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Editorial cartoonist Ted Rall and political analyst Jamarl Thomas deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM EST.

Today we discuss:

• So, there IS more “Mr. Nice Guy.” Trump blinked again by extending the ceasefire with Iran. His critics are mocking another TACO Tuesday. But the derision is better than risking more Iranian and US lives by doubling down to preserve his tough-guy persona. Inside Iran, though, Trump’s threats of military escalation lack credibility. The challenge for diplomats, from Pakistan and elsewhere, will be to find a way for Trump to claim some kind of win.

• Leaked documents reveal details of a secret Saudi Arabia–Pakistan Mutual Defense Pact, now that Pakistan is playing a key role mediating the US-Israel-Iran War. We dig into this entanglement with journalist Murtaza Hussain, who broke this story for DropSite News. Hussain is a journalist specializing in national security and foreign policy. A former Intercept reporter now at Drop Site News, he offers commentary on U.S. interventions, human rights, and global affairs. He appears regularly on CNN, BBC, and MSNBC.

• Trump asks Congress to increase the Defense budget by 42% (2/3 over Biden’s last one), to $1.5 trillion. Trump is seeking a 10% cut in discretionary domestic spending, chopping medical research, job training, home heating assistance, environmental protection and disaster relief after hurricanes. At a private Easter luncheon, Trump said: “We’re fighting wars,” he said. “It’s not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare.” Will Trump get his way?

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Like all parents, I want the best for my children and my family. But sometimes policymakers make that more difficult.

My family is among the millions hurt by the federal government's cuts to essential services and healthcare. Due to laws passed by congressional Republicans, my children and I have lost our healthcare.

At the same time, we’ve been criminalized by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), even though members of my family are US citizens and we are law-abiding. We’ve learned that doesn’t matter—especially if your skin is brown and you speak a language other than English.

We live in the nation’s capital, Washington, DC. Our city has a critical, locally funded assistance program called DC HealthCare Alliance. Both of our children have autism, and they’ve been receiving necessary care through the Health Services for Children with Special Needs (HSCSN) program.

We all need to be united as human beings—no matter where we were born or what language we speak. Human rights, not cruel partisan politics, are our common thread.

These programs are vital for their care—since I have to stay home with them, we count on my husband’s modest income to make ends meet. I also have an eye disease, and coverage through the DC Healthcare Alliance is essential for my glasses and treatment.

But due to the cuts in the GOP’s so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” and Congress’ drastic cuts to DC’s annual budget, I received a letter stating that my autistic children’s access to 24/7 emergency care has been cut, among other restrictions. I also received notification that I am no longer eligible for medical assistance from the Health Alliance.

This is warfare on our livelihoods. And for what?

We simply want what all families want—love, safety, health, and opportunities for our kids. Yet my taxpayer dollars—and yours—are being taken away from support for families and communities and put straight into the pockets of billionaires and ICE. Those masked ICE agents then prowl our schools, hospitals, and churches; break into our cars and homes without a judicial warrant; and use our small children as bait to abduct us.

The US hides the truth about how countries in Latin America become destabilized. Throughout the 1980s, the US government aided state terrorists in killing our people and installing thugs beholden to corporate interests instead of the well-being of their people. Yet now we see the same thing here in a country where many of us sought refuge.

I have not stood by while all these harms are being done to my family and neighbors—I’ve become a community leader. With the training from organizations like Spaces in Action and Popular Democracy, I host fundraisers to help house, feed, and clothe families who are too scared to leave their homes to work. We make homegoods to raise money to keep our children healthy.

We all need to be united as human beings—no matter where we were born or what language we speak. Human rights, not cruel partisan politics, are our common thread.

As the administration and their allies in Congress demand yet more money for ICE, my community stands with the courageous people of Minneapolis and all others who’ve stood up for the neighbors in the face of these cruel attacks. We stand with the families of Renee Good, Alex Pretti, and all the innocents who have suffered and died at the hands of ICE.

Join us in calling for not a penny more to ICE, or billionaires, or illegal wars. Instead, invest our taxpayer dollars in our families, communities, and common humanity.

On March 25, the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a historic resolution marking an extraordinary step forward for global racial justice. Spearheaded by Ghana and co-sponsored by more than 65 countries largely from Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America, a declaration designating slavery as the gravest crime against humanity passed the General Assembly. Through this, the majority of the world aligned on one key message: The enslavement of millions of Africans and their descendants for over 400 years is the gravest crime against humanity, we are still dealing with the consequences, and there must be reparatory justice to address the lingering impacts.

In a shameful moment for Americans and the world, the Trump administration voted against this resolution on behalf of the United States—only 1 of 3 countries to do so. This decision comes just months after the US withdrew from the UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent, falsely claiming it was “racist.” These two actions show that the Trump administration’s anti-Blackness is not limited to its domestic policy—it’s on full display on the global stage, too.

The history bears repeating: The slave trade ignited 400 years of racialized chattel slavery, representing the longest running system of organized human exploitation in history. This period marked the first time in human history when race defined the global political, economic, and social hierarchy. The United States was a driver in creating and perpetuating this unprecedented form of slavery. Across the globe, countries mimicked the United States’ policies to deprive an entire race of its humanity. The centuries-long system impacted millions upon millions of people of African descent, and even after this inhumane system of trafficking, selling, and enslaving human beings was abolished, its legacy continues to be felt today.

The resolution spearheaded by Ghana represents the worldwide atonement for chattel slavery that continues to have immeasurable consequences on the world. Because it is not legally binding, the only rationale for a country like the US to vote against it is that its leaders believe in erasing our world's greatest atrocity. It signals to the international community that the United States refuses to recognize the ugly parts of our past and how it impacts current realities.

The Trump administration’s actions to undermine forums at the UN designed to promote the rights and equality of people of African descent will be a stain on our nation’s history.

In his opposition to the resolution, the US representative characterized it as a scheme for developing (read: African) countries to gain leverage for the future allocation of resources. Additionally, he accused the resolution of being an attempt to establish a hierarchy of crimes against humanity (note: This was the same justification that the UK, Canada, and EU countries cited as explanation for their abstentions). Yet, this narrow-minded mischaracterization fails to recognize that the transatlantic slave trade and racialized slavery comprised all crimes against humanity: trafficking, forced labor, sexual assault, disease, famine, and the dehumanization of an entire race.

And yet, this is not the only instance of the Trump administration displaying its anti-Blackness on the world stage. When the administration made the decision in January 2026 to withdraw from the UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent (PFPAD) because it was “contrary to the interests of the United States,” it was saying the quiet part out loud: This administration does not care about or represent the interests of Black Americans.

The UN PFPAD was created in 2021 as a space for people of African descent to discuss ways to improve the quality of life and livelihoods of people of African descent and share recommendations with member states. Its mandate includes promoting “the full political, economic, and social inclusion of people of African descent in societies in which they live as equal citizens without discrimination of any kind” and “ensuring equal enjoyment of all human rights.” The forum’s annual meeting represents the largest UN gathering of Black civil society from around the world. Its fifth session just concluded in Geneva, Switzerland, where the US government’s absence was noticed, but overshadowed by the energy and momentum behind Ghana’s historic resolution.

Civil society from around the world noted the fact that the world’s “superpower” was 1 of 3 countries to vote against the resolution, but the sheer number and diversity of Black American civil society leaders present at the forum made it clear that this shameful vote does not reflect our unwavering commitment to and solidarity in the global struggle for reparatory justice.

The United States’ actions are not just a betrayal of the rest of the world; they are the latest examples of the Trump administration's betrayal of its own people—and in particular, of the 45 million Americans who are of African descent. This is why the video message from Congressional Black Caucus Chair Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY) in the PFPAD closing ceremony was so important: When the federal government fails to represent our interests or even be present in rooms where our issues are being discussed, Black civil society and congressional leaders have always stepped up to fill the void.

The Trump administration’s actions to undermine forums at the UN designed to promote the rights and equality of people of African descent will be a stain on our nation’s history. The administration is telling us loud and clear that it does not view ensuring Black people’s equal human rights as a priority. So, while this administration falsely claims that “President Trump has done more for Black Americans than any other president,” we must remember the words of our great James Baldwin, “I cannot believe what you say because I see what you do.”

Fifty-seven years ago, Earth Day changed American politics. On April 22, 1970, 20 million American, about 10% of the entire US population, took to the streets, campuses, and town squares in a single day to demand action after 150 years of uncontrolled industrial pollution. The demonstrations were so large and bipartisan that Washington responded almost immediately, probably out of fear but also respect for the intensity and size of the demonstrations. Within just a few years, President Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency and Congress passed 20 landmark laws including the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Endangered Species Act. Americans and their environment enjoyed that nonpartisan honeymoon for over a decade.

Again in the early 1990s, cooperation between Democrats and Republicans produced significant environmental progress, including the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, which addressed acid rain, smog, and toxics, and the Pollution Prevention Act of 1990, which stopped pollutants at their source. Were they costly? Initially to the polluters yes, but the health and safety results, estimated to be close to $2 trillion in health-cost savings, have been stunning. And eventually industry investment in clean technologies led to efficiency, profits, and innovation. These laws and others demonstrated that bipartisan cooperation could deliver both environmental and economic results.

What is often forgotten today is how broad that political coalition once was. Environmental protection was not a partisan cause. Republicans and Democrats almost competed to be seen as environmental champions. Conservative lawmakers voted for pollution limits, and no wonder: 75% of Americans supported increased government spending to reduce air and water pollution, and large majorities said they were willing to pay higher costs for clean air and water.

For a time, that public pressure worked.

When citizens demonstrate that protecting the planet matters—to their communities, their votes, and their future—leaders respond.

But the momentum that first Earth Day created has slowed and increasingly reversed. Why? One major turning point came in 2010, when the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision allowed corporations and outside groups to spend unlimited money in elections. In the years since, political spending by all groups has surged but particularly by polluting industries, which outspent health and environmental groups 20 to 1. According to Climate Power, the fossil fuel industry spent $450 million during the 2024 election cycle.

In the past year, 425 environmental and health and safety laws and regulations have been rolled back or crippled, many of which, including all climate change related policies and laws, were promised during the election. The quid pro quo for donations was pretty straightforward—denial that climate change exists or is harmful.

Citizens United opened the spigot for anti-environmental spending, and what is coming out of those spigots is hurting our children, our health, and American innovation and economic leadership.

The influence of that spending has helped transform environmental policy from a bipartisan priority into one of the most polarized issues in Washington. In the years before the ruling, bipartisan climate legislation was still possible. In the years after Citizens United, cooperation largely collapsed. The result has been legislative gridlock at precisely the moment scientists and many economists say immediate action will both reduce or even solve the climate crisis and keep America from losing its place in the impossible to stop green economy.

Ironically, this reversal of environmental policy has occurred even as public concern has remained high. Surveys consistently show that large majorities of Americans believe climate change is real and more than 70% of Americans support stronger measures to address climate change. This disconnect between public concern and political action is the defining challenge of this Earth Day and the environmental movement itself.

That is why the theme of this year’s Earth Day, Our Power, Our Planet, is more than a slogan. It is a reminder of a fundamental truth that shaped the first Earth Day: Political power ultimately flows from citizens—real people—to Congress and the White House.

The environmental breakthroughs of the 1970s and 1990s did not happen because leaders suddenly discovered science. They happened because millions of people made environmental protection politically unavoidable. Citizens marched, organized, voted, and demanded action. They made it clear that protecting the planet was not optional. Today, that same civic power and engagement is needed again.

