The House Natural Resources Committee majority just unveiled the worst piece of legislation for the environment in history—a bill that wouldn’t just sell off Alaska but that would threaten democracy and environmental protections across the country. The proposed “budget” reconciliation legislation is saturated with destructive provisions that would set our nation’s conservation legacy back for decades.

Don’t be distracted by the chaos. This “energy dominance” bill is not about good budgeting. It’s a clear handout to fossil fuel executives and a key part of President Donald Trump’s plan to sell off your public lands to wealthy oil, gas, and mining corporations for unchecked industrialization.

Starting with the threats to wild Alaska alone, you can find an unprecedented and sweeping giveaway of our nation’s lands and waters. Mandated industrialization, the override of environmental standards, cutting out the public—the text reads like something drafted in an oil tycoon’s boardroom.

This is not a budget. It’s a backroom deal for billionaires that steamrolls tribal rights, community voices, and our nation’s most iconic wild places.

First, the Arctic. Despite a well-documented history of failure, the bill would force the Department of the Interior to reinstate leases from a failed 2021 oil and gas lease sale in the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. That sale intended to pay for the last round of Trump billionaire tax cuts—a sale for which not one major oil company showed up to bid and less than 1% of projected revenues were collected. Taxpayers are still waiting for their money. Nevertheless, today’s bill would mandate four more lease sales in the refuge over the next decade, as well as lease sales in the Western Arctic every two years.

From there, the bill attempts to rewrite environmental law by declaring that rushed approvals are automatically in compliance with landmark statutes like the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), Endangered Species Act (ESA), Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), and Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA).

That’s not laziness—it’s an attempted authoritarian overreach.

In practice, that could look like agencies having just 30 days to approve permits—like those deciding whether seismic blasting can legally harm or kill polar bears—with no public input and zero accountability.

Then comes the most egregious power grab: The bill attempts to strip away judicial review of government decisions in the Arctic Refuge. Only the State of Alaska or oil companies could sue. The Gwich’in people, who have stewarded this place as their cultural homeland since time immemorial? Silenced. The basic democratic rights of the American public? Quashed. The same gag order appears for the Western Arctic, attempting to halt litigation over the Willow project and prevent future legal challenges to drilling by Iocal Indigenous communities or others.

And the hits keep coming.

The bill would require another six offshore oil and gas lease sales over the next 10 years in the waters of Cook Inlet, each covering no less than a million acres. Once again: environmental review sidestepped, public legal challenges all but erased.

The bill would also amend ANILCA to mandate approval of the Ambler Road, a 211-mile industrial corridor that would cut through National Park and Bureau of Land Management lands, disrupt caribou migration, and threaten subsistence for Alaska Native communities. Just like with Arctic drilling, this provision lets corporations sue the government to fast-track approvals while denying that same legal access to impacted Indigenous communities and the public. This language should terrify anyone who cares about tribal sovereignty or public lands.

Also hidden within the bill is language that would increase national timber harvest by 25%, possibly including the old-growth forests of the Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska—some of the most carbon-rich and ecologically important temperate rainforests on the planet. And it would slash funding for federal land management, threatening the long-term care of public lands from Denali to the Everglades.

So, what do Americans get in return? Not much. These fossil fuel handouts won’t lower energy prices, fix the deficit, or benefit future generations. The last Arctic Refuge lease sale brought in pennies on the dollar and had no impact on gas prices or our dangerous dependence on oil. This bill won’t boost revenue; it just fast-tracks extraction while silencing oversight.

Here’s the truth: This is not a budget. It’s a backroom deal for billionaires that steamrolls tribal rights, community voices, and our nation’s most iconic wild places.

We need Congress to reject this toxic package. Because our public lands—and our democracy—aren’t up for sale.

Isn’t the most remarkable—and least remarked-upon—aspect of the Pete Hegseth Defense Department reality show the fact that no one has appeared worried that the nation’s security might actually be threatened by this? That no one has seemed particularly concerned about any danger resulting from the vast U.S. military arsenal ostensibly being placed in the hands of someone who had obviously not read the job manual? But then why would they? Did anyone seriously think China’s Ministry of State Security was dashing off memos advising the country’s leaders to invade the United States because control of its armed forces had somehow fallen into inept hands? Or that something like that was going on in Russia… or Denmark… or Canada… or any other of our enemies, old or new?

