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•  Bill and Hillary Clinton cave in to Republican demands that he testify before the House Oversight Committee about their relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. A contempt vote still looms.

• Ignoring Trump’s threats, Uruguayan President Yamandu Orsi and China’s Xi Jinping sign a dozen strategic partnership agreements following a Beijing confab that makes China that biggest trading partner for Latin America. Meanwhile, conservative populist Laura Fernández won Costa Rica’s presidency, promising to continue the aggressive reorienting of the Central American nation’s politics started by her political sponsor, outgoing President Rodrigo Chaves.

• Don Lemon said about a dozen federal agents came to his Los Angeles hotel to arrest him last week, even though his attorney had told authorities he would turn himself in. Is Lemon’s body a lethal force?

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The post appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech at the World Economic Forum on January 20 was not an exercise in pique. It was the clearest articulation yet of a strategic shift that has profound implications—not just for US-Canada relations, but for the entire structure of American alliances worldwide.

Carney told the Davos audience that “the old order is not coming back” and that the rules-based international system was always “partially false.” The strongest exempted themselves when convenient, trade rules were enforced asymmetrically, and Canada “placed the sign in the window” while avoiding the gaps between rhetoric and reality. That bargain, he declared, no longer works. Canada is now building what Carney called “strategic autonomy”—the capacity to feed itself, fuel itself, and defend itself without depending on the United States.

The speech codified what six months of frenetic diplomacy had already demonstrated. Since taking office, Carney has signed 12 trade and security agreements across four continents. Canada has joined the European Union’s €150 billion Security Action for Europe (SAFE) defense procurement program; the first non-European nation admitted. Recently, Carney announced a strategic partnership with Xi Jinping and opened Canadian markets to Chinese electric vehicles. Ottawa has committed to the largest military spending increase since World War II, deliberately structured to reduce reliance on American defense contractors.

This matters beyond North America because Canada was, until recently, the test case for deep integration with the United States. More than 75% of Canadian exports went south. Supply chains, especially in automotive and energy, were seamlessly continental. Defense was jointly managed through NORAD. If any country had conclusively answered the question of whether binding one’s self to American hegemony was safe, it was Canada.

When allies begin describing authoritarian rivals as more reliable than the United States, something fundamental has broken.

The answer, Ottawa has now concluded, is no. And that conclusion is being watched carefully in Brussels, Tokyo, Canberra, and Seoul.

The proximate cause is the Trump administration’s tariffs, threats to abandon the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, and repeated suggestions that Canada should become the 51st US state. But Carney’s Davos speech made clear that the problem runs deeper than one administration. The issue is structural: American policy now swings so dramatically between presidencies that commitments made by one administration cannot be trusted to survive the next. For allies making decade-long investments in defense procurement, energy infrastructure, or trade relationships, this volatility is intolerable.

Carney borrowed a framework from Finnish President Alexander Stubb: “values-based realism.” Canada will remain committed to sovereignty, human rights, and international law in principle. However, Canada will be pragmatic about working with partners who do not share those values. This explains the China pivot. Beijing is not a trustworthy partner, and Canadians know this better than most after the arbitrary detention of the two Michaels—Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig—in 2018 (and released in 2021). But China is predictable in ways that Washington no longer is. As Carney noted in Beijing, the relationship with China is now “more predictable” than the one with the United States.

That statement should alarm policymakers in Washington far more than any tariff retaliation. When allies begin describing authoritarian rivals as more reliable than the United States, something fundamental has broken.

The Canadian pivot also reveals the limits of geographical determinism. American analysts have long assumed that Canada has no real alternatives; that proximity and integration lock Ottawa into the US orbit regardless of policy. Carney is testing that assumption. The Trans Mountain pipeline now ships Canadian oil to Asia. Liquefied natural gas terminals are under construction for Pacific exports. The EU defense partnership opens European procurement to Canadian manufacturers.

Canada cannot replace American trade overnight, but it can build sufficient alternatives to survive without it. That is precisely what Carney has pledged: doubling non-US exports within 10 years.

For other US allies, the lesson is clear. If Canada, the most integrated, most proximate, most culturally similar American ally, has concluded that dependence on Washington is too risky, then no alliance is safe from reassessment. The Europeans are already drawing similar conclusions. The EU’s Mercosur deal and accelerated talks with Japan and South Korea reflect the same diversification logic. Even Australia, historically the most reliable US partner in the Indo-Pacific, is quietly exploring options.

None of this necessarily serves those allies’ long-term interests. China is not a benign alternative to American hegemony. The middle-power coalitions Carney envisions may lack the capacity to provide genuine security. And the economic costs of unwinding continental integration will be substantial. Canada’s gamble may yet prove to be a mistake.

But that is not the point. America’s closest ally has made a rational decision, based on observed evidence, that the United States can no longer be trusted, and is acting accordingly. Other allies are making similar calculations. The network of relationships that has amplified American power since 1945 is fraying, and American policy is what’s fraying it.

Carney closed his Davos speech with a line that deserves attention beyond Ottawa: “Nostalgia is not a strategy.” For those in Washington who assume the old alliances will endure regardless of how allies are treated, the warning applies with equal force. The old order really is not coming back. The question is what replaces it, and whether the United States will have any role in building it.

Trump and many officials in his administration are Nazis. In their policies, their speeches, and their lawless violence, they follow the Nazi playbook of the 1930s. In 1932 the Nazi party gained control of Germany with 37% of the vote. Based on an ideology of Aryan (white) supremacy, they rammed through a series of racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic laws. The Nazis sought to “purify” the nation of non-Aryan blood. Their secret police threatened, beat and murdered suspected opponents. Hitler haughtily ridiculed those targeted by the violence. In all these ways, the Trump administration mimics Nazi plans and programs.

Granted, Nazism relied on one-party authoritarianism, official racism, and the Fuhrer principal. As yet, a two-party system prevails in the US. A further difference between Nazi and MAGA ideology is the ethnic German racism of the former and the white Christian nationalism of the latter. Trump’s strength has been to usurp Christian nationalist resentment about imagined wrongs by immigrants, fear over cultural dilution by foreigners, and certainty that white cultural identity must prevail if the nation is to return to its past greatness. But in creating a cult of personality, ignoring judicial orders, and constituting a lawless federal police, the Nazis have taken possession of the White House ballroom.

Trump’s Gestapo: ICE

Trump’s ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) police resemble the Nazi secret police (Geheime Staatspolizei or Gestapo) in their violence, terror, and even in dress. Hermann Göring’s Gestapo dressed in all-black attire used to strike fear in the masses. The thugs dragged off suspected criminals, surveilled the public, and beat “undesirables” with impunity: Jews, Roma, homosexuals, and political opponents. Hitler believed Gestapo was his "deadliest weapon,” and he gave it unlimited authority to pursue his declared enemies of the regime.

Together with paramilitary “Brownshirts,” the SA (Sturmabteilung), the Gestapo attacked other political parties, disrupting and shutting down assemblies and protests. After the Reichsstag fire of February 1933 that was attributed to Nazi opponents, tens of thousands of Communists, Social Democrats and other political foes were arrested and jailed; many opponents fled the country. A month later, the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act that gave the chancellor of Germany–Hitler–the right to punish anyone he considered an “enemy of the state.” The act allowed “laws passed by the government” to override the constitution.

The real question is why are Republicans silent about the Nazi whose illegal acts and Gestapo-like ICE are destroying the White House?

ICE has become a lawless, federal police force beholden only to Fuhrer Trump. Like the Gestapo, ICE refuses to follow the law, the constitution, and direct court orders. It has established a growing network of jails, some of which are abroad, precisely to avoid judicial oversight. Carrying out the president’s bidding, ICE police swarm the streets to terrorize citizens while claiming to make arrests of deviants and criminals. ICE officers have arbitrarily stopped “Black and Brown Minnesotans” on the street at random, demanding to see their IDs. They enter homes without warrants. ICE is now permitting its lower level police to arrest anyone they encounter – but the basis of arrest is usually skin color and accent. Not surprisingly, more than 70 percent of detained noncitizens have no criminal record. But ICE has a quota to cleanse the streets of 3,000 people daily.

The quotas have led “indiscriminate arrests of immigrants,” and to the expansion of the federal network of concentration camps (¨detention centers”) in Florida, Texas and elsewhere. The camps, boasting inhumane conditions, are Trump’s Dachau, the Nazi’s first concentration camp that opened in 1933. The US government is paying hundreds of millions of dollars in cash for additional warehouses that lack toilets and beds, let alone recreation areas, to store its prisoners. The only surprising thing is that the name “Trump” is not emblazoned on the front of these facilities. Like the Nazi concentration camp guards who separated children from parents, ICE is ripping children from their parents’ arms, deporting minors without parents, kidnapping mothers of the streets, and hunting down children in schools; thirty-two people died in ICE custody in 2025.

If It Dresses Like Gestapo, it is Gestapo

Don Trump says he hires only the best people, but the record of incompetence and high turnover of his government appointees reveals another story: Trump’s upper-level hires are as a rule wealthy, mediocre cronies. Some of their names appear in the Epstein files. To carry out deportations, with the Republican Congress happily earmarking $8 billion for the task, the feds are hiring up to 12,000 ICE agents, reducing their training to six weeks – in fact to 47 days because the Fuhrer is the 47th president, and lowering standards and age requirements so that even 18 year olds can get a $50,000 bonus to join in the mayhem. All of this appeals to immature right-wing young men with infantile fantasies about exercising military power without accountability.

In fact, the recruitment effort for ICE agents relies heavily on right-wing and Nazi slogans and imagery: advertisements talk about taking back and defending the home (land); destroying the flood of foreign invaders; and showing which way the American man leans -- toward law and order, and against invasion and cultural decline. Recruitment targets “male-dominated places and spaces where violence is either required or valorized: gun shows, military bases and local law enforcement,” and elsewhere. The ads depict the work of detaining immigrants as “an epic, heroic quest, with frontier imagery and cowboy-hat clad horsemen.” alongside language like “one homeland, one people, one heritage.”

ICE does not specify a dress code, precisely to make it difficult for people to differentiate between ICE agents, local law enforcement, and even vigilantes who prey on the defenseless. ICE agents usually wear plain clothes or black bulletproof vests. They are fond of grey-hoodies, sunglasses and masks. In the absence of uniforms, ICE impersonators have raped and assaulted women.

Gregory Bovino, until relieved as border control commander last week, left no doubt about his affection for the Gestapo attire. In his Himmler trench coat, as the German media pointed out, Bovino “completed the Nazi look.” Bovino has a long history of reckless violence and racism. He refers to undocumented immigrants as “scum, filth and trash.” He is not shy to utter anti-Semitic comments. In his online presence he augments assault weapons in his photos with inappropriate commentary to justify racial profiling. Bovino’s activities led to a ruling, during the Biden administration, that “masked federal agents brandishing weapons cannot command people going about their daily lives to stop and prove their lawful presence solely because of their skin color, accent, where they happen to be, and the type of work they do.”

But Bovino was quick to violence, and thus a perfect fit for Trump whose Homeland Security chief, Kristi Noem, known for shooting her poorly behaved puppy, abandoned the Biden-era limits. Bovino approved of the shooting of civilian Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, lying to hide ICE culpability. Using similar tactics as the Gestapo, Bovino claims that when his troops use violence, it is the protestors’ fault. He said, “If someone strays into a pepper ball, then that’s on them. Don’t protest and don’t trespass.” He admitted that his storm troopers arrested people based on “how they look.” Bovino’s boss, the Ice-Princess Noem, shares the mantra of racist inequality first and always.

White House Ideology of “Blood and Soil”

Trumpist racist ideology is based on the work of such nineteenth century foundational racists as Arthur de Gobineau. Gobineau argued in 1854 that “Caucasian” civilization was superior to all others. But the more that the white race had contact with lesser races – yellow, red and black – the more impure it became, and civilizations collapsed. The Nazis embraced Gobineau, Howard Stuart Chamberlin, and other such anti-Semites. Trump is clear on this point. He said in 2017: “The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive. Do we have the confidence in our values to defend them at any cost? Do we have enough respect for our citizens to protect our borders? Do we have the desire and the courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it?”

Nazi ideology was anchored into the idea of ethnic purity of the German peasant who was tied to the land through his blood. The slogan “Blut und Boden (Blood and Soil),” meant that (pure) ethnicity and (more) territory were the key to the great German future. The German Volk, a white, Aryan people, had this blood bond to the land, while Jews and others were a danger to it. Hitler believed that the Volk had been deprived of the right to life and land by impure vermin; many Germans in fact believed that those individuals with the "best" genes had been killed in the Great War, while the weak could easily propagate. MAGA ideologues similarly believe that only white people connected with the blood of the founding fathers can protect the legacy of American greatness – or deserve citizenship.

Leading German scientists, racial hygienists, and right wing political figures believed that the state must intervene to protect pure bloodlines and eliminate the weak – through laws, deportation, isolation, sterilization and eventually murder of people considered inferior: foreigners, Jews, Roma, the handicapped, gays and lesbians so that an ideal Nordic race would thrive. Hitler referred to Jews as blood-sucking parasites, rats and subhumans. The odious Trump calls immigrants “vermin” who poison the blood of the nation, and US citizens of Somali descent “garbage.” Congresswoman Ilhan Omar was recently attacked by a crazed MAGA supporter. Trump welcomed the attack, as he urged his followers to “Throw her the hell out!” of the country. The Trumpist effort to clean America of the weak, impure Africans, Muslims, gays and transsexuals thus directly follows that of the Nazis.