If governments believe environmental protection is a low priority for voters, progress will stall. If they believe the public is divided or disengaged, short-term political pressure and massive corporate dollars will always win. But when citizens demonstrate that protecting the planet matters—to their communities, their votes, and their future—leaders respond.

That is the real meaning of Our Power, Our Planet. The environmental movement has already shown what collective action can achieve. The question now is whether we are prepared to use that power again. Because the progress of the past half-century was never guaranteed; without sustained public engagement, it could easily erode.

Earth Day was never meant to be a celebration. It was designed as a demonstration of public will. Fifty-seven years later, the challenge is the same: to show governments, once again, that the power to protect our planet ultimately belongs to the people.

This piece was distributed by American Forum.

Once again, the US government is issuing a highly dubious sales pitch to American voters about why they should risk life and treasure overseas.

The post Trust Trump appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The Left is extreme, the Right is extreme. In the middle lies truth and reason.

None of this is true—but it is taken for granted, even by many of those on the Left and the Right. The Left is right about some things, as is the Right, and centrists are frequently, perhaps usually, proven wrong. But moderates control news and entertainment media and thus the narrative. In their telling, which even those of us who don’t believe when we stop to think about it, buy into because we are soaking, nay, drowning in their framing, the range of normal/sane/calm political debate lies in the middle. All else is kookery.

So we are told.

We have so poisoned our planet that a third of all species alive today will be extinct by 2100. We are the poorest developed country. Most people can’t afford healthcare. These are radical problems. They don’t call for a compromise, or splitting the difference, or good-enough solutions. Radical problems call for radical solutions. Oncologists don’t prescribe half chemo.

Radical left environmentalists deserve center stage in any discussion about pollution and ecocide for the simple reasons that they alone understand that the issue is enormously important, the crisis is grave, and anything less than a comprehensive global solution that totally transforms capitalism has a chance of addressing it. They are so sidelined from corporate media that they receive less of a fair hearing in the news than white supremacists.

Centrism is a political leaning. In the U.S., moderates are typically liberal technocrats or center-right pre-Trump Republicans. They have biases and prejudices and they succumb to shibboleths and bigotries. Yet the mainstream media labels centrists/moderates as “objective” or neutral—i.e., they don’t notice those biases because they agree with them. (This is analogous to how Fox News and other Murdoch-owned right-wing media outlets characterize mainline Democrats as “far left.”) Centrist or technocratic talking heads from thinktanks like the Brookings Institution are often identified solely by their professional credentials rather than their political stance.

I listen to a lot of NPR. So many writers from The Atlantic magazine appear as guests on the network that it’s jarring. It’s almost as if there are no journalists working anywhere else. So, while researching this piece, I looked into whether there was a formal partnership between the two organizations. It turns out that there is one with PBS, the staid analysis round-up “Washington Week with The Atlantic” TV show, and there is predictable cross-pollination between NPR and PBS, but no formal deal.

The Atlantic leans center-left—by American standards, which is what we’re discussing here. These days, it cultivates that ideological positioning with domestic news and analysis that reliably criticizes Republican positions. Flying under the radar are foreign policy positions that echo neo-conservative and unreconstructed Cold Warrior views so far right that Trump is to their left on some issues. Because The Atlantic is “moderate,” and adheres to baseline grammatical and editorial standards, its writers go on NPR every day to express opinions that are right-wing by any objective standard but are not only not labeled as such, they are not identified at all.

Say hello to the secret “neutral” right-wing extremists.

Anne Applebaum of The Atlantic espouses a set of retrograde views of the world that place her firmly in the camp of Bush-era neoconservatives like Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz. She hates Russia, hates socialism and communism, favors NATO expansion into the former Soviet space, rarely criticizes U.S. actions overseas, supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and pushes for more weapons to Ukraine.

My biggest problem with neoconservatives is not that they’re warmongers. It’s that they’re always wrong. Invading Iraq was never going to set off democratic dominos across the Middle East, there were no WMDs, Ukraine was not a democracy and has become a dictatorship, the people of Iran are in no position to overthrow their government. Left, right, or middle, political analysts should be good at prognosticating.

Like her fellow neoconservative and bestie William Kristol, Applebaum can almost always be counted upon for a right-wing foreign policy take that turns out to have been mistaken. Because she’s at The Atlantic, however, she’s identified as an anodyne “historian and journalist.” Her agenda—an extreme one at that, one espoused by only a tiny minority of voters—is concealed from NPR’s bourgeois audience. She’s entitled to her opinions. And readers are entitled to be informed about the fact that she’s opinionated.

Even when centrism is truly centrism, centrism is not neutral. Nor, when 63% of the electorate self-identifies as liberal or conservative, is centrism normal. It is high time to stop conflating moderation with neutrality.

(Ted Rall, the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of “Never Mind the Democrats. Here’s What’s Left.” Subscribe: tedrall.Substack.com. He is co-host of the podcast “DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas.”)

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When he declared war on Iran in violation of international law and the US Constitution, President Donald Trump announced several objectives. He claims to have won the war, but Iran is emerging as the long-term victor.

Let’s count the ways.

“Regime Change”

No one doubted the capacity of the US armed forces to decimate Iran’s far inferior military force. But to what end?

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convinced Trump that launching the attack would prompt a popular uprising that would lead to the overthrow of Iran’s theocracy. Listening to Netanyahu’s assertion, CIA Director John Ratcliffe called it “farcical.” Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Marco Rubio translated that word into language Trump would understand, “In other words, it’s bullshit.”

Trump’s bluster isn’t working with Iranian leaders. His threats to commit war crimes dominate news cycles, but they merely reveal to Iran Trump’s desperation to extricate himself from the mess he created.

Trump chose to believe Netanyahu. Announcing the US-Israeli assault, Trump told Iranians that this was their opportunity to reclaim their country. To win the war on Trump’s terms, the Iranian theocracy needed only to survive.

The attack killed the Supreme Leader of Iran and top members of the government. But immediately, the serpent grew another head—the Supreme Leader’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, who had lost his wife and teenage son in the bombing. The new leader is known for deep, long-standing ties to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) security establishment. His appointment signaled a transition to a more heavily militarized, hard-line, and anti-Western regime.

Trump calls this “regime change.” By his definition, Admiral Karl Dönitz succeeding Adolf Hitler as head of the German state near the end of World War II constituted regime change too.

The Iran theocracy survived in an even more militant form.

Score: Iran 1, Trump 0

“Contain Iran”

Trump boasted that the war would restrain Iran’s ability to project power:

“We are systematically dismantling the regime’s ability to threaten America or project power outside of their borders,” he said.

Trump then described the destruction of Iran’s navy, air force, missile facilities, and defense industrial base. Those were tactical successes, but the war itself has been a strategic failure.

Iran’s response included attacks on neighboring countries. Even more troubling, it discovered and deployed a powerful new weapon: blocking the Strait of Hormuz. Notwithstanding its decimated navy, Iran now has a choke hold on the global economy.

Netanyahu had assured Trump that the regime would be so weakened from the US-Israeli assault that it would be unable to block the waterway through which one-fifth of the world’s oil flowed. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine flagged the enormous difficulty of securing the strait and the risks of Iran blocking it. But Trump dismissed that possibility on the assumption that the regime would capitulate before that could happen.

With the price of oil skyrocketing, Trump has created a new problem for the entire world and powerful leverage for Iran.

Score: Iran 2, Trump 0

“No Nuclear Weapons”

In his June 2025 attack on Iran, Trump claimed to have “obliterated” its nuclear facilities. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth went further, saying that not only were the facilities obliterated, but so too were Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Subsequently, Trump took repeated victory laps over the mission:

• “It knocked out their entire potential nuclear capacity.” (July 16)
• “It’s been obliterated.” (July 31)
• “We obliterated… the future nuclear capability of Iran.” (August 18)
• “But I also obliterated Iran’s nuclear hopes, by totally annihilating their enriched uranium.” (September 20)
• “Well, they don’t have a nuclear program. It was obliterated.” (October 13)
• “…completely obliterated Iran’s nuclear capability.” (November 11)
• “It was called Iran and its nuclear capability, and we obliterated that very quickly and strongly and powerfully.” (November 19)
• “We obliterated their nuclear capability.” (December 11)
• “We knocked out the Iran nuclear threat, and it was obliterated.” (January 8)
• “…obliterated Iran’s nuclear enrichment capability.” (January 20)
• “…achieving total obliteration of the Iran nuclear potential capability—totally obliterated.” (February 13)

In defending the launch of the war on February 28, 2026, Trump acknowledged that Iran’s nuclear program had not been obliterated after all. Rather, the country was now “right at the doorstep” of having a nuclear bomb. Trump has no strategy for solving that problem either.

Trump’s tactics—bombing—won’t work. Knowledgeable experts believe that a key Iranian nuclear facility is Pickaxe Mountain, where some of its uranium may be stored. That facility is so far below the ground that even America’s 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs can’t reach its inner chamber.

Trump talks about “going in” and taking the nuclear material out. But a ground operation to retrieve the material or destroy the facility would entail tremendous risk to those attempting it while providing, at best, an uncertain outcome.

The threat of a nuclear Iran remains.

Score: Iran 3, Trump 0

False Declarations of Victory That Backfire

Trump’s bluster isn’t working with Iranian leaders. His threats to commit war crimes dominate news cycles, but they merely reveal to Iran Trump’s desperation to extricate himself from the mess he created. As a negotiating strategy, it’s counterproductive.

Trump’s persistent boasts about tactical victories against Iran’ s military ignore the fundamental strategic fact that Trump has lost the Iran war. If a deal emerges from discussions between Iran’s experienced negotiators and Trump’s collection of amateurs, America and the world will pay a big price for a long time.

As a candidate for president, Donald Trump infamously promised to end endless wars and be the president of peace. In office, President Trump has launched illegal regime change wars in Iran and Venezuela; bombed at least five other countries; threatened war against Cuba, Greenland, Mexico, Panama, and Colombia; and supported Israel’s genocide in Gaza and war in Lebanon.

Despite a two-week ceasefire and diplomatic negotiations with Iran, Trump has deployed thousands of additional troops to the Middle East, while “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth has made renewed threats to attack Iran’s civilian infrastructure, widely considered a war crime. For the next fiscal year, Trump has requested the largest military budget in US history, $1.5 trillion. He has also indicated he will ask for up to $200 billion more to fund the war in Iran. By all indications, Trump looks likely to return to war, if not in Iran, somewhere else.

Trump’s embrace of endless wars already has killed and injured tens of thousands, displaced millions, squandered tens of billions of taxpayer dollars, driven up prices on gas and other necessities, created a global economic crisis, and risked wider catastrophe and World War III. And don’t forget Trump’s genocidal threats to “wipe out” Iranian civilization, implying a potential nuclear attack.

Faced with the threat of more endless war in Iran and beyond, Congress must do everything in its power to stop Trump. One tool Congress hasn’t used is its power to immediately cut off money for wars in Iran and beyond. With constitutional authority over government spending, Congress can use its rescission power—that is, the power to rescind, or take back, money previously appropriated to government agencies. Specifically, Congress should rescind around one-third of this year’s discretionary budgets for the “Department of War” and Department of Energy, where nuclear weapons spending is hidden, while avoiding cuts that would harm military personnel and their families.

While a rescissions bill of this sort may break with congressional precedent, the future of the country and the world is at stake. Extraordinary threats demand extraordinary measures.

Cutting $350 billion in discretionary spending from the over $1 trillion war budgets would actually help protect the troops by making it harder, if not impossible, for Trump to deploy them into harm’s way to fight his wars. While a $350 billion cut may sound daunting, it would leave the country with a total military budget far larger than that of China and Russia combined and allow the military to focus on defending the country rather than squandering billions on endless wars.

