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Political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM EST.

Today we discuss:

•  Is Big Tech about to be finally be held accountable for their toxic products? Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified at trial about whether his company designed Instagram to be addictive. Parents who traveled from across the country for the trial brought by a girl who said bullying and addiction turned her suicidal, saying their kids were hurt or died because of social media. The outcome in the “Kaley” trial could put Big Tech on the hook for billions in damages and forced to make changes to platforms that have shaped how we live.

•  Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the perv formerly known as Prince Andrew, is arrested at his home in Great Britain.

• Trump plans to turn eight warehouses into “large-scale detention centers” and 16 facilities into processing sites, according to ICE, with at least 100,000 beds. ICE also intends to buy 10 detention facilities where they already operate. Cost will be about $38 billion, which will be drawn from the billions of dollars Congress for ICE approved last summer. But community opponents include pro-deportation Trump voters.

• Bernie wants a Billionaire Tax in California. Gavin does not.

•  Former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol was found guilty of leading an insurrection and sentenced to life in prison for his brief imposition of martial law in 2024.

•  The beating death of Quentin Deranque in Lyon has quickly become a flashpoint between the far right and far left as France prepares for local elections next month and presidential elections next year.

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Oreo is marketed as “milk’s favorite cookie.” But behind that familiar blue package is a supply chain tied to rainforest destruction and violence against the people who defend their land.

Mondelēz International, the corporate giant that makes Oreo, has built a global snack empire worth nearly $40 billion a year. Its products line grocery shelves across the country. What most consumers never see is the palm oil that goes into those products—or the damage connected to its production.

Palm oil expansion remains one of the leading drivers of tropical deforestation. It is also linked to land grabs, intimidation, and violence against Indigenous and local communities who resist losing their forests.

According to Rainforest Action Network’s 2025 Keep Forests Standing Scorecard, Mondelēz ranked last among major consumer goods companies on deforestation and human rights safeguards. The company scored just 4 out of 24 possible points. Most alarming, it received zero points for having a public policy protecting Human Rights Defenders—people who face threats, criminalization, and violence for standing up to destructive development.

Communities should not be displaced for cookies.

Between 2015 and 2024, more than 6,400 attacks and over 1,000 killings of land and environmental defenders were documented worldwide. Industrial agriculture is a major driver of this violence.

These defenders are farmers, Indigenous leaders, journalists, teachers, and community members. They are protecting forests that stabilize the climate, regulate rainfall, and support biodiversity found nowhere else on Earth. They are also protecting their homes.

Mondelēz has been exposed more than once for sourcing palm oil linked to illegal deforestation in Indonesia’s Leuser Ecosystem—often called the “Orangutan Capital of the World.” The Leuser region is one of the last places on Earth where critically endangered species including rhinos, elephants, tigers, and orangutans still coexist in the wild. It is also home to Indigenous communities who depend on intact forests for survival.

Satellite monitoring continues to show forest loss in protected areas within this ecosystem. That means safeguards are failing.

Mondelēz promotes its “Snacking Made Right” campaign as proof of sustainability leadership. But marketing language does not stop chainsaws. Without enforceable policies and independent monitoring, companies continue to profit while forests fall.

The absence of a Human Rights Defender policy is not a minor oversight. It sends a message through the supply chain that violence and intimidation are not red lines. When corporations fail to adopt zero-tolerance policies against threats and criminalization, suppliers operate with fewer consequences.

This is not just about environmental damage. It is about whether communities have the right to say no when their land is targeted for development. It is about Free, Prior, and Informed Consent. It is about whether corporate profit outweighs human safety.

Deforestation is accelerating the climate crisis. Tropical rainforests absorb carbon and cool the planet. When they are cleared, that stored carbon is released, intensifying global warming. From stronger hurricanes to prolonged droughts and wildfires, the effects are already visible.

Corporations that rely on forest-risk commodities have the power to change this trajectory. Mondelēz could require full traceability for its palm oil supply. It could suspend suppliers linked to deforestation or violence. It could adopt a clear, public Human Rights Defender policy with zero tolerance for intimidation and criminalization. It could require proof that communities have granted Free, Prior, and Informed Consent before land is developed.

Instead, it continues business as usual.

Oreo may seem harmless. But when palm oil is sourced from destroyed rainforest or land taken without consent, the cost is not just environmental—it is human.

Communities should not be displaced for cookies. Forest defenders should not risk their lives so multinational corporations can maintain margins.

Mondelēz has the size and influence to shift industry standards. What it lacks is the political will.

Protecting forests starts with protecting the people who defend them. Until companies like Mondelēz adopt enforceable policies that prioritize human rights and end deforestation in their supply chains, their sustainability claims will ring hollow.

Consumers deserve snacks that do not come at the expense of forests and communities. And the people risking their lives to protect the planet deserve more than silence from the corporations profiting from their land.

Attorney General Pam Bondi’s contentious House hearing about the Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein files offered a clear message to the nation: Sex trafficking of women and minors is perfectly acceptable as long as wealthy white men do it.

Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced late sex trafficker, fixer, and political networker, was found to have ties to huge number of the world’s elites on both sides of the political aisle—including Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Ehud Barak, Bill Gates, Steve Bannon, Larry Summers, Bill Clinton, and of course, Donald Trump.

For years, Trump’s conservative backers have attacked LGBTQ+ people, drag queens, immigrants, and others, claiming a desire to protect women and children from rapists and groomers. Trump even boasted that “whether the women liked it or not,” he would “protect” them from migrants, whom he slandered as “monsters” who “kidnap and kill our children.”

But when given the opportunity to seek justice for countless women and children who were trafficked, abused, and exploited by the world’s wealthiest, most powerful people, the MAGA movement and its leaders have shown a startling disinterest in accountability. During her hearing Bondi tried desperately to deflect attention, claiming that the stock market was more deserving of public attention than Epstein’s victims.

For elites like Epstein, ideological differences were superficial. The real distinction was money, power, and connections.

Even the Republican rank and file is now mysteriously detached from the Epstein files.

Polls show that in summer 2025, 40% of GOP voters disapproved of the federal government’s handling of the Epstein files. But by January 2026, only about half that percentage disapproved—even after the Trump administration missed its deadline to release millions of files and then released them in a way that exposed the victims while protecting the perpetrators.

While some European leaders are facing harsh consequences for associating with Epstein, no Americans outside of Epstein and his closest associate Ghislaine Maxwell have faced any consequences, legal or otherwise.

That’s despite very concrete ties between the Trump administration and the sex trafficker. Not only did Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick admit to visiting Epstein island after lying about it (and has so far faced no consequences), but Trump himself is named more than a million times in the files, according to lawmakers with access to the unredacted documents. Several victims identify Trump by name, alleging he raped and assaulted them.

And it’s not just Trump. Epstein was an equal opportunity fixer. He was just as friendly with liberals as he was with conservatives, including Summers, Clinton, and, disconcertingly for the American left, Noam Chomsky. For elites like Epstein, ideological differences were superficial. The real distinction was money, power, and connections.

Epstein was a glorified drug dealer, and his drugs of choice were the vulnerable bodies of women and children, offered up to his friends and allies as the forbidden currency he traded in. A useful moniker has emerged to describe the global network of elites whose power and privilege continues to protect them from accountability: the Epstein Class.

Georgia Sen. John Ossoff, who faces reelection in 2026, is deploying this label, understanding that voters—at least those who haven’t bought into the MAGA cult —are increasingly aware of the double standards that wealthy power players are held to.

“This is the Epstein class, ruling our country,” said Ossoff in reference to those who make up the Trump administration. “They are the elites they pretend to hate.”

He’s right. And if the Trump administration won’t hold them to account, Americans should demand leaders who will.

In recent months, the Department of Homeland Security has issued hundreds of administrative subpoenas to tech companies demanding the personal information of social media accounts that track, criticize, or oppose Immigration Customs and Enforcement. This includes Google, Reddit, Meta, and Discord, which—in a move that makes far more sense now—recently announced it will require users to submit a face scan or upload an ID to access full content.

While alarming, this is only the latest step in a year-long effort by President Donald Trump’s DHS to expand its online surveillance apparatus under the guise of combating left-wing “political violence” and “domestic terrorism.” In February 2025, The Intercept revealed that ICE was soliciting pitches for an automated system that would scan social media and other sites for anti-ICE sentiment and threats. If anything "suspicious" were detected, a contractor would conduct a detailed review of the user’s background, including:

Previous social media activity which would indicate any additional threats to ICE; 2). Information which would indicate the individual(s) and/or the organization(s) making threats have a proclivity for violence; and 3). Information indicating a potential for carrying out a threat (such as postings depicting weapons, acts of violence, refences [sic] to acts of violence, to include empathy or affiliation with a group which has violent tendencies; references to violent acts; affections with violent acts; eluding [sic] to violent acts.

To estimate one’s “potential for carrying out a threat” or “proclivity for violence,” contractors would draw on “social and behavioral sciences” and “psychological profiles.” Sentiment analysis would likely be carried out by machine-learning algorithms. While details here are sparse, the important point for now is that this review would attempt to assess one’s present and future threat to ICE based on the agency’s own internal (and politically biased) criteria.

Once flagged, the system would scour a target’s internet history and attempt to reveal their real-world location and offline identity. Contractors would provide ICE with a slew of personal information including: “photograph, partial legal name, partial date of birth, possible city, possible work affiliations, possible school or university affiliation, and any identified possible family members or associates.”

All of this meant to invoke fear, silence dissent, and consolidate power for Trump and his allies. Yet, despite the dangers, we must resist.

In October 2025, Wired reported that ICE plans to drastically expand their surveillance capabilities by hiring nearly 30 private contractors to scan social media sites and convert posts, photos, and messages into new leads for enforcement raids.

In January 2026, investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein revealed that DHS and the FBI have over a dozen “secret and obscure” watch lists they use to track “protesters (both anti-ICE and pro-Palestinian), ‘Antifa,’ and those who are promiscuously labelled ‘domestic terrorists.’” These watch lists include a classified social media repository code named Slipstream, as well as others “used to link people on the streets together, including collecting on friends and families who have nothing to do with any purported lawbreaking.” This reporting came a few days after a video was released online of an ICE agent telling a protester that they have a “nice little database” and “now you’re considered a domestic terrorist.”

These watch lists are an extension of Trump’s National Security Presidential Memo 7 (NSPM-7). That memo mandates a “national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts.” Per the memo, domestic terrorism is fomented by the spread of “‘anti-fascist’ rhetoric” including, “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity,” as well as “extremism on migration, race, and gender.”

The labeling of any view Trump disagrees with as “domestic terrorism” is dangerous and strategic. As Rachel Levinson-Waldman, the director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program, notes, under the Patriot Act, “Any federal or state crime can be used as the basis for a domestic terrorism investigation if it is ‘dangerous to human life’” and “appear[s] to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population” or the government. This broad basis allows DHS to use its vast policing and surveillance powers to investigate civil rights organizations, activists, and donors to progressive causes as well as online critics. Regardless of the outcome of their investigation, being suspected of domestic terrorism—regardless of how unconstitutional, frivolous, and politically motivated the charge—can have lasting impacts, including loss of employment and housing, inability to conduct financial transactions, as well as public stigma.

Importantly, the image of the “domestic terrorist” is quite different from the ordinary criminal. The “domestic terrorist” does not simply violate the law, they commit “ideologically driven crimes” aimed to destroy the nation and its people. They represent a far greater threat. This is why the State Department has been revoking the visas of hundreds of students who express “pro-Hamas” views, whether in protest, newsletters, or on social media. For Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the presence of “these lunatics” is contrary to the national security and interests of the United States. The State Department has also denied visas to people “celebrating” the death of Charlie Kirk for similar reasons.

