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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This should alarm every American, regardless of political affiliation.

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

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

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

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

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

This OMB proposal risks accelerating those exact outcomes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not every story mirrors ours.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Ralph Nader June 19, 2026 The mainstream media has no problem guesstimating the deaths (500,000) from the Assad Dictatorship’s Civil War in Syria, nor the estimated deaths in the wars in Ukraine, Sudan, or Iran. Somehow, media editors do not let their investigative reporters assess the extent of Israel’s mass murder of civilians in…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing perhaps the most precarious moment of his political career. He knows it. His allies know it. And his rivals—both within his coalition and across Israel's political spectrum—are preparing to capitalize on his growing weakness.

Former Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon, who also served as deputy prime minister between 2007 and 2009, is among the latest Israeli political figures to join a growing chorus of criticism directed at Netanyahu.

“In the final result,” Ramon said in an interview with Radio Galey, cited by the Israeli outlet Srugim, “we did not win.” He then broke down that failure in blunt terms: “We did not win in Lebanon, we did not win in Iran, and we did not win against Hamas.”

Another prominent critic is former Israeli army chief Gadi Eisenkot, who joined Netanyahu’s emergency war government following the events of October 7, 2023, before resigning with Benny Gantz in June 2024.

Arab and Muslim countries, along with their allies in the international community, must not wait for Israel to launch a much larger assault on the West Bank before responding.

Beyond accusing Netanyahu of failing to protect Israel on October 7, Eisenkot argues that the prime minister has effectively surrendered Israel’s political decision-making to US President Donald Trump, thereby strategically weakening Israel.

Ironically, Netanyahu’s coalition partners have often been even more opportunistic than the opposition.

Since the formation of the current coalition government on December 29, 2022—widely regarded as the most right-wing government in Israel’s history—figures such as National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich have repeatedly used Netanyahu’s political vulnerability to expand their own influence. Whenever Netanyahu needed political support to remain in power, they demanded concessions in return.

For Israel’s far-right extremists, Netanyahu’s inability to secure decisive strategic victories has often translated into opportunities to advance their own agendas. Every setback on the battlefield became an opening for greater settlement expansion, harsher measures against Palestinians, and deeper entrenchment of extremist policies.

Unable to deliver "victory," Netanyahu turned perpetual war into a political strategy in its own right. The result has been a genocidal war in Gaza, widespread devastation in Lebanon, and a dangerous confrontation with Iran that has repeatedly brought the region to the brink of a wider catastrophe.

For a time, this formula proved politically sustainable. Netanyahu successfully enlisted unwavering US support to keep the fires of war burning. At the same time, the failure of Europe and much of the international community to hold a wanted war criminal accountable provided him with the political space necessary to continue his bloody calculations.

Yet that formula may be nearing its limits. While this possibility may appear encouraging, it comes with a serious warning. If Netanyahu can no longer sustain the wars that have prolonged his political life for nearly three years, he may escalate where resistance is weakest: the occupied West Bank.

Regarding Iran, there is growing recognition that the current confrontation is unsustainable indefinitely and that some form of arrangement will eventually emerge. Likewise, regardless of whether Lebanon is formally included in any future agreement, Israel’s ambition of permanently occupying parts of Lebanese territory remains untenable.

Historically, when Israel fails to secure a strategic breakthrough on one front, it seeks compensation on another—typically where Palestinians are most vulnerable and where international scrutiny is weakest.

As Israeli elections approach, it is therefore reasonable to fear a further escalation of the genocide in Gaza, pushing both the death toll and the level of destruction to new heights. According to Gaza health authorities, nearly 1,000 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire agreement was announced in October, bringing the overall death toll of Israel’s genocide in Gaza to 73,000 Palestinians.

Though Israel's war has already failed to break Palestinian steadfastness, the broader objective remains unchanged: the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza and the transformation of the strip into a space that can no longer sustain Palestinian life.

The West Bank, however, presents a different challenge.

There, Israel faces a fragmented political landscape and a Palestinian Authority that refuses to develop an effective strategy for confronting accelerating Israeli violence, ethnic cleansing, home demolitions, land confiscation, and the relentless expansion of illegal settlements.

This vulnerability has enabled Israel to move from discussing annexation to implementing it in practice. The strategy rests on two interconnected pillars: extreme violence and displacement on the one hand, and rapid settlement expansion on the other.

According to an Oxfam International study published on June 12, Israel has killed 1,244 Palestinians, including 268 children, in the occupied West Bank since 2023—more than the total number killed during the previous 17 years combined.

This bloodshed has been accompanied by large-scale displacement that has already uprooted nearly 46,000 Palestinians, many of them from refugee camps and vulnerable communities across the northern West Bank.

An Amnesty International report published on June 10 documented the full or partial displacement of at least 117 Palestinian Bedouin and herding communities between January 2023 and April 2026.

Expectedly, the violence, displacement, settlement expansion, and land seizures are not isolated developments but components of a coherent political project. In September 2025, Smotrich openly proposed the annexation of 82% of the occupied West Bank. What was once presented as a political vision is now steadily being translated into facts on the ground.

The era of Netanyahu may be nearing its end, but before this bloody political chapter closes, countless more Palestinians may be forced to bear the cost.

Arab and Muslim countries, along with their allies in the international community, must not wait for Israel to launch a much larger assault on the West Bank before responding.

The matter demands urgent attention and immediate action.

This Juneteenth arrives at a moment when many of the hard-fought gains of the civil rights movement feel undeniably fragile. The Supreme Court’s recent Louisiana v. Callais decision gave state lawmakers the green light to reduce Black voting power by redrawing congressional maps. Meanwhile, the SAVE America Act and other proof-of-citizenship efforts propose new burdens for millions of eligible voters—especially voters of color who are more likely to face difficulty accessing required records.

As Black Americans, this should concern us deeply. For years after the ratification of the 15th Amendment, our ancestors had to overcome poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, and constant threats of violence to participate in our democracy. When Fannie Lou Hamer attempted to register to vote in Mississippi, she was fired from her job and forced from her home; Amzie Moore endured years of harassment and retaliation for helping Black Mississippians register to vote and build political power. But despite these hardships, they persevered.

Which is why one question continues to trouble me as a Black pastor and grassroots organizer: How did we move from a generation willing to risk everything for political participation to an overwhelming number of people believing participation doesn't matter?

Research shows that most Americans feel political leaders are out-of-touch with ordinary people, reflecting a deep and widespread sense that politics is reserved for an elite few. But we must remember that politics is simply the process of shaping the world around us—and by that definition, we are all politicians.

Organizing reminds people that change has always come from ordinary people deciding they have a stake in their own future.

At my organization, Live Free Illinois, we embrace our identities as politicians in our own right. For instance, in January, we successfully organized Gov. JB Pritzker to sign the Clean Slate Act, a transformational public safety bill that removes barriers to employment, housing, and education opportunities for people with past convictions. It took nearly five years of tireless organizing, but our bill crossed the finish line—and became a law with $5.6 million in funding to implement it. This victory makes clear that politics does not only belong to some unreachable class of leaders; it belongs to the people willing to organize and demand change.

Our ancestors did not organize because they believed the government was perfect. They organized because they understood that power would not listen unless it was confronted. They built churches, mutual aid networks, civic organizations, and political movements because they knew that liberation required disciplined collective action. That lesson is just as relevant today. The authoritarian forces seeking to diminish our democratic participation are counting on our exhaustion, our cynicism, and our disengagement. We cannot afford to give them any of those things.

That responsibility does not begin and end at the ballot box. It lives in church fellowship halls where neighbors gather to address violence in their communities, in voter registration drives after Sabbath, and in the courage of ordinary people who demand better from those in power. This may not look like the politics we’ve been taught to disdain, but they are among the most powerful political acts we can undertake. It is how our communities can transform shared concerns into lasting change.

