The Trump administration is organizing a network of energy-producing states in the Caribbean to provide the region with a steady supply of fossil fuels, despite the environmental risks.

Hoping to sideline Venezuela, the oil-rich country that once provided the Caribbean with affordable supplies of oil, the Trump administration is working to position other oil-rich countries as the region’s primary suppliers of energy. Administration officials are particularly focused on Guyana and Suriname, two oil-rich countries that they hope the region’s leaders will embrace as alternatives to Venezuela.

“The fact that now their own countries—Guyana, Suriname—are able to have and really surpass Venezuela in its oil production and be able to work with its neighbors there in the region is a huge opportunity for the Caribbean,” U.S. Special Envoy for Latin America Mauricio Claver-Carone said at a March 25 press briefing.

The Geopolitics of Oil in the Caribbean

Over the past two decades, the United States has engaged in a major rivalry with Venezuela for influence in the Caribbean. The U.S.-Venezuela rivalry has centered on oil, a fossil fuel that many Caribbean nations import to meet their energy needs.

Early in the 21st century, Venezuela took advantage of its vast oil reserves to become a major supplier of oil for the Caribbean. Under a program called Petrocaribe, Venezuela shared its oil wealth by providing Caribbean countries with shipments at low rates.

Many Caribbean countries embraced Petrocaribe. Not only did the Venezuelan program enable them to meet their energy needs, but it empowered them to begin developing their economies more independently of the United States, which has long been the dominant power in the region.

Rather than fully embracing environmentally friendly alternatives to Petrocaribe, however, U.S. officials quietly engaged in a geopolitical game over oil.

For many years, the United States failed to offer alternatives to Petrocaribe. While Venezuela emerged as a powerful counterweight to U.S. power in the Caribbean, officials in Washington faced the possibility that formerly dependent countries would break free from the U.S. orbit.

With its influence waning, the United States eventually developed its own energy program. In 2014, the Obama administration introduced the Caribbean Energy Security Initiative, which offered Caribbean countries technical assistance, financing for energy projects, and political support for regional energy planning.

U.S. officials presented the initiative as a way of bringing clean energy to the Caribbean. The program, they said, would empower Caribbean countries to transition away from fossil fuels and reduce their dependence on oil imports.

“You, the countries of the Caribbean, have a chance at the supply of energy that’s more resilient, more sustainable, cleaner, more affordable than you have ever, ever had,” Joe Biden told Caribbean leaders in 2015, when he was vice president in the Obama administration.

Rather than fully embracing environmentally friendly alternatives to Petrocaribe, however, U.S. officials quietly engaged in a geopolitical game over oil. Believing that the United States could outmatch Venezuela on fossil fuels, they set out to find ways of achieving regional dominance in oil and natural gas.

One tactic was to promote U.S. fossil fuel exports to the Caribbean. “We have more oil and gas rigs running in the United States than all the rest of the world combined,” Biden boasted in 2015, when he was promoting the Caribbean Energy Security Initiative.

Another tactic focused on finding new sources of fossil fuels in the Caribbean. Several U.S. officials developed high hopes for Guyana, a South American country with large offshore oil deposits. In 2015, ExxonMobil announced significant discoveries, raising expectations that the country would become one of the region’s largest suppliers of oil.

As U.S. officials pushed alternative sources of fossil fuels, they also sought to end Venezuelan influence altogether. Acting consistently with the long history of U.S. coups and interventions in Latin America, the United States sought to bring down the Venezuelan government.

The first Trump administration made some of the most audacious moves, openly embracing regime change. From 2017 to 2019, it imposed severe sanctions on the country’s finances and oil industry to facilitate the collapse of the Venezuelan government.

Although the Venezuelan government survived the challenges, which continued into the Biden administration, the country experienced an unprecedented economic collapse. With its oil industry in decline and under restrictions by U.S. sanctions, Venezuela could no longer maintain Petrocaribe, diminishing its efforts to be a major supplier of oil for the Caribbean.

Trump Administration’s New Approach

Since the second Trump administration entered office in January, it has faced a new power dynamic in the Caribbean. With Venezuela having undergone one of the worst economic collapses for a country not at war, including a major decline in its oil industry, the administration finds itself in a position to restore U.S. supremacy in the Caribbean.

Moving to take advantage of the situation, the Trump administration has added a new dimension to the geopolitics of oil. Hoping to permanently sideline Venezuela and exclude it from the Caribbean altogether, it has begun to create a network of oil-producing countries that will provide the region with oil under U.S. direction.

“This is an opportunity,” Claver-Carone said at the March 25 press briefing. Caribbean countries “are going to be able to support each other, to be able to create an energy security framework, which has already changed the geopolitics of the region.”

Administration officials are trying to create a security agreement with Guyana that will provide the country with the same kinds of military protections that the United States extends to its energy-rich partners in the Middle East.

In recent weeks, the Trump administration has made several moves in pursuit of its goals. On March 24, President Trump issued an executive order that threatened to impose a tariff of 25% on any country that imports oil from Venezuela. Trump’s order put strong pressure on Caribbean leaders who have been hoping to revive Petrocaribe.

Second, the Trump administration has organized U.S. diplomatic visits to Caribbean nations. At the end of March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio traveled to Guyana and Suriname, where he praised their leaders for embracing oil production and encouraged them to work together in a new network under U.S. leadership.

Surinamese President Chandrikapersad Santokhi said that he anticipated that Guyana and Suriname “will become important partners for the Caribbean and the Western Hemisphere.”

Still, Venezuela remains in a position to challenge the United States. It is continuing to produce more oil than Guyana and Suriname combined, enabling it to maintain some exports to countries in the Caribbean. It is also claiming sovereignty over Essequibo, the western part of Guyana that includes the country’s offshore oil deposits.

The Trump administration has responded aggressively to Venezuela’s territorial claims, signaling that the U.S. military will intervene if Venezuela attempts to seize any of Guyana’s territory. Administration officials are trying to create a security agreement with Guyana that will provide the country with the same kinds of military protections that the United States extends to its energy-rich partners in the Middle East.

Claver-Carone envisioned “a greater security cooperation agreement with Guyana—almost akin to what we’re working on with some of the Gulf states.”

The Trump administration’s strategy marks a major turning point for the Caribbean. Whereas the United States had once presented the region with options for shifting away from fossil fuels, it has now abandoned that approach. The new U.S. goal is to lock the region into permanent reliance on fossil fuels, only now under a network of energy-rich countries overseen by the United States.

What the Trump administration is doing, in other words, is implementing a far more dangerous geopolitics of oil. As it moves to isolate Venezuela, it is pushing energy-dependent nations to embrace fossil fuels, regardless of the environmental consequences for the region and the world.

With Tax Day rapidly approaching, taxpayers who haven’t yet filed could have a great option available to them this year. Half the states in the nation now have access to a zero-cost tool created by the Internal Revenue Service called Direct File that allows people to file taxes online directly to the government using a question-based software.

Direct File is a much better option than paying for expensive corporate-owned software or hiring a private tax-prep company. The typical taxpayer ends up spending an average of eight hours each year completing their tax returns in addition to shelling out $160 a year to pay for a service that should be—and is now—free of charge.

Last year, Direct File software was made available through a pilot program to those with relatively simple tax situations living in Arizona, California, Florida, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, Texas, Tennessee, South Dakota, Washington, and Wyoming.

The user testimonials speak for themselves. “It was the fastest I’ve ever done my taxes,” said one user. “I wish everyone could do their taxes that easily,” said another.

This year, in addition to the 12 states from last year’s pilot program, all of which are participating again, Direct File has been expanded to include Alaska, Connecticut, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Approximately 30 million people across the 25 participating states are eligible to use Direct File. And there are many reasons to welcome this new e-file tool created by the IRS.

Direct File was designed to make it as easy as possible for people to file taxes. In addition to being free of charge, the tool is mobile-friendly, available in both English and Spanish, and has live chat assistance from the IRS. What’s more, the tool now pre-populates some information that the IRS already has in its records to make the process even quicker and error-free, which is a huge improvement over its original version.

What’s more, Direct File is intended to help people claim credits like the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which around one in five eligible filers don’t currently claim.

Research shows that when Direct File is fully scaled up, Americans could collectively save up to $11 billion in filing costs alone, while low and moderate-income families could recoup $12 billion in tax credits like the EITC and Child Tax Credit that they’re currently missing out on. That money could come in handy for families struggling to make ends meet in these times of rising costs.

Predictably, Direct File is overwhelmingly popular with the American public. More than 90% of people who used Direct File last year said that the tool is “Excellent” or “Above average.”

The user testimonials speak for themselves. “It was the fastest I’ve ever done my taxes,” said one user. “I wish everyone could do their taxes that easily,” said another.

It’s not just popular with those who’ve used it. Direct File has been cheered by more than 140 members of Congress; 16 attorneys general; 134 leading experts on the U.S. tax system; and more than 250 national, state, and local organizations representing all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.

During his confirmation hearing, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he would commit to keeping Direct File in 2025. However, amid the current chaos happening in the federal government, its future in 2026 and beyond is less certain. Big tax prep corporations have been handing out cash to opponents of Direct File in Congress in the hopes of gutting the program.

For Direct File to remain an option in future years, it’s critical that taxpayers take advantage of the tool right now. Widespread participation will help solidify the future of this important service.

So if you haven’t filed your taxes yet, go to directfile.irs.gov to see if you’re eligible.

Imagine, if you will, the United States on January 1, 2028. President Donald Trump and his gang of MAGA goons have been drawing from the well of right-wing nativism for the past three years, generating spectacle after spectacle without managing to improve material circumstances for any but the wealthiest Americans. That well has now run dry, and the American public is getting restless. The United States has repeatedly skirted the edge of an economic recession; inflation remains high and unemployment is ticking up. The malaise of stagflation pervades every aspect of American life. Eggs and milk prices remain high, the stock market hasn’t really rallied again since the GOP pushed through its latest cut on taxes for the wealthy, and the big ticket items—homes, vehicles, education—are all more expensive than when Trump first took office, for the second time.

Amidst the chaos, Democrats have kicked their campaigning into high gear, with primary season nearly upon them. This is a primary without an heir apparent, and every Democrat within arm’s reach of a well-funded PAC has thrown their hat into the ring. At the top of the list are familiar names like Gavin Newsom, full of “I feel your pain” empathy for the right and spite for the left. He’s spent the second Trump administration honing his performance of antipathy for progressive social issues and rubbing elbows with the right-wing glitterati. Now he’s ready to convert on his “moderate” bona fides. There’s also Pete Buttigieg, here to remind us that no planes crashed on his watch as Transportation Secretary. Amy Klobuchar is back too although no one, including herself, can articulate exactly why.

Since the resurgence of the New New Left in the last decade, there has never been a wider gulf between the appeal of left-wing politicians and distaste for the Democratic Party establishment.