National security is also the basis for imposing denaturalization quotas for foreign-born citizens as well as the Trump administration’s efforts to restrict birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants. In each case, “national security,” “left-wing political violence,” and “domestic terrorism” are used to justify the denial of rights and the abuse of federal powers.

For US-born citizens like Renee Good, Alex Pretti, Marimar Martinez, or those subjected to ICE’s mass digital surveillance, those punitive measures are unavailable. Instead, the designation of “domestic terrorist” is meant to mark them as traitors—as people who, like “pro-Hamas” visa holders or “dangerous illegal criminal aliens more broadly,” do not belong in this country. For this administration, they are essentially citizens in name only—they do not “share our values, contribute to our economy, and assimilate in our society.” Thus, they too must be subjected to the full arsenal of policing and surveillance powers at DHS’ disposal.

In fact, for Trump, these "faux" citizens are a greater threat than undocumented immigrants. As then-presidential candidate Trump put it, “I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within, not even the people that have come in and destroying our country. […] I think the bigger problem are the people from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people. Radical left lunatics.” But the reality is that far from sick, bad, or radical, these are ordinary law-abiding people whose only crime is defying the rising piss-stained tide of Trump’s authoritarianism.

The dangers here are real and serious: The blatant First Amendment violations; the widening of DHS’ mass surveillance capabilities; the policing of dissent, both actual and possible; the coordinated effort to undermine digital activism; the complicity of tech companies in furthering the fascist ambitions of the Trump administration; the malicious smearing of those who oppose this administration as “domestic terrorists”; as well as the reality—unnerving, though far from unprecedented—that from the web to the streets the president of the United States is weaponizing the federal government to hunt, prosecute, and punish his enemies.

All of this meant to invoke fear, silence dissent, and consolidate power for Trump and his allies. Yet, despite the dangers, we must resist. We must continue calling out ICE’s abuses, championing Palestinian sovereignty, denouncing Trump’s vile imperial and colonial ambitions, and protecting our rights and freedoms from the real domestic terrorist threat: the Trump administration.

“Move fast and break things,” Mark Zuckerberg famously ordered his employees at Facebook. His thought wasn’t original. “Inaction is death,” Benito Mussolini wrote nearly a century earlier. “Fascism is action in which doctrine is immanent.” Do first, think later—or perhaps not at all.

Clearly, the Trump Administration subscribes to rapid-fire governance. Not a day passes without some dramatic statement, shocking policy pronouncement or reversal, or a half-dozen of them. It’s not boring. Post-Biden, a White House that said and did things isn’t nothing. Whether and when the thrill ride yields to exhaustion remains to be seen.

The inspiration for the aggressive style of Trump’s second term derives from the George W. Bush years, when an anonymous White House official (reputed to be Karl Rove, who denied it) was quoted in The New York Times saying: “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

Triumph of the will, to coin a phrase. Bullies can bomb fishermen, kidnap the Venezuelan president, steal Gaza…who’s going to stop them, the Times editorial board?

The rub is, someone—dissident Republicans, the press, SCOTUS, street protests, something—would stop them, eventually. Which is where the second essential ingredient of the regime comes into play: Zuck’s breakneck speed, Il Duce’s cult of action. By the time your enemies begin to respond to today’s and tomorrow’s and the next day’s reality-creations, you’re on to new ones. What just happened and what is happening now is what people care about. Our overloaded brains can’t process last month’s outrages and the new shocks and the imminent horrors. New stuff gets thought about more than old stuff.

Authorized by a pile of executive orders and enabled by Democratic disarray, as well as a compliant Congress and Supreme Court, President Trump’s manic aggression has resulted in a year of policy changes whose number and sweep arguably match the scale of FDR’s first 100 days. He fired hundreds of thousands of federal employees through DOGE, declared war against DEI, transformed ICE from an immigration enforcement agency into a personal anonymous goon squad bigger and better-armed than most national armies, normalized paramilitaries and assassinations of U.S. citizens on U.S. soil, abolished EPA regulations of greenhouse emissions and fuel efficiency for automobiles, launched a multifront trade war against scores of other countries, gutted the Affordable Care Act—I could go on, but you’re living it.

Trump’s agenda is as radical as Roosevelt’s. FDR told the American people they were entitled to basic social safety guarantees from their government; Reagan said we weren’t; Trump told us to be afraid, that it isn’t our government at all.

Democratic voters fantasize that President Newsom or Buttigieg or whoever will hit a hard reset on January 20, 2029, returning to the status quo ante Trumpus, but continuity is the norm. French revolutionaries moved into Louis XVI’s palaces, the Bolsheviks snatched the Czar’s digs and Joe Biden kept Trump’s Space Force and de facto tax hikes on homeowners living in Democratic states. Governments come and go, but their works endure.

Even the Nazis, a regime so thoroughly destroyed and discredited that it’s still illegal to display a swastika in Germany, live on through their works. No postwar German government suggested demolishing the autobahn or dismantling such Nazi-affiliated businesses as BASF, Hugo Boss, Allianz, BMW, Audi, VW, Porsche, Bayer or Mercedes-Benz. Aside from the remarkable fact that Germany was allowed to remain a nation-state, reunited and to assume a dominant position in the European Union (one of Hitler’s ideas), the 70 million-plus people killed by the Nazis, and the 400 million or more theoretical people who would otherwise have been descended from them, represent the ultimate fait accompli. The Nazis lost. Yet they’re still with us.

However his presidency ends, we will be living with Trump’s works long after he’s gone. Democrats will look more favorably upon an imperial presidency and more expansive presidential power once it’s their White House. Trump’s wars will become theirs. Turning their ideas and policy prescriptions into law will take precedence over knocking down Trump’s triumphal arches and scraping his name off public buildings. Democrats certainly won’t invite the undocumented immigrants deported by Trump to return to the United States.

Inertia wins.

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

 

 

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It would be hard to overstate Jesse Jackson’s importance in opening up American politics and society, not just to Black Americans, but also to Hispanics, and the LGTBQ community. It is probably difficult for younger people to imagine, and even old-timers like myself to remember, how bad discrimination was in the not very distant past.

When Jackson ran the first time in 1984, and even the second time in 1988, there was not a single Black governor in the United States. There had been no Black governors since the end of Reconstruction. There were also no Black senators.

The only Black person to serve in the Senate since Reconstruction was a Republican, Edward Brooke, who was elected in Massachusetts. When Carol Mosley Braun got elected to the Senate from Illinois in 1992, it was widely noted that she was first Black women to be elected to the Senate. She was also the first Black Democrat to be elected to the Senate.

It wasn’t just in politics; Blacks were largely excluded from the top reaches in most areas. I recall when I was a grad student at the University of Michigan in the 1980s. There we just two Black tenured professors in the whole university. There was a similar story in corporate America.

This was a period of serious upward redistribution and the losers, as in most people, were not happy campers. Jackson spoke to those people.

Jackson’s campaign didn’t turn things around by itself, but it certainly helped to spur momentum for larger changes. Back then people seriously debated whether a Black person could be elected president in the United States. Jackson’s campaign raised that question in a very serious way.

Barack Obama (the second Black Democrat to be elected to the Senate) answered that question definitively two decades later. While President Obama is obviously an enormously talented politician, without Jackson’s campaigns it is hard to envision Obama ever having been a serious presidential contender.

And Jackson was serious about a “rainbow coalition.” He also helped open the door for Hispanics, for Arab and Muslim Americans, and for the LGBTQ community. At a time when there were no openly gay or lesbian members of Congress, and even liberals were afraid to be associated with anyone who was openly gay, Jackson stood out in offering a welcome mat.

Jackson also pushed a powerful economic message. At a time when Ronald Reagan was busy cutting taxes for the rich and cutting back social programs, and trade was devastating large parts of the industrial Midwest, Jackson was advocating a populist agenda that focused on building up the poor and the working class. His message resonated with many white workers who felt abandoned by the mainstream of the Democratic Party, and even many farmers who were devastated by over-valued dollar in the early and mid-1980s.

There is a bizarre revisionism that has gained currency among people who pass for intellectuals that says the baby boomers grew up in Golden Age in the 1970s and 1980s. The unemployment rate averaged over 7% from 1974 to 1992. The median wage actually fell from 1973 to the mid-1990s. This was a period of serious upward redistribution and the losers, as in most people, were not happy campers. Jackson spoke to those people.

I had the opportunity to work in Jackson’s campaign in Michigan in 1988, and I still remember it as one of the high points of my life. Even though Jackson had vastly outperformed anyone’s expectations in the early primaries (probably even his own), he was not taken seriously in the Michigan race. Most of the pundits considered it a race between the frontrunner Michael Dukakis and Congressman Dick Gephardt, who had strong union support. As it turned out Jackson handily beat both, getting an absolute majority of the votes cast in the state.

In my own congressional district, which centered on Ann Arbor, all the party leaders lined up for Dukakis. The Jackson campaign was composed of a number of people who worked in less prestigious jobs, like salesclerks and custodians, and grad students like me. It really was a multiracial coalition.

We managed to totally outwork the party hacks. First, because it was a caucus and not a primary, it meant that people would not go to their regular precincts to cast their votes. We made sure that our supporters had a neatly coded map that told them where their voting site was.

Also, since it was a caucus and not a primary, the state’s usual rules on being registered 30 days ahead of an election did not apply. We had a deputy registrar at every voting site who would register people who had not previously registered.

We also made a point of having all our workers knocking on doors on election day and offering to drive people to the polls who needed a ride. The Dukakis people were all standing around the voting sites, handing out literature with their big Dukakis buttons, apparently not realizing that anyone who showed up had already decided how to vote.

I remember talking to a reporter late that night after the size of Jackson’s victory became clear. Up until that point, there had been numerous pieces in the media asking, “What does Jesse Jackson really want?” as though the idea that a Black person wanting to be president was absurd on its face.

I couldn’t resist having a little fun. I pointed out that with his big victory in Michigan, Jackson was now ahead in both votes cast and delegates. I said that I think we have to start asking what Michael Dukakis really wants.

Anyhow, the high didn’t last. The party closed ranks behind Dukakis, and he won the nomination. He then lost decisively to George Bush in the fall. His margin of defeat was larger than in any election since then.

All the gains of the last four decades are now on the line, as Donald Trump and his white supremacist gang look to turn back the clock. We have the battle of our lives on our hands right now.

But Jesse Jackson was a huge player in the changes that created the America that Donald Trump wants to destroy. He had serious flaws, like any great political leader, but for now we should remember the enormous impact he had in making this a better country.

Last week I was in Minneapolis, Minnesota to observe and learn from those who have attempted to protect members of their community from the brutal assaults by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other government agencies and hold those agencies accountable for the violence they are wrecking on the community.

ICE in Minneapolis: From Surge to “Surrender (Kind of)”

The Trump administration’s decision to surge 2,000 ICE and Border Patrol agents into Minneapolis to uphold White House Deputy Chief of Staff Steven Miller’s directive for the arrest in the US of 3,000 persons each day to teach immigrants, and everyone in the US a lesson, backfired as the actions of the federal agents in Minneapolis outraged the city, state, and nation.

Due to community pressure and noncompliance with the violent attempts by ICE agents to force capitulation by the community and the lawlessness of the masked agents, caught on video by bystanders in busting doors to homes, smashing car windows, and beating up and murdering two Minneapolis residents eventually forced the Trump administration to replace the well-known, mean-spirited Gregory Bovino and bring in “border czar” Tom Homan who very quickly reduced the number of ICE agents in Minneapolis by one-third and required the agents to wear body cameras.