While only two Republican Congress members have voted to stop Trump’s war in Iran, Democrats should advance a rescissions bill to continue to apply pressure to end the war in Iran and show they won’t fund another day of endless war. While a rescissions bill is unlikely to pass now, we may soon see more Republicans defecting from Trump’s sinking presidency and increasingly unhinged behavior. While a rescissions bill of this sort may break with congressional precedent, the future of the country and the world is at stake. Extraordinary threats demand extraordinary measures.

Cutting the War Budget Now

Given what we’ve seen from Trump, how can he be trusted to continue to control a military budget that already exceeds $1 trillion? Doing so is to almost literally leave loaded guns in the hands of an increasingly erratic and dangerous man.

The danger Trump poses underlines the desperate need to get Trump out of office as quickly as possible through impeachment or the 25th Amendment. Amid these efforts and continued attempts to pass Iran War Powers Resolutions to prevent Trump from waging war without congressional approval, Congress should help protect the country and the world by removing the funds available to Trump to make more war.

Allowing Donald Trump to continue to control the entirety of this year’s Pentagon budget—let alone a larger one next year—risks his not only continuing his immoral, illegal war in Iran but also his likely launching new wars, including, for example, in Cuba and most frightening of all with China.

Congress has the power to take back money it’s previously appropriated to the Pentagon just as it has passed thousands of rescissions bills to take back all kinds of funding it previously approved.

There are at least three forms a rescissions bill could take. Under each, the bill won’t take pay or services from military personnel or their family members. It will instead take money from weapons makers and others profiting off war and budgets that make the military an offensive, endless war fighting force. A rescissions bill could rescind money for war and:

1. Return the money to citizens in the form of $600 to $1,200 stimulus checks (or a “peace dividend”) and some lowering of the national debt, as military budget expert Stephen Semler has proposed. As Semler says, this proposal could appeal to people across the political spectrum given the longstanding affordability crisis, which has been worsened by the rising price of gas and other necessities thanks to Trump’s new war.

2. Reappropriate—that is, redirect—the funds as a peace dividend to defend people’s daily lives by improving and expanding access to things like Medicare and Medicaid, free school lunches and other food assistance, childcare, affordable housing, and other critical infrastructure.

3. Return the money to the US Treasury to reduce the near $40 trillion national debt.

Importantly, a rescissions bill could reclaim both money not yet obligated—that is, not yet committed to spending—and money that has been obligated. Both offer an opportunity to take money back from some of the hugely expensive, unnecessary, and often world-endangering weapons systems and the war profiteers who make them. This includes funding for new nuclear weapons, the F-35 fighter jet (the world’s most expensive weapons system that has a terrible record of actually being able to fly), its planned sequel F-47, and Trump’s technologically infeasible fantasy “golden dome” missile defense system. A rescissions bill could mandate specific budget cuts or could cut a percentage from all Pentagon and nuclear weapons accounts except those supporting military personnel and their families.

Is It Realistic?

A rescissions bill is unlikely to pass in today’s Congress. To now, only two Republicans have voted for War Powers Resolutions to stop the war in Iran. However, the resolutions failed by just a few votes given the tiny Republican majority in Congress. And we don’t know what Congress will look like in one month or three, when more Republicans may abandon Trump.

Democrats and others shouldn’t be afraid of the tired shibboleth that military spending is about “supporting the troops”—it is increasingly obvious that increasingly large military budgets have made it easier to wage offensive, catastrophic wars of choice that have put troops in harm’s way, causing tens of thousands of troop deaths and hundreds of thousands of injuries, in addition to millions more dead in Afghanistan, Iraq, and far beyond.

A rescissions bill also gives politicians an opportunity to vote “yes” to cut the Pentagon budget; “yes” to a peace dividend; “yes” to using taxpayer money to actually defend the country and improve national security.

Even if a rescissions bill can’t pass now, it can be another way to pressure the administration to end the US-Israeli war in Iran and Lebanon. Along with war powers resolutions, a rescissions bill is another way to demonstrate continuing opposition to this and other endless wars. It’s a way to keep the media focused on a war that’s been all too distant from many people’s lives in the US. It’s a way to do everything humanly possible to stop wars that have already killed and injured tens of thousands and that could exceed the catastrophe of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq if they continue.

A rescissions bill will also allow constituents and journalists to ask Congress members and midterm candidates, “Do you want to fund more endless war or do you think Congress should take money back from the Pentagon to prevent more war and fund things we need? Do you think we can trust Trump with the current Pentagon budget or not? Do you think we can trust that Trump won’t use the out-of-control military budget to restart the war with Iran and start new wars, most terrifyingly a potential nuclear war with China?”

A rescissions bill also gives politicians an opportunity to vote “yes” to cut the Pentagon budget; “yes” to a peace dividend; “yes” to using taxpayer money to actually defend the country and improve national security; “yes” to a rational, realistic, defense-focused military budget rather than a military budget designed for offensive wars.

While Trump has trashed his promise to “stop wars” not start them, Congress has the power to pass a rescissions bill that would protect the country and the world from more endless war while transforming the US military into the defensive force it should be.

Republicans are at it again, and it’s hard to overstate how chilling this is and what it tells you about the direction people in this Party want to take America.

Texas Congressman Chip Roy is preparing to introduce legislation he’s calling the “MAMDANI Act,” named after Zohran Mamdani, the recently elected democratic socialist mayor of New York City, that would let the federal government bar entry to, deport, and strip naturalized citizenship from any person who advocates for or is “affiliated with” what Roy calls “totalitarian” movements. The list includes, from Rep. Roy’s webpage:

“[A] socialist party, a communist party, the Chinese Communist Party, or Islamic fundamentalist party, or advocates for socialism, communism, Marxism, or Islamic fundamentalism.”

The bill targets people who “write, distribute, circulate, print, display, possess, or publish” material supporting socialism or any of those other ideas.

“Possess?” That single word means that owning a copy of Marx’s Das Kapital, or a pamphlet from a Palestinian solidarity group, or a battered paperback of Howard Zinn — or maybe even one of my books on the New Deal — would be enough to make a green-card holder or a naturalized citizen “inadmissible or deportable.”

“Affiliated with?” That would prevent anybody who’s ever affiliated themselves with the Democratic Socialist Party in New York that Mamdami ran on behalf of (along with the normal Democratic Party; New York has fusion voting so you can run on two parties simultaneously) from staying in America. Gone to a meeting, rally, or put yourself on their mailing list? You’re toast.

“Write?” That means they’re coming for me, and for you if you’ve ever echoed in writing the kind of sentiments that Republicans call socialism, including food stamps and school lunches, free college, public libraries, a national healthcare system, police and fire, and highways that don’t have tolls. (When billionaire David Koch ran for vice president in 1980 on an antisocialism agenda, he called for the end of all these forms of “socialism”.)

“Distribute?” And they’d be coming for Substack, too, it appears. Along with your local bookstore or library.

We haven’t seen anything this sweeping since the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, when then-President John Adams had roughly 30 newspaper editors and publishers thrown in prison for attacking him. Ben Franklin’s grandson was arrested for publishing an op-ed calling the president “old, querulous, Bald, blind, crippled, Toothless Adams.” A town drunk in New Jersey was arrested for criticizing him while imbibing in a bar. Adams’ overreach lost him the election of 1800 to his then-political enemy Thomas Jefferson, who openly opposed the Acts.

But here we are again, and here’s another dangerous overreach on the GOP’s part in this legislation: Roy’s bill explicitly forbids judicial review of any inadmissibility, deportation, or denaturalization decision made under it.

In other words, if this law passes then no court can stop or second-guess the government: no habeas corpus, no meaningful appeals; just an order from the Attorney General or some twit at ICE or Homeland Security and you’re on a plane or stuck in a hellhole “detention facility,” possibly for the rest of your life.

That’s not immigration policy, that’s the architecture of a police state, and it’s modeled on how the Nazis stripped citizenship from German Jews and political dissidents in 1935 under the Reich Citizenship Laws.

I’ve walked through Berlin’s Topography of Terror museum, and the documents on display tell the horrific story of how that the lawyers who drafted those Nazi laws studied America’s own racial and political exclusion laws for inspiration.

Now Republican Chip Roy wants to bring them back to America as Republicans try to reinvent or country in the image of Trump’s mentor Putin’s Russia or — as the authors of Project 2025 openly suggest — Orbán’s Hungary.

The bill’s namesake, Mayor Mamdani, became a U.S. citizen in 2018 after moving here from Uganda as a child. He hasn’t been credibly accused of any crime, and as the Brennan Center for Justice meticulously documents, the Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected the use of stripping people of their citizenship as a political weapon like Putin now routinely does and Trump loves to threaten.

That goes all the way back to trying to overturn the 1943 Schneiderman Supreme Court ruling, which held the government must prove “lack of attachment” to the Constitution by “clear, unequivocal, and convincing” evidence. Disagreeing with someone’s politics doesn’t cut it by a long shot. But Roy and his allies aren’t interested in the existing jurisprudence; they want to write new laws that nullify that decision (and common decency) altogether.

Roy told Breitbart his target is what he calls a “Red-Green Alliance” of socialists and Islamists, and a summary from his office goes further, claiming current immigration policies — echoing Clarence Thomas‘ recent speech that I wrote about yesterday — have produced “dangerous levels of opposition to classical American political doctrines, like free-market capitalism.”

That’s an extraordinary admission, because Roy isn’t proposing to deport people who commit crimes, or who support terrorism, or even who lied on their citizenship applications. He wants, instead, to strip of citizenship and then deport people who don’t sufficiently believe in the unregulated, low-tax version of the so-called free market capitalism advocated by the rightwing billionaires who now own the GOP.

This is a loyalty test for an ideology rather than a country, and, as I lay out in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy, it’s the kind of legislation the robber barons of the 1920s and the John Birchers and McCarthy movement of the 1950s dreamed of but could never ram through Congress and neither Taft nor Eisenhower would ever have signed.

We’ve actually run a smaller, more local version of this experiment before, and it ended in disgrace. The Palmer Raids of 1919 and 1920 saw roughly 10,000 immigrants rounded up without warrants and 556 of them deported, including the anarchist Emma Goldman, all for the crime of holding the wrong politics.

The Communist Control Act of 1954 put into law by Republicans at the height of McCarthyism, was eventually declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1973 and most of its provisions repealed. Each time we’ve tried this sort of neofascist thing the country looked back in shame, having relearned that the First Amendment doesn’t have an exception for people who say we should tax the morbidly rich to build and support a middle class.

History tells us, over and over again, that once you give the government the power to disappear people for what they read, write, believe, or advocate that power never stays trained just on the original targets.

There are nearly 25 million naturalized citizens and 12.8 million green-card holders living in the United States today, and every single one of them would, under Roy’s bill, be subject to having their citizenship reviewed and potentially revoked based on some rightwinger complaining about them to a federal bureaucrat or police agency or the discovery of a book in their house.

It would threaten millions of legal permanent residents and visa holders working in our hospitals, building our houses, teaching our children, designing our electronics, and even farming our food. The fear alone is the point: if you’re a naturalized citizen or green-card or visa holder and you want to attend a Free Palestine rally, a labor union meeting, or a tenants’ rights organizing session, you’d now have to ask yourself whether some aide in Stephen Miller’s office might decide that constitutes “advocacy for socialism.”

And it’s one of dozens of similar laws that have been proposed by Republicans in recent years.

Presumably, this is the sort of thing that the billionaire who funded JD Vance’s rise to the Senate and vice presidency meant when he famously said, “I no longer believe freedom and democracy are compatible.” That’s the billionaire whose company now compiles information on Americans on behalf of the Trump regime.