Despite the typical pomp that attends any party primary season, this campaign looks different than those in recent memory. For the first time in 12 years, more than a decade, Democrats do not have Donald Trump to run against. Whoever the Republican primary process churns out will surely promise to continue whatever erosion of democracy and civil rights Trump has accomplished in his second term. But that nominee is unlikely to carry the same boogeyman-like narrative weight that Trump has wielded to captivate the media for years. Democrats, then, will face a disconcerting prospect: They must run with a positive, projective vision for the country.

What Do the Democrats Believe?

Over the last few election cycles, the Democratic Party has struggled to present a cohesive vision of what it stands for in the 21st century. This is partly due to Donald Trump; the party has, in some sense, overdeveloped its anti-Trump messaging while neglecting the rest of its platform, like a tennis player with an oversized racket arm. Democrats have been saved from having to more carefully cultivate policy messaging because, for the last three cycles, they have simply run as the opposition to Donald Trump. This strategy has a 33% success rate.

The platform problems go much deeper than this, though. The party’s multi-decade pivot away from working class voters toward suburban, college-educated ones has failed to grow a winning coalition for the Democrats. It has, though, paralyzed the party on policy questions relating to income inequality and redistribution of wealth, arguably the most pressing of our present moment. The party cannot serve the interests of wealthy and upper-middle income suburbanites and the working class, simultaneously. Instead of striving to resolve this tension, the party has grasped at social issues in an attempt to trail the prevailing popular opinion of the moment. Where the party was “woke” and all in on ameliorating issues of racial injustice in 2020, just a few years later, some of the most prominent Democrats have joined right-wing Republicans in attacking trans people and migrants.

All this vacillation has run the party aground. Recent polling reveals that the party has reached its lowest point in popularity in at least the last three decades. Constituents do not trust congressional Democrats to stand up to Donald Trump and the GOP. We are only a few months into Donald Trump’s second term, and the Democratic Party already appears to be out of ideas. Leadership is at pains to point out how hamstrung they are by their minority positions in the House and Senate, but they have so far shrunk from any opportunity to use leverage they have against the Trump administration.

The last few months have made two things about the Democratic Party and its supporters abundantly clear: First, there is a real appetite among the party’s constituents to take a radically new tack in combatting Trumpism and, second, there is no inclination among party leadership to do so.

2028 Will Be the Left’s Best Opportunity

Against this backdrop, left electeds and candidates are once again garnering attention and enthusiasm. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) have drawn crowds of tens of thousands for their “Fighting Oligarchy” tour, an astounding turnout in an off-election year for two politicians already firmly entrenched in their respective seats. Elsewhere, Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist running for mayor of New York City, has surged to take second place in recent polling, trailing only the disgraced, but universally known, Andrew Cuomo. Mamdani’s fundraising has been so robust that he recently implored would-be donors to canvass for him instead, becoming likely the only U.S. candidate for office ever to ask people to stop sending money.

Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are the most well-known representatives of the left within the sphere of electoral politics. That they are driving massive turnout to their rallies amidst Democrats’ cratering popularity is a testament not just to the durability of their individual fandoms but to the appeal of left policy as well. (It’s also worth recalling that Sanders has long enjoyed some of the highest favorability ratings of any living U.S. politician.) Since the resurgence of the New New Left in the last decade, there has never been a wider gulf between the appeal of left-wing politicians and distaste for the Democratic Party establishment. This is why it’s critical for the left to seize on this imbalance well ahead of 2028.

A Path to Winning the Nomination in 2028

Since its resurgence in 2016, the left has now had the opportunity to observe the primary process (or lack thereof) in three presidential cycles. We should no longer harbor any illusions about how stridently the corporatist wing of the party will oppose a left candidate who appears poised to grab the Democratic nomination. Therefore, it’s critical that the left unites, well ahead of schedule, behind one, single candidate.

Established practice recommends that candidates wait until at least after the dust from the midterm elections has settled. However, the risks to a left candidate declaring before this point are minimal—if Republicans further cement their hold on Congress, it’s proof of the ineptitude of the current party leadership; if Democrats make advances, that’s evidence that the electorate (still) desires change. It’s true that a declaration of intent so far out from the primary contest would be a radical departure from the established modus operandi. But what would a left candidate actually lose in making their intentions known so early? For an established name it would give that person runway to flesh out their platform and expand on their existing base of supporters; for an up-and-comer, it would allow enough time for that person to introduce themselves to the American public and drive up their name recognition. In the era of total digital saturation, media could be had easily—and cheaply—via an infinite number of social media platforms, podcasts, YouTube channels, and so on.

Despite the fierce headwinds a left candidate is sure to face from the party leaders, the left does have one significant advantage: we already have an established political program. Whereas the Kamala Harris campaign was characterized by its almost total lack of prescriptive policy, a left candidate has a tested-and-true platform to run on. The basic tenets of this platform were established by the Sanders presidential campaigns in 2016 and 2020 and have been elaborated on through a series of federal, state, and local campaigns over the ensuing years. They have also been informed by the social movement struggles of the last decade, beginning especially with the Black Lives Matter uprisings after George Floyd’s murder and continuing through the ongoing Cease-Fire Now protests over U.S. complicity in the genocide in Gaza.

While individual candidates may riff on this platform a bit, there are some established, bedrock policies that should form the basis of any left campaign. These include support for single-payer, universal healthcare; acknowledgment that climate change is a real, existential threat; and efforts to massively expand union membership, including installing a radically pro-worker National Labor Relations Board. Also critical will be an immigration approach that ends mass deportations, a policy that is quickly coming to define the second Trump administration. In the realm of foreign policy, a left candidate for president would commit to ending arms sales to Israel and putting the U.S.’ diplomatic weight behind an immediate end to any military action against the Palestinian people. The left flank of the party should be prepared to line up behind the candidate who best represents this platform in 2028.

The Prospects

So, where will we find a perfect tribune of the left? Well, we won’t. The key is simply to find a candidate with enough mass appeal to corral the various left constituencies who will need to back the primary campaign. There are a few places to look for such a person:

The Traditional Route

The most obvious place to go looking for this candidate is among already-established career politicians. The advantages to this approach are obvious: These are people who already know how to run campaigns, have large pools of current and former staffers from whom they could build a campaign team, and have long-running connections with members of the political fundraising ecosystem. The startup costs for a member of this group would be substantially less significant than for an outsider.

The names in contention here are well-known among left politicos. Above the title is, of course, Ocasio-Cortez, who has dominated the progressive Democrat sphere since her shock win over Joe Crowley in 2018. AOC, if she entered the race, would be a formidable frontrunner. Recent surveys have shown that a plurality of Americans already believe her to be the de facto leader of the party, ahead of even Kamala Harris. She has also transformed into one of the party’s strongest fundraisers, a critical component of any successful campaign for president. And, she would be just 38 as the primary season kicked off in 2028, and 39 if she were elected, making her easily the youngest person ever elected to the presidency. Comparatively young candidates have easily capitalized on their youth to brand themselves as change candidates in the past, which is likely to be an especially compelling narrative as the then-81 year old Trump presides over his waning days in office.

The left best serves corporatist Democrats when we descend into internecine squabbles and leave the door open for multiple entrants to claim the “progressive” mantle.

AOC has her detractors as well, of course. Her occasionally uneasy relationship with parts of the left has sometimes destabilized her relationship with what would otherwise be her core constituency. As with Sanders in 2016 and 2020, though, it’s likely that a real attempt by Ocasio-Cortez to seize the Democratic nomination would rally many on the left as the prospect of installing a veteran of left-progressivism in the White House would prove too enticing to pass up.

Less well-known nationally in this group, but perhaps more serious about running in 2028, is Ro Khanna, representative from California. Khanna has built many of his progressive bona fides on being the Big Tech-whisperer of the left, someone who can harness the energy of Silicon Valley for good, not evil. (Khanna represents the district that includes much of Silicon Valley; it is the nation’s wealthiest Congressional district.) As such, he has been a strong advocate for digital privacy rights, an issue that is sure to have increasing salience amidst the destruction of personal privacy which the so-called “Department” of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is currently instituting.

But, Khanna has also taken stances that are more controversial among leftists. In the weeks before Trump’s inauguration, Khanna wrote favorably about DOGE, giving fuel to the idea that he is too close to Silicon Valley and its technocrats. He also raised leftists’ ire over his ties to Hindu nationalists and for lobbying for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is a member with the far-right BJP, to address Congress in 2023.

A problem for both Ocasio-Cortez and Khanna is that, if they were to move directly from the House of Representatives to the presidency, they would be the first to do so since James Garfield, in 1880. This isn’t to say that it’s impossible for any candidate to make this jump, just that, over the last century and a half, more presidents have come straight from the ranks of television show hosts than they have from the U.S. House of Representatives.

Labor and Its Allies

A middle ground between recruiting a candidate through the political establishment and a more radical departure from the norm could be to turn to organized labor. Democrats have long counted union members among their most reliable constituencies (although there is some evidence that that association is weakening). Approval for labor unions is also at a high point since the mid-1960s, and labor leaders are becoming more prominent members of the political commentariat, if not quite yet household names.

Most visible among this group is probably Shawn Fain, the president of the United Auto Workers (UAW) since 2023. Fain was one of Trump’s most vocal critics during the presidential campaign, but has substantially moderated his approach toward Trump in the months since the election and has even spoken approvingly of Trump’s tariff policy.

While his occasionally conciliatory attitude toward the Trump administration may rankle some on the left, Fain’s unorthodox approach to the administration may work in his favor. He could use his unique politics to avoid being cleanly labeled as either a Republican or Democrat, and lead with his “pro-worker” brand instead.

Sara Nelson would be another strong contender from the world of labor. Nelson, who has been president of the Association of Flight Attendants since 2014, has been among the most visible and militant labor leaders of the last 10 years. She rose to prominence while advocating for members of her union during the 2019 government shutdown in Trump’s first term, and none other than Bernie Sanders lobbied Joe Biden to name Nelson labor secretary in his administration.

Nelson’s path to achieving widespread name recognition would be much steeper than Fain’s. While Fain is head of one of the most well-known U.S. labor unions with hundreds of thousands of members spread across multiple industries, Nelson heads a much smaller association. And, despite her status as a darling of left organizers, she is still broadly unknown to the wider electorate and, of all the aforementioned candidates, would have to spend the most time driving up her name recognition.

Any candidate who came from organized labor would need to also reckon with whatever labor activity is spinning up as 2028 approaches. Fain and the UAW are gearing up for a potentially massive labor action on May 1, 2028. While the left is sure to support a labor action of this size and scope, presiding over a large-scale strike and the possible months of subsequent negotiations could significantly complicate a labor-aligned candidate’s ability to simultaneously run a presidential campaign.

The Trumpian Tack

Finally, of course, a candidate could come from entirely outside of the political sphere. Since Donald Trump rode his golden escalator into infamy, many entertainers, commentators, and public personalities have toyed with the idea of running for the land’s highest office. The field here, at least for leftists, is a bit thin.