“I Can’t Breathe” Organizing in Minneapolis Six Years Ago With the Horrific Murder of George Floyd Prepared the Community

A memorial is shown for George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Photo by Ann Wright)

Community organizing began six years ago with the community response to the horrific murder of George Floyd. The protests and vigils for George Floyd in Minneapolis and around the world brought attention to the continuing targeting of African Americans for minor incidents that the police escalated into “I Can’t Breathe” and death.

To this day, each day for six years, a group from the community meets at 8:00 am at George Floyd Square located across the street from the Memorial over coffee to discuss the previous day’s events and the organizing needed for that day. There are several persons who are at the Square each day who can provide to a newcomer the historical context for the treatment by police of African Americans, Native Americans, and immigrants in the Minneapolis area.

Others arriving may be unhoused who are needing a cup of coffee and a doughnut for breakfast or some “new clothing” from the donations that are located inside a city bus stop shelter located at the square. By 9:30 am, the group has disbursed: some left quickly after 8:00 am to take kids to school or to go to work, others to continue work on community mutual aid projects.

Block by Block Community Organizing

Veterans for Peace mobilize against ICE in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Photo by Ann Wright)

In speaking with residents in several parts of Minneapolis, beautiful stories of organizing on a block-by-block level emerged! Residents got to know those who lived on the same block. Everyone had a whistle to alert the neighborhood that suspicious cars were in the area. Those residents who were not targeted by ICE, generally Caucasian, came out on the streets to find out what was happening and ready to record ICE actions. They began doing grocery shopping for those fearful of leaving their homes, taking kids to school, picking them up from school, and taking people to medical appointments.

The Minneapolis friend who housed us for this visit usually has at least two things per day that she was doing for immigrants in her neighborhood. Others in teams of two or three stand outside businesses that ICE might target, with the businesses thanking the volunteers by providing coffee and snacks.

Other volunteers in their personal cars follow vehicles that they suspect may be driven by ICE agents. Many of these volunteers have been physically assaulted by ICE agents who stop the volunteers, damage their cars, take their license plate numbers, find out the addresses of the volunteers, and then harass them at their homes.

Minnesota “Nice” has turned into “F**k ICE.”

The Veterans For Peace (VFP) chapter in Minneapolis has a Rapid Response team composed of veteran volunteers from around the country that has provided a presence in various parts of the city. In an article by VFP board member Gerry Condon, he relates: “Younger Post-9/11 veterans have taken the lead. They have been patrolling in at-risk neighborhoods, monitoring for agitators, deescalating situations at protests, and training people how to stop bleeding. At least four veterans have been arrested while peacefully protesting but have been released without charges.”

These types of community volunteering happen every day all over the city, including a team of carpenters who replace doors that ICE has knocked down when entering a residence, to a team of tow truck operators who return a vehicle that occupants have been kidnapped from to the residence of the person—free of charge.

Many of these stories, organizations, and actions are chronicled in the website: Stand With Minnesota.

Challenging ICE at the Whipple Federal Building

Every day hundreds come to the Whipple immigrant court and detention building located in south Minneapolis. ICE agents mobilize in the huge parking lot with hundreds of rental cars and drive out to terrorize the community and bring those arrested into the Whipple facility before sending them to other detention locations.

Volunteers with megaphones speak their minds to the departing ICE agents with the most “F” words I have ever heard in all my life!!! Spontaneous “F**k ICE” chants erupt everywhere—from the entire audience in a recent Minneapolis hockey game to whenever Minneapolis residents meet on a street corner.

Minnesota “Nice” has turned into “F**k ICE.”

ICE put up tall fences on both sides of the roadway used for departure. In one remarkable action, community members threw dildos over the fences at ICE cars because they were such “dicks.”

Due to AI and facial recognition devices used by ICE, most who go to Whipple wear masks and leave their phones in their cars.

Volunteers Help Detainees Released in the Middle of the Night with No Coats, Phones

Another group of volunteers formed “Haven Watch” to provide 24-hour-a-day coverage for those who have been detained and subsequently allowed to leave Whipple. Generally, they are released from the detention facility at night, with no coats and sometimes no shoes, in the bitter cold with no phones to call for help. The volunteers provide warm drinks and food, clothing, a phone, and a ride home.

The Murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti: Retaliation for challenging ICE Can Be Swift and Brutal

A memorial to Renee Good is shown in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Photo by Ann Wright)

Hundreds of people visit the memorials each day of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. New flowers, photos, poems, and statements are placed at the site where each was murdered by ICE agents. We have all seen the videos of ICE agent Jonathan Ross shooting mother of three Renee Good in her car on January 7, 2026 and of Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez murdering Veterans Affairs ICU nurse Alex Pretti on January 24, 2026 as five of them pinned Alex on the ground.

President Donald Trump, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and other administration officials' attempts to characterize both Good and Pretti as terrorists backfired badly as videos of the federal agents murdering them emerged.

The allegations against four others shot by federal immigration agents unraveled in court with little publicity.

Before Trump officials declared Renee Good and Alex Pretti at fault for instigating violence before they were killed, the administration’s allegations against four others shot at by federal immigration agents quietly unraveled in court. There have been 16 shootings by on-duty federal immigration agents patrolling in US cities and towns over the past year, including those that took the lives of Minnesota protesters Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

Continuing Historic Violence in Minnesota: Vigil and March for Disappeared and Murdered Native American Women

Crowds gather outside the Minneapolis American Indian Center. (Photo by Ann Wright)

ICE violence is not the only type of violence in Minnesota. Saturday, February 14, 2026 we went to the Minneapolis American Indian Center to participate in the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives Day of Remembrance, which is held each February 14, to bring awareness to the epidemic of Indigenous people who have gone missing or have been murdered.

Startling data collected by the state of Minnesota is evidence that Indigenous people are a high percentage of the state’s missing person cases.

The Minnesota state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension reports that 732 Indigenous persons went missing in Minnesota in 2025, more than 64% of whom were women. In 2025, the average number of Indigenous people in Minnesota who were missing on any one day was 63, according to the BCA.

According to 2024 data, American Indians accounted for more than 4% of all reported victims of homicide or nonnegligent manslaughter in Minnesota, despite American Indians making up only a little more than 1% of the population.

Many Issues of Minneapolis-St. Paul

People in Minneapolis, Minnesota hold up a banner in support of Cuba. (Photo by Ann Wright)

While ICE raids are the main focus of citizens of Minneapolis-St. Paul, they are still active in other issues. They have not forgotten Cuba and Palestine, among many issues, with weekly bridge bannering on Wednesday and Friday afternoons… after a day filled with protest of ICE!

Minnesota NICE—It Surely IS, Despite all the Challenges!

Our country faces an affordability crisis amidst fundamental attacks on democracy. Public employee pension plans can either be part of the solution or part of the problem.

Late last year, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander recommended the city’s pension boards drop BlackRock and other portfolio managers that don’t have decarbonization plans up to the city’s standards. Lander’s initiative was blocked, and the editorial board of The Washington Post accused him of playing politics. But Lander argued that his recommendation was in line with the government’s fiduciary duty to protect the long-term value of pension funds, the retirement systems most public sector workers rely on—and have been paying into their entire careers. He’s right. In this critical moment in history, companies that are actively hastening climate change, threatening housing security, eliminating jobs and industries, and destabilizing our democracy and economy do not deserve our investment. Yes, they are acting immorally but they are also very bad investments with little promise of future returns for public sector workers. It’s not “playing politics” to refuse to fund their efforts to dismantle our society. That’s why we’re calling on pension boards across the country to take a hard look at their portfolios and make the smart business decision: stop investing in companies like this today.

The stakes could not be higher: pension funds account for $6.1 trillion in state and local defined-benefit funds alone. Every month, nearly 15 million workers across the country contribute part of their paycheck to ensure they have enough income to retire securely. This is a big pot of money and the companies that boards choose to invest it with matter. For public sector workers, pensions are not only retirement funds, but deferred current compensation. Workers are forsaking their hard-earned money today for the potential of a dignified future. Meanwhile, corporations are using that money today to further their own goals—many of which are directly at odds with the goals, livelihoods, and futures of public employees.

The interests of public workers and these companies dangerously diverge, but even the one area of alignment is fraught: secure return on investment.

Public pension systems across the country, including the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTERS), California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) and New York City retirement funds, are heavily invested in Blackstone, the private equity company turning profits by hiking up rents during a housing affordability crisis. RealPage, the company sued last year by the DOJ for allegedly operating a nationwide rental price-fixing scheme, has investments from over a dozen pension funds through private equity funds. Public workers are watching their deferred compensation funnel into corporate exploitation while they fight to pay their own rent or mortgages.

Palantir, the data surveillance software company whose co-founder has stated his support for public hangings and apartheid, has multi-million dollar investments from The Teacher Retirement System of Texas, the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System, CalPERS, CalSTERS and other pension funds. Palantir’s tools have been used by the military to conduct destabilizing wars around the world, by DOGE to gather and merge data on millions of US residents, endangering the safety and security of us all, and by ICE to terrorize individuals and families across the country— threatening our democracy at home and abroad.

The interests of public workers and these companies dangerously diverge, but even the one area of alignment is fraught: secure return on investment. We are almost undeniably in the midst of an AI bubble, much larger than the dot com bubble that came before. With so many pension fund portfolios overly concentrated in the tech industry, funding new data centers built on speculative calculations and crypto companies propped up by hype—Palantir, Coinbase, VC firms like Andreessen Horowitz and others, NVIDIA and many more—a shift in the global appetite for new technology could empty the pockets of millions of workers. Short-term gains are not a good predictor of long-term returns for investors like public employees, who are stuck with the terms of their retirement funds and can’t pull out when markets turn. When the editorial board of the Washington Post writes that “the job of pension fund managers is to maximize returns for retirees who depend on them,” they should take these very real—and apolitical—risks into account.

Public pension funds are an enormous engine driving the economy today, and the investment choices that pension boards make are critical to the future of the country and the world. When boards invest workers’ money, they contribute to the specific visions and plans of companies and the people who run them. And when those plans include the destruction of our environment, our right to housing and fair work, and our democracy, it’s assisted suicide. Today we are urging pension boards to think beyond short-term gains and market bubbles. We’re calling on leaders to speak out and push for change as Former Comptroller Brad Lander did. Public worker retirement money must be invested responsibly in a secure future for us all.

LIVE 9:00 am Eastern time, Streaming Anytime:

Political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM EST.

Today we discuss:

•  The “alternative homeland” – the notion that Jordan should become the Palestinian state – is rocking the Hashemite Kingdom, following Israeli measures to register swaths of the occupied West Bank as sovereign Israeli soil. Mamdouh al-Abbadi, Jordan’s former deputy prime minister, says: The fear in Amman is not just about military invasion, but about making life in the West Bank impossible to force ethnic cleansing into Jordan.

•  Senate Republicans are under increasing pressure from the hard right to do whatever is necessary to break through a filibuster and ram through the Save America Act on a simple majority vote over Democratic opposition.

• Last year, between 200,000 and more than 1 million immigrants in the United States stopped working, according to analyses of Census Bureau data. But as immigrants left, unemployment for native-born Americans jumped to 4.7% in January from 4.1% a year before. That not only exceeds the overall unemployment rate of 4.3%, but also the 4.6% rate for foreign-born workers. Removing people from the country led to fewer workers and fewer people to buy the goods and services those workers produced, argues Stan Veuger, senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. Plus: tariffs and AI are having a depressing effect, and low-wage employers are refusing to pay more.

The post Jordan Is Next | DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

“Microplastics are everywhere, and they’re harming us.”

“Actually, maybe not.”

“Hold on, that study might be flawed.”

“Bombshell… the whole field is in doubt.”

The headline isn’t “microplastics in people might be wrong,” but rather “quantifying microplastics in human samples is challenging, and the science is evolving in the right direction.”

