This Fourth of July marks the 250th birthday of a new kind of nation state — based not on ancestral ties to a land or on the territorial reach of monarchs, but on shared principles about the rights of citizens and the purpose of the state.

The Founding Fathers set forth those principles in the Declaration of Independence: “All men are created equal” and have “unalienable Rights [to] Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” To “secure these rights,” Jefferson wrote, the government must “derive just powers from the consent of the governed.”

America has come a long way over two and a half centuries, but today we face a grave challenge from within — and especially from our own leaders.

Of course, those founding ideas have always been more aspiration than reality. In a sense the Declaration of Independence was an invitation to struggle over the inequalities that marred the new nation: slavery and white supremacy, the subjugation of Native peoples, the legal subordination of women, the limitation of voting rights to the well-off.

In the course of 250 years, those struggles have achieved tremendous progress.

A bloody Civil War won what Lincoln called “a new birth of freedom.” Slavery was abolished and the Constitution amended to strengthen the government’s ability to safeguard the rights of African Americans and other people.

Women were eventually enfranchised and achieved formal legal equality. The lawless subordination and genocides of Native Americans were eventually recognized as the evils they are. The Civil Rights Movement repealed American apartheid and restored rights that had been stripped away.

But equality and democracy are openly contested today in a manner not seen in a century. Those who oppose the Founding Fathers’ fundamental values are using our government to attack equality and democracy. The good news is that tens of millions of Americans are fighting back.

America is and always has been a nation of diverse peoples — a multi-ethnic, multi-racial mix — and that is what the Framers and their successors had in mind.

Indeed, the Declaration of Independence complained that the King obstructed the “Naturalization of Foreigners” and failed to “encourage migration hither.” Enslavers brought millions of Africans to our shores, and America became their land as well. National expansion westward incorporated French, Spanish, and Mexican peoples into America, too.

But today the Trump regime seeks to erase the diversity essential to our national character. White supremacy and white nationalism are threads running through nearly every policy — from ending civil rights enforcement to discriminating against African-American military leaders, terminating refugee programs for nonwhites, slandering Haitians, and calling Hispanic migrants “the worst of the worst.”

Free elections, majority rule, and democracy itself are Trump’s targets — from his efforts to overturn the 2020 election to his unrelenting assault on voting rights and representation today.

Today, gerrymanders demanded by Trump are likely to eliminate one third of African-American members of Congress. The Supreme Court has erased the protections of the Voting Rights Act. Evidence-free voter suppression laws are making it more difficult for eligible voters to cast their ballots, while Trump seeks to outlaw voting by mail and his backers threaten to deploy ICE to intimidate midterm voters.

On this 250th anniversary of our first struggle for American freedom and democracy, Americans are fighting back against this war on what makes America America — in the voting booth, in the courts, in the streets, and in our hearts.

The lesson of 250 years: Democracy is hard won and may be easily lost unless we are vigilant in protecting it. The vision of our Founding Fathers depends on you, me, and all of us to safeguard it.

In one of its final decisions of the 2025-26 term, the Supreme Court of the United States solidified its place in the onslaught of eradicating trans rights, in a ruling that revolved largely around whether state bans of transgender athletes violated Title IX and the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

In response to the question placed before the court of whether states could implement bans on transgender athlete participation in girls’ and women’s sports, 6 of the 9 justices said, “Yes.”

Outside of patchy citations and contradicting interpretations of legal precedents, the rationale behind the majority opinion of the court, written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, echoed three key premises in the “sports context.” First, female bodies are inherently physiologically different from male bodies, which map onto sex-based athletic advantages for males. Second, regardless of these differences, girls and women should have equal opportunities to boys and men. And third, because of these differences and because of equal guarantees between the sexes, “competitive fairness” and “safety” look different for the female category as compared with the male category. Consequently, the only way to ensure equal sporting opportunities for girls and women is to keep transgender girls and women, or “biological males,” out of the female category.

Anti-transgender advocates in the broader “save women’s sports” movement frequently draw from these rationales, but also ignore the underlying deeply problematic and troubling considerations. On an ethical level, this approach undermines inclusive efforts and further stigmatizes transgender individuals. On a public health level, this reasoning deprives an exceptionally vulnerable population from enjoying the social, mental, and physical benefits from physical activity that should be enjoyed by all. And on a pragmatic level, these declarations overlook the minimal number of out transgender youth, of which even fewer participate in high school level sports.

Notably, of all the documented issues in and across women’s sports, there is no evidence demonstrating that transgender athletes, in any way, contribute to these inequalities.

Beyond parroting this tired transphobic logic, the majority opinion also points to other sports governing bodies, such as the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee, who have “drawn a biological line” to ensure safe and fair competition by banning transgender athletes. What Justice Kavanaugh omits, however, is that both organizations abruptly changed their policies following President Donald Trump’s Executive Order No. 14201, rather than in response to any scientific evidence or domination of transgender athletes (in response to a Senate hearing question about how many transgender athletes compete in the NCAA, NCAA President Charlie Baker infamously responded that of the more than 500,000 athletes competing, he knew of “only 10”).

While this ruling itself does not necessarily come as a surprise to those who have followed along with the US’ steady rollback of transgender rights, perhaps the most shocking element of the SCOTUS’ majority opinion is the brazen use of transphobic and misogynistic language in their ruling. “Biological males” and “biological females,” which are used 64 and 31 times respectively in Justice Kavanaugh’s 29-page majority opinion, are not rooted in medical terminology. Instead, these are terms that have become popularized and mobilized by anti-transgender advocates to reinforce a binary model of sex difference. This type of sex segregation is premised on patriarchal beliefs of male athletic superiority and female athletic inferiority, and has historically led to harmful body policing, racial discrimination, and erasure of intersex persons.

There is also reference to an “ongoing medical and scientific debate” surrounding whether transgender athletes maintain athletic and performative advantages after transitioning. What is absent from this brief discussion of science, however, is the concrete evidence that has shown the abundant health disparities experienced by the transgender community, particularly transgender youth. In 2024, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that, compared with their cisgender counterparts, transgender youth are more likely to report violence, victimization, unstable housing, and suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Similarly, a 2024 study in Nature Human Behavior found that anti-transgender state laws, including transgender sport participation bans, directly increased incidents of suicide attempts among transgender and nonbinary youth by as much as 72%.

The (mis)direction of attention to abstract ideas of “competitive fairness” and unsettled science also disregards the rampant incompliance of institutions with Title IX. In 2023, Florida State University (FSU) agreed to add women’s lacrosse as a varsity sport after threats of a sexual discrimination lawsuit from its women’s club lacrosse team. The threat came on the heels of an 18-month USA TODAY investigation, which revealed that the university was egregiously out of Title IX compliance. FSU was far from the exception, however, as the investigation exposed how hundreds of colleges and universities manipulated their roster numbers for women’s sports to create a mirage of compliance. These Title IX transgressions emerged under the backdrop of several systemic issues in women’s sports, such as the decline in the number of women coaches for women’s sports, consistent underfunding, disproportionate rates of harassment and abuse experienced by girls and women, and media underrepresentation. Notably, of all the documented issues in and across women’s sports, there is no evidence demonstrating that transgender athletes, in any way, contribute to these inequalities.

Despite these relevant considerations, and as Justice Sonia Sotomayer wrote in her dissent, “to the Court, the facts do not matter, even though the consequences are serious.”

In addition to the immediate impact on transgender athletes, this decision prompts questions around how girls’ and women’s sports will now be policed to “catch” athletes who do not fit within normative assumptions or understandings of female bodies. International sports governing organizations, such as World Athletics and the International Olympic Committee, have recently paired bans on transgender athlete participation with implementations of sex testing via chromosome tests, which has long been established as a fraught, unethical, and discriminatory practice.

The impacts on youth and high school sports are, and will be, more pronounced. Organizations at these levels lack the same resources and financial capacities, meaning that, for high school athletic associations, sex testing would most likely involve some type of genital or physical examination. While these might be conducted by medical personnel (though the Larry Nassar sex abuse scandal is evidence that this does not guarantee safeguarding minors), depending on access or finances, these could also be conducted by coaches, other parents, or officials, which prompts further questions and justified concerns surrounding training, confidentiality, consent, and protections of minors. These practices not only impact transgender athletes, but all athletes, regardless of gender identity or, to borrow from Justice Kavanaugh, “biological sex.”