The comedian and host of The Daily Show, Jon Stewart, may be the likeliest pick in an unlikely scenario. Stewart has been propositioned as recently as the last presidential cycle. Although he quickly put that possibility to rest, 2028 will be a different game entirely. In 2024, Stewart was seen as a hail Mary option as Democrats anguished over their unease with keeping former President Joe Biden at the top of the ticket. In 2028, he may be a frontrunner in a wide open primary. Stewart would bring sky-high name recognition and a preexisting base of loyal fans with whom he’s nurtured a connection since the George W. Bush administration. He would also bring the media savvy and knack for comedic timing that Trump himself leveraged to paint his competitors in the 2016 Republican primary as hopeless dullards.

Drafting Stewart into this role is unlikely, and probably best viewed as a fallback, unless he expressed enthusiasm for the job. Assuming he’s not interested, the picture quickly becomes bleak. While the left has a vibrant and expansive ecosystem of podcasters, streamers, content creators, and commentators, growing any individual micro-fandom into a base of supporters large enough to win the Democratic nomination would be a Herculean task, to put it mildly.

A Coalition of the Willing

Finding the right candidate will only be half the battle. Critical, too, will be assembling a coalition of left leaders, organizations, and activists who will form the base of support for that candidate. Conversations among potential members of this group should begin quickly, and aim toward developing a consensus list of preferred candidates. Gaining broad buy-in for this strategy will be essential to getting any effort like this off the ground.

So, who would be part of this group? To be vague and a bit cowardly, I’d say that any person or group who supports the above-described platform should be part of this coalition. More specifically though, this coalition would have to draw together grassroots activists; significant parts of organized labor; and left-leaning, party-adjacent groups who lobby the party on matters of strategy and policy. These different groups would have to set aside interpersonal differences and agree to support whomever the coalition is eventually able to recruit to run, regardless of their personal affinity for, or proximity to, this person. This is a tall order, but members wanting to be part of this network should keep in mind lessons from the past: The left best serves corporatist Democrats when we descend into internecine squabbles and leave the door open for multiple entrants to claim the “progressive” mantle. If we want this effort to be successful, we must be resolute and unambiguous in our promotion of a single person.

We Are Coming to Save Us

The last few months have made it crystal clear that neither our institutions nor the grandees of the old Democratic establishment will save us from encroaching authoritarianism. Neither will appeals to restoring an old, vanished order or promises that nothing, fundamentally, would change with the Democrats in charge.

However, the Democratic Party cannot afford to drift, rudderless, through this Trump administration. It must present a strong counterpoint to the policies of this White House, and soon. One of the surest ways of doing that would be to appoint a new class of leaders who are more prepared to take on the rising fascist tide—a class of leaders who understand how grave, and late, the hour is for our democracy. If the corporatist class of the party will not make this pivot, leftists must do it for them. And, for our part, nothing could be a more concrete statement of the left’s intent for the next four years than to appoint a progressive champion well ahead of schedule.

Fear of ICE arrests is spreading across the United States, reaching beyond migrants and political activists to include everyday citizens. This growing anxiety stems from intensified immigration enforcement, with frequent raids and deportations unsettling communities. The emotional toll is palpable—individuals live with constant uncertainty, while society grapples with the broader implications. Many people wonder whether it’s safe to leave the U.S. on vacation. We are a nation at a crossroads, wrestling with issues of identity, rights, and government overreach.

The post Fear of ICE Grips Migrants, Activists, and Citizens appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Streaming 2:30 PM LIVE and Replaying On Demand Afterward:

DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall dives into two explosive stories that will leave you questioning everything.

First, the shocking massacre of first responders in Gaza by Israel—brave heroes gunned down in cold blood while saving lives, followed by a chilling coverup that’s been buried too long. What really happened, and why won’t the world look?

Then, a jaw-dropping tale from Detroit: a fearless lawyer targeted by BCE, caught in a web of intrigue and retaliation that screams corruption at the highest levels. Why is this advocate being silenced, and who’s pulling the strings?

Hosted by ex-CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou, who exposed torture and paid the price, and fearless cartoonist Ted Rall, no stranger to controversy, this episode rips the lid off hidden truths the powerful want kept quiet.

Will the Gaza atrocities ever see daylight? Can the Detroit lawyer fight back against BCE’s shadowy grip? Tune in to DeProgram for a rollercoaster of revelations that’ll make your blood boil and your mind race. Don’t miss this—click now to uncover the stories they don’t want you to hear!

The post DeProgram: “Israel’s Gaza Slaughter & a Detroit Lawyer’s Fight” appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The Los Angeles area began this year with some of the worst wildfires in its history. Dozens of people were killed and 200,000 were displaced. About 40,000 acres and 12,300 structures, including houses, were burned. The city endured immense emotional and physical damage. Yet, many property owners in the city find themselves with little recourse for financial compensation.

In fact, over the past five years, insurance companies like State Farm, Farmers, Chubb, Liberty Mutual, and Allstate have all refused to renew policies for innumerable homeowners in the Los Angeles area, leaving residents without adequate protection for their homes. By July of 2024, State Farm alone had dropped 1,600 clients residing in the Pacific Palisades ZIP code, where damage from the fires would be some of the worst. Soaring home insurance prices have also forced lower- and middle-income residents to make the impossible decision of refusing insurance for their homes. In the wake of the most recent fires, many are not only left devastated by the destruction of their homes and the uprooting of their lives, but they are also financially stranded in the disaster’s aftermath.

All of these horrible consequences stem from a simple rule that defines much of the home insurance industry’s dealings with the public: Increased risk means increased prices. In more disaster-prone areas, the likelihood of insurance companies having to compensate homeowners is heightened by the prevalence of destructive events, and insurance companies raise premiums to remain profitable and to ensure their financial ability to cover future losses or drop clients altogether. For instance, knowing that California is highly prone to destructive wildfires, insurance companies will deny housing coverage for people in high-risk forest fire areas to avoid paying the high cost of rebuilding thousands of homes should one occur.

As climate organizers encounter a federal government unfriendly to systemic change but have made decent strides in their work with financial institutions, it is clear that targeting the private sector is imperative at this moment.

Rising insurance prices are not isolated to one region, though. Communities across the country from Kentucky to Florida to New York are now facing the brunt end of this crisis. When hurricane Ida hit New York in 2021, damages cost one woman up to $25,000 dollars out of pocket for repairs because Liberty Mutual outright rejected them coverage. This disproportionately affects low-income communities, who will face even more struggle trying to afford to pay for damages that should have been covered by their housing insurance in the first place.

Even considering the fact that the burden often falls on people purchasing insurance for their homes, increased and intensified natural disasters fundamentally have an adverse financial effect on insurance companies by making their services more expensive, which is also often accompanied by reduced coverage. Therefore, you would think that they would address the root cause of this increase in destruction—climate change.

But, many don’t. Everyday, insurance companies like Chubb, Liberty Mutual, and AIG practice hypocrisy, creating a perpetual cycle that expedites climate destruction and inequality. This is accomplished through the underwriting of fossil fuel projects, which is often cheaper for these companies because it allows them to invest and insure something deemed less “risky” that, in the short-term, will make the company more money. Insurance companies continue to underwrite pipelines for transporting fossil fuels and liquefied natural gas (LNG) infrastructure that is often built nearby vulnerable communities. The domestic insurance industry has also invested $582 billion of assets collected through client’s premiums into the fossil fuel industry. Still, climate change, caused by the emission of those exact fossil fuels into the Earth’s atmosphere, further exacerbates and increases the frequency of the (not so) natural disasters that drive up insurance prices. Essentially, these companies contribute to the climate crisis through their financial choices, and then expect frontline communities to foot the bill.

(Graphic: Green America)

The insurance industry is one of the key pillars of our society’s reliance on fossil fuels alongside the financial institutions that bankroll it and the government agencies that sign off on its expansion. When insurance companies provide coverage for fossil fuel extraction projects, they provide insurance so that in the case of a disaster like a spill or explosion, the extraction project is protected. Without insurance coverage, corporations simply cannot continue building the infrastructure that keeps us hooked on fossil fuels. For example, last year, when Chubb dropped the coverage from the Rio Grande LNG project, AIG stepped right in as an insurer on the initiative. As climate organizers encounter a federal government unfriendly to systemic change but have made decent strides in their work with financial institutions, it is clear that targeting the private sector is imperative at this moment.

Insurance companies, especially, know the risks of climate change and are vulnerable to its effects. A report by the asset manager Conning shows that 91% of insurance executives profess “significant” concern about the climate crisis. This makes efforts to persuade insurance companies on matters of climate particularly salient and realistic during these times—especially when the public wants change. According to one study, 78% of U.S. voters are at least somewhat concerned about rising property insurance costs and 67% percent are concerned about extreme weather events. Most importantly, the vast majority of the population surveyed said that insurance executives are to blame for the aforementioned rising costs and 57% said that these costs should not be passed on to customers.

Although older generations also suffer the difficulties of accessing reliable insurance and figuring out how to pick up their lives after devastating climate disasters, Gen Z is uniquely forced to come of age without the financial expectations and infrastructure that were promised to us as part of the American economic system. Affordable mortgages and insurers that will actually cover us and provide reliable and ethical insurance now seem near-impossible to access for young people, knowing the state of our climate. This has particularly impacted Gen Z because we have grown up in a time where climate disasters are stronger, more frequent, and now something of a regular occurrence. In response to these climate events becoming normal, companies will continue to increasingly deny us housing coverage and proper insurance in hopes of saving money. This calls youth across the country to take action against the hypocrisy of these companies, calling for sustainable insurance that does not fund the fossil fuel industry.

The shift to a fossil fuel-free insurance industry will not be easy, but it is now, more than ever, a necessary step toward ensuring the common good. It is, in fact, the only ethical option on behalf of corporations that are meant to protect people’s livelihoods. As youth, we demand immediate action from the individuals and corporations in power, and to those who refuse to listen to us, we have one question: Who do you expect to pay your premiums in 50 years?

Don’t let U.S. President Donald Trump’s cozy relationship with Teamsters President Sean O’Brien fool you. The new administration is a bunch of scabs—union busters of the highest order, cut from the same cloth as the radically anti-worker Reagans and Thatchers of the world.

In his frenetic and destructive first few months back in office, Donald Trump has pursued a sweeping set of anti-worker and anti-union executive actions that have our country’s oligarchs salivating. Here is a small and disturbing sampling of Trump administration actions. He:

• Fired hundreds of thousands of unionized federal workers across dozens of federal departments and agencies, many of them illegally;
• Illegally nullified the Transportation Security Administration’s union contract and ended collective bargaining for thousands of federal workers, ominous first steps in the right-wing plot to destroy public sector unions entirely;
• Started an unlawful campaign to stack the National Labor Relations Board with anti-labor zealots;
• Elevated Elon Musk—an openly corrupt oligarch and notorious union-buster currently suing to rule the NLRB unconstitutional— to the very highest level of decision-making authority in his administration;
• Began an illegal and authoritarian crackdown on the right to free speech and free assembly—indispensably important union rights protected by the Constitution; and
• Opened up a new privatization front targeting Social Security, the U.S. Postal Service, and other federal agencies and programs that employ thousands of union workers and serve millions of working families.