Stephen Miller, White House Deputy Chief of Staff, the president’s architect of racist violence, has long spouted the ideas of Gobineau, Chamberlain and other racists of racial inequality; black male stereotypes of criminality; and immigrants as polluters of a pure blood stream. Miller rejects diversity. He joined far-right hate groups in university and organized such campus events as an “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week.” He prefers the company of white nationalists. He was originally scheduled to serve as the headline speaker at the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, after which Trump let the world know that there were “very fine people” among the Nazi protestors. Less than 12 hours after using the National Guard to seize control of Washington, DC’s police in August 2025, the White House used its social media page to display photographs of arrested black men – innocent until proven guilty, who had not yet seen a judge, in their mugshots. No doubt, Miller was behind this.

Immigration and Racism: A Tradition of American Right-Wing Violence

The goal of MAGA immigration policies is to make America more white. (Recall that, in January 2024, Trump torpedoed a bipartisan immigration bill to strengthen the southern border, the better to have immigration fears as a tool in the elections and as cudgel to round up Americans in democratic strongholds on the basis of their accents and skin color.) The attacks on Muslims and immigrants in general recall the racist essence of debates over the 1924 Immigration Act which excluded virtually all Asians and Southern Europeans and Jews from entry to the US.

Miller, who is central figure in shaping the Trump Administration’s agenda for promoting state violence against various enemies, prefers a return to the 1920s with its strict quotas to favor white races over “dark” among immigrants. He regrets the famous US “melting pot” of diversity through which “a unified shared national identity was formed.” Miller further laments the passage of civil rights laws of the 1960s which, he claims, attracted more people from “third world” countries who failed to assimilate in the US. This was the “single largest experiment on a society, on a civilization, that had ever been conducted in human history. The result was increased criminality, welfare cheating, and cultural decline. Miller sees the value of “foreign workers” only in their service to white civilization, and in no way worthy of citizenship.

The ongoing campaign of mass deportation to reverse “cultural decline” recalls the 1940 Nazi plan to deport all Jews to Madagascar – before the Nazis embraced the Final Solution to eliminate the Jews in concentration camps. Trump has been a fan of deportation for years. In May 2017, he signed an executive order banning people from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the country. Tied to the “ban” on Muslims, later overturned in courts, was the threat and reality of child separation to jumpstart “the largest deportation operation in American history” of up to 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States without due process but will full coercive police power of the executive branch. Already, the Trumpists have disappeared people on hundreds of flights, mostly to Central American countries. The Fuhrer is threatening to send US citizens into exile as well.

All of this is fully steeped in white nationalism. The racist-in-chief attacks black majority countries as “shitholes.” He pushes to accept more immigrants from Norway and other white-majority countries, with an exception for white South Africans. He clearly sees the issue not as one of national security, but one of national identity with “whiteness” the only important characteristic of an individual’s worth.

Why Are Republicans Silent?

Trump has been baldly racist since his early days in real estate when he refused to rent his apartments to African-Americans. Lest there be doubt: in 1989, Trump called for the execution of five innocent, but incarcerated black men in a full page advertisement, and he has never retracted that sentiment. The cowardly Trump, who refused to serve in the military, has been quick to call for violence against his nemeses: leaders of countries who refuse to embrace his glory, journalists and protestors at home.

Learning from Nazi tactics, Trump’s politicized Department of Justice (DJ) has accelerated its attack on democrats, majority Democratic states and cities, and the electoral process. The DJ has insisted on the right to examine – and cleanse – state voter rolls. In Georgia in late January 2026, FBI troops raided the Fulton County, Georgia, election office, at Trump’s orders, to seize records, create doubts “ahead of the 2026 midterms,” and overcome the stinging hurt of his 2020 election loss. In fact, the liar-in-chief had tried to convince the Georgia Secretary of State to miscount ballots in 2020. He was assisted in the effort to overturn the fair election by several now convicted felons. And of course, Trump’s ICE regime is directed not at protecting the border, but at attacking cities and states that vote against MAGA: California, Minnesota, Oregon. Any election he loses, Trump claims, is because of cheating election officials and opponents. When he wins, he is silent. If Hitler came to power with just 37% of the vote, why can’t Trump revisit the 2020 election which he lost with just under 47% of the vote?

The Trump regime is corrupt. It follows the Nazi blueprints of violence, threats and street murders. The president fires officials for failing to follow his purge orders. His DOJ is coming after journalists—primarily black and women. It has arrested dozens of them. It carries out early morning raids without warrants. His thugs stop cars, guns drawn, smash windows, drag people to the ground—and shoot protestors. Trump has called for the incarceration of President Obama. Trump owns a copy of Mein Kampf; not surprisingly, in a recent fundraising email, he asked, “Are you a proud American citizen, or does ICE need to come and track you down?” The real question is why are Republicans silent about the Nazi whose illegal acts and Gestapo-like ICE are destroying the White House? Do they fully share his views, or just the ones about poisoning the blood of the nation?

Not finished terrorizing Minnesota, the Trump administration is seeking to open a new front in their war against America. This time, the battlefield will be Ohio, and Haitians will be the scapegoat.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced it would end Temporary Protection Status (TPS) for Haitians, with an effective termination date of February 3, 2026. According to a federal notice issued by DHS in November 2025, “Based on the Department's review, the Secretary [Kristi Noem] has determined that while the current situation in Haiti is concerning, the United States must prioritize its national interests and permitting Haitian nationals to remain temporarily in the United States is contrary to the US national interest.”

Per this federal notice, “there are Haitian nationals who are Temporary Protected Status recipients who have been the subject of administrative investigations for fraud, public safety, and national security.” No specifics are offered with regards the scope of this problem, or even the number of Haitians on TPS who have been charged or convicted of any crimes. Instead, they offer a few specific examples. This includes people like Wisteguens Jean Quely Charles, who importantly was not a TPS recipient.

Nevertheless, DHS argues that Charles’s “case underscores the broader risk posed by rising Haitian migration,” especially in the context of a “high-volume border environment” with poor vetting. They allege that the “inability of the previous [Biden] administration to reliably screen aliens from a country with limited law enforcement infrastructure and widespread gang activity presents a clear and growing threat to US public safety.”

The actions we take today will determine whether America embraces multiculturalism or becomes an ethnostate that treats diversity like a plague to be eradicated.

In short, DHS offers no concrete evidence that Haitians on TPS pose an actual threat to public safety or national security—only that they might pose a threat because their potential for being a threat was not properly assessed. Moreover, this potential cannot be properly assessed now because Haiti’s “lack of functional government authority” makes it too difficult to access “critical information” (e.g., criminal histories).

As per usual with the Trump administration, fearmongering replaces facts. In 2021, President Donald Trump claimed that all Haitians have AIDS—this is false (obviously). In 2024, he claimed that, “In Springfield, [Haitians] are eating the dogs. The people that came in, they are eating the cats. They’re eating—they are eating the pets of the people that live there.” There were no credible reports of this occurring.

Trump describes immigrants as dangerous criminals. Yet, studies have repeatedly shown that immigrants—including undocumented immigrants—commit far fewer crimes than US citizens. Haitian immigrants are no exceptions. Undocumented Haitian immigrants, for instance, have an incarceration rate that is 81% below US-born Americans.

The situation in Ohio is also no different. In Springfield, home to one of the state’s largest Haitian communities, “Haitians are more likely to be the victims of crime than they are to be the perpetrators in our community. Clark County jail data shows there are 199 inmates in our county jail this week. Two of them are Haitian. That’s 1% (as of Sept. 8).” The thousands of Haitians with TPS protection living in Ohio have made themselves indispensable to the state. As Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, remarks, “If you took Haitians away overnight, I will tell you that the business people there will tell you that’s going to be a big problem for the economy of the community.” In Springfield alone, Haitian immigrants have contributed to higher wage growth while reversing the city’s population decline.

Despite this, DHS will deliberately send Haitians back to a country that they themselves describe as being currently unsafe. So, the question is: why? The answer is because they are Black and foreign. This is also why his administration is so aggressively targeting Somalis.

For Trump, both Somalia and Haiti are “shithole countries”—“places that are a disaster, right? Filthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime.” At the 2026 Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum, Trump ranted: “The situation in Minnesota reminds us that the West cannot mass import foreign cultures, which have failed to ever build a successful society of their own. I mean, we’re taking people from Somalia, and Somalia is a failed—it’s not a nation.”

In Trump’s view, Somalia and Haiti are dirty and crime ridden because their people are dirty and prone to crime. Places and people are inextricably tied to him—bad people will always produce bad places; bad places are always the byproduct of bad people. If the US is failing, it’s because we have “imported” too many bad people. This is why, for Trump, almost every social problem from housing affordability to low wages to employment to high crime rates can be solved by mass deportations. From healthcare to election integrity, immigrants are the problem for his administration.

This sentiment is explicitly expressed by US Homeland Security Adviser Stephen Miller. He remarks, “This is the great lie of mass migration. You are not just importing individuals. You are importing societies. No magic transformation occurs when failed states cross borders. At scale, migrants and their descendants recreate the conditions, and terrors, of their broken homelands.” Mass migration for Miller is a cross-generational problem. In his view, if Somalis come to America, then they and their children will cause America to fail just like they caused Somalia to fail. For Miller and Trump, this is a problem of cultural and biological determinism. It is a problem of “bad genes” that determine behaviors like criminality, as well as “toxic” ideologies like diversity, equity, and inclusion and ‘hateful’ beliefs like Islam that impede American progress.

When Trump remarks that “illegal immigration is poisoning the blood of our country,” the poison in question is the people themselves and the threat their mere presence represents. Put another way, for Trump, all immigrants from poor countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America are akin to tumors in the body politic. Whether they are malignant or benign makes little difference, the safest and most effective response is to surgically remove (deport) them. Even if it turns out that those growths are helping the body politic, they are still foreign agents that should not be present. They are not part of the “very special culture” that built the West—“the precious inheritance that America and Europe have in common.” An inheritance that must be protected from “unchecked mass migration" and “endless foreign imports.” Whether it’s MAGA’s racism or MAHA’s anti-vaxxerism, the Trump administration will reject anything it arbitrarily deems a foreign toxin.

While the Trump administration has deployed federal agents across the nation, we should not be surprised that the “largest immigrant operation ever” has targeted Somalis, a community of predominantly Black, Muslim, and immigrant people. Whiteness and Blackness have always been direct polar opposites within the Western racial imaginary—the former signifying all that is good, the latter all that is bad. For Trump, it is whiteness that “abolished slavery; secured civil rights; defeated communism and fascism; and built the most fair, equal, and prosperous nation in human history.” Of course, none of this is true: Haiti was the first nation to end slavery, Black and other people of color fought for civil rights, and the Trump administration is a fascist regime.

None of these facts will stop the Trump administration’s crusade against “foreign invaders” spawned from “hellholes” who threaten “civilization erasure.” In the name of “defend[ing] your homeland” and “defend[ing] your culture,” his administration will arrest, detain, cage, traumatize, tear-gas, use children as bait, deny people their rights, deport, murder US citizens, and terrorize communities across the nation. No cost is too high in this Holy War to save the proverbial soul of America.

We are at a critical juncture. The actions we take today will determine whether America embraces multiculturalism or becomes an ethnostate that treats diversity like a plague to be eradicated. We must continue to protest nationwide against Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Trump administration. We must continue to monitor and observe ICE’s tactics. We must push elected officials to fulfill their obligation to the people and use their authority to keep Trump in check. At a time when the Trump administration wants nothing more than to divide us, we must come together and resist.

On January 31, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson requested that Congress pass federal legislation to make the Food Stamp Program permanent. Up to that point, the program had operated as a pilot in select counties and states, serving about 380,000 participants. The Food Stamp Program expanded dramatically in the ensuing decades, driven largely by a recognition of domestic hunger. It has also undergone many changes—notably 2008 legislation that changed the name to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, in part to fight the politicized stigma of receiving food assistance.

Today, the program is without a doubt one of the most effective food assistance programs in reducing food insecurity and poverty across the United States. The US Census Bureau reports that supplemental nutrition assistance lifted nearly 3.6 million people out of poverty in 2024, the most recent year for which full data are available.

What’s more, every dollar in SNAP benefits generates about $1.50 in economic activity, as recipients spend their benefits at grocery stores, farmers’ markets, and small businesses. This ripple effect strengthens communities, keeping businesses open and workers employed.

Looking solely at the data, it would seem the anti-hunger program would be viewed by the vast majority of US voters as a practical solution that helps families put food on the table while also supporting local economies. After all, the vast majority of SNAP recipients are children, seniors, and people with disabilities, not the able-bodied adults who are often misrepresented as the main beneficiaries in political debates. And many rural communities, which tend to vote conservatively, rely heavily on this nutrition assistance, with some of the highest SNAP participation rates found in states that lean Republican.

The politicization of social welfare programs generated long-lasting shifts in voting behavior.

Yet in spite of its broad social and economic benefits, food assistance has been a politically contested issue ever since it was enacted more than five decades ago, often shaped by ideological and racialized narratives. This polarization persists today, exemplified by the massive cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in the 2025 Republican budget reconciliation bill (commonly referred to as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”) that was passed by the 119th US Congress and signed into law by President Donald Trump in July 2025.

In new research, I, together with co-authors Troup Howard at the University of Utah and William Mullins at the University of California, San Diego, examine the process through which policy-based polarization emerges and persists over time. Using the historical expansion of the federal Food Stamp Program between 1961 and 1975 as a case study, we provide empirical evidence that the politicization of social welfare programs generated long-lasting shifts in voting behavior. Understanding this history and its persistence is essential to making sense of current debates over the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

The Rollout of the New Federal Food Stamp Program Amid the Civil Rights Movement

The historical rollout of the Food Stamp Program provides a case study in how social and economic policies become polarized and how those divisions persist across generations. Political views on food assistance are emblematic of the deeply partisan divide over social insurance programs and racial attitudes, which consistently emerge as key fault lines in US politics, reflecting deep-seated ideological and historical divisions.