The ruling closes with a half-hearted remark that “no student-athlete on either side of the issue, whether a biological female or transgender, deserves to be ostracized or vilified.” What the SCOTUS fails to recognize, however, is that their ruling is predicated on the misguided vilification of transgender athletes, with impacts that will continue to ostracize transgender people in sports and broader society.

There are more billionaires in my district and the surrounding area than almost any other Member of Congress. Within fifty miles of my district sits nearly a third of the entire American stock market—over $20 trillion in value—and five companies worth more than a trillion dollars each. For years, I have fought for fairness in our tax policy. If America has been good to you, you must do good for America.

There are 938 billionaires in America. Together they are worth $8.2 trillion. The bill I wrote with Bernie Sanders asks them for 5 percent every year.

This is a simple tax on wealth. Every year, this tax evaluates the total value of a billionaire’s holdings, their stock, their companies, their real estate, and taxes 5 percent of it. Not their income, which they have arranged to be almost nothing. The wealth itself. The same way a family pays property tax on a house whether or not they sell it. We conduct this assessment on individual’s estates already when they die.

This billionaire wealth tax will raise $4.4 trillion over a decade. This is enough to establish a $60,000 salary floor for every public school teacher in America, cap child care at 7 percent of a family’s income, and restore the $1 trillion stripped from Medicaid and the ACA, with a $3,000 check left over for every household under $150,000.

The California Fight

California legislators have proposed a state tax to target similar excessive wealth. A proposition on the November ballot would levy a one-time 5 percent tax on the wealth of the state’s 250 billionaires. Accrued over 5 years, it would raise $100 billion to save health care for 3 million Californians. I am backing it.

Opposing these landmark taxes, Governor Newsom has suggested a “minimum income tax”. The focus of this tax is billionaires’ reported income, as well as the loans they take out to live on. An income tax, not a wealth tax. That is the problem. Newsom goes after that income, but billionaires have very little. Most take no salary at all. They borrow against their stock, live on the loans, and pass the fortune to their children without ever selling a share. The wealth underneath goes untouched.

Bernie and I tax the wealth itself, and our bill raises $4.4 trillion. Newsom’s tax on these borrowed assets only raises 1/44th of that. That’s why the tech oligarchs support Newsom’s proposal. They hope they can trick folks into making the issue go away.

Same billionaires, forty-four times the revenue from Bernie and I’s proposal compared to Newsom’s.

Tax what they own, not what they report.

No Capital Flight

I was criticized for the bill, as well as my support of California’s proposed Billionaire Tax. Many said that the wealth flight from California would devastate our economy. They were wrong. In Q1 of 2026, California received more venture capital investment than the rest of the country combined. Then the billionaires spent millions propping up my primary challenger. He received 6 percent of the vote.

Tax over $50 million

And the tax should not stop at billionaires, it must reach centimillionaires. The tax has to reach all fortunes $50 million and up, and one already does. Every year it has been introduced, I have cosponsored the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act. It starts at $50 million: 2 percent a year on wealth above that line, And it reaches the money inside irrevocable trusts, taxed to the grantor who set them up. Moving a fortune into a trust should not take it off the books from a wealth tax.

Wealth Taxes are the Moral Test of Our Time

Supporters are right to call the fight in California the reverse Proposition 13 of our generation. In 1978, California voted for Prop 13 to cap property taxes, and that anti-tax revolt carried Ronald Reagan to the presidency two years later. This is that revolt in reverse: instead of capping taxes on property, we are taxing the extreme wealth at the top. This is a philosophical fight, and California is the test case for the nation.

So the question is not complicated. Are we going to stand with the three million Californians about to lose their health care, or with the billionaire class that would rather we looked away? Are we the party of working people, or just the party of the donor class? Are we going to return to the party of FDR, or keep telling ourselves we need to do what the donors want?

Are we willing to tax extreme wealth, or only willing to talk about it?

I know my answer. We cannot have a nation where 938 people grow $1.5 trillion richer in a year while a teacher in my district takes a second job to cover rent.

Most of us associate Independence Day with celebration, from grandiose fireworks displays to backyard barbecues. The 250th anniversary of our nation’s founding, however, comes at a time when celebration alone is not enough. We have to remember what the first Independence Day was all about: refusing to accept an unaccountable monarch’s abuses of power and creating the foundation for a government that is run by and for the people.

The Declaration of Independence, at its core, was a watchdog report. Our nation was founded on a promise of accountability — and 250 years later, we must ask ourselves whether we’re keeping this promise.

After years of being subject to the whims of a singular ruler, our founders dared to ask the question: What does it look like to create a government that answers to the people it’s meant to serve? And thus, the framers signed the Declaration of Independence. Our nation’s most foundational text is literally a 27-count public accounting of one ruler’s abuses of power: taxation without consent, a military turned against civilians, obstruction of accountability institutions, and more.

We find ourselves on the precipice of returning to the very form of government Americans rebelled against 250 years ago.

Following this document, our founders then created the Constitution, outlining how the government should work and who it should work for. Rather than consolidate power in the hands of a few, it deliberately separated power across an executive branch that represents the nation as a whole, a legislative branch that represents the interests of individual communities, and a judicial branch that upholds the Constitution over any one party or politic.

Our personal freedoms, financial stability, community safety, and more depend on these accountability mechanisms working the way our founders intended. If an executive can singularly plunge our nation into a war that everyday people don’t want, we pay the price in lost family members and skyrocketing costs. If our judiciary decides to prioritize partisanship over the Constitution, we lose our ability to shape our own futures.

That is, unfortunately, exactly what we’re seeing play out today, and there is no shortage of examples. The Declaration of Independence may have centered on accountability, but in its first year alone, the Trump administration illegally fired nearly a quarter of the government’s inspectors general — the people tasked with combating waste, fraud, and abuse in federal agencies — and defunded the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE), which ensures these federal watchdogs have the resources they need to do their jobs effectively. Meanwhile, it decimated our merit-based civil service, replacing nonpartisan federal workers with partisan lapdogs.

Just as Americans rebelled against soldiers patrolling our communities in the 1700s, we have once again had to fight back against the deployment of the military to our cities. On the eve of our 250th birthday, troops trained for war are illegally occupying our nation’s Capitol, costing us more than $1 million a day.

After years of enduring a monarch who treated the U.S. colonies as a personal piggy bank, our founders created a republic meant to prevent leaders from using their power of office to amass personal wealth. But today, we’re seeing lawmakers on both sides of the aisle benefit from insider trading; top White House advisors holding stock in companies profiting from the administration’s own policies, and major government contractors gifting massive sums to the lawmakers who oversee their work.

The challenges we face today are urgent, but they are not new. The pillars of our democracy have been tested since our nation’s founding, and they have remained standing only because regular people have risen, time and again, to hold power to account.

And it’s not just the executive branch eroding these protections. Congress, too, has abdicated its watchdog responsibilities; up until this month, it failed to exert its constitutional war powers to put an end to the president’s illegal war. It has time and again ceded the power of the purse —which belongs “the people’s branch” for a clear reason — to the administration. to the administration.

In short, we are seeing a small but powerful group of public officials use their positions to destroy the accountability mechanisms that make our government work for us so that they can rule with impunity. We find ourselves on the precipice of returning to the very form of government Americans rebelled against 250 years ago.

But just as the founders fought against the monarchy over two centuries ago, we can fight back against these latest attempts to take power away from the people. That means demanding Congress take back its constitutional powers — from its warmaking authority to its power of the purse — so that these critical, life-changing decisions don’t rest with a singular leader. It means passing legislation to restore protections for a non-partisan civil service and provide our inspectors general the independence and resources they need to make agencies accountable and effective. It means ensuring public officials institute policies based on the needs of the people and not their own bottom line.

We know that, in spite of our differences, we are united in a belief that our government should be responsive to our needs. We keep this belief alive not through sentiment alone, but with our actions.