I have spoken with many parishioners who have felt overwhelmed by the challenges facing our community. But when I encourage them to organize—to gather their neighbors, advance shared priorities, and demand accountability—something shifts. They begin to recognize that the power they were searching for was already in their hands. Organizing reminds people that change has always come from ordinary people deciding they have a stake in their own future.

Juneteenth is a timely reminder that our democracy demands more than participation; it demands organization. As corrupt leaders advance efforts to weaken democratic oversight and centralize power, we must activate our own agenda—and hold elected officials accountable to it. The future of our communities depends on whether we are willing to embrace that responsibility.

When I was little, I’d wake up when I heard my dad getting ready for work. I’d run downstairs hoping to catch him before he left so I could hug him goodbye. My father, an immigrant from India, came to the United States as a child with my grandparents in search of stability and opportunity. They worked hard to build a life here, and I grew up watching my dad do the same—out the door early, home late.

Sometimes I cried if I missed him before he left. Sometimes I cried even after a hug, because the day felt so long without him. But there was one thing I never questioned: He would come home.

Too many children in immigrant families don’t have that certainty today. In recent months, high-profile cases have shown how quickly stability can disappear, as families are swept into immigration enforcement and children are separated from their parents, often with little warning. New research from the Brookings Institution estimates that more than 100,000 children have been separated from a parent during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, and that most of those children are likely US citizens. Researchers also warn the true scale may be even higher because the government does not consistently track whether detained immigrants are parents.

A father can leave for a shift and not come back, not because he chose to abandon his family, but because immigration agents arrested him on his way to work, during a scheduled court check-in, or even in everyday places like airports. In recent weeks, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have been deployed in airports across the country, where travelers have witnessed arrests unfold in real time. We are already seeing the consequences in deeply troubling ways, including the case of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos in Minnesota, whose detention alongside his father drew national attention.

For years, politicians have lamented a “fatherlessness crisis.” We should name what we are doing when we detain and deport fathers without regard for their children. We are actively manufacturing it.

When parents are detained, children are often pulled into the system with them, or families are left scrambling to stay together. Recent court filings describe hundreds of children held in family detention facilities beyond court-ordered limits, often without adequate food, medical care, or mental health support. Many other children are left with relatives, neighbors, older siblings, or informal caregivers while parents remain in detention or face deportation proceedings, forcing children to navigate sudden loss and uncertainty.

According to federal data compiled by TRAC, more than 60,000 people are currently held in ICE detention, and nearly three-quarters have no criminal conviction. The Trump administration claims that ICE targets “the worst of the worst,” but the data tell a different story. Because immigration arrests disproportionately target working-age men, many detained are likely fathers. That gap matters deeply in a country where more than 4 million US citizen children live with an undocumented parent. That omission makes it easier to debate immigration enforcement policy while overlooking the children who are directly impacted. Even if only a fraction of those detained are parents, that still means thousands of children losing a caregiver, a provider, or both, frequently overnight. They are neighbors and community members, often fathers who were actively raising their children until the day the government took them away. I know this not only from policy data, but from listening to fathers talk about their children.

As a senior policy researcher at Children’s Rights, I study how family stability shapes a child’s well-being and how quickly it can be shattered by the government. We have found that current immigration policies are not only separating families but causing measurable harm to children, including mental health challenges, developmental delays, and disruptions to their education. Federal data show children being held in immigration custody for months at a time, often averaging more than 150 days, exposing them to prolonged instability and stress.

In a qualitative study published in the Journal of Child and Family Studies, my co-authors and I interviewed 85 Latino fathers raising young children in the United States. Many were immigrants, primarily from Mexico, El Salvador, and Guatemala. They spoke about love and connection, wanting to be present, witness milestones, and serve as role models. They reflected on their own parents and their hopes for their children. They described the burdens of responsibility, but also of joy. They sounded like parents everywhere, underscoring how universal these parenting motivations are.

That is why detaining fathers is not just harsh, it is shortsighted. Decades of research show fathers play a unique role in children’s emotional well-being, behavior, and learning. When the government removes a father without warning, holds him for weeks or months, and ultimately deports him, children do not experience it as “policy.” They experience it as a profound loss.

As Father’s Day approaches, I am thinking about the fathers who show up for their children every day, who work long hours, provide stability, and try to build better futures for their families. Across the country, many children are already missing fathers they were unfairly separated from. Not because those fathers failed their children, but because of a failed immigration system that is increasingly willing to separate families.

For years, politicians have lamented a “fatherlessness crisis.” We should name what we are doing when we detain and deport fathers without regard for their children. We are actively manufacturing it. If we truly care about children’s health and well-being, we must treat family integrity and stability as essential.

Congress and the administration should require ICE to collect and publicly report whether those it detains are parents of minor children, and ensure children are not left without safe caregiving arrangements. This is especially urgent given recent reporting that ICE is failing to follow its own policies designed to protect family unity, including requirements that agents ask whether someone has children and allow parents to make decisions about their care. ICE should use detention more sparingly for parents and expand community-based alternatives that allow people to keep working and caring for their children while their cases proceed.

I still picture my younger self at the top of the stairs, running toward my father’s morning hug. Every child deserves to believe, with confidence, that a parent who leaves in the morning will come home at night.

As Juneteenth approaches, I find myself thinking about anniversaries.

Not because I am particularly sentimental about dates, but because anniversaries reveal something about how societies remember. They tell us which stories we choose to elevate, which contradictions we learn to live with, and which truths we have become comfortable leaving unresolved.

This year, those questions feel particularly urgent.

Communities across the country will gather to celebrate Juneteenth, commemorating the moment enslaved Black people in Galveston, Texas learned they were free more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation had been signed. At the same time, the nation is preparing to commemorate its 250th anniversary, renewing familiar conversations about liberty, democracy, independence, and freedom. There is something meaningful about those two anniversaries sitting so close together. One asks us to remember the promise of freedom. The other asks us to remember the distance between a promise and its fulfillment.

Every democratic gain we now celebrate exists because ordinary people organized, challenged existing systems, imagined alternatives, and demanded that the nation become more than it was.

For many people, Juneteenth is understood as a story about delayed freedom. That is certainly true. But the older I get, the more I think it is also a story about delayed meaning. The people in Galveston were legally free long before they knew they were free. The law had changed. Their status had changed. On paper, their relationship to the nation had changed.

Yet their lived reality had not. The declaration existed, but the meaning had not yet reached them. That distinction matters because we often talk about freedom as though it becomes real the moment it is declared. We assume that once a law is passed, a court issues a ruling, or a right is recognized, the work is complete. History tells a different story.

Again and again, America has demonstrated that there is often a gap between what institutions proclaim and what people experience. The abolition of slavery did not end racial hierarchy. The passage of the Voting Rights Act did not end voter suppression. Legal victories did not eliminate the need for organizing, education, resistance, or vigilance. Rights may be secured in law, but they must still be carried into communities, institutions, and everyday life. Juneteenth reminds us of that reality. It reminds us that freedom is not simply a legal condition. It is also a social condition, a cultural condition, and a lived condition. It becomes meaningful only when people can actually experience it.

That lesson feels particularly relevant today.

Across the country, we are witnessing renewed debates about democracy, citizenship, rights, belonging, and power. We are watching efforts to restrict voting access, weaken public institutions, narrow how history is taught, and redefine who gets to participate fully in public life. At the same time, many Americans are being encouraged to believe that these concerns are exaggerated, that racism and inequality belong primarily to the past, and that the nation's democratic project is largely complete. What concerns me is not simply the political debate itself. It is the historical amnesia that often accompanies it. Too often, we remember progress while forgetting the struggle that produced it. We celebrate outcomes while ignoring the generations of people who fought to make those outcomes possible. We remember milestones but forget movements. We remember victories but forget the conditions that made those victories necessary in the first place.

In doing so, we begin to mistake progress for permanence. Juneteenth offers a corrective.

