Healthy Again, Trump’s cuts show blatant disregard for food safety and public health. Quick and comprehensive data collection is an essential line of defense in detecting and containing foodborne illness outbreaks—without it, we’re left fighting in the dark.

Big Ag’s Dominance = More Foodborne Illness

This Cyclospora outbreak also highlights the dangers of our corporate-controlled, highly consolidated food system. Lettuce and leafy greens are common causes of foodborne illness because most are irrigated using polluting substances, or they’re produced near disastrously polluting factory farms.

Factory farms are a huge culprit of this contamination problem. These facilities exist to make raising livestock as cheap as possible for the sake of corporate profits, storing up to a million animals in tight confines. Leafy greens grown near factory farms are regularly exposed to pathogens in the waste that these facilities produce in abundance.

Cyclosporasis in particular spreads via human waste, and Big Ag has long spread sludge from human sewage on agricultural land as fertilizer.

In short, our profit-at-any-cost, highly consolidated food system trades public health for corporate gain.

Moreover, as the industry searches for more water sources, it’s increasingly turned to “recycled” wastewater. While this water moves through treatment plants before it hits fields, that’s often not enough to make it totally pathogen-free. Studies have shown that bacteria and pathogens persist in wastewater after treatment, and research suggests that “using treated wastewater for agricultural irrigation may cause food chain contamination.”

These dangerous business practices aren’t the only way Big Ag is driving more foodborne illness. Taylor Farms, the corporation at the heart of today’s largest Cyclospora outbreaks, has acquired or invested in 10 other companies in just eight years. It runs 22 production facilities in North America and sells 40% of “value-added salads” in the United States.

This consolidation—fewer and bigger companies controlling more of our food—makes our food system even more vulnerable to shocks. Now, Cyclospora shows us the outsized influence a single company can have because of its massive reach. A single corporation can send an illness across the country.

In short, our profit-at-any-cost, highly consolidated food system trades public health for corporate gain.

Climate Change Makes Everything Worse, Including Cyclospora

Since the 1990s, cyclosporiasis outbreaks have occurred each year, typically from May through August. As climate change makes summers hotter and longer, the window for Cyclospora to spread also widens, as the parasite thrives in warm, humid conditions.

Studies also show that climate change and climate disasters will cause more food spoilage and foodborne illnesses. Hotter temperatures promote the growth of pathogens such as Listeria, Campylobacter, and Salmonella, while floods can contaminate food supplies with sewage and agricultural runoff.

Right now, our corporate-dominated food system is utterly unprepared for how climate change will impact our food.

Moreover, as climate change drives more and longer droughts, the US Department of Agriculture will likely encourage farms to turn to wastewater as a solution. The agency has called treated wastewater “the irrigation wave of the future.”

Right now, our corporate-dominated food system is utterly unprepared for how climate change will impact our food. While government agencies recommend we irrigate our crops with wastewater, Trump is demolishing climate and public health programs and funding.

Cyclospora is sending us a dire warning that our leaders must heed: We need to invest in public health, climate change response, and a sustainable, diverse food system that bucks corporate control. Or they’ll guarantee another foodborne illness outbreak, rather than making Americans healthy.

Social Security is a promise between generations. When far-sighted visionaries like President Franklin Roosevelt and Frances Perkins imagined what would come to be today’s Social Security system, they were thinking about the workers and their families who would rely on Social Security for years to come.

For 91 years, Social Security has been how Americans take care of each other. For 91 years, people across our country have fought to protect the hard-earned Social Security benefits that rightfully belong to everyone. To honor Social Security’s 91st birthday, we are renewing our commitment to stay in that fight.

It’s hard to imagine what it would have been like to be alive during the Great Depression. With millions of workers unemployed, it would have been difficult to overcome a sense of pervasive hopelessness and despair. But the founders of Social Security didn’t lose hope. They knew that it was possible to come together in community and solidarity. They imagined a better, more economically secure future. We also share that same ability to imagine and fight for a better future. If the founders of Social Security were able to resist being demoralized by the Great Depression, we can overcome our current circumstances.

The founders of Social Security laid down a gauntlet for future generations. It’s up to us to continue to carry out this vision of a society where we all join together to take care of each other.

While their fight will never be finished, the founders of Social Security laid down a gauntlet for future generations. It’s up to us to continue to carry out this vision of a society where we all join together to take care of each other. As part of that effort, Social Security Works held a town hall to celebrate Social Security’s 91st birthday, providing a reminder of the work that needs to be done to continue FDR’s legacy.

We believe that we're all in this together. And so we choose through Social Security...to care for those in the dawn of life, and those in the dusk of life. That's what we do through Social Security, and ain't nobody going to take it from us or from our grandchildren. - @martinomalley.bsky.social

[image or embed]
— Social Security Works (@socialsecurityworks.org) August 14, 2026 at 1:24 PM

As former Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley put it, “We believe that we’re all in this together.” O’Malley is articulating the greatness of Social Security, the way it ties families and communities to each other. In a resolute note of defiance, O’Malley warned, “That’s what we do through Social Security, and ain’t nobody going to take it from us or from our grandchildren.”

You have billionaires pay into Social Security on all of their income like the rest of us do, and then we prevent cuts and can actually expand benefits. This beloved system has lasted for 91 years and because it works so well for working people, it's going to last for another 91 and beyond.

[image or embed]
— Social Security Works (@socialsecurityworks.org) August 14, 2026 at 11:28 AM

Alex Lawson, Executive Director of Social Security Works, explains why Social Security has worked so well for 91 years, and how it can continue working well for the indefinite future: continuing to protect working people by making sure the wealthiest pay their fair share. Lawson observed, “You have billionaires pay into Social Security on all their income like the rest of us do, and then we can prevent cuts and actually expand benefits.”

Social Security is the greatest act of compassion and caring that a free people had ever enacted of by and for themselves. It's gone on for 91 years without ever missing a payment.

[image or embed]
— Social Security Works (@socialsecurityworks.org) August 14, 2026 at 11:32 AM

As former Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley articulated, Social Security represents the highest and best of American values. O’Malley noted that “Social Security is the greatest act of compassion and caring that a free people had ever enacted of, by, and for themselves.”

We are the cavalry.We can build whatever future we can imagine, and Social Security is the crown jewel of that society that we can imagine, a society that takes care of ourselves.That's why I'm so certain that we will win this fight. - @alaw202.bsky.social

[image or embed]
— Social Security Works (@socialsecurityworks.org) August 14, 2026 at 1:21 PM

Striking the same optimistic note as former Commissioner O’Malley, Social Security Works Executive Director Alex Lawson shared his confidence that today’s generation of activists can win this chapter of the fight for Social Security’s future: “We are the cavalry. We can build whatever future we can imagine, and Social Security is the crown jewel of that society that we can imagine, a society that takes care of ourselves. That’s why I’m so certain that we will win this fight.”

As Social Security turns 91, its future hangs in the balance. In just five years, Congress must take action, or allow a 22 percent benefit cut to go into effect. Rather than cut our hard-earned benefits, Congress should make millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share, so we can protect and expand benefits for everyone.

One year ago, President Donald Trump declared a “crime emergency” in Washington, DC, claiming, without evidence, that the city had been “overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people.”

In response to this alleged crisis, Trump deployed roughly 800 members of the DC National Guard as well as more than 1,000 National Guard members from several cooperating states “to protect law-abiding citizens from the destructive forces of criminal activity.” A year later, 4,600 troops patrol the city against the wishes of the district’s elected local government.

This deployment violates long-standing American traditions, jeopardizes public safety, and has already cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars—all without any discernible impact on violent crime rates in Washington. Yet Trump wants to keep troops here, and he’s counting on Americans to stop paying attention. We can’t let that happen.

From the beginning, Trump’s claim of a “crime emergency” stood on weak footing. In fact, the murder tally in Washington had declined from 274 in 2023 to 187 in 2024.

The founding generation would immediately have seen the danger in a president trying to normalize the domestic use of troops.

But even if day-to-day crime in Washington had instead been trending upward, that would not have justified the invocation of emergency powers. Such powers are intended for sudden, unforeseen crises—the definition of an emergency—that normal legal frameworks and systems are too slow-moving to address. Urban crime, in contrast, is a foreseeable, ongoing problem that can and should be addressed employing the ordinary tools of government.