Call your member of Congress through the Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and tell them you oppose the MAMDANI Act and any legislation that creates thought, publishing, and speech crimes, then use the ACLU’s action tool to make sure your senators hear from you, too.

Support the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which has been on the front lines fighting Roy’s earlier “Sharia-Free America Act,” and back the American Immigration Council as it readies the inevitable legal challenges. Get involved with Indivisible and your local Democratic Party to make sure the 2026 midterms send Roy and every co-sponsor of this bill back home permanently.

The Constitution doesn’t defend itself and neither does freedom; that work belongs to us, and the time to engage with it is right now.

Lori Chavez-DeRemer resigned Monday as secretary of labor [translated: she was told to resign by the White House], after facing investigations by the department’s inspector general into multiple allegations of misconduct.

She’s alleged to have been drinking during the workday from a “stash” of alcohol in her office, arranging official trips for herself that were extended vacations, taking subordinates to an Oregon strip club while on one such trip, showing no interest in the work of the department, and having an affair with a member of her security team.

Sources have described Chavez-DeRemer as the “boss from hell,” saying she demanded staffers run personal errands for her or perform other menial tasks unrelated to their government jobs. More than two dozen department employees from across the political spectrum described in interviews with The New York Times a toxic workplace characterized by an absentee secretary, hostile aides, and a deeply demoralized staff.

In other words, Chavez-DeRemer was turning the great department I once headed and loved into shit. And I hold Trump responsible because he appointed her.

As I shared with you a few weeks ago, I loved the Department of Labor from the moment I entered the Frances Perkins Building on Constitution Avenue as secretary of labor in January 1992. I loved its mission: to protect and raise the standard of living of working Americans.

I loved its history. The first secretary of labor, Frances Perkins — appointed by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 — was also America’s first female Cabinet secretary. She was the guiding light behind the creation of Social Security, the 40-hour workweek, the National Labor Relations Act, and much more.

I hung the painting of Frances Perkins behind my desk in my huge second-floor office. Whenever I felt discouraged, I looked at her, and she bucked me up. (Although I’m Jewish, I called her Saint Frances.)

I admired the Department of Labor’s career staff, who were dedicated to helping American workers. I was deeply impressed by the assistant secretaries, the deputy secretary, the chief of staff, and other appointees with whom I toiled, often six or seven days a week from early morning to late at night.

Never before or since have I had the privilege of working with such talented people who cared so much about what they were accomplishing for the American people, and who made such a positive impact on so many lives.

We raised the minimum wage for the first time in many years, even under a Republican-controlled Congress. We implemented the Family and Medical Leave Act. We fought against sweatshops. We took on big corporations that were cheating their employees. We kept workers safe. We … well, I could go on and on. (And I have, in my book Locked in the Cabinet, which you can also find here, but please don’t order from here.)

But like so much else Trump has done, he’s turned what was once a great department into a fucking mess. And it frankly breaks my heart.

It’s what you get when you have a president and White House staff who don’t give a rat’s ass about whom they appoint to positions of power except for their loyalty to Trump and how they look on television.

Trump and his White House assistants don’t mind if his appointees wreck our government because they don’t care about government. Hell, they came to government to wreck it. If the public loses confidence in, say, the Department of Labor, that’s perfectly fine. If Congress slashes its funding, so much the better.

What they do mind is if a Cabinet member makes Trump look bad, which is why Kristi Noem and Pam Bondi are now history — along with Chavez-DeRemer.

It infuriates me, because I’ve seen government work for the people. I’ve witnessed public servants who care deeply and bust their asses in service to this country. I know how important government can be if it’s doing the job it should be doing.

I loved the Department of Labor because it has improved the lives of millions of Americans. I worked like hell as secretary of labor because I believed in what we were doing. That it’s been treated like crap is an insult to generations of hardworking DOL employees, to American workers, to America.

The least we can all do is flip Congress in November, so senators and representatives who care about this country can oversee the departments of the government and try to remedy some of the wreckage that Trump and his appointees have wreaked on America.

In the meantime, goodbye and good riddance to Madam Secretary Chavez-DeRemer.

When he’s on full blast, Donald Trump (not so long ago the “drill, baby, drill” candidate for president) is distinctly a furnace. And he seems intent on turning this planet, our only world, into a version of the same. But here’s the strange thing, when it comes to almost anything — from Iran to suddenly firing two key women, Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem, in his government (but certainly not the no-less-chaotic men) — there’s no minute, it seems, when he’s not flipping himself on his head and then spinning or stumbling or catapulting off in a new direction. There’s only one exception I’ve noticed and, all too sadly, that’s climate change, where everything he does — every single thing — is guaranteed to be a disaster for our children and grandchildren.

Recently, of course, he’s launched a nightmarish war, by definition a gigantic producer of greenhouse gases, that’s literally been all about oil and natural gas, thanks in part to the now chaotic, largely blocked Strait of Hormuz through which a quarter of humanity’s sea-borne oil and a fifth of its natural gas used to pass. And if you don’t believe me about it being a nightmare, just check out the most recent prices at your neighborhood gas station. Consider it an irony, then, that his disastrous Iranian war will undoubtedly lead in a direction — to the use of more green energy globally — that, if he ever thought about it, he would hate more than just about anything else. He has, of course, referred to environmentalists as “terrorists.” (“They are terrorists. I call them environmental terrorists.”) And in this country, over his two presidencies, he’s done his damnedest to attack and try to block wind and solar power projects in every imaginable way, even though, globally, green power is growing fast and getting ever cheaper.

And here’s the reality of our moment for which we do need to give Donald Trump credit: once upon a time, you couldn’t have made any of this up — or, of course, have made up Donald Trump as president of the United States (twice!). If you had, it would have seemed like the least believable science fiction novel ever written. Not that I drive a car in New York City (the subway and buses work fine for me), but as I was writing this piece, of course, the price of gas had also edged up in my city to almost four dollars a gallon and a (possibly global) recession is on the horizon. (Thank you, Donald Trump!)

Of course, in launching his recent war against Iran, however incoherently, “the PEACE PRESIDENT” (and yes, he’s into CAPS when it comes to himself) was, all too sadly, in good company, historically speaking. Since victory in World War II, from Korea to Vietnam to Afghanistan to Iraq and now to Iran (to mention only the big conflicts of that all-American era), our presidents have had quite a knack (if such a word can even be used) for starting wars, none (not a one!) of which has ended in anything faintly like victory. And it’s already obvious — you don’t need to have the slightest knack for seeing into the future to know this — that Donald Trump’s version of the same in Iran will prove to be a global disaster, made worse by the fact that, in the process, whether he faintly grasps it or not, he’s also launched another brutally losing war against Planet Earth.

And the worst thing is that I feel I’ve written all of this before. And before Trump — well, “leaves” is far too mild a word for it — abandons (??) the presidency, I could end up writing it again and again, and we would still be in the world — all too literally his world — from hell. Of course, for all we know, Donald J. Trump could decide to crown himself president and try to launch a third term in office that would, if successful, turn the constitution into an historical relic.

“The Only Orange Monarch I Want Is a Butterfly.”

The other week, feeling as I do about “our” president, I went to New York City’s “No Kings” rally. It was gigantic (though you wouldn’t have known that, had you read my hometown paper, the New York Times, in the days that followed). It started on 59th Street where Central Park ends, with masses of marchers on both Seventh and Eighth Avenue, heading for 34th Street. By getting there early, I made it to the front of the crowd on Seventh Avenue at the head of that vast mass of protesting humanity and, once it started, I wove my way in and out of the crowd, back and forth, downtown and uptown again, jotting in a little notebook some of the thousands of homemade signs people were carrying.

When I finally reached Broadway and 42nd Street, I stepped up on the sidewalk and looked back. To my amazement, I could see all the way to 57th Street where we had begun, and that significant-sized avenue was still totally — and I mean totally — packed right back to Central Park. And mind you, this old man was just one of an estimated more than eight million Americans who turned out at more than 3,000 rallies across the United States that day, in communities huge and microscopic, to protest the world Donald Trump has dumped on, spilled all over, and is continuing to roil and broil.

And, yes, it did seem like every third person (even the two demonstrators dressed as plastic tigers) was carrying a homemade sign. I doubt I had ever seen so many of them at any past demonstration. I was scrawling a number of them down in a little notebook, and they ranged from “Fight Truth Decay” and “Grandma says, ICE is not nice!” to “It’s a good thing Congress isn’t alive to see this” and “The only orange Monarch I want is a butterfly.”

And then there was the one carried by a bearded man that caught my attention: “You dirty ORANGE maniac! You blew it all up! Damn you to hell!” And I thought to myself, boy, is that painfully accurate. In his own fashion, among all the things he hasn’t succeeded in accomplishing, he has indeed been blowing it all up in a striking fashion and, unfortunately, potentially damning my children and grandchildren (and yours) to a literal planet from hell.

And sadly, as crazed as Donald Trump may be — and he clearly is a deeply disturbed (and, of course, disturbing) human being — when it comes to war and the burning of fossil fuels, he’s been anything but alone as president of the United States. After all, in these decades, war has been this country’s middle name and we’ve been burning fossil fuels to fight them as if… well, as if there would indeed be no tomorrow(s). And in his two terms in office, Trump and crew have gone with a passion after any form of clean, renewable energy that wouldn’t blister us all. Only recently, for instance, the Guardian (which is superb when it comes to climate-change coverage) was the only publication I saw that reported on new research in Nature magazine showing that this country has caused “an eye-watering $10tn [yes, that’s trillion!] in global damages to the world over the past three decades through its vast planet-heating emissions, with a quarter of this economic pain inflicted upon itself.”

Consider it something of an unintended irony, then, that the crew President Trump and his administration have put so much of themselves into goes by the acronym ICE. In fact, wouldn’t you have thought that “ICE” would be a curse word for President Trump and that, when it comes to creating an immigration hell on earth, his crew of manic enforcers would have been known as “HEAT”? Which reminds me that, at the No Kings rally, I noted an older woman carrying a homemade sign all too appropriately saying: “Deport Trump! Make ICE useful.”

And thanks to his brutal assault on Iran, this planet is only going to get hotter yet, as war releases staggering amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere! Honestly, back in 2016, even if you had let your mind run in wild and unbelievably crazy directions, you simply couldn’t have made up Donald Trump’s planet as it is now, could you? Who could have imagined that the president of the United States, after launching a war with Iran in the Strait of Hormuz, would attack European countries for not joining him, saying, “You’ll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the U.S.A. won’t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren’t there for us.”

And remind me, who has Donald Trump been there for, other than the major fossil fuel companies that backed him so radiantly in the 2024 election and are now getting a remarkable return on their investment?

Giving Decline New Meaning

Of course, to put all of this in some kind of perspective, sooner or later great imperial powers do go down and the United States has been the number one imperial power on this planet since the end of World War II, with its only true competitor (until China rose well into this century), the Soviet Union, which collapsed in a heap in 1991. So, it shouldn’t be surprising that this country, which, singularly in human history, once reigned more or less supreme on Planet Earth, should finally have begun its own decline, while turning over investment in present and future green energy to China.

But of course, there’s decline and then, in ICE terms, there’s DECLINE!!! And Donald Trump is threatening to turn imperial decline, something known throughout history, into a distinctly new phenomenon. Even declining imperial powers haven’t usually had such a mad ruler or leader. And he does seem remarkably intent, in his own increasingly confused way, on taking this country down with him. The difference, historically, is that until now no imperial ruler had the chance to take down not just his (almost never her) country, but (after a fashion) our planet (at least as a livable place for us), too. And he does seem remarkably intent on continuing to fossil-fuelize our world in a disastrous fashion.