In the midst of this overwhelming onslaught of anti-union action, some in the labor movement might be tempted to retreat—to cut our losses and hope that we get a friendlier administration and more favorable political environment in four years. Like millions of union workers across this country who recognize what’s at stake here, I believe this would be a terrible mistake. Our best defense is a good offense.

Rather than sheltering dues in rainy day funds or freezing hiring during this uncertain time, unions should pour resources into new organizing. I know from my time as a United Auto Workers (UAW) member organizing the first-ever private sector grad worker union on the West Coast that new organizing takes a real institutional commitment. It takes hiring talented and dedicated member-organizers to staff campaigns, spending money on training and leadership development programs, and funding the nuts and bolts of new organizing campaigns like legal representation and organizing materials.

Unfortunately, as Chris Bohner has written, most labor unions have largely eschewed new organizing in recent years, even as union war chests have grown to record levels. This has to change.

Investing in new organizing is the single most strategically sound decision unions can make in order to build power.

First, organized labor is historically popular right now. In a time when nearly every type of institution is hitting record lows in approval ratings, unions are at their highest level of popularity since the New Deal era. At the same time, traditionally anti-union institutions like corporations as well as mainstream institutions are losing the faith of the public. Labor can and should use this in its favor.

Additionally, some of the fastest growing sectors in terms of union density, such as the nonprofit sector, higher education, and healthcare, are among those being targeted systematically by the Trump administration and its oligarch backers. Now is the time for labor to keep its foot on the gas and redouble its efforts to organize new workers and workplaces in these sectors.

New organizing can also catalyze people’s faith in democracy and inspire broader efforts to resist oligarchic power grabs. While the Democratic Party and the news media largely fail to meet the moment, organized labor can and must fill the void through organizing new workers and workplaces. What better way to spark democratic resistance than a series of new organizing campaigns that deliver material gains for workers and agitate workers to engage in mass action such as sick-outs, protests, and recognition strikes?

This most basic expression of democratic willpower—harnessing “people power” to force change rather than beg for it—is the labor movement’s bread and butter, and it’s precisely what everyday people need to see modeled for them in order to not feel powerless. The Trump administration, following the terrifying blueprint of Project 2025, hopes that by causing maximum chaos and using state power to sow destruction on as many fronts as possible, the broad anti-fascist coalition that opposes its unpopular and authoritarian actions will fall into disarray and adopt a defensive posture. Instead, the effort to save our democracy must take a page out of Trump’s chaos playbook and deploy every tactic in the book to fight back.

By organizing new workplaces, we can tie up the time and resources of anti-union entities and actors in the short term while growing our membership and financial resources to build for the medium and long term. If other lines of defense fail, a mass labor stoppage can be the only thing preventing a plunge into full-blown authoritarianism.

Union density is still on the decline, and current density is far too low to pull off anything on the level of an effective general strike—and the bad guys know it. As union organizers know, having a credible strike threat is the foundation of any union’s ability to win its demands. We have to organize new workers, and fast.

LIVE 10 AM Eastern + Streaming 24/7 After:

In this episode of “The TMI Show” with Ted Rall and Manila Chan, the hosts dive into a trio of pressing global stories.

First, they unpack U.S. President Donald Trump’s abrupt reversal on his tariff war strategy. After stock markets tanked and Treasury yields soared, Trump paused his sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs for 90 days, lowering them to a 10% baseline, though he hiked China’s imports to a steep 125%. Markets reacted swiftly: the S&P 500 spiked over 9%, and Japan’s Nikkei followed with a 9% leap, though Treasury yields hinted at lingering economic strain. China, meanwhile, retaliated with a 50% tariff bump on U.S. goods, pushing their total levy to 84%.

Next, the episode shifts to Detroit, where civil rights lawyer Amir Makled faced intense scrutiny at the airport. Returning from a family vacation, Makled—counsel to a pro-Palestinian activist—was detained by Border Patrol, questioned by a Tactical Terrorism Response Team, and pressed to unlock his phone. He resisted, citing client privilege, but allowed a limited contact list review, noting agents’ focus on Lebanese names. The incident sparked debate over government intimidation tactics.

Finally, the hosts cover the return of three Americans—Marcel Malanga Malu, Tylor Thomson, and Zalman-Polun Benjamin—to the U.S., after their death sentences for a failed coup in DR Congo were commuted to life imprisonment. Alongside this, Ksenia Karelina, a U.S.-Russian citizen jailed for treason in Russia, was freed in a prisoner swap, as U.S.-Russia talks gained traction.

The post TMI Show Ep 115: “Trump’s Tariff Twist, Lawyer’s Airport Drama, and a Congo Coup Fallout” appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Correction: An earlier version of this article said that the Hermes 450 can carry and deploy up to two medium-range missiles. It has been updated to reflect the fact that it can actually carry four.

Recently, Aviation International published a conversation between the Department of Commerce Commissioner of North Dakota and a director at Thales group. The article, titled “North Dakota: The Silicon Valley of Drone Innovation,” makes the case that North Dakota is the go-to state for drone technology.

North Dakota’s strong ties with the drone industry formed a few years ago, with the state’s goal of transforming the state into ground zero for drone technology. By taking advantage of the state, its resources, and its people, the mission to turn North Dakota into a silicon valley for drones has already produced a vast network of unmanned aircraft system (UAS) technological hubs. However, in doing so it has also entangled North Dakotans into a deep relationship with Elbit Systems of America, a subsidiary of the Israeli company. This relationship is not comprehensively understood by North Dakotans nor our lawmakers.

Vantis is an aerospace company founded in North Dakota with an investment from the state five years ago. It helps facilitate commercial and private drone use by “utilizing North Dakota Department of Transportation (NDDOT) towers to deploy radars and other network technology around the state, lowering development costs by utilizing existing infrastructure.” Drone technology also helps monitor flooding, which is an issue in North Dakota on an annual basis. Thus, Vantis isn’t inherently a poor investment, and investing in drone technology for farming and environmental reasons isn’t necessarily a bad idea. However, three years ago, Vantis partnered with Thales, the 11th-largest weapons manufacturer in the world. Thales has long partnered with Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems to develop drone technology for various militaries around the world. Since this initial investment by the state of North Dakota into UAS, the state’s relationship with Elbit Systems started to cement itself as well.

North Dakota’s evolving relationship with drone technology presents both significant opportunities and serious ethical concerns.

In 2016, a researcher at North Dakota State University launched an initiative to bring an Elbit drone to help with agricultural research. The project was funded by North Dakota and Elbit Systems, which planned on selling the imagery from the research. The idea was that using a larger drone, the Hermes 450, would be a more cost-effective way to use drone technology for farming. But the Hermes drone isn’t just for farming; it’s also one of Elbit’s most deployed weapons by the Israeli army in Gaza. It’s been used to surveil and target Palestinians ever since it joined the Israeli air force fleet. It can carry and deploy up to four medium-range missiles. When the conversation about slaughtered civilians in Gaza comes up, many point fingers at the weapons giant Elbit.

On February 7, CODEPINK North Dakota visited our legislators in Bismarck to talk to them about Elbit. We sought clarity regarding the extent of the collaboration between North Dakota and Elbit Systems as North Dakotans concerned about our complicity in Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. What we learned was that our legislators knew—at best—about as much as we did or—at worst, and most commonly—nothing at all. State Sen. Bob Paulson (R-3) admitted to not knowing anything about Elbit Systems.

We delineated North Dakota’s disturbing relationship to Elbit—highlighting the atrocities that Elbit’s drones, particularly the Hermes 450, have been used to commit. One such atrocity was the well-documented attack on the World Central Kitchen in April 2024—widely considered to be a flagrant war crime under international law. However, Sen. Paulson denied the magnitude of Israel’s atrocities, dismissing our concerns and minimizing Israel’s responsibility with statements like: “That’s just war.” He also regurgitated Israeli propaganda, parroting the claim that Hamas uses “human shields” and put “babies in ovens” on October 7, 2023. We had to repeatedly rein in our conversation to get back to our main concern: Elbit Systems operations in North Dakota.

Our secondary concern was HB 1038, a bill to allocate $15 million in funding for the replacement of Chinese drones used by North Dakota state agencies and public institutions. Our worry is that, if passed, this bill could open up another avenue for North Dakota to deepen its relationship with Elbit Systems. We met with several other legislators over the course of the day. Some, like Sen. Randy Burckhard (R-5), were adamant that China “is out to get us,” while others, like Sen. Kathy Hogan (D-21) and Rep. Gretchen Dobervich (D-11), were far more sympathetic to our cause.

Ultimately, we do not want a drone company that manufactures weapons that commit war crimes to operate in North Dakota.

Northern Plains UAS Test Site (NPUASTS) in Grand Forks has voiced concerns about how overreliance on foreign technology could lead to disruptions if geopolitical tensions escalate. Geospatial data collected by a North Dakota drone could be hacked into and leveraged by foreign adversaries for intelligence or even used to disrupt infrastructure. If North Dakota is indeed worried about data from our UAS being hacked by a foreign adversary as a result of geopolitical tensions in the region of the technology’s origin, then we should be especially wary of sourcing our UAS from Israel.

Thankfully, HB 1038 was divided up into two separate parts in the North Dakota Senate. One part, “Division A,” included the allocation of $15 million to replace Chinese drones in North Dakota agencies and institutions. “Division B” had more to do with implementing a data management program, including an $11 million allocation to enable Vantis to ensure that data collected in North Dakota remains under state control. Division A ultimately failed in the Senate, whereas Division B passed and was signed into law by Gov. Kelly Armstrong on February 24, 2025.

Yet the reality remains. North Dakota’s evolving relationship with drone technology presents both significant opportunities and serious ethical concerns. While the state’s investment in UAS has the potential to enhance agricultural and environmental monitoring, it also links North Dakota with Elbit Systems, a company directly responsible for war crimes. The lack of transparency and awareness among state legislators about this relationship highlights the need for more informed discussions on the role of foreign technology in our state.

North Dakotans should consider the ethical implications of its partnerships and ensure that state resources are not connected to companies that are blowing up innocent men, women, and children, thereby making taxpayers complicit in such war crimes.

Children have rarely been a national priority in the United States. Lawmakers have historically chosen to set aside the needs of children, families, and educators, with Head Start being one of the few examples of meaningful investment in children’s futures. But amid recent cuts at the Department of Health and Human Services, including layoffs at the Administration for Children and Families (which funds Head Start), the future of this program is uncertain.

Effectively destroying an essential program like Head Start and dismantling the Department of Education (DOE) and other federal agencies is cruel, irresponsible, and short-sighted. Childcare costs more than ever, and Head Start and Early Head Start, which provide access to high-quality early learning programs for children from low-income backgrounds, are lifelines. Without Head Start, hundreds of thousands of children will go without safe places to learn and grow. Parents, especially women, depend on it and other forms of childcare to stay in the workforce. Unless care is available, many are forced to cut hours or leave their jobs altogether, hurting household incomes and overall economic growth.

“It’s going to affect a lot of families that are already struggling,” Early Head Start educator Sandra Dill, who runs a family childcare program in Connecticut, said recently.

State-based solutions will help chip away at the vast problems facing the early childhood education sector, but wiping away Head Start and Early Head Start will set us back for years—possibly generations—to come.