Apparently not. Why? Well, at recent count, the U.S. was in possession of a fleet of 299 deployable combat vessels, 3,748 nuclear warheads, 5,500 military aircraft, 13,000 drones, and 2,079,142 military personnel. All of this comes with highly detailed operational plans for situations involving an actual attack on the nation. But no one seemed to think that what Hegseth was spending his time on had much, if anything, to do with that eventuality. From the point of view of the nation’s legitimate security, that’s a good thing. But it raises the question of what was Hegseth on about, anyhow?

The story that brought the question of the Trump foreign policy team’s competence to the fore has little to do with the matter of American national defense. What it’s really about is the unauthorized, global use of American military force. The few Americans whose well-being were plausibly threatened by Hegseth’s now infamous sharing of the details of upcoming bombing missions—with his wife, brother, lawyer, as well as the editor of The Atlantic—were the pilots of those missions.

While, as in so many areas, he may well be the crudest exponent and practitioner of American foreign policy that we’ve seen in some time, the bombs Trump orders do not fall far from those dropped by previous administrations.

The object of this ongoing bombing campaign—which the administration says has struck a thousand targets—is the Yemen rebel group called the Houthis, an organization allied with Iran and militarily opposed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The recent U.S. attacks came in response to a resumption of Houthi efforts to block Israeli shipping in the Arabian Gulf that followed upon Israel’s breaking of its cease-fire agreement with Hamas, along with its blocking of humanitarian aid to Gaza. In response to the renewed U.S. assault, the Houthis have attacked the U.S.S. Harry S. Truman, the aircraft carrier which then-President Joe Biden deployed to the Gulf last December as a base for the anti-Houthi airstrikes that he had ordered.

Now, although it may seem quaint to mention such technicalities as the law in relation to the routine U.S. bombing of another nation, the truth of the matter is that—whether one considers bombing the Houthis to free up Arabian Gulf shipping a good idea, or whether one doesn’t—we are simply not at war either with the government of Yemen or with the Houthis trying to supplant it. Nor has Congress authorized the use of force there, in lieu of a declaration of war.

If you have trouble recalling Congress declaring war, that’s because you probably weren’t alive in 1942, the last time it did so (against Bulgaria, Hungary, and Rumania.) The wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan? No declaration of war deemed necessary. And while the current Republican-controlled Congress may be distinguishing itself for new depths of subservience, generally the Democrat and Republican leadership alike tend to act as if questions of war and peace were above their pay grade, with only a minority of Democrats and a handful of Republicans ever making noise about the latest military action taken in our name. Congress’ ultimate responsibility notwithstanding, Presidents Biden and Donald Trump have made their decisions to launch attacks on Yemen unilaterally.

What we’re dealing with here is what we might call the Defense Department’s Offense Division—the part that maintains the 700–800 foreign military bases around the globe (the exact number is classified, but maybe if you could get your number on Hegseth’s phone list…), along with the ships that ply its waters and the planes and drones that fly its airs. As previously noted, Trump is not the first president to bomb Yemen. And while, as in so many areas, he may well be the crudest exponent and practitioner of American foreign policy that we’ve seen in some time, the bombs Trump orders do not fall far from those dropped by previous administrations. Prior to the current episode, the U.S. has bombed Yemen during every single year since 2009—nearly 300 times, primarily via drone.

Nor is Yemen the first country bombed during the second Trump administration; Iraq, Syria, and Somalia have preceded it. None of this was considered much by way of news—a failing of the news media, yes—but less so than of the congressional leaders who have failed to make it news. Here too, while Trump may denigrate his predecessors, he apparently takes no issue with their bombing choices, joining the George W. Bush, Obama, Trump I, and Biden administrations in the serial bombing of Somalia that has occurred more than 350 times over the course of those presidencies. The U.S. has also bombed Syria and Iraq every year since 2014.