The challenges we face today are urgent, but they are not new. The pillars of our democracy have been tested since our nation’s founding, and they have remained standing only because regular people have risen, time and again, to hold power to account. On our 250th anniversary, celebrating our nation is not enough — we must honor the founders by taking action to uphold the promise of accountability laid out in our founding documents.

In 1776. Tom Paine wrote: "We have it in our power to begin the world over again."

Today, we are in the throes of another deep crisis.

The United States of America has lost its way. The fundamental premise of our founding, the rejection of tyranny—the focus of Common Sense, the pamphlet which sparked the popular revolution of 1776-1783—has been abandoned.

Part 1: Common Sense Revisited

Today, we are ruled by a tyrant, a President whose criminality and drive for self-gain has obliterated the Constitution’s restrictions on one-man rule—aided throughout by cowering lackeys in Congress and justices of the courts who value their status over the sovereignty of the people.

The history of the past 250 years shows that significant social change, the type we need now—where real power and wealth are redistributed to the people, away from elites—only takes place in the wake of a crisis: witness 1776, the Civil War, America’s response to the great depression, and after WWII.

Now, we certainly have our crisis.

It’s time to get our act together, the center stage of history is waiting.

What Tom Paine observed in early 1776 is even more true today: “The cause of America is in great measure the cause of all mankind.”

This portrait of Thomas Paine was painted by Laurent Dabos around 1792. (Image source: Wikipedia)

Paine inspired Americans to leave the British Empire with the prospect not only of dignity through self-rule, but also more power and prosperity—which, in turn, inspired the French, and the Haitians, and thus the entire world.

Now, our crisis is everyone’s crisis. For the past eighty years, America has been the country at the heart of a global system of nations and economy.

The people must mobilize—both to reclaim our sovereignty and keep alive the unrivaled promise of America.

Now the people of the world watch in dismay and disbelief, as the dynamics of our internal disfunction destroy the beacon of democracy and popular sovereignty. Yet, no other nation, no other people, are stepping up to remedy the weakening of liberty and the rise of authoritarianism. Power dynamics being as they are, it’s hard to see how they could.

It’s up to us, the people of the United States: "These are the times that try men's souls."

An America as great as its promise is right over the horizon.

It’s been there since the inception (“All men are created equal…”). The problem is that no one ever reaches the horizon, it continually recedes.

But now is not the time to address riddles; or develop a nuanced explanation of the betrayals of American history.

Now is the time for Common Sense, of the Tom Paine variety. Revolutionary Common Sense.

Looking through that lens, it’s clear why the idea of America’s unfulfilled promise is so salient at this moment.

America’s current crisis is rooted in the public’s deep dissatisfaction with the direction of our society and country, which has been consistent since the 2007-08 financial crisis and the ensuing Great Recession.

Trumpian authoritarianism perfectly reflects the political interests of a wealthy elite: democracy must be suffocated, lest the dissatisfied masses interfere with their “right” to run the world that they own.

This sentiment is compounded by an even greater lack of faith in politicians to turn things around; especially now that one of the two major political figures who openly acknowledged these problems and promised a remedy (“Make America Great Again”) has been exposed before the whole world as a con man motivated by lining his pockets and dodging the law—but not before doing unprecedented damage to our constitutional democratic republic, delivering us to the precipice…

The authoritarians currently control most of the levers of power; have the backing of the wealthiest oligarchs the world has ever known; a powerful propaganda machine whirring 24/7 and they have no compunction about stealing elections. If they triumph in either November 2026 or ’28, it’s game over.

So, what will bring us back from the edge?

Tom Paine himself has the answer. The people must mobilize—both to reclaim our sovereignty and keep alive the unrivaled promise of America.

But no one will mobilize for a promise that is continually deferred.

We must release the “Promise of America” from its metaphorical exile over the horizon—and make this goal the attainable centerpiece of our politics (updated, of course, for 2026).

Indeed! Like Paine, we must think like revolutionaries. We are going to make something happen that is new in all of human history. We are on the precipice of creating the world’s first successful multi-ethnic democracy. With progressive leadership, we are going to create the greatest—the most just and prosperous—nation the world has ever known.

We are going to fulfill the promise of America!

Part 2: Common Sense Solution

(Common Sense so obvious they’ve yet to write an algorithm that can suppress it.)

As I said above, the American political system and, in fact, the entirety of American society are in the throes of a major crisis. Our constitutional democratic republic is fraying. Few could have imagined that this would be the case only three and a half decades after the United States had “won” The Cold War and established itself as the first truly unrivaled global hegemon.

There is no mystery about the cause. In poll after poll during every election cycle, one issue tops all others: The vast majority of Americans know the economy is not working for them. They also know that wasn’t always the case.

The current crisis is very much predicated upon the public’s awareness that once upon a time, not long ago, a slice of America’s tremendous wealth was set aside for them. Average Americans could pursue and achieve the “American Dream” through hard work. Indeed, evidence of this is everywhere to be seen across the American landscape. Today, however, this American dream of comfort, prosperity is out of reach for ever more Americans. At the same time, unprecedented wealth pours into the coffers of oligarchs and idle investors.

Working people are mad. They work non-stop hours in alienating jobs just to keep their heads above water. Their lives are slipping away; and they are condescendingly told by establishment politicians that the economy is strong. This anger will not abate until what they feel is their birthright is restored to them: prosperity and a sense of control, and stability in their lives.

Trumpian authoritarianism perfectly reflects the political interests of a wealthy elite: democracy must be suffocated, lest the dissatisfied masses interfere with their “right” to run the world that they own.

But people overwhelmingly want democracy. They understand that without it, there’s no prospect of building a society that respects them and serves the interests of the working person.

Working people are mad.

One thing is clear: either a shift happens in the economy such that it once again lifts average households and holds promise for all Americans—or the country will remain riveted by crisis. The era of post-war prosperity, the American dream of owning a suburban house, was too real and lasted too long, impacting too many people—that it can’t be erased from the collective American mind. Nothing less is acceptable.

Only the progressive agenda promises to deliver what the people want and need.

The “neoliberal” (market based) political consensus that sees all of the economy as a commodity to be bought and sold, collapsed in 2016, with the rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Since that time, three political tendencies have vied for power in America’s two-party system:

• The Neo-Fascist Right: Represented by the now-dominant Trump wing of the Republican Party.
• The Neoliberal Center: Ranging from the defunct Romney wing of the GOP to the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party. These “conservatives” seek to maintain a failed status quo.
• The Progressive Left: Often referred to as Rooseveltian, Social Democratic, or Democratic Socialist.

Of the three, only this left alternative has a program designed to deliver for the American people: the re-establishment of a middle-class-centric social order.

This desire refers back to post-World War II America; and what historian Gary Gerstle refers to as the “New Deal Order.” By the 1970s, the countries that adopted this model were the wealthiest and most equitable in human history.

The conclusion we can draw from this: only one macro-economic model has a proven track record of delivering the broadly prosperous middle class society, in which the “American Dream’ is readily attainable for all people willing to make a standard contribution to the social weal—that is, work one full time job (with full benefits and guaranteed vacation time!). This model was introduced to the world by FDR and Frances Perkins, codified in the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes, and bolstered by a strong union movement. It used government spending to fill the gaps where the market failed to deliver social necessities to all people; and it deployed state power to regulate business and protect the population from the excesses and imbalances of capitalism. The model was developed in democratic societies and proved conducive to strengthening democracy.

In contrast, the neoliberal model that followed the era of the “New Deal/Keynesian” consensus, was grounded by the central principal that the market knows best. Regulations were weakened (except when they served big business) and more decisions were placed in private hands. The result? Wealth and power flowed upward to the rich. The “Neoliberal Order,” has failed over the past 45 years to bring our society into that realm of prosperity. Rather, it has diminished the middle class and weakened the welfare of the general population while siphoning almost all the wealth produced collectively into the coffers of an idle investor class.