Use of the military raises additional concerns. A president deploying troops to police street crime is unprecedented; it violates centuries of American civic tradition and political thought. Americans have long rejected military interference in civilian affairs, and particularly military involvement in law enforcement, because an “army turned inward” can easily become an instrument of tyranny. Domestic deployment of the military is a tool of last resort, to be used only when civilian authorities are overwhelmed.

There are other, more immediate reasons to be wary of domestic military operations. Military personnel, including members of the National Guard, are trained to be soldiers, not police officers. Most National Guard members have little or no training in local criminal law, how to uphold constitutional rights, or how to preserve and collect evidence. Over the past year, there have been disturbing incidents where guard members have improperly detained DC residents and, in at least one documented case, used excessive force.

Trump’s use of the National Guard in Washington has also largely failed to serve its stated purpose. Although there was a narrow reduction in opportunistic property crime over the first six months of the deployment, recent analysis has found little to no impact on violent crime. On the other hand, the deployment has proven to be extraordinarily expensive for taxpayers, with a current cost of over $3 million per day.

Those costs will only accelerate in light of the recently announced $292 million deal to provide National Guard members deployed to Washington with apartment-style housing. In return for these huge sums of money, guard members across DC are spending their days standing idle on street corners and in metro stations—a form of non-activity euphemistically labeled “presence patrols.”

Yet Trump shows no signs of reversing course. To the contrary, he has doubled down. A “summer surge” brought the number of guard forces in DC close to 5,000, and the administration has announced that it intends to keep troops here through January 20, 2029, at an estimated cost of $1.4 billion beyond the money already spent.

The duration of the deployment might be what’s most concerning. No true emergency can be predicted to remain in place for another two-and-a-half years. If there was any doubt before, it’s now clear that the deployment was never meant to be a quick response to an immediate crisis.

It is designed to normalize something that should never be normal in this country: the use of the military as a domestic police force. It would be a small step from National Guard forces assisting in the arrest of people who dip their hands in the reflecting pool to guard members policing protests. And if Trump were to try to illegally block Congress’ certification of the 2028 presidential election—this time using military force, rather than exhorting an angry mob—there would be thousands of troops already arrayed within a short distance of the US Capitol.

It is no small irony that armed troops are patrolling the streets of our nation’s capital in the same summer as the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. That document denounces King George III for, among other things, using “among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.” The founding generation would immediately have seen the danger in a president trying to normalize the domestic use of troops.

We must see it, too. The longer the deployment lasts, the less shocking the sight of National Guard forces on nearly every street corner becomes, and the easier it is to view the situation as a new normal. The American people must resist that instinct and demand an end to the deployment.

It was 1974. The Bronx was burning. Abandoned cars littered the streets, and New York City teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. I’m still surprised my overprotective Holocaust-survivor parents let their preteen daughter ride the subway to school every day, but somehow they did.

For five years—from eighth grade through high school—I took the No. 5 Dyre Avenue train from our apartment in the Pelham Parkway neighborhood of the Bronx to my Jewish day school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The commute was nearly an hour each way and always coincided with rush hour.

Mornings weren’t so bad; I lived near the beginning of the line and could usually get a seat. But heading home, the 86th Street platform was packed five to eight people deep.

When it was my turn to board, I would throw my entire body weight onto the person in front of me, as the person behind me did the same. We all pushed forward together, forcing ourselves into an already crammed car, as more people tried to pack in behind us.

The more choices we have about how we travel or whether we go to private schools or fancy gyms, the easier it becomes to spend our lives among people much like ourselves. Distance makes it easier to dehumanize.

Once the doors closed, we stood packed together in a dense sea of bodies. When the train lurched, the entire crowd swayed as one. Usually, I breathed through my mouth to avoid the smell of sweat and bad breath. I tried to pull away from a hand on my behind that might have been accidental, but probably was not. I remember thinking I was too young for this.

At the time, I hated riding on the subway. But more than 50 years later, I’m grateful for that commute—for the way it forced a visceral reminder of our shared humanity.

Now, like three-quarters of Americans, I go everywhere by car. It’s faster and more convenient but I never see my fellow travelers—only their vehicles speeding past on the highway. And while I don’t miss the discomfort of the subway, I feel more cut off from other people’s lives.

When you don’t see people, you know them less. When entire groups remain unseen it becomes easier to turn them into abstraction—to fear them, dismiss them, or vilify them. It’s much harder to do that when you’ve stood shoulder to shoulder with someone, both of you grasping the pole as the train jolts you from side to side.

These were the days before smart phones or even portable music players. There was little to distract me from just looking and listening to the people around me. For two hours a day, I heard people speaking Spanish. I absorbed its rhythms long before I understood the words. Years later, when I finally learned the language, I picked it up quickly.

The subway exposed me to a depth of poverty I hadn’t seen in my own working-class Jewish neighborhood. I saw people asleep on the seats, curled around garbage bags that held everything they owned. There was a young man with no legs or lower torso who moved through the cars on a wheeled platform, collecting money. I watched him cross the treacherous gaps between cars as the train rattled and swayed.

The subway also showed me where people lived. Unlike highways, which are designed to bypass neighborhoods, the elevated train trestle cuts straight through them.

The No. 5 ran through the South Bronx at a time when more than 80% of buildings had burned or been abandoned. On dark winter evenings, we passed through blocks of hollowed-out shells, with the occasional occupied apartment. From the train I could see into people’s living rooms, glowing blue from the television.

As a teenager, I didn't know much about redlining, disinvestment, or the policies that had helped create those conditions. I only knew that children my age lived there and I wondered what it was like to grow up in what felt like a war zone.

There are, of course, other ways to encounter difference. My husband, a nurse in one of the poorest communities in Massachusetts, has cared for people from all walks of life. But that’s a different kind of interaction. People meet him when they’re sick, in pain, or in crisis. When you commute, you’re simply sharing space.

But not all forms of transportation create the same kind of shared space. Recently, riding the Amtrak train home from Philadelphia, I watched miles of rundown brick rowhouses slide past the window. Some were boarded up. Inside the train, however, the conversations I overheard were about road races in Cancun and the best spin classes in Manhattan. The passengers' lives appeared far removed from the neighborhoods we were passing through.

Having last lived in a city decades ago, my rural life is now quieter, more controlled. I move from one place to another sealed inside a car. It’s comfortable and efficient. But it’s made my life smaller. It’s made it possible to live a life where one rarely sees anyone outside one’s own orbit.

How can that not affect one’s ability to empathize—if your neighbors, coworkers, and classmates all reflect some version of yourself? The more choices we have about how we travel or whether we go to private schools or fancy gyms, the easier it becomes to spend our lives among people much like ourselves. Distance makes it easier to dehumanize.

Which is not to say that riding the No. 5 Dyre Avenue made me a kinder person. I still judge people; I could be nicer and more patient. But the commute gave shape and texture to lives I might otherwise reduce to stereotypes. Day after day, it reminded me that everyone, just like me, was simply trying to get home.

The world knows Bethlehem as the city of the Nativity. It is a city of churches, olive groves, ancient stone streets, and a history that attracts pilgrims and visitors from across the globe. For many, Bethlehem symbolizes peace, hope, and human resilience.

Yet in recent weeks, another image has emerged. Overflowing garbage containers. Piles of waste left uncollected for days. Unpleasant odors drifting through neighborhoods. Stray dogs searching through torn plastic bags. Flies, rodents, and growing public concern about health and sanitation.

For residents, these scenes are disturbing. For visitors, they are difficult to reconcile with the image of one of the world's most recognized and beloved cities. But the garbage accumulating in Bethlehem's streets is not the real story. It is merely the most visible symptom of a much larger crisis. The question is not why a container is overflowing. The question is what happened to the system behind it.

At first glance, it may seem like a simple municipal problem. A shortage of fuel. A broken truck. Workers on strike. Delayed collection rounds. The reality is far more complicated.

The environment does not understand politics. It understands only what we do—or fail to do—to protect it.

Waste management depends on an entire chain of institutions, workers, vehicles, roads, fuel supplies, disposal facilities, municipal revenues, and public cooperation. When enough pressure is placed on that chain, it begins to break. And in Bethlehem, pressure has been building for years.

The city has suffered repeated economic shocks. The tourism sector, once a major source of income, was devastated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Before it could fully recover, the war and the broader economic crisis brought new hardships. Businesses struggled. Workers lost jobs. Household incomes declined. Many families found themselves prioritizing food, rent, and basic necessities over municipal fees.