It reminds us that democracy has never been self-executing. Freedom has never expanded automatically. Rights have never sustained themselves. Every democratic gain we now celebrate exists because ordinary people organized, challenged existing systems, imagined alternatives, and demanded that the nation become more than it was. That is why I find myself thinking differently about the conversations surrounding America's 250th anniversary. I am less interested in celebrating a polished national mythology than I am in wrestling honestly with the tension at the center of the American story. The United States was founded on extraordinary democratic ideals while simultaneously denying many people access to them. Those contradictions are not incidental to our history. They are central to understanding it.

Yet Juneteenth is not ultimately a story about contradiction. It is a story about persistence. It is a story about Black people who continued reaching for freedom even when freedom arrived late. It is a story about Black people who expanded democracy even when democracy excluded them. It is a story about generations of Black Americans who carried hope, memory, responsibility, and struggle across time so that future generations might inherit possibilities they themselves were denied. That is what I find myself celebrating this year.

Not a perfect nation, completed democracy, or a tidy story of inevitable progress.

I am celebrating the people who carried the work forward anyway. The people who understood that freedom does not become real simply because it is declared. It becomes real because someone carries it into the world. Someone teaches it. Someone protects it. Someone organizes around it. Someone refuses to let it disappear.

The lesson of Juneteenth is not that freedom finally arrived. The lesson is that even after freedom was declared, someone still had to carry the news.

And generations later, someone still has to carry the meaning.

In the same way that Nixon kept telling the American people that the end of the Vietnam War was right around the corner, Trump has told us at least 36 times that a peace deal with Iran and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz—critical to the global economy—were imminent.

The post Right Around the Corner appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Please provide your mailing address and we will send you a free copy of Armistice Day and the Empire: An Inconvenient and Troublesome Holiday by Matthew Hoh, Disabled Marine Corps Combat Veteran and Senior Fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network. Note: This offer is valid until Saturday, July 4th 2026.  Matt Hoh’s speech traces how…

I have spent years fighting against President Donald Trump’s push toward war with Iran, and I have the scars to prove it. When Trump withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, in 2018, I warned that it would eventually bring us to this moment. Ever since, I have consistently argued against the confrontational path he set the United States on. That record speaks for itself, which is why I can say what follows without any throat clearing.

Given the circumstances, President Trump’s decision to strike a deal with Tehran and bring this costly, unnecessary war to an end is the right one. It deserves support, not partisan second-guessing. As Rob Malley—a key member of Barack Obama’s team that negotiated the nuclear deal and later Joe Biden’s lead negotiator with Iran—noted on X, comparing Trump’s memorandum of understanding to Obama’s JCPOA misses the point. What matters is not how the agreement stacks up against past diplomatic achievements, but how it compares to the alternatives before us. And on that score, Malley argued, the MOU is “far preferable to any of the alternatives on offer. Period.”

I would go further. To examine the Memorandum of Understanding and ask, “Was the war worth it?” is nonsensical.

Of course it wasn’t. How could it have been? The premise itself is deeply flawed: that a failed war of choice would somehow strengthen Washington’s hand at the negotiating table and produce more favorable terms. History offers little support for such a proposition.

Trump currently owns this failed war, but if the Democrats help torpedo the MOU and war resumes, then they will co-own the next war. Trump’s disaster will become theirs as well.

The question is also flawed in another, more consequential way. It implies that a war should not be brought to an end until it has produced better terms—even when the war itself is failing.

Taken seriously, that logic leads to a dangerous conclusion: that a failed war must continue until the battlefield fortunes somehow improve and a more favorable outcome becomes attainable. Perhaps that day will come. Perhaps it never will. In the meantime, the costs—in lives, treasure, regional stability, and strategic credibility—are treated as secondary considerations.

This is how endless wars are born.

Wars become interminable when leaders convince themselves that ending them without victory is politically more costly than continuing them without hope. Once that trap is sprung, every setback becomes an argument for one more deployment, one more escalation, one more year. The objective shifts from achieving a realistic political outcome to avoiding the admission that the original objectives were unattainable.

American history offers more than a few examples. Presidents inherit wars they did not start, recognize they cannot be won on the promised terms, yet lack the political space to end them. So they postpone the reckoning. They kick the can down the road, handing the burden to their successor, who does the same. The result is a cycle of strategic drift in which the costs accumulate while the prospects for success steadily recede.

When victory is nowhere in sight, prolonging a conflict in the hope that reality will eventually conform to political rhetoric is not resolve. It is denial.

Remember Afghanistan. For years, American officials lied to the public that victory was just around the corner—six months away, perhaps a year at most. Yet the Afghanistan Papers later revealed that these officials privately understood that victory was nowhere in sight. They knew the war was adrift, but feared the political consequences of admitting it.

So the war continued. By the time the United States finally withdrew, nearly two decades had passed, and more than $2 trillion had been spent.

And what was the end result? After 20 years of war, thousands of American and allied lives lost, and hundreds of thousands of Afghan casualties, the United States arrived back where it had begun: it had replaced the Taliban with the Taliban.

That is the curse of endless war. The refusal to accept an unfavorable reality today merely guarantees a higher bill tomorrow.

Some credit must be given to Trump for breaking this pattern, even as he should be blamed for having started this war in the first place. Political leaders should be judged not only for the mistakes they make, but also for whether they have the courage to correct them.

Trump could have followed the well-worn path of his predecessors. He could have prolonged the conflict, spent more money, sacrificed more lives, destabilized more economies, and further depleted American power—all while insisting that victory remained just over the horizon. Recall the countless times he declared that the war had been won.

Indeed, the political costs of continuing the war would likely have been lower than the costs he is paying today for ending it. In American politics, there is often greater punishment for acknowledging failure than for perpetuating it.

That perverse incentive has trapped presidents for decades. In his testimony on the Vietnam War before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1966, George Kennan stated the following: “There is more respect to be won in the opinion of the world by a resolute and courageous liquidation of unsound policies than by the most stubborn pursuit of extravagant or unpromising objectives.”

The criticism coming from some Democrats is particularly disappointing because it echoes the same bad-faith tactics Republicans deployed against the JCPOA in 2015. To be sure, Trump has invited some of this treatment. He spent years attacking Obama’s agreement with a barrage of misleading arguments and exaggerated claims.

But that does not make it wise for Democrats to return the favor.

Trump currently owns this failed war, but if the Democrats help torpedo the MOU and war resumes, then they will co-own the next war. Trump’s disaster will become theirs as well.

This isn’t rocket science. Several Democratic lawmakers have managed to criticize the war, hold Trump accountable for it, yet avoid attack lines that could sabotage the MOU. Their criticisms are primarily over Trump having started this war in the first place, rather than the terms for ending it.

Rather than attacking the terms of the MOU, Democrats should pressure the administration to protect it from those who are determined to see it fail. The main external threat is the Israeli government and Benjamin Netanyahu’s obsession with sabotaging any opportunity for Iran and the United States to bury the hatchet.

Instead of relying solely on angry phone calls and public rebukes of Netanyahu, supporters of ending the war should press Trump to act now: Suspend military aid to Israel and curtail military and intelligence cooperation. Such measures would limit Israel’s ability to reignite the conflict and dispel any notion in Tel Aviv that Washington will automatically follow Israel into another war. If Israeli leaders understand that the United States will not be drawn into a future conflict on their behalf, their incentive to start one in the first place will be significantly reduced.

The task now is not to reward Trump politically, nor to excuse the recklessness that produced this war. It is to prevent the war from returning. Democrats can condemn the decision to start it without sabotaging the agreement that ends it. They can hold Trump accountable without helping Netanyahu drag the United States back into conflict. The choice before them is not between opposing Trump and supporting peace. It is between learning from America’s endless wars and repeating them.