The electorate rebelled against the political status quo in 2016 with Sanders on the left and Trump on the right pulling apart what had been a bi-partisan neoliberal consensus. Unfortunately, the wrong rebel candidate won, as Trump (for all of his bluster) has no intention of re-ordering the economy away from the interests of the investor class—and the economic and political power of the elite has become only more concentrated during his two administrations… and public dissatisfaction has reached fever pitch.

We must not pull any punches. Here’s the truth:

The public will remain dissatisfied and our society in a dangerous crisis until a President and Congress sets a new course—one that is, in fact, an old course, albeit adjusted for the 21st Century—and a broadly social democratic FDR-inspired social contract is re-implemented nationally.

No other set of policies has worked to generate such a prosperous society with aggregate wealth justly-distributed among the population. There is no other model that will deliver what Americas want and expect as citizens of the wealthiest country in the world.

What should such a program look like in contemporary America?

At PDA, we advocate for a 21st Century Economic Bill of Rights. We demand universal “rights” for all, not “entitlements.” While liberals may see housing, education, and food as entitlements, we understand they are fundamental rights. Polling shows that every one of these rights has majority support amongst the American public.

We also focus on five “big costs” that destroy household balance sheets: Childcare, Housing, Higher Education, Healthcare and high-interest debt. The market will not adequately address these; they require regulation and public policy. They require political will.

Furthermore, we address poverty, to alleviate it and then eliminate it. Almost all of the world’s wealthy countries have low-to-no poverty with a large prosperous middle class; and all of the nations (not on the Arabian peninsula) that fit this description are healthy democracies. In fact, all of these countries were the strongest allies of the United States during the cold war: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and all of Western Europe including the UK. This is not a coincidence. Their shared economic model was initially developed in the 1930s in a democracy: the United States.

Tellingly, no other countries, not even China, has achieved the average level of household wealth as these countries (or even come close) during the entire neoliberal era. That’s because only one economic model can develop and sustain this level of general prosperity: the FDR/Keynes/Social Democratic/Democratic Socialist model.

Lastly, let’s not fall for the nonsense put forth by neoliberal ideologues that progressive Keynesian economics won’t work in the mid-21st century. None of the other prosperous democracies, not even the UK, were as transformed by neoliberalism as the United States. Sure, governments across the world adjusted to a global economic order defined by market fundamentalist principles, but their populations consistently voted to protect and maintain programs established during the post-war era of social democratic dominance. These programs continue to define the social fabric of all the world’s other prosperous democracies.

America will remain a society in decline, consumed by crises and prayed upon by demagogues until the national economy is once again organized in the interests of working people. This can only be achieved successfully through the implementation of an FDR/Keynesian/Democratic Socialist-inspired template of policies for the 21st Century.

Once the American people understand this, they will demand nothing less. The task for progressives is clear.

Thomas Paine’s path—to the revolutionary fulfillment of an America as great as its promise—lays ahead.

Part 3: Common Sense Strategy

So, pray tell, how are we going to alter the entire American economy so that it no longer serves the wealthy few, but delivers prosperity for the many; saving our democracy in the process?

The answer is simple: the same way we did before.

In the 1930s and ‘40s, with the threat of fascism looming, the Democratic Party was transformed by the mass entry of workers in coordination with the labor movement. Under FDR’s and Francis Perkins’ leadership, the Democratic Party’s New Deal policies redesigned the entire American economy. After the war, these policies provided the foundation for unprecedented affluence, defined by the growth of the largest and most prosperous middle class in human history

We must take over and transform the Democratic Party.

There are two central facts about the Democratic Party that everyone must understand if our democratic republic is going to survive President Donald Trump’s authoritarian counterrevolution:

1. The Democratic Party is the only institution in our society with the breadth and scale to defeat and vanquish Trumpism
2. The Democratic Party, as currently configured, has proven incapable of doing this.

Fortunately, the Democratic Party is a malleable institution. Winning control of one of America’s two major parties is the opportunity we need to redesign the economy so it serves the people, to build an America as great as its promise and fulfill Thomas Paine’s vision for a revolutionary country defined by freedom and equality for all.

There’s still a long way to go. Our opponents have the money, but we have the people.

We can get this done. The proof is in the polling. Ever since the 2024 general election, the Democratic Party has shattered records with astonishingly low approval ratings. At the very same time the Democrats are polling way ahead of the Republicans in relation to the upcoming 2026 midterms. This may seem contradictory, but it’s not. The public understands the necessity of defeating Trump’s GOP, which represents a mortal threat to our republic; and they will use the only instrument available to them to defeat MAGA, the Democratic Party, which at least supports the constitution.

This doesn’t negate the fact that the public loathes the centrist faction that has defined the Democratic Party in recent decades. Under their leadership, the Democratic Party has consistently gaslit the public: claiming to be with the people but serving the status quo; offering, at best, tiny incremental improvements, while imposing “necessary” austerity just as frequently. Furthermore, while a centrist-led Democratic Party has shown it can win narrow victories over Trump’s GOP, these have only amounted to temporary setbacks. After a few years of unsatisfactory Democratic governance, the fascists come roaring back

In contrast, the centrist’s nemesis, Bernie Sanders, consistently ranks as the most popular politician in the country. This is not due to his rakish charm, but rather his unwavering commitment to a progressive agenda, which has overwhelming support among Democrats and majority support among the general public.

So, how do we Achieve what the people want, and wrest control of the Democratic Party from a historically anachronistic, but deeply entrenched and well-funded dominant faction that serves the interests of the elite and their courtiers?

Before addressing that, let’s backtrack briefly to clarify why the progressive takeover and transformation of the Democratic Party is a historical necessity if we’re going to salvage our democracy and truly Make America as Great as its promise. Two Reasons:

1. For better or for worse, we live in a two-party political system.

Since 1946 there have been over 17,000 elections for the US House of Representatives. How many have been won by a third-party candidate? Zero.

In the US Senate, there have been two third party candidates elected: William F Buckley’s brother, James L Buckley, in 1970 on the New York Conservative line (usually a fusion Party); and Joe Lieberman, founding member of the Connecticut for Lieberman Party.

The record is similar in statewide and local elections, where there have literally been millions of contests since WWII. The number of third-party victories is infinitesimal, less than one-tenth of 1%.

Now that Trump’s Republican Party is openly embracing a Putin-like evisceration of democracy and elite accountability—effectively destroying our constitutional republic—there’s even less tolerance for third party adventurism, or anything that splits the Democratic Party vote.

Third Partyism in the United States is, at best, an utter waste of time and energy; at worst, left-wing third parties facilitate the rise of the right—both by siphoning votes away from Democrats, and by drawing well-intentioned progressives away from participating in politics that actually make a difference.

2. This is unequivocally true for a very simple reason: The rules and regulations that govern our society are still, to this day, determined by our elected officials, who are either Democrats or Republicans.

Let’s be clear what that means. At the federal level, Congress passes legislation, the President signs it into law, the courts uphold the law and law enforcement ensures its implementation.

Movement activism, no matter how powerful, cannot change the law or create public policy—both require elected officials passing legislation.

From the 1970s through to the rise of the new progressive movement with Bernie Sanders campaign in 2016, this reality was somehow lost on progressives. Resources poured into single issue advocacy campaigns; very little into electing progressive candidates. From addressing the climate emergency to reforming law enforcement to many other progressive causes, popular support grew substantially, but very little changed. There were too few progressive politicians in place to make that change a reality.

The American people want change. Trump is an utter charlatan, and the centrists are empty suits. It’s time for progressives to step onto the stage of history; and do what’s necessary to deliver change.

Either progressives win control of the Democratic Party or we’re lost.

So, how to proceed? There are two main fronts where the battle for the soul of the Democratic Party will take place: inside the Party apparatus; and in primary elections. These two fronts are distinct but inter-related, success will require victory in both.

There is much confusion among the public about the role and authority of the Democratic National Committee and the ruling bodies of the State Democratic Parties. Oftentimes, the DNC gets blamed for the Party’s milquetoast policies, but the Democratic Party is not a parliamentary party, in which its candidates are expected to adhere to the platform. Rather, Democratic candidates determine their own policy priorities. Thus, the Party’s political identity is defined by its leading elected officials more than by the platform deliberations at Party meetings.