Even though political polarization is often framed as a natural consequence of personal preferences and ideological sorting, such an interpretation overlooks the strategic role of political parties in shaping public perception for electoral advantage. We find that these behaviors persisted well beyond the first two decades—through 2020, as detailed in our research, and arguably even more so today.

The Food Stamp Program, now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, has played a critical role in the network of US social programs for more than half a century. After state- and federal-level experimentation, the program was rolled out nationwide between 1964 and 1975 to combat food insecurity and improve nutrition among low-income Americans. The program currently supports 42 million people, including nearly 1 in 5 American children. Research consistently demonstrates its effectiveness in reducing poverty, stabilizing household food consumption, and improving long-term health and economic outcomes.

The initial rollout of the Food Stamp Program coincided with a period of intense legal and political transformation, marked by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the broader dismantling of Jim Crow laws that legally discriminated against Black Americans across the South. In this context, the introduction of a federal food assistance program was not merely a policy shift but also became a political flash point.

Our analysis provides, to the best of our knowledge, the first causal estimates on the racial politicization of social programs. Using individual-level voting data, we find three key results:

• The introduction of the Food Stamp Program heightened racial polarization in voting behavior.
• This effect was strongest among individuals who were adults at the time of the rollout of the Food Stamp Program.
• The resulting political divide persists in voter registration patterns and electoral outcomes today, more than a half a century later.

How the Food Stamp Program Generated Decades-Long Political Polarization

When a government program is first implemented, voters are often uncertain about its long-term effects. This initial ambiguity provides political parties with an opportunity to shape public perception through strategic political moves, particularly in the early stages of a policy’s rollout. Politicians can change the narrative framing surrounding discussions about the program. Or they can steer political resources away from the program and bring into focus other politically polarizing issues. Or they can set agendas that cater to specific groups of voters in an effort to offset any political advantages the opposing party might be accruing from public discussion about the policy.

These are classic partisan political strategies, and we show in our research that political parties, recognizing the potential to consolidate their voter base, have incentives to selectively target different demographic groups with distinct messaging. Even when a policy itself does not explicitly favor one group over another, partisan political moves can amplify political divisions and solidify long-term realignments in voter preferences.

To implement our analysis, we used a comprehensive dataset covering the universe of US voters as of 2020. We then compared the voting behavior between individuals who were adults when the Food Stamp Program was introduced in their county and those who were younger at the time. This methodology, which incorporates a rich set of fixed effects and demographic controls, including age, race, and gender, ensures that our findings are not driven by geographic variation, cohort effects, or broader shifts in political attitudes between 1960 and 2020.

SNAP is often misunderstood or misrepresented, but at its core, it is a practical program that helps families meet basic nutritional needs.

The results reveal the lasting impact of the Food Stamp Program on partisan affiliations. White voters who lived through the Food Stamp rollout as adults were significantly more likely to be registered as Republicans—and less likely to be Democrats—in 2020, compared with White voters who were younger, especially those who were born in a world where the Food Stamp Program was already an established feature of US social programs.

In contrast, Black and Hispanic voters who lived through the Food Stamp rollout as adults were significantly more likely to be registered as Democrats or Independents than Black and Hispanic voters who were younger. Racial polarization in partisan affiliations is an order of magnitude larger than electorate-wide effects, underscoring the extent to which food assistance became a racialized political issue.

Further analysis of voting behavior conditional on party affiliation reveals additional layers of polarization. Exposure to the rollout of the program increased the likelihood of white Republicans turning out to vote while simultaneously boosting turnout among Black and Hispanic Democrats. This divergence suggests that the politicization of food assistance not only influenced party registration but also reinforced voting engagement along racial and ideological lines.

Moreover, when focusing on individuals who registered to vote before the age of 25—a group likely to be more politically engaged—we observe even stronger effects, highlighting the formative role of early political experiences in shaping long-term partisan identity.

Taken together, these findings illustrate how social policy can serve as a catalyst for enduring political realignments. The case of the Food Stamp Program suggests that initial framing and partisan efforts can have consequences that extend well beyond the policy itself, shaping voting behavior for generations.

The program’s name shift in 2008 to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and its catchy acronym SNAP was intended to partially address this polarization that had developed over many decades. Beyond reducing the stigma associated with “food stamps,” the rebranding sought to counter the racialized and partisan narratives that had taken root during the program’s early rollout by emphasizing nutrition, work, and temporary assistance. By reframing food assistance as a modern, employment-adjacent social support rather than a form of welfare, policymakers aimed to make the program more politically durable amid persistent partisan scrutiny—even as the underlying political divisions documented in our analysis continued to shape debates over the program’s scope and funding.

How to Bridge the Partisan Divide over the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program

As contemporary debates over social programs continue—not just about SNAP benefits but also in the context of the expansion of Medicaid in the Affordable Care Act of 2010 and the recent cuts to Medicaid in 2025—understanding the historical roots of this polarization is critical. The long-run political consequences of early policy framing should be a central consideration in both policymaking and electoral strategy. And the long-run economic fallout if partisan politics are successful in further diminishing social insurance programs could include substantial contractions in local economic activity as federal SNAP dollars are withdrawn from communities.

To make discussions about SNAP benefits less partisan, it is important that views about the program become decoupled from partisan politics. Yet separating the program from political narratives and stereotypes can be challenging. SNAP is often misunderstood or misrepresented, but at its core, it is a practical program that helps families meet basic nutritional needs.

By focusing on the facts and the program’s broad benefits, as documented in this issue brief, Americans can move past partisan divides and recognize the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for what it truly is—a bipartisan investment in food security, economic stability, and the well-being of US families.

This piece was first published by the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.

I haven’t seen it. I hope you don’t, either.

This, from one of the kinder reviews:

“Across some 104 minutes, the first lady delivers these blatantly scripted and meaningless narrations with all the conviction of someone who just woke up from a two-hour nap and can’t remember what day it is.”

Manohla Dargis of The New York Times sees a “glossy, curiously impersonal” portrait of a woman who “rarely drops her Sphinxlike deadpan.” Nick Hilton of The Independent calls the first lady a “scowling void of pure nothingness in this ghastly bit of propaganda.” Guardian critic Xan Brooks says it “doesn’t have a single redeeming quality” and compares it to a “medieval tribute to placate the greedy king on his throne.”

Not since The Washington Post music critic Paul Hume observed that Margaret Truman’s singing voice in Constitution Hall in 1950 was “flat a good deal of the time” has a performance by a member of a sitting president’s family generated such averse reviews.

Yet because the The Washington Post is now owned by the man who spent $75 million on the movie ($40 million to make it, $35 million to promote it), I somehow doubt The Post will crap on it. (At least Monica Hesse, in her review for The Post, had the honesty to confess that “if you suspect I have come here today to trash a movie about the wife of a notoriously thin-skinned, anti-journalist president, which was bankrolled by the company owned by the man who also pays my salary—NOT TODAY, SATAN. Do you think I’m a moron?”)

My purpose today is less to highlight this inane excuse for a film than to talk about its real excuse—allowing Jeff Bezos to give a big fat bribe to the president of the United States.

Why would Bezos bribe him? Please.

Bezos, one of the richest men in the world, owns Amazon and many other businesses that depend on the whims of the sociopath in the Oval Office. (Trump sold the idea of the documentary to Bezos when he dined at Mar-a-Lago in December 2024, just after the election, according to the The Wall Street Journal.)

Bezos’s Amazon Web Services has a $1 billion agreement with the General Services Administration for cloud services, which presumably Bezos would like renewed. His rocket company, Blue Origin, has over $2.3 billion in contracts from the U.S. Space Force.

Several of Bezos’s companies are subject to potential tariffs on goods from China. Amazon is under the cloud of a major antitrust lawsuit brought by the Federal Trade Commission (when the FTC was still independent—before it came under the putative control of the Oval Office). The trial is expected in 2027.

And so on.

Friends, when the history of this sordid period of America is written—assuming it’s not written by historians trying to curry favor with a future fascist regime—I hope the leaders of American business are condemned to the hellfire they deserve for helping destroy American democracy.

The outer ring of hell will be reserved for CEOs who stayed silent so as not to rile the narcissist-in-chief.

Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase will reside here because, notwithstanding his assumed role as spokesman for American business, Dimon has uttered no criticism of Trump other than to suggest, in the vaguest possible terms, that Trump’s attack on the Federal Reserve’s independence “is probably not a great idea.”

The middle ring will be reserved for business leaders who surrendered to Trump’s extortionist demands for personal payoffs.

The Ellisons, père Larry (the world’s third-richest person) et fils David, will be there, along with Shari Redstone and the board of Paramount, for paying Trump $16 million to settle his utterly baseless lawsuit against CBS.

Also in this middle ring will be Bob Iger, CEO of Disney (which owns ABC) and Debra OConnell, the president of ABC News Group and Disney Entertainment Networks, for giving Trump $15 million to settle his equally spurious lawsuit against ABC News.

In the inner ring, where hell fires burn especially hot, will be business leaders who went beyond acquiescing to Trump’s extortion and decided to pay him big fat bribes.

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, will have pride of place here, after spending a quarter of a billion dollars getting Trump elected.

Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, will get a spot here for lavishing on Trump a custom-designed glass plaque mounted on a 24-karat gold base.

We’ll also find here the CEOs who coughed up $300,000 each for Trump’s ballroom — including crypto magnates Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, oil tycoon Harold Hamm, Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman, and every Big Tech mogul.

But Jeff Bezos, with his $75 million bribe of Trump, will deserve a special place in the innermost ring of hell.

The $40 million he paid Melania Trump’s production company is at least $35 million more than the cost of typical high-end documentaries. (By way of comparison, Magnolia Pictures and CNN Films produced “RBG,” a documentary about the late Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, for around $1 million.)

Melania Trump pocketed more than 70 percent of that $40 million—or more than $28 million—the Journal reported.

The additional $35 million Bezos shelled out for marketing “Melania” is 10 times what other high-profile documentaries spend on marketing. The promotional budget for “RBG” was about $3 million. (To be sure, Melania Trump is no Ruth Bader Ginsburg, so I suppose you might argue that Melania needed a larger promo budget. But this much larger?)

All this, at a time when Bezos is slashing the newsroom at the Post—it’s heart and soul—in order to “economize.” Forget the inner ring. Bezos deserves to be at the center of the inferno.

The promo money apparently worked, at least in the U.S., where opening-weekend ticket sales for “Melania” totaled $7 million.

But let’s be realistic. A $35 million promotional budget will get people into theaters to see paint drying.

If all goes well—given that opening weekend is usually about 25 percent of total box office and that movie houses pocket half — Amazon could end up with about $14 million on its $75 million investment. A pittance.

Yet this was never a financial investment. It was an investment in kissing Trump’s derriere. As Ted Hope, who was instrumental in starting Amazon’s film division, wondered aloud to The New York Times: “How can it not be equated with currying favor or an outright bribe? How can that not be the case?”

Of course it’s an outright bribe.

If America still had a Department of Justice, Bezos would be indicted for bribery of a public official pursuant to 18 U.S. Code § 201, which criminalizes offering or giving anything of value to a public official with the intent to influence their official actions. Penalty: imprisonment for up to 15 years.

(Also note: The U.S. Constitution lists taking a bribe as an impeachable offense for a president.)

There’s a statute of limitations for criminal prosecution of such bribes: Prosecution must begin within five years of the deed.

So, my friends, if America gets a true Justice Department starting in January of 2029, Bezos’s inferno may become a reality.

The Trump administration’s latest threat to impose secondary tariffs on any nation selling oil to Cuba represents a dramatic and catastrophic tightening of the six-decade-long, deliberate chokehold the United States has maintained on Cuba’s access to essential resources. This act of collective punishment against the Cuban people, for alleged crimes the US government has scarcely attempted to substantiate, will be felt across every aspect of daily life.

According to Trump’s January 29 executive order, this latest escalation in economic warfare is framed as a response to the “unusual and extraordinary threat” the Cuban government allegedly poses to US national security. The order revives familiar Cold War language, including references to an obsolete Soviet-era listening station outside Havana, alongside sweeping allegations of harboring terrorism, fomenting regional instability, and engaging in hostile activity. While these all-too-familiar claims remain largely unfounded, debating the rhetoric is ultimately beside the point when the underlying policy objective is stated plainly by the Administration. “We would love to see the regime there [in Cuba] change,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week, dispelling whatever ambiguity might have remained.

Sanctions have been a blunt, heavy-handed, and ultimately unsuccessful weapon of US policy toward Cuba. As the State Department admitted in 1960, they were intended to “bring about hunger, desperation, and the overthrow of government.” Enforced unilaterally and extraterritorially, US sanctions restrict not only Cuba’s ability to import and export goods, but also the willingness and feasibility of third countries to engage in trade with the island nation. In practice, sanctions function as a blockade encompassing food, medicine, and life-saving medical equipment.

Cuba’s remaining energy access has rapidly unraveled amid the US government’s latest military escalation in the region. Following the US kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and the Trump administration’s effective seizure of Venezuela’s oil sector, President Trump declared on Truth Social that “there will be NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA—ZERO.”

While restrictions on oil are often portrayed through images of rolling blackouts and hours-long diesel lines, the full humanitarian and economic consequences are far more severe.

