What does it say about this country when you can work for more than 40 years and still can’t afford to stop?

I am 66 years old and have spent over 30 years caring for children across the South. When 2024 drew to a close, I tried to retire. I thought I had put in enough time to set myself free from the labor of surviving this economy.

But, as I worried, I couldn't afford it. The price of everything was increasing, including bread, and I realized I had no choice but to return to work within six months of my retirement.

You can tell workers like me that we should have saved more, planned better, chosen a better path toward our retirement. But here’s the problem many domestic and care workers encounter: You cannot save money you never had. When wages barely cover housing, groceries, medicine, and everything else life throws at you, retirement is less like a plan and more like a luxury. In 2025 (the year I was supposed to be retired), early educators had a median wage of $34,980. Other domestic workers, like house cleaners make an estimated median wage of $34,650, and home care workers in 2025 had a median annual income of $22,429. These wages reflect the reality that domestic workers overall are three times as likely to live in poverty as other workers.

With seven children and 18 grandchildren, I do not want another generation of women in my family to inherit a country’s economy where caring for others means giving up their own security.

I come from a legacy of domestic workers. My grandmother, Big Momma, was a Certified Nursing Assistant. My mother was a housekeeper. I became a childcare worker. Three generations of Black women in my family have cared for other people.

We are part of a much longer history, and that is why this work has never paid what it should.

In 1881, 20 Black laundresses organized a movement that grew to nearly 3,000 members and won better wages after striking. Nearly a century later, Dorothy Bolden organized domestic workers across this same city and founded the National Domestic Workers Union of America. Bolden understood that better working conditions and civic power went hand in hand and even made voter registration part of the strategy to organize domestic workers.

When this country finally wrote basic protections into law, such as the right to organize, a minimum wage, and a path to retirement, domestic workers and farmworkers were left out of these protections. That was intentional. Much of that work was done by Black women in the South; leaving it unprotected was no accident. A multigenerational legacy later, we are still living with the consequences these gaps created.

It’s why a person can care for children for over 32 years and still not be able to afford to retire. We didn’t fail to plan; our work was just kept out of sight and out of the protections other workers won.

For most of my career as a childcare worker, children knew me as Miss Cathy. If one of them came to me crying because they were being bullied or something was wrong, I would tell them, "Miss Cathy is going to get to the bottom of it." And trust that Miss Cathy always did.

I adore my work and the children I care for. But loving your work should not require sacrificing your own security.

Or your health.

I have Graves’ disease—a disease that is twice as likely to impact Black women—and often, we face delayed diagnoses and advanced symptoms because of healthcare disparities. For years, I managed it by going to quick clinics when I could afford them and, most of the time, went without care when I couldn't. It was ironic: I was spending my days making sure other people's children were cared for while struggling to afford consistent care for myself. It was not until I turned 65 and qualified for Medicare that I finally had access to health coverage. And even that coverage is at risk.

But this essay is not meant to share all of the challenges I face in care work. No, I am writing this to emphasize that I am no longer the exception. We, as working-class people, have become the rule.

Across the United States, retirement is slipping out of reach for working people of every kind. Wages have not kept up with the cost of the roof over our heads, a simple doctor's visit, a full grocery cart, or care of any kind. More and more people are working into their late 60s, 70s, even 80s, not because they want to, but because stopping simply is not an option. For me, I work until God tells me to stop. The insecurity I’ve referenced has always shadowed domestic workers, and now it’s reaching the rest of the working class. My story reflects the lives of so many working people.

But domestic workers are building a constituency around care: domestic workers, family caregivers, parents, and everyone who understands that care is not some niche issue. It is part of whether a family can afford to live and whether the people who provide that care can afford to grow old, in my case, preferably with a crisp beverage on a beautiful beach.

The economy and affordability are on people's minds. It’s the only thing that’s on my mind. My bank account tells me that things are expensive.

For Black women like me, the right to be heard was never simple. Our grandmothers cleaned other people's homes and were told their voice did not matter in their own country. My father, who raised my siblings and me in 1960s Memphis, taught us that sitting out of the civic process was not optional; he refused to be invisible, and engaging with elected officials was a way to ensure that.

And it is not only domestic workers who have a stake in this. Every family with childcare needs, every person with an aging parent or disabled loved one at home, all of us who will need care someday—we all deeply depend on this work. When we make that care visible, when we insist that it be counted and prioritized, we are looking out for one another.

I want the people in elected office to hear that childcare lets parents go to work, that home care lets people live with dignity, and that we, the people who do that work, should be able to retire from it one day.

Domestic workers are more than our labor. We are neighbors, parents, and grandparents.

With seven children and 18 grandchildren, I do not want another generation of women in my family to inherit a country’s economy where caring for others means giving up their own security.

My grandmother cared for people. My mother cared for people. I spent 32 years caring for children. We have done our part.

This Labor Day, I want the people who represent us—and the country we have spent our lives caring for—to show us they will do theirs.

And if they don't, Miss Cathy is going to get to the bottom of it.

The Supreme Court’s de facto approval of Trump’s illegal ballroom construction and destruction of the East Wing is the latest example of a White House determined to outrun the slow-moving court system in order to remain unaccountable.

The post Move Fast and Break Laws appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

In every war, there is supposed to come a moment when the guns fall silent and families carry their dead to the cemetery.

In Gaza, that moment has still not fully arrived.

Nearly three years into the war, thousands of Palestinian families are still waiting—not to learn whether their loved ones survived, but for the chance to recover what remains of them from beneath collapsed homes and buried streets.

Many families know almost exactly where their relatives are: beneath a particular building, under a collapsed staircase, behind layers of concrete too heavy to move by hand. Across Gaza, rubble is no longer only evidence of destruction. In many places, it is also a grave.

There should be no disagreement over one principle: The dead have a right to be recovered and buried with dignity, and families have a right to know where their loved ones lie.

The urgent humanitarian question is therefore not only how many people were killed. It is how many are still waiting to be recovered, identified, and buried.

On August 4, 2026, Gaza held a mass funeral for 112 members of the al-Hassayna and Abu Sharia extended family. Their remains had been recovered from homes destroyed in Gaza City’s Sabra neighborhood in November 2023. For nearly three years, their families had waited to bury them.

That funeral was a warning about what time does to the dead—and to those left behind.

The longer remains stay beneath collapsed buildings, the harder identification becomes. Decomposition advances. Bones separate. Personal belongings are displaced. Forensic evidence deteriorates. Gaza’s forensic capacity also remains severely limited.

For families, identification is not a technical detail. It is the difference between a missing person and a known grave. It is the ability to perform a funeral, visit a burial place, and begin mourning with certainty rather than suspicion.

For relatives, the waiting is its own form of suffering. Some families return again and again to the same ruins, pointing to the place where a bedroom, kitchen, or stairwell once stood. They are not asking for certainty about survival; they are asking for the basic certainty of a grave. Until recovery happens, mourning is suspended between memory and rubble.

There are legal consequences as well. Without formal recovery and identification, families can face prolonged uncertainty over death registration, inheritance, guardianship, and other civil matters. A person may be gone in every human sense and still remain unresolved on paper.

The physical challenge is enormous. A 2026 damage and needs assessment by the United Nations, the European Union, and the World Bank estimated that the war had generated more than 68 million metric tons of rubble in Gaza. Some debris are contaminated by unexploded ordnance, asbestos, and other hazardous materials.

Recovering the dead is therefore not a matter of sending people into ruins with shovels. It requires excavators, cranes, fuel, protective equipment, forensic teams, DNA identification capacity, safe humanitarian access, and protection for civil-defense and rescue workers.

Heavy machinery is not a luxury. It is the difference between a body remaining beneath concrete and a family finally being able to bury its dead.

In July 2026, the United Nations Development Programme and the European Union launched a €15 million initiative to support emergency debris removal and strengthen Gaza’s capacity for the dignified recovery and identification of human remains. It is important, but the need is far greater than any single project.

That is why debris removal must treat the recovery of human remains as a central humanitarian priority, not as an afterthought to reconstruction. Sites where people are believed to be buried should be mapped and handled carefully, with procedures for documenting remains, preserving evidence, and notifying families. Rebuilding Gaza cannot mean building over the missing.

What is required now is neither complicated nor impossible.

Humanitarian teams need safe and unhindered access to recovery sites. Excavators, cranes, fuel, spare parts, and specialized equipment must be allowed in without delay. Forensic capacity must be expanded, including DNA identification and proper preservation of remains. Civil-defense, rescue, forensic, and humanitarian teams must be protected.

These are not maximalist political demands. They are the minimum requirements of human dignity.

People will continue to disagree about politics and the future of this conflict. But there should be no disagreement over one principle: The dead have a right to be recovered and buried with dignity, and families have a right to know where their loved ones lie.

A bulldozer should not become a diplomatic bargaining chip. A crane should not require a political breakthrough. Reaching the body of a child should not become another battle.

Civilization is measured not only by what it builds for the living, but by the dignity it preserves for the dead.

Open the crossings and humanitarian routes. Allow the heavy machinery and forensic equipment in. Protect the teams recovering the dead. Give families the chance to bury their loved ones.

Because even after war has taken a life, it should not be allowed to take away a name, a grave, and a final goodbye.

Human dignity does not end with death.

Let Gaza bury its dead.

Let me not quote him once in this piece. We’ve already heard all too much from him, don’t you think? And president of the United States though he may be, he doesn’t deserve to be quoted, not given what he has to say.

It’s true that, in my lifetime, we’ve had all sorts of strange, sometimes deeply disturbing presidents. Believe me, Richard Nixon was no fun. And neither was Ronald Reagan or even, in our very own relatively recent moment, the aging Joe Biden. But nothing like him was ever even conceivable... not until, of course, he happened.

I hardly need to say it, but he—and unfortunately on this planet of ours right now, I really can’t help mentioning him again and again and again, can I?—should be considered the summary of what decline has long meant for great powers, personified in a fashion that may be historically unique for a nation that, not so very long ago, was arguably unique in its global reach and power. Phew, that sentence exhausted me!

Indeed, historically speaking, it’s certainly been rare beyond words (though I swear that won’t stop me from writing this!) to experience such an imperial decline—especially of the greatest power on Earth, possibly ever—both summoned up by and summed up in a lone individual, a single leader, a uniquely mad (and, mind you, not simply as in angry) man.