Of course, at this very moment, we’re all watching his approval ratings generally (and particularly on the economy) begin to tank. (Oh wait, my mistake! A tank is a war vehicle, and right now that reference only applies to Israel, which recently lost a remarkable number of tanks in southern Lebanon.) But “our” president has also focused a significant part of his administration on ending anything that could benefit the climate, while burning fossil fuels in a fashion that should be considered beyond incendiary. That includes recently agreeing to offer almost a billion dollars to a French energy company to abandon a project to construct wind farms off the East Coast of this country (as long as it was willing to reinvest that sum in future oil and gas projects here instead).

Yes, someday he could well be seen not just as the president of decline but potentially of ultimate devastation and that flaming red tie of his could end up having a symbolic significance that, once upon a time, no one might have imagined. No wonder that sign I saw on the No King’s Day march — and let me repeat it here one more time: “You dirty ORANGE maniac! You blew it all up! Damn you to hell!” — sticks in my mind. It predicts the very future that, unbelievably enough, 49.8% of American voters tried to usher in again in 2024.

Once upon a time, who could ever have imagined either Donald Trump as president of these (increasingly dis-)United States or such a possible fate?

LIVE 9:00 am Eastern time, Streaming Anytime:

Editorial cartoonist Ted Rall and political analyst Jamarl Thomas deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM EST.

Today we discuss:

• Between Pete Hegseth, Kristin Noem and Kash Patel, the Trump Administration was staffed with some real party animals! Now Lori Chavez-DeRemer is out at Labor for boozing it up on the job while boning a subordinate. How did teetotaler Trump wind up with such a posse of wild right-wingers?

• The US State Department will host a second round of ambassador-level talks between Israel and Lebanon on Thursday. Joining “Deprogram” to explain the latest in Israel’s invasion of Lebanon is Dmitri Lascaris. Dimitri Lascaris is a Canadian lawyer, journalist, and activist based in Montreal and Kalamata, Greece. A former Wall Street and class-action securities litigator, he now reports independently on foreign affairs, human rights, and global politics via his YouTube channel Reason2Resist, often from conflict zones, including Lebanon.

• Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf says Iran is “prepared to reveal new cards on the battlefield” after Trump threatened Iran with “problems like they’ve never seen before” if the two-week ceasefire expires tomorrow without a deal. There is no official confirmation on whether Iran will take part in talks in Islamabad.

MERCH STORE: https://www.deprogram.live

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Wars, invasions, blockades, and genocide from Venezuela and Iran to Palestine have ripped the curtain off the inherent volatility and violence of the fossil energy system. We need a rapid and just scale-up of socially controlled renewables to end the era of fossil fuels. But ensuring a just transition requires deeper conversation. Who benefits from the energy transition? Who bears the cost? Who gets a say in how energy is produced? These are also feminist questions about power, labor, care, and whose lives are valued.

To answer them, grassroots leaders, Indigenous communities, trade unions, and environmental justice activists will gather in Santa Marta, Colombia for the Peoples’ Summit and First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels this week. For many of us in environmental and social justice movements, this gathering represents both urgency and possibility. This will be a critical space because, without justice, the energy transition will reproduce the same systems of extraction, control, and violence.

So We Must Ask: an Energy Transition for Whom?

The transition narrative sold by corporations and rich countries today tells us we can scale up corporate, market-led renewable energy technologies without questioning who controls them, who benefits, and who bears the cost. This risks the transition becoming nothing more than the old model in greener packaging. In Malaysia, for example, the energy transition policy largely rebrands the old growth-and-extraction model. It uses green rhetoric, prioritizing corporate-led false solutions like carbon capture and storage and carbon capture, utilization, and storage. Copying Western-style developments through corporate-driven trade and investment patterns sustains fossil fuel dependence and continues to entrench structural inequalities both nationally and internationally. Without systemic change, the transition becomes another chapter in a long history of resource plunder, particularly in the Global South.

Consider the surge in demand for minerals like lithium, cobalt, nickel, and rare earth elements. These are essential components of batteries, solar panels, and wind turbines. Governments and corporations in the Global North are racing to secure these materials, often greenwashing extraction as necessary for climate action, while diverting these minerals into military, aerospace, AI, and data centers. For communities across Latin America, Africa, and Asia, this rush is already translating into land grabs, water depletion, labor exploitation, and violence. Lithium extraction threatens fragile ecosystems and Indigenous Peoples’ livelihoods; cobalt mining has been linked to dangerous working conditions and child labor. As with oil before them, critical minerals are becoming objects of geopolitical competition—backed by military power and strategic control.

If this transition is not rooted in justice, it will not be a solution. It will be the next phase of the crisis.

The military is among the world’s largest consumers of fossil fuels, yet its emissions are routinely excluded from national reporting. At the same time, states and corporations work together to secure control over oil, gas, and critical minerals—profiting from war and devastation from Lebanon to Venezuela and Cuba.

These are the very predictable outcomes of a system that prioritizes profit over energy as a right for people. A just transition must go far beyond emissions reductions. It must actively confront inequality, redistribute power, and wealth, and repair historical and ongoing harms. It must center those who have been marginalized and exploited—not as victims but as leaders.

A Just Transition Must Be Based on Peoples’ Sovereignty and Energy Sovereignty

At the heart of this vision are peoples’ sovereignty and energy sovereignty: the right of communities to control their lands, resources, and energy systems, and to shape the decisions that affect their lives. This means treating energy as a common good that is managed for collective well-being rather than private profit, while building energy democracy, where communities have real decision-making power over how energy is produced and used. It also requires energy sufficiency, prioritizing meeting people’s needs over excessive and wasteful energy use. Together, these principles challenge the concentration of power in corporations and wealthy countries, and point toward energy systems that are locally rooted, democratic, and aligned with social and ecological needs.

Achieving this also requires that we confront imperialism. The current global order allows wealthy countries to externalize the social and environmental costs of their consumption to the Global South, while maintaining control over finance, technology, and trade. This imbalance shapes the terms of the energy transition, devastating communities and often locking countries in the Global South into roles as raw material suppliers rather than equal partners.

Policies that ignore power dynamics may deliver short-term emissions reductions, but they will ultimately fail as communities resist exploitation and inequity deepens. A transition rooted in justice, however, can build the broad-based support needed for transformative change.

Around the world, communities are already practicing energy sovereignty, from managing decentralized renewable systems in Palestine to asserting their rights against extractive projects in Mozambique. Alternatives are not only possible, but underway.

A feminist and just energy transition must challenge the structures that perpetuate dependency and inequality, including unfair trade agreements, debt regimes, and corporate impunity. It must also recognize and address the intersecting forms of oppression based on gender, race, class, and colonial history that shape how the climate crisis is experienced and resisted.

As we look toward Santa Marta, the message is both simple and profound: We cannot solve the climate crisis with the same logic that caused it. If this transition is not rooted in justice, it will not be a solution. It will be the next phase of the crisis.

The path forward will require confronting entrenched interests and reimagining our economies and societies. From Santa Marta and beyond, communities are showing us the way. The task now is to listen, to act, and to ensure that the transition ahead is truly just—for people, for the planet, and for future generations.

Have a question for Ted and/or co-host Jamarl Thomas? Join the hosts of “DeProgram” for a full hour of nothing but LIVE Q&A! Any topic, any question, goes—it’s up to you.

Q&A extras are every Monday and Wednesday at 12 noon Eastern time.

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The breakdown of recent US–Iran contacts in Pakistan does not represent an isolated diplomatic setback. It reflects something more structural: a relationship that is no longer moving toward resolution but instead stabilizing into a long-term cycle of managed confrontation.

In this emerging pattern, diplomacy has not disappeared, but its function has changed. It is no longer a pathway toward agreement; it has become part of the mechanism through which escalation is contained, calibrated, and periodically reset—without addressing the underlying conflict.

Recent signals that indirect contacts may still be continuing are not evidence of progress. Rather, they confirm the new logic of the relationship: diplomacy and coercion now operate in parallel. Negotiations persist, but without a shared framework, agreed end state, or credible roadmap toward settlement.

Diplomacy without resolution

Over the past several years, US-Iran engagement has increasingly shifted away from structured bargaining toward fragmented, episodic communication. The assumption that talks naturally lead toward de-escalation no longer holds.

Instead, both sides now use diplomacy tactically. It serves to manage risk, test boundaries, and signal restraint—while broader strategic competition continues uninterrupted.

This produces a paradox: dialogue continues, but trust erodes; engagement persists, but outcomes remain absent; communication expands, but political distance grows.

The breakdown of expectations following recent regional escalation and fragile ceasefire dynamics underscores this shift. The relationship is no longer oriented toward solving problems, but toward preventing them from spiraling out of control.

A fundamental strategic mismatch

At the core of this stalemate is not a failure of communication, but a deeper mismatch in strategic logic. The United States continues to approach diplomacy as an extension of pressure. Sanctions, military signaling, and containment strategies are intended to extract concessions on nuclear activity, regional influence, and security behavior. Iran, meanwhile, treats negotiations as a test of endurance and strategic recognition. It seeks economic relief and political acknowledgment of its regional position without fundamentally altering its core security doctrine.

These positions are not complementary. They are structurally incompatible. One side seeks behavioral change through pressure; the other seeks survival and recognition under pressure. As a result, negotiations do not converge toward compromise. They remain trapped within a constrained space of managed disagreement.

A region adapting to permanent instability

This dynamic is not confined to Washington and Tehran. It is reshaping the wider regional environment.

Pakistan’s role as a venue for indirect contacts highlights the growing importance of intermediary states attempting to contain escalation, even when their influence over outcomes is limited.

Turkey continues to balance mediation with strategic autonomy, engaging multiple actors while avoiding fixed alignment.

Russia benefits from prolonged US-Iran tensions, which divert Western attention and reinforce Moscow’s positioning as a partner for Tehran.

China prioritizes energy security and stability. It seeks to prevent open conflict but remains reluctant to assume a direct security role in the Gulf.

The combined effect is a fragmented regional order in which external actors are not neutral observers, but participants in managing—and at times exploiting—persistent instability.

Iran under layered pressure

Iran’s current strategic environment is shaped by three overlapping pressures: military, economic, and domestic.

Militarily, the likelihood of full-scale war remains relatively low. More plausible is a pattern of calibrated escalation—limited strikes, maritime tensions, cyber operations, and proxy activity.

Any sustained attempt to restrict Iranian-linked activity near critical maritime routes such as the Strait of Hormuz would mark a qualitative shift toward structural escalation, increasing long-term regional risk.

Iran, in turn, is unlikely to respond symmetrically. Its strategy relies on asymmetric tools: disruption of shipping, cyber capabilities, and the activation of regional networks. This produces a form of conflict that is continuous, dispersed, and difficult to resolve decisively.

Economically, the breakdown of talks reinforces Iran’s continued exclusion from the global financial system. Over time, sanctions have not only constrained Iran’s economy—they have reshaped it. Parallel trade networks, non-Western partnerships—particularly with Russia and China—and informal mechanisms have become structural features rather than temporary workarounds.

This reduces incentives for rapid compromise and increases the cost of reintegration into Western-led systems.

Domestically, sustained external pressure interacts with existing internal challenges. While external confrontation can temporarily reinforce political cohesion, it also intensifies long-term tensions between state capacity, economic performance, and public expectations.

The result is not collapse, but persistent strain.

The logic of strategic endurance

Taken together, these dynamics point toward a strategy best described as strategic endurance.