All of this has been justified under tortured, expansive legal interpretations of the 2001 and 2002 Authorizations for Use of Military Force permitting military action against entities that “planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons” as well as “to defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq.” Under Bush, the authorization was interpreted to extend to the occupation of Iraq. Under Barack Obama, it would encompass action against groups that did not even exist in 2001, but were “descendants” or “successors”—such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The first Trump administration would expand that logic to warfare against eight different groups—including the assassination of an Iranian military commander. It was now understood to allow for military actions anywhere on the globe.

Before the Trumpists coopted the use of the term “Deep State”—to encompass what they believe to be a malign government network that supports programs like the “Ponzi Scheme,” as Elon Musk sees it, of Social Security, or Medicare—the term was used by quite a different group of people to quite a different end. The Deep State back then referred to the unelected elements of the government committed to waging endless war, often covert, often illegal—e.g. the Central Intelligence Agency—the sort of thing President Lyndon Johnson was talking about when he said that under President John F. Kennedy the U.S. had been running “a damned Murder, Inc. in the Caribbean.”

We don’t call that the Deep State anymore because, as the above discussion indicates, our government no longer feels a need to hide these things. It’s above ground now—part of the DOD’s Offense Division. The CIA now conducts assassinations openly—via drone.

This is the part of the U.S. government that should really worry us. It’s what Pete Hegseth was hired to run, something that was clear right from his Senate confirmation hearings that culminated in a narrower win than even his boss’s on Election Day—his approval requiring a vice presidential tie-breaking vote for only the second time in history (the first being the approval of Betsy DeVos as Trump I Secretary of Education) From the get go, Hegseth was forthright in declaring himself against increased “wokeness”—and for increased “lethality.”

One simple way to increase lethality is to broaden the potential killing range. And in this area, Hegseth came with a pretty strong record, having successfully lobbied for pardons of soldiers convicted of war crimes during the first Trump administration, and suggesting in a book he wrote last year, The War on Warriors, that rather than adhering to the Geneva Conventions, the U.S. would be “better off in winning our wars according to our own rules.”

Nor has he missed a beat since taking office; he’s announced plans to terminate the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Office and the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, and the Army will no longer require training in the law of war; henceforth it will be optional. Results have quickly followed, with the bombing of a migrant detention center in Yemen, for instance. One of Hegseth’s infamous Signal chats even described the targeting of a civilian location.

One last thought for the secretary: Pete, If you were to spend your time on our national defense—instead of “lethality” in attacking foreign nations with which we are not at war—you could probably rest easier about using your phone. Of course, we both know that’d get you fired in a New York minute. You’re there to play offense.

If you were drowning, I wouldn’t ask how you got there before throwing you a lifeline.

I wouldn’t tell you to swim harder.

I wouldn’t tell you to make better choices, I wouldn’t hope you sink, and I wouldn’t put you in a cage.

If you were drowning, I would reach for you, pull you up, and do everything in my power to keep you alive.

That’s what harm reduction is: keeping people alive.

We don’t criminalize someone for losing a limb to the effects of diabetes. We don’t arrest them for not taking their insulin or for struggling to manage their blood sugar. We surround them with medical care, support systems, and resources to help them live healthier lives.

The first step isn’t forcing someone into a system they aren’t ready for. The first step is keeping them alive long enough to say yes.

Problematic substance use—a chronic, relapsing disease—is no different. And harm reduction is one of the many courses of medical action we’re taking to address this in MacArthur Park, Los Angeles, where the opioid crisis and homelessness collide in painful, visible ways.

I understand the frustration. I hear the anger. Lock them up, people say—oblivious to the harrowing truth that this crisis is made profoundly worse in our jails.

I want a healthy, accessible, thriving MacArthur Park just as much as my neighbors; a MacArthur Park where hardworking families aren’t forced to live amid trauma and visible substance use. But let me be clear: I don’t throw people away—and I don’t invest in failed solutions.

People don’t wake up one day and decide to become homeless or addicted. They end up there because they’ve been failed by an economic system that keeps people in poverty, by a housing system that makes rent impossible to afford, by a criminal justice system that treats problematic substance use like a crime instead of a disease, by a political system that chronically underfunds mental health, and by a for-profit healthcare system that allowed big pharmaceutical companies to manufacture the opioid epidemic and knowingly steal thousands of lives in exchange for billions of dollars.