Consider it beyond remarkable that, in 2024, almost 50% of the American voting public (49.8% of them to be exact) opted to put YKEW back in the White House to do his—and it couldn’t be a more appropriate word, given our world—damnedest to turn this planet into a hothouse of the first order.

If a single poll sums him up in this singular moment of ours, perhaps it’s the latest AP-NORC one. It indicates that about 72% of Americans think this country is indeed heading in “the wrong direction,” while only 26% (and what in the—yes!—world can possibly be going through their brains at this moment?) think it’s heading in the right direction (wherever on this ever stranger planet of ours—or do I mean theirs?—that might be).

And talking about the wrong direction in which the president of the country that, not so long ago, was certainly the greatest power ever is sending us, hook, line, and sinker—whoops, I meant not to mention him again and yet there I went! It seems that I just can’t help myself, nor can I evidently finish this sentence—and honestly, can you blame me on this planet of ours?

Okay, I give up. How can I help myself (or anyone else) when it comes to HIM?

After all, what world can any of us imagine living in anymore, other than his? And given that world, maybe what I actually meant should have been a little more emphatically stated than what I wrote above. After all, to put it mildly (or do I mean wildly?), he’s taking us in the wrong direction, hook, line, and—no, not sinker but stinker (though he is indeed sinking us and this planet, too, in a big-time fashion). And yes, the president who told the world at the United Nations last year that climate change was nothing short of a “con job” and a “scam” seems to be distinctly in the process of preparing to burn down this very world of ours (or do I mean his?).

It’s Getting Hot, Hotter, Hottest

Oh, and only recently, to change the subject for a moment from You Know Exactly Who (or YKEW), a French tourist died after his vehicle became stuck in the mud in the all too aptly named Death Valley National Park in southern California, where the temperature was—and catch a breath before you read this!—116°F! (And mind you, that valley has been setting its own heat records in recent years.)

Now, given the location, you might think that was a one-of-a-kind situation in a deeply desertified stretch of this planet, but if so, think again. As it happens (to flip lands for a moment), on that tourist’s home continent, Europe, according to The Guardian, there have already been an estimated at least 35,000 “excess deaths” attributed to four stunning heatwaves that started in May this summer. Worse yet, when the records for the whole season are in, that number—god save us!—could still rise significantly as parts of that continent continue to go up in flames in a radical fashion. And don’t for a moment think that the idea of this planet being increasingly on fire is just a metaphoric image. As The Guardian also reported, “Wildfires are projected to burn 39% more of Europe by the end of the century even in the best-case scenario for stopping the planet from heating, a study has found, unless action is taken to manage them better.”

And mind you, in some strange fashion, we’re undoubtedly just at the beginning of all this. Oh, and keep in mind as well that we’re not just talking about temperatures on land. I’m sure you’ll be amazed to know that, as The Guardian again reported, ocean temperatures have similarly been soaring of late. In fact, believe it or not, ocean waters set a new temperature record in August (even though the highest ocean temperatures are usually in March or April).

Nonetheless, you shouldn’t find that particularly shocking, since more than 90% of the heat trapped by carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel burning enters those very oceans. As environmentalist Bill McKibben reminded us recently, “Since our planet is 70% ocean, it’s a pretty good gauge of how hot the planet is getting. And what it shows is that in all the decades we’ve been measuring, it’s never been hotter.” And mind you, “42% of the world’s ocean area is now experiencing a ‘marine heatwave.’”

Phew!... I’m already sweating!

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

In some sense, given what we human beings are doing to this planet and given that the president of the greatest power on Earth, YKEW himself, has been going out of his way in these years to increase the use of fossil fuels while, among other things, trying to shut down new sources of wind power and solar energy, who wouldn’t be sweating?

When it comes to the literal destruction of this planet, however, it seems clear that YKEW simply loves it. He couldn’t, for instance, be more enthusiastic about the scores of new AI data centers being set up (or soon to be set up) across this country (not to speak of the world) that will be powering themselves with immense quantities of—oh, yes!—fossil fuels and so pouring ever more carbon into the atmosphere nationwide (and undoubtedly globally, too). As The New York Times reported, for instance, when a new data center in El Paso, Texas, is completed, “It could emit as much planet-warming carbon dioxide in a year as 360,000 gasoline-powered passenger vehicles, each driven for the average distance logged by American drivers in a year.”

Under the circumstances, what could possibly go wrong?

So, among other things, expect to feel ever hotter on this distinctly broiling planet of ours and consider it beyond remarkable that, in 2024, almost 50% of the American voting public (49.8% of them to be exact) opted to put YKEW back in the White House to do his—and it couldn’t be a more appropriate word, given our world—damnedest to turn this planet into a hothouse of the first order.

And although we’re still months away from December 25 (though don’t count on snow), consider all of that his Christmas present to our children and grandchildren. I’m thinking, of course, about a planet whose major power, led by You Know Exactly Who (YKEW himself!), is giving the phenomenon of imperial decline historically new meaning by working all too efficiently to take the planet down with him.

These days, it seems as though there are new data centers being proposed and built everywhere.

Tech companies have long relied on these gigantic server warehouses to process massive amounts of digital data. But a race to develop AI, championed by President Donald Trump, has fed a sharp surge in construction.

The problem is, no one really wants to live near one. Three-quarters of Americans surveyed in August say they oppose data centers. That’s up from 42% a year earlier.

Data centers use up lots of land—largely in rural America. They use inordinate amounts of water for cooling, eat up power and pollute our air, and generate heat in an already-warming climate. So anyone concerned with their most basic needs—land, water, air, electricity, and the climate—is justifiably concerned about data centers.

The good news, Meyer says, is “there has been tremendous grassroots pushback and opposition to data centers in all parts of the country.”

Data centers are also physical symbols of the way in which AI companies are gambling away our economic stability.

“They are pushing to move as quickly as possible, to throw as much money at this as possible, basically offering open bribes to governments at all levels—local, state, and federal—to get these things approved and built,” Thomas Meyer, deputy political director at Food & Water Watch, told me.

Even mainstream economists are warning about a massive “AI bubble,” which could take the entire system down with it when it bursts. (South Korea, where that bubble may already be bursting, offers a real warning to the United States.)

The good news, Meyer says, is “there has been tremendous grassroots pushback and opposition to data centers in all parts of the country.” Meyer’s organization is one of hundreds that have joined the newly formed Stop Data Centers Coalition, which unites local fights against data centers in urban and rural areas across the country. Many of these struggles have enjoyed varying degrees of success.

What’s really needed is a national moratorium on data centers, as outlined in a letter to Congress signed by the coalition’s partners.

Partisan gridlock in Congress, and President Trump’s full-throated support of AI companies, stands in the way of a national ban for now. But this spring, environmental organizations defeated a bill called the “Protect American AI Act” that would have carved out environmental loopholes for data centers.

Meanwhile, activists are pushing ahead at the state and local levels.

Residents in Maine pushed legislators to pass what would have been the first state-wide moratorium on data centers earlier this year (although Governor Janet Mills vetoed the bill).

The fight against data centers fared better in New York, where state lawmakers passed a similar moratorium. Gov. Kathy Hochul, who has championed AI technology, has yet to sign the bill. But in the meantime, she signed an executive order issuing a one-year pause to allow time to develop regulations. “We are still pushing her to sign that bill because it’s a bit stronger than the executive order,” said Meyer.

Meyer pointed out that more than a dozen states are considering similar moratoria, and bans have already taken effect in many local communities. “Several hundred places have enacted moratoriums of different kinds of shapes and sizes,” said Meyer—including Sarasota County in Florida, and the cities of Minneapolis and Spokane. Monterey Park, California, stands out for being the first in the nation to enact a permanent ban passed by voters.

Trump unashamedly centers industry talking points in his executive order, casting data center construction and AI technology as a “race” to be won. But the real race appears to be for tech companies to build data centers in as many communities as possible before residents can stop them.

And that’s exactly why we need a moratorium.

On September 1, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents could be deployed to polling sites across the country. He remarked, “The only reason why we would be at polling places is if there is a threat to that polling place or we’re serving a warrant on someone that we have been actively tracking down.” Later that day, DHS doubled down on this point. In a statement, the department said that, while ICE is not “planning operations targeting polling locations,” the agency conducts “intelligence-driven targeted enforcement, and if an active public safety threat endangered a polling location, they may be arrested as a result of that targeted enforcement action.”

Missing from those statements, however, is that this “intelligence-driven” enforcement would be based on DHS’ explicit and baseless efforts to amplify President Donald Trump’s election fraud lies. In July, Mullin said, “We will scrub all election records, looking for illegal aliens and those who are ineligible to vote, including those that somehow voted, yet they were deceased.” At the time, he also threatened to withhold federal election-related aid to states that failed to comply with the Trump administration’s probe.

That same month, DHS issued a statement alleging that over 250,000 noncitizens are illegally registered to vote in California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Nevada. According to DHS employees and officials familiar with the situation, those numbers were wildly inflated. For instance, while DHS claimed that there were close to 16,000 noncitizens on Nevada’s voter list, it only managed to provide state officials with information on 185 voters. DHS failed to disclose what data they used to match those voters to noncitizens.

This is unsurprising. As the Brennan Center for Justice reports, empirical studies, state investigations, and work by journalists have consistently found that cases of noncitizens voting are exceptionally rare. Moreover, claims made by Republicans and their media allies to the contrary have been repeatedly shown to be false.

These extreme measures also point to just how afraid Trump is ahead of the midterms.

The reality is that Mullin’s DHS is actively trying to fabricate a pretext for ICE to be present at polling sites, regardless of how illegal it would be. 18 U.S.C § 592 directly prohibits any deployment of military personnel or “armed” federal agents “at any place where a general or special election is held.”

To that end, Mullin is exploiting every resource available to him. On September 1, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) reportedly launched “a coordinated criminal voter fraud surge initiative to pursue investigative leads, conduct field interviews, and support timely prosecutorial review,” according to a federal guidance reviewed by CNN. HSI offices in Washington, Wisconsin, Missouri, Georgia, California, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New York, and Connecticut are expected to take investigative action from early September through mid October. While HSI ordinarily focuses on crimes like human trafficking, drug smuggling, and child exploitation, it has been repeatedly tasked with investigating voter fraud in Trump’s second term. In February, the White House directed the agency to determine if any naturalized citizens voted or registered to vote prior to becoming citizens. HSI has also been directed to coordinate with US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to issue removal proceedings for noncitizens suspected of or linked to voter fraud.