Iran’s likely trajectory is not decisive breakthrough or breakdown, but sustained resistance under pressure—preserving core capabilities, maintaining regional leverage, and keeping limited diplomatic channels open without major concessions.

This is not a strategy designed to resolve the conflict. It is a strategy designed to survive it.

The narrowing policy horizon in Washington

For the United States, the collapse of diplomatic momentum reinforces an increasingly familiar policy response: expanded sanctions, renewed military signaling, and limited tactical strikes against proxy-linked targets.

But the effectiveness of this approach is diminishing. Pressure without a credible political horizon tends to produce adaptation rather than compliance. It hardens positions, deepens fragmentation, and reduces the likelihood of negotiated outcomes over time.

What remains is a narrowing strategic space in which policy tools are still available, but less capable of producing meaningful change.

A durable cycle of confrontation

The most likely near-term trajectory is neither war nor resolution, but a prolonged cycle of managed confrontation.

This cycle will be characterized by intermittent escalation, partial and indirect diplomacy, and growing involvement of external actors attempting to prevent wider spillover.

Such an equilibrium may appear stable in the short term. Its danger lies in its durability. Conflicts that become structurally managed rather than resolved tend not to end through negotiation, but through accumulated crises that eventually exceed the system’s capacity to contain them.

The failure of talks in Pakistan does not simply close a diplomatic episode. It clarifies the limits of what current diplomacy can realistically achieve.

Unless the underlying strategic mismatch is addressed, US-Iran relations are likely to remain trapped in a pattern where escalation is managed, but resolution is continually deferred—at increasing cost to regional stability and global security.

The US government under Donald Trump has twice used disingenuous negotiations with Iran to provide cover for attacking it, in June 2025 and again before launching the current war in February. Now it is trying to do so for a third time.

On April 8, the US and Iran began a two week ceasefire, after Trump accepted a 10-point peace plan drawn up by Iran as “a workable basis on which to negotiate.” But Vice President Vance and US negotiators rejected Iran’s plan out of hand at talks in Pakistan on April 11, and instead demanded that Iran must give up its right as a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (or NPT) to enrich uranium for civilian purposes. The talks ended with no agreement.

As the end of the ceasefire on April 22 drew near, Trump claimed that Iran had agreed to US demands on enriched uranium and other matters. But Iran announced to the world on April 18 that it had not agreed to any of the terms Trump claimed, and that his lies and threats provided no basis for further negotiations. Iran then responded to US and Israeli ceasefire violations by once again closing the Strait of Hormuz to all vessels linked to hostile countries.

In other words, Iran called Trump’s bluff, holding the US to the terms of the two-week ceasefire. But Trump didn’t give up on his false claims, and instead insisted that Iran had agreed to another round of talks in Pakistan on April 21st, which Iran immediately denied.

The reversal in US policy that it would take to resolve this crisis would not be unprecedented.

As the April 22 deadline approaches with no agreement, many analysts now expect the end of the ceasefire to be followed, within hours or days, by a US escalation of the war and a proportionate military response from Iran, with no clear off-ramp from further escalation.

But this could be averted by a belated but genuine US reappraisal of its position, based on Iran’s ten point proposal that Trump accepted as “a workable basis on which to negotiate.”

If the United States government really wants an exit strategy from this self-imposed, ever-escalating war, it should take a fresh look at Iran’s ten point peace plan, and seriously consider how it can engage with this framework to turn over a new leaf in its relations with Iran and the region.

These are the ten points, as reported by Gulf News:

1. A guarantee that Iran will not be attacked again
2. A permanent end to the war, not just a ceasefire
3. An end to Israeli strikes in Lebanon and against Iranian allies
4. The lifting of all US sanctions on Iran
5. Iran agreeing to reopen the Strait of Hormuz
6. Introduction of a $2 million fee per ship transiting Hormuz
7. Revenue from shipping fees to be shared with Oman
8. Funds to be used for reconstruction of war-damaged infrastructure
9. Establishment of safe passage protocols through Hormuz
10. A broader framework to end regional hostilities

Since the United States has failed to use the two-week ceasefire to negotiate on this “workable basis,” it will be up to Iran to decide whether to agree to extend the ceasefire so that the US and Iran can finally start real negotiations.

This would require the US to begin acting in good faith, an inherently tall order, to convince Iran that it would not just use an extension of the ceasefire to prepare an even more deadly and catastrophic attack. It should immediately lift its naval blockade of Iran, stop transporting more armed forces into the region, and do whatever it takes to end Israel’s ceasefire violations in Lebanon and Palestine, including by halting the transfer of weapons that Israel uses to violate those ceasefires, as US law requires.

Without such confidence-building measures, it is hard to see why Iran would agree to an extension of the ceasefire. As Professor Mostafa Khoshcheshm in Tehran explained to Al Jazeera, Trump’s lies convinced Tehran it would not find “a trustworthy partner for any kind of deal,” and, as long as the US acts this way, “Iran will continue the war.”

“Iran believes it has the upper hand and that this must be established in any future confrontation,” he said, noting that millions of people are still taking to the streets in Iran every night to call for continued resistance.

Maybe the most vital of Iran’s ten points is the first one listed above: a guarantee that Iran will not be attacked again, either by the United States or Israel. Trump’s war crimes, his undermining of US credibility and his connivance at Israel’s ceasefire violations make such a guarantee elusive, although it is only what international law requires of all countries, that they resolve their disputes peacefully and refrain from threatening or using military force against each other.

What form of guarantee could Iran possibly accept from a country that systematically violates treaties and agreements? Engaging in good faith negotiations over the rest of Iran’s 10-point agenda, especially the lifting of US sanctions, while also moving to restore diplomatic relations, might be good first steps.

The reversal in US policy that it would take to resolve this crisis would not be unprecedented. Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan all forced US forces to withdraw from their countries. But those were much longer wars, involving many years of US occupation that went on until popular resistance movements made continued occupation untenable.

How long must the US war on Iran go on, and how badly must the US be defeated, before it will agree to a permanent peace? This crisis can be as long or as short, and as bloody or bloodless, as US leaders choose, and as the American people will tolerate.

The lifting of illegal US sanctions against Iran (#4 on the list) would be a vital part of any solution to this crisis. This would surely be good for both countries, and the United States would be less likely to attack Iran again if the US and Iran have reestablished mutually profitable trade relations.

Ending Israel’s attacks on Iran’s allies (#3), and a broader framework to end regional hostilities (#10) are both steps that most Americans would support. The failure of the US-Israeli war on Iran could be the desperately needed catalyst for the US to transform a US-Israeli military alliance that is committing genocide in Palestine and aggression throughout the region into a new and different relationship bounded by the rules of international law.

A US military withdrawal from its bases around the Persian Gulf could prevent the countries that host them from again becoming targets in US-Israeli wars on Iran, so it is interesting that Iran doesn’t mention them in its ten points. Perhaps Iran sees the value of these US bases as vulnerable targets in this and future wars as outweighing any threat they might pose, but that would be one more reason for the United States to withdraw from them before they cost more American lives.

There is a simple way to avoid one of the most destructive elements in recent failed negotiations with Iran, and that would be to remove Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner from the US negotiating team.

The other five items in the ten-point agenda are all related to the Strait of Hormuz. The strait is within Iran’s and Oman’s territorial waters, although charging ships to pass through it is unprecedented and legally questionable. It is really the US and Israel that should pay reparations to Iran for the death and destruction they have wreaked, not the owners of international merchant ships. But if the US will not agree to pay reparations, Iran’s tollbooths may be a compromise that all sides can live with in order to reopen the strait, as Iran itself calls for in item # 5.

There is a simple way to avoid one of the most destructive elements in recent failed negotiations with Iran, and that would be to remove Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner from the US negotiating team. Discussing prior negotiations, a diplomat from one of the Gulf countries told The Guardian, “We regarded Witkoff and Kushner as Israeli assets that dragged a president into a war he wants to get out of.”

Given Witkoff and Kushner’s foreign loyalties, Trump’s lies and corruption, Rubio’s subservience to Israel, and Hegseth’s bloodlust, the United States can surely find more professional officials to represent it in these difficult negotiations, which have only been made more difficult by the flood of threats, lies and deception from the US side.But since the United States has not really tried to make peace wit Iran since abandoning the JCPOA in 2018, a new team of qualified, experienced US diplomats charged with turning over a new leaf in US-Iran relations could start with a clean slate, and they would have the support of the whole world behind their efforts to resolve this global crisis.

In late March, I sat in the gallery of the Supreme Court for the first time in my life. Throughout my 30 years of grassroots anti-poverty work, I’ve joined countless protests and vigils outside the Court. In 2018, I was even arrested and held in detention for praying on its palatial steps. Now, I was seated with a clear view of the nine justices of the nation’s highest court. I was there as a guest of immigrant rights lawyers, as their team made oral arguments in Noem v. Al Otro Lado, the most significant case on the right to asylum in decades.

In February, the Kairos Center (the organization I direct) authored an interfaith amicus brief on that very case, alongside 31 denominations and organizations representing faith traditions practiced by billions worldwide. Those groups, including the Alliance of Baptists, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Hindus for Human Rights, the Latino Christian National Network, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Reconstructing Judaism, the Union for Reform Judaism, the Unitarian Universalist Association, the General Synod of the United Church of Christ, and the General Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church, joined together to declare that our societal obligation to provide for persecuted outsiders is a universally shared moral principle.

Although the case has largely flown under the public radar, there is indeed a lot at stake. Filed on behalf of asylum seekers, Noem v. Al Otro Lado focuses on the legality of a 2018 Trump border policy blocking access to the U.S. asylum process for people arriving at the border with Mexico. Immigrant rights advocates argue that such a turnback policy, under which immigration officers physically stop people seeking safety at official border crossings from setting foot on U.S. soil, flouts decades of settled federal immigration law and our society’s most deeply held legal and moral values.

For more than a century, the government has been required to undertake a legal process of inspection when people seek asylum at official ports of entry along the U.S.-Mexico border (as they must inspect all noncitizens seeking admission to the United States). That requirement is supposed to ensure that this country doesn’t send vulnerable people back into danger without first allowing them to seek protection. A wide range of immigration lawyers and legal experts argue that the first Trump administration’s turnback policy, euphemistically called “metering,” directly undermined the government’s responsibility to process such asylum claims. As a result, vulnerable children, families, and adults were regularly forced to remain indefinitely stranded in perilous conditions in Mexico.

Although the turnback policy has not been in effect since 2021, when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals declared it unlawful, the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to review the case. Should the government win (which is all too possible given the hyperpartisan nature of the current Court), the consequences are sure to be grave and far-reaching. The Department of Homeland Security would have the legal backing to turn away untold thousands of desperate people at the border, potentially clearing the way for even more expansive border closures, while further intensifying the jingoistic nationalism that defines the Trump administration. Alongside other landmark cases this term, like Trump v. Barboza, in which the government seeks to undo the constitutional right to birthright citizenship, the results of Noem v. Al Otro Lado are likely to reveal the lengths to which the Supreme Court is willing to backstop the president’s assault on democracy, including accelerated attacks on the rights of vulnerable populations.

The day I was there, the existential stakes of that case and the larger societal crisis in which it was unfolding did not seem to concern the court’s conservative justices. I had the words of George Washington (written in 1788 to the radical Dutch republican Francis Van der Kemp) in my mind as I sat in the gallery: “I had always hoped that this land might become a safe & agreeable asylum to the virtuous & persecuted part of mankind, to whatever nation they might belong.”

Unfortunately, having heard the statements and reactions of some of the judges, I fear that the majority of the Supreme Court may no longer agree with that foundational vision for this country.