In the weeks since Venezuelan supplies were abruptly cut off, Mexico became Cuba’s last remaining external source of fuel. In 2025, Mexico had already surpassed Venezuela as Cuba’s main oil supplier, exporting roughly 12,300 barrels per day, or about 44 percent of the island’s crude imports. Following the imposition of the tariff, Trump has effectively cut off that lifeline. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has neither denied reports that shipments were halted amid fears of reprisals nor downplayed her government’s efforts to explore alternatives to support the island. Beneath the geopolitical headlines, Cubans already living with the cascading impacts of prolonged blackouts now face an acute energy crisis. Estimates suggest the country has no more than two weeks of oil reserves at current demand, making widespread power outages inevitable and pushing essential services to the brink of collapse.

The international community has long condemned the United States’ cruel and anachronistic policies toward Cuba. For more than 33 years, the United Nations General Assembly has overwhelmingly voted to call for an end to the US economic embargo. In November 2025, Alena Douhan, UN Special Rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures, likewise urged the US government to end sanctions and economic restrictions that isolate Cuba from international cooperation and financial systems, and instead to “settle disputes in accordance with the principles and norms of international law.” In the formal report, Douhan underscored the human toll on Cubans: shortages of fuel, electricity, water, food, medicine, and essential machinery, combined with the emigration of skilled workers, are inflicting “severe consequences for the enjoyment of human rights, including the rights to life, food, health, and development.”

While restrictions on oil are often portrayed through images of rolling blackouts and hours-long diesel lines, the full humanitarian and economic consequences are far more severe. Fuel powers irrigation pumps and farm machinery, electricity keeps processing plants and refrigeration running, and diesel moves food from fields to markets and ports. Energy and fuel shortages constrain farm-level production and disrupt processing, preservation, and distribution, delaying or reducing food availability and causing perishable goods to spoil. The result is serious losses for both markets and households. Reporting from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) underscores a global pattern, including in Cuba, where energy shortages directly trigger food insecurity, disrupting production, milling, and distribution networks.

Cuba’s limited access to foreign currency and global markets further compounds these pressures. Rising transport costs, canceled shipping contracts, and banking restrictions delay even UN technical assistance projects, including food aid. Diplomatic missions, humanitarian organizations, and individuals regularly report difficulties in sending essential goods—and face the risk of losing Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) status simply for working in Cuba. Cuban enterprises also struggle to pay for certifications or purchase goods from US companies, forcing longer and more expensive alternative routes. For example, the World Food Program has faced delays in procuring and shipping fortified foods to Cuba in recent years, in part because companies are unwilling to send shipments to Cuban ports. In another striking case, only 9 of 518 requests from the Cuban agricultural sector for tractors, motors, batteries, forklifts, and spare parts were approved in 2022, as foreign suppliers feared US retribution.

Since 2000, food and agricultural products have technically been exempt from the US trade embargo on Cuba—a concession often cited by officials to argue that sanctions do not target the Cuban population. In practice, however, this exemption is largely illusory. Under the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act, Cuba is prohibited from purchasing US food on credit; all transactions must be paid in cash and in advance, before shipment. For a country with chronic foreign exchange shortages and virtually no access to international credit, this is punitive. Additionally, because Cuba remains on US sanctions watch lists, foreign banks face legal and financial risk for facilitating transactions. The result is that Cuba has almost no access to trade credit, short-term financing, or conventional loans that most countries rely on to import food. Even when food is legally available, cash-only prepayment forces the government to divert scarce hard currency from other essential needs or to forgo imports entirely. This is not a neutral or humanitarian exception, but a structural barrier that both intensifies and contributes to Cuba’s domestic challenges, including limited access to credit for producers, volatile food prices, and inadequate infrastructure for distributing agricultural goods. Under Trump’s latest measure, many Cubans will struggle even more to secure even their most basic food needs—a crisis that has been building steadily over the past year.

The public health risks of these new restrictions are also grave. Cuba’s health care system is already under immense pressure from chronic energy shortages. Pharmaceutical plants struggle to operate, power outages threaten the spoilage of critical medications and vaccines, and despite government priority afforded to ambulances and mobile medical units, fuel shortages remain a consistent challenge. Hospitals have been forced to make impossible choices, prioritizing ICUs and operating rooms over general wards. Across the country, patients have gone without oxygen, dialysis treatments have been interrupted, and have been forced to rely on cellphone flashlights during prolonged blackout caused by a lack of oil for generators.

As early as the late 1990s, public health experts at the American Public Health Association warned that Cuba’s comparatively sophisticated and comprehensive healthcare system was “being systematically stripped of essential resources” due to US sanctions. Their year-long study concluded that the embargo had led to a significant rise in suffering, and even deaths, and placed severe strain on healthcare infrastructure by limiting access to electricity, oil, diesel, and gasoline.

Energy shortages also threaten Cubans’ access to water. Outages directly disrupt pumps that supply households in the capital, and without fuel and reliable transportation, emergency cistern deliveries are severely limited. Once more, US sanctions compound these shortages through long-standing restrictions on water treatment chemicals and spare parts for infrastructure, resulting in serious reductions in the availability of safe drinking water and elevated risks of waterborne diseases.

Ultimately, Trump’s latest tariff is not an abstract “coercive” policy—it is a deliberate attack designed to destabilize life for ordinary Cubans. It functions as a state-sanctioned mechanism of harm, forcing citizens to shoulder the costs of political pressure. While the Cuban government may try to adapt through rationing, subsidies, or resource reallocation, ordinary people are facing the life-altering consequences of scarcity and energy insecurity.

The Cuban government has responded with fierce condemnation. On January 30th, President Miguel Díaz-Canel wrote on social media that Trump’s action “exposes the fascist, criminal, and genocidal nature” of the administration, which has “hijacked the interests of the American people for purely personal gain.” Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez also denounced the measure, calling it part of a broader US strategy to dominate the hemisphere. He wrote, the US seeks to “submit them [the Americas’ to its dictates, deprive them of their resources, mutilate their sovereignty and deprive them of their independence,” and warned that “every day there is new evidence showing that the only threat to peace, security and stability in the region…is the one exerted by the US government against the peoples and nations of our America.”

In essence, the US is inciting chaos by restricting basic necessities of life—supposedly to stop the Cuban government from “incit[ing] chaos by spreading communist ideology across the region.” The policy is partly rooted in leftover Cold War ideology and geopolitical posturing, but largely appears to reflect personal vendetta and financial gain.

The consequences, regardless, are unmistakably humanitarian–and Trump himself seems unconcerned. “It doesn't have to be a humanitarian crisis,” he told reporters on Saturday, January 31, dressed in a tuxedo aboard Air Force One, adding, “I think, you know, we'll be kind.” The Cuban people bear the full brunt of that ‘kindness.’

Most Americans probably don't know that the US President has the absolute legal power to launch a potentially humanity-ending nuclear first strike against anyone anywhere at any moment without the permission or even advice of anyone at all--Not Congress, not military leaders, not his Cabinet, not anyone else.

An angry, impulsive or simply demented President could initiate the destruction of human life on earth with no legal constraints. If that doesn't worry you, it should.

We came close to nuclear war during the 1962 Cuban Missile crisis under President Kennedy. President Reagan's son Ron believes that the President suffered from dementia during the final year of his term. Many question whether President Biden was fully mentally competent during the last months of his term.

But Donald Trump's diminished mental state increases the danger he might impulsively order a civilization-ending nuclear strike all by himself. He appears to have moved from just being a narcissistic, power hungry, ignorant bully to having dementia. Could Trump get so angry at another world leader like the Prime Minister of Norway or Switzerland that he would order not just the annexation of Greenland or high tariffs on Swiss Chocolate but a nuclear strike? I don't know how likely that is, even for Trump, but it's no longer unthinkable.

The unilateral power for any President to launch a nuclear first strike must be legally curtailed and the power to remove a mentally disabled President from office must be strengthened. Neither Republicans nor Democrats should want one person alone to have to power to order the destruction of humanity.

Outlaw a Nuclear First Strike

Congress must pass a bill outlawing the first use of nuclear weapons. Sen. Ed Markey and Rep. Ted Lieu have introduced the "Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act" multiple times since 2017, most recently in January 2025 with 26 co-sponsors in the House and 7 in the Senate. The bill was referred to Committee, where so-far no discussion or hearings have been held.

A "No First Use" statute could be short and sweet:

"(a) It shall be the policy of the United States that nuclear weapons may only be used in direct retaliation for a nuclear attack against the United States or its allies. (b) The President shall not authorize, order, or direct the non-retaliatory use of nuclear weapons. (c) No member of the Armed Forces shall execute, implement, or otherwise carry out an order for such use."

This is something both parties should support. Whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, you should not want one person alone to launch a civilization-ending nuclear war.

Make the 25th Amendment Allowing the Removal of a Mentally or Physically Disabled President Practical

For most of American history, there was no Constitutional means to remove a mentally or physically disabled President other than the high bar of impeachment. Following President Kennedy's assassination, the 25th Amendment to the Constitution was enacted to set up a Constitutional procedure to transfer Presidential powers.

Under Section 4, the President may be removed and replaced by the Vice President if the President cannot perform his duties for any reason including mental incapacity such as cognitive or psychological impairment. If the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet send a written declaration to Congress that the President cannot discharge his duties, the Vice President immediately becomes Acting President. If the President disagrees in writing, the Cabinet and Vice President have 4 days to respond. If within 21 days 2/3 of both the Senate and House approves, the Vice President remains President. If not, the original President is restored to office.

But the 25th Amendment is badly flawed. Among other things, the Cabinet members have been appointed by the President and are unlikely to revoke his powers. And if they were to consider it, the President could simply fire them before they voted.

That's why the drafters of the 25th Amendment included an alternative mechanism: Congress may pass a law designating another body other than the Cabinet to determine the President's fitness for office

In 2020, to implement the intent of the 25th Amendment, the House passed "The Commission on Presidential Capacity to Discharge the Powers and Duties of Office Act" authored by Rep. Jamie Raskin. The bill did not target any specific President. It would have set up a 17-member bipartisan panel of physicians and former executive branch officers to evaluate the President's fitness for office. To prevent partisanship, half the members would be appointed by Republicans and half by Democrats. While it passed the House, the bill did not pass the Senate.

Under present circumstances, it's time to modernize and enact the bill. The republic should not have to improvise during a Presidential medical emergency or cognitive decline.

Conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat wrote several years ago that

"[From the perspective of the Republican leadership’s duty to their country, and indeed to the world that our imperium bestrides, leaving a man this witless and unmastered in an office with these powers and responsibilities is an act of gross negligence, which no objective on the near-term political horizon seems remotely significant enough to justify."

Regardless of your partisan leanings, it's time to act to limit the President's unilateral power to launch a nuclear first strike and to use the 25th Amendment to remove a mentally impaired President. In that event, J.D. Vance would become President, which shouldn't bother Republicans. And for Democrats, it would still be better than allowing a mentally declining Trump to remain in power, even if Vance's values are as reactionary as Trump's And even if it doesn't pass, it would put the issue of the President's mental health and the danger of a unilateral nuclear first strike front and center.

Outlawing the President's unilateral first nuclear strike right could even become one of the demands of contemplated general strike.

“How’s the Democratic Party’s ground game in Pennsylvania?” I asked a friend several weeks before the 2024 presidential election. He replied optimistically that there were far more door knockers this year than in 2022. It turned out these door knockers were just urging a vote for the Democrats without putting forth a compelling agenda attached to candidate commitments on issues that mean something to people where they live, work, and raise their families. There was no Democratic Party “Compact for the American People.” Biden visited Pennsylvania, which went Republican, many times, with his most memorable message being that he grew up in Scranton.

Once again, the vacuous, feeble Democratic Party is relying on the Republicans and the cruel, lawless dictator Trump to beat themselves to gain control of the Senate and the House.

Legendary reporter Seymour Hersh last week made the case for the Republicans taking themselves down, to wit: “I have been told by an insider that the internal polling numbers are not good …” and that “Anxiety in the White House that both the House and the Senate might fall to the Democrats is acute. Trump’s poll numbers are sliding …. The public lying of Cabinet members in defense of ICE has not helped the president or the party. Trump hasn’t delivered on the economy, except for the very rich, and he hasn’t made good on early promises to resolve the disastrous war between Russia and Ukraine.”

GOP operatives are assuming the Democrats will take back the House by a comfortable number and now think the Senate, where the GOP holds a three-seat majority. There are six seats in play. The GOP’s biggest fear is that their negatives continue to increase, propelled by a pile of unpopular Trumpian actions, ugly behavior, and corruption. The combination of all these things could create a critical mass and produce a landslide comparable to the Reagan-led victory in 1980. In this election, the Republicans defeated seemingly unbeatable Senate veterans like Senator Magnuson, Senator Nelson, and Senator Church, and gave the GOP control of the Senate.

Our Republic has been invaded by the Trumpsters, who are taking down its institutional pillars, its safety nets, and its rule of law. Our democracy is crumbling by the day.

So, what is the Democratic Party doing during this GOP slump? It is Déjà vu all over again. The Dems are furiously raising money from commercial special interests and relying on vacuous television and social media ads. They are not engaging people with enough personal events, and they are not returning calls or reaching out to their historical base – progressive labor and citizen leaders. Most importantly, they are not presenting voters with a COMPACT FOR AMERICAN WORKERS. Such a compact would spark voter excitement and attract significant media coverage.

Their aversion to building their own momentum to answer the basic questions “Whose side are you on?” and “What does the Democratic Party stand for?” remains as pathetic as it was in 2022 and 2024. Ken Martin, head of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), recently quashed a detailed report he commissioned about why the Democrats lost in 2024. He has refused to meet with leaders of progressive citizen organizations. We visited the DNC headquarters and could not even get anyone to take our materials on winning issues and tactics. We offered the compiled presentations of two dozen progressive civic leaders on how to landslide the GOP in 2022. This material is still relevant and offers a letter-perfect blueprint for how Democrats could win in 2026. (See winningamerica.net). (The DNC offices are like a mausoleum, except for visits by members of Congress entering to dial for dollars.)