So, what does the Party apparatus do and why is it important?

The party platform and official resolutions are not entirely insignificant, and they could be used to greater effect. If progressives get the upper hand at the DNC or at the state level they can do more to promote the platform to help establish progressive candidates as the true Democrats in the minds of voters.

Similarly, a progressive Democratic Party would flip the endorsement script and start endorsing progressive candidates over centrist opponents in primaries.

The party’s governing bodies make the rules for how it operates. Rule changes can impact every facet of the Party, transforming it from a party dominated by inaccessible elites, into one that is responsive to the interests of poor, working- and middle- class Americans.

Right now, there is a battle raging inside the party over the role of money in primary elections. Progressives are calling for its prohibition. In recent years, progressive candidates have narrowly lost numerous elections that they were poised to win until massive tranches of dark money poured into their districts to fund an avalanche of propaganda in support of their conservative opponents.

While the party can do little about money spent to influence general elections (other than support measures like Hawaii’s Act 11) there are a variety of measures that the Democratic Party can take to limit, or eliminate, the influence of “big money” in its own primaries.

The public, once again, agrees with progressives on this. If Democrats become known as the party that has honest primaries, free of big money influence, they will be rewarded in the general election.

None of these positive changes are possible unless progressive activists move into the Party, become the new majority and change it from within.

Most of the state parties, while not exactly hollow shells, have low-to-very low participation. Given the groundswell of enthusiasm for the progressive movement across the country, we should be able to overwhelm the centrists with our numbers. Since the state parties, in turn, elect the Majority of the DNC’s members, progressive leadership at the national level will follow.

However, don’t expect a cakewalk. There was a wave of Democratic Party entryism after the 2016 Sanders campaign. While this led to progressives becoming the dominant faction in a few states, most progressives were unwelcome and were rebuffed by the established leadership.

Progressives can expect the same reception now, so we must learn from our experience. The key will be maintaining coordination among progressives entering into the party at the local, state and national level. This means consistently “huddling up,” sharing experiences with each other, understanding what works and what doesn’t, and most importantly re-enforcing each other and maintaining solidarity. I called this the “Outside/Inside” strategy in an article I wrote last year. The effort in 2016-17 showed that progressives who enter into the Party will benefit from being part of a well-coordinated team that understands, and is motivated by, the importance of their mission: winning control over one of America’s two national parties so that the people can take back control of our society from the oligarchs.

That brings us to the other front, the one that defines the Democratic Party for the public: who are its elected officials.

First, it must be said, for all of the problems with America’s electoral system—and as Trump and his minions work daily to further pervert our democracy—the country does have an “extra layer” of democracy rarely found in other countries: the open primaries in the two dominant parties. Most progressives I know gripe about the two party system, and praise the multitude of parties in the world’s other “liberal” representative democracies. But almost none of those parties have open primaries where the public (not party members, or more frequently party committees) determines the candidate that will run in the general election.

Now is the time for progressives to recognize our power and mobilize.

Primaries provide a real opportunity to reset the party every two years and totally transform it within six years. This is the opportunity we must seize.

Detractors of the two party system will point to how the Democratic Party establishment gamed the system to block Bernie Sanders path to the nomination in both 2016 and 2020. Yes, major shenanigans took place both years, but this is why coordinated Party entryism goes hand-in-hand with electing candidates that reflect the interests of working people—we can make sure there’s a level playing field.

The same is true for eliminating the primary instrument the establishment uses to defeat competitive progressives: big money. The only way that we can contain, and then eliminate, the influence of big money in Democratic Party primaries in a reasonable time frame is also through mass entryism into the Party to change its internal rules.

There is another barrier to electoral success that progressives must address: the frequent occurrence of too many progressive challengers running in the same primary race. This problem has resulted in electoral losses in districts where the combined vote for progressive candidates exceeded 50%. We need to develop a clear and fair mechanism through which progressives unify behind one candidate in every primary in every race across the country. This may seem like a stretch, but it should be easy to achieve through greater coordination between the national mass-membership organizations that endorse candidates such as Progressive Democrats of America (PDA), Justice Democrats, Our Revolution, Progressive Change Committee (PCCC), People’s Action, Popular Democracy, Democratic Socialists of America, and others.

This unified front, getting behind candidates across the entire country, will have the added benefit of alerting voters that wherever they live there will be a strong progressive candidate on the ballot. This will further nationalize the contest between the do-nothing centrists and progressives committed to solving (not just “addressing”) the problems faced by poor, working- and middle-class Americans. That is a contest progressives will win.

Gaining control of the party apparatus and racking up wins in the primaries are both about building power. With each victory more people will feel empowered. Together, we will become strong enough to change and renew the most influential country in the world, setting it back on the path to where we can, in the words of Bob Dylan “breath the air around Tom Paine.”

Currently, Democratic voters overwhelmingly support progressive policy positions, but the lion’s share of elected Democrats are establishment centrists. Fortunately, progressives have the momentum now, buttressed by a series of high-profile victories in the 2026 primaries. There’s still a long way to go. Our opponents have the money, but we have the people.

It is not in numbers, but in unity, that our great strength lies; yet our present numbers are sufficient to repel the force of all the world. —Thomas Paine, Common Sense

Now is the time for progressives to recognize our power and mobilize. Our movement is strong, our policies are popular, we can change American society for the better, empowering people and improving their lives, revitalizing our democracy in the process—but to achieve any or all of this, we need the Democratic Party. No other institution, no other vehicle has the capacity to deliver what needs to be delivered—but the Party must be transformed to succeed. The centrist-led Democratic Party has failed to vanquish Trumpism.

If progressives enter the party en masse in a coordinated manner and unify behind one progressive candidate in primaries across the country, we can have a Democratic Party that serves the interests of the people by 2028.

We are right on time to beat back authoritarianism, enact a popular ground-breaking social contract and renew faith in the American project—much like 96 years earlier, and the revolutionary spirit of 1776.

Coda: Applied Common Sense

Progressives must win the battle for the soul of the Democratic Party.

At this hour in our history, if the party remains dominated by its conservative neoliberal faction, an increasingly desperate public will seek an alternative—and in our two party system, that means a “populist” anti-democratic authoritarian GOP.

We can’t fall into that trap again.

A Democratic Party that serves the interests of the poor, working- and middle-class Americans—aka the vast majority of the population—is an imperative.

Anyone who has read this far understands that the idea of shepherding millions of people into a status quo Democratic Party is anathema to your humble author and all sincere progressives. Any progressive campaign for mass entryism into the Party must be predicated on an unwavering commitment to transform the party. As a show of public accountability, we must loudly proclaim this as our goal, complete with detailed plans to achieve our ends. This transparency will weed out the charlatans from our ranks.

At the same time, Common Sense demands every progressive, every democratic socialist, anyone of good conscience who wants to live in a free, democratic society—indeed, everyone who holds out hope to live in an America fulfilling its potential as the world’s first multi-racial democracy—must unite behind the Democratic Party for the 2026 midterm general election in November.

Yes, that means partnering with the very same “moderates” who reject the progressive policies supported by the Democratic base, are servants to big money and are despised by the public—but they do support the constitutional democratic republic and oppose fascism.

We cannot and will not make the same mistake that anti-fascist forces made in Germany in 1933, by splitting the opposition. We must do what Americans did in 1933. Build the Democratic Party into a pro-working class super-majority party and transform the economy and by extension the country—and this time no one will be excluded.

So, progressives must fight like hell in the remaining primaries to defeat the centrist Democrats but come October we will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them to defeat the fascists (to the tunes of Woody Guthrie, Cardy B, Chuck D and Bad Bunny).

Then, on November 4th, we return to the task of taking over and transforming the Democratic Party so that we can win more than a temporary respite from fascism.