We’ve spent over a trillion dollars on the failed War on Drugs, and the availability and potency of illicit drugs have only increased—along with our prison population.

It’s time for a different approach.

Decades of research have shown that harm reduction strategies provide significant public health benefits, including preventing deaths from overdoses and preventing transmission of infectious diseases. That’s why our office partnered with the LA County Department of Health Services and Homeless Healthcare Los Angeles (HHCLA) to deploy an overdose response team in the park seven days a week. Every day, they provide wound care, hygiene kits, naloxone, methadone, and harm reduction tools to people experiencing problematic substance use. They clean up biohazardous waste, picking up and safely disposing of left-behind needles and pipes that put our families in danger. They do the work that Recreation and Parks and LAPD can’t while reducing call volume to emergency responders, and we are all safer for it.

Since launching in late 2024, this team has collected over 14,000 hazardous items and distributed more than 3,600 naloxone kits—totaling over 11,000 doses of life-saving medication—and saved 52 lives. Those 52 people have names and faces and stories and hopes and dreams. They are someone’s child, someone’s friend, someone who now has a shot at accepting treatment, because we know that recovery isn’t a straight path—it takes multiple touchpoints. The first step isn’t forcing someone into a system they aren’t ready for. The first step is keeping them alive long enough to say yes.

I also want to be clear about what our office can and cannot do. The City Council cannot make arrests. What we can do is invest in solutions. We can choose to fund the strategies that actually reduce harm, that save lives, that address the root causes of these crises. Or, we can choose to push people out of sight and throw them away.

The fight for humanity goes far beyond MacArthur Park. We see it happening across the country. We see it in how President Donald Trump treats immigrants like pawns, willing to let families suffer for cheap political points. We see it in how he attacks the LGBTQ+ community, stripping away protections and treatment, denying their very existence. We see marginalized communities degraded and vilified and sacrificed at the altar of power, and we see misinformation peddled at every turn to satiate a hungry, desperate base. It is easy to dehumanize. It is easy to discard people. It is easy to think of human lives as inconvenient. But we have to resist that urge. We are better than that in Los Angeles. We have a moral responsibility to set an example for the rest of the nation: one that’s rooted in compassion, humanity, and data-driven approaches. And since my very first day in office, that’s what I’ve always done, no matter how uphill the battle may be.

MacArthur Park is struggling. Yes, we are frustrated, scared, and sometimes, angry. But I refuse to abandon the people suffering in front of us.

We don’t throw people away. We fight for them.

The philosopher Nigel Warburton shrugged: “Users of slippery slope arguments should take skiing lessons—you really can choose to stop.” But slippery slopes are a thing precisely because people often choose to keep cruising along until they smash into Sonny Bono’s tree.

Critics from both parties describe Donald Trump’s behavior and policies as unprecedented. This presidency, however, did not emerge from a vacuum. Everything Trump does builds on presidential politics of the not-so-recent past—mostly, but not always, Republican.

Trump has shocked free speech advocates and civil libertarians by ordering his masked ICE goons to abduct college students off city streets for participating in campus protests criticizing Israel for carpet-bombing Gaza. (An aside: what will he say when someone avails themselves of their Second Amendment rights rather than allow themselves to be chucked into an unmarked van by random strangers?)

Government oppression of dissidents in America has a rich and foul history. During the 1999 Seattle WTO protests, which included many college students, Bill Clinton’s Immigration and Naturalization Service (the predecessor of ICE) detained and initiated deportation proceedings against students from Canada and Europe who were arrested for opposing free trade agreements. Under Reagan, the INS moved to deport African students who participated in rallies urging colleges to pull investments out of apartheid-era South Africa. Nixon’s FBI and INS worked to revoke the visas of students who protested the Vietnam War, particularly those from Canada and Latin America. George W. Bush conducted “extraordinary renditions,” including off U.S. streets, where individuals like Maher Arar, who was entirely innocent, were detained without charge and sent to third countries for interrogation that included torture, under the guise of national security.

Trump is demanding that universities and major law firms bend the knee, insisting that college administrators surrender to federal oversight and eliminate DEI policies, and that attorneys allocate hundreds of millions of dollars in pro bono legal work to clients allied to Trump.