Imagine a mere switch of 240,000 votes in three states (Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin) would have defeated Trump in 2024. That margin would have been easily accomplished had the Democratic Party supported the efforts of AFL-CIO and progressive union leaders who wanted the Dems to champion a “Compact for Workers” on Labor Day, with events throughout the country. (See letter sent to Liz Shuler, President of AFL-CIO, on August 27, 2024).

The compact would have emphasized: raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 per hour, benefiting 25 million workers and increasing Social Security benefits frozen for over 45 years, could have benefited over 60 million elderly, paid for by higher Social Security taxes on the wealthy classes. The compact would also include: a genuine child tax credit would help over 60 million children, cutting child poverty in half; repeal of Trump’s massive tax cuts for the super-rich and giant corporations (which would pay for thousands of public works groups in communities around the nation); and Full Medicare for All (which is far more efficient and life-saving than the corporate-controlled nightmare of gouges, inscrutable billing fraud, and arbitrary denial of benefits).

Droves of conservative and liberal voters would attend events showcasing winning politics, authentically presented, as envisioned for the grassroots Labor Day gatherings, suicidally blocked by the smug, siloed leaders of the Democratic Party in 2022 and 2024.

Clearly, this is a Party that thinks it can win on the agenda of Wall Street and the military/industrial complexes. (See Norman Solomon’s book The Blue Road to Trump Hell: How Corporate Democrats Paved the Way for Autocracy. It can be downloaded for free at BlueRoad.info.) The Democratic Party scapegoats the tiny Green Party for its losses again and again at the federal and state levels to the worst Republican Party in history – BY FAR.

It is fair to say that, with few exceptions, the Democratic Party apparatus is coasting, playing “it safe,” and expecting that the Trumpsters will deliver the Congress to it in November.

The exceptions are warning about this hazardous complacency, such as adopting James Carville’s ridiculous advice just to let the GOP self-destruct (though recently he also has urged a progressive economic agenda). There are progressive young Democrats challenging incumbent corporate Democrats in the House. They are not waiting for a turnover in the Party’s aging leadership. They believe the country can’t wait for such a transformation. Our Republic has been invaded by the Trumpsters, who are taking down its institutional pillars, its safety nets, and its rule of law. Our democracy is crumbling by the day.

As for the non-voters, disgusted with politics, just go vote for a raise, vote for health insurance, vote for a crackdown on corporate crooks seizing your consumer dollars and savings, and vote for taxing the rich. That’s what your vote should demand, and these are the issues that should be conveyed to the candidates campaigning in your communities.

Tell the candidates you want a shakeup, not a handshake. (See, the primer for victory, “Let’s Start the Revolution: Tools for Displacing the Corporate State and Building a Country that Works for the People” 2024).

Don Lemon, a high profile personality was arrested on orders from US Attorney Pam Bondi, accusing him of violating the Federal Civil Rights of worshippers. Lemon, an independent journalist followed protesters into a church on January 18 to cover the event. The Trump administration known for its vindictiveness and with no love for the outspoken Lemon, who has expressed outrage over the policies and racism of the administration, felt obliged to make him an example. We have witnessed how these political rogues in the White House don't hesitate to wield power in a punitive and targeted way. Also arrested were Trahern Jeen Crews, co-founder of Black Lives Matter in Minnesota, Jamael Lydell Lundy, and local independent journalist Georgia Fort—each with high profiles in their own right. There were many other protesters and independent journalists that were in the church.

Following the arrests, Pam Bondi posted a statement to social media that read: “At my direction, early this morning federal agents arrested Don Lemon, in connection with the coordinated attack on Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota.” One of the church’s pastors, David Easterwood, heads the local ICE field office and given the high tensions and the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti—coupled with the unrestrained hostilities and overwhelming presence of DHS and other so-called law enforcement agencies—was the reason this particular church was chosen.

Department of Justice Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said that her investigation of Lemon and others have to do with these people “desecrating a house of worship and interfering with Christian worshippers.” The post went on to state, “A house of worship is not a public forum for your protest! It is a space protected from exactly such acts by federal criminal and civil laws!”

This church is part of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), a conservative church movement that has its own history of racism, including its support of slavery, its stance against women in ministry, and homophobia. There was immediate outrage that a church’s worship service would be disrupted. Immediately the leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention recoiled.

The conservative church, often referred to as the white evangelical or charismatic church is one of the places that this right-wing "Make American Great Again" agenda garnered strength and energy to help Donald Trump and other MAGA adherents elected.

“I believe we must be resolute in two areas: encouraging our churches to provide compassionate pastoral care to these (migrant) families and standing firm for the sanctity of our houses of worship,” said the SBC's Trey Turner in a social media post. “No cause—political or otherwise—justifies the desecration of a sacred space or the intimidation and trauma inflicted on families gathered peacefully in the house of God,” stated Kevin Ezell, president of the North American Mission Board of the convention. He went on to argue that what "occurred was not protest; it was lawless harassment.”

I have served ministries in Chicago, Boston, and for 30 years in DC and am perplexed why churches would think that they are insulated from criticism from outside once they have made forays into the issues of the world? When churches intentionally enter into vital and important political discussions or take positions that affect the lives of people they have opened themselves to the critique and questions of those issues by the people affected by their positions.

This invites actions and disruptions that may manifest itself in worship. Disruptions to church services are not new. Civil Rights leader James Forman disrupted services at New York's Riverside Church in 1969 to demand $500 million in reparations from white churches. It was the Black Manifesto, an action aimed to force institutions to address their historical complicity in slavery. The protest led to increased discussions about religious accountability, with some institutions later adopting anti-poverty, and racism awareness initiatives.

Another example includes Stop the Church, a demonstration organized by members of AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP). In December 1989, that group disrupted Mass being led by Cardinal John O'Connor at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City. One-hundred and eleven protesters were arrested. The main objective of the demonstration was to protest O'Connor's opposition to the teaching of safe sex in the public school system, and his opposition to the distribution of condoms to curb the spread of AIDS. During the Free South Africa Movement there were numbers of church disruptions to press churches and denominations on divestment from South Arica. More recently worship services were confronted over the genocide in Gaza. Church disruptions are not new but bring urgency and concern evaluating the public policy positions of the church and at times pointing out the contradictions in the church and of the pastor.

The conservative church, often referred to as the white evangelical or charismatic church is one of the places that this right-wing "Make American Great Again" agenda garnered strength and energy to help Donald Trump and other MAGA adherents elected. It was from the conservative pulpits that pastors presented to their members that it was “God’s will” and that God took a flawed person like King David, known in the scriptures for adultery and murder, and like King David God anointed Trump even with all of his flaws. These statements or those of a similar bent were made behind many church doors to parishioners across the country. It was in these circles that people like Charles Kirk gained his notoriety and political influence among young white evangelicals with his brand of ridicule of “woke-ness,” DEI, Black people, and other people of color.

Behind worshipping doors across the country right-wing and predominantly white evangelical churches have impacted the society in fascist ways. The theology of these churches believe that God puts in place leadership. That leadership is appointed by God. But the reality is that divine leadership tends to be the assertion of those in positions to assert that point of view, dress it biblically, and asserted it as divine will. Those of us fighting bias and exclusion in the church observe how "God loves all the people that people in the church love, and hate all the people that people in the church hate!” That is hardly a divine equation. When Obama left the White House and Trump took office in his firs term, Paula White-Cain, a religious adviser to Trump wrote that Jesus had "finally returned" to the White House. This was a peculiar comment because the Obama's were deeply rooted in the church, and no one knew any church affiliation that Trump could claim.

Now I am not saying that people should indiscriminately target churches, but I am saying that churches when they enter the political fray to reshape the world and make politics for all the rest of us are open face the consequences of political discussions and critique whether in worship or not. In addition, Pastors and the positions that they theologically take to influence the secular world does not insulate them or protect them from criticism or accusations of hypocrisy.

There are pastors doing secular work, and that has been called “tent” ministry. These secular jobs supplement their church income. The pastor in St. Paul was involved in a “tent” ministry. A “tent” ministry is to have a secular position in addition to a church one. This raises another question of whether that secular job contradicts or compliments a person’s overall ministry. In the St. Paul ministry an important question emerged, the scriptures asks, ‘whether you can serve two masters,’ in this case ICE and the church. How can the church comfort and advocate for immigrants, which it claims it does, while arresting and deporting them? The protesters were calling out the contradiction.

Pam Bondi and others are interested in protecting their right-wing religious base and therefore are not interested in the history of church disruptions and advocacy. Churches are not exempt from the political or theological fray once they enter the public debate. Institutional churches should be held accountable as well as pastors who serve full-time or in ‘tent” ministries. What happened on January 18 in St. Paul, Minnesota is not beyond what is reasonable or appropriate. The pastor opened himself to the disruption and criticism. Instead of being outraged the pastor and others need to comprehend why they drew the anger of protesters who were spotlighting the lack of congruency in serving ICE and claiming to offer comfort to immigrants.

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•  After Democrats won a pair of special elections in surprise upsets, another bright spot for the party as they try to back the Senate: their candidates are raising a lot of money. Democrats have two weeks to squeeze concessions out of ICE—which has locked down its Texas gulag due to a measles outbreak—is it possible?

• Trump wants to build a 250-foot-tall memorial arch in DC to celebrate July 4th.

• Gulf Allies characterize Iran’s mid-range missiles as a deadly threat to the Middle East and US bases there. Turkey to host US-Iran negotiations.

• Google accused of violating its own ethics rules by handing over AI tech to Israel, which is using it to build its surveillance state. Meanwhile, Israel bans MSF from Gaza as Rafah crossing sort-of reopens.

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After ICE killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, right-wing defenders of the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation strategies blamed the victim for coming to a demonstration bearing a weapon. This is despite the state’s clear right to carry a gun openly, the Second Amendment, and the GOP’s longstanding arguments in defense of its own who did the same thing in the past.

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I don’t remember ever hearing federal officials so quickly, in unison, blame the victim as after the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis on January 7 by an agent of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. And as quick after the killing of Alex Pretti two weeks later on January 24 by agents of US Customs and Border Protection, or Border Patrol.

The Border Patrol before principally operated within 100 miles of the US border, hence its name. That changed with the so-called immigration enforcement by the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) under President Donald Trump. With the lines between ICE and Border Patrol blurred, when protesters shout “ICE Out,” they mean both.

Both killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti. That is, ICE’s transformation under the Trump administration led to their killing. A metamorphosis in which scapegoating is one motivating force to justify scaling up ICE and its deployment into the Twin Cities, tagged by DHS “Operation Metro Surge.” Victim blaming is one manifestation of the Trump administration’s overarching scapegoating propaganda machine.

German documentarian Neal McQueen reminds us of the poisonous functions of scapegoating in his comparison of the rise in Germany in the 1920s of the Nazi Party’s paramilitary force Sturmabteilung (often called “Brown Shirts”) and today’s ICE. “No moral equivalence is asserted,” he writes of his comparison. What he does do is highlight how both organizations, his words, “constructed their ideological purpose through scapegoating.”

Where was the mind of ICE and Border Patrol personnel shooting Alex Pretti and Renee Good? Was it the mindset of a paramilitary force in combat with those at odds with MAGA and its ideology?

Scapegoating is nothing new in the US. The Ku Klux Klan (“KKK”), one example, has been a paramilitary group supporting its purpose via scapegoating. As historian William Trollinger wrote, while “the original Klan concentrated its animus against the newly freed slaves and their Republican Party supporters,” the Klan growth in the 1920s relied upon an “expanded list of social scapegoats that included Catholics, Jews, and immigrants.”

But the KKK hasn’t been an armed force within the executive branch of the US government as is ICE. With ICE becoming more so with the ballooning funding and personnel expansion during President Trump’s second term.

President Trump has proven himself a master of using scapegoating to maintain and grow his political power, as Jess Bidgood at the New York Times chronicles. His targeting Somalis in the Twin Cities in Minnesota a latest example.

A video posted in December 2025 by a conservative YouTuber alleged fraud in some Somali-run childcare centers. Allegations refuted in follow-up investigation by the state. But damage done, as President Trump and his minions ramped up attributing fraud to all of Somali descent in Minneapolis-St. Paul, the majority American citizens.

What the video missed was actual fraud occurring during the Covid-19 pandemic. And the biggest fraudster then was the convicted white female founder of Feeding Our Future. That fraud involved providing a publicly-financed nutrition program with false counts and invoices of meals provided to children. Some of Somali descent participated in the fraud, but only around one-tenth of 1% of all Somalis in the Twin Cities.

Repeatedly we hear the focus of Trump’s immigration enforcement is deporting “the worst of the worst.” The word “worst” said referring to criminal and violent undocumented immigrants. But analysis at the Cato Institute indicates these are not the vast majority of immigrants being rounded up and deported. In practice, as America has witnessed in Minneapolis and elsewhere, “worst” means not being white.

Scapegoating is evident in the killing of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. In likely nurturing trigger-happy ICE and Border Patrol agents. And in blaming Ms. Good and Mr. Pretti.

Within two hours of Renee Good’s killing, the victim blaming started, as analysis by ABC News documents. A post on X by DHS stated Ms. Good “weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over” ICE agents “in an attempt to kill them—an act of domestic terrorism.” And President Trump joined in with his own post that day writing:

The woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer… it is hard to believe he is alive, but is now recovering in the hospital.