At the same time, childcare providers, including family childcare educators who run small businesses in licensed, home-based settings, are facing exorbitant and rising prices for basic supplies that they need to keep their programs running. Without much-needed funding from the federal government, many of these programs—already existing on razor-thin margins—will be at risk of shutting their doors and leaving families without care options, worsening an already dire childcare shortage.

Amid the layoffs of thousands of government employees including Head Start administrators, there will certainly be chaos and confusion in the coming weeks among programs and the families who rely on them, with a lack of understanding of how already approved funds will be distributed. This will likely be similar to what ensued amid the federal funding freeze in January, with some programs temporarily closing their doors, unable to access funding for weeks, and families going without care.

Since the pandemic, the home-based childcare educators in All Our Kin’s networks have seen a significant surge in toddlers struggling with language and learning delays. Heath and Human Services and the DOE provide critically important early intervention services, including for children aged 0 to 3. Without these programs, fewer children will have a strong start in life. More will go without healthy meals, and fewer will have opportunities for social-emotional development or be prepared to succeed in kindergarten and beyond, and will have fewer opportunities for social and emotional development. Actions to shrink these departments in the name of cost cutting could overburden states and ultimately lead to far greater societal and economic consequences.

We are encouraged by bipartisan progress at the state level. Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont has proposed increased investments to help pay childcare providers competitive wages. In New York, there is a proposal from Gov. Kathy Hochul for additional funds to be set aside for family childcare providers to make renovations and repairs to their programs. And universal childcare has gained momentum in states like New York, Michigan, Oregon, Vermont, and New Mexico.

State-based solutions will help chip away at the vast problems facing the early childhood education sector, but wiping away Head Start and Early Head Start will set us back for years—possibly generations—to come.

Every child deserves a high-quality, affordable education, especially in the critical formative years of their lives. If we want a strong economy, we must save Head Start and protect the futures of the children and programs it supports.

Although it surely was not intended, Trump’s tariff plan may have opened the door for the Democrats to push for and win Medicare for All(M4A), a longstanding goal for progressives. It does this in two ways. First Trump was able slip by this massive tax scheme with almost no attention from the media. Democrats should demand Trump treatment when they push M4A.

The second reason is that Trump’s tariffs show that it is politically acceptable to tax the middle-class. Trump’s tariff scheme is a tax increase for middle-income households of several thousand dollars annually. If that is politically acceptable, then surely much smaller tax increases that may be needed to cover M4A would surely be politically feasible.

On the first point, Trump did talk about tariffs in his campaign, but there was very little written about how big his tariffs would likely be and how large a hit they would be to middle and moderate-income households. For this reason, most people, including those who follow the news closely, were shocked by the size of Trump’s tariffs. This is why the stock market crashed immediately after Trump’s tariff speech. If investors had expected anything like the tariffs Trump is putting in place, the market would have already priced in the impact of the tariffs.

To be clear, the media did note Trump’s call for tariffs, but they never demanded or received any specificity from Trump. By contrast, any time Vice-President Harris put forward a proposal, like her plan for covering assisted living for senior citizens, the media demanded to know exactly how she would pay for it.

Democrats have to learn to be Trumpian in dealing with the media. They can say we will have M4A, in fact improved M4A that covers dental, vision, and hearing, and we will find ways to pay for it because we’re a rich country: end of story. The days where we just accept that the media demand higher standards from Democrats than Republicans must be over. Trump gets to say f**k you when he doesn’t feel like answering a question. The Democrats need to do this also.

The second takeaway is that it is apparently not politically deadly to talk about tax increases on the middle-class. Trump and every Republican in Congress are just fine with a huge tax increase on the middle-class in the form of his massive tariffs.

Since Trump’s tariffs have shown that a large tax increase on the middle-class is just fine politically, they need not fear putting forward a modest one to two percentage point tax increase in order to give people near-free health care.

In principle, most of the cost of M4A should be covered by lower payments for drugs and medical equipment, by bringing the pay of our doctors and dentists in line with their pay in other wealthy countries. We also will save hundreds of billions of dollars annually by getting rid of private insurers and replacing them with the far more efficient Medicare system.

But we are still likely to need additional revenue. Most of this money should come from the rich, who have been the big winners in the economy over the last half century. But it is likely that we won’t be able to get as much as we need exclusively from taxing the rich.

As our Modern Monetary Theory friends remind us, the purpose of taxation is to reduce demand in the economy and thereby prevent inflation. If we raise another $10 billion a year from increasing the taxes paid by Elon Musk, it’s not clear how much we will reduce demand. Musk will probably continue to consume at pretty much the same level as he did before the tax hike, although he may reduce his campaign contributions to right-wing candidates by some amount.

By contrast, if we raise an additional $10 billion in tax revenue from the middle-class, we can be pretty sure that we will be reducing demand by close to $10 billion, because middle-class people spend the bulk of their income. In the last two decades, Democrats have treated it as sacred first principle that they could never increase taxes on people earning less $400,000 a year.

Since Trump’s tariffs have shown that a large tax increase on the middle-class is just fine politically, they need not fear putting forward a modest one to two percentage point tax increase in order to give people near-free health care. Whatever they do put forward they can put in terms of the Trump tariffs. For example, they could put a ceiling on any middle-class tax hike, saying it will be no more than one-quarter of the tax hit from Trump’s tariffs.

In addition to being good policy, M4A should be great politics. People have come to like Obamacare over the fifteen years since it was made into law. It is now so popular even Trump doesn’t openly talk about ending it. The idea of extending Medicare to cover the whole population is likely to be extremely popular and it is a simple proposal that can be easily understood. M4A is a perfect bumper sticker slogan for cars and pickup trucks all across the country. It tells everyone what Democrats will do for them if they are put in office.

While it certainly was not Trump’s intention, his loony tariff scheme may have opened the door for Medicare for All in a way that normal presidency never would. If democracy survives, we may get some real gains as a result of the Trump presidency.

The Trump administration’s decision to close the Heath and Human Services Office of Long COVID Research and Practice deals yet another blow to our already embattled public health system. This initiative, like the recently terminated Advisory Committee on Long COVID, had signaled much-needed attention to infection-associated chronic diseases, largely overlooked by the U.S. medical establishment.

An estimated 7.5% of adults in the United States suffer from Long Covid, which can affect multiple organ systems with over 200 symptoms from brain fog and sleep problems to joint pain and bedridden fatigue. A diagnosis of Long Covid describes symptoms that continue at least three months after contracting Covid-19. For some, symptoms eventually go away. But for others, symptoms get worse and, frighteningly, new symptoms appear—with no end in sight. Long Covid is variable and unpredictable. I know this because it happened to me.

Covid-19 laid bare our fragile health systems and the necessity of caring for one another.

After escaping Covid-19 for over three years, I developed a moderate case, with fever, cough, body ache, and fatigue. Four months later, when I had almost complete recovered, I suddenly took a turn for the worse. Over the past 15 months I have steadily improved, yet my life remains significantly changed. Aches and pains, post-exertional malaise, and a weakened immune system circumscribe my daily activities. Alongside the challenges of navigating the health conditions themselves is my limited ability to keep Covid-safe amid waning attention to Covid-19—as our government and institutions have abandoned Covid precautions. This puts us all at higher risk of Covid-19 infection, and for those of us with Long Covid this risk is exacerbated—each additional reinfection with Covid exposes us to further complications with Long Covid.

In such a climate of pandemic abandonment, punctuated as early as 2022 when then-President Joe Biden issued his dangerously delusional statement that we were post-pandemic, we can rely even less than before on our government and institutions to save us from either Covid-19 or Long Covid. We must prioritize cultivating our own spaces of care—focusing on prevention, mutual aid, and accommodations for the sick and disabled.

We Need to Cultivate Spaces of Collective Care

The earliest lessons of the pandemic remain true today—we can lower transmission rates through masking, physical distancing, and meeting online, among other precautions. While workplaces, businesses, and public spaces have varied in their implementation of Covid-19 safety, social justice groups, led by disability justice, have led the way from the start.

When the pandemic hit in 2020, my racial justice collective applied our principles of care and justice to Covid-19 safety. We pivoted meetings and gatherings online to Zoom, made use of its breakout rooms for one-on-one debriefs, the chat box for running insights and snark, and the emoji feature for added interpersonal expressiveness. As we learned new ways to build community, it made us more inclusive: Folks who otherwise had barriers to attending in-person—whether that be due to illness and disability or just being out-of-town—could now attend remotely. When gatherings needed to be in-person, like the summer 2020 protests for George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, we still prioritized Covid-19 precautions. Actions either followed traditional modes of large gatherings but required (and provided) masks, or were smaller so that activists could maintain physical distance. For those who couldn’t participate safely due to Covid-19 or physical disability, remote action was possible, such as handling back-end prep work or coordinating check-ins.

These community care practices remain important even during periods of low community transmission—they make spaces accessible to all.

We Must Hold Ourselves Accountable

Five years into the pandemic, even progressive activist groups have moved away from these lessons. Many no longer require masks at meetings and gatherings, or prioritize online options. This leaves each of us to fend for ourselves individually, abandoning the principles of collective care and disability justice—from access intimacy to “we keep us safe”—that had made such in-roads in our communities. If we cannot collectively learn from this “mass disabling event” of our lifetime, when will we? And if progressive activist groups whose common mission it is to make a world free from oppression—where caring for one another is the dominant ethos—ditch pandemic precautions, what hope is there?

To be sure, we still need to push institutions at the local and federal levels to make available personal protective equipment and resources for frontline workers, better access to healthcare, more research on Long Covid and other underfunded chronic conditions such as myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). These actions would certainly help support the many biomedical doctors who toil tirelessly for treatments despite biomedicine’s limited approaches to chronic illness, as well as the Chinese medicine and other non-biomedicine doctors, not to mention the patient advocacy groups, who have arguably carried the bulk of the care and treatment for Long Covid sufferers.

I believe we have the most control over our small communities of care. Covid-19 laid bare our fragile health systems and the necessity of caring for one another—and for a time many of us heeded that call. Let us renew our attention to keeping each other safe, supporting the most vulnerable among us, and preventing more mass disablement. And for us activists who say we want to create better worlds, let’s model for everyone else how it’s done.

On Saturday, April 5th, fifty-seven years after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, hundreds of thousands of protestors gathered across the country to challenge Trump’s attack on, well, just about everything!

I went to the rally in New Jersey, where speaker after speaker had us chanting “Hands off our Social Security!” “Hands off our Medicare!” Hands off our Medicaid!” “Hands off our Abortion Rights!” and so on. This was the national theme developed by the Democratic Party.

A few protestors in the back chanted “Hands off Gaza,” which was not on the agenda. But they soon retreated into silence. One woman carrying a large Trump 2024 banner walked near the edge of the crowd of about 2,000 and took on a few angry shouts, but there was no confrontation. Tensions rose enough, however, that the chair of the gathering did feel obliged to remind us that this was a peaceful, non-violent gathering.