It’s freaky—but there is precedent for this kind of bullying.

Even though universities like UC Berkeley, Columbia and Kent State viciously suppressed anti-Vietnam War protesters, Nixon threatened to cut federal funding unless they unleashed even more police violence. The FBI’s COINTELPRO program spied on professors and students and Nixon’s Justice Department fired off letters to university presidents demanding that activist students be suspended or expelled. Nixon’s INS visa revocations normalized targeting student activists; Trump exploits that now.

The Education Department, under Reagan, threatened to withhold federal funds from colleges whose admission and financial aid policies included affirmative action. Bush went after universities like MIT, NYU and the University of Michigan for allowing international students and faculty to criticize U.S. foreign policy. The DOJ and FBI demanded student visa records and monitored campus groups—especially Muslim Student Associations—for links to radical Islamists.

FDR attacked “Wall Street lawyers” for obstructing his New Deal, and his top officials leaned on firms to represent labor unions pro bono in order to make up for their alleged pro-business bias.

Though the Trump Administration will almost certainly fall short of its goal of deporting a million people it alleges are in the United States illegally, this White House looks exceptionally aggressive against illegal immigration due to moves like deporting 238 alleged (but probably not) Venezuelan gang members to a private for-profit gulag in a third country with which they have no affiliation, El Salvador, and refusing to bring back one it admits was expelled illegally as the result of an “administrative error.”

But the real Deporters in Chief were Bill Clinton, who “removed” 11.4 million undocumented workers from the U.S., and George W. Bush, with 8.3 million. The Bush Administration kidnapped “enemy combatants” without due process and shipped them the U.S. concentration camp at Guantánamo Bay.Detainees from countries like Afghanistan, Yemen and others were held in a third country (Cuba) without being returned to their home nations. Some were later transferred to fourth countries like Albania or Qatar for resettlement or further detention.

You have to go back further to find antecedents for Trump’s 10% universal tariff on all imports, up to 145% on China, and reciprocal tariffs on about 90 countries. Still, here too, there’s nothing new under the sun. Biden continued Trump’s first-term 25% tariffs against China. Reagan slapped tariffs against Japan and Canada. Herbert Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which added an average of 45% tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods to try to protect farms and industries during the Depression.

Then there are the DOGE mass firings orchestrated by Elon Musk. Musk’s chainsaw-wielding theatricality aside, going after federal bureaucracy with an axe instead of a scalpel is anything but new.

Through his National Performance Review (later renamed “Reinventing Government”), Clinton eliminated 377,000 federal jobs—17% of the total workforce. He got rid of about 100 programs and consolidated 800 agencies. Not unlike Musk’s “fork in the road” mass email offers, Clinton offered buyouts up to $25,000 to about federal 100,000 workers. Reagan, Carter and Nixon each fired tens of thousands of federal workers. Like Trump, Reagan called for the elimination of the Department of Education; probably like Trump, he failed.

In most cases, such as Nixon’s surveillance or Clinton’s deportations, liberals and mainstream media offered brief, muted criticism. If there had been broader and more sustained outrage in response to these previous outrages, odds are that Trump would be operating with somewhat less untrammeled volition today.

We can’t go back in time. Hopefully this moment will remind us that there are consequences for every decision not to protest and not to raise hell—and that those consequences may play out in the distant future.

(Ted Rall, the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of “Never Mind the Democrats. Here’s WHAT’S LEFT.” Subscribe: tedrall.Substack.com.)

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

The post Trump Is Shocking But Not New appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

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

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

The post History Warns, Courage Wanes appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Brazil,

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

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

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

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

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

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

This makes eminent sense because

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

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

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

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

Stadelmann expects to make his money back within three years.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We can get big. Really big.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***********

Senator:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As Jack Mirkinson, an editor at The Nation wrote:

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

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

Senator, do the right thing.

Sincerely,

A Heartbroken Voter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Principals

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All of that is now under threat.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here are the findings:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At worst? You drown.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The movement is growing. Will Republicans join?

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

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

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

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

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

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

History is calling. Let’s answer.

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

The correct word is corruption.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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