Courtroom Friezes and Draconian Law

The first thing that struck me on entering the Supreme Court gallery were the stone friezes on the walls of the room. Designed by Adolf Weinman more than a century ago, those large marble reliefs, featuring what he called the “great lawgivers of history,” tower over the space. Among them are prominent religious figures like Moses (holding a scroll of the Ten Commandments), King Solomon, Confucius, and a rendition of the Prophet Muhammad (that is entirely unrecognizable). The friezes also include Roman Emperor Octavian (otherwise known as Caesar Augustus, Jesus’s great nemesis), French King Louis IX (leader of the seventh and eighth crusades), and Draco (a Greek jurist whose legacy lurks in the word “draconian” because of the extreme measures he took to punish minor offenses).

As I stared at those figures, I reflected on the message they convey about the complex civilizational lineages from which the Supreme Court and our legal system derive their authority. In our amicus brief, we reflected on those varied lineages as they pertain to the right to seek asylum:

“Our asylum laws are the modern embodiment of a deeply rooted religious, cultural, and historical heritage that has consistently affirmed society’s obligation to provide refuge for those seeking safety. Asylum reaches back to some of the earliest moments of recorded human history. It was practiced throughout the ancient civilizations that forged the foundation of Western society. This tradition can also be found in the form of church sanctuary asylum, a mainstay of European culture for over a millennium.
“Our very nation began as a haven for persecuted political and religious minorities. This tradition is present throughout our history, from the practices of Native Americans to the Underground Railroad to modern times. Congress adopted our current asylum laws in significant part due to the efforts of faith-based groups seeking to uphold deeply held societal, moral, and cultural principles.”

Despite such deeply held and ancient principles, I couldn’t shake a sense of impending doom as I scanned the faces on the friezes and those of the justices. I thought of the awesome and awful power of Rome, depicted throughout the gallery, and its draconian reign of “peace” (or what Secretary of War Pete Hegseth recently termed “delivering peace through strength”). And I recalled the worsening anti-democratic and pro-oligarchic turn our own Supreme Court has taken in the Trump era.

Just consider the rulings from the past few years: the Court has essentially given immunity to the executive branch (although the Court is supposed to be a critical part of a federal system of checks and balances), criminalized homelessness (although the U.S. claims to be a nation of opportunity and prosperity for all), and degraded voting rights (cutting off the legs of our democracy).

Before oral arguments began in Noem v. Al Otro Lado, I was under no illusion that the Supreme Court delivers equality, freedom, and justice for all. And yet, on an issue as basic and legally sound as the right to seek asylum, I was still shocked by the flippancy of the court’s conservative judges. For hours, they rocked in their chairs, physically broadcasting their disinterest in the case. Rather than take seriously more than 100 years of legal precedent and hundreds more of long-established societal practice, they seemed to enjoy getting into hyper-specific and cherrypicked semantic and rhetorical arguments with Kelsi Brown Cochran, our lawyer.

In preparation for that day, I had brushed up on the history of U.S. asylum law. An important story in that history is the S.S. St. Louis, a ship that in 1939 was carrying 930 refugees from Hamburg, Germany, fleeing the Nazi regime, who were first denied entry to Cuba and then to the United States, only to be returned to Europe, where many of them were taken to the Nazi death camps.

Reflecting on that story at a pre-hearing press conference, Nicole Elizabeth Ramos, border rights project director at Al Otro Lado, a plaintiff in the case, offered this explanation:

“The right to seek asylum is not a policy preference or a loophole — it is a legal right and a moral commitment forged in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Seeking asylum is not like taking a number at a deli counter and waiting for your turn. You cannot ask someone fleeing rape, torture, or death threats to wait in danger indefinitely because a government has decided their lives are inconvenient. We filed this case because the United States has an obligation to follow its own laws — laws duly enacted by Congress. The question before the Court is whether those laws can be set aside by executive action, or whether they remain binding at the border, as written.”

In their apparent willingness to flout precedent and condemn modern-day asylees to harm or even death, the conservative justices unselfconsciously aligned themselves with American nativism and European fascism of the 1930s. If, in their final decision, they uphold Trump’s turnback policy, they will be affirming that, were the S.S. St Louis to sail again today, the ship would still be denied entry and its passengers asylum.

The Moral Crisis Is Not “Border Surges” But the Closing of the Border

The morning of those oral arguments, the Kairos Center and other faith organizations held an interfaith prayer vigil on the steps of the Supreme Court to call attention to the case. Reverend Michael Neuroth, director of the United Church of Christ’s Washington D.C. office, put the matter vividly: “Welcoming and protecting the stranger is not a minor tenet of our faith but is a foundational moral obligation in each of our traditions. Dismantling the right to asylum is morally wrong, strategically short-sighted, and increases insecurity here in our nation. We must be a nation of compassion, a place of refuge to those in need.”

The vigil was organized in the heart of the “holy season” amid Ramadan, Passover, and Easter. As billions of people globally engage in rituals of remembrance, repentance, deliverance, and liberation, our prayers and petitions focused not only on the legal precedent for the right to seek asylum, but on the moral imperative to do so. For Christians, protecting and welcoming the immigrant is one of Jesus’s first and most powerful teachings. It’s also among the highest moral commands of the Torah. As the prophet Jeremiah reminds us, “Do no wrong to the foreigner and do not shed innocent blood.” Asylum and societal hospitality are well-recognized rights within Islamic law and theology, a fundamental Hindu and Buddhist tenet, and part of Native American spiritual teachings.

In our interfaith amicus brief, we wrote: “As the many faiths practiced by this country’s citizens teach, a society that does not protect the least among us is a failed society.” As faith leaders, we had in mind not only the right to seek asylum, but the many ways the Trump administration has deepened and intensified a moral crisis at the heart of our society. We were thinking about the ongoing attacks on immigrant communities — from ICE-led campaigns of terror to family and child detention in places like Dilley, Texas. There was also the stripping of life-saving healthcare and food support from millions of Americans through cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP); the criminalization and forced deprivation of LGBTQ+ people; and the prosecution of anillegal war that threatens the lives of so many in Iran and the broader region, as well as the livelihoods of billions of us across this globe.

In Noem v. Al Otro Lado, the Trump administration is attempting to mask its cruelty and despotism through banal legal arguments. By focusing semantically on when protections start for asylum seekers and debating the meaning of the term “arrives in” (as in this country, of course), its lawyers were ignoring the illegality and immorality of border agents blocking asylum seekers from crossing the U.S.-Mexican border and the larger question of whether the United States can any longer be a place of safety and protection for all families “yearning to be free” of violence and persecution.

The government is, of course, hoping that we don’t make the connections between the stripping away of asylum rights, the larger issue of immigrant rights, and the many other ways that it’s targeting “the least among us.” That’s a mistake we can’t make and where the teachings of our many faith traditions have encouragement to offer. In Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and more, love, justice, and peace are not parceled out only for certain people in certain places. Across our religions, all life is sacred, full stop!

No Turning Back for Anyone

Intermixed with the important lawgivers of history in that marble frieze in the Supreme Court gallery are engraved winged personifications of “Peace,” “The Rights of Man,” “History,” “Authority,” “Fame,” and more. Those winged characters form what looked to me like a Greco-Roman “choir of angels,” proclaiming “law and order” at the expense of rights and dignity for us all.

Sitting there, I reflected on just who was not in that room listening to those arguments or forcing the Supreme Court justices to face the very lives impacted by their decision. I thought about all those who will never have access to that courtroom, or justice of any sort for that matter, the millions of people struggling to fight for their communities and a future where everybody is in and nobody is out.

Those people are — or at least should be — our hope. They are the true “choir of angels” who came out for the recent No Kings Day demonstrations and are standing up for the rights and dignity of communities all over the country. They are also the people who are increasingly giving Donald Trump historically low approval ratings. And here’s the truth of these times: this administration has nothing to offer everyday people, other than hardened borders and wars that nobody wants.

At such a moment in history, a movement that connects the dots between our many struggles is certainly the way forward. Therefore, it seems fitting that the coalition that came together to fight this case and protect the rights of asylum seekers calls itself “No Turning Back.” It reminds me of a song by Emma’s Revolution that I’ve sung many times at protests and gatherings. Its key lines are a reminder of what we all need to keep in mind in this deeply disturbing Trumpian moment of ours:

“Gonna keep on moving forward
Keep on moving forward
Keep on moving forward
Never turning back
Never turning back”

Because indeed, there can be no turning back for any of us. Either we get there together or we never get there at all.

LIVE 9:00 am Eastern time, Streaming Anytime:

Editorial cartoonist Ted Rall and political analyst Jamarl Thomas deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM EST.

Today we discuss:

• Hours after the US and Iran announced a ceasefire deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, Trump took to social media with insulting, triumphantalist messaging that reneged on America’s promise to suspend its own blockade of Iranian ships. The Strait closed again, Iran attacked two ships and the U.S. attacked and took over an Iranian cargo vessel. Peace talks are supposed to start Wednesday—but will US envoys be talking to themselves?

• Republicans have few days left to extend Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). But Trump, GOP leaders and White House officials have failed to come up with a workable framework for months—and there is no agreement.

• Progressive Bulgaria, the party led by former President Rumen Radev, wins general elections in Bulgaria with 44.7%, a better-than-expected performance and one of the largest parliamentary mandates by any party in recent years. Warmer relations with Russia are likely.

• Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney says that Canada’s strong economic ties to the US were once a strength but are now a weakness that must be corrected.

MERCH STORE: https://www.deprogram.live

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The post Pirates of Petulance | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Today is the 63rd anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s release from the Birmingham, Alabama jail in which he penned his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”

The “Letter,” a response to eight White moderate clergyman who publicly called on King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference to stop its desegregation campaign in the name of “law and order and common sense,” is one of the most widely discussed texts in US history. Most of the discussion has focused, rightly, on the way King carefully and respectfully outlines a justification and strategy of non-violent civil disobedience, to be undertaken when attempts to redress grievances are repeatedly ignored; after careful preparation; and in the name of a higher law. While scholars continue to discuss and debate the nuances of King’s text, the force of his arguments, and their general applicability, there can be no doubt that both the “Letter” and the Birmingham campaign that the “Letter” explains and justifies have informed subsequent generations of protest in the US and the world at large.

At a time when the Trump administration is making war on “domestic enemies” and continuing a campaign of terror against undocumented immigrants and anyone suspected of being “an illegal,” and when citizens have resisted these efforts in the streets of major American cities--most notably in Minneapolis this past January—both King’s example, and his “Letter,” justifiably loom large in public discussion. And while the citizens of Minneapolis surely did not literally follow King’s the letter of King’s “Letter,” their extraordinary and successful campaign of resistance to ICE was surely in the spirit of King’s text and his example.

To read King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” is to be reminded of just how low our public life has fallen in the age of Trump...

As I reflect today on the “Letter,” however, I want to focus on a different dimension of the “Letter”: the way King--a holder of a doctorate in theology, a Black Baptist Minister, and the leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference—carefully braided together religious and secular rhetoric to make the case for a more inclusive democracy, invoking a range of exemplary religious figures and texts while deliberately using language that was itself manifestly inclusive. Many scholars have written about this. At the same time, I think it bears special emphasis given the way that the Trump administration, in ways large and small, hidden and public, is now promoting, with a vengeance, what can only be described as a form of militant Christian nationalism.

The New York Times reports that “Trump’s Planning of America’s 250th Suggests a Religious Focus.” Columnist Ja'han Jones, writing for MS Now, goes further, observing that “Trump is planning a Christian ‘revival’ for America’s 250th anniversary,” continuing: “Let there be no doubt. The president is using the milestone celebration to promote far-right evangelism and Trump-centric Christianity.”