There are many lessons to be learned from the lates made-for-Israel war on Iran. The first and most damning is that the war resolved the very crisis it created. Donald Trump celebrated the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and the lifting of the blockade against Iran. Two conditions that were fully in place before Benjamin Netanyahu dog walked Trump into this war. The agreement that concluded the war took us back to exactly where we stood before America spent $200 billion, and where Americans continue to pay Israeli surcharge tax at the pump and grocery stores.

As for Iran's nuclear program, the arithmetic does not lie. The 400 kilograms of 60-percent enriched uranium that Iran possessed were zero before Trump — pressured by his largest Israel-first donors — tore up the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in May 2018. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran had fully complied not only with the IAEA non-proliferation agreement, which Israel has never signed nor accepted, but with the additional protocols governing verification and monitoring of its civilian nuclear program. Trump canceled the deal anyway, not because it failed America, but because it did not satisfy Israel’s veto.

The deepest irony is that Iran's nuclear knowledge and capabilities are more advanced today than when Trump discarded the JCPOA. Any new agreement—even one stricter in structure than the original—is therefore being negotiated from a fundamentally weaker position than the one that existed in 2018. No treaty can unlearn what Iran already knows.

On Monday, June 15, Trump heralded the end of war bragging that Iran agreed not to develop nuclear weapons. Item 8 of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), signed Wednesday, states: “The Islamic Republic of Iran reaffirms that it shall not procure or develop nuclear weapons.” The word reaffirms is not incidental. It is a direct reference to Article III of the 2015 JCPOA, which Trump most likely never read, where Iran had already affirmed: “… that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons.” Same commitment. Same language. Different signatures. Twelve weeks of a war that went nowhere to get here.

From “There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” to celebrate an MoU to reopen a Strait that was open before $200 billion and countless American and Iranian lives were squandered. Trump's triumph is much ado about nothing. He canceled an existing deal that took years to negotiate, inflicted economic hardship on ordinary Iranians, and allowed Iran's nuclear advancement to leap forward. It is, in the most literal sense, like redefining water as H2O. The molecule did not change. Only the dressing did. Israel’s war took Trump back to the starting point, at twice the cost to American taxpayers.

The same special-interest group that pushed Trump to cancel the JCPOA, lobbied him long before the 2024 election. Israel-first donors poured hundreds of million into his campaign as a down payment for this war. Netanyahu visited Trump seven times in 13 months, manipulating, and scheming for another made-for-Israel war.

This war should also carry a lesson for the Arab Gulf states that long believed American military bases were a guarantee of their security. Instead, they found themselves sidelined and never consulted on a war waged, directly or indirectly, from their own soil, ultimately in service of an Israeli agenda. Foreign military presence does not deliver security. It delivers dependency. Lasting regional stability is built through regional cooperation, on terms beneficial to the region.

Foreign military presence does not deliver security. It delivers dependency.

More importantly, the region must now reckon with a pattern it can no longer afford to ignore: wherever Israel goes, instability follows. The so-called Abraham Accords brought Israel into the Gulf. What followed was bombs, drones and economic ruin not seen since the Second World War. I have lived in the Gulf. The only pop people could hear was the backfire of an aging car exhaust. In the last three months, friends shared recordings of ballistic missiles splitting the sky and drones buzzing overhead. Israel did not bring a defense shield; it brought a target. Its presence is a magnet for unrest. It is a carcass attracting wasps.

In fact, Israel is an agent of disorder and a parasite nurtured by chaos. It wraps itself in the language of partnership, mutual benefit, and shared values, deceiving others into believing the arrangement is reciprocal when it is entirely one-directional.

Israel record speaks for itself: a genocide in Gaza, ethnic cleansing across the West Bank, 1.3 million internal refugees in Lebanon, the occupation of Syrian land following Assad's fall, destabilization operations in northern Iraq and Sudan.

In Iraq, the American invasion and regime change did not satisfy Israel’s insatiable lust for total chaos. It targeted Iraqi scientists and waged war against knowledge itself. The blueprint, in this view, has not changed for Iran. Israel’s dissatisfaction over the MoU with Tehran is not that it fails to produce a non-nuclear Iran, but that it fails to wipe out knowledge. Its broader objective is the suppression of scientific and technological development across the region. Israel seeks neighbors unable to think independently. it wants consumers, not producers. It wants importers rather than innovators. It wants to maintain a monopoly over nuclear capabilities and control over regional scientific advancement.

Israel brought ruins to the US, too. The made-for-Israel Iraq war helped detonate the financial crisis of 2008, saddling future American generations with trillions in accumulated debt that has never been fully reckoned with. A war that Trump condemned, criticizing Democratic leadership for failing to impeach George W. Bush who “got us into the war with lies.”

The cost of Trump's made-for-Israel war on Iran requires no economist to explain. It arrives uninvited in every American home, at the meat counter, in every grocery bill, every gas receipt, every price that keeps rising without explanation. They may not realize its extent—not yet anyway. By the time they do, the damage to the US economy, as in 2008, will be too deep to reverse.

To undermine potential peace with Iran, the ungrateful Israel-first loyalists like Ben Shapiro, Mark Levin are already panicking and challenging Trump’s MoU. Israel will activate the constellation of media outlets controlled by Israel-first billionaires to shape what Americans see, read, and are permitted to question. The once-respected "60 Minutes," under a new Israel-first boss, Bari Weiss, allows Netanyahu to handpick his own interviewer. Who knows, maybe he submits his own questions, too.

Now, Netanyahu and American Zionists have 60 days to sabotage a final deal with Iran. Israel will mobilize its donors, lobby Congress, and if that fails, resort to what it has perfected. A false flag operation against American forces in the region, or another assassination in Lebanon. A conflagration ensues, and once again, it will be fought with American money and American lives. Because a Middle East free of American military entanglement is the one outcome Israel cannot tolerate—a prospect more threatening than any Iranian nuclear centrifuge.

Donald Trump’s second term has precipitated a tsunami of criticism from Democrats over his foreign policy. Yet when it comes to Washington's efforts to dominate Latin America and the Caribbean, the substantive dispute—if there is any substance remaining, once stripped of partisan bickering—is less about ends than means.

Beneath the rhetoric of inter-party conflict lies a broad bipartisan consensus in favor of promoting US hemispheric hegemony and crushing governments that resist it—with Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua at the forefront. While Democrats frequently portray Trump as reckless, they generally accept the underlying premises of economic coercion, political intervention, and regime-change pressure. Their objections mainly focus on the execution of policy rather than its legitimacy.

The Central Role of Sanctions in Projecting Imperial Coercive Power

Under Democratic administrations, the US forged and institutionalized what may be its most effective instrument of hegemony. Coercive economic measures, commonly called “sanctions,” were first deployed by Franklin D. Roosevelt against Mexico in the 1930s. They were used by Dwight D. Eisenhower to pressure Guatemala in 1954 and then—most drastically—against Cuba by both Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy in 1960. Today, one-third of the world’s nations are under US sanctions.

Sanctions—a form of collective punishment—are held by legal experts to be contrary to international law. Paradoxically, not only does Washington disregard international law in imposing sanctions, but the US then behaves as if they are applying the law when, for example, they pirate a ship delivering humanitarian supplies to a sanctioned country.

The shared strategic objective of the bipartisan Washington consensus is the projection of US hemispheric dominance.

Use of sanctions has accelerated because successive administrations have seen their unique advantages. Compared with “forever wars,” they are more easily justified to US voters as cost free and as not imperiling US lives. If sanctions are the precursor to military intervention—as in Guatemala in 1954, Cuba in 1961, Grenada in 1983, Panama in 1989 and, of course, Venezuela in 2026—the interventions have usually been limited, with few US casualties.

Yet sanctions are very potent: Between 2010 and 2021, they caused around 560,000 deaths globally each year—more than five times the number of people killed annually in direct armed combat.