The 21st Century Economic Bill of Rights
Alan Minsky and Harvey J Kaye, Co-Authors

Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) proposes a 21st Century Economic Bill of Rights that will guarantee all people residing in the United States the right to the basic necessities of life regardless of their income, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or country of origin. Having a 21st Century Economic Bill of Rights will establish that all Americans are entitled to:

1. The right to a job that pays a living wage

2. The right to a voice in the workplace through a union and collective bargaining

3. The right to comprehensive quality health care

4. The right to a complete cost-free public education & broadband Internet

5. The right to decent, safe, affordable housing

6. The right to a clean environment and a secure planet

7. The right to a meaningful endowment of resources at birth and a secure retirement

8. The right to sound banking and financial services

9. The right to an equitable and economically fair justice system

10. The right to recreation & participation in public life

Ten Pillars of A Rural New Deal
Alan Minsky, Anthony Flaccavento and Dave Alba, Co-Authors

• Rebuild farm, forest & food economies
• Reward work & ensure livable wages
• Dismantle monopolies, empower & support local business
• Invest in community & regional infrastructure
• Re-build small town centers
• Cultivate self-reliance & resilience
• Invest in rural health care
• Fully fund rural schools
• Make rural & small town housing affordable
• Re-localize rural & small town banks

AMES, IOWA - JANUARY 25: Iowa voters listen as Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) speaks at the Ames City Auditorium on January 25, 2020 in Ames, Iowa. Iowa holds the state's caucuses in nine days on February 3.

Two hundred fifty years ago, Americans rejected monarchy. They rejected the idea that power should rest in the hands of one person, one family, or a distant ruling class. Instead, they enshrined an American promise: Legitimate power comes from the people.

Our Constitution opens with three words: “We the People.” As the country marks its 250th anniversary, that promise is worth remembering: In America, the people are supposed to be in charge.

Indeed, every day we see neighbors working together to improve their lives, their communities, and the country.

Earlier this year, hundreds of residents of San Marcos, Texas, packed into public meetings with concerns about a new data center. The Caldwell/Hays Examiner, a local paper, summarized the sentiment: “Electricity bills may soon spike while access to clean water diminishes drastically, given the unfathomably giant data center on its way.”

Do “We the People” govern ourselves, or are we ruled by concentrated power?

The local government rejected the unpopular project, and similar efforts are taking place across the country. In every place the message is clear: The people who live there, not a distant tech company, should be in charge of the community’s resources.

Rural communities are also taking on Big Ag. For example, Grassroots Organizing of Western Wisconsin brought residents together and passed local safeguards that limit threats from factory farms and support family farmers, clean water, and local infrastructure.

Iowans won a big victory against a global pesticide manufacturer. Knowing their state’s unusually high cancer rates, Iowa Farmers Union mobilized from the bottom up and blocked a law that would have shielded a billion-dollar corporation from accountability.

These patriotic efforts help fulfill the promise of “We the People.” They also show what’s possible when people come together to shape the decisions that affect our lives.

Unfortunately, few Americans feel in control right now. We face an unpredictable economy, cuts to healthcare, cruel and reckless Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, and attacks on mail-in ballots. Even that recent win in Iowa is in jeopardy—the Supreme Court just shielded the pesticide company from thousands of lawsuits brought by farmers and families who blame Roundup for their cancer.

These are all symptoms of a single disease: a nation where too much power rests with an elite few rather than with ordinary Americans. That’s exactly what researchers at Topos Partnership found. After listening to nearly 5,000 Americans, we heard one idea emerge: The people are supposed to be in charge.

The real story isn’t Democrats versus Republicans, or newcomers versus citizens, or some fabricated clash of civilizations. The real story—the one that unifies and energizes—is about who decides. Do “We the People” govern ourselves, or are we ruled by concentrated power?

Most Americans in our research recognize that the answer to that question is complicated, but also that being reminded of our defining story could help heal a fractured nation. As one moderate Colorado man expressed: “When everyday people don’t feel in charge, it creates anger, frustration, bitterness. But when everyday people feel like they’re having an impact, it creates a sense of belonging.”

When ordinary people organize, mobilize, and refuse to accept the dictates of an elite few, America moves forward. We’ve seen it in workers establishing safer workplaces and the civil rights movement expanding “who counts” in our country. We decided our nation belonged to us—and acted like it.

Let America’s history and recent successes be the inspiration. This July 4, the most patriotic thing we can do is remember whose hands this country is supposed to be in: ours. When we come together, the people are in charge.

From my living room window, I can see the yellow gate.

It stands on the main road linking several villages west of Bethlehem to the rest of the West Bank. To an outsider, it may look like an ordinary metal barrier. To those who live here, it has become something far more significant: a daily source of uncertainty that shapes routines, decisions, livelihoods, and even childhood memories.

My house sits beside the road. Every day, I watch people approach the gate not knowing what they will find. Will it be open? Closed? Will there be a checkpoint? Will they be delayed for minutes, hours, or forced to turn back altogether?

For many families, the first question of the morning is no longer about work, school schedules, or the weather. It is simple: "Is the gate open today?"

No child should become so familiar with a barrier that it earns a permanent place in his imagination.

Entire WhatsApp groups have emerged around that question alone. Residents exchange updates throughout the day. Someone reports that traffic is moving. Another warns of delays. A third shares a photo showing the road blocked.

These groups were not created to discuss politics. They exist because people need to know whether they can get to work, attend university classes, reach medical appointments, or visit relatives.

The gate has become a permanent presence in people's minds. When it closes completely, the scene changes instantly.

The drivers park their cars along the roadside and continue on foot. Students hurry toward schools and universities. Workers walk to avoid losing a day's wages. People carrying groceries, bags, or small children cross the distance that vehicles can no longer cover.

In the evening, many return the same way—tired, frustrated, and uncertain whether they will find the road open when it is time to go home.

Sometimes people ask permission to leave their cars near our house because they do not know when they will be able to retrieve them. On more than one occasion, I have watched strangers park, shoulder their belongings, and continue their journey on foot because there was no other option.

The visible inconvenience is easy to describe. The invisible burden is harder to measure.

What does it mean to organize your life around uncertainty? What happens when a routine trip to work, school, or a medical appointment becomes a daily calculation involving alternate routes, unexpected delays, and the possibility that the road ahead may suddenly close?

Over time, uncertainty settles into people's lives. It affects productivity, family plans, social commitments, and mental well-being. Conversations become dominated by road conditions and access restrictions. Schedules remain tentative. Even celebrations, weddings, and family gatherings are planned with the possibility of disruption in mind.

The impact extends far beyond transportation. It reshapes the way people think. And perhaps nowhere is that impact more visible than in the way children absorb the world around them. My son is 8 years old. Over the past months, he has drawn the gate more than 30 times. No one asked him to do so. No teacher assigned it. Yet the yellow gate keeps appearing in his drawings. Sometimes it is closed. Sometimes cars are waiting in front of it. Sometimes people are walking around it. Occasionally, there are figures standing nearby, watching.

Some of the drawings done by Mahmoud Ibrahim's son are shown.

At first, I barely noticed. Children draw what they see. But as the drawings accumulated, I began to pay attention. The same image returned again and again. A gate. A road. Waiting.

Children are supposed to fill their notebooks with football fields, superheroes, animals, friends, dreams, and imaginary adventures. Yet among my son's drawings, the gate had secured a permanent place. That realization stayed with me.

The true cost of restrictions is often discussed in terms of economics, mobility, or security. Those discussions matter. But there is another cost that receives far less attention: the amount of mental space occupied by obstacles that become part of everyday life.

When adults constantly discuss whether a road is open or closed, children listen. When plans are interrupted repeatedly, children notice. When uncertainty becomes normal, children absorb it as part of their understanding of how the world works.

The gate outside my window is made of metal. Yet its influence reaches far beyond the road it controls. It enters conversations around dinner tables. It dominates community WhatsApp groups. It influences work schedules, school attendance, and family visits. And, in my son's case, it appears repeatedly on sheets of paper scattered around our home.

Recently, I gathered several of his drawings and laid them side by side. There it was again: the yellow gate. In one picture it was closed. In another it stood across the road while cars waited. In a third, people walked around it.

I found myself asking a simple question: What would my son be drawing if the gate were not there? I do not know the answer. But I do know that no child should become so familiar with a barrier that it earns a permanent place in his imagination.

That is why I am writing this.