ICE is also currently seeking vendors to handle “and secure delivery of publicly available voter registration files and voter history files to support Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) fraud detection and data segmentation activities.” To be clear, as J.B. Branch, the director of Federal AI Governance and Technology Policy for Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division, notes, “Publicly available does not mean ‘fair game’ for unlimited government surveillance.” He continues, “There is an enormous difference between a voter record sitting in a state database and the federal government aggregating millions of those records, cross-referencing them against other government and commercial databases, and using algorithms to generate investigative leads about individual Americans.”

That contract would be worth between $2-5 million according to an acquisition forecast document published by DHS on August 31.

This latest data grab is one of several coordinated efforts by ICE and the Trump administration to undermine voter eligibility. A procurement record from July indicated that ICE planned to pay Thomson Reuters, a major data broker firm, $125 million for access to its CLEAR database, which includes “peoples’ names, addresses, Social Security numbers, ethnicity, social media posts, and geolocation information,” to help the agency investigate voter fraud.

On September 3, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), along with individual voters, filed a motion asking a federal judge to block the Trump administration’s plan to compile state-by-state lists of people it deemed eligible to vote—“State Citizenship Lists”—and publish them online. The basis for this project is an executive order Trump signed on March 31. While a lower court blocked several key provisions from going into effect in 33 states and Washington, DC, the Supreme Court stayed the injunction in August, thus paving the way for the plan to be implemented nationwide. This, despite the fact that the Constitution clearly dictates that only states and Congress—not the president—have the power to control US elections.

All of these escalating efforts so close to the midterms point to one undeniable truth: DHS is readying itself, on behalf of the Trump administration, to engage in nationwide voter suppression and intimidation this November.

These extreme measures also point to just how afraid Trump is ahead of the midterms. On August 21, he told supporters that if Republicans lose, he will be impeached. Several Republicans, including House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), have recently echoed this "warning."

And they are right to be afraid. Democrats are favored to take back control of the House and possibly win control of the Senate. If this happens, Congress should immediately impeach Trump and put him, as well as everyone who enabled his corrupt administration, on trial for their many crimes.

The Trump administration is desperate. They will do anything—regardless of how illegal or unconstitutional—to subvert the will of people and remain in power. Yet, with the stakes so high, we cannot allow ourselves to be intimidated. This country cannot afford two more years of unchecked Trumpism. While there is still time, we must continue to advocate for progressive candidates as well as calling out and challenging every effort by Republicans to steal our elections.

There’s a question that has become almost unavoidable in movement spaces over the last several years: “What is giving you hope right now?

Usually, the question is asked with good intentions—a way to remind people of their why in the middle of authoritarianism rising, civil rights rolling back, endless surveillance, and the noise of it all.

I often asked myself, “What is giving me hope?” because people I deeply respect pushed many of us to think seriously about hope, radical imagination, and our responsibility to believe that another world is possible. And I still deeply believe in the importance of those things.

My father once told me that the thing that kept him focused while incarcerated for 24 years was the hope and vision that one day he would be reconnected to me. I’ve watched my mother make miracles happen and find ways to provide because of the hope and vision she had for me to have a better life than she did.

I’ve realized that long-term discipline requires a certain level of alignment through rest, quiet, and reassessing our personal intersections of passion, curiosity, capacity, skill, and impact.

But I’ve also found myself becoming a little irritated by the question, even wondering whether the way many of us talk about hope in the first world can become disconnected from the actual conditions so much of humanity has endured throughout history. The more I learn, the more I realize that so many people continue struggling under conditions far worse than what many of us can imagine, and yet they still endure and fight.

Just this week, I was reading I’ve Got the Light of Freedom, which focuses on the organizing traditions of the Mississippi Freedom Struggle. In one section, a young organizer from the 1960s explains that every single time he got up to organize Black people in the South, he had to seriously consider the possibility that he could be stabbed, beaten by white mobs, or lynched.

And yet, they organized anyway.

I think about Palestinians enduring genocide and starvation and still fighting. I think about political prisoners who have effectively been abandoned by much of the public and are still fighting.

At some point, I started realizing that hope alone isn’t what’s carrying people through history. Or at least not entirely. Sometimes people continue struggling because they believe they can win. Sometimes they continue because they feel a responsibility to the people around them. Sometimes they fight simply because their independence and ability to live self-determined lives are worth dying for. I still struggle with these things, and my thinking is constantly adapting. Still, I now spend a lot of my time thinking about discipline, focus, and endurance, especially in this political moment.

I have dealt with actual motion sickness since childhood. But I think many of us are dealing with social and political motion sickness right now. We are trying to simultaneously process global crises, local crises, personal crises, historical crises—you name it. Eventually, your nervous system starts collapsing under the weight of it all

What keeps me grounded is not trying to respond to everything, but instead trying my best to stay focused. Paying attention to what is actually within my control. Committing deeply to a set of responsibilities instead of scattering my energy across a thousand directions and not doing anything well.

And for me, that focus has required that I ask difficult questions about where I actually have the capacity to contribute in meaningful ways, and also if my contribution is actually building toward something constructive. I’ve realized that long-term discipline requires a certain level of alignment through rest, quiet, and reassessing our personal intersections of passion, curiosity, capacity, skill, and impact. Otherwise, over time, it becomes much harder to remain grounded, focused, and useful to the people around you.

Without moments of stillness, it becomes difficult to hear yourself clearly enough to know what you actually think, feel, or believe beneath all the noise. Enough space to actually feel what is happening in your body. And creating a little space to process those questions you have been avoiding.

I’m finding that those moments of quiet are helping me see the world, and myself, more clearly.

Part of what prompted me to write this is that I often get asked some version of the same question: “How do you hold all of this?” The work. The reading. The organizing. Being an executive director, being present for family and my daughter, and trying to stay informed about everything happening in the world. And honestly, I’ve been trying to struggle through that question myself. The truth is, there is no perfect answer, and I get it wrong all the damn time.

Building the capacity to endure is a process, like anything else. Part of the reason I’m able to hold the level of responsibility that I currently do is because of conditioning. That foundation was built years ago as a collegiate athlete, structured around 5:00 am workouts, study sessions, classes, two-a-day practices, late nights, and early mornings. It was an environment that forced me to learn how to push through discomfort, organize my time, and function while exhausted.

Today, that same discipline and structure have simply been redirected toward movement work, political education, writing, relationships, and community. But the capacity itself wasn’t built in a year; it required nearly two decades of routine, failure, and adjustment.

I don’t have all the answers, but I do think I’m slowly learning that surviving these times requires more than just consuming information or reacting to every crisis. It requires building the discipline to focus, the patience to grow over time, and the willingness to create enough silence in your life so you can hear yourself think again.

What must Tyrant Trump be thinking about his opponents’ feeble, weak, cowardly responses to his daily torrent of serious, impeachable offenses? Even his egomaniacal narcissism cannot fully explain his amazing good luck.

Start with the House’s two impeachments of Donald Trump, while Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was Speaker, in 2019 and 2021. The first was over Trump’s trying to bribe or extort Ukraine into going after Hunter Biden—an investor and Board member of a Ukrainian business. Pelosi knew there was no chance of getting the required two-thirds vote required for Senate conviction, but went for the House vote anyway. At the same time, Pelosi declined to pursue numerous other "slam dunk" kitchen table impeachable offenses we and others presented to her. (See Congressional Record, December 18, 2019).

In 2021, after the January 6 Trump-incited violent insurrection involving attack on the Capitol and Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election, Pelosi did the same thing: impeached Trump in the House. Unfortunately, the Senate fell short of the two-thirds vote required to convict and remove him from office because most Senate Republicans cowardly failed to hold Trump accountable for these treacherous actions.

Come the Second Trump term, after criminal indictments, a felony conviction, and civil litigation brought by women accusing him of sexual misconduct, on Day One, January 20, 2025, Trump began issuing illegal executive orders. Many of them were impeachable offenses as he boastfully implemented them, with the aid of Elon Musk’s criminal enterprise—DOGE.

Trump continues to commit “high crimes and misdemeanors,” brazenly, taunting the so-called leaders of the Democrats by saying, “This is just the beginning."

Trump probably anticipated a much more vigorous impeachment drive by the Democrats, even though they were in the minority in the House. His luck continued. The Democratic Party’s so-called leadership decided against this excellent galvanizing get-out-the-vote initiative for their voters, 90% of whom wanted Impeachment yesterday. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries’ (D-Calif.) staffers told inquirers that they didn’t know how it would play out.

Jeffries himself told a reporter that “he didn’t want to get ahead of that discussion.” What? Ahead of 90% of his party’s voters!!?

Trump, who called for the execution of six Congressional Democrats for reminding soldiers of their obligation not to obey an illegal order that is contrary to the Constitution or the laws of the United States (as in described in the Army Manual for Courts-Martial [MCM] along with international law) must be privately dumbfounded. The more violently extreme and erratic he gets, the less interested the Democratic Party is in an Impeachment Drive. (See “Statement from Medical Professionals” in the April 30, 2026 Congressional Record.)

Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) introduced H. Res. 537 on June 24, 2025. It was treated as a privileged impeachment resolution and Rep. Al Green took to the floor for debate and a prompt vote to educate the public about the necessity of ordering Trump, “You’re Fired.” Jeffries and his cohorts opposed it! Trump must have been stunned.

After all, people and their children are feeling, seeing, and hurting in the tens of millions from Trump’s wrecking, endangering, and weakening America. (See my column last week, “Open Letter to Representative Hakeem Jeffries.”)

Under the Jeffries and Schumer anti-impeachment bans, thus agreeing with Trump, the news media has little activity to cover in Washington, DC. Also, it’s not keeping up with the civic activity around the country demanding Impeachment. (See nader.org/impeachment.)

More puzzling is the refusal of editorial writers to urge impeachment. They regularly make the Impeachment case against Trump but decline to tell their readers the obvious conclusion: that the House should begin an impeachment inquiry and approve articles of impeachment. Congress also has an important role under Section 4 of the 25th Amendment. Congress, by statute, may appoint itself—in lieu of the principal officers of the Executive Branch—to determine whether the president is disabled and should be temporarily removed until the disability lapses.