As revenues declined, local institutions found it increasingly difficult to sustain essential services. At the same time, operational costs continued to rise. Fuel became more expensive and, at times, harder to secure. Vehicles required maintenance. Equipment aged. Service providers struggled to balance growing needs with shrinking resources.

The crisis does not stop there.

Road closures, military gates, and movement restrictions have increasingly complicated daily life throughout Bethlehem Governorate. What should be a routine collection route can suddenly become longer, slower, or more expensive. A delayed truck today may become an overflowing container tomorrow.

Even the final destination of the waste is not immune from these pressures.

The Al-Minya landfill, which serves communities in southern parts of the West Bank, represents a critical component of the region's waste management system. Any disruption affecting access, transportation, security, or operations along this chain eventually reaches the streets of Bethlehem and surrounding communities.

The result is a problem that residents experience every day. A container left uncollected. A street corner filled with waste. A smell that lingers in the summer heat. A growing sense that something is no longer working as it should.

When waste accumulates, the consequences extend beyond appearance.

Overflowing garbage attracts stray dogs, insects, rodents, and other disease vectors. It increases environmental risks and can create fire hazards during hot weather. It affects public health, community well-being, and the quality of life in neighborhoods already facing multiple challenges.

This is why waste management should never be viewed as a secondary service. It is not simply about removing garbage from the street. It is about protecting public health. It is about preserving human dignity. It is about maintaining the environmental quality of cities and communities. It is also about protecting the people who perform this difficult work.

One night, at around 2:00 am in the morning, I drove into Bethlehem to take my wife to catch an early bus to Allenby Bridge Boarder with Jordan. While most of the city slept, sanitation workers were already on the streets. Wearing reflective orange uniforms, they swept roads, emptied containers, and loaded waste onto trucks. Few residents would ever see them. By sunrise, most traces of their work would have disappeared.

Their presence reminded me that waste management is not an abstract system. It depends on real people working under difficult conditions, often exposed to hazards that most citizens never think about.

But workers alone cannot solve this crisis, neither can municipalities, nor can citizens. Responsibility is shared.

Citizens must reduce the waste they generate, support cleaner public spaces, and contribute to the sustainability of essential services whenever possible.

Municipalities and service providers need stronger planning, better resource management, and long-term financial stability.

National institutions must support local governments struggling under extraordinary economic and political pressures.

And international partners should recognize that environmental services are not luxuries. They are fundamental to public health, social stability, and human dignity.

There is another reason this issue deserves greater attention. Pollution does not recognize borders. Smoke from burning waste does not stop at a checkpoint. Contaminated water does not respect political divisions. Air pollution travels wherever the wind takes it.

The environment does not understand politics. It understands only what we do—or fail to do—to protect it. That is why environmental protection requires cooperation, shared responsibility, and long-term vision.

Bethlehem does not simply need more garbage trucks or more containers. It needs investment in sustainable solutions. It needs stronger institutions. It needs public awareness. It needs serious efforts to reduce waste generation, expand reuse and recycling, and create economic opportunities through a circular economy approach.

Most importantly, it needs recognition that environmental challenges are not isolated technical problems. They are deeply connected to economic conditions, governance, public services, and the daily lives of ordinary people.

The overflowing containers seen today across Bethlehem are telling a much bigger story. They are telling the story of a city under pressure, a story of institutions struggling to maintain essential services, a story of workers trying to do their jobs under increasingly difficult circumstances, a story of economic hardship, environmental vulnerability, and a community searching for sustainable solutions.

And perhaps they are also reminding us of something simple: Garbage does not appear overnight. Neither do environmental crises. Both are the result of problems left unresolved for too long.

If Bethlehem is to remain the beautiful city that the world knows and cherishes, addressing those problems can no longer wait.

Imagine 2-year-old Malek, growing up in an Arabic-speaking home, entering childcare for the first time. At home, language carries feeling, memory, and family connection. In care, it may be the first time he learns that only one language is recognized and that the other must stay behind. As New York City expands care for 2-year-olds, the public conversation has largely centered on key logistics: seats, speed to implementation, and salaries for home-based providers. Another fundamental question is how this expansion will shape children’s relationships to language, community, and belonging, especially for multilingual families whose experience with formal education is associated with estrangement from their home culture and language.

For decades, growing up with more than one language was wrongly framed as a deficit; it was once described as “semilingualism.” A large body of research has documented the social, communicative, and educational benefits of multilingualism, including stronger connections to family and community, and broader cultural and economic opportunities. The evidence is clear: Multilingualism is an asset, not a liability, supporting not only how children learn, connect, and participate in the world, but also adding to their professional pathways in the future.

Anyone who works in education knows the pattern of language loss that begins when a child enters the school system. Over time, heritage languages begin to fade, a loss that is often normalized as an inevitable part of schooling and assimilation. Research, including our own, shows that heritage language attrition follows a predictable pattern when children enter settings where one language dominates socially and institutionally, causing the dominant language to expand at the expense of the other. This is not only a cultural issue; it is foundationally developmental. Sustained exposure to both languages supports more stable language development, while early shifts away from the heritage language can disrupt that balance.

In one of the most linguistically diverse cities, we continue to reproduce monolingualism despite overwhelming evidence of the benefits of multilingualism. New York City’s 2-K program, with its focus on community- and home-based providers, is significant not only for expanding access, but for reshaping how early education is experienced. These programs, and their providers, who are often members of the same community as the families, offer services that are qualitatively different from formal institutional care, offering environments where language, culture, and relationships are not separated from learning, but are its foundation. They are truly a child’s home away from home.

Taken together, the expansion of 2-K home-based care can reshape how language, culture, and education interconnect as a foundation for learning.

In home-based settings, children are more likely to hear and use multiple languages in meaningful, everyday interactions with caregivers and children across ages. Care is organized around relationships and participation, rather than standardized expectations of academic performance. These are not incidental features. They are developmental conditions that support how language is sustained, how children come to belong, and how communities reproduce themselves across generations.

If supported intentionally with professional development opportunities, mentorship, and resources, these community environments could play a critical role in addressing one of the most persistent and overlooked challenges in US education: the systematic erosion of heritage languages beginning in early childhood. One proven way to enhance language development in home-based settings is strengthening the quality of adult-child interactions. In a randomized controlled trial we conducted in linguistically diverse communities, we found that babies in home-based child care vocalized far more when their providers used a program designed to strengthen relationships than did babies in the control group. We also found that the program led to reductions in background noise (such as television and other electronic sounds).

Together, these transformations in the babies’ language environment point to a simple lesson: When caregivers are intentionally supported in building warmer, more responsive interaction patterns, children’s language environments improve in measurable ways. This matters because early language development lays the groundwork for school and lifelong success. Providers can be supported to embed language-rich emotionally responsive interactions across home and care settings, and to facilitate collaboration between families and early learning environments. This potential will not realize itself; it requires deliberate investment.

In addition, home-based settings may address a critical gap in New York’s Early Intervention (EI) system. EI under federal law, is intended to provide support early in a child’s life, before small differences become larger barriers. Each state defines its own criteria. In New York, children with mild delays in a single developmental area, such as communication, often do not qualify for services. The result is inequity: Families with resources turn to private providers, while others must wait until delays become severe enough to meet eligibility thresholds. What is intended as early intervention becomes, in practice, delayed access.

Language can also be supported through family-centered approaches that sustain bilingual exposure when designed from a strengths-based perspective. In our work with Arab American families in New York, this meant creating community-based spaces where parents strengthened their children’s bilingual language use and their own sense of belonging, along with a renewed commitment to bilingualism, and greater confidence in navigating and engaging with public institutions such as libraries and educational spaces. In clinical treatment settings, birth-to-five therapists strive to provide both treatment and supervision in the home languages; it is simply best practice.

As early care becomes more widely available for younger children, providers in these settings are increasingly positioned to notice differences in children’s development, support social participation, and guide families toward resources. This requires ongoing professional support, not only in developmental frameworks, but in approaches that are culturally grounded, transdisciplinary, inclusive, and evidence-based. This means building an interprofessional, holistic, and community-based system of care that brings speech-language pathologists, early childhood educators, mental health professionals, and other healthcare providers to work alongside home-based caregivers and families collaboratively as partners embedded in the same communities.