If you’ve been hearing about microplastics recently, you may have been getting whiplash from the headlines. But you shouldn’t be.

Because this is what science looks like when it’s working: Researchers test new ideas and challenge each other’s methods. This helps refine what we know. What isn’t supposed to happen is a normal, healthy, scientific process getting manipulated into a dramatic storyline about a fictional scandal—a story that can leave the public confused.

The Myth Machine: How a Story We Tell Can Become a Trap

For over two decades, we’ve studied plastic pollution in the ocean. Scientists started describing the accumulation zones of plastic in the subtropical gyres, the places where wind and water currents concentrate floating debris. The research pointed to a truth that was complicated but clear: Most of the pieces are tiny, fragmented plastic—microplastics—along with some larger marine debris, like fishing gear.

But the media put a spin on it, and gave the world a simpler picture: a floating island of trash, “twice the size of Texas.” Some even called this a “garbage patch” you could supposedly walk on. People cried, “Why can’t I see it on Google Maps?” Some wondered if the US should plant a flag, and a handful of naive entrepreneurs fabricated fantastic ocean cleanup contraptions.

It was dramatic. Word spread. But eventually, it backfired.

All those who went looking for an island, didn’t find one. Instead they concluded, “It’s more like smog than a landfill,” and some pointed out, “Maybe it was exaggerated and the world had been duped.”

The pattern—one that goes oversimplify, sensationalize, backlash, dismissal—can drain urgency from a real crisis. Misinformation gets the headline. This gets repeated, as we’ve seen before in other environmental debates, such as the hole in the ozone layer, or climate change. The same thing is unfolding now with microplastics and human health.

What the “Bombshell” Reporting Gets Wrong

The recent article in The Guardian that sparked this debate focuses on a real issue. In our research studying microplastics in the environment and animal studies, measuring micro- and nanoplastics in human tissue is incredibly hard. It is particularly difficult when researchers are looking for very small particle sizes, where laboratory contamination from airborne sources becomes harder to rule out. This is especially the case in human tissue.

Microplastics are not like other contaminants, such as lead in water, where you can measure parts per billion, and lean on decades of standardized instruments and test methods. Plastics come in many polymers, sizes, and shapes. Nanoplastics behave differently than microplastics. And plastic is everywhere, meaning background contamination is always a risk. This is sometimes called the “pig pen effect”—it is a challenge to study a material that is so widespread.

The Guardian article is not a devastating blow. It’s a scientific debate around specific methods in a research field that is rapidly improving.

What’s the Real Headline?

The headline isn’t “microplastics in people might be wrong,” but rather “quantifying microplastics in human samples is challenging, and the science is evolving in the right direction.”

That difference matters. If the public hears “doubt cast,” then it translates it as “maybe plastic pollution isn’t really there or not that bad.” The question is, does it hold up across methods, across labs, across time?

So what has science taught us?

1. Yes, we do have microplastics in our bodies. A number of peer-reviewed research shows that plastics, or plastic-associated signals, are present in human samples. Some findings claims will hold up better with time. That’s normal.
2. Scientists criticize each other's studies. This is how science becomes more reliable over time. How methods get stress tested. By challenging assumptions, doing repeated studies, etc. weak studies get corrected or critiqued. In rare cases retracted. This isn’t chaos. It’s science.
3. Some headlines are hype. Microplastics science is new enough that every new study can feel like a “first,” which incentivizes media toward shock value. But, when scientific findings revise our understanding, the correction isn’t “nothing to see here.” The correction should be that science is a self-improving enterprise.
4. Scientists have been, and will continue revising the numbers. For example, early reporting suggested we each eat a “credit card” of plastic each week (subsequent studies estimated much less). Is that a bombshell? No, not really. And if it’s widely seen as such, it might suggest we should wait before we act (e.g., until every uncertainty is resolved). But, that’s not how public health works. We make decisions based on the best available science, and assess risk with limited data.

Weaponized Uncertainty

The biggest threat here isn’t scientific uncertainty, since there’s a considerable amount of scientific consensus that there is plastic in us. The biggest threat is weaponized uncertainty.

Environmental health has a predictable plot—when evidence starts piling up that a pollutant is harmful, a well-funded countermovement doesn’t always try to prove it’s safe. On the contrary, it tries to prove that the science is messy, uncertain, and “we need more data.”.

We’re not asking journalists to avoid urgency. Plastic pollution is urgent. Certain phrases, however, may signal that you’re being pulled into a pattern of mythmaking.

The industry has a playbook with favorite phrases, such as: “not conclusive,” “uncertain,” “scientists disagree,” “lack of consensus.” Disagreement in science is healthy. However, this (very routine) component of science can also become a winning political strategy used against science and public policy. Casting doubt can delay regulation.

Naomi Oreskes writes in Merchants of Doubt, “The industry had realized you could create the impression of controversy simply by asking questions.” That’s why our concern isn’t that researchers are debating methods. Our concern is that sensational headlines can warp debate, and give merchants of doubt an opportunity to skew public perception.

Red-Flag Language—It Should Make You Pause

We’re not asking journalists to avoid urgency. Plastic pollution is urgent. Certain phrases, however, may signal that you’re being pulled into a pattern of mythmaking, such as “bombshell,” or “debunked,” when what’s really happening is refinement. Those phrases shock and entertain, but do little to foster understanding.

What we actually need next is for the microplastics field to keep growing. Researchers across the board—from those that think studies are exaggerated to those that stand behind their research findings—are making calls for better lab protocols, contamination controls, reporting requirements, and inter-lab studies to validate results. These are unglamorous, but they’re what solidify early research findings into trusted science. A first-of-its-kind finding of plastic somewhere in the human body shouldn’t be framed like the final truth. It should be heralded as the beginning of a more complete picture.

The justices on the Supreme Court should not favor the president who appointed them because checks and balances demand that they uphold the law without passion or prejudice. The current Supreme Court has increasingly shown a pattern of siding with the Trump administration—a result made predictable by the court’s conservative majority. Immigration cases have, with rare exception, aligned along these partisan lines.

On June 27, 2025, the Supreme Court sidestepped the question of birthright citizenship and overruled lower court decisions that sought to protect it. The original plaintiffs filed suit to enjoin the enforcement of the executive order that identifies circumstances in which a person born in the United States is not “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” thereby restricting the constitutionally guaranteed bestowal of birthright citizenship. The Trump administration petitioned the Supreme Court, which granted review. The plaintiffs argued that the executive order violates the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause, as well as sections 1 and 201 of the Nationality Act of 1940—the constitutional guarantee that birth on US soil confers citizenship.

Before the case reached the Supreme Court, the district court entered universal injunctions barring the application of the executive order to anyone, thereby preserving birthright citizenship, and the appellate court denied the government’s request to postpone the granted relief. In its application to the Supreme Court, the government argued that federal courts lacked equitable authority to issue universal injunctions under the Judiciary Act of 1789, attacking the district court’s authority in order to preserve the president’s propensity to overstep his. The Supreme Court granted the government's application and held that Congress has not granted federal courts authority to universally enjoin the enforcement of an executive order. Reaching all the way back to pre-Revolution English law and the Founding Fathers, the Supreme Court reasoned that no such authority exists. Their reasoning reads as petulant and arbitrary, an invocation of ancient doctrine to narrow modern rights.

On September 8, 2025, the Supreme Court granted an application for stay by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The decision states that the Immigration and Nationality Act authorizes immigration officers to interrogate any alien (or person believed to be an alien) as to “his right to be or to remain in the United States.” They also found that they may briefly detain individuals if they have a “reasonable suspicion” that he or she is an alien illegally present in the United States, based on the “totality of the particular circumstances.”

The Supreme Court’s deep bias in favor of Trump administration policies gestures toward a reversal, through immigration cases, of the trenchant progress in civil rights litigation that the Warren Court and subsequent courts have made.

The Supreme Court’s interpretation of the law, however, takes tremendous liberties with the letter of these laws, essentially recognizing ethnicity as a basis for reasonable suspicion. Specifically, the California District Court enjoined immigration officers from making investigative stops based on, among other factors, speaking Spanish or English with an accent, and race or ethnicity. In a nutshell, the lower court forbade immigration enforcement from racially profiling Latine Angelenos. The Supreme Court overruled the lower court, reasoning that, while ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion, it can be a relevant factor when considered along with other salient factors. This argument is internally incoherent and contradictory, suggesting that racial bias is at once insufficient and persuasive evidence. Citing the myriad “significant economic and social problems” caused by “illegal” immigration, the Supreme Court sided with DHS, finding that the government would suffer irreparable injury from the injunction. The relevance of socioeconomic problems to the question of racial profiling and potential excessive force in the execution thereof is tenuous at best.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the dissenting opinion, in which Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined. She argued that “we should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job,“ as it would be a loss to our constitutional freedom.

On December 23, 2025, however, the Supreme Court issued an noticeably restrained opinion upholding a lower court’s temporary restraining order (TRO), which barred the deployment of the National Guard in Illinois. The court found that, under the Posse Comitatus Act, the military is prohibited from executing the laws, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress. The decision further stated that, before the president can federalize the guard under 10 USC §12406(3), he must have statutory or constitutional authority to execute the laws with the regular military and must be unable with those forces to perform that function.

The Supreme Court’s deep bias in favor of Trump administration policies gestures toward a reversal, through immigration cases, of the trenchant progress in civil rights litigation that the Warren Court and subsequent courts have made. The sitting members should consider what kind of legacy they wish to leave for future generations before siding blindly with our most autocratic president in history. Political expediency may be convenient in the short term, but history will judge harshly those who twisted our most sacred liberties to the advantage of an advantageous few, rather than standing with the people our Constitution was written to protect.

In the wake of the shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis, nationwide attention has been fixed on the deeply troubled aspects of federal immigration enforcement. But beyond the use of deadly force, the preventable death of Parady La in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention reveals another serious, often overlooked set of failures that demand examination.

A little more than a month into 2026, eight people have already died at the hands of the US ICE, signaling yet another year of lethal systemic failure. La was the fourth fatality, a 46-year-old Cambodian refugee, who died of drug withdrawal just three days after entering ICE custody at a federal detention facility in Philadelphia. This death was entirely preventable. When the government takes custody of a person, it assumes total control over and liability for that individual’s safety, health, and survival. Unfortunately, in ICE detention, that obligation is being violated again and again.

According to reports from inmates later confirmed by medical experts, La told detention staff he was withdrawing and requested medical care, but his symptoms, including persistent vomiting, were left untreated, resulting in his death. Drug withdrawal is a predictable physiological response when a person who is chronically dependent on a substance is abruptly cut off, often involving severe nausea, vomiting, dehydration, physical pain and panic, cardiovascular strain, and escalating medical instability. Substance dependence is a chronic medical condition, no different in principle from other conditions that carry known risks when left unmanaged, such as diabetes, heart disease, or epilepsy. When symptoms of chronic conditions go untreated, particularly in custodial settings where people are confined, closely monitored, and unable to seek care on their own, the resulting harm is entirely foreseeable. Rather than explaining why someone reporting severe withdrawal symptoms was left without basic medical care in government custody, the official death notice on ICE’s website devotes significant space to detailing La’s past criminal history.

This lack of accountability is not surprising given the decades long history of preventable deaths in ICE. A Human Rights Watch analysis of 18 ICE detainee deaths between 2012 and 2015 found that independent medical experts concluded substandard medical care likely contributed to at least 7 of those deaths, with evidence of dangerous medical practices present in 16 of them. In several cases, detainees repeatedly reported severe symptoms only to be dismissed or accused of exaggeration, with hours-long delays before staff intervened. One man was found unresponsive in a pool of bloody vomit after officers failed to enter his cell for minutes, and emergency responders were not called until it was too late. A peer-reviewed analysis of 55 deaths in ICE custody between 2011 and 2018 found that nearly all involved serious medical failures, including delays in care in 95% of cases, poor care delivery in 95%, missed or ignored red flags in 80%, and failures in emergency response in 82% of deaths.