Despite the many detailed editorials in The New York Times, such as one showing how Trump is harming the health of the American people and another “Autocracy Index” titled “Trump’s Election Meddling Erodes Our Democracy,” the editorial writers limped off their pages without answering the alarmed readers’ question, “What do you want done about this?”

The Times Sunday columnist Jamelle Bouie relentlessly documents Trump’s impeachable crimes, but not once has he moved to recommend this Republic-saving mechanism given to us by our Founding Fathers. Same for other Times columnists, Michelle Goldberg and EJ Dionne.

The Times’ reluctance to employ the “I” word is typical of the mass media. What about the independent progressive media? The Nation, In These Times, Progressive Magazine, and The Washington Monthly have all mentioned impeachment, but few have made a sustained, prominent editorial demand for an impeachment drive. Also, they do not report on the rising citizen activities behind Impeachment around the country.

Meanwhile, Trump continues to commit “high crimes and misdemeanors,” brazenly, taunting the so-called leaders of the Democrats by saying, “This is just the beginning.” He provides the Democrats with daily evidence that should prompt SHADOW CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS organized by Democratic members of Congress and designed to build a public factual record. Such hearings could attract substantial media attention, particularly if they focused on specific alleged abuses and featured affected witnesses, legal experts, and former public officials. Nonetheless, Jeffries and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) block any shadow hearings by dissenting House members.

What explains this historic cowardice? Is it fear of Trump retaliating? Is it smugness over Trump’s low polls, and a belief they can win in November by lying low, raising AIPAC and corporate campaign money, mumbling about affordability, and avoiding heavily poll-favored Pledges or Contracts for the American people showing specifically what they stand for? (See, Compact for American Workers and Robert Reich’s 10-Point Plan To Make America Affordable.) Or is it just trying to avoid Trump accusing the Democrats of having done similar things when they controlled the White House, such as starting or backing unconstitutional wars?

Whatever explains their inhibitions, the result is to signal to Trump that he has two-plus unchallenged years to ravage the lives and livelihoods of millions of people here and abroad, oppose preparedness for climate and pandemic catastrophes, to suppress renewable energy and favor omnicidal fossil-fuel combustion, invade our cities with his stormtroopers, and treat children with unsurpassed cruelty. It also leaves unanswered serious questions about his personal financial enrichment while in office—estimated to be $1.1 million per working hour. All this invites the demand that they resign. The people need fresh, stand-up leaders to take over the Democratic leadership and its party committees. (See RootsAction: “Tell Democrats in Congress to Insist That Schumer and Jeffries Step Aside”.)

The Democrats and electorally frightened Republicans pushed Richard Nixon out in 1974 for far, far lesser transgressions than those committed by Trump in a week.

Daniel Snyder, advocate of strategic nonviolence and author of Praying in the Dark: Spirituality, Non-Violence, and the Emerging World collaborated on this commentary.

Countless commentaries have shed light on the current administration’s aggressive, demonic, and systematic campaign to undercut commitments that have held us together for 250 years.

The assault we are experiencing threatens our health and well-being, bashes hopes we have for our children and grandchildren, and detracts from essential responsibilities that go along with being a good citizen. Adherence to the rule of law, assuring protections afforded in the Bill of Rights, and maintaining equitable and humane treatment of all persons are three of the nation’s most critical commitments.

An assumption throughout has been that millions of people in this country treasure these commitments and want to see them reaffirmed. If you are reading this, you are likely a person who shares these feelings. The telling question then is: What to do? What actions would be most effective in fulfilling our common aims? It would not be an understatement to say that this single question has dogged many of us since this administration came to power.

Nonviolent direct action seeks to move the center of gravity of public opinion toward the 3.5% participation that researchers have identified as the “tipping point” of social movements.

Yet the question often leaves resistors uncertain and overwhelmed. We tend to rush to action without fully understanding political dynamics and appreciating the value of strategic thinking. A critical first step is study, not only of the issues, but of approaches that have proven to work.

Desperate for brighter prospects, we are counting heavily on the upcoming midterm elections to turn the political tide in favor of preserving our treasured commitments. Perhaps we are also hoping that the judiciary will step up as a forceful counterweight to the ceaseless assaults. Yet, important as they are, Congress and the courts are "top-down" forms of political power. "Bottom-up" power is an essential complement, keeping "top-down" forms accountable to the people they were created to serve.

Rather than relying solely on one form of political power, one that is often fragile and slow-moving, we suggest a more practiced and time-tested approach: Nonviolent Direct Action.

What it is: Nonviolent direct action seeks to move the center of gravity of public opinion toward the 3.5% participation that researchers have identified as the “tipping point” of social movements. Such a groundswell of public opinion requires a careful assessment of proposed actions’ tendency to expand the “bottom-up” power base. Strategy-based action is a kind of “street theater” designed to create a broad base of people power, and a collective sense that “we” are in this together.

No Kings Protests had some of the earmarks of nonviolent direct action, but they lacked a constructive purpose. Most important, they lacked a strategy for attaining and sustaining that critical 3.5% threshold.

How it works: Imagine an inverted pyramid balanced on its point—extremely unstable, right? It will topple with the slightest breath. To maintain stability, undemocratic regimes must be propped up with "pillars of support." What are those pillars for the Trump administration? This is the essential strategic question for anyone planning an action. Weakening or removing even one pillar creates a crisis for the regime. Demonstratively successful nonviolent actions work on this principle. Economic boycotts, central to the civil rights movement, forced business owners to integrate lunch counters. Divestment actions pressured South Africa to dismantle apartheid.

What is essential for it to work well: Study the literature, especially the writings of Gene Sharp. Sign up for online training or subscribe to one or more of the online news services that report on current nonviolent actions and offer informative articles on strategy.

Within every action group there must be at least one or two people dedicated to doing the research and training necessary to offer wise and informed strategic counsel.

Build coalitions with others. No need to reinvent the wheel or act alone. Find out who else is already taking action on behalf of the commitments listed above and collaborate in learning and coordinating action.

Big picture, we need to improve our game, be more effective than activist groups, which tend to be issue-focused and action-oriented, but weak on strategy. News outlets like Waging Nonviolence and Nonviolence News provide plentiful stories of current actions. These are good places to start for us who are anxious to do something that will definitively turn the tide toward democratic governance.

Bread for the World recently held its annual Advocacy Summit in Washington, DC. As a board member, I was honored to be part of conversations on how public policies affect people experiencing hunger and poverty. People from all walks of life and all backgrounds united with the common goal of developing institutions that advance food security.

This moment was especially full of policy discussions as midterm season is in full swing across the country. Leaders are itching to advance on the campaign trail. They are more likely to be on the ground listening to what we have to say, so the opportunity is ripe to share what we care about. We can ask them what they will do to reduce hunger and improve food security for those in poverty. We can push for accountability.

But first, we must understand the current policies and context today that create and maintain food apartheid.

As of the 2017 Census, Black farmers were reported to own just 0.32% of US farmland, a number which has been continuously decreasing over the past century. They are denied grants disproportionately to their white counterparts and earn approximately one-seventh of the income that their white counterparts bring in. Land ownership is steadily being stripped from us.

Hunger is not inevitable. It is possible to make change.

In the last year and a half, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) has been on the chopping block many times. Since July of 2025, well over 3.5 million people have been pushed out of the program as a result of cuts in the federal budget. Newly enacted work requirements unjustly require people to qualify themselves to eat.

SNAP’s program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) is facing even further underfunding. Recent cuts will take away over $141 million in funds to feed over 5 million new mothers and young children—particularly funds designated for fresh fruits and vegetables. They are literally taking food out of the mouths of children.

This says nothing of the centuries of racism, blocked resources, and stolen land that brought us here today. It barely scratches the surface of all the factors influencing security today. We are facing hateful rhetoric; regressive social policies; global instability; and widespread threats to Black, brown, and immigrant communities. All this uncertainty makes us feel vulnerable. It makes food security and, indeed, any economic stability more tenuous.

There is no question that we need change; now is the moment to demand it from our leaders. Just as there are policies that harm access to nutritious food, there are certainly policies that can expand access.

We can remove work requirements for SNAP that pick and choose who gets to eat without regard for what they are going through. We can expand funding and access so that no one is left without nutritious food to sustain them. We can enact reparations to return land and opportunities to Black communities, and we can support the Black farmers and organizations working to feed people.

But, as we raise our voices for policy change, we must not overlook actions in our own neighborhoods.

I will always fight for a more representative government which supports the needs of our people. However, the government is still imperfect to say the least; we cannot wait for them while hunger runs rampant. We can take matters into our own hands.

Community organizing and self-reliance offers security especially when our government fails us; this is what we work for at The Black Church Food Security Network. We meet people where they are. We grow the food ourselves and distribute it throughout the community. We work together to build autonomy within our own communities.

Such an immense issue as food insecurity cannot be wholly solved by one channel or one institution alone. It takes policy advocacy, community organizing, and self-reliance moving hand-in-hand. Progress is possible when we approach it as a united front.

As Bread for the World reminded us through the advocacy summit, hunger is not inevitable. It is possible to make change. If we come together to uplift our communities and advance essential policies, we can create an environment where people are not only fed, but they are in a better position to feed themselves.

After pushing through one of the more regressive tax cuts in history back in 2017, President Donald Trump promised, on taking office in January 2025, that his new regime of onerous tariffs would be different. Foreigners would pay them, American consumers would be held harmless, and American manufacturing would bloom anew.

In the real world, of course, companies routinely pass tariffs on to American consumers in the form of higher retail prices, and it’s generally agreed that this is what happened when Trump’s tariff regime took effect. But after the Supreme Court found most of Trump’s tariffs to be illegal and ordered that they be refunded to importing companies, those refunds have not generally been passed onto consumers, as a series of candid corporate earnings calls in recent months have demonstrated.

In other words, working Americans, who make up most of the nation’s consumers, paid for checks that are now being written to corporations and that will enrich their (mostly wealthy) shareholders. Trump’s tariffs have played out as a straightforward redistribution of income from ordinary Americans to corporations, much like the two other major tax cuts he’s pushed through as president.