Evidence from community-based programs shows that when caregivers are supported in building responsive, relational environments, children’s communication skills increase. They grow not through more instruction, but through more meaningful engagement. The question, then, is not only how many seats we create, but what those seats make possible and whether we are willing and able to build the systems needed to sustain them. Home-based providers are already embedded in the communities they serve, often sharing language, culture, and lived experience with families. With intentional and focused support, they will be uniquely positioned to sustain children’s languages, relationships, and development. Without it, expansion risks reproducing the very inequities it seeks to address.

Taken together, the expansion of 2-K home-based care can reshape how language, culture, and education interconnect as a foundation for learning. This direction challenges approaches that pathologize differences and individualize the effects of poverty. It offers a possibility we can realize in New York, where children thrive without giving up who they are, and systems, not families, are accountable.

For Malek, this means entering childcare without being pulled away from his language, home, and identity. Arabic does not stop at the classroom door; it lives in caregivers’ voices and neighborhood interactions. His mother is not measured against narrow expectations of “engagement,” but recognized as a partner in his learning through everyday interactions grounded in their culture. She is not positioned as lacking. Malek does not have to choose between belonging and opportunity because he grows within both.

You’d never know it by the title “Dancing in the Dark,” but the Washington Spectator’s recent investigation is about the various steps (mostly illegal) Trump is taking, including the use of enforcement tools and violence, to prepare to reverse any overall Democratic victory in the November Congressional races. The authors, Mark Medish and Joel McCleary, believe Trump needs such a coup to save himself from impeachment, congressional investigations and subpoenas seeking more proof of crimes throughout his lawless, corrupt, dictatorial regime.

Currently, Trump’s polls are so low that he is endangering enough Republican seats in the House and Senate to give the feeble, corporate money-indentured Democratic Party a chance to win control of Congress. This is precisely what Trump fears, even though he has control of the Executive Branch and the immunity given him by six Injustices of the Supreme Court. Take note, he knows that impeachment and removal from office in the Senate are final, not reviewable in the federal courts.

In 23 single-spaced pages, Medish and McCleary walk readers through the events, directives, ballot seizures, and draft emergency orders Trump could use to assert federal control over a midterm election and use a domestic paramilitary force of unprecedented size and budget. Trump and his minions have already expanded their dictatorial control of our democratic institutions. (See: The V-Dem Institute’s Democracy Report 2026.)

To obstruct the vote in key precincts, then fabricate a need for national-security powers to purge and miscount ballots, falsely charge fraud, illegally seize ballots, threaten precinct workers, and claim without evidence foreign interference are preparations for instant escalation.

They then describe the “Devil’s Accordion File” meaning “the elements of a ramified, radical strategy to hold on to power at almost any cost as we approach the test of the 2026 elections…” Although they describe Trump as a brilliant mastermind concentrating extraordinary power in his hands, they remind us that he is also in “full command of his office, directing the Justice Department, the FBI, ICE (the largest new federal police force in American history) the IRS, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Communications Commission, the intelligence community and the armed forces. [Under total acolyte Pete Hegseth.] He is using each agency in a coordinated attack on his political adversaries in ways that would have been dismissed as fantasy only a few years ago.”

Trump’s iron grip on institutional controls was further strengthened by the Trump/Musk DOGE criminal enterprise which tore through federal agencies in 2025, closing some, shredding others, grabbing huge troves of personal data on Americans, and destroying the non-partisan civil service that could have used federal laws to resist his coup d’état.

Focusing on swing electoral districts—including those politically redistricted earlier this year—and on the various junctures between now and the final certification process in the House of Representatives on January 3, 2027, the authors write that “the political will, personal motivation, legal architecture and technical infrastructure by now [are] all in place.” They could have added Trump’s unlimited pardon power to facilitate the violence and theft by his criminal operatives.

Trump has also precluded any opposition from corporations and the “contented classes” with tax cuts, non-regulation, subsidies and other inducements from which his family also lavishly benefits. (In 2025 Trump took in $1.1 million an hour when measured over a 40-hour workweek —see my column $1.1 MILLION AN HOUR!!—Trump’s Personal Profit in 2025.)

To obstruct the vote in key precincts, then fabricate a need for national-security powers to purge and miscount ballots, falsely charge fraud, illegally seize ballots, threaten precinct workers, and claim without evidence foreign interference are preparations for instant escalation.

Trump tried a dress rehearsal in his July 16 national televised address, pushing his Save America Act, which is stalled in Congress. The speech “bombed” drawing widespread criticism, ridicule and dismissal even by the mainstream media along with some of his Republican partisans.

Undeterred and personally deeply fearful of losing, Trump plunges ahead. He makes the notion that “it can’t happen here” the Achilles heel of Democratic Party opposition, which had better prepare—and work overtime.

The authors warn: “The full election subversion strategy mixes subtlety and brutality, subterfuge and open tactics. It represents unprecedented intensification and escalation of the attack on our once seemingly settled Constitutional order…”

Led by Stephen Miller, his fascistic White House adviser, Trump and his Injustice Department have already launched attacks on so-called “antifa” advocates labeling them “domestic terrorists.” Trump could falsely use this moniker to include any of his selected political opponents. Remember, in 2025, he called for the execution of six Democratic Members of Congress, including two Senators, for reminding U.S. soldiers that they have under Army law a legal obligation to resist illegal orders from their superiors. Hegseth filed charges against Senator Mark Kelly (Dem. Ariz.), a retired Navy Captain for making such a statement; the case was dismissed in federal court.

Trump has often mentioned using the vaguely worded Insurrection Act, which he claims could enable him to quell unrest, including by using unrest as the pretext for his own false-flag operation. Imagine the chilling effect of Trump arbitrarily and illegally deploying federal soldiers to a city or region.

In their conclusion, “What Is to be Done,” the authors have numerous suggestions for the citizenry and state officials. However, they omit the need to mount an Impeachment drive, which, as it intensifies, can serve as a deterrent to Trump. He knows that his blatant disregard for the Constitution and his mounting impeachable offenses could further provoke the public and Congress to use this final remedy provided by our Founding Fathers—telling Trump: “You’re Fired.” This is Trump’s biggest nightmare. Remember the stubborn Richard Nixon, who after winning 49 of 50 states in 1972, was forced to resign when his Republican base collapsed in Congress before the 1974 elections.

In my podcast interview with Joel McCleary, I suggested that he and his allies (he served in the Carter White House) press some House Democrats to conduct a public “shadow hearing” on Impeaching Trump, an effort that polling shows is already supported by 90% of Democratic voters and two-thirds of Independents. (See our July 22, 2026 Symposium on Impeachment.) He replied: “I think that’s a fantastic idea.” We’ll see if these savvy authors can move from words to action. As a 14th century Chinese philosopher once wrote: “To Know and Not to Do is Not to Know.”

Furthermore, the group Indivisible seems to be planning another mass protest march in the Fall. It should replace its weak, obsolete name of “No Kings” with “Impeach Trump Now.”

“American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again,” declared the State Department in a new video tying, somewhat improbably, the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 to killing people on boats in the Caribbean and Pacific 200 years later. Blowing up speedboats supposedly to stop fentanyl smuggling—which notably does not come to the US on speedboats—appears senseless. As a counter-narcotics strategy, it is ineffective, an assessment echoed by the DEA. The performative violence overshadows its role in building a new US policy towards the hemisphere: acts of murder as a tool to create permanent structures of US dominance and extraction.

Laid out in the December 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS), the “Donroe Doctrine” aims to restore US preeminence in a region where it has been eclipsed by China, convert security claims into exceptional military authority against “narco-terrorists,” institutionalize that authority through permanent commands, “enlist and expand” governments aligned with Washington, and use it to secure strategic and commercial access. The desired end: military cooperation, trade agreements, access to critical minerals and rare earths, likely accompanied by shady personal deals for the Trump family. Democratic backsliding, in a region where democracy is still relatively young, is a necessary condition for its success.

The Donroe Doctrine's architecture is still under construction. Latin American governments can still resist Washington’s pressures, refusing to co-create his transactional order. Greater regional integration would rebalance that bargaining power, helping less powerful countries impose conditions, defend constitutional limits, reject particular operations, and withstand the costs of US pressure. More than 100 legislators, political leaders, and experts from 15 countries are gathering at the Third Pan-American Congress in Montevideo this weekend to strengthen regional collaboration, the basis for an alternate architecture to one premised on US domination.