These repeated failures point to a detention system with limited transparency and little independent medical oversight.

More recent findings reinforce these earlier conclusions. A 2024 joint investigation by the American Civil Liberties Union, Physicians for Human Rights, and American Oversight examined 52 deaths in ICE custody from 2017-2021 and found that 95% were preventable or possibly preventable with appropriate medical care. Medical experts identified recurring failures across cases, including misdiagnosis, delayed or denied treatment, interrupted medications, and inadequate emergency responses, with people living with chronic health conditions disproportionately affected. Yet ICE continues to rely largely on internal death reviews, limiting transparency and meaningful corrective action and allowing the same preventable failures to recur.

What makes this lack of accountability even more disturbing is that the agency has recently halted payments to the third-party medical contractors responsible for providing care to people in custody. Reporting indicates that ICE stopped paying outside medical providers in October 2025, with claims processing not expected to resume until at least April 2026, even as the detained population has grown to more than 73,000 people nationwide. Because ICE relies heavily on these providers for specialty and off-site care, the payment freeze has already led some clinicians to stop treating detainees altogether and others to delay or deny essential services, including medications and treatment for chronic conditions. For people held in civil detention, this decision further erodes the already slim access to basic medical care inside facilities.

These repeated failures point to a detention system with limited transparency and little independent medical oversight. ICE detention facilities operate largely out of public view and are structured through layers of bureaucracy and private contracting that disperse responsibility across agencies and vendors. Medical care is often delivered by outside contractors, oversight is primarily internal, and meaningful external review is rare. In this environment, gaps in care are difficult to trace, accountability is easily diluted, and preventable deaths are allowed to recur without clear consequences.

When the government confines a person, whether in a prison, jail, or immigration detention facility, it assumes full control over that individual’s ability to access medical care. People in detention cannot seek emergency treatment on their own, choose their providers, refill prescriptions independently, or remove themselves from unsafe conditions. Their health and survival depend entirely on the state. Providing timely and adequate medical care in custody is therefore a baseline obligation that must be followed.

For 1,900 of the last 2,000 years, Jews represented a tiny minority, usually in the low single digits of the population of what is today Israel. Zionists argue that they, and only they—not the other ancient peoples who lived and ruled there—are entitled to live in and dominate the region and expel those who lived there throughout their absence.

The post Back After 1,900 Years appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

From the recent gutting of the Washington Post to the rightward lurch of CBS, the sheer proliferation and variation of media failures and attacks on the press during Trump 2.0 are difficult to grasp. Regulatory bodies have become political weapons. Major news organizations have complied and retreated. Media ownership has consolidated in the hands of a few feckless billionaires. Taken together, these developments endanger our information and communication systems, our First Amendment freedoms, and our democracy. Yet they resist easy synthesis.

This essay offers a schematic for making sense of the chaos. I argue that what we’re witnessing isn’t a singular breakdown, but discrete and cascading layers of “media capture” that produce censorship, exclusion, and democratic failure. This analysis is a necessary first step towards structurally reforming—and, ultimately transforming—our media institutions and infrastructures to privilege democratic needs over profit and power.

The polycrisis afflicting our media necessitates a political economic analysis that focuses on ownership, control, and market structure. It also calls for critical analyses of how law and policy determine such power relationships—both how they’re weaponized against democracy and how they could be deployed to create a more democratic media system.

To understand contemporary media failures, we must tease apart overlapping but distinct forms of capture. There’s often a tendency to focus on state capture of media, especially in countries experiencing democratic backsliding, where both public and private media systems fall under government influence and control. US media failures, however, require a broader lens. Here, authoritarian encroachment is dependent upon preexisting forms of media capture—capitalistic and oligarchic. Below, I analyze how these layers build on each other but require different interventions.

Capitalistic Capture

Extreme commercialization has long defined the US media system. The US newspaper industry became highly commercialized in the late 1800s with its increased reliance on advertising revenues. US broadcast media followed a similar hyper-commercialized path when policymakers in the early 1930s essentially privatized the public airwaves instead of building a public media system. As a result, several corporate media networks came to dominate radio and flooded it with advertising-supported programming.

Television replicated radio’s hyper-commercialized model, with the very same corporations dominating another lightly regulated medium. Although the US eventually established a public broadcasting system in the late 1960s, it remained chronically underfunded—literally almost off the chart compared to other democracies in federal funding per capita. And Congress entirely rescinded even that paltry support last year.

Jeff Bezos purchased the Washington Post for less than half of what he paid for his superyacht, and now he’s dismantling the paper while currying favor with President Donald Trump.

Meanwhile, the few public interest protections that were installed to protect media diversity from unfettered capitalism—like the long-dead Fairness Doctrine—were gradually weakened or jettisoned altogether. The “Postwar Settlement,” a social compact which allowed commercial media to remain lightly regulated if they practiced social responsibility, has come undone over the ensuing decades as commercial logics overwhelmed public interest protections and professional norms.

The commercialization of US digital media began in earnest in the 1990s when the internet’s infrastructure, originally funded by the National Science Foundation, was privatized with little public debate. Today, capitalist logics permeate the entire digital stack, from the wires that deliver internet services to our homes (if we can afford the exorbitant rates from the “broadband cartel”), to the targeted advertising that operates as the internet’s core business model. Artificial intelligence is now following this same well-worn path.

In the extremely inegalitarian US, where billionaires command disproportionate power, treating our media as private commodities instead of public services all but guarantees concentration in the hands of oligarchs. To give one glaring example, Jeff Bezos purchased the Washington Post for less than half of what he paid for his superyacht, and now he’s dismantling the paper while currying favor with President Donald Trump. With primary media organizations reduced to the playthings of plutocrats, media oligarchy becomes the dominant paradigm.

Oligarchic Capture

As ownership concentration accelerates, US information markets tend toward monopolies and oligopolies. This trend, endemic to lightly regulated capitalist systems, has only increased with the erosion of media ownership restrictions, from the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to more recent “deregulatory” moves during two Trump administrations.

Extreme corporate consolidation creates a wide range of social hazards and harms. It has allowed Trump-aligned right-wing oligarchs to take control of vast media empires, from the Murdochs to the Ellisons. This kind of capture also manifests in algorithmic gatekeeping, such as Elon Musk’s X selectively amplifying and suppressing political speech. In Canada, Meta is blocking news media on its platform to avoid paying for content. More recently, concerns have risen that TikTok, following its acquisition by Trump-friendly owners, has begun to censor political expression.

Such oligarchic capture is the predictable culmination of what’s essentially a pay-to-play system where the highest bidder takes all. Under this regime, what Americans hear, see, and read is increasingly dictated by a handful of billionaires with their own agendas. These private tyrannies have the luxury of treating their media assets as a kind of “loss leader” for broader political and economic goals. Our hyper-commercialized media system was ready-made for this kind of weaponization, making authoritarian capture easy.

Authoritarian Capture

Highly concentrated media systems are structurally vulnerable to authoritarian capture. This is essentially the Viktor Orban model: Autocrats needn’t take over newsrooms at gunpoint; instead, they can count on friendly oligarchs to police the media for them. As a result, screens and airwaves are flooded with uninterrogated official narratives that flatter the administration in power.

In addition to arresting individual journalists, the Trump administration has engaged in various forms of regulatory intimidation. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman, Brendan Carr, who’s been known to sport a gold lapel pin featuring Trump’s profile, recently informed Congress that the FCC is not an independent agency. As if to prove the point, Carr has shamelessly used the FCC to carry out Trump’s agenda, often by punishing—or threatening to punish—perceived enemies. He has used mergers as leverage to extort major news companies and influence media coverage favorable to Trump.

If capitalist capture is the foundational condition that turns our media against democracy and enables other types of capture, then the most transformative remedy must confront that root problem.

In other cases, the administration has threatened regulatory intervention against recalcitrant media companies and individual commentators, such as the comedian Jimmy Kimmel. Recently, the FCC has threatened to apply the “equal time” rule—requiring that broadcast media organizations give equal airtime to competing political candidates—against late-night and daytime television shows, which previously had been exempt from this rule. As the Trump administration bullies the media, many organizations have capitulated.

While shifts in media ownership and conglomeration are often narrated as natural developments—often featuring dramatic twists and turns of individual protagonists and business interests—it’s important to remember that our media institutions are human-made, structured, and maintained through law and policy. They’re subject to change if we as a society so wish. We must resist any sense of inevitability and dare to imagine democratic alternatives.

What’s To Be Done?

One line of defense against authoritarian media capture is public interest regulation. But decades of regulatory capture—where government agencies internalize the logics and imperatives of the industries they purportedly regulate—have hollowed out such normative foundations, rendering them vulnerable to co-option and “discursive capture.” With anti-democratic tendencies already entrenched, new federal policies are nonstarters for the near term, though targeted state and local initiatives may still be viable.

A frequently invoked—though rarely realized—solution to media conglomerates is to simply break them up. Moreover, antitrust arguments have gained prominence amidst a growing anti-monopoly movement, exemplified by Lina Khan’s admirable work chairing the Federal Trade Commission. Such anti-corporate and anti-oligarchic politics clearly resonate with broad swaths of the public and should be encouraged. But this strategy can be overly reliant on competition policy, presupposing that trust-busting a few corporate giants will return social responsibility to the marketplace.

No doubt, preventing or dismantling media conglomeration is critical. We’ve seen the dangers of these vertically and horizontally integrated firms, with tentacles across advertising, content production, distribution, and data extraction. If nothing else, shrinking them and diluting their political and economic power would be real progress.

But dealing with systemic media market failures requires a more fundamental intervention. Competition alone won’t bring local journalism back to news deserts, eliminate surveillance advertising, or guarantee affordable broadband. Furthermore, smaller, profit-driven media entities are likely to exact some of the same social harms as larger ones. Many of these problems are capitalism problems, not just monopoly problems.

Fortunately, the anti-monopoly toolbox contains instruments that do more than tame capitalist excesses through market discipline. For example, the public utility regulatory tradition offers a diverse set of policy tools, ranging from robust public oversight to institutional arrangements approaching municipal and public ownership. These models can directly challenge corrosive capitalist logics at the level of media governance, reflecting a more democratic vision of ownership and control.

If capitalist capture is the foundational condition that turns our media against democracy and enables other types of capture, then the most transformative remedy must confront that root problem. We should endeavor to create non-capitalist information and communication infrastructures. The clearest antidote to hyper-capitalistic media—an argument I’ve made in these pages before—is to remove media from the market altogether and create public alternatives. A “democratic capture” of our media would ensure these institutions serve us all, not just the wealthiest few.

Such a policy program is decidedly ambitious and long-term. It requires not just a Project 2029 but a Project 2050 for structural media reform. Despite such distant projections, we must begin to clearly articulate these plans now. It’s precisely during dark political times that we must assert bold policy visions for a democratic future.

This piece was originally published on the LPE Blog.

Once upon a time, if you had described Donald Trump’s America to me (the second time around), I would have thought you mad as Alice in Wonderland‘s proverbial hatter — or, if you were a fiction writer, I would have considered your plot so ludicrous that, after reading a few pages, I would undoubtedly have tossed your book in the trash.

And yet here we are, not once (yes, all of us can make a mistake once, can’t we?) but twice!