Vice President J.D. Vance also jumped in, blaming Ms. Good, as did DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. All the victim-blaming lies, revealed as such in the video analysis by New York Times, that by the Guardian, and others.

When the officer shot through Ms. Good’s open driver-side window, he clearly wasn’t run over. Instead, he was positioned with Ms. Good as a target he couldn’t miss. And after all the shots were fired, you can hear him say “fucking bitch.” He then walked away, casually as if leaving a session at a shooting range proud to have hit the bullseye.

Looking at the video of Ms. Good’s killing, I can’t help but think the ICE agent already knew he had immunity before Vice President Vance announced it later that day. Knew when he shot with his gun pointed through the window at Ms. Good’s head.

A private autopsy performed for Ms. Good’s family revealed she was shot three times; in the breast, forearm, and head. The wounds of the breast and forearm were deemed not immediately fatal. But the head wound was deemed more immediately so.

And why was Ms. Good’s killer taking video of her license plate. Probably because he and other agents were told to collect identifying information on protesters; protesters joining an enemy list with Somalis. And, as should be expected, as in all wars enemies get killed.

Victim blaming continued with the killing of Alex Pretti. Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino, held a news conference a few hours after this fatal shooting saying:

…an individual [Alex Pretti] approached US Border Patrol agents with a 9-millimeter semi-automatic handgun. The agents attempted to disarm the individual, but he violently resisted. Fearing for his life and the lives and safety of fellow officers, a border patrol agent fired defensive shots…This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.

And at her news conference the same day, DHS Secretary Noem’s victim blaming was identical word for word.

But video shows Alex Pretti did not brandish his legally-carried gun. Nor violently resist. With instead holding his hands up above his head, cell phone in one hand. What violence there was happened when Border Patrol agents threw him to the ground and held him down.

One agent appeared to step back with Mr. Pretti’s gun in his hand having removed it. Then gunfire heard. Not by one officer, but two. The first shots finding Mr. Pretti motionless lying face down. Then agents stepping back fired a rapid blast of more shots into Pretti’s still body, analysis indicating a total of 10 shots fired.

The preceding description is consistent with the moment-by-moment video analysis of Alex Pretti’s shooting by CNN. And, also, by ABC News and the New York Times. And with sworn testimonies of eye witnesses.

When I watched videos of Mr. Pretti’s killing, I couldn’t help but wonder how the agents felt when firing their rapid volley of bullets. Was it to them, as the scene intensely felt to me, like a moment of target practice as if at a shooting range?

Where was the mind of ICE and Border Patrol personnel shooting Alex Pretti and Renee Good? Was it the mindset of a paramilitary force in combat with those at odds with MAGA and its ideology? More that than of agents performing disciplined immigration enforcement?

Rep Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) seems to wonder that himself in his letter on January 12 to Attorney General Pamela Bondi and DHS Secretary Kristi Noems, writing:

DHS seems to be courting pardoned January 6th insurrectionists. It uses white nationalist “dog whistles” in its recruitment campaign for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents that appear aimed at stirring members of extremist militias… which participated in the insurrection… ICE agents conceal their identities, wearing masks and removing names from their uniforms. Who is hiding behind these masks? How many of them were among the violent rioters who attacked the Capitol on January 6th and were convicted of their offenses [but Trump pardoned]?

Aside from recruitment messages already winking to extremists, Washington Post reported on future ICE recruitment plans (also discussed on Democracy Now) to reach attendees at, for instance, gun shows and NASCAR races among other venues.

After the killing of Mr. Pretti, the killing of Ms. Good not sufficient alone, President Trump said he was “de-escalating” the surge of ICE and Border Patrol agents into Minnesota “a little bit,” replacing Commander Greg Bovino with Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan.

Then again, an ICE agent also told an observer in Minnesota just days after Alex Pretti was killed, “You raise your voice, I will erase your voice.”

Fat is now phat, at least according to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

When President Donald Trump’s Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary unveiled new federal dietary guidelines this January, he declared: “We are ending the war on saturated fats.” Seconding Kennedy was Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary, who promised that children and schools will no longer need to “tiptoe” around fat.

Kennedy’s exaltation of fat comes complete with a new upside-down guidelines pyramid where a thick cut of steak and a wedge of cheese share top billing with fruit and vegetables. This prime placement of a prime cut is the strongest endorsement for consuming red meat since the government first issued dietary guidelines in 1980.

The endorsement reverses decades of advisories, which the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and HHS jointly issue every five years, to limit red meat consumption issued under both Democratic and Republican administrations given the strong evidence that eating less of it lowers the risk of cardiovascular disease. Multiple studies over the last decade have linked red and processed meats not only to cardiovascular disease, but also to colon polyps, colorectal cancer, diabetes, diverticulosis, pneumonia, and even premature death.

Given the scientific evidence, we should intensify the war against saturated fats, not call it off.

The new dietary guidelines even contradict those issued under the first Trump administration just five years ago, warning Americans not to eat too much saturated fat. “There is little room,” those guidelines stated, “to include additional saturated fat in a healthy dietary pattern.” A significant percentage of saturated fat comes from red meat. Americans, who account for only 4% of the people on the planet, consume 21% of the world’s beef.

Kennedy’s fatmania even extends to beef tallow and butter, which the new pyramid identifies—along with olive oil—as “healthy fats” for cooking. In fact, beef tallow is 50% saturated fat. Butter is nearly 70%. Olive oil, meanwhile, is just 14% saturated fat and is, indeed, healthy.

This rendering of recommended fats muddles a message that could have been stunningly refreshing, given the Trump administration’s penchant for meddling with science. Some of the new pyramid’s recommendations were applauded by mainstream health advocacy groups, particularly one advising Americans to consume no more than 10 grams of added sugar per meal and others, as Kennedy pointed out, calling for people to “prioritize whole, nutrient-dense foods—protein, dairy, vegetables, fruits, healthy fats, and whole grains—and dramatically reduce highly processed foods.”

But such wholesomeness could easily be wasted if Americans increase their meat consumption. That would not, as Kennedy professes, make America healthy again. Given the scientific evidence, we should intensify the war against saturated fats, not call it off.

Saturated Fats Are Poison

The 420-page report by the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee prepared in 2024 for the USDA and HHS found that more than 80% of Americans consume more than the recommended daily limit of saturated fat, which is about 20 grams—10% of a 2,000 calorie-per-day diet. The report concluded that replacing butter with plant-based oils and spreads higher in unsaturated fat is associated with lower cardiovascular disease risk and eating plant-based foods instead of meat is “associated with favorable cardiovascular outcomes.”

A March 2025 peer-reviewed study in JAMA Internal Medicine came to a similar conclusion. It found that eating more butter was associated with a higher risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer. Using plant-based oils instead of butter, the researcher found, was associated with a 17% lower risk of death. Such a reduction in mortality, according to study co-author Dr. Daniel Wang, means “a substantial number of deaths from cancer or from other chronic diseases … could be prevented” by replacing butter with such plant-based oils as soybean or olive oil.

What does a “substantial” number of deaths look like? Heart disease is the No. 1 killer in the United States, and heart disease and stroke kill more people than all cancers and accidents combined. The annual number of American deaths tied to cardiovascular disease is creeping toward the million mark. According to the American Heart Association (AHA), it killed more than 940,000 people in 2022.

Over the next 25 years, AHA projects that the incidence of high blood pressure among adults will increase from 50% today to 61%, obesity rates will jump from 43% to 60% and diabetes will afflict nearly 27% of Americans compared to 16% today. Reducing mortality by 17% for those and other related health problems would go a long way to make Americans healthier.

Highly Processed Food Is a Killer, Too

A good place to begin reducing food-related mortality is by cutting highly processed foods out of the American diet. That would require a drastic change in eating habits for a lot of people. A July 2022 study found that nearly 60% of calories in the average American diet comes from ultra-processed foods, which have been linked to cancer, cardiovascular disease, depression, diabetes, and obesity.

One of the main culprits is fast food. A January 2025 study of the six most popular fast-food chains in the country—Chick-fil-A, Domino’s Pizza, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Subway and Taco Bell—found that 85% of their menu items were ultra-processed. And, according to a 2018 study, more than a third of US adults dine at a fast-food chain on any given day, including nearly half of those aged 20 to 39.

The new federal dietary guidelines reverse decades of advisories that recommended limiting red meat consumption. (Illustration: HHS/USDA)

Our overreliance on fast food presents a huge conundrum. US food systems are structured in a way that it is unlikely you can tell people to cut processed foods and eat more meat at the same time. Hamburgers and processed deli meat are among the main ways Americans consume red meat. And given the blizzard of TV ads for junk food and fast-food joints, which have proliferated across the country and especially in low-income food deserts—it is also unlikely that many people will use the new guidelines to comb through their local grocer’s meat department for the leanest (and often most expensive) cut of beef.

According to the University of Connecticut’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Health, food, beverage, and restaurant companies spend $14 billion a year on advertising in the United States. More than 80% of those ad buys are for fast food, sugary drinks, candy, and unhealthy snacks. That $14 billion is also 10 times more than the $1.4 billion fiscal year 2024 budget for chronic disease and health promotion at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And don’t expect the CDC to get into an arms race with junk food advertisers any time soon. Kennedy slashed the CDC staff by more than 25%, from 13,500 to below 10,000.

All of this adds up to the probability that Americans will see the new guidelines’ recommendation to eat red meat as a green light to gorge on even more burgers and other fast-food, ultra-processed meat.

Meat and Dairy Interests Weigh In

The new guidelines’ green light for consuming red meat and saturated fats is particularly vexing given the guidelines produced five years ago during Trump’s first term did not promote them. Why the about-face?

During the run-up to Trump’s second term, the agribusiness industry went into overdrive to install Trump in the White House and more Republicans in Congress. In 2016, agribusinesses gave Trump $4.6 million for his campaign, nearly double what it gave Hillary Clinton. But in 2024, they gave Trump $24.2 million, five times what it gave Kamala Harris. Agribusinesses also donated $1 million to Kennedy’s failed 2024 campaign, making him the fourth-biggest recipient among all presidential candidates during that election cycle.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is nowhere near making America healthy again by declaring in his new food pyramid that red meat is as healthy as broccoli, tomatoes, and beans.

Despite claiming he wanted dietary guidelines “free from ideological bias, institutional conflicts, or predetermined conclusions,” Kennedy rejected the recommendations of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee and turned over the nation’s dietary data to 9 review authors, at least 6 of whom had financial ties to the beef, dairy, infant-formula, or weight-loss industry.

Three of them have received either research grant funding, honoraria, or consulting fees from the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, which is known for funding dubious research downplaying or dismissing independent scientific findings that show read meat to be threat to public health and the environment. In 2024, the trade group gave nearly all of its $1.1 million in campaign contributions to Republican committees and candidates.

Kim Brackett, an Idaho rancher and vice president of the beef industry trade group, hailed the new guidelines, claiming “it is easy to incorporate beef into a balanced, heart-healthy diet.”

Perhaps, but the grim reality is most Americans do not follow a balanced, heart-healthy diet. Four out of five of us are already consuming more than the recommended daily limit of saturated fat and we are well on our way to a 60% obesity rate.

So, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is nowhere near making America healthy again by declaring in his new food pyramid that red meat is as healthy as broccoli, tomatoes, and beans. Beholden to Big Beef, he is driving us full speed ahead on the road to a collective heart attack.

This article first appeared at the Money Trail blog and is reposted here at Common Dreams with permission.

I learned one of my most valuable lessons about US power in my first year as a Brown University doctoral student. It was in anthropology professor Catherine Lutz’s seminar on empire and social movements. I’d sum up what I remember something like this: Americans consume one hell of a lot—cars, clothes, food, toys, expensive private colleges (ahem…), and that’s just to start. Since other countries like China, the United Kingdom, and Japan purchase substantial chunks of US consumer debt, they have a vested interest in our economic stability. So, even though you and I probably feel less than empowered as we scramble to make mortgage, car, or credit-card payments, the fact that we collectively owe a bunch of money globally makes it less likely that a country like China will want to rock the boat—and that includes literally rocking the boat (as with a torpedo).

In classes like that one at Brown, I came to understand that the military power we get from owing money is self-reinforcing. It helps keep our interest rates low and, in turn, our own military can buy more supplies (especially if President Donald Trump’s latest demand for a $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget goes through!). Our own debt somewhat ironically allows this country to continue to expand its reach, if not around the globe these days, at least in this hemisphere (whether you’re thinking about Venezuela or Greenland). Often when I splurge on a fancy Starbucks latte or a new pair of shoes, I think about how even critics of US military hegemony like me help prop up our empire when we do what Americans do best—shop!

To put this crudely, we consume far beyond our means because our military keeps enough of us feeling secure, and we have such a large military because we consume far beyond our means.

American Trash and the Politics of Consumption

And boy, can we shop! As of August 2025, US consumer debt ballooned to nearly $18 trillion and then continued to rise through the end of last year.

Here’s one consequence of our consumptive habits: We Americans throw a lot of stuff out. Per capita, we each generate an average of close to two tons of solid waste annually, if you include industrial and construction waste (closer to one ton if you don’t). Mind you, on average, that’s roughly three times what most other countries consume and throw out—much more than people even in countries with comparable per capita wealth.

Reminders of our waste are everywhere. Even in my state, Maryland, which funnels significant tax dollars into environmental conservation, you can see plastic bags and bottles tangled in the grass at the roadside, while the air in my wealthy county’s capital city often smells like car exhaust or the dirty rainwater that collects at the bottom of your trash can. Schoolchildren like mine bring home weekly piles of one-sided worksheets, PTA event flyers, plastic prizes, and holiday party favors. Even the rich soil of our rural neighborhood contains layers of trash from centuries of agricultural, household, and military activity, all of which remind me of the ecological footprint we’re leaving to our children and grandchildren.