While sanctions are made more palatable by being described as “targeted” at governments or individuals seen as undesirable by Washington, in practice the “targeting” is deliberately far wider. Sanctions do most damage to the poorest sectors of societies—the sectors most likely to support progressive governments. The barely veiled message is that only by withdrawing this support will such communities be able to prosper and avoid the threat of even greater US intervention.

The frequent description of sanctions as “targeted” carries another implication—that they are intended to have a precise and conclusive effect. However, while sanctions cause severe economic damage, there is little evidence that they achieve intended regime change. Even so, sanctions on countries which refuse to change are maintained and—very frequently—intensified. Democrats are as guilty of this folly as Republicans.

Indeed, US sanctions have imperial utility through their “demonstration effect”: attempting to cripple progressive alternatives to the neoliberal world order. Recently subjected to draconian sanctions, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel proclaimed, “Cuba is not a failed state; Cuba is a besieged state.” Still, infant mortality in Cuba is lower than among African Americans.

Transitioning to “Democracy” in Venezuela

In the case of Venezuela, the Democrats have criticized the Republicans from the right, complaining that the cudgel of imperial power against essentially defenseless small states has not been wielded with sufficient malice.

Washington has imposed illegal unilateral coercive measures on Venezuela since 2015 in efforts to asphyxiate its Bolivarian Revolution. The transparently false rationale for continuing sanctions is that Venezuela poses an “extraordinary threat” to the national security of the US. Although the threat is obviously the other way around, mainstream Democrats have not exposed this lie. How could they, when it originated with President Barack Obama and was subsequently echoed by President Joe Biden and then Trump?

Despite the horrific toll of an estimated 100,000 excess deaths attributed to US-imposed sanctions, Venezuela has resisted and maintained an unbroken continuity of leadership from Hugo Chávez to Nicolás Maduro and to now Delcy Rodríguez. And that’s the rub for the Democrats.

Ranking Democrat members of the House and Senate foreign affairs committees, Rep. Gregory W. Meeks (D-NY) and Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), issued a “request [for] a clear explanation” of Trump’s Venezuela policy. Their meek missive came a full five months after the abduction of the Venezuelan president, an operation that resulted in more than 100 collateral deaths. Meanwhile, more than 200 occupants of small boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific have been subjected to extrajudicial murder by the Trump administration.

Yet these inconvenient facts are absent from the June 8 Democratic Party congressional foreign-policy leadership’s statement on Venezuela. Their complaint is that Trump’s White House has failed to sufficiently “exercise its leverage.” As they put it, “As of today, the [state] department has yet to provide any evidence the Trump administration is doing any of this hard work.”

The contradiction of kidnapping a lawful head of state in the name of restoring democracy does not trouble the Democrats. Rather, they “strongly support the Venezuelan people’s right to choose their leaders”… after the US abducts their president.

These Democrat leaders are also troubled that Venezuelan authorities were allowed to appoint a new attorney general and defense minister without apparent US interference. In addition, they express impatience with Trump’s lethargy in not yet overhauling Venezuela’s supreme court and electoral council.

To the extent that they make any concrete demand, the putative opposition party wants Trump to impose an “electoral timeline” on Venezuela. Yet, the same party has no problem with Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Ukraine who suspended elections after his legal term in office expired two years ago, banned opposition parties, shuttered critical media, and arrested political opponents.

Restoring “Democracy” in Cuba

Democratic Party policy toward Cuba is perhaps best exemplified by Biden’s retention of the State Sponsor of Terrorism designation, which he inherited from Trump. Then, just six days before leaving office, Biden rescinded the designation with full certainty that the incoming Republican would—and did—reverse his decision.

Former National Security Council officer Ricardo Zúñiga was Obama’s adviser for the Americas and Biden’s special envoy for the Northern Triangle. He writes in Foreign Affairs offering advice on, rather than criticism of, Trump’s Cuba policy.

Republicans may be more inclined toward overt confrontation, selective military assaults, and maximal pressure; Democrats typically prefer a combination of inhumane sanctions, diplomatic isolation, and multilateral coercion.

Zúñiga advocates achieving regime change in Cuba through “diplomacy” rather than “force.” Scare quotes are used because, for this Democrat, brute economic strangulation is regarded as diplomacy. Zúñiga would “forswear military action,” but only if Cuba submits to US dictates. And so long as “pro-market reforms” are adopted, “democracy” can wait.

Without a hint of opprobrium, Zúñiga casually references the US invasion of Iran and the kidnapping of the Venezuelan president as policy options that would not be effective in Cuba. Given these examples, he then complains that Cubans remain resistant to “American views on democracy and human rights.”

He acknowledges that even if Trump wished to selectively roll back the murderous sanctions currently imposed on Cuba, he would face opposition not only from Republicans but also from Democrats. Where this Democrat differs from Republicans is in his supremely hypocritical conclusion: “It is ultimately Cuban citizens who will determine their country’s future”… after the US overthrows their government.

Promoting “Democracy” in Nicaragua

Tiny Nicaragua is also labelled an “extraordinary threat” to the US. While the harshest and most successful sanctions against it were applied during the Reagan administrations, when an economic blockade and the US-financed Contra war eventually unseated the Sandinista government in 1990, economic pressure quickly resumed once the Sandinistas returned to power in 2007. Both the Bush and then Obama administrations made cuts in aid, and it was under Obama that Democrats joined with Republicans to launch the NICA Act, eventually implemented (under Trump) in 2018.

While Trump signed the NICA Act and sanctioned various Nicaraguan functionaries, Democrat senators took the lead in formulating stronger measures in the RENACER Act, signed by Biden in 2021. This led to an estimated loss of $500 million annually in development finance that would have been directed at Nicaragua’s poorest communities. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), with Marco Rubio, put forward new legislation in 2023 that was intended to strengthen the RENACER Act and ensure even greater damage.

Biden officials were consistently aggressive toward Nicaragua. In 2022, his nominee for ambassador to Managua, Hugo Rodríguez, promised the US Congress that he would “support using all economic and diplomatic tools to bring about a change in direction in Nicaragua.” As a result, Rodríguez was never accepted as ambassador and the post remains unfilled.

In 2024, Biden’s trade representative launched a hostile investigation clearly aimed at disrupting trade with Nicaragua and possibly at excluding it from the regional trade treaty, CAFTA. When it eventually reported in late 2025 it recommended punitive tariffs, but only relatively mild penalties were actually implemented by Trump.

Marco Rubio regularly imposes sanctions on individual Nicaraguans, including 100 more just this month. More than 2,300 have now been sanctioned by successive administrations. Nevertheless, hard-line Democrats, as well as Republicans, are pushing Rubio to do far more.

Two Parties, One Strategy

The shared strategic objective of the bipartisan Washington consensus is the projection of US hemispheric dominance. The two major parties differ mainly in messaging and, to a lesser extent, on tactics. Their theatrical contention is neither between intervention and nonintervention, nor between coercion and diplomacy. More often, it is between competing methods for achieving the same strategic objective.

Republicans may be more inclined toward overt confrontation, selective military assaults, and maximal pressure; Democrats typically prefer a combination of inhumane sanctions, diplomatic isolation, and multilateral coercion. But both approaches rest on the assumption that Washington has the right to shape the political future of other nations.

Despite differences in tone and tactics, the supposed opposition party offers not an articulated alternative to the Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine but, at the very most, a variation of it.

The climate negotiations are beginning to feel like a masterclass in avoiding the obvious. Every year, negotiators arrive with new targets, new initiatives, and new buzzwords.

This year, one of the biggest announcements revolves around electrification. The incoming COP31 Presidencies have put forward a target to move from 20% to 35% electrification by 2035. At first glance, it sounds ambitious. Yet the key question is what will power that electrification.

An electric vehicle connected to a fossil fuel-powered grid does not necessarily deliver meaningful emissions reductions. Likewise, an electric factory running on gas-generated electricity cannot be considered evidence of a low-carbon transition. Electrification delivers climate benefits only when it is powered by renewable energy and accompanied by a clear road map to phase out fossil fuels.