And the one thing you should take for granted is that Donald Trump in the White House a second time around is the all-too-literal personification of imperial decline. In fact, decline is hardly an adequate word for it. We just don’t happen to have another word or phrase that would describe him and his crew aptly enough in all their eerie strangeness. Yes, this country, even in the best of (imperial) times, certainly had its problems. (Remember the Vietnam War, for instance, or President “Tricky Dick” Nixon and the Watergate scandal.) Still, nothing was ever quite like this, was it? Never.

The First American King?

A literal Mad Hatter in command in Washington, D.C. Once upon a time, who would have believed it? In fact, if we could indeed travel into the past and I were able to take you back to 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed, ending the Cold War, while China had not yet faintly “risen,” the world of that moment might essentially have been considered American property, lock, stock, and proverbial barrel.

This planet could have been thought of then as the property of just one great power — my country, of course — that, in imperial terms, had essentially been left alone on planet Earth in a fashion that might never have happened before in the history of humanity. And if I had then been able to see into our future and had tried to fill you in on the Trumpian world we’re now living through a mere three decades later, you would have quite literally laughed me off the planet (and, believe me, that’s putting it politely).

Truly, who could have ever (ever!) imagined this bizarre Trumpian era of ours in which the joker (in the worst sense of the term) in the ultimate deck of cards is indeed sitting in the White House. Yes, unbelievably enough, he was elected a second time in 2024 by a “sweeping,” “landslide,” “historic” 49.7% of American voters. It’s true, not even 50% of us voted to make him the first American king a second time around.

And if that made you chuckle just a little, well, stop doing so right now! Yes, what happened to us in Trumpian terms was and remains genuinely absurd. Still, given this deeply endangered world of ours, it should be anything but funny. Just imagine for a moment, a president who, before entering the White House, was essentially known for only one thing: being the host of the TV show The Apprentice (“You’re fired!”). Once upon a time, if you had described the (ir)reality we’re now living through, you would have been laughed not just out of the room but off this planet. You would, in short, have been fired.

In fact, if what we’re now experiencing were a novel, it would be considered to have the most ludicrous plot imaginable and, a few pages in, you would undoubtedly have tossed it into — yes, again! — the trash. (Unfortunately, it’s not just you or me but this planet itself that Donald Trump now threatens to toss into that garbage pail.)

So here we are in February 2026 and, like it or not, we’re all apprentices to one Donald J. Trump — oops, sorry, one President Donald J. Trump. And the ongoing TV show he emcees these days from the White House is undoubtedly the wackiest one in our history, as he fires not just everyone but everything that rubs him the wrong way from the Kennedy Center (gone!) to the East Wing of the White House (now rubble) to the U.S. Agency for International Development (once upon a time…).

One way to think about all of this is to go back in time and imagine that, long, long ago, Isaac Asimov or Ray Bradbury wrote a science fiction novel with a distinctly bizarre premise: that, at some future moment, thanks to the endless burning of fossil fuels, we humans would essentially threaten to burn ourselves off planet Earth. And when the voters of the world’s largest democracy heard that such a thing might, sooner or later, actually happen to us, they would respond by freely electing a genuine madman — who ran his second candidacy in 2024 on the all-too-bluntly apocalyptic slogan “drill, baby, drill” — to “lead” us into a literal hell on earth. Now, of course, that “president” is insisting that he be given the largest iced island on this planet, Greenland, that, were all its ice to melt (as indeed is already beginning to happen), could send global sea levels up by 23 feet and quite literally drown this world’s coastal cities. Imagine that!

And now, try to imagine this: in 2026, such terrible fiction is, in fact, our reality and one thing is guaranteed (excuse the colons inside colons but this is a strange, strange world to try to sum up): it’s only going to get worse in the three years to come before Donald Trump’s presidency is officially ended, if, of course, it ever does end. (As he typically said at one point last year, “Based on what I read, I guess I’m not allowed to run. So we’ll see what happens,” and he’s now talking about “nationalizing” — think “Trumpifying” — our elections!)

Given him and everything that’s gone on so far in his second term in office, including the way he recently had Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard accompany FBI agents to an election voting hub in Fulton County, Georgia, where they “seized hundreds of boxes containing ballots and other documents related to the 2020 election,” I wouldn’t count on anything Trumpian ending according to plan. Whew! That was one long sentence!

The Declinist President

When I launched TomDispatch (or perhaps it launched me) in November 2001 in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on this country, if you had told me that almost a quarter of a century later, our all-American world would not only be in significantly worse shape but unimaginably (as in Trumpianly) so, I would, of course, have laughed you out of the room.

Donald Trump, president of the United States, not once but twice? Back then, it wouldn’t have worked even as a terrible science fiction story or a truly bad joke. Yes, along with George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy, we certainly had some lousy presidents. But in the hundreds of years since 1789, nothing — not a single president — faintly like him (and, yes, in such a context, he does need to be italicized).

And yet here we indeed are. I can’t tell you how sad it makes me feel, after almost 25 years producing TomDispatch, to be on nothing better than Donald Trump’s version of planet Earth and to be handing this deeply unsettled, not to say embattled, world of ours off to my children and grandchildren. I mean, honestly, how could we have elected a president (twice!) who, among other nightmares, is doing everything he can to literally burn this planet down by endlessly promoting fossil fuels (including, of course, Venezuelan oil), while doing his damnedest to wipe out wind power or really any version of clean energy that might in any way come to our rescue. (Thank heavens, he doesn’t control the whole planet and so, for the first time last year, wind and solar power generated more electricity in the European Union than did fossil fuels.)

It’s true, of course, that, in our history on this planet, we humans have had some genuine monsters as leaders, whether you’re thinking about Attila the Hun, Roman Emperor Caligula, Nazi horror Adolf Hitler, or the Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin. But whatever else they did — and they were all true monsters — their goal was never to literally destroy this planet itself. Donald Trump’s way of joining humanity’s worst characters in our future history books (if, in that all too ominous future, they even exist) is, it seems, to lend a distinct hand in creating a literal global holocaust, even if in slow motion.

He is, in short, nothing less than the personification of an imperial power, once possibly the greatest of all time, and a planet, once possibly the most livable in our universe, both in grim and rapid decline. And imagine this, to put him in a strange perspective: the American people elected as president, twice, a man who, as a businessman, had either four or more likely six bankruptcies to his name, depending on how you care to count them. And count on this as well: by the time he’s done as president this second time around, he could well have (again depending on how you count) either five or seven of them on his record.

After all, he hasn’t hesitated to call global warming a “con,” “scam,” and “hoax,” claiming that “If you don’t get away from the green energy scam your country is going to fail.” In the process, he’s done just about everything in his power to promote fossil fuels, while trying to dismantle the creation of green energy, genuinely threatening (in his own strange fashion) to bankrupt not just this country but this planet. (Thank heavens, the courts so far have stopped him from destroying coastal wind power projects, though we don’t yet know how [his] Supreme Court will deal with such cases.)

It’s honestly strange (at least to me) that, while all of this is indeed reported in our media and Donald Trump is the eternal center of news attention, so little attention is paid to what he’s likely to mean for the future of humanity on this planet. Climate change, of course, seldom makes the sort of headlines and news that he creates day by day, hour by hour, no matter what he happens to be doing. And that’s doubly strange, because if he were a Stalin- or a Hitler-equivalent in another country, promoting the extinction of parts of humanity, it would certainly be headline news.

But while his words and acts, when it comes to turning this planet into a major heat zone, are certainly reported, they’re seldom the top of the news. They’re just another passing strangeness in the world of You Know Who. And that, under the circumstances, should seem strange indeed — or rather stranger than so much else that takes up our time these days.

Once upon a time, in another life and another world, if someone had told me about the planet I now inhabit (along with the rest of you), I don’t think I would have believed them. Donald Trump as president of the United States? You must be kidding (and it’s not even a good joke)! Our planet is melting in a climate broiler that we control and we’re not only not turning down the heat fast enough, but we Americans elected someone (twice!) determined to turn it up ever higher. Honestly, who would have believed any of that once upon a time?

Not me, I can tell you that. Even without climate change, Donald Trump’s presidency would have been an eye-poppingly strange experience. With climate change, however, he’s a nightmare beyond words — though, in a sense, he’s never beyond words. There isn’t a moment when he doesn’t want to say something to the rest of us, his apprentices, and be the center of attention for time immemorial. Yikes, I’m sweating!

LIVE 9:00 am Eastern time, Streaming Anytime:

Political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM EST.

Today we discuss:

• France has its own Charlie Kirk. The centrist Macron administration blames the “ultra-left” LFI party and the Jeune Garde of Jean-Luc Melenchon for the fatal beating of 23-year-old Quentin Deranque, a right-wing extremist, in Lyon—a notorious hotbed of right-wing violence. Macron calls for patience and calm. Will France listen?

• Local police, sometimes seen as a bulwark against ICE goon squads on city streets, are signing deals to cooperate with and deport immigrants for the aggressive agency. There were 135 such deals a year ago; now there are 1,168.

• Persian Gulf Showdown: As US-Iran/Israel talks stall and another carrier heads to the Gulf, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards drill in Strait of Hormuz.

• BlanketGate: Corey Lewandowski, an unpaid special government employee who acts as chief of staff for and lover to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, fired a Coast Guard pilot for leaving Noem’s blanket on a plane — but was forced to rehire them upon realizing there was nobody else to fly the party home. Lewandowski has overseen a reign of terror over DHS.

• Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, who made history as a third-party presidential candidate, dies at 84. Robert Duvall, the actor, passes at 95.

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

https://x.com/tedrall
https://x.com/JohnKiriakou

LIVE ON RUMBLE: https://rumble.com/c/DeProgramShow
SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/2kdFlw2w8sSPhKI8NRx8Zu
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Political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM EST.

Today we discuss:

•  France has its own Charlie Kirk. The centrist Macron administration blames the “ultra-left” LFI party and the Jeune Garde of Jean-Luc Melenchon for the fatal beating of 23-year-old Quentin Deranque, a right-wing extremist, in Lyon—a notorious hotbed of right-wing violence. Macron calls for patience and calm. Will France listen?

•  Local police, sometimes seen as a bulwark against ICE goon squads on city streets, are signing deals to cooperate with and deport immigrants for the aggressive agency. There were 135 such deals a year ago; now there are 1,168.

• Persian Gulf Showdown: As US-Iran/Israel talks stall and another carrier heads to the Gulf, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards drill in Strait of Hormuz.

•  BlanketGate: Corey Lewandowski, an unpaid special government employee who acts as chief of staff for and lover to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, fired a Coast Guard pilot for leaving Noem’s blanket on a plane — but was forced to rehire them upon realizing there was nobody else to fly the party home. Lewandowski has overseen a reign of terror over DHS.

• Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, who made history as a third-party presidential candidate, dies at 84. Robert Duvall, the actor, passes at 95.

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

https://x.com/tedrall

https://x.com/JohnKiriakou

LIVE ON RUMBLE: https://rumble.com/c/DeProgramShow

SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/2kdFlw2w8sSPhKI8NRx8Zu

APPLE MUSIC: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deprogram-with-john-kiriakou-and-ted-rall/id1825379504

The post Je Suis Charlie Kirk | DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

In a recent article I argued that the world is now crossing a threshold from decades of growth and increasing integration to decades of economic shrinkage and political breakdown. This shift will create stresses that extend in scale from ecosystems and international relations down to households and individuals. Everyone will be personally—and likely profoundly—impacted by the polycrisis.

There are three components to this tectonic shift: environmental, economic, and political. It’s useful to think of this in terms of disasters, e.g. natural disasters, economic calamities, and government repression or civil war.

Every disaster is unique, but some general observations apply. When a disaster happens, our normal sense of time is interrupted and our priorities get scrambled. Suddenly, nothing matters but the immediate necessities of escaping harm and helping others to safety. People’s attitudes tend to be sober, purposeful, and helpful; hysteria is rare. Everyone’s implicit goal is to get back to something approximating normal. Importantly, disasters also tend to evoke a similar community-minded response in people: At least in the short run, they work together creatively to meet one another’s basic needs.