As I looked around at the well-healed demonstrators from our liberal town, I couldn’t help but imagine adding a few other items to the list: “Hands off our IRA’s!” “Hands off the Stock Market!” “Hands off Free Trade!” I’m sure that would have been right on the money.

But why was I raining on this parade? After all, these were my neighbors, good caring people who turned up on this rainy Saturday because they truly want to make our society a better place.

My mind went negative because it was crystal clear that the rally was the opposite of Martin Luther King Jr.’s challenge to the established order that enabled Jim Crow and persistent poverty. Dr. King asked us to envision massive changes to the status quo. Today, we were chanting to defend the status quo that Trump is surely taking a wrecking ball to.

The Democrats who put the rallies together across the country missed a moment to present an alternative vision. This was a chance to announce new proposals to tame runaway inequality, the growth of which has undermined the Democratic Party’s coalition, and to provide job insecurity, the lack of which has given MAGA a foothold in the first place.

Instead, we got pure opposition, spirited to be sure. Its only virtue was to provide collective support to those of us who have been stunned by the revanchist thrust of Trumpism. We can’t believe what is happening and we need each other to shore up our spirits. It was a chance, feeble but necessary, to show some form of communal defiance.

But a successful movement will not grow without a vision and proposals to support it. Why didn’t the Democrats do that? Because, except for a few fellow-travelers like Bernie Sanders, their vision is deeply tied the status quo BT (Before Trump).

That set of BT institutions was working well for the top 20 percent of the income distribution, especially those with college and post-graduate degrees, including just about everyone at our town’s demonstration.

It was not working for those whose jobs had been shipped abroad to China, Mexico, or elsewhere, and who watched their communities then crumble.

It also wasn’t working so well for those who lost their jobs to finance Wall Street stock buybacks and outrageous CEO salaries.

And it wasn’t working well at all for those working at poverty wages, especially immigrant workers, risking life and limb with little protection.

In short, the Democratic Party, long the party of the working class, has no compelling vision today because it has left behind a big chunk of the working-class. As analysts debate what went wrong, they should perhaps ask why the Democrats are so reluctant to support a working-class populist agenda.

The answer lies in how it became the party of the established order and therefore was unable to provide a vision that makes sense to working people who have been screwed by the established order. (Please see Wall Street’s War on Workers.)

And that’s a damn shame. Because we want and need to be inspired by a positive vision. But that will only happen when the Democrats take their hands off their imaginations and ours.

We need to return to the days when the vision was FDRs for four freedoms, not four family tax credits to support the “opportunity society.”

The Democrats still have a chance, the field is open, but really? That is not likely to happen until it is challenged by a new independent party that stands for substantive change, created by and for working people.

I’ll be demonstrating for that.

We are living through a week unlike any other in my lifetime; maybe the last truly comparable stretch was the bank closure that marked the start of the FDR administration, but then the president was there to tell Americans they had nothing to fear; now we have a president who can only insist we “take our medicine.” He is constantly hyping the fear, and he is doing it with the constant invocation of a word—”emergency”—designed to send us into ever-deeper panic.

So I’ve been doing my best to think as calmly about that word as I can, with the hope that it will offer at least a bit of mental pathway through this horror and perhaps point toward the exit.

Let’s start with one of the less-noticed executive orders of the past week—by no means the most important, though if it is carried out it will probably affect more square miles of the U.S. than any other. This is a memorandum from Brooke Rollins, the secretary of agriculture and hence the overseer of America’s vast National Forests. In it she declares “an emergency situation on America’s National Forest system lands.”

This emergency on our national forests, in the administration’s view, is

due to uncharacteristically severe wildfires, insect and disease outbreaks, invasive species, and other stressors whose impacts have been compounded by too little active management.

For example: • The 2023 Wildfire Hazard Potential for the Unites States report identifies 66,940,000 acres of NFS lands under a very high or high fire risk.

• Roughly 78,800,000 acres of NFS lands are already experiencing, or are at risk of experiencing, insect and disease infestations.

As a result, the Forest Service is commanded to dramatically increase the amount of logging on these forests, exempting them from the longstanding system of oversight and challenge from communities and tribes affected by logging. Forest supervisors have been told to increase the volume of timber offered for sale on our lands by at least 25%.

Now, as many of us have been patiently explaining for years, the biggest cause of increased fire on our forests is the dramatic increase in global temperatures that has extended fire season in California virtually year-round, and for extra months on either end across the West. The biggest infestation of insects has come from pine bark beetles, and that is directly tied to a fast-warming climate. As Cheryl Katz explained almost a decade ago:

Bark beetles are a natural part of the conifer forest life cycle, regularly flaring and fading like fireworks. But the scope and intensity in the past two decades is anything but normal, scientists say, in large part because rising temperatures are preventing the widespread winter die-off of beetle larvae, while also enhancing the beetles’ killing power. Not only are the insects expanding into new territory, they’re also hatching earlier and reproducing more frequently. New infestations become full-blown with astonishing speed, and the sheer numbers of beetles exceeds anything forest experts have seen before. [One expert] says he’s seen spruce beetle epidemics in Utah so intense that when the insects had killed all the trees, they began attacking telephone poles.

To the extent that forests needed thinning to reduce wildfire risk (and it’s not at all clear that it does), the Biden administration worked to get the effort underway, spending $4 billion on the work—in some areas they were ahead of schedule, and in others behind, but overall

“the scale of spending is unprecedented,” said Courtney Schultz with Colorado State University. The forest policy expert said millions of acres had been through environmental review and were ready for work.

“If we really want to go big across the landscape—to reduce fuels enough to affect fire behavior and have some impact on communities—we need to be planning large projects,” she said.

Where the work was lagging, it was largely the result of a lack of bodies—something that will be considerably harder now that the Forest Service has laid off 3,400 workers. But at any rate, the new logging mandated under the “emergency declaration” isn’t the careful thinning work that might reduce fire intensity—instead, the forest industry is getting access to what it really wants, large stands of big trees. It is, in other words, a money grab by vested interests that supported Trump’s campaign.

That new cutting will make climate change worse, because as we now understand that letting mature forests continue to grow is the best way to sequester carbon. Meanwhile, cutting down those forests will mean far fewer trees to hold back the increasing downpours that climate change is producing. (A new study released yesterday showed that even in areas of the West where climate change is drying out forests and increasing blazes, there’s also a big jump in deluges—what one expert called an “eye-popping.”) I remember sitting down with the chief of the Forest Service under former President Bill Clinton, almost three decades ago, and even then he said the service’s internal data showed the greatest dollar value of the forestlands was water retention, not timber.

So, to summarize: We’ve invented an emergency where none exists. (The only thing even resembling an emergency in timber supply will come if we continue to tariff Canadian producers). We’ve abandoned most of the slow and patient work to deal with a problem, and replaced it with a boondoggle designed to increase short-term profits for Trump donors. That will juice the one actual emergency we do face worse—the rapid increase in global temperature—and it will make the effects of that emergency harder to deal with.

I’d submit that the “emergency” that Trump is actually responding to—the one that motivated his Big Oil donors to donate half a billion dollars in the last election cycle—is the rapid increase in renewable energy deployment.

This pattern more or less holds across the board. Each “emergency” we’re supposedly dealing with is, at worst, a long-term problem that needs serious and patient work, work that had begun in earnest under the Biden administration. Fentanyl deaths and illegal border-crossings—which if you can remember back three weeks ago were the original “emergency” justifying tariffs on Canada and Mexico—had both been falling sharply in the last year. The “emergency” justifying tariffing every country on Earth and also the penguins was the exact opposite of an emergency: a 50-year hollowing out of industrial areas, which again had begun to reverse because of the Inflation Reduction Act—specifically targeted by the Trump administration for reversal. As The Washington Post pointed out this week, a “stunning number” of battery and EV factories have been canceled in the last month, most of them in red states.

According to data from Atlas Public Policy, a policy research group, more projects were canceled in the first quarter of 2025 than in the previous two years combined. Those cancellations include a $1 billion factory in Georgia that would have made thermal barriers for batteries and a $1.2 billion lithium-ion battery factory in Arizona.

“It’s hard at the moment to be a manufacturer in the U.S. given uncertainties on tariffs, tax credits, and regulations,” said Tom Taylor, senior policy analyst at Atlas Public Policy. Hundreds of millions of dollars in additional investments appear to be stalled, he added, but haven’t been formally canceled yet.

“It’s working-class people in places like Georgia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Michigan, and Arizona that have seen some of these projects get canceled,” Keefe said. “And I can tell you who’s benefiting—China and other countries that are doubling down.”

I said before that there was one true emergency on our planet—its rapid heating. Now of course there’s another—the implosion of economies, likely to lead (if history is its usual guide) to military conflict. But I’d submit that the “emergency” that Trump is actually responding to—the one that motivated his Big Oil donors to donate half a billion dollars in the last election cycle—is the rapid increase in renewable energy deployment.

Reuters reported over the weekend that, for the first time in American history, less than half of electricity generated in March came from fossil fuels: “More power was instead generated using renewable sources such as wind and solar, which in March reached an all-time high of 83 terawatt hours.” It’s wonderful news, of course, heralding the chance at a new world. But that’s the crisis that Big Oil faces, and to fight it they’ve been willing to drag us all down.

It’s small comfort that the man they picked to do that job, Donald Trump, is so stupid that in the process of wrecking the American economy he’s actually putting big pressure on the oil industry too. He’s doing his best: Alone among industries, fossil fuel was exempted from tariffs, in what The Guardian called “a clear sign of the president’s fealty to his big oil donors over the American people,” and yesterday he commanded the Department of Justice to try and stop states from suing the oil industry or enforcing the Climate Superfund laws that charge Exxon et al. for the bridges and roads that taxpayers must constantly rebuild. (Trump comically called these efforts “extortion,” even as he attempts to blackmail every country on Earth, plus of course the penguins, with his tariffs). Trump’s even trying to boost coal this week, even though the data shows that 99% of the time it would be cheaper to build new renewables.

But the damage he’s doing to the world economy threatens to spill over to the oil industry—as the price of a barrel plummets, the chances of drilling new wells plummets too. According to the Times yesterday, Harold Hamm—Trump’s industry bundler—was wondering how to explain to the president that “when you get down to that $50 oil that you talked about, then you’re below the point that you’re going to drill, baby, drill.” Fossil fuel stocks have fallen sharply. Ha ha.

But in reality there’s one immediate and overwhelming emergency. It’s name is TrumpMuskVance, and it’s threatening to engulf almost everything in its unholy flames. People—even a few senators (thank you Cory Booker)—have begun pulling the alarms, and the volunteer fire company has begun to respond (such thanks to all who came out for the Hands Off rallies this weekend). We’re going to need quick wits, courage, incredibly hard work, and some real luck to put out this moronic inferno—but that’s the job of being a citizen in 2025. You matter as a political actor, more than any of us ever have before; I’ll make sure you know of the opportunities to put your talents to use!