Of course, this is not how Trump marketed his trade policies.

Because he chose instead to levy these tariffs using authority the law simply doesn’t give him, the Trump tariff experiment now amounts to a multibillion-dollar transfer of cash from working families to shareholders.

The administration promised, at various points, that the new tariff revenue would be enough to replace the entire federal income tax, boost military spending by 50%, pay a $2,000 dividend to every American, and somehow simultaneously reduce the national debt.

The court’s February decision ruled that the tariffs—imposed by Trump under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA)—were illegal and must be refunded to the companies that had initially paid them. This was no surprise—the IEEPA was enacted in 1977 to restrict presidential power, not expand it. The decision meant that fully $166 billion, well over half of the additional tariffs collected to date by the Trump administration, must be refunded.

For the millions of Americans who saw the prices of almost everything they buy increased by tariffs, the obvious question was how—if at all—these companies would pass through their tariff refunds to consumers. But as a series of corporate earnings calls have made clear over the past several weeks, in general these corporations are treating the tariff refunds—which often come with interest paid on top—not as something they should duly pass on to consumers, but a way of padding their bottom line. And this is true even of companies that acknowledged raising prices last year to offset the tariffs.

For example, in an earnings call back in summer 2025, a Nike executive estimated the company would see a tariff impact of around $1 billion, and announced that it “intend[s] to fully mitigate the impact” of the tariffs with a series of steps including “surgical price increase in the United States.” The $5 to $10 price increases introduced by the company that summer were transparently Nike’s “surgical” way of passing the buck to consumers.

Yet when Nike announced earlier this summer that it would see close to a $1 billion tariff refund, company officials simply noted that this “unplanned benefit” would boost the company’s earnings for the quarter. As a result, consumers have filed a class-action suit against Nike for extracting a double benefit from the Trump tariffs—first boosting shoe prices to offset the cost of the tariffs and then pocketing the tariff refunds.

Some companies claim that part of their refunds will lower prices for consumers going forward, but this is meaningless spin that is divorced from how prices are set. Receiving unexpected cash from the government does not create an incentive for a company to charge customers less for its products than the market will bear. But several corporations are making this claim to distract the public from their windfall.

For example, Dollar Tree recently reported it will receive $383 million in tariff refunds and said that $22 million of that $383 million in refunds will go toward “higher markdowns… related to our tariff reinvestment initiative.” While some of the remaining refund will go toward “customer messaging and marketing, and incremental improvements in store conditions and operations,” Dollar Tree has not said how much more it will devote to price markdowns. But the company’s leaders were far less squishy about announcing a $605 million stock buyback for the quarter—more than 27 times the $22 million it recorded for tariff-related markdowns.

Other big companies have vaguely promised that consumers will benefit from the giant refund checks without saying how much. Walmart says it is using refunds to support “price leadership.” Target says it will “invest in price.” Lowe’s initially promised “customer-facing actions” that will “reinforce our value proposition,” although the company subsequently pivoted toward saying its leaders “feel strongly that we want to deliver strong profitability for our shareholders.” But none have said what share of their tariff refund will actually make its way back to consumers. Levi Strauss, having previously admitted it would be taking “thoughtful, targeted pricing actions” in response to the tariffs, tops them all by saying of its $80 million tariff refund windfall only that “we haven’t figured out what to do with it.” (Levi Strauss now also faces a proposed class-action suit for not returning tariffs to consumers.)

Some companies aren’t even bothering to pretend they’re interested in offering relief to their customers. Shoe maker Steve Madden, which previously acknowledged “adjusting pricing” in response to the tariffs and subsequently noted it was “pleased overall with consumer acceptance of the price increases,” now says it will use its $92 million in tariff refunds to “pay down debt.”

This unmistakable shift of cash away from consumers and into the pockets of corporations and their shareholders is, on one level, not the companies’ fault. Once companies incorporated their tariffs into price increases across all the items they sell, there was no practical way to identify exactly which consumers bore which portion of those tariffs, or to reverse those price increases dollar for dollar: That egg can’t be unscrambled.

The ultimate responsibility for this regressive tax shift falls on the Trump administration, which chose to impose these tariffs unilaterally, without seeking the congressional authorization the law required. If Trump had gotten the approval he needed from Congress to levy these tariffs, this whole episode would merely have been an economically catastrophic, regressive tax hike on consumers.

But because he chose instead to levy these tariffs using authority the law simply doesn’t give him, the Trump tariff experiment now amounts to a multibillion-dollar transfer of cash from working families to shareholders. In that sense, Trump’s illegal tariffs are beginning to look a lot like his much-ballyhooed tax cuts of 2017 and 2025: Working families were promised big tax cuts, but corporations and their shareholders ultimately made out best.

Have you ever had to fight off a rattlesnake in the dark while on shift? Or struggled to breathe through heart palpitations, in a remote field dozens of miles away from the nearest hospital?

Farmworkers are increasingly having these experiences as extreme heat in certain states has forced people to pick onions, grapes, and berries at night when it is cooler and the work more tolerable.

Compounding the struggle, there’s the accompanying impaired visibility and occupational safety risks for workers planting seeds and picking crops before sunrise. For those partially or primarily laboring during the day, heatwaves continue to become longer year after year, more intense, and therefore, more deadly. Making matters worse are conditions for those who work at the pace of piece rate work, which pushes farmworkers to do more and faster for potential pay fueling more intense physical labor from the workers at all given times.

In an ideal world, farmworkers would have rights and protections guaranteed by the federal government so that they could labor during the day, and if needed, at night, without risking their basic bodily integrity to bring food to our tables. In fact, in 2024 the Biden administration took steps in this direction with a proposed heat standard that would require employers to establish heat safety plans, provide water and shade, and institute paid 15-minute breaks every two hours when the heat index reaches 80°F. While a final version of the rule was proposed, it has not been finalized, which means that it remains in regulatory limbo. Moreover, with a federal government brazenly hostile to federal regulations, as evident in several environmental policy rollbacks, it is unlikely that nationwide protections for workers will come into force in the immediate future.

As of last year, most states have no legislation providing protections to workers in relation to extreme heat while working outside, inside plant nurseries, or in nighttime darkness.

Still, not all hope is lost. While federal action to the benefit of farmworkers leaves much to be desired, there has actually been significant motion at the state level. In fact, some states are actively configuring and approving heat protection standards, while others are improving upon regulations already in place.

Some states, like Arizona, mandate that employers need to provide water to workers and provide shade should temperatures rise above 100°F. The Georgia House Legislature has proposed a bill with similar specifications, but has not advanced it to be signed into law by the governor, similar to New Mexico’s proposed heat stress rule. More recently, the state of Virginia approved legislation in April 2026 directing its health and labor agencies to implement heat safety standards. Despite these positive trends, California continues to be the only state to regulate nighttime work in agriculture. California also has a much lower extreme heat stress limit for daytime work—80°F—than other states for when shaded areas must be provided.

Surprisingly, these states are outliers. As of last year, most states have no legislation providing protections to workers in relation to extreme heat while working outside, inside plant nurseries, or in nighttime darkness.

For the states that have regulations, the next step to support farmworkers is to build from this regulatory patchwork and make enforcement real. Improvement, however, is a continuous uphill climb.

Currently California is considered to be the state with the best farmworker protections, yet their agency responsible for the state’s occupational safety, Cal-OSHA, reported last year how the institution suffers from a severe lack of resources and staff. The dearth of resources is so bad that case backlogs are months long, as officials cannot spend time reviewing those that don't result in fatalities, leaving workers with limited recourse.

For other states, establishment of basic protections are still needed.

Texas, for instance, has no heat stress protections for workers. This, as the Lone Star state ranks among others like California for having the highest number of farmworkers. In 2023, the state of Texas actually took a step in the opposite direction by approving legislation restricting local governments from enacting rules that go beyond the state law, striking down some city ordinances that had previously guaranteed 10-minute water and shade breaks for some outdoor workers, such as construction workers. Accordingly, workers in this state deserve at minimum the right to access cool potable water, and time in the shade should temperatures reach a certain level.

Typically, by now the high temperature season would be wrapping up but many regions are still experiencing heatwaves. While the federal government continues to lean into deregulation, Congress recently advanced the Heat Workforce Standards Act of 2025 (HR 6213), to the House floor on July 21. If passed, this bill would prohibit the Occupational Safety and Health Administration from finalizing, implementing, or enforcing its proposed federal heat injury and illness prevention standard.

Farmworkers need local and state governments to come to their aid in implementing policies recognizing the urgency of lethal heat while learning from one another as they pass laws where there are none, and improving standards where they exist. The status quo—rattlesnakes and all—is not just absurd, but inhumane. Farmworkers deserve better.

By Ralph Nader September 4, 2026 What must Tyrant Trump be thinking about his opponents’ feeble, weak, cowardly responses to his daily torrent of serious, impeachable offenses? Even his egomaniacal narcissism cannot fully explain his amazing good luck. Start with the House’s two impeachments of Trump, while Nancy Pelosi was Speaker, in 2019 and 2021.…

Ralph Nader and Busboys and Poets Present: Galvanizing Labor Day for a Workers’ Compact NEWS RELEASE FOR RELEASE Tuesday, September 1, 2026, 10:00 AM FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT: Ralph Nader, 202-387-8030 or info@nader.org Conference to feature Labor Leaders, Activists Ralph Nader and Busboys and Poets present Galvanizing Labor Day for a specific Workers’ Compact (see:…

The future of Social Security, the government program that touches the lives of more Americans than any other, will be determined by the results of the November elections. Let us explain. The Social Security program faces a funding shortfall. As ABC News reported back in June:

Social Security's trust fund that pays retiree and survivor benefits is expected to begin running low on money earlier than previously expected, leading to questions from Americans who rely on the benefits for their living expenses. Without congressional action, the fund is now expected to begin depleting by the fourth quarter of 2032, according to a report issued Tuesday by Social Security's trustees, the body that manages the trust fund.

This does not mean that, as some who for their own political purposes argue, Social Security is going “bankrupt.” Those who depend on Social Security (roughly 68 million Americans) do not have to worry about their checks stopping. Instead, they need to be concerned about a very significant cut to their benefits.