Environmental disasters are sometimes the easiest for victims to mentally comprehend, though not always to recover from. After floods, fires, earthquakes, and chemical spills, immediate response efforts are led by the affected region and surrounding communities, while longer-term recovery typically depends on national governmental assistance. Neighbors pull together to make sure all are safe (see this account of my experience during the 2017 wildfires in my hometown of Santa Rosa, California).

Severe political conflicts can therefore be more psychologically devastating than environmental or economic disasters. But, as we will see, they can also evoke extraordinary levels of community solidarity and mutual aid.

Economic disasters can linger for years and can scar a generation, as occurred during and in the wake of the Great Depression of the 1930s, and in the currency collapses that have plagued several nations over the last century. The Global Financial Crisis of 2008 and the Covid-19 pandemic, though relatively short in duration, saw large-scale failure of businesses and disappearance of jobs. Again, it’s typically up to local communities to help meet people’s immediate needs until the national government can intervene to provide aid and stability.

Political disasters (including civil conflicts) are often different in significant ways. In some instances, they turn neighbor against neighbor, or communities against their national government. Government may hurt rather than help; indeed, government may be out to get you. Severe political conflicts can therefore be more psychologically devastating than environmental or economic disasters. But, as we will see, they can also evoke extraordinary levels of community solidarity and mutual aid.

The Great Unraveling of environmental and social stability will feature all three kinds of disasters. Currently, global breakdown is being accelerated primarily by an ongoing and worsening political calamity in the United States. In this article, we’ll go to the frontlines of conflict in Minneapolis to see how people are responding to a violent—even deadly—government-imposed crisis. As the Trump regime promises to end its surge of federal agents in that city, perhaps it’s a good time to reflect: What have we learned that might be helpful in future crises?

A City Under Siege

Recent events in Minneapolis and surrounding communities are being widely reported and analyzed. They’ve even been iconified in a Bruce Springsteen song. Our purpose here is to see what we can glean that’s relevant for the larger project of surviving the Great Unraveling.

First, some background facts. Following deployments of troops and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to Los Angeles, Chicago, and Portland, on January 6, 2026 president Donald Trump sent nearly 3,000 ICE and Border Patrol agents to Minneapolis—a medium-sized city of fewer than half a million residents. There is widespread speculation that the ICE surge was politically motivated, as Minneapolis is a bright blue* town in a blue state whose governor, Tim Walz, was the Democratic vice-presidential candidate in 2024. The massive deployment of federal agents dwarfed the city’s police force of 600 officers.

Trump and his officials have stated that the purpose of the ICE surge is to remove “the worst of the worst”—undocumented immigrants who are thieves, rapists, and murderers. However, officials have imposed unrealistic arrest quotas on agents, requiring them to round up more undocumented people than can be vetted for criminality—as well as US citizens and legal immigrants with green cards or refugee status. The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonprofit research organization, has found that roughly three-quarters of individuals currently detained by ICE do not have a criminal record, and that many who do were convicted of only minor offenses, like traffic violations.

Federal agents have focused their attention on places where undocumented people are likely to be found: restaurants, Home Depot stores, schools, and churches. Often, agents simply grab anyone who looks brown-skinned. They sometimes break into homes without warrants and effectively kidnap the residents, who are then sent to makeshift detention centers; family members may have no idea where their loved ones are for many days.

As a result, many immigrants and non-immigrants alike feel as though they are living under occupation by a hostile army. People are terrified, businesses are closed, workers are staying home, rent payments are falling behind, and children are not going to school.

Resistance Breeds Solidarity

The response of the people of Minneapolis and its surrounding suburbs has been peaceful but organized and insistent. Neighbors are protecting neighbors.

Minnesota has a longstanding tradition of mutual aid and of neighborhood organizing, which intensified after the killing of George Floyd by a police officer in 2020. Residents are making a disciplined effort to avoid violence, even when protesters are being attacked. They’ve created a leaderless cell-based pattern of organization, communicating through Signal (an encrypted social media app). Participants use pseudonyms, and every effort is made to maintain anonymity.

Actions undertaken in response to the specific needs of the community fall under four broad headings: documenting the actions of ICE agents; protesting their presence; protecting vulnerable people; and helping meet those people’s daily needs for food, shelter, schooling, and doctor visits. Often these actions require courage and creativity, as when massed members of the group Singing Resistance walk frozen streets, raising the spirits of fellow community members with songs of solidarity, grief, and rage.

I recently reached out to a friend who lives near Minneapolis to ask about their experience in resistance networks there. The story of what is happening there is best told by someone who is in the thick of it themselves, so I am giving over remainder of this article their words. This is an edited transcript of the comments from my friend, who wishes to remain anonymous:

“My first encounter with ICE was in mid-December. It was a very cold day. I saw construction workers trapped on the roof of a house they were building, and ICE had surrounded it. Very quickly, observers started gathering and blowing whistles. The workers on the roof weren’t prepared to be up there for a long time, so observers were trying to throw them blankets and handwarmers. In the end, one of the workers had to be taken to the hospital for possible frostbite.

"If anything positive is going to come from all this, it’s the fact that people are going to be more connected and more willing to help their neighbors."

“Later, I got involved in response efforts. We have ICE agents staying in hotels where I live, and there are some nicer restaurants that they like to frequent. There were reports of ICE outside one local restaurant. We talked with employees, who said there’s a table of ICE agents eating. Then we were able to identify a car of ICE agents outside, and people started surrounding the car and honking. This was before any of the observers had been killed [i.e., Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both gunned down by ICE and Border Patrol agents], so I think we were a little bolder at that point. One man even got out of his car and walked right up to the ICE vehicle and yelled at them. Then the local police came, but the cops usually say they can’t intervene."

“On another occasion, there was a report of ICE agents outside a [Mexican] restaurant. I was the second observer on the scene; there was already a lady there with her megaphone, making noise. We had identified three ICE vehicles in the parking lot. So, we started driving around trying to get their plates so we could have them in our records and verify they were in fact federal agents. The goal was to make enough noise to hopefully get the agents to leave. We’re honking and flashing lights at them, and they’re flashing lights at us. They were obviously irritated. Within 20 minutes, between 15 and 20 additional cars showed up to observe and show support for the cornered workers. One by one, they slowly left, and community members helped the workers who were trapped inside to get home safely in cars that weren’t identifiable to them."

“We’ve got a couple of contacts who live in big apartment buildings and who are vulnerable, and they’ve been go-betweens for fundraising. We’ve been able to fundraise to help people pay rent. It’s a domino effect: People are worried about going to work. They stop going to work, and restaurants temporarily close because a lot of their workers are vulnerable. As a result, they can’t earn money, and they’re at risk of losing their job."

“We get specific calls like, hey, we have this family that needs this or that, and people can raise their hands either to fund that, or to drop it off to the liaison who then distributes it, all to keep people’s information private."

“The ICE agents are adapting all the time. They’re changing up their cars, and they’re switching plates. There have been occasions where they are driving around without any plates at all. They were all wearing masks, and now a lot of them are wearing plain clothes to try and blend in more. But as they adapt, we do too."

“I think the community building going on has been impressive because, unlike what the media says, none of us have been paid a cent for this and never expect to be. At a protest the other night, one guy said, ‘There’s no amount that anybody could pay us to not show up for our neighbors.’ I don’t know why people can’t comprehend that people would be doing this just because they care about the well-being of others."

“It’s been an evolution. As people get more involved, they see the different pieces of the puzzle, and then they can contribute. The biggest thing for the people who’ve been leading it longer is that they’re getting burnt out. Many involved already have full-time jobs, and they’re also putting in full-time hours for this effort. So, the longer-term observers are keen to get more people in leadership roles so that the work can be distributed. And the ability to do that has come from just building trust with people you initially may only know anonymously through the phone. That trust comes from showing up repeatedly, putting in the time and effort, and vouching for each other."

“This is a community effort. I don’t think anyone is trying to be recognized for what they’re doing. Everyone involved knows that this is the right thing to be doing. There are a lot of people out there, especially in our government, who try to spin what’s going on here as being terroristic in intent, or that we’re just trying to interfere with government operations or hurt people. But that is so antithetical to what anyone here is actually trying to do."

“There’s risk involved, and the distributed leadership model helps diminish that because then individuals can’t be targeted as easily. But I know some of my local elected representatives have been involved, and they’ve been subject to threats, because they’re public and they’re not hiding their identity."

“Even when the imminent threat of people constantly being taken dies down, there’s going to be more need for community organizing and mutual aid. And so, hopefully, this is cementing a framework that we can continue to expand upon as needs in the community grow through whatever challenge may arise. I think if anything positive is going to come from all this, it’s the fact that people are going to be more connected and more willing to help their neighbors."

“Having these federal agents here and knowing my community is under extreme surveillance is unfamiliar and infuriating to me, but I know it is something like what many marginalized groups have contended with for decades or centuries."

“It is increasingly difficult to leave the house and drive somewhere without viewing every car with suspicion. We wave and smile as I pass through vulnerable neighborhoods, to show we are here to help and not harm. There is a sense that we are always ‘this close’ to an agent feeling justified to smash in our windows or detain us for simply practicing the rights the US Constitution entitles us to. We fear what may come next, what the retribution may be. It is frustrating knowing that if we call the cops with concerns regarding the illegal or unethical behaviors of these agents, we will be met with no response."

“But there is a power in this resistance, a feeling of deep connection and kinship to those around you, even if you just met or only know their online alias. You know you are on the same side of this battle for basic human rights. There’s a feeling that so many people have your back, even if they have never met you. Seeing extreme bravery from regular people encourages your own commitment."

“The biggest feeling of all, though, is the feeling that none of us are doing enough. Despite our efforts, people are still being taken from their families every day to potentially disappear in the system."

“The other frustrating thing, to me, is that this shouldn’t have to be our priority. It wouldn’t be if our United States government were set up in a way that wasn’t so focused on exploiting and ‘othering’ people for money and greed. We could be putting all this energy toward trying to build a more sustainable world rather than just protecting people from being abducted. But this is the imminent threat right now.”

Mardi Gras arrives, and masked federal agents continue their lawless violence under the false flag of "law enforcement." Meanwhile a federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration's latest anti-Haitian effort because, among other things, its racist foundation violates the law.

All of that is why phrases from Haitian singer Manno Charlemagne (1948-2017) have been coming to mind.

In one song, Charlemagne praises those who "unmask the wrongdoers" (demaske malpwopwete). In another, he scoffs at the bands of thinly disguised paramilitary cowards (yon bann fov mal maske). He might have been riffing on the Declaration of Independence's complaint about a king who sends "Swarms of Officers to harass our People," quoted last month by the federal judge who ordered the release of a 5-year-old boy and his father from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention in Texas.

Manno, as everyone called him, was Haiti's best-known singer-songwriter and a leading activist in his own country's fight for democracy. I was fortunate to have met him when I worked at Miami's Haitian Refugee Center in the 1990s, and we later translated some of his songs from Haitian Kreyòl to English.

Behind the masks are not just racists, but bullies, and bullies are cowards.

Manno's 1989 "Lamayòt" was written for Carnival, which in Haiti as elsewhere brings new political songs. As Edwidge Danticat explains, "A lamayòt is a mysterious box whose contents are known only to its owner, and which others can see only after they have paid some kind of price. In politics, lamayòt can refer to, among other things, trickery, a sleight of hand, and broken promises."