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In this episode of The TMI Show, hosts Ted Rall and Manila Chan examine the case of Ryan Wesley Routh, charged with attempting to assassinate Donald Trump on September 15, 2024, at his Florida golf course. The discussion centers on a recent Justice Department filing revealing Routh’s efforts to acquire a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) or Stinger missile from a Ukrainian contact in August 2024. Prosecutors allege Routh messaged via Signal, seeking weapons to target Trump’s plane, citing Trump’s perceived threat to Ukraine. Rall and Chan dissect the evidence, including Routh’s prior support for Ukraine’s war effort, and explore the implications of such an international plot.

The episode also covers Trump’s escalating trade policies, focusing on the 104% tariffs imposed on Chinese imports, and China’s retaliatory 84% tariffs, intensifying the U.S.-China trade war. They discuss Canada’s 25% counter-tariffs on U.S. autos, dubbed “testariffs,” signaling broader economic fallout. Additionally, the hosts address a judge’s ruling favoring the Associated Press, reinstating its White House access, and a quirky aside on windshield wiper regulations amid tariff talks.

The post TMI Show Ep 114: “Did a Ukraine RPG Plot Almost Take Out Trump?” appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

On March 25, World Athletics president Sebastian Coe announced that the track and field governing body would introduce chromosomal testing of women athletes to “doggedly protect the female category.” Concern around “protecting” women athletes and the women’s category has resurged in recent years as the issue of transgender participation in sport has become politically expedient in the United States culture war, culminating in President Donald Trump’s executive order in January banning athletes from participation on teams that don’t align with the sex assigned to them at birth.

Sex and gender verification has been utilized by sport organizations for over a century. Previous methods included “nude parade” physical examinations requiring genital inspection, chromosomal testing, and testosterone level testing. However, World Athletics (previously known as the International Association of Athletics Federations, or IAAF) stopped mandatory sex testing in 1991, due to scientific inaccuracy, inability to prove unfair advantages, and ethical concerns. Women athletes could continue to be tested if their gender presentation was deemed “suspicious.” Notably, Indian track star Pratima Gaonkar committed suicide in 2001 after failing a sex test. In the 2010s, South African distance runner Caster Semenya and Indian hurdler Dutee Chand endured intense public scrutiny over their sex and gender after they were assumed to have androgen insensitivity syndrome. This is one of many conditions that are broadly classified as differences of sexual development (DSDs), and can occur for many reasons but are usually linked to sex chromosomes or anomalies in how the body produces or responds to hormones such as testosterone.

Unlike the World Athletics’s 2023 policy that banned trans athletes from competing in the women’s category, this policy targets women who were assigned “female” at birth, identify as women, and have always lived as women. They simply don’t have the XX chromosomes that World Athletics now deems necessary.

Chromosomal testing does not determine athletic performance and has been condemned by scientists and human rights organizations as discriminatory and unethical.

The new policy requires mandatory chromosomal testing, including a check swab and dry-blood test. While World Athletics claims to have consulted 70 sporting and advocacy groups, it is unclear who was included. Their cited scientific bibliography is largely authored by individuals affiliated with World Athletics, ignoring significant research questioning the ethics and efficacy of female eligibility policies in sport. Notably absent are two pieces by Roger Pielke and colleagues: one exposing flaws in World Athletics’ original 2011 policy and another reaffirming those issues after the organization admitted its female eligibility research was flawed.

The well-established problem with World Athletics’ chromosomal testing is that it actually has no linkage to performance. Put simply, “failing” a chromosomal, DNA, or sex test tells us nothing about whether an athlete will destroy a world record or even win a race. “Failed” tests, more often than not, indicate a chromosomal anomaly—something that neither enhances an individual’s athletic ability nor impedes their quality of life (if this were the case, it would probably be diagnosed way before an elite sport competition!). The inability of chromosomal testing to determine an “unfair” performance advantage was resoundingly proven by geneticists, bioethicists, medical researchers, physicians, and endocrinologists in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which was what led to the abolition of mandatory sex testing.

Systematically, policies like these disproportionately target women from the Global South and reinforce racial and gender biases. A 2020 Human Rights Watch report detailed discrimination, surveillance, and coerced medical intervention that elite athletes from the Global South experienced when seeking to comply with sex testing practices. The women interviewed detailed how medical practitioners did not fully explain the tests and procedures conducted, and the humiliation and discrimination they experienced in their communities when their medical records were disclosed without informed consent. This may be why earlier, in 2019, the World Medical Association released a notice imploring physicians to “take no part in implementing new eligibility regulations for classifying female athletes.”

These concerns highlight the urgency for educating sport governing bodies, and the general public, about the broader implications for the autonomy and safety of girls and women that can result from “protective” policies in sport. While the new World Athletics policy does not mandate surgical alteration, history shows the risks of such regulations. In 2013, four elite women athletes underwent gonadectomies and partial clitoridectomies—an unnecessary and harmful procedure classified as a form of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C)--to comply with eligibility rules. These policies can serve to legitimize and reinforce cultural practices with serious health risks for girls and women.

Women athletes must already carefully negotiate their athleticism with market-driven expectations of femininity to secure sponsorship deals, which are especially critical for women athletes because of the sport industry’s pervasive pay inequity. Mainstream beauty norms—favoring whiteness, thinness, and hairlessness—inform which bodies will be deemed “suspicious” under World Athletics’ new policy. Black and brown athletes, particularly those with more muscular builds and deeper voices, are more likely to be targeted. Research shows that elite women athletes already feel they are forced to choose between appearing “strong” or “feminine”; the reintroduction of sex testing may add further pressure for women athletes to conform with rigid gender norms to avoid harassment and surveillance. Athletes like Algerian boxer Imane Khelif and Semenya endured an onslaught of online attacks following public scrutiny of their gender. Women in sports generally already face disproportionate abuse, with an NCAA study finding that women basketball players receive three times more abusive messages than their male counterparts.

World Athletics’ claims that chromosomal testing will protect women athletes and the women’s category. However, chromosomal testing does not determine athletic performance and has been condemned by scientists and human rights organizations as discriminatory and unethical. Rather than “protecting” the women’s category, these regulations reinforce harmful gender norms, disproportionately target women from marginalized backgrounds, and risk severe personal and professional consequences for women athletes.

In 2023, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued a stark warning: America is suffering from an epidemic of loneliness, and the consequences are dire. “If we fail to [address this crisis], we will pay an ever-increasing price in the form of our individual and collective health and well-being,” he wrote. Then came the line that now feels prophetic: “We will continue to splinter and divide until we can no longer stand as a community or a country.”

This country is certainly dividing, and whether it can stand remains to be seen. As an immigrant from apartheid-era South Africa and a Californian shaken by the fires, I love and fear for the country I have known as home since adolescence. Having grown up in a society fractured by systemic oppression and seeing firsthand how division and authoritarianism hollow out a nation, I recognize the peril America faces. Trump and his allies have solidified their hold on power, reshaping institutions to entrench minority rule, while political violence moves from the fringes to the mainstream. State leaders openly defy court rulings, and democratic backsliding is no longer a theoretical threat but a lived reality. The consequences stretch far beyond our borders, fueling global instability.

Given everything at stake—from escalating climate disasters to an economy teetering on crisis—many are wondering: Are we entirely lost?

No, I say. It’s disastrous, yes. But it is precisely in the disastrous that we may find the seeds of renewal.

We now have a choice: Succumb to panic, numbness, and doomscrolling; or take purposeful action by confronting disaster head-on.

The reality is that democracy has been eroding for years; climate disruption worsens daily. The difference now is that we can no longer ignore the truth of our situation. Mass deportations. The rise of authoritarianism. A looming constitutional crisis. Wildfires, hurricanes, bomb cyclones, rising sea levels. The unraveling is no longer theoretical. It is here.

And this recognition could be our saving grace.

Murthy’s warning underscores the link between personal loneliness, social fragmentation, and political chaos. As Hannah Arendt wrote in The Origins of Totalitarianism, “The isolation of atomized individuals provides the mass basis for totalitarian rule.” Contemporary research supports her argument. A 2021 RAND Corporation study found loneliness is a primary driver for adopting extremist views and joining extremist groups. A 2022 study published in Political Psychology found that weak social bonds correlate with lower voter turnout and increased support for populist parties.

In this context, the disastrous might offer an unexpected antidote.

Charles Fritz, a sociologist who helped lead the University of Chicago’s Disaster Research Project in the 1950s, analyzed a broad data set of catastrophic events and concluded: “The widespread sharing of danger, loss, and deprivation produces an intimate, primary group solidarity among the survivors, which overcomes social isolation, provides a channel for intimate communication and expression, and provides a major source of physical and emotional support and reassurance.” There is ample further evidence to back up his conclusion, as Rebecca Solnit documents at length in A Paradise Built in Hell.

We are wired to adapt to slow declines, to normalize the unraveling. But disaster shatters the illusion of stability. It forces a reckoning. History suggests that disaster not only destroys—it also disrupts. It crushes old assumptions, forcing people to see one another, to respond, to rebuild.

Most of us aren’t living in an actual disaster zone right now. But when we see images of Los Angeles burning, Asheville flooding, or state officials openly defying the rule of law, we feel the urgency of the moment.

We now have a choice: Succumb to panic, numbness, and doomscrolling; or take purposeful action by confronting disaster head-on. This isn’t just about responding to immediate crises, but about addressing the isolation and division that have fueled them. By acting with intention, we don’t just face disaster—we undo the fragmentation that made it possible.

Growing up under apartheid, I learned how systems of oppression function and how they fail. I saw firsthand that division is not inevitable, that transformation is possible—but only when people refuse to be passive in the face of crisis. Former U.S. President Abraham Lincoln understood this too. “We are not enemies, but friends,” he declared in his first inaugural address in 1861, on the eve of national collapse. “We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.” Those bonds of affection, Lincoln said, could be rekindled by the “better angels of our nature.” He knew then what we must remember now: Survival depends on rebuilding these bonds.

Regardless of how our political situation unfolds, we are entering an era of massive upheaval, and none of us will remain untouched. Whether through fire, flood, or political collapse, displacement is no longer a distant threat—it is a certainty.

Can you feel it? The disaster at your doorstep?

Let it inspire you to act. Talk to the neighbor who voted red. Reach out to your friends. Volunteer with organizations fighting for justice. Host a community discussion, support local activism, or donate to causes that uplift marginalized communities. Advocate for change by calling your representatives. Support artists and thinkers who challenge the status quo. Every action—big or small—helps rebuild what’s been broken.

Let the better angels of our nature prevail. It’s the only way forward.

As part of the Trump administration’s overhaul of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, funding for several programs, including conservation contracts and local food purchasing for schools, was cut or frozen.

The lack of funding of these and uncertainty for other programs is already having a chilling effect on farmers and our food systems, and the impacts have been immediate and wide-ranging. These programs support critical conservation initiatives in agriculture—from assisting local farms and sustainable agriculture research to farmer technical aid. These local programs also support smaller-scale farmers to maintain local or heritage breeds such as Galloway cattle or Tamworth pigs that are not suitable for large-scale, industrial agriculture.