But know this: The reduction can be avoided with courageous political action. Congress and the president can make adjustments that will close the gap and pay out promised benefits. Back in 1983, Congress and President Ronald Reagan hammered out a solution to do just that.

Right now, there are a number of steps that Congress can take that will strengthen Social Security’s finances for today and for future generations. One of the most talked about solutions is raising the cap on the amount of income subject to the Social Security tax—otherwise called “busting the cap.” The Economic Policy Institute points out that:

Earnings above a cap aren’t subject to the payroll taxes that fund Social Security. As a result, billionaires pay the same tax as someone earning $176,100 in 2025 (the cap is indexed to the average wage, so it changes every year). “Scrapping the cap” is a popular and effective way to address Social Security’s funding gap. Nearly three-fourths of Social Security’s projected long-term shortfall would be eliminated if the cap were scrapped without increasing benefits.

Believe it or not there is a bipartisan proposal out there from Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio. Sens. Warren and Moreno argue that “instead of cutting benefits for the retirees who count on Social Security, we need to take bipartisan action to protect those benefits, reward work, and restore fairness. That starts with a common-sense solution: lifting the Social Security payroll tax cap.”

Other bipartisan members of Congress argue that the best way to address Social Security’s challenges is through the creation of a bipartisan commission made up of 13 members appointed by the president and congressional leaders in both parties. Reps. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) and Representative Tom Suozzi (D-NY) introduced the Bipartisan Social Security Commission Act which would create such a commission. Congress would then only be given an expedited up-or-down vote on the recommendations with no amendments—bypassing regular legislative order. How is public input included in this process? Hint: It isn’t.

It seems to us that raising the tax on income subject to Social Security is a much better step toward securing Social Security’s future than creating a commission that operates outside the public view. Supporters of the commission idea will argue that this is exactly what happened in 1983. This is true, but it ignores the political realities of 1983. An agreement came about because Democrats and President Reagan came together to hammer out an agreement. There is no leadership on this issue from our president.

Creating a commission may sound good to inside the beltway players like the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget but to the millions of Americans who depend on Social Security, creating a commission to deal with the program’s fiscal challenges is just another way of Congress not doing its job.

There can be no doubt that the members of Congress elected this November will chart Social Security’s future. If you care about your retirement security and that of future generations, you have an obligation to ask some tough questions about Social Security. The two questions that we would put to members of Congress are:

1. If we create a special commission to deal with Social Security, why do we need members of Congress?
2. Should Elon Musk pay the same amount of Social Security tax that an IT manager earning $184,600 (one hundred dollars over the cap)?

During this election, ask your candidates where they stand on Social Security’s future, and what solutions they support to ensure that our benefits are not cut because of inaction or because of political fear. And tell them what Social Security means to you and to your families. Social Security is the only guaranteed inflation-protected retirement income source for millions of Americans—and that guarantee must be honored by our elected political leaders.

On Friday, the Trump administration announced a “deal” handing the United States 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan crude oil, roughly a fifth of the country’s total reserves (the largest on Earth), on leases running up to 100 years. They would give $200 billion, or just about $3 a barrel (just 3% of market value) to Venezuela. If this was a fair “deal,” following market value, it should be over $6 trillion. That may be the biggest fraud in human history.

Billionaires are already circling like vultures. A Coinbase co-founder is in talks to run his own Venezuelan oil fields, and pro-Israel megadonor Paul Singer is positioned to profit too. The arrangement comes eight months after US special forces stormed and carpet-bombed Caracas and abducted President Nicolás Maduro.

Marines have openly occupied the streets of Caracas since, doing numerous muscle-flexing helicopter raids across the city. The administration has said Venezuela is “not ready yet” for elections, despite running their own elections for decades—plus, why does the US get to dictate when and if countries can have elections, anyway?

The Pentagon itself reportedly holds a 35% stake in the venture set to extract the oil, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio runs the country as its de facto “viceroy," according to The New York Times. The whole scheme was backed by neocons like the Vandenberg Coalition and the Florida lobby.

Would the US accept it if China, Russia, Iran, or Mexico kidnapped a US president, bombed American fishermen, seized American oil fields, and installed a puppet government because officials in Beijing or Tehran deemed it “in the national interest”?

I guess they’ve stopped pretending this was ever about democracy or drugs (the original bogus reason). It is now even being sold as the cure-all for a worsening recession and a pre-midterm buy-off, even as the affordability crisis worsens.

President Donald Trump and the neocons’ message seems to be: It’s fine to steal trillions from other countries, kidnap their leaders, kill civilians, and install puppet governments, for profit. We skipped the Cold War and went straight back to old-school imperialism.

As almost always, most of the windfall from this “deal” will go to the super rich. Gas prices keep climbing, but oil majors are hitting record highs on Wall Street. Chevron’s stock sits near an all-time high as it committed $7 billion to the new venture. Canada’s largest oil investor also hit an all-time high in the stock market the day of the news.

You may ask yourself, how have Democrats responded to all this depravity and barbarism? Well, would it shock you if I said most Democratic politicians have attacked Trump from the right, and legitimated his warmongering? Unfortunately, it probably won’t.

My home state’s senator, the ever-boring Tim Kaine (D-Va.), joined by Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), filed a war-powers resolution to block what they called an “illegal war” with Venezuela. “Illegal” is the operative word. Their objection is that Congress never voted on this, not that invading, bombing, and looting a sovereign country is morally wrong.

In a Tweet, quoting the right-wing oil-funded Wall Street Journal, Kaine added that Trump had "Invaded Venezuela, Removed the dictator Maduro but... Kept his VP in power While blocking opposition leader and Nobel laureate Maria Corina Machado from returning home and delaying all talk of elections," ending on "So the US could control Venezuelan oil in violation of its constitution!"

Now we see why Trump

Invaded Venezuela
Removed the dictator Maduro but . . .
Kept his VP in power
While blocking opposition leader and Nobel laureate Maria Corina Machado from returning home
And delaying all talk of elections

So the US could control Venezuelan oil in violation…
— Tim Kaine (@timkaine) August 29, 2026

He's basically saying, "We want to coup foreign governments to put in a far-right puppet and take their oil, LEGALLY." We don't need Mickey Mouse anti-imperialists.

If Congress had passed a resolution approving all of it, the way it did for the wars in Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan, would that make it morally acceptable? Of course not. Torture under the Bush administration was legal, as was the US colonization of the Philippines, and even the Transatlantic Slave Trade, for that matter.

But for Democratic leadership, this was never about principle, or backing a truly progressive foreign policy vision; they just care about opposing Trump for its sake, and respecting the oh-so-perfect process. Though legislating morality is the purpose of law, legality and morality are not the same—and in this case, legal approval means nothing.

This is nothing new. Democrats have spent decades backing a hawkish, neoliberal Venezuela policy. During the 2002 coup that briefly ousted democratically elected president Hugo Chávez, then-Sen. Joe Biden dodged the question on television before pivoting, months later, to demand Washington “ratchet this up” against Chávez. By 2006 he was warning of an “axis of oil” led by Venezuela, echoing talking points from neoconservatives like Iraq War architect John Bolton.

Washington-aligned opposition forces also waged the 2002-2003 PDVSA oil lockout meant to strangle Chávez’s government economically. In 2019, when Trump anointed the unelected Juan Guaidó as president, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) recognized him, and most congressional Democrats stayed silent or lined up behind her.

Now, with the Pentagon routinely bombing fishing boats off Venezuela's coast for months, which it says, without evidence, are narco boats, killing hundreds of civilians, Democrats’ loudest objection was, again, that Congress hadn’t authorized it.

They wanted to see “proof” of these being narco boats, rather than focusing on the more important point: Are we okay with just murdering any suspected criminal? This is the kind of logic that leads to right-wing politicians arguing to kill thieves and petty drug peddlers, like in Brazil and the Philippines.

Hillary Clinton, of all people, said more than many elected Democrats would. Now Democrats are lining up behind Delcy’s far-right replacement-in-waiting, María Corina Machado. Even the Central Intelligence Agency thought she was too extreme and alienating to be Maduro’s replacement. Yet, Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) met with Machado months before she shamefully won the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize (before giving it to Trump). Durbin later co-sponsored a resolution honoring her alongside far-right Republican Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas) and Rick Scott (Florida). Most Democrats have been backing her as the next president, calling her a “champion of democracy,” among other ridiculous stolen valor.

Machado, backed by the Bush administration and US intelligence agencies, backed the 2002 coup; relentlessly pushed for and defended the sanctions that starved her own country; wants to privatize PDVSA and hand away her country’s, in her own words, “trillions of dollars of natural resources” to the US on Donald Trump Jr.'s podcast; and has praised autocrats like Daniel Noboa, Javier Milei, and Nayib Bukele.

Machado is “completely aligned,” historian Greg Grandin told Democracy Now!, “with the most militarist and darkest face of US imperialism. She was the main force lobbying for the coup against Maduro, and has supported the boat strikes on fishermen, her own fellow citizens. She has been supported by neocon war criminals like John Bolton, Elliott Abrams, and Mike Pompeo—does that sound like someone the Democrats should be backing?

There are, still, some exceptions worth naming. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) has made the actual moral case, not just the legal one, calling Trump’s approach a return to "the era of gunboat diplomacy where might makes right” and saying plainly, “It's not just that it's strategically wrong. It's morally wrong.” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) has also warned against letting “control of the world’s most powerful military” rest in one man's hands, and called out Trump’s imperialism plainly.

Expanding the anti-war coalition, libertarian Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) has repeatedly co-sponsored bipartisan war-powers resolutions with Democrats Rep. Jim McGovern (Mass.) and Joaquin Castro (Texas), arguing, “This is not about drugs; this is about oil and regime change... our troops are not pawns to be risked for the profits of oil companies and investment bankers.” A real transpartisan anti-war bloc is possible, it just needs bold politicians to lead it.

We face an unprecedented fascist and imperialist threat. Washington is using its world-bending power to expand its territory, remove leaders who won’t play ball with US crony and intelligence interests, and turn sovereign countries into de facto American possessions. Venezuela, as even the often-disappointing New York Times has reported, has effectively become a US colony.