- YouTube

Resistance to US coercion, however, also depends on democratic repair within the region. Governments captured by authoritarian leaders cannot provide a durable basis for sovereignty. Corruption erodes state capacity and public trust, making foreign military solutions more appealing. The Trump administration is betting on a hemispheric doctrine that favors authoritarian leaders, eager to share in corruption.

The Donroe Doctrine’s highest profile proof of concept began with airstrikes on boats off the coast of Venezuela, to the killing of fishermen in the Pacific—since revealed to be a covert CIA program—to August’s announcement of a new Joint Task Force-Western Hemisphere, establishing a standing headquarters for efforts to turn such extrajudicial killings into joint operations with allied governments. This maps onto the administration's Shield of the Americas, a coalition of right-wing Latin American governments allied with the Trump administration. From the abduction of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro to the boat strikes murders, all leaned on two forever wars framing and justification that long predated Trump: The War on Drugs and the War on Terror.

The Trump administration is betting on a hemispheric doctrine that favors authoritarian leaders, eager to share in corruption.

Targeting supposed smugglers, many of them probably fishermen, as “narcoterrorists” is a way to move trafficking from the framework of criminal law into the claimed authorities of war. Suspects become targets not of investigation but of immediate execution, secret assessments replacing due process and evidence in courts. The urgency of national security puts executive discretion over judicial authority. The boat strikes publicly declare exceptional authority of the executive. The Pentagon’s and CIA’s programs institutionalize it.

Like the War on Terror, this framing pictures an enemy and creates an industry to manage. It creates quid pro quo partnerships with other governments who leverage military cooperation into access to US foreign assistance, weapons, intelligence, and diplomatic cover for unsavory ends, whether domestic repression, corruption, or state murder of their own. With public opinion showing falling trust in all institutions but the military, stoking fears of all-powerful narcoterrorists serve mutual interests of reactionaries in Washington, Bogotá, and Tegucigalpa. The main risk is that it creates bureaucratic structures that outlive sitting administrations. With multilateral cooperation and institutions on the decline, this new military-industrial complex makes it nearly irreversible.

It also creates tools for meddling in domestic partisan politics. The success of Trump’s “Shield of the Americas” is predicated on Latin America’s continued turn to the right. Ecuador and Colombia have already agreed to “joint” military strikes on their territory, which are likely to become unilateral US strikes. Trump openly intervened in supporting the election of Nasry Asfura in Honduras, as it is currently doing with Flávio Bolsonaro in Brazil. That many of these allies are themselves tied to the drug trade is of little consequence: Colombia’s President de la Espriella made a career as a defense attorney for top narcos, Ecuador’s president Noboa’s family’s fruit business was found to be transporting cocaine, and Honduras’ former president Juan Orlando Hernández won a Trump pardon after his US conviction on drug-trafficking charges.

The project functions more easily where democratic foundations are weak and leaders face fewer constraints from citizens, legislatures, courts, and independent institutions, reflecting Trump’s own effort to weaken checks on executive authority inside the United States. Bukele in El Salvador provides a marquee case for using the specter of crime to consolidate a permanent “state of exception” and authoritarian rule. Such regimes can authorize operations, share intelligence, sign agreements, allocate land, and suppress opposition with less scrutiny.

Democratic scrutiny can expose the climate costs of extraction, contest land allocations and territorial interventions, demand transparency over contracts, and insist that resource wealth benefit the public. Corruption circumvents those checks by connecting external power with local gatekeepers able to transfer public resources and protect the bargain. The lack of transparency surrounding more than $13 billion collected by the United States from Venezuelan oil sales illustrates the scale of the accountability problem.

For the region, the emerging system depends on governments choosing to participate and institutions holding its authority. As progressives in the United States, we must challenge the false counternarcotics claims, unchecked lethal force, and waste of public resources sustaining this project, and hold our government accountable. Regional resistance and democratic repair must proceed together.

Since last fall, I and a group of fellow animal rights activists have been holding protests at the upscale Lincoln Park restaurant Galit, urging it to stop serving foie gras. Each weekend, activists hold signs, chant, shout through a megaphone, write on the sidewalk with chalk, and pressure Galit to remove foie gras from its menu. We are a grassroots group of people from all walks of life who care about animals. Our group is made up of people with diverse occupations and perspectives, but we are united by an opposition to the worst abuses animals face. Now, Galit and one of the top law firms in the country have dragged us into court, calling our protests “harassment.”

Our group chose to protest at Galit—after emailing the restaurant for two months, initially seeking to remove foie gras from its menu through dialogue—because of its progressive values. The restaurant prides itself on paying its workers well, and providing a robust benefits package, including paid time off, substantially subsidized health insurance, and retirement benefits. The restaurant is closed on major holidays, allowing employees to have a holiday as well. It reports inclusive hiring practices and provides harassment and bystander intervention training. Galit’s website notes that its two co-owners have Israeli and Palestinian-Cuban-Spanish backgrounds. Galit is rightly proud of these practices, which are uncommon in service industries. But all too often, such values exclude the most vulnerable of all: animals.

Foie gras is a luxury product made from the fattened liver of ducks and geese, using a process called gavage, in which birds have a pipe forced down their throats in order to force-feed them to the point that their livers become painfully engorged and diseased. It is, frankly, systematic torture. That’s why entire countries, states, and cities have banned it, including nearly all of Europe, the UK, Australia, Israel, Türkiye, India, Argentina, California, New York City and, just last month, Portland, Oregon. Each of these bans is based primarily on the cruelty involved in foie gras production.

In the US, animal rights activists have been protesting this for around 30 years. Over the last few years, these protests have intensified and largely focused on specific restaurants—holding protests just like those I’ve participated in at Galit. Our movement has succeeded in getting 400 restaurants across the world to permanently remove foie gras from their menus. Our protests urge Galit to join the ranks of restaurants that have made this ethical choice, extending the same concern to animals as it has to so many other important values.

Instead, Galit went to court. After attempting to limit our protests by urging police to issue tickets to demonstrators—each of which has been dismissed—Galit and its general manager have filed for anti-stalking orders against me and other protesters.

The restaurant is represented, for free, by the top law firm Jenner & Block. This is rather stunning. Jenner & Block is known for handling major litigation, including arguing several cases before the US Supreme Court. The firm is also notable for the stand it took early in the second Trump administration, refusing to cave to Trump’s demands that it not represent the president’s political foes, while other large law firms folded. Jenner & Block described its position as a principled stance against political interference with a client’s right to vigorous, uncompromising representation. For this, it was targeted by a Trump executive order. The firm vowed to remain “fearless.” But once again, when it comes to animals, principles go out the window. Jenner & Block knows full well that protesting is not harassment or stalking, that it is protected by the First Amendment. Yet the firm has provided its prestige legal services—and attached its name—to an effort to protect a local restaurant from a dozen animal advocates armed with megaphones and chalk.

There is yet another odd twist to this story. While Galit has refused to remove this single product, the result of extreme animal cruelty, from its menu, some have begun accusing us of protesting not to stop it from serving foie gras, but because we are antisemitic. They argue that, because we are protesting against Galit and not other Chicago restaurants that serve foie gras, we are targeting it because one of its owners is Israeli (the critics do not explain how such a motivation makes sense in light of Galit’s own website reporting that the other owner identifies at Palestinian-Cuban-Spanish). But some members of the group protesting against foie gras at Galit, too, are Jewish and Israeli, and Israel itself is among the countries that have banned the production of foie gras.

Accusations of antisemitism are cynical at worst and intentionally ignorant at best. First, it underscores how so many people simply cannot see that animals might be worthy of treatment short of torture. Apparently, it makes more sense that we would target Galit due to antisemitism than that we chose to protest there because we want it to bring its treatment of animals into line with the restaurant’s otherwise admirable values. Antisemitism makes more sense than that a commitment to values like workers’ rights, community, and equality should include a commitment to animal welfare. It is not out of hatred for Galit, but out of respect for its stated values, that we chose to press it to stop serving foie gras.

It also saddens me because I, myself, am halachically Jewish. That is to say, I am Jewish on my mom’s side of my family. In recent years, I have been a regular at a Chabad house. For a while, I was there every shabbos evening. I have spent the last year teaching middle school math at a haredi school in West Ridge, wearing a kippah every day at work.

To be clear, across the country, protests to stop restaurants from selling foie gras have proceeded one restaurant at a time. This is a decision based on strategic value and activist capacity, and it has proven remarkably successful. Were Galit to provide a written commitment to, and stick to, a foie gras free policy, we will move on to another restaurant.