In "Lamayòt," Manno mocks the military oppressors who promote themselves and make up their own rules, thinking that guns and the power to intimidate make them right. But their masks and smirking, sings Manno, are the only flag they carry, and people see right through their pathetic Mardi Gras disguise: "Lan fè grimas se drapo nou pote... Pou mwen nou pa menm madigra k mal maske."

Despite a push from activists, and with Democrats following their lead, agents are sure to keep their masks on. Yes, it's to protect themselves—from accountability. ICE and the Border Patrol have always aspired to lawlessness, and under President Donald Trump they have moved further than ever in that direction.

In California this month, a judge ruled against a state prohibition on federal agents hiding behind masks, but only because the law doesn't also apply to state law enforcement. In response, State Sen. Scott Wiener has said he will push for a law that covers all officers. Wiener's statement could be from a Carnival song: "We will unmask these thugs and hold them accountable." The Field Office Director for ICE Enforcement and Removal (ERO) in San Francisco had told the court that the law should be struck down because"DHS does not intend to comply" with it.

Agents claiming to enforce the law—even when they actually do so—are violating federal law by refusing to identify themselves: "At the time of the arrest, the designated immigration officer shall, as soon as it is practical and safe to do so, identify himself." The city of Santa Ana has actually passed a resolution suggesting that the federal government follow federal law.

The Trump administration also claims that federal agents can give themselves permission to break down your door and check your papers or abduct you, though that's not how "permission" or warrants work. The Associated Press reports that the latest in Department of Homeland Security (DHS) "ruses" includes the use of false license plates in violation of Minnesota law, and the impersonation of local police, construction workers, and utility workers.

Behind the masks are not just racists, but bullies, and bullies are cowards. That's why their bosses keep saying how brave they are while whining about their victimhood. In the first Trump administration, DHS Secretary John Kelly complained that his agents "are often ridiculed and insulted... and frequently convicted in the court of public opinion on unfounded allegations." In November, a deputy chief of Border Patrol told a California court that agents wear masks and "remove their badges, nameplates, or unique identifiers" because "incidents across the nation have created an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty" for them.

A Burmese-American named Ba Zan Lin spent 18 years "living under dictatorship and tyranny" in his native country. Last year he told a Buffalo (New York) audience, writes Geoff Kelly in the Investigative Post, "that the measures taken by ICE agents to conceal their identities—unmarked vehicles, face masks, no badges or name-tags—indicates their authority is vulnerable to challenges by ordinary citizens."

"'As long as they're still wearing masks, they're still afraid of us,'" Lin said.

"What you do to scare me only excites me," sang Manno Charlemagne. "Masked man, I'm not afraid of you. You're only a person."

On February 12, 2026, the US Environmental Protection Agency repealed the Endangerment Finding, a key determination for regulating greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. This decision follows the EPA’s January 2026 announcement that air quality protections will be determined based on corporations’ bottom lines, not people’s health. These harmful decisions join a dizzying number of other regulations essential for environmental justice that have been dismantled, deregulated, or destroyed.

In these times, it would be easy to despair about how the tireless movement organizing labor that made these strides possible over many years has now been eroded. However, we cannot accept defeat. My decades of frontline organizing with workers and environmental justice communities toward a just transition shows that transformations come from our collective power. No matter the obstacles, we have the real solutions needed for the crucial work ahead, including during the upcoming Santa Marta conference.

Last year marked a huge moment for just transition. This movement and the principles that inform it often took center stage in grassroots organizing and during the United Nations Climate Summit in Belém, Brazil, in November 2025. The popularity of this concept, practice, and process reveals both promising and harmful co-opted outcomes for Indigenous Peoples, frontline workers, and fenceline communities. The language can be amplified by those most impacted, used to communicate their demands and desires, and it can be used as a tool for trying to undermine the hard work of community organizations and frontline communities.

At COP30, while we welcomed progressive news media coverage and the labor of journalists to cover such an intense few weeks of climate justice and just transition advocacy, we also witnessed reporting by some Global North journalists and news outlets that worked to minimize the credibility of frontline groups and community-based organizations, while amplifying the voices and positions of false solutionists and disaster capitalists.

Unlike some researchers who argue that the negotiations can be improved by using generative artificial intelligence for creating treaty drafts, we know who has the real solutions and who must be centered in building pathways toward just transition.

Much mainstream coverage of COP30 has not adequately addressed the indispensable role of grassroots organizing in pushing toward the successful implementation of a Just Transition Mechanism within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Several days before the official start of COP30, the Movimiento de Afectados por Represas held the IV International Encuentro (Meeting) of People Affected by Dams and the Climate Crisis. This global gathering resulted in the launch of an international movement. Similarly, the Peoples’ Summit, including a just transition axis, was integral in building relationships and movement power. These mobilizations and knowledge sharing spaces worked synergistically with the Global Day of Action for Climate Justice, which occurred on November 15, with people of the world overflowing into the streets of Belém. It was these preceding and concurrent gatherings that energized Just Transition cross-constituencies and that shaped the direction of the Just Transition Work Programme negotiations and the resulting Just Transition Mechanism.

Many celebrate the institutionalization of just transition as one of the greatest successes at COP30. However, much work remains in the implementation process for the new mechanism to actually advance a just transition. Without a commitment to and practice of Indigenous Principles of Just Transition and Just Transition Principles, this mechanism will become another failed effort and abuse of the labor of frontline peoples and grassroots groups who have fought so hard for so long.

Unlike some researchers who argue that the negotiations can be improved by using generative artificial intelligence for creating treaty drafts, we know who has the real solutions and who must be centered in building pathways toward just transition. Groups practicing agroecology and Landback, as well as waste pickers and many other frontline workers, are creating collective power that brings together the most affected workers and environmental justice communities, rather than pitting them against each other.

Additionally, as knowledge holders, Indigenous Peoples and Afro-Indigenous Peoples hold inherent and collective rights; accordingly, they should not be conflated as part of “civil society.” We know that Indigenous Peoples and civil society members must be the ones consulted and centered in these key United Nations negotiations and texts, not the corporate profiteers and their political cronies who pollute just transition possibilities at every COP and at many other conferences.

This year marks 35 years since I served on the drafting committee of the Principles of Environmental Justice and 30 years since I contributed to the Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing. These principles and the relationships and lived experiences that gave them life continue to inform and fortify our movements toward just transition and a livable world where we all can thrive. Let’s not forget these principles and the frontline peoples who made them possible.

Mardi Gras is a transnational, diasporic cultural tradition rooted in Christian liturgical calendars and continually reshaped through Afro-diasporic, colonial, and migrant histories. Across cultures and centuries, the passage from winter to spring has carried a shared meaning: renewal. It is a moment marked not only by seasonal change but by intentional pause, a time to reassess habits, responsibilities, and the ways individual actions shape collective life.

In New Orleans and across South Louisiana, that pause arrives right after Mardi Gras. Carnival season, with its music, artistry, and communal joy, gives way to Lent, a period traditionally devoted to reflection, restraint, and service. Similar practices appear across faiths and cultures, from Ramadan in Muslim communities to Passover in Jewish tradition and secular observances tied to the spring equinox. Each reflects a collective understanding that cycles of abundance must be balanced by intention.

Within Christian tradition, Lent centers on three practices: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. These concepts readily translate into environmental responsibility. Fasting becomes a restraint from unnecessary consumption. Prayer becomes a reflection on the consequences of habitual behavior. Almsgiving becomes solidarity with communities bearing the costs of environmental harm.

Plastic-Free Friday, a weekly initiative launched by RISE St. James, draws directly from these shared values. Rather than framing plastic reduction as individual sacrifice, the campaign presents it as a communal act of care, rooted in culture, seasonality, and public health. That framing matters, particularly along the Gulf Coast, where plastic pollution is a lived and often encouraged reality.

Mardi Gras Was Never Meant to Be Disposable

Mardi Gras is among the world’s most recognized cultural celebrations and is central to New Orleans’ identity and economy. Yet when the parades end, and the streets are cleared, the environmental consequences of Carnival season remain.

In 2023, Mardi Gras celebrations generated approximately 1,162 tons of waste over 11 days, according to data from the City of New Orleans Department of Public Works. An estimated 25% of that waste consisted of plastic beads, according to local waste audits and bead recovery organizations. While recovery efforts have expanded, reclaiming more than 10,000 pounds of beads during the 2025 Carnival season, these initiatives capture only a fraction of the plastic distributed each year.

Plastic-Free Friday leverages cultural timing, community norms, and shared identity to reframe plastic reduction as a public health intervention rather than a personal moral test.

Much of the remainder enters landfills, clogs storm drains, or is carried into surrounding waterways. Over time, these plastics degrade into microplastics that are now detected in soil, seafood, drinking water, and human tissue. Peer-reviewed research increasingly links microplastic exposure and associated chemical additives to endocrine disruption, reproductive harm, immune dysfunction, and elevated cancer risk.

These risks extend far beyond festival cleanup. They intersect with a deeper public health and environmental justice crisis that has long shaped life along the Gulf Coast.

Plastic Is a Public Health Issue

Plastic pollution is often framed as a waste management issue. In communities along Louisiana’s industrial corridor, it is also a determinant of health.

Plastic production relies on fossil fuels and petrochemical infrastructure that is disproportionately concentrated in low-income and predominantly Black communities along the Mississippi River. Residents living near these facilities experience elevated exposure to air and water pollution, higher rates of respiratory illness, and increased cancer risks, trends documented by the Louisiana Tumor Registry and federal environmental justice screening tools. From extraction and production to disposal, plastic reinforces structural inequities that shape who bears the health costs of modern consumption.

Every single-use item, whether a bottle, a bag, or a Mardi Gras bead, participates in that system. The connection between consumption and harm is rarely visible in moments of celebration, but it becomes clear when examined through a public health lens.

Plastic-Free Friday situates that connection within everyday life. By encouraging individuals and communities to reduce plastic use one day a week, the campaign lowers barriers to participation while fostering habit formation and collective awareness. Behavioral science research shows that recurring, socially reinforced practices are more likely to produce sustained change than isolated actions. Plastic-Free Friday leverages cultural timing, community norms, and shared identity to reframe plastic reduction as a public health intervention rather than a personal moral test.

Legal Challenges Along the Gulf Coast

Along the Gulf Coast, particularly in Louisiana, residents and environmental organizations have turned to the courts to challenge permitting practices they argue ignore cumulative pollution and disproportionate health risks. Lawsuits supported by national groups, including Earthjustice, contest permit extensions for proposed petrochemical and plastics projects in St. James Parish, where residents already face elevated rates of respiratory illness and cancer.

Through small but consistent acts of restraint, reflection, and solidarity, communities across the Gulf Coast can reduce plastic exposure, protect public health, and support those most affected by the plastic economy.

Additional litigation seeks broader remedies. Residents of St. James Parish, represented by the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic, have filed civil rights lawsuits alleging discriminatory land-use practices and calling for a moratorium on new petrochemical development. A federal judge’s decision to allow key claims to proceed reflects increasing judicial scrutiny of cumulative environmental harm linked to industrial siting.

These cases emphasize the limits of addressing plastic pollution solely through waste management. Plastic-Free Friday complements, rather than replaces, legal and regulatory accountability by addressing demand and public awareness.

Culture Endures

Mardi Gras is sustained by continuity, creativity, and collective participation. Plastic pollution imposes a lasting burden on the environment and health systems, persisting long after its causes are forgotten.

Plastic-Free Friday offers a culturally grounded and scalable response. Through small but consistent acts of restraint, reflection, and solidarity, communities across the Gulf Coast can reduce plastic exposure, protect public health, and support those most affected by the plastic economy.

As environmental challenges intensify, the path forward may not always begin with a sweeping transformation. Sometimes it begins more simply, with a pause at the end of a season, a shared intention, and a decision to choose differently, together.