Mealy-mouthed centrist imperialism just won’t do the trick. A legal invasion is still an invasion. Pursuing “US interests” doesn't give any official carte blanche to roam the world like rogue thugs. Would the US accept it if China, Russia, Iran, or Mexico kidnapped a US president, bombed American fishermen, seized American oil fields, and installed a puppet government because officials in Beijing or Tehran deemed it “in the national interest”? They might nuke them within the hour.

All empires end at some point. When it does, no power will grant the US the mercy it denied the countries it pillaged.

Democrats, and American officials generally, should recognize their precarious position in a world increasingly turning toward rivals like China, and finally build that coalition in earnest. Thankfully, there are now constituencies challenging Washington’s neo-imperial consensus, in academia, in think tanks, at the State Department, and even in Congress, that are growing too significant to ignore.

LIVE 9:00 am Eastern time, Streaming Anytime:

Conflict reporter/writer/cartoonist Ted Rall and political analyst Jamarl Thomas deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM ET.

Today we discuss:

• US Vice President JD Vance blurts “sometimes things happen” when asked whether an American bombing attack was responsible for killing four people, including a child, at a wedding celebration in southern Iran. The strike has been independently confirmed.

• Tensions rise between Germany and Russia. Russia will close German cultural centers, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says, in a retaliatory measure after Berlin blamed Moscow for an attempted drone attack at Leipzig/Halle Airport. In Munich, several incendiary devices were thrown at a construction site near a building where several companies, including from the defense sector, are located. Two Bulgarian nationals were arrested.

• First the Ballroom, now the Arch. Trump is breaking ground on his 250-foot-tall triumphal arch near Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, even before a federal review panel has approved the project.

• Argentine President Javier Milei escalates his country’s dispute with Britain over the Falkland Islands, vowing new measures to halt an oil project near the British-controlled archipelago and praising Trump for saying Washington could reconsider its neutral stance on the islands’ sovereignty.

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The post JD Vance Laughs Off Civilian Deaths | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Working people are fed up. Job uncertainty is the new normal. Chaos and corruption are constantly spilling out of Washington. But for the people grinding out a living every day, the crisis hits much closer to home. Burnout is rampant among essential workers, especially among caregivers, first responders, and social workers. And even as working people put in longer hours, their paychecks cover less and less as prices on seemingly everything continue to rise month after month. This Labor Day, that anger needs somewhere to go.

In 2026, even a simple backyard barbecue with friends and family can feel out of reach. These days, you are paying more for the burgers and crossing your fingers, hoping the lettuce will not make you sick.

The essential workers clocking in this Labor Day to keep our communities safe, healthy, and running should be able to count on one job paying enough to live on. Instead, too many worry about how they will make ends meet—or are picking up a second or even a third job. On a day meant to celebrate working people, that is a damn shame.

And it is not just groceries stretching family budgets. It’s healthcare and prescription drugs. Gas and electric bills. Rent and childcare. Nearly every necessity costs more, and every paycheck has to stretch further.

This November, working people must vote like our jobs, our freedoms, and our families’ futures depend on it, because they do.

This affordability crisis is not an accident. It is the result of choices. It is what happens when politicians pick a side. Whenever the Trump administration had a chance to lighten the burden on working families, it chose to make that burden heavier. Its so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” gutted the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, putting groceries further out of reach for millions of families. It slashed Medicaid, threatening coverage and shifting more healthcare costs onto working people.

The administration has made its choice clear: It is on the side of billionaires. Their wealth has surged by trillions since last Labor Day. The president’s own wealth has grown by $2.2 billion—all while working people and retirees struggle to afford the basics.

AFSCME has made its choice clear, too. Our union stands with working people—with the 1.4 million public service workers and retirees who make our communities stronger every day.

We side with Chearice Vaughn, a US Department of Agriculture worker and president of AFSCME Local 3870, whose team connects rural schools, hospitals, and families to high-speed internet. Despite her 32 years of dedicated public service, the administration tried to fire her.

We stand with Sabrina Bishop, a San Diego homecare provider and a member of UDW/AFSCME Local 3930, who cares for veterans, people with disabilities, and older Americans. The administration has gone after overtime protections that ensure caregivers like Sabrina are paid for every hour they work.

And we stand with Everett Johnson, a preventive maintenance technician for Baltimore City Public Schools and a member of AFSCME Council 3. Everett keeps school buildings safe, but a lack of resources forced him to buy his own tools to do the job.

These workers are not powerless. They have a union.

AFSCME went to court and stopped the administration from forcing Chearice out. Sabrina and her union siblings mobilized at the California State Capitol and won protections for overtime pay. Everett has a seat at the table to negotiate for better pay, better equipment, and the resources to do his job.

That is what union power looks like. When working people come under attack, we organize. We fight back. And we win.

More working people are recognizing that power every day. That is why public support for unions is at an historic high and why AFSCME continues to grow despite the constant attacks.

Standing together is how we take on billionaires and anti-worker politicians. It is how we protect our jobs, our freedoms, and the spirit of Labor Day itself.

But our power does not stop at the workplace. It extends to the ballot box.

This November, working people must vote like our jobs, our freedoms, and our families’ futures depend on it, because they do. We must elect candidates who will lower costs, protect public services, and stand up for working people, not billionaires.

This Labor Day, ask yourself: Whose side are you on?

And this November, vote for the people who are on your side.

The falling US share of the world economy—40% in 1960 versus 25% in 2026—is a driving force of economic nationalism stateside. Its rhetoric under President Donald Trump is America First, with abundant use of sanctions, tariffs, and war—directly with Iran and by proxy in Israel and Ukraine. On the note of warfare, the president has used military operations abroad as did Presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden since the fall of the former Soviet Union on December 26, 1991, heralding a big change in the world order.

Another landmark change in the global order is China's share of the world economy (3.5-4% in 1960 versus 19-205 in 2026). Currently, China is a manufacturing world power. The nation is also blessed with a bevy of natural resources such as rare earth minerals like erbium and yttrium. Advanced electronics and artificial intelligence, prominent industries stateside in 2026, rely upon these two heavy elements.

Accordingly, given the history of US militarism and racism against Asians, the contradictions of economic nationalism, the America First rhetoric, are plentiful. President Trump refers to America's interest as "ours" and "we" when he speaks of other nations cheating the US. This is a bid to unite the class interests of elites (billionaires and corporations, key donors to Democrats and Republicans) with workers. Thus the economic rise of China is a big target of distortion.

China's prominent trading partners help to form the grouping of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) nations. There is a BRICS summit in New Delhi, India set for September 12-13.

An affordability crisis of working and poor people stateside as their tax dollars flow away from them and into the congressional-military-industrial complex is the tip of a proverbial iceberg.

Speaking of military operations, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced increased economic warfare against Iran plus any countries doing business with that Persian nation, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) met in Kyrgyzstan. Nations’ heads of state attending this gathering ranged from China, Russia, India, Iran, and Pakistan to Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. The SCO also addressed measures to counter Uncle Sam’s deeds worldwide, including the US war against Iran and Israel's genocide of Palestinians.

In the SCO’s Bishkek declaration, the members also pledged to “support and strengthen an open, transparent, fair, inclusive, and non-discriminatory multilateral trading system based on generally accepted international principles and rules that promotes global economic development, ensures fair market access, and ensures special and differential treatment for developing countries.” Uncle Sam is looking at challenges to it alone calling the shots of a world order that gets its marching orders from Washington, DC. Meanwhile, the US is pursuing attempts to dominate other nations to boost the bottom line of America's elites.

Think of Uncle Sam’s taking of Venezuelan oil reserves, the details of which are emerging, glacially. Then there’s the talk from Washington of the US using tactical nuclear weapons to subdue Iran. The president has been threatening to take Greenland. He has also launched a trade war against Canada, a major US trading partner, claiming the neighbor to the north has been unfairly treating America.

Recall the president’s premise for his America First approach to jobs and economic gains? US global trade partners had been ripping off America. He was going to solve that problem, draining the swamp of Washington insider corruption, and so on. Wait. What?

For starters, US industry made the call to move abroad. To be clear, the deindustrialization of the Midwest and Northeast was a bipartisan priority that the political establishment facilitated, based on decisions made in corporate boardrooms. Democrats and Republicans supported corporate America moving production abroad to pursue higher returns on investment and weaker environmental policies.

Placing the drive for profits before the needs of the human population is the normal operation of the capitalist system. Ruling class interests use two-party politics to craft laws and policies that benefit elites, billionaires, and corporations.

The contradictions of economic nationalism and the world order are growing. An affordability crisis of working and poor people stateside as their tax dollars flow away from them and into the congressional-military-industrial complex is the tip of a proverbial iceberg. The worsening climate crisis that profits billionaires and corporations in the short-term as the political duopoly facilitates this ecocide is a wake-up call for movement politics.

Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from Nancy J. Altman's latest book, The Road to Medicare for All: A Call to Action (Routledge, 2026), published today and now available for purchase wherever quality books are sold. As the United States continues to spend substantially more on health care than other wealthy nations but with poorer health outcomes, Altman's book analyzes the dysfunction of the current system and sets forth the solution. "Medicare for All won’t happen without a fight," she argues, "but it is a fight we can win."

In the early morning hours of December 4, 2024, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare was gunned down outside the Hilton Hotel in midtown Manhattan in New York City. The CEO was on his way to the health insurance company’s annual investor conference. The police found the words “Delay,” “Deny,” and “Depose” carved into bullet casings at the scene.

The public reaction was swift and overwhelming. People took to social media to describe stories of mothers, fathers, spouses, children, and friends who had died from treatable illnesses, dead because UnitedHealthcare or other health insurance companies had either denied the life-saving care doctors had prescribed to their loved ones or had endlessly delayed approval of the lifesaving treatment.

Physicians posted stories of the hours they spent on the phone, seeking to convince insurance companies of the necessity of the care. The providers detailed spending countless hours advocating for their patients to insurance company doctors who had little or no expertise in their area of medicine but with the power of literal life or death to authorize or deny payment for the prescribed treatment. The frustrated providers recounted incidents of being on hold for hours and transferred among insurance executives in what felt like perpetual loops.

The United States is an outlier. Its health care is the most expensive in the industrialized world, while its outcomes rank at or near the bottom

When the treating physicians finally got through and were told they had to schedule a time to talk, the time for the so-called peer-to-peer conversation was solely at the convenience of the insurance company doctor, with no concern for the schedule of the treating physician. One doctor talked about a particular insurance company that told doctors they would get a call back but were not told when or from what number. They were told, though, that if they didn’t answer, the claim would be denied.