Yet a fundamental contradiction persists. While governments celebrate record growth in renewable energy, they continue approving new oil, gas, and coal projects. Renewable energy capacity is increasing, but fossil fuel production is increasing too. Nearly 30 years after the adoption of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, negotiators are still struggling to confront the primary driver of climate change.

While developed countries point to existing contributions as evidence of progress, developing countries remain confronted with a widening gap between what is needed and what is being delivered.

The same tendency to search for new distractions is emerging in the agriculture discussions. Instead of prioritizing agroecology, which already provides proven solutions for adaptation, food security, biodiversity protection, and resilience, increasing attention is being given to artificial intelligence. While technology certainly has a role to play, farmers facing droughts, floods, soil degradation, and declining yields are not asking for algorithms. They are asking for secure access to land, water, seeds, finance, and support.

The adaptation discussions reveal a similar disconnect. While Bonn has spent considerable time debating indicators, methodologies, and reporting frameworks, developing countries continue to raise concerns about access to finance and the means needed to turn plans into action. Discussions under the Baku Adaptation Roadmap exposed broad agreement that major barriers continue to prevent finance from reaching countries and communities at the scale required. Yet when the conversation turned to solutions, momentum quickly faded. The same pattern resurfaced during discussions on the Global Goal on Adaptation, where developed countries showed far greater interest in technical discussions than in finance and implementation. Meanwhile, communities on the ground are left waiting for support that remains trapped in negotiation rooms.

And when adaptation falls short, those impacts do not simply disappear. They become loss and damage. Yet despite being recognized as the third pillar of climate action, loss and damage continues to be treated as an afterthought. During the opening plenaries in Bonn, Ghana, speaking on behalf of the Africa Group of Negotiators, and Timor-Leste, speaking on behalf of the Least Developed Countries, highlighted a striking contradiction: While countries repeatedly call for balance across climate action, there is still no comprehensive agenda item dedicated to loss and damage under the negotiations.

This diplomatic stalling now clashes directly with international law. In its landmark Climate Change Advisory Opinion, the International Court of Justice affirmed that states have a legal obligation to protect the climate system and cooperate to address climate harm. By clarifying that breaches of climate obligations may constitute internationally wrongful acts, the court strengthened the legal basis for responsibility, restitution, and compensation.

At the center of all these discussions lies a familiar issue: finance. The mitigation and adaptation ambitions embedded in the Paris Agreement were always contingent on the provision of climate finance under Article 9.1. Every ambition discussed in Bonn, from adaptation and resilience to renewable energy and implementation, ultimately depends on whether developing countries receive adequate support.

That tension is playing out directly in Bonn's finance negotiations. The two major finance discussions this year, the Climate Finance Work Programme and the Veredas Dialogue on Article 2.1(c), exposed a persistent divide. Developing countries continue to stress that climate finance is a legal obligation and the foundation for implementing climate action. Developed countries, meanwhile, continue pushing broader discussions centered on mobilizing finance from multiple sources, particularly private finance.

Ultimately, both processes highlighted the same reality: While developed countries point to existing contributions as evidence of progress, developing countries remain confronted with a widening gap between what is needed and what is being delivered.

Against this backdrop, the establishment of the Just Transition Mechanism at COP30 stands out as one of the few discussions focused on implementation rather than process. After years of dialogue under the UAE Just Transition Work Programme, Parties recognized the need for a dedicated mechanism capable of connecting ambition with delivery. Discussions in Bonn are now turning to how it can support countries navigating profound economic and social transformation.

For developing countries, this discussion goes far beyond climate policy. Energy access, industrialization, economic diversification, poverty eradication, and job creation are central to the transition many countries are trying to build. Whether the mechanism becomes a meaningful tool for support or simply another addition to the climate architecture will depend on the choices parties make in the months ahead. Without that shift from process to implementation, every year spent debating distractions is another year spent delaying the action we already know is needed.

For over six weeks now, Bolivia has been engulfed in a national revolt. What started as sectoral demands over public employee salaries, fuel subsidies, and land rights has metastasized into a full-throated cry for the resignation of Trump-aligned President Rodrigo Paz. The country is paralyzed by more than 100 road blockades that have severed the capital, La Paz, from the rest of the nation, cutting off food, fuel, and medicine. Ten people are dead, dozens more injured, and over 300 have been arrested. Journalists and activists have also been caught in the violence.

The government’s response has been a schizophrenic mix of hollow calls for peaceful dialogue and negotiation, and brutal repression. Paz has signed deals with some social sectors, and organized a Social Economic Council, while jailing the leaders of the groups he’s “negotiating” with.

Thousands of militarized police have been deployed, using tear gas, rubber bullets, and, according to persistent rumors the government denies, live ammunition. Leaders of various protest groups, including the Bolivian Workers’ Central (COB), the largest trade union in the country, and radical Aymara defense force Ponchos Rojos, have been jailed. The Wiphala, the sacred flag of Bolivia’s Indigenous majority, has been burned in public squares by counterprotesters while the state itself no longer displays it publicly.

As Argentinian President Javier Milei’s expatriated adviser Fernando Cerimedo put it, this government is fighting against “dirty leftists.” Cerimedo was reportedly crucial in deporting a human rights mission from Argentina this week. Protest leaders and politicians have been kidnapped in broad daylight, including one senator with the Movement Toward Socialism, taken by police in plain clothes.

When a government disregards the voting blocs that got it into office, blocks every avenue for democratic change, criminalizes dissent, and rules on behalf of a foreign-aligned racist elite, it leaves the people few political options for engagement and representation.

Far-right groups and “The Resistance” have re-popularized the slogan, “Make the homeland, kill an indian,” which had become a popular rallying cry in the 2019 coup. Those same far-right groups were also seen in San Julian, near Santa Cruz, using illegal weapons and explosives against protesters, alongside state security forces. The Paz government has not rebuked any of these figures, statements, or actions, and instead cracked down further on the left.

Internationally, the reaction maps perfectly onto the new ideological conflict dividing Latin America. The right-wing autocrats, from Argentina’s Milei and Venezuela’s Maria Corina Machado to the Trump administration, have been unequivocal. They have labeled the protesters “narco-terrorists” threatening democracy itself, with the government applauding their solidarity.

US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth declared that the US “will reject all attempts to overthrow the legitimate government.” President Donald Trump himself expressed solidarity for Paz at the Shield of the Americas, held at his very own Trump Resort in Miami. This support has emboldened the Bolivian far-right, which is openly pushing for a full “state of exception,” a euphemism for martial law that has been developed by various autocrats including Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, to crush democracy and opposition in the name of a “war on drugs.”

That scenario is likely for Bolivia, too, where protesters labeled “narco-terrorists” would be the subject of that war on drugs. Paz and the government coalition in the Plurinational Assembly have already passed and signed a law modifying the state of exception law. The old law was passed in 2020, after the pro-US unelected government of Jeanine Anez committed multiple massacres against opposition in that state of exception, to try to tamper state abuses.

Now, many safeguards have been removed, with the law giving carte blanche to state agents to kill, seize property, shut down telecommunications, and suspend political rights. The president has also declared a 90-day humanitarian emergency, which allowed for the deployment of militarized forces in El Alto, leading to the death of one protester and multiple injuries.

To understand why Bolivia is on the brink, we must understand a fundamental betrayal of the people by their political representatives. Rodrigo Paz ran under the banner of the Christian Democratic Party (PDC), a big-tent coalition with Indigenous currents previously aligned with the left, populist anti-corruption crusaders, and hard-right figures from the Santa Cruz elite. Voters, exhausted by the chronic crises of the Luis Arce administration and facing a nightmare choice against the far-right former president Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga (who was vice president to former pro-US dictator, Hugo Banzer), held their noses and voted for what they believed was the least destructive option.