In the meantime, activists will continue to protest Galit. (Unfortunately, for now, I cannot personally participate in these protests because of Galit’s baseless lawsuit against me.) The judge presiding over Galit’s request for a protection order—again, oddly, filed by the top law firm Jenner & Block—threw out the complaint. But Galit has amended its complaint and continues to seek restraints on our protests.

It is worth wondering why one of the nation’s top law firms is representing a local restaurant, pro bono, in an effort to restrain the protests of a dozen animal rights activists. We may also wonder why Galit is so committed to serving a product that multiple entire countries have deemed too cruel to allow its production. All of this, rather than simply adopting a foie gras free policy.

I do believe there will come a time when Galit sees foie gras for what it is, and agrees to a foie gras-free policy. Force feeding is not kindness. It’s not food, it’s violence.

Mothers are seemingly given endless choices: to work or be a stay-at-home mom. Sleep train or not, breastfeed or bottle-feed. The list is endless.

But true choice only exists when the options are genuinely possible. For millions of mothers around the world, they aren't.

Reshma Saujani’s recent documentary, No Country for Mothers, has reignited a conversation about what it means to be a mother in a society that was never designed to support it. As clear evidence of this, more than 400,000 mothers of young children have left the US workforce, the steepest decline in 40 years. While Saujani’s documentary focuses on the United States, the friction it exposes is global.

There is a design flaw at the heart of modern motherhood:

Rather than judging mothers for these choices, we need to create a society that better supports them.

Our economies rely on the assumption of an uninterrupted worker, and our families rely on the expectation of an endlessly available mother.

We have witnessed this firsthand, as the founders of Kidogo Childcare Centres and Maziwa Breastfeeding, working alongside low-income mothers in Kenya, and as women who have confronted these tough choices ourselves.

Many of the mothers we work with either work informally, receiving sporadic daily income, or are living from paycheck to paycheck. For them, returning to work is not about ambition or professional identity. It is the only way they can feed their families. A few weeks without income can push a family onto the street.

However, if a mother is compelled to return to work, how is her child adequately cared for and fed?

Globally, the World Bank estimates 350 million children below primary school age need childcare but do not have access to it. Similarly, optimal breastfeeding could prevent more than 820,000 child deaths every single year and countless cases of serious illnesses, but working mothers are not supported to maintain breastfeeding.

Unfortunately, in the contexts we work in, maternity leave, safe and affordable childcare, lactation rooms, and breastfeeding breaks are nonexistent. Yet, when a child is left in unsuitable care or weaned off of breastmilk prematurely, we shift the blame to the mother—rather than the system that has failed her.

Society cannot expect mothers to work and then treat childcare and breastfeeding as a private burden for each woman to solve alone.

As female entrepreneurs, we face these impossible choices personally as well: Sabrina, feeling like she has missed out on early childhood development milestones for her own daughter, ironically while building the largest childcare network in Kenya; and Sahar, freezing her eggs to delay motherhood, while launching Kenya’s first wearable breast pump to allow mothers to balance working and breastfeeding.

Time and time again, we see these trade-offs play out: If a mother is working, she needs to find safe and adequate care. If she stays home, she must absorb the income loss. If she breastfeeds, she must do so without support, time, space, or privacy. If she cannot breastfeed, she is made to feel like she has failed.

When all these expectations collide, we call it choice. But for many mothers, it is not a choice at all. It is a system asking them to do the impossible.

Rather than confronting this friction directly, we often turn mothers against one another. The "trad wife" and the "girl boss" are presented as opposing ideals. Breastfeeding and formula feeding become moral tribes. Stay-at-home mothers and working mothers are asked to defend their choices as if one woman’s path invalidates another’s.

This reduces structural failures into identity camps. These divisions are not accidental. They distract us from the systems that create these impossible choices in the first place.

The choices are not being made from a place of agency—nor are they taken lightly. There is an immense amount of motherhood guilt with every decision. Rather than judging mothers for these choices, we need to create a society that better supports them.

To be sure, progress has been made to better support motherhood in some countries. For example, Sweden offers 480 days of parental leave with 80% of pay. However, across the globe, women's participation in the workforce is rising faster than the policies needed to support working mothers.

No Country for Mothers has clearly highlighted how mothers have been “failed by economic policies, workplace structures, political agendas, and cultural narratives that were never designed to support caregiving or family life.”

The impossible choices mothers face are the symptom, not the cause. Rather than expecting mothers to solve structural failures through individual sacrifice, we need our systems to adapt to motherhood.

By Ralph Nader August 21, 2026 You’d never know it by the title “Dancing in the Dark,” but the Washington Spectator’s recent investigation is about the various steps (mostly illegal) Trump is taking, including the use of enforcement tools and violence, to prepare to reverse any overall Democratic victory in the November Congressional races. The…

I have never been a deficit hawk, and I’m not about to change my religious affiliation now. But whatever we think of debt and deficits, there is one point that should be very clear: it has been run up almost entirely due to Republican tax cuts and their inept management of the economy.

Every Democratic president of the last half century has left with a deficit that was lower, measured as a share of GDP, than the one they came in with, except Obama, who left it unchanged. By contrast, every Republican president has left with a considerably higher deficit than what they inherited.

Starting with Carter, the deficit for fiscal year 1976 was 4.1% of GDP. When he left office in 1980, it was down to 2.5% of GDP, despite a recession that year. That was the starting point for Reagan. (These figures refer to fiscal years, which end on October 1 of the year.) Reagan’s tax cuts, along with a big military buildup, were most of the story of higher deficits. When his successor, George H.W. Bush, left the White House in 1992, the deficit was 4.5% of GDP.

For better or worse, Clinton took deficit reduction seriously. He was helped by an explosion of tax revenue associated with the tech bubble, but he both made budget cuts and increased taxes. When he left office in 2000, the government was running a surplus equal to 2.3% of GDP.

George W. Bush quickly reversed the picture. A big part of the story was the collapse of the tech bubble in 2001-2002, which both led to a recession and a plunge in tax revenue from capital gains. He also had big tax cuts and a military buildup associated with his invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. When Bush left office after 2008, he handed Obama a deficit equal to 3.1% of GDP, as well as a financial crisis and severe recession, resulting from the collapse of the housing bubble.

The deficit initially exploded in 2009 under Obama, as the country faced the worst recession since the Great Depression. As the economy gradually recovered, the deficit came down, falling back to 3.1% of GDP in 2016, just as Obama was leaving the White House.

Trump’s tax cuts caused the deficit to rise again. It hit 4.6% in 2019, but it really took off the following year, as a result of the pandemic. It reached 14.7% of GDP in 2020, the largest since World War II. The recovery and some modest increases in tax collections brought the deficit down to 6.3% of GDP in 2024.

Taking the cumulative changes from Democratic and Republican presidents, Democratic presidents have reduced deficits by 16.7 percentage points of GDP during their terms in office, while Republican presidents have raised them by 18.9 percentage points. Somehow, many people talk about Republicans as the party of fiscal responsibility.

As I said earlier, I am not hugely troubled by the debt. It would be better to be paying less money in interest, but 3.0% of GDP going to interest is not a disaster. The more important issue is to have a healthy economy with solid growth.

Here is where the big failure is. Trump’s war is leading to shortages, most importantly of oil, but also fertilizer and other products. His tariffs have led to higher prices for a wide range of products, as has his mass deportations. Perhaps most importantly, Trump’s open corruption and self-dealing undermine confidence in the U.S. financial markets and business system more generally.

In the past, investors could view the United States markets as relatively clean and stable. Unlike in some other countries, getting your investment back didn’t depend on staying in the good graces of the political leadership. Under Trump, this is no longer true. He has openly threatened companies and their management for saying and doing things he does not like. That is not a good recipe for a stable economy with solid growth.

If there is a run on the dollar, and interest rates soar higher, it is far more likely to be the result of Trump’s corruption and incompetence than the high debt. This is what people should be losing sleep over, not the debt crossing the $40 trillion mark.

Trump and his Republican partners in the destruction of American democracy really don’t want us to vote this fall or in 2028. And there’s a good reason for it, at least in their minds.

Joyce Vance just pointed out that Howard Lutnick, Trump’s morbidly rich crony Commerce Secretary, claimed this week that they’d found over 24,000 noncitizens who’d illegally voted in the 2020 election.

It’s a lie, of course, and a pretty naked one at that, but this will be the foundation for Republicans establishing even more draconian rules to prevent married women, racial minorities, city dwellers, and low-income people from voting this fall and in 2028.