Not all of us create or live with garbage to the same degree.

To our credit, some of us try to be mindful of that. In recent years, three different public debates about how to fuel our consumptive habits (and where to put the byproducts) have taken place in my region. Residents continue to argue about where to dispose of the hundreds of thousands of tons of our county’s waste (much of it uneaten food) that’s currently incinerated near the scenic farmland where I live. Do we let it stay here, where it pollutes the land and water, not to mention the air, and disturbs our pastoral views? Or do we haul at least some of the residual ash to neighboring counties and states, to areas that tend to be poor majority-minority ones? While some local advocacy groups oppose the exporting (so to speak) of our trash, it continues to happen.

A related dispute has taken place in an adjacent county that’s somewhat less wealthy but also majority white. That debate centers on the appropriate restrictions on a data center to be built there that will store information we access on the internet and that’s expected to span thousands of acres. How far away need it be from residents’ homes and farms? Will people be forced to sell their land to build it?

While many of our concerns are understandable—I’m not ready to move so that we can have a data center nearby—it turns out that some worries animating such discussions are (to put it kindly) aesthetic in nature. Recently, a neighbor I’d never met called me to try to enlist our family in a debate about whether some newcomers, a rare Indian-American family around here, could construct a set of solar panels in a field along a main road, where feed crops like alfalfa can usually be seen blooming in the springtime.

My neighbor’s concern: that the new family wanted to use those fields for solar panels to supply clean energy to their community (stated with emphasis, which I presumed to denote the Asian-Americans who would assumedly visit them for celebrations and holidays). Heaven forbid! She worried that the panels would disrupt the views of passersby like us and injure a habitat for the bald eagle—ironic concerns given how much of a mess so many of us have already made renovating our outbuildings, raising our dogs and chicken flocks, and chopping down trees that get in the way of our homes or social gatherings.

Many such concerns are raised sincerely by people who care deeply about land and community. However, the fact that, to some, solar panels are less desirable than the kinds of crops that look nice or feed our desire for more red meat should reframe the debate about whose version of consumption (and garbage) should be acceptable at all.

Indeed, not all of us create or live with garbage to the same degree. Compared to white populations, Black populations are 100% more likely and communities of Asian descent 200% more likely to live within 6 miles of a US Superfund site (among America’s most polluted places). Such proximity is, in turn, linked to higher rates of cancer, asthma, and birth defects.

Nor do whites suffer such impacts in the same ways. According to an analysis by the Environmental Protection Agency—and let’s appreciate such an analysis while we still have access to it, since the Trump administration’s EPA just decided to stop tracking the human impact of pollution—Black Americans live with approximately 56% more pollution that they generate, Hispanic Americans experience 63% more than what they create, and—ready for this?—white Americans are exposed to 17% less than they make.

Military Contamination

Our military, far from being just another enabler of unequal consumption and suffering, contributes mightily to the waste we live with. In the US, hundreds of military bases are contaminated by so-called forever chemicals, such as PFAS, in the drinking water and the soil. We’re talking about chemicals associated with cancer, heart conditions, birth defects, and other chronic health problems. The civilian populations surrounding such bases are often low-income and disproportionately people of color. Of course, also disproportionately impacted are the military families and veterans who live and work around such bases, and tend to have inadequate healthcare to address such issues.

An example would be the Naval Submarine Base in New London, where my family spent a significant amount of time. Encompassing more than 700 acres along the Thames River, that base was designated a Superfund site in 1990 due to contamination from unsanctioned landfills, chemical storage, and waste burial, all of which put heavy metals, pesticides, and other toxic substances into the environment.

Rather than bore you with more statistics, let me share how it feels to stand on its grounds. Picture a wide, deep river, slate gray and flanked by deciduous trees. On the bank opposite the base, multifamily housing and the occasional restaurant have been wrought from what were once factories. After you pass the guard station, a museum to your left shows off all manner of missiles, torpedoes, and other weaponry, along with displays depicting the living spaces of sailors inside submarines, with bunks decorated with the occasional photo of scantily clad White women (presumably meant to boost troop morale).

To your right, there are brick barracks, office buildings, takeout restaurants, even a bowling alley, and submarines, their rounded turrets poking out of the water. Along roadways leading through the base, old torpedoes are painted in bright colors like children’s furniture and repurposed as monuments to America’s military might. The air smells like asphalt and metal. Signs of life are everywhere, from the seagulls that swoop down to catch fish to the sailors and their families you see moving about in cars. It’s hard to comprehend that I’m also standing on what reporters have called “a minefield of pollution… a dumping ground for whatever [the base] needed to dispose of: sulfuric acid, torpedo fuel, waste oil, and incinerator ash.”

Empire of Waste

When I say that our military produces a lot of garbage, I don’t just mean in this country. I also include what it does abroad and the countries like Israel that we patronize and arm. Last summer, I corresponded with anthropologist Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins, who spent more than a year documenting the human casualties and costs of what the Israeli military and other Israelis have done in Israeli-occupied Palestine. That includes the mass dumping of garbage there from Israeli territories and the barricading of Palestinian communities from waste disposal sites, all of which have led to environmental contamination.

I think progressives would do well to consider how important it is that our signs, our social media posts, our political speeches, and even our patterns of consumption send a message—that many are welcome here, skin color, pronouns, and even specific brands of left-wing ideology be damned.

For example, Stamatopoulou-Robbins visited the 5,000-person Palestinian village of Shuqba, surrounded by open land on all sides and controlled by the Israeli government. Nearby cities and settlements dump waste, including X-ray images, household appliances, broken electronics like cell phones, industrial waste, wrecked vehicles, and car parts right in its neighborhood. One young man told Stamatopoulou-Robbins that he and his wife couldn’t have a baby because of the toxic environment. Many others, he told her, experienced the same problem, along with higher-than-average rates of cancer and respiratory and skin problems. His story, Stamatopoulou-Robbins wrote me, was one of many similar tales in Shuqba, tales that multiplied across the West Bank, where Israeli settlements and trucks from Israel, as she put it, “regularly dump their wastes in proximity to Palestinian residential areas and farmland.”

Her research drives home how we experience pollution all too often depends on who we are. I’m a case in point. My family and I pride ourselves on being the first to inhabit our sprawling rural property since the family whose ancestors built a home on it in 1890 and passed it down to two subsequent generations. In 2020, when we initially came to look at it, we couldn’t afford the asking price. However, the older couple who, in the end, sold it to us wanted a family in the house who would raise children there as they had. As they put it flatteringly, we were a “salt-of-the-earth” family (and the feeling was mutual).

Trash and Belonging

Nowadays, the news abounds with references to who is a “real” American, and who belongs beyond our borders. References to purity and contamination apply not just to our growing piles of waste but to human beings, too. Consider candidate Donald Trump’s promise, at a 2023 campaign rally, to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country,” or his claim that Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and other Somali immigrants are nothing less than—yes—“garbage.”

And it’s true that what (or who) we consider garbage, and what (or who) we tolerate in our field of vision matters. My family recently renovated an old cabin behind our house to serve as an office for me to see my psychotherapy patients in person. The idea was that the veterans and military families who come to me for help with trauma, many of whom themselves are lower-income people of color, would have a peaceful place to process it.

As we demolished an outer wall to add a bathroom to my new office, something fell out of that wall: an old paper advertisement for black licorice candy (“Licorice Bites”) that depicted a Black baby, eyes wide in the stereotypical fashion of Jim Crow Era ads, trying to crawl away from an alligator, its mouth gaping open. Good thing, I thought, that it hadn’t fallen out of that drywall when a patient of mine was there. The experience, while fleeting, reminded me of writer Ta-Nehisi Coates’s point that Americans so easily minimize foreign genocides because we’ve done such a striking job of burying (in the case of my house, literally!) the atrocities of slavery, the segregated world that followed it, and their role in our country’s expansion.

Whoever put it there, that ad in my cabin wall—just like local gossip about that Indian-American family—is a reminder of who belongs and who doesn’t in this country. Like an Egyptian pyramid filled with a pharaoh’s possessions, remnants of American lives remind us of how some of us are kept sick, intimidated, and belittled, while feeding the appetites of others.

In the meantime, I think progressives would do well to consider how important it is that our signs, our social media posts, our political speeches, and even our patterns of consumption send a message — that many are welcome here, skin color, pronouns, and even specific brands of left-wing ideology be damned. Who is “of this earth” is questionable at best.

We should also ask why pictures denigrating Black people and half-naked women, and monuments to weaponry, so excite the patriotic souls of enough Americans that it’s easy to find them throughout our land. We cannot continue to allow the other side’s exclusionary ideals to dominate today’s political messaging.

The real estate industry doesn’t want you to know an important fact about rent control: Since World War I, rent regulations have protected poor and middle- and working-class tenants against skyrocketing rents and predatory landlords. Rent control, in other words, has long been a part of the American way.

Soon after World War I, elected officials understood that they needed to protect tenants against sky-high rents due to a worsening housing shortage. Fair rent committees, with an emphasis on “fair,” were set up in 153 cities in the United States, and those committees routinely reached out to landlords to stop unreasonable rent hikes. In Washington D.C. and Denver, rent commissions determined fair rents, and, in New York, state legislators passed emergency laws to control sky-high rising rents.

Politicians knew that they couldn’t allow the status quo of unfair rents to continue, and they knew that they had the power to do something about it. So they stepped in to help hard-working Americans.

During World War II, politicians again did the right thing and expanded rent control. The federal government established rent control for around 80 percent of rental housing in the U.S. in response to housing shortages and rent gouging. When that federal program was phased out, some states, such as New York and New Jersey, established their own rent control policies in the early 1950s.

If there was ever time for politicians to protect tenants, now is that time, and the situation is dire.

Throughout this period, elected officials understood that tenants needed stable, affordable housing that would not force renters to choose between eating or paying the rent or paying medical bills or paying the rent. Americans’ well-being was at stake.

Fast forward to the early 1970s. With worsening inflation, rents spiked. President Richard Nixon pushed for temporary rent controls, and that was followed by American cities passing rent regulations, including Berkeley, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

Unfortunately, in the 1980s and 1990s, the deep-pocketed real estate industry pushed back, aggressively lobbying state legislatures across the country to pass rent control bans or restrictions. Landlords and lobbyists went against the American way of looking out for people.

Today, more than 35 states have laws that stop the expansion of rent control while the real estate industry’s profits, through unfair, excessive rents, go through the roof. Between 2010 and 2019, renters paid a staggering $4.5 trillion to landlords in the U.S, according to Zillow.

Recently, Big Tech and Big Real Estate teamed up to charge wildly inflated rents through a rent-fixing software program by RealPage, which brought about numerous lawsuits and investigations. The software allowed corporate landlords to collude and charge outrageous rents that harmed Americans throughout the nation.

If there was ever time for politicians to protect tenants, now is that time, and the situation is dire. Eviction Lab, the prestigious research institute at Princeton University, found that increasingly unaffordable rents are linked to higher mortality rates. And a wide-ranging study on homelessness by the University of California San Francisco revealed that people ended up living on the streets because of sky-high rents. An urgent way to address these life-threatening problems is to utilize rent control—an American tradition since World War I.

But activists believe that rent control isn’t the only tool to fix the housing affordability and homelessness crises. There needs to be a multi-pronged approach called the “3 Ps”: protect tenants through rent control and other renter protections; preserve existing affordable housing, not demolish it to make way for unaffordable luxury housing; and produce new affordable and homeless housing.

Taking care of each other is a part of the American way. Politicians doing the right thing on the behalf of vulnerable tenants is also a part of the American way. Today’s elected officials must continue that work, especially since tenants throughout the country are facing serious risks of death and homelessness. They must immediately utilize rent regulations and the 3 Ps.

The first year of this Trump administration has dealt significant blows to the advancement of clean energy and efforts to lower energy prices. The federal government has cut clean energy funding, repeatedly disrupted construction on in-progress wind energy projects, and shut down energy affordability programs. For workers on solar and wind energy projects, there’s been no shortage of bad news.

And yet, there’s also been undeniable progress. In the absence of federal leadership, state and local governments have picked up the slack, and labor unions have taken action.

To see what I mean, just take a closer look at my home state of Maine. In 2025, we had one of the most successful legislative sessions for climate and workers in our history. We passed landmark bills that expanded the state’s ability to build new clean energy projects and committed the state to achieve 100% clean electricity by 2040. Strong labor standards throughout this legislation help ensure every clean energy project we build in Maine creates high-quality, family-sustaining jobs while protecting ratepayers from rising costs. Policies like this are how we can insulate ourselves from harmful federal actions and continue to deliver real benefits. Other states could take note.

Across the country, energy demand is rising for the first time in decades, and we’re not building enough new energy to keep up. This supply and demand imbalance is pushing energy bills to unaffordable prices for working families, who are already struggling to stay afloat. At the same time, we’re experiencing the impacts of climate change with more and more frequency—extreme cold and devastating storms in the winter; scorching heatwaves, wildfires, and smog in the summer.

If we want climate policy to be popular and durable, it needs to do more than reduce emissions. It needs to materially deliver for working people.

This moment of high costs, worsening climate impacts, and a lack of good-wage jobs requires us to build more clean energy, urgently. We simply cannot bring down energy prices without more energy. Labor unions understand this, and we understand that clean energy will and is already creating thousands of job opportunities.