They were promised “Capitalism for Everyone,” a softer, more competent alternative that would see public programs and social rights protected while opening up the country further.

Instead, Paz’s first months have been a masterclass in neoliberal shock therapy, looking to privatize energy, cutting public services and subsidies, restructuring debt with American financial institutions, and proposing to reform Indigenous land tenure, which communities correctly interpreted as a prelude to opening communal lands to private extraction. Key subsidies ensuring many citizens’ very survival, including fuel and food subsidies, have also been cut, jump kicking the cost of living for the most vulnerable.

The result is the political destitution of the Bolivian left, which represents the vast majority of the country. The old vehicle, Evo Morales’ MAS, is decapitated and adrift. Evo himself is practically in exile with an arrest warrant hanging over his head. His protege, Andronico Rodriguez, has been a ghost in public life, and his Alianza Popular has not been able to build much momentum.

Former President Luis Arce, Evo’s former minister and now sworn enemy, is in prison, in preventive detention. Other socialist leaders, politicians, and activists have been jailed, while the cabinet has ironically vowed to continue crackdowns “against lawfare.”

The Paz government has been jailing the key leaders of the socialist era while releasing convicted terrorists and far-right racists linked to the 2019 coup government and its subsequent massacres, like Jeanine Áñez, Luis Fernando Camacho, and leaders of far-right youth groups deemed the equivalent of the Proud Boys. It has also brought back the Drug Enforcement Administration, which had been kicked out by the Morales government over alleged election interference.

Despite running as the left’s only option, and as the counter to the right, since taking office, Paz’s policy proposals, rhetoric, and platform have mostly been directed at the white, Christian, conservative elite in the tropics, rather than to the Indigenous majority in the Altiplano.

This betrayal is creating a crisis of representation in a country where trust in institutions and democracy is already very low—and in the poorest country in South America. Most of the activists in the streets voted for Paz, while many unions endorsed the PDC, but are now expressing their discontent at their interests being disregarded. One protester in La Paz told me, “We have to remind these oligarchs who the Casa Grande del Pueblo is for, and reclaim it.”

The government and its allies have worked overtime to criminalize the rage that has come from this betrayal. In the face of this repression, some groups have decided to fight fire with fire, arguing Paz’s repression has made negotiation unviable. The COB itself said it would be willing to do anything, “as in a war,” and has vowed to “increase radical pressure measures.”

As Quya Reyna, a writer, activist, and social leader argued in a manifesto for the protest movements, repression will only bring further suffering, and, if the government refuses to negotiate, this is the social cost it will bring. Another manifesto signed by some indigeneist protest groups now explicitly endorses armed resistance.

When a government disregards the voting blocs that got it into office, blocks every avenue for democratic change, criminalizes dissent, and rules on behalf of a foreign-aligned racist elite, it leaves the people few political options for engagement and representation.

The state is using its monopoly on force not to protect its citizens, but to protect the privileges of the few against the many. It cannot, then, be surprised at the rage it engenders by doing so. As Reyna added, “if you want peace, listen to the people and negotiate, don’t repress.”

Faced with this brick wall, the social movements are left with little choice but to play outside the system. In the long term, this is a terrible development for peaceful, stable, social democracy, as it may create a vicious cycle between faith in political institutions, and political violence. As one piece of graffiti scrawled in La Paz by protesters declares, “Let there be no peace for the oligarchies if there is no bread for the majority.”

Vice President Edmand Lara, a populist former police officer who was crucial to Paz’s election, has broken dramatically with the president, condemning the repression and inviting the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to monitor the country.

The vice president has also denounced the cabinet’s own links to drug trafficking, though he has called for further crackdowns on crime, and Evo Morales. On the right, former president Tuto Quiroga, billionaire Marcelo Claure, Áñez allies, and others have pushed for Paz to step aside and allow security forces to rule, through a state of exception (essentially, martial law), while continuing economic “liberalization.”

Some reports have also indicated the military is interested in pushing Paz out, while embracing further right-wing figures. To satisfy them, Paz has given even more power to the hardliners like Ernesto Justiniano, the anti-drug czar, now minister of defense, while further alienating social sectors and moderate progressives within his cabinet, like José Luis Lupo, Lara, and billionaire Samuel Doria Medina, all of whom have urged for dialogue over repression.

This government is eating itself, while Bolivian democracy has perhaps never looked weaker.

The hard-fought promise of the Plurinational State, a multiracial social democracy with strong rights and constitutional protections, has been hollowed out by a new form of external rule for the elites, far-right racists, foreign states, and the security state. The majorities, meanwhile, have felt betrayed, and are using every means at their disposal to regain representation.

That popular movement now believes the only way forward is a fresh start—calling for Paz to resign, and for fresh elections. Until then, they will continue blocking the country, and forcing the government’s hands, to remind them of their power. Though, the right will continue blaming “dirty leftists” and “indians” for “destroying the country” and “stopping progress,” instead of blaming themselves.

To move forward, the country's leaders will have to realize that, whether in a democracy or dictatorship, they will have to govern with, and for, the Indigenous majorities, not without and against them.

We’ve been here before. When Dobbs came for abortion care in our states, we did two things: We opened clinics across state lines so our patients would still have a legal option. And we stayed. We kept our original clinics open, expanding the care we'd always offered or always wanted to offer. When Skrmetti came for gender-affirming care, we kept providing that too, because abortion care patients and transgender patients are not separate communities. The calculation patients make before they walk through the door is identical for both communities: Will I be seen? Will I be safe? Will the person across from me treat my body like a problem to be managed, or a life to be supported? June marks anniversaries of both Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health and US v. Skrmetti, and that conviction has never felt more urgent.

Long before Dobbs or Skrmetti, the intersection of abortion rights and trans rights was already living in our waiting rooms, in the patients who received reproductive care and gender-affirming hormone therapy (GAHT) under the same roof; in the person who drove hours across the state because we were the only provider they trusted; and in those who trust us with their whole-person care because their grandmothers, mothers, sisters, aunts, and friends have relied on our clinics for care for 50 years. Throughout that history, our organizations have been guided by a simple principle: When members of our community are targeted, excluded, or denied the care they need, we do not look away. We listen, we adapt, and we show up.

When abortion care moved across the border after Dobbs, the patients who remained still needed care they couldn’t access at home. The wall between reproductive healthcare and LGBTQIA+ healthcare that exists in policy language and funding categories has never existed in our exam rooms.

What connects every patient who walks through our doors, whether they’re coming in for an abortion or a hormone therapy appointment, is something our staff recognized long before we had language for it: the experience of arriving at a clinic while carrying the weight of a political target on your back. A clinic’s job of creating a space where people can receive care without shame or fear has always been exactly the same job regardless of why they came.

Bodily autonomy is the foundational principle of reproductive rights, and it only means something if it applies to everyone.

Marty had learned, growing up as a transgender person in rural Maryland, to brace himself before every medical appointment, because finding healthcare that was both competent and genuinely affirming had always required a fight. What he found at our clinic was a staff that met him without conditions, no justifications required, no explanations asked for. His mother has supported the Women’s Health Center (WHC) since its earliest days, and used to volunteer as a clinic escort. Watching the same clinic support her son in his gender-affirming care gave her, in her own words, a peace she hadn’t known she needed. When gaps in care left Ben, a transgender West Virginian, navigating painful dysphoric cycles and a transition that had stalled, he found his way to WHC West Virginia. Today, he says that every time he looks in the mirror, he sees more of himself looking back.

When one of our providers first interviewed to work for CHOICES, she didn't really know much about gender-affirming care. In the time she has been with CHOICES, she has cared for hundreds of gender-affirming care patients across the mid-South. "It's clear how important this care is for patients," she shared. "After patients start hormone replacement therapy, they come back as a much more energetic, vivacious person.” Since the state of Tennessee has restricted gender-affirming healthcare, including banning minors from accessing care, our patients are experiencing increased anxiety and fear about their privacy, safety, and continued access to care. CHOICES' provider shared, "Hormone replacement therapy is routine, like every other service we offer.” If something has such a profound impact on someone's life, why wouldn't we keep this care accessible?