Also this week, the Center for American Progress released an extraordinarily disturbing fact sheet summarizing an investigation they published that documents fifteen separate, interlocking tactics the Trump administration, Republican governors, and GOP members of Congress are engaging in right now to rig this fall’s election.

Their tactics range from firing the bipartisan Election Assistance Commissions’ commissioners to encouraging Red state voter purges to putting ICE agents outside polling places in clear violation of federal law.

The six corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court are also deciding, perhaps this week or next, whether to let Trump’s hand-picked Postmaster General have your mailman refuse to deliver your ballot if you’re not on Trump’s approved voter list.

Trump’s executive order to do this has been blocked twice by a federal judge, noting that the Constitution is clear that only states run elections and the executive branch has no authority whatsoever to even try to regulate them. And now it’s in the hands of six corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court.

And the plain words of the Constitution — which references the “right to vote” six times, including five Amendments that say, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged…” — have never been an obstacle for Republicans on the Court. Just read the plain text of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments and compare that to ICE’s behavior, which the Court is allowing.

Sadly, we need to be ready for anything, because Republicans now have a 58-year-long record of committing crimes and treason to get their men into the White House.

— Nixon sabotaged LBJ’s Vietnam peace deal just before the election of 1968, an event LBJ and Senate Republican Leader Everett Dirksen called “treason” on a phone call that wasn’t released until decades after Johnson’s death. Because the war continued, Nixon beat Humphrey that year by lying that he had a “secret plan” to end the war, and an additional 20,000+ Americans and over an additional million Vietnamese died.

— Reagan’s campaign cut a deal with the Iranian Ayatollah to hold the 52 hostages they’d taken during Carter’s presidency until after the election. Iran kept the deal destroying Carter’s chance in the 1980 election, and for six years Reagan secretly and illegally sold them American-made weapons in violation of the law. We remember that as the “Iran-Contra Scandal.”

— Florida Governor Jeb Bush had 57,000 mostly Black Floridians purged from the voting rolls just months before the 2000 election, which let his brother George W. Bush squeak by with a 537 vote margin. When the Florida Supreme Court, smelling a rat, ordered a recount, five corrupt Republicans — including Bush’s father’s nominee Clarence Thomas — violated the state’s rights Tenth Amendment and blocked the recount, putting Bush into the White House even though a later recount found that Al Gore had won the election. President Jimmy Carter told me on my radio program: “I don’t think that George W. Bush won the election in 2000, and he probably lost Florida and nationwide…”

— And then there was the GOP’s theft of the 2024 election. Greg Palast, a reporter with a masters’ degree in statistics, went through the official state-by-state statistics and found that 4,776,706 voters were wrongly purged from the rolls: 2,121,000 mail were ballots disqualified by Republican challenges, 1,216,000 provisional ballots were thrown away uncounted, 3.24 million new registrations were rejected or never processed, and 585,000 in-person ballots were “spoiled.”

He found Black voters were four times as likely as white voters to have their mail ballot rejected; Black, Hispanic, and Asian-American voters were more than 3 times as likely as white people to be given provisional ballots that were never counted. Had that voter suppression not worked, he concluded, Kamala Harris would be president and the House and Senate may well be in Democratic hands.

So, here we go again, only this time state-by-state voter suppression — remember when Texas AG Ken Paxton told Steve Bannon on the air that if he hadn’t blocked Houston from sending out mail-in ballots Trump would have lost Texas? — is getting a big boost from the feds under Trump’s control.

— Trump and his lickspittles have fired or pushed out at least 75 career election security officials, gutted the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and removed the Election Assistance Commission’s commissioners so the agency is now functionally dead.

— The Civil Rights Division of the DOJ, now run by an apparatchik devoted to undoing civil rights, has threatened election officials in all 50 states with prison if they make even small errors in running their elections. The DOJ itself has sued more than 30 states trying to seize their voter files.

— The FBI raided the Fulton County elections office with Tulsi Gabbard, then the Director of National Intelligence, standing over the process at the personal direction of Trump himself as agents hauled away hundreds of boxes of 2020 ballots.

— Steve Bannon has repeatedly promised — most recently this week — that ICE agents will defy the post-Civil War federal law that bans armed government officials from polling places.

— And Trump has, on multiple occasions, floated declaring a national emergency or state of insurrection to shut down this fall’s elections, either nationwide or in places where Democratic majorities may win.

Back in the old days, Nixon and Reagan at least had the decency to commit their treasonous election thefts in secret.

Trump is now bragging about it, telling Congress that if they pass his voter suppression bill to prevent low-income people and married women from voting, “We’ll never lose a race. For 50 years, we won’t lose a race.”

This is Putin-level corruption, right out in the open, and not a single Republican is pushing back as our national press tries their hardest to avoid discussing it.

We’ve suffered through five illegitimate presidencies in the years since Nixon’s 1968 treason largely because our press has refused to investigate or tell the stories and Democratic leadership has been too timid to bring it up. You know how Republicans would be reacting if the shoe were on the other foot.

This time the press can’t claim they just didn’t realize what was going on, as happened in 1968, 1980, 2000, and 2024: Trump and his cronies are doing all this right out in the open, and his advisors like Bannon are crowing about it on TV.

So it’s time for all of us to raise some hell, letting our friends and neighbors know what’s happening, and demand that our elected officials act now to protect our elections. The number for Congress is 202-224-3121 and don’t forget to check your voter registration at vote.org, particularly if you live in a Red state.

We just have a few weeks to go before early voting starts and we have a hell of a lot of work to do to get out the vote and keep it honest.

LIVE 9:00 am Eastern time, Streaming Anytime:

Conflict reporter/writer/cartoonist Ted Rall and political analyst Jamarl Thomas deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM ET.

Today we discuss:

• Nathan Cofnas, the U.S. professor who raised plagiarism concerns over ‌Cambridge professor Jason Arday, who then committed suicide, has been suspended by Belgium’s Ghent University and is under investigation for discrimination. Arday, Cambridge’s youngest Black professor, killed himself at age 41. Arday denied plagiarism but ​acknowledged mistakes.

• The Navy is discussing renaming an aircraft carrier after Trump. The ship, which is still under construction, was set to be named the USS Doris Miller in honor of an enlisted sailor who famously staffed an anti-aircraft gun during the attack on Pearl Harbor. Miller, a mess attendant, grabbed the gun shot down at least one Japanese plane and dragged wounded U.S. sailors to safety.

• Democrats are preparing an all-out oversight campaign targeting President Trump, his family and administration should they flip the House. Leading the effort are California Rep. Robert Garcia, who is poised to lead the Oversight Committee under a Democratic takeover, and Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, who is in line to lead the Judiciary Committee. They are planning to investigate Trump’s acceptance of a Qatari jet and his family’s cryptocurrency investments. Democrats want to build an accountability message for 2028.

LIVE ON YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@DeProgramShow

LIVE ON RUMBLE: https://rumble.com/c/DeProgramShow

https://x.com/tedrall

https://x.com/JamarlThomas

#tedrall #jamarlthomas #news #politics

The post Professor Who Attacked Jason Arday Suspended | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

If you want to understand how the Supreme Court became the sinkhole of ideological extremism and corruption it is today under the leadership of Chief Justice John Roberts, you have to go back to the beginning and examine the institution’s own origin story. A good place to start is with the debates on ratification of the Constitution that played out in 1787 and 1788 in what are now known as the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers, in which the pros and cons of replacing the Articles of Confederation with a new national charter were laid out in passionate detail.

Totaling 85 essays, Alexander Hamilton was the author of 51 of the Federalist Papers; John Jay of New York and James Madison of Virginia penned the remainder. Of the three, Hamilton was the staunchest advocate for creating an independent federal judiciary fortified with the power of “judicial review” that would enable judges to declare acts of Congress and the executive unconstitutional.

Writing under the pseudonym “Publius,” Hamilton outlined the principles of judicial review in Federalist No. 78, explaining:

The interpretation of the laws is the proper and peculiar province of the courts. A constitution is, in fact, and must be regarded by the judges, as a fundamental law. It therefore belongs to them to ascertain its meaning, as well as the meaning of any particular act proceeding from the legislative body.