That’s why we so ardently fight for strong climate legislation in our state. It’s why our members were some of the first to speak up against federal cuts to clean energy tax credits. And throughout it all, we’re still building solar panels, installing heat pumps, erecting wind turbines, and upgrading building efficiency—work that makes our communities cleaner and safer.

Labor’s work for climate action will continue on, both in Maine and across the country. If we want climate policy to be popular and durable, it needs to do more than reduce emissions. It needs to materially deliver for working people—with good jobs, higher wages, and lower bills. It’s both possible and necessary to do all of this at once.

This year in Maine, we’re working to push the envelope even further to win bold, worker-led climate policy while driving down costs for ratepayers.

For example, we are advancing legislation that would streamline permitting of utility-scale clean energy projects built in Maine with high-road labor standards, accelerating the pace by which Maine brings clean energy online that is cheaper and lowering our exposure to global energy price volatility through greater energy independence.

The onus has certainly shifted to states to lead on climate and affordability; it’s not coming from the federal level. But that hasn’t deterred us in Maine, and it shouldn’t deter the rest of the country either. Even in red states like Texas, our brothers and sisters in labor have pushed for and won local climate progress.

Labor is proud to be advocating for and building clean power that provides affordable energy and good jobs for our communities. With working people at the table, we can drive meaningful climate action and pocketbook benefits for working people—all at once.

Let us not be afraid or resigned in this moment. Maine is proof that we can still create union jobs, lower costs, and build domestic clean energy, but only if we keep fighting for it.

And here I am, an American, staring at the border again... and slowly coming to realize the paradox of it. Borders don’t actually exist. They’re invisible lies. They’re also virtually everywhere.

Consider the border Alex Pretti crossed on January 24, on a street in Minneapolis, as he stepped between some US Border Patrol agents and the woman they had just pushed down. He crossed the border that separates ordinary people from the federal Proud Boys (or whoever they are), the masked invaders who were occupying the city to enforce The Law. Pretti interfered with them! He dared to try to protect the fallen woman, who herself had just crossed the same border. In so doing, they both went from being ordinary citizens to “domestic terrorists.”

“Yet our greatest threat isn’t the outsiders among us, but those among us who never look within.”

The words are those of poet Amanda Gorman, who wrote a poem honoring Alex Pretti after the agents shot him, almost 10 times. Another killing! Oh my God! Another cut to the American soul—a cut, by the way, that comes with complete immunity, according to Team Trump. They’re waging civil war against those who cross the border that separates right from wrong. “Fear not those without papers,” Borman’s poem continues, “but those without conscience.”

Oh, let us evolve toward a trans-border world! This is the core of the American civil war that is now, seemingly, getting underway.

You know what? As terrifying as the idea of a new civil war sounds, I prefer it to something worse: a great national shrug and acquiescence to the Trump agenda. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), as so many people have pointed out, is acting like the Trump Gestapo, as his administration rids sacred (white) America of the brown-skinned other, who may or may not be immigrants. What matters is that they’re different from “real” Americans. Right?

Regarding the whole concept of the border: It seems so real and viable until you start questioning it, which includes looking into its history.

As Elisa Wong and Raymond Wei write:

The way we think of borders today, as firm boundaries that are violently enforced, is a relatively new thing, and we would argue it doesn’t serve humanity’s best interests. While ‘strong borders’ are often argued as a necessity for our security, we think they limit humanity’s potential as a global community.

In ancient times, rivers, oceans, and mountains marked the boundaries of territory... As humans began building kingdoms and empires, more walls began to form, thus more firmly delineating borders.

And in Medieval times, from around 1000 to 1700 AD, European kingdoms started engaging with each other in a state of unending warfare, violently squabbling over the limits of their territory. And plunk! Global borders were created, and whole contents started getting divided almost randomly into European territorial possessions.

“At the Berlin Conference in 1884,” Wong and Wei write, “European leaders met to carve up Africa for themselves, which split local tribes across arbitrary lines and laid the groundwork for ethnic conflicts that still rage today’”

Oh, let us evolve toward a trans-border world! This is the core of the American civil war that is now, seemingly, getting underway. This is why protesters are flooding the streets in Minneapolis and across the country. This is why they’re enduring pepper spray and tear gas and flash bang grenades. This is why some people are being killed. But the rational—effective—response to violent aggression is not counterviolence.

“Anger and hatred are natural in response to such atrocities,” David Cortright writes, “but it is essential to avoid causing physical harm, to maintain a nonviolent intention and commitment despite increasing government provocation. A major outburst of protester violence would be disastrous, diverting attention from the message of support for victimized communities. That’s exactly what the White House is hoping for—to cover up ICE abuses, reinforce their lies about violent protesters, and justify additional domestic militarization.”

And he quotes—who else?—Martin Luther King: “Hatred multiples hate. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Violence multiplies violence.”

Yeah, that’s the world as we know it: endless war. But America’s new civil war must not—will not—go that way. “Loving ICE” doesn’t mean accepting their actions or their purpose, but rather, challenging it head on, courageously and nonviolently. What we choose to love fully and unconditionally is Planet Earth itself—a planet without borders—and all who live within it. Yes, that includes ICE agents. It includes Donald Trump. But loving them also means standing up to them—and handing them their conscience.

The recent firing of Greg Bovino, the face of Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis, was clearly intended to serve as a pressure-release valve for a city at its breaking point. For weeks, we have watched federal agents transform our neighborhoods into a theater of intimidation, characterized by warrantless stops, the brutalization of peaceful protestors, and the killings of two constitutional observers, captured on video and now seen by the majority of Americans.

By replacing Bovino with Border Czar Tom Homan, the administration likely hopes to signal a new direction or a cooling of tensions. But no one should be fooled. Firing a commander is an empty act of appeasement when the machinery of the operation itself remains fully fueled and operational. Bovino’s departure changes nothing about ICE’s lawless behavior on the ground. If anything, the situation has become more volatile.

The timing of this leadership shuffle is particularly cynical when viewed alongside the latest developments in the federal judiciary. On Monday night, the Eighth Circuit granted the Department of Justice (DOJ) a full stay on the injunction previously secured by Judge Katherine Menendez. That injunction was the only thin line of defense protecting protesters from ICE violence and retaliation. With that stay in place, federal agents have been handed a blank check to target activists and constitutional observers in ways that Menendez had previously found unconstitutional.

Operation Metro Surge was never about public safety in the way most Minnesotans understand it. It is a display of federal power, designed to bypass local oversight and treat our state as an occupied zone because the current administration doesn’t like our social welfare policies. Bovino was a symptom of this strategy, not its sole architect.

Minneapolis does not need a new commander, it needs Operation Metro Surge to end.

The tactics of intimidation, unmarked vehicles, lack of clear identification, and the racial profiling of community members is baked into the Operation Metro Surge’s DNA. Changing a public-facing figure while maintaining the underlying tactics only creates a more dangerous environment. It allows the operation to continue under a veil of "reform" while ICE’s mandate continues to broaden, and the reality on the street remains one of fear and violence.

I believe we are now entering the most dangerous phase of ICE’s enforcement operations in Minnesota. The combination of a leadership changeup and a legal victory for the DOJ has created a perfect storm. History shows us that when law enforcement agencies feel vindicated by the courts and pressured by optics, they do not retreat, they push forward, and citizen vigilantes come to their defense.

The attack on Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) on Tuesday was primed by years of dehumanizing rhetoric against her, prompted by ICE’s illegal actions in Minneapolis, and executed by a lone-wolf reactionary in an attempt to silence calls for abolition. When the administration labels “disrespect” as a capital offense, and has pushed the rule of law to its breaking point, we should not be surprised when citizens take it in their hands to “enforce” the new law.

Minneapolis does not need a new commander, it needs Operation Metro Surge to end. The replacement of Bovino is a tactical retreat, a cosmetic change meant to buy time. If we accept Homan’s takeover as "progress," we are consenting to the continued erosion of our civil liberties and political culture. A leadership shakeup doesn’t change anything; it’s just a convenient news cycle that the Trump administration would prefer for us to focus on. Don’t give them your attention. Keep watching the streets of Minneapolis and the actions of our federal courts.

“How’s the Democratic Party’s ground game in Pennsylvania?” I asked a friend several weeks before the 2024 presidential election. He replied optimistically that there were far more door knockers this year than in 2022.

It turned out these door knockers were just urging a vote for the Democrats without putting forth a compelling agenda attached to candidate commitments on issues that mean something to people where they live, work, and raise their families. There was no Democratic Party “Compact for the American People.” Then-President Joe Biden visited Pennsylvania, which went Republican, many times, with his most memorable message being that he grew up in Scranton.

Once again, the vacuous, feeble Democratic Party is relying on the Republicans and the cruel, lawless dictator Donald Trump to beat themselves to gain control of the Senate and the House.

Legendary reporter Seymour Hersh on Thursday made the case for the Republicans taking themselves down, to wit: “I have been told by an insider that the internal polling numbers are not good …” and that “anxiety in the White House that both the House and the Senate might fall to the Democrats is acute. Trump’s poll numbers are sliding… The public lying of cabinet members in defense of ICE has not helped the president or the party. Trump hasn’t delivered on the economy, except for the very rich, and he hasn’t made good on early promises to resolve the disastrous war between Russia and Ukraine.”

Their aversion to building their own momentum to answer the basic questions “Whose side are you on?” and “What does the Democratic Party stand for?” remains as pathetic as it was in 2022 and 2024.

GOP operatives are assuming the Democrats will take back the House by a comfortable number and now think the Senate, where the GOP holds a three-seat majority. There are six seats in play. The GOP’s biggest fear is that their negatives continue to increase, propelled by a pile of unpopular Trumpian actions, ugly behavior, and corruption. The combination of all these things could create a critical mass and produce a landslide comparable to the Reagan-led victory in 1980. In this election, the Republicans defeated seemingly unbeatable Senate veterans like Sen. Warren Magnuson (D-Wash.), Sen. Gayord Nelson (D-Wis.), and Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho), and gave the GOP control of the Senate.

So, what is the Democratic Party doing during this GOP slump? It is Déjà vu all over again. The Dems are furiously raising money from commercial special interests and relying on vacuous television and social media ads. They are not engaging people with enough personal events, and they are not returning calls or reaching out to their historical base—progressive labor and citizen leaders. Most importantly, they are not presenting voters with a COMPACT FOR AMERICAN WORKERS. Such a compact would spark voter excitement and attract significant media coverage.

Their aversion to building their own momentum to answer the basic questions “Whose side are you on?” and “What does the Democratic Party stand for?” remains as pathetic as it was in 2022 and 2024. Ken Martin, head of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), recently quashed a detailed report he commissioned about why the Democrats lost in 2024. He has refused to meet with leaders of progressive citizen organizations. We visited the DNC headquarters and could not even get anyone to take our materials on winning issues and tactics. We offered the compiled presentations of two dozen progressive civic leaders on how to landslide the GOP in 2022. This material is still relevant and offers a letter-perfect blueprint for how Democrats could win in 2026. (See winningamerica.net). (The DNC offices are like a mausoleum, except for visits by members of Congress entering to dial for dollars.)

Imagine a mere switch of 240,000 votes in three states (Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin) would have defeated Trump in 2024. That margin would have been easily accomplished had the Democratic Party supported the efforts of AFL-CIO and progressive union leaders who wanted the Dems to champion a “Compact for Workers” on Labor Day, with events throughout the country. (See letter sent to Liz Shuler, President of AFL-CIO, on August 27, 2024).

The compact would have emphasized: raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 per hour, benefiting 25 million workers, and increasing Social Security benefits frozen for over 45 years, which could have benefited over 60 million elderly, paid for by higher Social Security taxes on the wealthy classes. The compact would also include: a genuine child tax credit that would help over 60 million children, cutting child poverty in half; repeal of Trump’s massive tax cuts for the super rich and giant corporations (which would pay for thousands of public works groups in communities around the nation); and Full Medicare for All (which is far more efficient and lifesaving than the corporate-controlled nightmare of gouges, inscrutable billing fraud, and arbitrary denial of benefits).

Droves of conservative and liberal voters would attend events showcasing winning politics, authentically presented, as envisioned for the grassroots Labor Day gatherings, suicidally blocked by the smug, siloed leaders of the Democratic Party in 2022 and 2024.

Clearly, this is a party that thinks it can win on the agenda of Wall Street and the military-industrial complexes. (See Norman Solomon’s book The Blue Road to Trump Hell: How Corporate Democrats Paved the Way for Autocracy. It can be downloaded for free at BlueRoad.info.) The Democratic Party scapegoats the tiny Green Party for its losses again and again at the federal and state levels to the worst Republican Party in history—BY FAR.

It is fair to say that, with few exceptions, the Democratic Party apparatus is coasting, playing “it safe,” and expecting that the Trumpsters will deliver the Congress to it in November.

The exceptions are warning about this hazardous complacency, such as adopting James Carville’s ridiculous advice just to let the GOP self-destruct (though recently he also has urged a progressive economic agenda). There are progressive young Democrats challenging incumbent corporate Democrats in the House. They are not waiting for a turnover in the party’s aging leadership. They believe the country can’t wait for such a transformation. Our Republic has been invaded by the Trumpsters, who are taking down its institutional pillars, its safety nets, and its rule of law. Our democracy is crumbling by the day.

As for the nonvoters, disgusted with politics, just go vote for a raise, vote for health insurance, vote for a crackdown on corporate crooks seizing your consumer dollars and savings, and vote for taxing the rich. That’s what your vote should demand, and these are the issues that should be conveyed to the candidates campaigning in your communities.

Tell the candidates you want a shakeup, not a handshake. (See, the primer for victory, “Let’s Start the Revolution: Tools for Displacing the Corporate State and Building a Country that Works for the People” 2024).