Not simply about a gate on a road near Bethlehem, but about how uncertainty seeps into daily life, settles into communities, and quietly shapes the memories of a generation growing up in its shadow.

Americans routinely dismiss engaging in diplomacy with their adversaries on the ground that their enemies cannot be trusted and that only force will work. Does it ever occur to us that that’s the way we are perceived overseas?

The post Everyone Knows appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

By Ralph Nader July 2, 2026 After progressives, including self-described Democratic Socialists, won numerous primary victories in New York and elsewhere, Trump launched a whopper of a lie, even by his crazed standards. He declared that the “communist” Democratic Socialists are “the biggest threat to our nation there is, maybe since our founding …. That…

This week, the Supreme Court dealt transgender Americans another devastating blow, upholding state bans on transgender athletes’ participation in girls' and women's sports. The decision represents the latest in a long series of attacks on trans lives, as we remain in the crosshairs of a manufactured culture war. The architects of these attacks usually wrap their bigotry in a familiar defense: “religious freedom.” They claim their faith compels them to legislate a strict, inflexible gender binary, and that any deviation from it is a threat to their religious liberty.

But as a trans Jew, and a leader of a major national Jewish organization, I have a question for them: What about my religious freedom? What about the freedom to live our Judaism?

My grandmother was born at home on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, spoke Yiddish as her first language, and was raised by immigrants who worked 12 hour physical jobs six days a week. She would not have known the phrase “gender identity” if her life depended on it. And yet, when I transitioned two decades ago, she did not hesitate. She took a deep breath, took a long look at me, decided it was still me she was seeing, and accepted me completely from that moment on.

When politicians attempt to ban gender-affirming care, bar trans kids from playing sports, and legally erase trans people, they are not protecting religious freedom. They are imposing Christian nationalism. Real religious freedom—the principle this country was founded on—only counts if it applies to all of us. Christian nationalists advocating against the rights of LGBTQ+ people are actively suppressing Judaism and other religions that don't neatly align with their theology.

We cannot let that vocal and well-funded Christian nationalist minority implement laws that endanger transgender people like me.

For years, the far-right has successfully monopolized the concept of religious liberty in this country, weaponizing it as a license to discriminate. But our past does not have to be our future. The theology they are attempting to encode into law is not a universal truth. In fact, it runs in direct opposition to my own religious tradition.

Judaism is a deeply embodied religion. It does not view the physical body as a prison, a shameful secret, or a rigid test of obedience; it delights in it. More than a thousand years before the advent of contemporary thinking about gender identity, the rabbis of the Talmud recognized seven different embodied genders. When faced with the reality of human diversity, they didn’t panic or attempt to legislate it out of existence. They acknowledged it, discussed it, and made space for it in Jewish law.

Today, the major streams of American Judaism, including the Reform, Reconstructionist, and Conservative movements, as well as plenty of Orthodox communities, explicitly affirm that being transgender is real, and healthy, and holy. And again, that affirmation is grounded in ancient theology and Jewish religious law.

At Bend the Arc, we organize progressive Jews because we understand attacks on trans people are a part of the authoritarian playbook. The very same political forces attempting to erase trans lives are the ones mainstreaming antisemitism, suppressing votes, abducting immigrants, and attacking reproductive freedom. They demand conformity because human diversity is a fundamental threat to their consolidation of power.

When I transitioned, my Jewish grandmother understood on a theological level that I was still me, and still made in the image of God. She also taught me that we do not abandon our people to appease bullies.

We cannot let a vocal and well-funded Christian nationalist minority dictate the narrative on religious freedom in America. We cannot let that vocal and well-funded Christian nationalist minority implement laws that endanger transgender people like me. LGBTQ+ people and everyone who loves us must wield our joy and pride every day as a weapon against Christian nationalism and authoritarianism, and we must stand unapologetically in our own traditions as we insist on living that joy in public.

My faith commands it. My humanity demands it. And our democracy depends on it.

How will we remember this Supreme Court term?

For Louisiana v. Callais, which demolished the 1965 Voting Rights Act. For near misses, too, as when the Constitution’s plain-language guarantee of birthright citizenship was recognized by only a bare majority of the justices. (As JD Vance crowed, that core protection is now “hanging by a thread.”)

I think the term may be remembered most as a time when the supermajority of very conservative, very pro-business justices bent the shape of American government. It was a power grab in legal garb, undermining Congress, granting presidents more authority, but with key decisions ultimately in the hands of the nine unelected officials now redesigning government.

In 2005, The New York Times Magazine published a story about a cadre of intense anti-government legal activists. They bemoaned “the Constitution in exile,” what they saw as an epic wrong turn in the 20th century. That was the era when Congress and presidents created expert independent agencies, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, to police Wall Street, and the Federal Trade Commission, to protect consumers. To most Americans, that was how we grew a modern, fair, prosperous economy. To those activists, it was all a terrible mistake.

A future president may be a populist progressive, now with new levers of power to address climate change or boost union power. To quote Justice Brett Kavanaugh, “What goes around comes around.”

One of the few adherents of this eccentric theory, the Times reported, was an unknown young federal judge named John Roberts. Soon he would become chief justice.

Trump v. Slaughter, announced on Monday, marked a key moment in Roberts’s long drive to write pro-business dogma into the Constitution. On this, Roberts is far from a Midwestern country club Republican cheerfully calling “balls and strikes.” This is not about wins or losses for Donald Trump. These justices have wanted to do this since Trump was cavorting at Studio 54.

Congress established the first independent agency, the Interstate Commerce Commission, to set railroad rates in the 1880s. Since then, laws created nearly 60 agencies to police the economy or serve as watchdogs over the government, and tried to wall them off a bit from political pressure and partisan politics.

Congress has now been blocked from imposing removal protections for the heads of most federal agencies, a critical bulwark against presidential meddling. Consider a consequential, complex current question: Could an effective new agency regulate artificial intelligence? The Slaughter ruling could make it considerably harder to insulate such a powerful body from political interference.

Of course, independent agencies are not a purely partisan issue. Over the course of American history, they have frustrated presidents of both parties, who want control of the sprawling federal bureaucracy.

The Slaughter ruling overturned a 1935 case, Humphrey’s Executor. William Humphrey was a reactionary and thoroughly unpleasant Federal Trade Commission member whom President Franklin D. Roosevelt wanted to fire. Humphrey kept going to work even after he was dismissed, then died while the legal challenge to pry him from his office was being heard. His heirs sued for his back pay.

The Supreme Court ruled that even FDR, at the peak of his power, could not fire grumpy old Mr. Humphrey. “That damn little case,” recalled FDR aide Robert Jackson (later a justice himself), “made Roosevelt madder at the court than any other decision... [He] thought they went out of their way to spite him personally.”

Slaughter is one of the most significant expressions of the pretentiously named “unitary executive theory.” This is the idea that because a single individual, the president, is elected to lead the executive branch, that means the whole executive branch serves at his whim. Of note, this case revolved around one aspect of it, firing of agency officials.

Indeed, the justices seemed to recognize the havoc their new doctrine would cause. On the same day, a different lineup of justices blocked Trump from firing Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook. The Fed, too, is an independent agency, signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson in the Progressive Era, but the rationale for independent central banking is well known. The Cook ruling mumbles about tradition and history, but the real answer for the divergent outcomes seemed to be, well, the Fed is just... different. (Of course, business interests revere the Fed and often loathe the FTC.)

A limited version of the unitary executive theory is not entirely crazy. We want a strong president able to guide the balky executive branch. But advocates have taken this idea to a dangerous extreme, turning it into a fancy cloak for an authoritarian executive. By their logic, if all federal employees work personally for a president, as if they were gardeners at Mar-a-Lago, that could demolish civil service protections and other rules that can keep government from being the instrument of executive whim.

Who knows how far this rhetoric of presidential power will go? Russell Vought, the White House budget director, says we live in a “post-constitutional time.” And in Trump v. United States, Roberts wrote that the president is “the only person who alone composes a branch of government.”