As a result, farms and livelihoods throughout the country are threatened. These programs provide vital support for U.S. agricultural infrastructure and long-term sustainability including the diversity of food available to the public. The link between biodiversity and food security is well known—vibrant biotic life supports soil fertility, pest control, pollination, water quality, and sustainable agriculture. Genetic biodiversity in our foods is also important—domesticated plants and animals that are genetically diverse are less likely to succumb to the same diseases or pests, and many have adapted to a range of environmental and climatic conditions. The more genetically diverse our food system is, the less vulnerable it is to collapse.

Local breeds are living genetic repositories. They are the result of long-term histories and cannot be simply made in a laboratory. They are the future of our food security.

For this reason, conservation efforts must include protecting domestic animal breeds to establish living genetic banks for future food security during times of abrupt climate change. Unlike plants that can be propagated from seeds stored in vast seed banks, the most efficient way to maintain biodiversity in domesticated livestock is by keeping herds of local or heritage breeds, since sperm cryopreservation is expensive; susceptible to damage or loss; and limited to rich, industrialized nations and communities. Breed conservation can occur on a local level and doesn’t need to be expensive—it’s been successfully done in the past.

Almost 100 years ago, Texas longhorns—the iconic emblem of the state of Texas—almost went extinct. At the time, American tastes in meat favored fattier cattle breeds and the lean, grass-fed longhorns were unpopular, difficult to transport in railroad cars due to their big horns, and not economically viable for ranchers. This breed already had a long history in the area and was particularly well adapted to the hot, arid climate of southern Texas. In the 1920s when the breed was on the brink of extinction, U.S. Forest Service employees established a protected herd at the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge in Oklahoma, and a small group of ranchers established other small herds in Oklahoma and Texas, including in Texas state parks. It was through the efforts of this small group of people that the breed was kept alive. As American tastes in meat changed, Texas longhorns became economically popular once again.

Today, they are highly valued for their lean meat and their specific climatic adaptation. They are also living genetic repositories—their specific genetic adaptations are now used to help create new breeds of cattle for dealing with future climate change such as those predicted for several parts of the southern United States and elsewhere.

According to data collected by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, Texas longhorns are one of over 8,700 breeds of domesticated animals used for food production on the planet today. Most are part of the “big five”: cattle, sheep, chickens, goats, and pigs. Over 8,000 of these breeds are local—recorded in only one country and most of them are specific to particular areas or regions like Texas longhorns, Gulf Coast sheep in Florida and Louisiana, and Mulefoot pigs in Missouri.

Many of these breeds, however, are also vulnerable to extinction—they are not as profitable and farmers focus on a few breeds to maximize products for national and global markets. There are estimates that over 100 livestock breeds have gone extinct in the last 15 years, and 29.54% of existing livestock breeds worldwide are at risk of extinction, while for the majority of breeds we lack data on their status, size of population, or likelihood for survival for the future.

Why are local breeds important? They are the result of centuries and even millennia of adaptation to their environments through human management and natural selection pressures. They are living gene banks of biodiversity and have special traits in comparison with industrial livestock—some are resistant to parasites or diseases; feed on different forage; or are highly fertile or long-lived. Others thrive in hot or humid environments such as Gulf Coast sheep that don’t have wool on their bellies, legs, or heads.

Despite many years of research, current information on these breeds is sorely lacking. There is very limited genetic data on most of the economically important animal breeds on the planet, and the pressures of industrialized agriculture are pushing farmers to focus on the few breeds with the current highest economic rewards. But this comes at a cost—today’s industrial farming strategies are not sustainable for an unknown future. Local breeds are living genetic repositories. They are the result of long-term histories and cannot be simply made in a laboratory. They are the future of our food security.

Many species are on the brink of extinction and need conservation help, and many are perhaps more photogenic or emblematic than cows or sheep. However, livestock breeds need this help too if we want to secure genetic diversity in our foods. This conservation doesn’t need to be expensive—dedicated farmers and conservation groups should be financially supported in maintaining local breeds. If the federal government is turning its back on these initiatives, state and local governments need to help fill the gap. Small investments today will pay dividends in the future to keep our food systems resilient.

"Please make this go viral. . . . Please help us."

Those are the words of Osiriss Azahael Vázquez Martínez in video messages he was able to record from the overcrowded Krome detention center two weeks ago. Vázquez Martínez, 45, a construction worker, lived in the United States for a decade and "was arrested [in February] for driving without a license on his way home from work," the Miami Herald reported.

Crouching under a table in what is apparently a waiting area, Vázquez Martínez knew his message was from a place we might not even know about. "This is happening right now in the Krome detention center in Miami, Florida," he says in Spanish. "We are practically kidnapped."

Thirty-five years ago, I taught English at Krome. The photo accompanying Vázquez Martínez's story—an exterior view of Building 8, the men's "dormitory"—reminded me of how remote the detention compound seemed when I would drive home after my classes, from the edge of the Everglades back to Miami Beach.

"You're brainwashed over there [to think] 'These are all scumbag inmates,'" he said.

Teachers worked at Krome back then through a Dade County Public Schools contract with the Immigration and Naturalization Service, predecessor to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The detainees, our students, came from around the world, though most were Haitian asylum-seekers. They were frustrated and bored. They were also quiet, calm, and appreciative of any small efforts the teachers made to help.

So it was surprising when Krome guards, also known as detention officers, warned us to be careful. Informally and at "briefings," they told us the detainees were dangerous, even though we were used to moving freely through the common areas, registering students, and sitting with them to study or talk. Guards also asked us teachers to act as their "spies." When I brought in copies of the Miami Herald to use for English lessons, guards told us not to let detainees see newspapers. Later I'd understand the reason.

Out of sight, Krome guards would beat men regularly and force women to trade sex for the promise of getting out. The Herald had started reporting on all of this, even as the immigration agency barred its reporters from the detention center. Miami, and much of the country, would learn about these practices—they weren't aberrations—from a teacher who had been working at Krome for years and finally decided she had to speak out about what the detained women had been telling her (Miami Herald, 4/11/1990).

As I started to research detention further, I was able to interview a former Krome guard who explained how the officers were conditioned to view all immigrants as criminals, and how this, in their minds, justified the brutality. "You're brainwashed over there [to think] 'These are all scumbag inmates,'" he said.

The ex-guard told me that his fellow guards, not the detainees, were the dangerous ones. He called his colleagues "cop wannabes" and said, "I tell you from experience. I was going, 'Wow, I got a badge and a gun now.'" The more experienced officers encouraged him to lock detainees in the bathroom for hours at a time, just to let them know who had the power, and he did it.

U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance didn't invent anti-immigrant rhetoric and violence. Brutality and racism have always been part of the immigration enforcement regime. But the longstanding principles of U.S.detention and deportation policy—dehumanization of the immigrants and unchecked power for their guards and deporters—have metastasized under the Trump-Vance plan.

Our government now glorifies and celebrates the humiliation and violence, as it has in the U.S.-El Salvador collaboration on what historian Timothy Snyder has called a propaganda film worthy of the 1930s.

In 1990, the "average daily population" of immigrant detainees in the United States was about 5,000. On March 23 of this year there were 47,892 people acknowledged to be in ICE custody.

Last year the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) randomly chose 5 out of 44 available videos of use-of-force incidents at Krome from a given six-month period. Four of the five videos depicted the use of pepper spray by guards against detainees who were already restrained or who were offering no resistance at all.

DHS's Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (OCRCL) also investigated Krome, reporting on "concerns related to inappropriate use of force and the impact on the mental health of the noncitizens involved with the incidents." Congress formed OCRCL during the post-9/11 Bush administration in response to, among other things, "widespread illegal and abusive detention of Muslim and Asian immigrants." The Trump administration has eliminated this and other watchdog agencies and removed OCRCL documentation from the agency website. (At least some of the material has been preserved at the Wayback Machine.)

A DHS spokesperson said that government oversight has "obstructed immigration enforcement." In other words, the law itself is an obstruction, and "enforcement" is a synonym for lawlessness.

This plays out in large and small ways at Krome and elsewhere.

At Krome, a reporter from Reason was barred by an "ICE supervisor" from observing public court hearings. At the Batavia detention center in New York State, guards are illegally opening and copying detainees' legal mail.

ICE's "administrative detainees" are also being incarcerated in federal prisons, although the government refuses to say which prisons or how many prisoners. In this way the Bureau of Prisons can help keep the immigrants away from their lawyers.

Back in 1998, the officer-in-charge at Krome said "that the problem was that some officers did not want to accept the fact that detainees were human beings." Last month USA Today reported that women held briefly at Krome, which is an all-male facility now, were chained for hours on a bus without bathroom access. Guards told them to urinate and defecate on the floor, and some had no other choice.

Detainees at ICE's Otero County Processing Center in New Mexico told USA Today they staged a "sit-in" because they wanted to see deportation officers or a judge. Some had been held for seven or eight months. Even if they wanted to leave the U.S. voluntarily, they couldn't do so. One of the nonviolent protesters, Irrael Arzuaga-Milanes, said he was punished with four days of solitary confinement. (The ACLU has just obtained ICE documents, for which it had to sue, concerning ICE policies on solitary. ICE has used this punishment as a form of torture, according to the United Nations.)

There will be more protests by detainees against wrongful detentions, illegal deportations, overcrowding, and mistreatment. ICE detention guards, private-prison contractors, and county jails holding ICE detainees will respond with the excessive force that the administration actively encourages. And not only encourages: Our government now glorifies and celebrates the humiliation and violence, as it has in the U.S.-El Salvador collaboration on what historian Timothy Snyder has called a propaganda film worthy of the 1930s.

There's a small bit of good news here. A day after the Herald reported on conditions at Krome, 200 protesters rallied outside that immigration prison. Also in recent weeks:

• In Washington State, labor unions protested outside ICE's Northwest detention center to support people locked inside;
• In North Carolina, women protested the arrests of their husbands (stopped based on lies by law enforcement) who were then sent down to Krome;
• In New Jersey, protesters opposed the planned reopening of the Delaney Hall detention center to be operated by the GEO Group, while Newark city inspectors have reportedly been barred from entering the detention center construction site; and
• In Rhode Island, protesters outside the Wyatt Detention Facility demanded the release of their immigrant neighbors.

There are almost 200 of these "facilities"—that we know of—across the United States, as well in Guam and the North Mariana Islands, used by ICE to hold immigrant prisoners as of late 2024. The prisoners are in ICE's "processing centers," in county jails, and (the overwhelming majority) in private prisons. There are also 25 ICE field offices, as well as ICE "check-in locations" around the country.

There's room outside all of them for lawful protests and demonstrations against the lawlessness and inhumanity inside.

Trump’s 2024 election win partly relied on complaints over inflation, like skyrocketing egg prices. However, his tariff-focused strategy to protect American businesses may raise costs further by limiting foreign competition. This will lead to even higher prices for staples—eggs, bread, meat—undermining his anti-inflation stance. This convoluted approach bolsters arguments for socialism or communism, where essentials are subsidized or free, ensuring affordability. While tariffs appeal to nationalist voters, they risk alienating those demanding lower grocery bills. Can tariffs curb inflation, or do they invite radical economic alternatives?

The post Trump’s Tariffs Make the Case for Communism appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.