Then came the denials. UnitedHealthcare and other insurance companies are not required to disclose their denial rates, but anecdotal evidence and lawsuits suggest that the rates are high. And denial is a life and death matter. Virtually all treatments are prohibitively expensive without insurance. One TikTok contributor described receiving six months of chemotherapy for her dangerously advanced, stage 4 cancer, only to receive a letter from her insurer saying it would no longer pay for the treatment. She explained in her post that the treatment cost $15,000 every three weeks and the alternatives she had tried before starting the current regimen had done nothing. Only the current treatment prescribed by her oncologist worked.

America’s Outlier Healthcare System: Expensive, Wasteful, Complicated, Deficient

The delay and denial of lifesaving care doesn’t happen in other wealthy countries the way it does here. The United States is an outlier. Its health care is the most expensive in the industrialized world, while its outcomes rank at or near the bottom… Thirty million Americans—almost 10 percent of the population—have no health insurance whatsoever. Millions more are underinsured. Though they have health insurance, it does not cover the care they need at a cost they can afford. Even those with supposedly adequate coverage often have high deductibles, causing them to delay care until their health issues are too severe to ignore. The problem is that in the United States, health care is implicitly treated like a commodity, like the latest iPhone or simply a service, like plumbing or electrical work in a home. Of course, health care is not just another commodity or service. It is literally a life-and-death matter.

Like our court system, police and fire departments, public libraries, and our public schools, high-quality health care should be available to everyone in America as a right—automatic and free of charge when we need it.

Unlike the government, which has the power to tax, can control its currency, and is not going out of business, companies can only stay in business if they turn a profit. That means that health insurance corporations must ensure that they don’t pay out more in benefits than they collect in premiums, and the premiums can’t be too large or their customers will go elsewhere. To make the numbers work and earn a large enough profit to keep shareholders happy, these companies must seek to entice those who are healthy and therefore not in need of health care, by offering benefits like gym memberships. They must carefully screen to cherry-pick the healthiest of the population and avoid covering those likely to need expensive care. If their enrollees do get sick, insurance companies can restrict what treatment patients are able to get by limiting the doctors and hospitals that are in-network. The companies can delay or even deny prescribed treatments, if they are expensive and supposedly uncertain of success, by requiring pre-authorizations. Indeed, insurance companies refused to insure anyone with pre-existing conditions, such as birth defects, pregnancy, and job-related injuries, until the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act prohibited that discriminatory practice designed to reduce expenses and bolster profits.

In short, private companies must cover their costs to remain in business. That too often translates, in the case of health insurance corporations, to denying payment for doctor-prescribed medical care. Like our court system, police and fire departments, public libraries, and our public schools, high-quality health care should be available to everyone in America as a right—automatic and free of charge when we need it. Rich or poor, sick or healthy, old or young, no matter where you live, everyone should have high-quality health care.

The Obvious Solution to Our Broken Healthcare System

The way for health insurance in the United States to be universal, affordable, and efficient is to make the federal government the insurer. Insurance is most cost-efficient and reliable when the risks can be spread across as broad a population as possible and when people cannot delay purchasing the insurance until the moment people know they are getting sick—a practice known as adverse selection. Only the national government has the power and ability to establish a nationwide, universal risk pool, with mandatory participation, making adverse selection impossible. Furthermore, when the federal government administers the insurance, overhead is minimized. Instead of high-paid CEOs wielding power over our health care, hardworking, modestly-paid civil servants are in charge. Instead of unaccountable private actors in control, federal employees, subject to transparency and oversight, are the administrators. Moreover, other costs, like advertising and marketing, are unnecessary.

Fundamentally, the government is not seeking a profit for shareholders or high salaries for executives. In addition, there is only one payer, producing more efficiency and less waste. Consequently, all of us, collectively through the government, can provide health care less expensively and more efficiently for everyone. [...] Profit should have no place in our healthcare system. Instead, there should be a single insurer that can pay for the most efficient care equitably and universally. We would spend less as a nation and have better health outcomes.

Profit should have no place in our healthcare system.

We know it works because an American institution has been paying for health care efficiently and fairly for over 60 years: Medicare. To be clear, the solution is definitely not the vastly inferior, misleadingly-named Medicare “Advantage.” […] The solution is traditional Medicare as it was designed and enacted in 1965, with it improved and expanded to everyone.

Medicare works. Americans overwhelmingly agree. After living with private health insurance or, worse, no health insurance at all, your 65th birthday is eye-opening. That birthday brings Medicare. Once you enroll in Medicare, you generally have no claims to fill out, no insurance companies to contact. It is comparatively simple.

The vision of Medicare for all is for everyone to have that simplicity and much, much more. In addition to expanding it to everyone, Medicare should be improved. Today, those with traditional Medicare who can afford supplemental private-insurance coverage (colloquially known as Medigap, because it fills in the gaps) generally must purchase it to control their costs. That will be in the rearview mirror under Improved Medicare for All. All premiums, co-pays, co-insurance, and deductibles should be eliminated.

The vision is for cradle to grave, comprehensive healthcare coverage for everyone in America, automatically. It means better protection for everyone at lower cost—including for those covered under today’s Medicare. Improved Medicare for All means going to the doctor of your choice, without first checking to see if your preferred practitioner is in your insurance network. With Improved Medicare for All, there is essentially one big network of virtually every doctor and hospital in America. The result? Guaranteed health care with the provider of your choice, anywhere you happen to be, without the stress of dealing with private insurance companies. […] So how do we make that vision a reality? Medicare provides protection to the grave. But not from the cradle. At least, not yet. We are the wealthiest nation in the entire world at the wealthiest moment in our history. We are much wealthier than we were in 1965, more than a half century ago, when we enacted Medicare for those aged 65 and older. We are much wealthier than we were in 1972, when we extended Medicare coverage to people with serious, work-limiting disabilities. Seniors and people with disabilities are the segments of our population who, on average, have the highest medical costs and the most frequent need for care. Covering the rest of us should be easy. The politics make it hard, but it is achievable. As the title of the book makes clear, we are on a journey.

With Improved Medicare for All, there is essentially one big network of virtually every doctor and hospital in America. The result? Guaranteed health care with the provider of your choice, anywhere you happen to be, without the stress of dealing with private insurance companies.

Every chapter contains aspects of the discussion of how we got here—the nation’s history of health care—in order to provide context for the following points: Chapter 2 explains that the nation was on a slow path toward a single-payer system (essentially Medicare for All) during the first three-quarters of the twentieth century despite the strong opposition of powerful forces. Then, though, as Chapter 3 details, the powerful forces became more organized and pro-active. They succeeded in stopping the push for Medicare for All in its tracks. Indeed, they did not just halt progress; they partly reversed it. Perhaps most damaging, mainstream Democratic political leaders lost sight of the destination. Opportunities were lost as a result. Chapter 4 explains that where we are now is a result of having failed to enact a single-payer system. It discusses the flaws and unsustainability of the current patchwork system. The chapter explains that Democratic leaders, in the face of the election of President Ronald Reagan almost a half century ago, gave up on the destination. That was unfortunate. It has led to where the nation finds itself today. Continuing down the current road, simply tinkering with the present system, is unsustainable. Exiting the current road and getting back on track is essential.

Chapter 5 explains what the right road is. It reminds us what our North Star was prior to 1972 and what it should be again. It lays out the vision of a single-payer Improved Medicare for All system. It also explains that questioning the affordability of Medicare for All is misguided. The correct questions are (1) since the new system will save money, how should we divvy up the savings; and (2) given the complete unsustainability of the current system, how can the nation afford not to enact Improved Medicare for All. Monied interests have prevailed for the last half century, but history is not destiny. Replacing our current Rube Goldberg-style, overly complicated, dysfunctional healthcare system with a straightforward, superior system of Improved Medicare for All won’t happen without determined effort. History teaches that the commercial health insurance industry fears losing its business and will fight every initiative that jeopardizes those profits. The pharmaceutical industry will fight any initiative that will cut its exorbitant profits. Historically, physicians and hospitals have opposed government-provided health insurance. Given the powerful forces arrayed against Improved Medicare for All, its failure so far to become the law of the land is not hard to understand. Indeed, because health care is so crucial to all of us, it is easy to convince us that we will lose, not gain, from Improved Medicare for All. It is not hard to scare us into thinking that it is something foreign, un-American, inconsistent with the nation’s values, and harmful for us as individuals.

Replacing our current Rube Goldberg-style, overly complicated, dysfunctional healthcare system with a straightforward, superior system of Improved Medicare for All won’t happen without determined effort.

The concluding three chapters answer all of these challenges and fears. They provide the tools, including a roadmap, to finally reach our destination. Chapter 6 highlights the politics and how a winning coalition can be forged. It discusses why the organizations that represent hospitals and physicians may be convinced to end their opposition to Improved Medicare for All and join the other supporters working to enact it. Whether that happens or not, it is crucial to understand that the forces arrayed against Improved Medicare for All have been defeated in the past and they can be defeated again. The response to the murder of the UnitedHealthcare CEO is but one example spotlighting that the American people are both united and ready. The answer lies in numbers, active involvement, and determination. To the extent the electorate is engaged and clear-eyed, victory is not only achievable; it is inevitable. Chapter 7 alerts supporters to at least some of the disinformation that opponents will use to stymie and depress those engaged in the effort. The chapter adopts the premise that forewarned is forearmed. Finally, Chapter 8 provides specific actions that readers may take to join the winning fight. Universal Health Care Is a Fight We Can and Must Win And a winning fight it will be.

It may appear that the worst time to engage in this fight is now, in the shadow of the November 2024 election, when Donald Trump was returned to office together with a Republican House of Representatives and Senate. The Supreme Court is controlled by conservative forces hostile to a domestically-active federal government, and the entire judiciary will be even more conservative after the first few years of a Trump presidency. Yet this is the perfect time.

As polarized as the American people currently are, we are overwhelmingly united in our support for Medicare, as well as Social Security. Expanding both programs can lead the way to re-unite the United States. Together, we will win. We must. Medicare for All won’t happen without a fight, but it is a fight we can win. It is a fight we must win. Our lives literally depend on it.