In the same vein, Politico reports on the administration’s Easter enthusiasm:

several key Cabinet departments [were] heralding Christ’s resurrection on their official social media accounts. “He is risen,” declared the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department. The Defense Department shared a post on X from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth: “The tomb is empty. The promise is fulfilled. Through His sacrifice, we are redeemed. We stand firm in faith, courage, and truth.” The Justice Department also chimed in on X:“Today, as millions of Christians gather in their churches across the nation to celebrate the resurrection of Christ, this Department—is proud to defend religious liberty.”

Most disturbing has been the way the Trump administration has very publicly treated its war on Iran as a Christian holy war. Trump did this indirectly when he declared, on Good Friday, that:

As we rejoice in this Easter season, we are reminded that the life of Jesus Christ and the truths of the Gospel have inspired our way of life and our national identity for 250 years. From the Christian patriots who won and secured our liberty on the battlefield and every generation since, the love of Christ has unfailingly guided our Nation through calm waters and dark storms. . . . We acknowledge that, through Christ’s redeeming sacrifice, in the words of Holy Scripture, “Death is swallowed up in victory.” Above all, we echo with tremendous joy those sacred words that have given life, hope, and purpose to Christians for thousands of years: He is risen.

Hegseth has been more emphatically bellicose, especially in this much discussed, bone-chilling prayer offered at a recent Pentagon worship service:

Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation. Give them wisdom in every decision, endurance for the trial ahead, unbreakable unity, and overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.

The administration has been so resolutely Manichean and indeed bloodthirsty in its war rhetoric—with Trump going as far as to threaten the literal annihilation of not simply Iran but Iranian civilization itself—that Pope Leo XIV has felt obliged to publicly weigh in to call it to account. As Trump and his supine protégé JD Vance have responded with a combination of vituperation and arrogance, Leo has become more sharply critical even as he has continued to speak with great nuance. Trump’s Social Truth post representing himself as Jesus Christ, and the widespread charges of “blasphemy” that have followed, are simply surface expressions of the much deeper and more dangerous fact that the Trump administration is acting with utter contempt for any moral or political limits, and doing so by presenting itself as the veritable agent of a Christian holy war against the forces of the anti-Christ.

At a moment when such morally corrupt individuals as Trump, Vance, and Hegseth present themselves as agents of both religious virtue and “American Greatness,” King’s “Letter” exemplifies the way that serious moral and religious commitment can elevate democratic politics.

Beginning his “Letter” by immediately addressing the claim of his religious critics that he is an “outsider,” King makes no bones about his own religious connections and convictions. He points out that as President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, he has come to Birmingham at the invitation of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. He then goes further, situating himself openly in a long tradition of Christian dissent:

I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century b.c. left their villages and carried their “thus saith the Lord” far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco-Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

But he then quickly shifts to the third and more general reason for his presence, articulating what are the most famous sentences of the “Letter”:

I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

From the start, then, King articulates a pluralistic sense of his own identity, as the leader of a specific Christian movement, as a Christian, and as a citizen of the US and indeed of the world.

The entire “Letter” draws its force from King’s consistent and persistent performance of a rhetorical and political pluralism. When rebutting the charge that he is an “extremist,” he begins, famously, by asking “was not Jesus an extremist for love”—and it is relevant that he speaks here of “Jesus” the man, and not “Christ,” not because he abjures the language of “Christ,” but because he wishes to strike an ecumenical tone, and to call attention to a kind of courage to which any good man can aspire. King then continues, in the same paragraph and in the same vein, to list the others with whom he identifies: Amos, Paul, Martin Luther, Paul Bunyan, Lincoln, Jefferson, three of whom are quite obviously not “Christian” at all.

When explaining his distinction between a just and an unjust law, he writes that “a just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law,” and then explains by citing Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, Paul Tillich, “the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber,” and the language of the Brown v. Board decision itself.

When recalling heroic dissidents of the past, he names Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego from the Hebrew Bible’s Book of Daniel, the early Christians, Socrates, and the rebels behind the Boston Tea Party.

Every move King makes in the first half of the “Letter” is deliberately ecumenical, drawing on a plurality of religious sources, Biblical and theological, and a variety of secular sources, from Socrates to the American revolutionaries to Lincoln.

When King then shifts into a more direct critique of the church, he explicitly includes “white ministers, priests, and rabbis.” And when he makes clear his own deep personal Christian faith, charity, and love, he immediately shifts into a more general tone:

In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of the church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love. Yes, I love the church. How could I do otherwise? I am in the rather unique position of being the son, the grandson and the great-grandson of preachers. Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.

What then follows is a long critique of the church for its forgetfulness of a “God intoxication” that demands a concern for justice, concluding that “the judgment of God is upon the church as never before.” But even here, King refuses the rhetoric of jeremiad, opting instead for the words of hopeful persuasion with which he concludes:

I hope this letter finds you strong in the faith. I also hope that circumstances will soon make it possible for me to meet each of you, not as an integrationist or a civil-rights leader but as a fellow clergyman and a Christian brother. Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.

In his “Letter” King performs a sincere and serious religious commitment—a Christian, Baptist religious commitment, which he completely owns—while simultaneously performing a commitment to religious pluralism, democratic citizenship, and human rights. He ends with the hope of one day meeting his interlocutors “as a fellow clergyman and a Christian brother” because he is a clergyman and a Christian, who is directly engaging other religious leaders, each of whom leads a different community in a distinct way, and each of whom can be regarded as a kind of “brother.” He does not limit this hope to only Christians. He makes no reference here to Christ or the crucifixion or the resurrection or the end of days or God’s harsh judgment. King speaks not in the language of Holy War or Crusade. He speaks in the language of brotherhood, fraternity, commonality, and citizenship.

And indeed, while speaking in the language of universalism and ecumenicism, King also very deliberately, and emphatically, invokes a distinctly American political tradition of freedom, articulating this political vision:

One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

Unlike Trump and Hegseth, who wrap their unaccountable rhetorical and deadly violence in a cloak of evangelical Christian righteousness, Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote these, his most famous words, from a jail cell, while placing his life on the line in the name of a real commitment to freedom and justice. It is impossible to separate out King’s exemplary political courage from his profound Christian convictions, which he shared with his SCLC colleagues, even as he marched and collaborated with many who did not share these convictions. King makes his Christian faith clear. But he makes equally clear that in a democratic society, or at least a society professing democratic values, it is both possible and necessary for people of good will from a variety of religious, cultural, and moral places to reach toward an overlapping and common commitment to equal dignity, justice, and citizenship.

To read King’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail” is to be reminded of just how low our public life has fallen in the age of Trump, and how corrupt, venal, and dangerous is the rhetoric of religious fundamentalism when deployed by cynical autocrats intent on targeting and destroying “enemies.” But it is also to be reminded that words can elevate as well as denigrate, and that true moral conviction, whatever its cultural or religious grounding, can make a real difference in promoting a better, more just and more democratic world.

There’s a line in the U.S. Constitution so simple it shouldn’t require interpretation. Article I, Section 8: Congress has the power to declare war. Not the President. Congress. The Founders were explicit about this. James Madison called it “the most sacred of all” constitutional provisions — the one safeguard against a single person dragging a republic into bloodshed.

On February 28, 2026, at approxiomately 1:15 am ET, the United States began bombing Iran. No declaration of war. No congressional vote. No single national security incident was cited as the basis for the attack—Trump instead recounted 47 years of U.S.–Iran tensions, beginning with the 1979 hostage crisis, as justification. The bombs fell anyway.

What happened next is the part that should disturb you more than the war itself.

Congress had a choice. It had the tool — the War Powers Resolution of 1973, passed over Nixon’s veto precisely to prevent this kind of unilateral military adventurism. The law is unambiguous: the president may not enter U.S. troops into hostilities without express congressional authorization, regardless of a conflict’s scale or duration. The 60-day clock started ticking the moment the first bomb dropped. Congress could have acted.

It didn’t. When Senators Kaine and Paul introduced a War Powers Resolution on March 1, the Senate voted it down 53–47. Then they voted it down again. And again. By mid-April, the Senate had rejected Democratic efforts to force an end to U.S. military involvement in Iran four separate times, voting largely along party lines.

Four votes. Four failures. This is not a story about Trump breaking the law. It’s a story about Congress watching him do it and choosing, repeatedly, to look away.

The War Powers Resolution was supposed to be the fix for exactly this situation. Widely considered a measure for preventing “future Vietnams,” it was nonetheless generally resisted or ignored by subsequent presidents, many of whom regarded it as an unconstitutional usurpation of their executive authority.

Every president since Nixon has treated it as optional; Clinton in Kosovo, Obama in Libya, and now Trump in Iran. The pattern is so consistent it barely registers as news anymore. But what has changed, and what makes Operation Epic Fury different, is the scale.

This is markedly different in scope, scale, and objective from the more limited US attack on Iran of June 2025 which targeted senior leadership, military infrastructure, and nuclear capabilities. This is a war by any honest definition. The administration just refuses to call it one.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Fox News: “This is not a war against Iran,” the same view held by most modern presidents and their lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel. If you call it something else—a “police action,” a “limited engagement,” or a “kinetic military operation”—you never have to ask permission. Truman did it in Korea. Nixon did it in Cambodia. The euphemisms change; the evasion doesn’t.

But here’s the thing about this particular evasion. Congress isn’t powerless here it’s passive. The appropriations power alone gives lawmakers the ability to cut off funding for any military operation they find objectionable.

The annual National Defense Authorization Act process, combined with supplemental appropriations, provides multiple leverage points. Republican leadership isn’t using any of them. They’re not even seriously trying. Speaker Johnson called the War Powers Resolution vote “a terrible, dangerous idea” that would “empower our enemies.” That’s not a constitutional argument. That’s cover.

And the Democrats? They’ve forced the votes, yes. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) has been relentless. But Kaine himself acknowledged that the renewed effort was unlikely to go anywhere, but said it’s important for members of Congress to go on record. "Going on record." That’s what it’s come to—symbolic gestures in the face of a $200 billion war that nobody voted for.

The costs are real. The war has already cost at least $12 billion, and the Pentagon has asked the White House to approve a $200 billion supplemental request to Congress to fund the conflict. The Strait of Hormuz closed. Global oil markets lurched. Economic shocks have rippled outward, with the costs falling on ordinary Americans while those who profit from endless war count their returns. Children were killed at a school in Minab. The 60-day deadline has come and gone.

The War Powers Resolution was built for this moment. It was written by legislators who had watched Vietnam consume a generation because no one in Congress had the spine to call a war a war. “After Nixon, it’s gone on from one president to the next , they believe they can use military force against one country after another,” says Louis Fisher, who served for 35 years as senior specialist in separation of powers at the Congressional Research Service.

Fifty years later, the lesson has not been learned. The resolution that was supposed to restore congressional war powers has instead become a ritual. A series of doomed votes that let lawmakers signal opposition without actually exercising it.

There is one question that cuts through all of it. Sen. Kaine asked it directly on the Senate floor: “If you don’t have the guts to vote yes or no on a war vote, how dare you send our sons and daughters into war where they risk their lives?”

No one answered him. That silence is the real story.

The 1973 War Powers Resolution wasn’t just a law. It was a promise that the United States would never again stumble into a catastrophic military conflict without the consent of the people’s elected representatives. Operation Epic Fury has broken that promise to the American people once again. Congress has the power to keep it. Right now, it is choosing not to.

That choice has a cost. Someone should start paying it.