Hamilton was aware of the potential for overreach, but he believed the federal judiciary would prove “the least dangerous” of the Constitution’s three branches of government. Unlike Congress and the president, he reasoned, the courts would have “no influence over either the sword or purse,” but would possess “only judgment,” rendering them repositories of detached wisdom and impartiality. To put it plainly, his argument was that we could trust the judges.

Hamilton got a lot right about the need for judicial independence, but the faith he placed in the president and the Senate to select and confirm only well-qualified judges was egregiously wrong.

This was a novel and highly controversial idea at the time and remains a subject of contention nearly 240 years later.

Among the earliest dissenters was New York state Judge Robert Yates, a delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention. Yates feared that the power of judicial review would result in judicial supremacy, and historians consider him the probable author of several anti-federalist tracts published under the pen name of “Brutus.”

In Anti-Federalist essay No. 14, Brutus rebuked Hamilton, writing that under the new Constitution, the Supreme Court “would be exalted above all other power in the government, and subject to no control.” In No. 15, Brutus added in words that echo eerily to the present that the Supreme Court

[will] have a right, independent of the legislature, to give a construction to the constitution and every part of it, and there is no power provided in this system to correct their construction or do it away. … Men placed in this situation will generally soon feel themselves independent of heaven itself.

Hamilton’s position triumphed, and a Supreme Court equipped with judicial review became official doctrine with the landmark 1803 decision in Marbury v. Madison. But the triumph came with a price. Although it is difficult to imagine an independent court system that lacked authority to invalidate legislative and executive acts, judicial review has proven to be a two-edged sword. It has been wielded at times to advance democratic ideals (Brown v. Board of Education) but at others to thwart, damage and reverse those ideals (Dred Scott v. Sandford, Plessy v. Ferguson, and the cases invalidating key legislative pieces of the early New Deal).

We are in one of the dark periods now. With Roberts at the helm, the Supreme Court has used the power of judicial review to tack hard to the right on a number of fronts: reinterpreting the Second Amendment to include an individual right to bear arms, undermining the legal foundations of union organizing, removing political gerrymandering from the jurisdiction of federal courts, opening election campaigns to unlimited spending by corporations and wealthy individual donors, overturning the right to abortion, endowing the president with immunity for official acts and neutering the Voting Rights Act.

Hamilton got a lot right about the need for judicial independence, but the faith he placed in the president and the Senate to select and confirm only well-qualified judges was egregiously wrong. While he lived long enough to see Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase impeached by the House of Representatives in 1804 (he died in a duel with Aaron Burr before Chase’s acquittal in the upper chamber), he scarcely could have imagined a court completely dominated by a chief justice who has falsely portrayed himself as an institutionalist committed to calling “balls and strikes,” and a supporting cast of grifters, ideologues and political hacks. He also likely would have been surprised to see how Roberts and his confederates have fulfilled Brutus’ fears by elevating themselves to the status of unaccountable and inscrutable Delphian oracles, who deign to tell the rest of us that they alone get to determine what the Constitution means.

The Roberts court’s rollback of constitutional rights is deeply unpopular, as reflected in recent polling showing that the court faces a legitimacy crisis of its own making. The rollback has sparked renewed calls for structural reforms, ranging from the imposition of term limits to restrictions on the court’s appellate jurisdiction and an expansion of the bench to as many as 13 members. Accomplishing any of these, however, will require Democrats to do three things: stiffen their spines, take back both houses of Congress and win the presidency. Even then, reforms will be difficult to achieve and slow to implement.

In the meantime, we need a theory of constitutional interpretation and reform to rival and ultimately displace the “originalism” that Roberts and his forerunners have deployed to engineer the right’s takeover of the Supreme Court. Fortunately, one such alternative, known as “popular constitutionalism,” already exists and is gaining traction.

As set forth by the legal scholar Larry Kramer in his 2004 book, “The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review,” popular constitutionalism is the idea that “the people” — not as an abstract concept but as actual engaged citizens — are the ultimate source of constitutional meaning rather than the nine unelected black-robed members of the Supreme Court. We may be legally bound by the court’s rulings, but we have the right to criticize them, promote alternative interpretations and take peaceful action to overturn wrongly decided cases through voting, demonstrations, litigation, legislation, impeachment, amendments to the Constitution and a myriad of other means.

As New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie wrote in June:

Constitutional meaning deals with the shape and structure of our political community. And as much as courts help build our collective constitutional understanding, the question of meaning is as much the purview of the public as it is the job of a jurist. … It is only in the last half-century, in fact, that we have fully conflated legal decision-making with the production of constitutional meaning. The result … is a strong form of judicial supremacy, where the meaning of the Constitution and therefore the structure of our political community are fixed in place by the decisions of a small, cloistered and often self-interested tribunal.

Even Hamilton, the principal proponent of judicial review, conceded in Federalist 78 that his vision for the courts “did not by any means suppose a superiority of the judicial to the legislative power. It only supposes that the power of the people is superior to both. …”

There are a number of examples from the past that illustrate popular constitutionalism in action — the ratification of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, the passage of the Civil Rights Acts of the 1950s and ’60s, and more recently, the recognition of same-sex marriage, to cite just a few.

This summer, the legal commentators at Slate launched a series of articles and podcasts called By the People to renew this tradition. The series unpacks the history of popular constitutionalism and provides a guide to citizen involvement. After a brief hiatus, the series will resume in the fall, just as the Supreme Court convenes for another harrowing term.

It will take a long time to produce meaningful change, but as we move forward, we should remember that it took the radical right decades of organizing by groups like the Federalist Society and the promotion of originalism to highjack the Supreme Court. With that history in mind, we need to prepare for a marathon, not a sprint. More than anything else, we must be prepared to win.

I’ve lived in Northern Virginia my whole life, but no one told us we would soon be living alongside one of the largest concentrations of data centers in the world.

No one asked our community whether we wanted them. No one explained what they would mean for our neighborhoods, our landscape, or our monthly bills. Then, almost overnight, they were everywhere. Massive industrial buildings rose where open space once stood. The constant hum became part of daily life. And one month, our electricity bill didn't gradually creep upward, it nearly doubled.

We were told these projects would bring jobs, innovation, and economic growth. What we weren't told was what residents would be expected to give up in return.

Now, as I watch Maryland debate whether to accelerate data center development, I can't help but feel like I've seen this story before.

As someone living with the consequences of Virginia's choices, my advice is simple: Don't wait until the bills arrive, the forests are gone, and the data centers are already built to ask whether they were worth it.

For years, Virginia has been held up as the nation's data center success story. But if Maryland leaders only see Virginia's balance sheet, they're missing the growing backlash from the people who live here.

I have watched forests disappear, industrial buildings replace open land, electricity demand surge, and communities be transformed by sprawling server farms. Everyone I know is asking whether the promised economic benefits outweigh the environmental and financial costs.

Maryland has a choice. You can rush to replicate Virginia's model, or you can learn from our mistakes before it's too late.

The conversation surrounding data centers has largely centered on artificial intelligence and economic development. But too often, what gets left out are the communities expected to absorb the costs.

Supporters frequently describe data centers as major job creators, but the reality is more complicated. Construction creates temporary employment, yet once operational, many hyperscale facilities require relatively few permanent workers. Communities are often asked to trade farmland, forests, neighborhoods, and increased pressure on utilities for projects that may never deliver the long-term economic engine they were promised.

That trade-off deserves far more scrutiny than it has received.

The race to build data centers is being driven largely by the explosive growth of artificial intelligence. Every major technology company wants more computing power, faster infrastructure, and greater capacity. But history teaches us that economic booms rarely continue unchecked. America has seen speculative waves in office construction, shopping malls, and commercial real estate that far exceeded demand before markets eventually corrected.

No one can say with certainty whether today's data center boom will follow the same path. But uncertainty itself is reason for caution, not acceleration.

Maryland should pause before repeating Virginia's mistakes. A statewide moratorium would give policymakers time to complete a comprehensive assessment of the environmental, economic, and energy impacts of these facilities; strengthen safeguards for communities; ensure developers bear the costs of new infrastructure; and give the public a meaningful voice in decisions that will shape their neighborhoods for generations.

Virginia spent years asking how quickly it could build data centers.

Maryland has an opportunity to ask a better question: How do we embrace innovation without sacrificing the affordability, environment, and quality of life that make our communities worth living in?

As someone living with the consequences of Virginia's choices, my advice is simple: Don't wait until the bills arrive, the forests are gone, and the data centers are already built to ask whether they were worth it.

By then, the answer may come too late.