The pattern behind Skrmetti is one reproductive rights advocates should recognize immediately, because it follows the same logic as the restrictions that led to Dobbs: They come for the most vulnerable first, in the states where the political ground is most hostile, and they build from there. Idaho passed the first transgender athlete ban in 2020, West Virginia followed with the Save Women’s Sports Act in 2021, and Tennessee’s restrictions on gender-affirming care for minors moved through the courts the same way abortion restrictions moved state by state in the years before Dobbs. Since abortion care moved across the border, thousands have received gender-affirming and LGBTQIA+ care at our clinics, even as the political, legal, and financial pressure on both organizations has intensified.

Bodily autonomy is the foundational principle of reproductive rights, and it only means something if it applies to everyone. When it becomes conditional, granted to some patients and denied to others, it stops being a principle and starts being a permission slip, and permission slips get revoked. The fights to protect abortion access and gender-affirming care are not parallel struggles that happen to share a difficult political moment. They are the same struggle, rooted in the same conviction, playing out in the same clinics with the same patients, and the forces working to end both of them have always understood that connection even when the rest of us have sometimes lost sight of it.

Between our two organizations, we’ve earned a century’s worth of experience at the practice of staying, enduring. CHOICES has kept their doors open for 52 years, and the Women’s Health Centers of West Virginia and Maryland will celebrate 50 years of care on June 24—the same day Roe v. Wade was overturned four years ago.

Support independent clinics in hard places keeping the doors open. And when the next fight comes, show up for the communities under pressure. Remember that those targeted first won’t be the last, but they will be the ones to lead the way.

The Memorandum of Understanding, which ostensibly ends the four-month war between the US and Iran, illuminated the profound US defeat. In addition, a Quincy Institute webinar on military lessons from the war, shortly before the MOU’s release, enumerated numerous ways in which the US failures in its misbegotten war reveal how drastically US military dominance has been undermined for the long term.

On the subject of the relative decline of US power and influence, the impacts of the war on world energy supplies—especially in Asia—will reinforce political and economic pressures for alternative—non-fossil—energy sources. China is already light years ahead of the US in clean energy production technologies, while President Donald Trump thinks only in the very short term as he maximizes oil and gas production and exports while attempting to revitalize filthy coal mining.

Bottom line: The US loss in this totally avoidable imperial war of choice was severe. That said, countries and territories as small and weak as Cuba and Greenland remain profoundly vulnerable.

The MOU’s commitments include:

• Immediate termination of military operations including in Lebanon.
• The US and Iran “refrain from the threat or use of force against each other.”
• Mutual respect of US and Iranian sovereignty.
• The US and Iran commit to negotiating a final agreement within 60 days, although this timetable can be extended by mutual consent.
• The US and regional partners will develop a $300 billion plan for reconstruction and economic development in Iran. The mechanism for implementation is to be finalized within 60 days.
• The US commits to “terminate all types of sanctions against the Islamic Republic” including United Nations sanctions.
• The US will fully remove its naval blockade within 30 days and will remove its forces “from the proximity of the Islamic Republic within 30 days after the final deal.”
• Iran will engage in dialog with the Sultanate of Oman “to define the future administration of maritime services in the Strait of Hormuz in discussion with other Persian Gulf littoral states in line with the applicable international law” and rights of coastal states.
• Iran “reaffirms that it shall not procure or develop nuclear weapons” as was its stated policy before the war. Additionally, under International Atomic Energy Agency supervision, its current stocks of highly enriched uranium will be blended down, and enrichment for “Iran’s nuclear needs” will be agreed in the final deal.
• Pending the final deal, Iran will maintain the status quo of its nuclear program, and the US will not impose any new sanctions or deploy additional forces to the region.

Perhaps like the “decent interval” with which the Nixon administration sought to minimize the domestic political costs of the US defeat in Vietnam, by dragging out negotiations and agreeing to a remarkably vague framework, President Trump hopes to minimize the impacts of his lost war on the November midterm elections. Iran will dominate and ultimately control the Strait of Hormuz for the foreseeable future. How it exercises that power, with its global economic implications, will be a new feature of the emerging multipolar world disorder. The escape clause that allows for the extension of negotiations beyond the 60-day timeline should prepare us for a long, difficult, and drawn-out process. And in true Trumpian form, despite the commitment to “refrain from the threat or use of force against each other,” within hours of the MOU’s release, our president threatened to resume bombing if he was not satisfied with the outcome of negotiations. (This may have been more for domestic political consumption than a threat that Iran will take seriously.)

With 1,000 Gazans having been killed since the declaration of that ceasefire, and with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu more concerned with winning his nation’s October election and staying out of jail, the US ability to enforce the termination of Israeli military operations in or its occupation of its northern neighbor is in doubt. Iran’s confirmation that it will it not procure or develop nuclear weapons is nothing new. That was the case before President Trump withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear agreement negotiated by President Barack Obama and was reiterated numerous times by Iranian leaders before the Trump-Netanyahu regime change attempt, which resulted in a harder-line government. Like Japan, South Korea, Sweden, and Poland, Iran will remain a threshold nuclear state, and the MOU allows for enrichment for medical and power generation use, as Iran has insisted for years.

But Trump’s defeat will reverberate globally. Elites in many nations will be taking a North Korean lesson from this and the Ukrainian wars: If you have nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons states won’t attack you. Diplomatically, between this globally disastrous war, Trump’s total disregard of allies in launching and fighting the war, the US cessation of military aid to Ukraine and its inability to facilitate either a ceasefire or peace negotiations in that war, the Euro-Atlantic alliance is on life support and solidarity among US people and Europeans is but a memory. And as we look to possible future crises, Europeans are overestimating Russia’s military power and are racing to create a European Union superpower—either within or independent of NATO.

Then there is the lesson from the Iran War for the US-Chinese competition for Asia-Pacific regional hegemony. The failure of Trump’s Iran war illuminated US-Chinese dynamics and realities at play over the last decade or more.

As enumerated in the Quincy Institute’s webinar with military analysts Brandon Carr, Jennifer Kavanagh, and Kelly Grieco, the war demonstrates that the US is not in a position to militarily defend Taiwan, nor will it be able to credibly threaten to defeat China in a non-nuclear war. (No one wins a nuclear war!!!)

• The destruction of infrastructure, warplanes, missiles, and more in US Persian Gulf bases demonstrated the vulnerability of the hundreds of US bases within the First Island Chain (Japan, Philippines, Taiwan) along China’s East Coast, and this could likely apply as far away as Guam.
• France, Spain, and Italy denied US use of its bases and airspace in their countries to attack Iran. This illustrates that the US cannot be assured of the ability to use its hundreds of bases and military assets in East Asia in a future war with China. Japan, which has its most militarist government since 1945, would likely consent to use, but use of bases in South Korea and the Philippines cannot be counted on.
• Iran’s drones and missiles established area deniability, albeit it at lower altitudes. China, with its much greater number of missiles and an industrial capacity much greater than that of the US, will be able to similarly dominate US forces within the First Island Chain.
• The draw down on US missile defense missiles to defend Israel and its Gulf bases was severe. Given the United States’ weak industrial capacity, it will take years to restore the arsenal to its pre-war levels, while China continues to build missiles and drones at levels unmatched by the US.
• China’s navy is already larger than the Pentagon’s, and the US shipbuilding industry is anemic.

Bottom line: If the war accomplished anything, it accelerated the decline of US power, influence, and economic security. Instead of wasting billions on White House human cockfights, futile efforts to regain military superiority, subsidizing the military-industrial-congressional complex, and turning the clock back to Jim Crow America, we would do better to take a page from President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and rebuild economic and human security for the US people.