Policymakers now must grapple with the justices’ handiwork. How can we have strong inspectors general or independent military lawyers if a president can bark “you’re fired” at will? Can Congress step up by, say, giving the Government Accountability Office greater responsibility to police the executive branch? Such obscure questions will determine how government can work going forward. Necessary reforms can follow abuse and scandal. That’s what happened after Watergate. Now such safeguards must be designed in a world where the Supreme Court has supercharged presidential power.

Let’s not forget Donald Trump is a lame duck. (He is! Really!) A future president may be a populist progressive, now with new levers of power to address climate change or boost union power. To quote Justice Brett Kavanaugh, “What goes around comes around.” Of course, this court has also invented tools to stop policies it doesn’t like, such as the “major questions” doctrine it used to block Biden-era climate change rules. Stay tuned.

But it’s hard to escape the conclusion that this ruling will make government less effective, more chaotic, and more driven by politics and personality—steered there by a Supreme Court with too much power, now in thrall to an obscure and dangerous philosophy.

The Trump administration concluded a recent mineral deal with Kazakhstan that, not surprisingly, enriches not only President Donald Trump’s own family but that of his secretary of commerce, Howard Lutnick. Trump’s two eldest sons, part owners of Dominari Securities, are set to profit from the Kazakh tungsten deal. So is Cantor Fitzgerald, the investment firm run by Lutnick’s two sons.

As The New York Times pointed out in its investigation of the scheme, “Their sons were soon doing business with partners in a deal that their fathers were negotiating, continuing a pattern of self-enrichment in the second Trump administration that has few precedents in American history.”

The phrases “self-enrichment” and “few precedents” are interesting ways of characterizing this latest instance of the administration’s corruption. Isn’t self-enrichment a good thing, in the sense of profiting from your own hard work? By contrast, the article doesn’t mention the word “corruption” at all. Perhaps the Times is worried about getting hit by yet another Trump legal challenge (in October last year, Trump refiled a $15 billion defamation suit against the paper for its coverage of his 2024 presidential campaign).

There are indeed several precedents in American history for what Trump is doing. These previous corruption scandals—Credit Mobilier, Whiskey Ring, Teapot Dome—wrecked the reputations of presidents and cast long shadows over American politics. They also helped to produce the kind of safeguards that Trump is now destroying.

Foreign policy is a tool by which the administration levies a toll on any entity that has the temerity to be a country other than the United States.

As with much of Trump’s disrespect for norms, his corruption has been massive and largely in full view. The two outstanding questions are: Will Trump and company ever be held accountable for their graft and will this corruption have an enduring impact on political institutions in the United States?

Tracking the Damage

If scandalous behavior unfolds in full view of everyone, is it still a scandal? “Scandal” suggests something hidden, something whispered about, something revealed. Trump’s actions are full frontal. They are both brazen and matter-of-fact.

According to the Trump administration and its extended family, the money skimmed off the top of economic transactions is just smart politics. The administration has endeavored to negotiate every peace deal, trade agreement, investment arrangement, and mineral pact in such a way as to deliver Trump, his family, and their circle of close supporters a good chunk of change.

This is Trump’s interpretation of the American dream: Folks would be downright foolish not to profit from their position. All the great tycoons made their money, from railroads to AI, by being in the right place at the right time with the right amount of ruthlessness. In Trump’s case, however, he is using taxpayer money to cover the risk. And most the time, given the terms of the arrangement, there is hardly any risk because Trump is using his presidential power to game the system. That’s what he really means by the “art of the deal.” Trump only deals from a marked deck of cards.

The Center for American Progress runs Trump’s Take, which estimates that the president has received a little over $2.6 billion in cash and gifts since he took office in January 2025.

The graft is not secret, though sometimes the actual amounts involved are obscured by layers of complex finance. Trump’s recent mandatory financial disclosure offers some details. But thanks to a number of websites, it’s become quite easy to track in real time the growing amount of Trump’s slice of the pie.

The Center for American Progress runs Trump’s Take, which estimates that the president has received a little over $2.6 billion in cash and gifts since he took office in January 2025. Much of this money has come from various crypto schemes, including the Trump meme coin, but also such dubious ventures as the documentary about Melania Trump and a number of legal settlements (more colloquially known as shakedowns). Corruption Counter puts the value at $2.2 billion and includes such recent items as the $100 million savings for Trump from the recent effort to bar the Internal Revenue Service from auditing the president. (Courts blocked the overall $1.8 billion “settlement fund,” but the Justice Department is upholding the IRS amnesty.)

If you want to keep track just of the crypto deals, the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee maintain the Trump Family Digital Grift Wealth Tracker. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) keeps his own list, which highlights the insider trading around the Iran War and a defense contract with Dell after the president invested in the company. David Kirkpatrick, at The New Yorker, has been keeping a running total of Trump’s ballooning assets. In January, he updated his total to $4 billion, which details, among other things, the Gulf money flowing into Trump pockets. Meanwhile, at RepresentUS, you can find a timeline of shady deals, from the no-bid contract to a presidential supporter for the Reflecting Pool “upgrade” to an Air Force contract for drones awarded to a company backed by Trump’s eldest sons.

In May, Campaign Legal Center published a rundown of influence peddling—what Trump supporters get in return for their contributions—that includes Elon Musk’s DOGE appointment, Immigration and Customs Enforcement contracts for the Trump-supporting GEO Group, and the cessation of various lawsuits for Trump-friendly entities (Gemini, Robinhood, Coinbase). Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has its own tracker that keeps up with the number of major events held at Trump’s properties and the number of Trump-branded foreign projects developed during his second term (with a new Trump Tower planned for Tbilisi, Georgia, it’s now up to 25).

Sometimes it seems as though Trump administration policy is just a front for making money, much as a shell company provides a legitimate façade for organized crime.

Getting His Percentage

One of the sticking points in the current war with Iran is the latter’s attempt to control shipping in and out of the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran wants to charge a toll on ships passing through the Strait. Given that the strait is an international waterway—and not a canal—Iran’s bid violates international law.

Trump has opposed Iran’s gambit not so much because it violates the Law of the Seas but because Iran has borrowed a page from the Trump playbook. How dare they try to trump Trump! Indeed, the president has threatened a toll of his own if the ceasefire doesn’t hold: a take of 20% of regional revenues if the United States becomes “the guardian of the Middle East” by using military force to protect shipping in the region.

Foreign policy is a tool by which the administration levies a toll on any entity that has the temerity to be a country other than the United States. The Kazakh deal on tungsten is but one of several ways that the administration has cashed in on critical minerals. The Trump sons have a financial interest in 14 companies working with the US government on mineral deals that involve nearly $9 billion in federal funding. This includes $620 million Pentagon loan, fast-tracked by the White House, to a North Carolina rare-earth magnet company in which Donald Trump Jr.’s venture capital firm has invested. Several Trump associates stand to gain from any future deal involving Greenland minerals.

Trump has used tariffs to extract various concessions. In some cases, countries have responded by appealing to Trump’s self-interest. Vietnam, for instance, approved a Trump golf course and received a tariff reduction. Switzerland also enjoyed such treatment when it gifted Trump “a special Rolex desktop clock, a 1-kilogram personalized gold bar, and loads of flattery.” The message is clear: US trade policy is for sale.

Even peace agreements are not immune from the Trump treatment. The Gaza peace deal offers potentially lucrative opportunities for outside businesses to profit from the reconstruction of the rubble-strewn area. “Everybody and their brother is trying to get a piece of this,” one long-time contractor told The Guardian. “People are treating this like another Iraq or Afghanistan. And they’re trying to get, you know, rich off of it.” The executive board of Trump’s Board of Peace is dominated by titans of industry—Marc Rowan, Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner—all salivating at the prospect of using their insider position to profit (though, with progress stalled on the ground, the Board of Peace may end up doing corruption the old-fashioned way by just siphoning off the money up front and granting itself legal immunity to escape the consequences).

The deal that created a “Trump corridor” between Armenia and Azerbaijan was similarly projected to provide commercial opportunities to Trump cronies. But it has yet to get off the ground, another victim of Trump’s propensity to make a big splash with his agreements and neglect to secure the follow-through. Trump’s peace deal with Russia, negotiated on the backs of the Ukrainians, would have also meant a huge windfall for Trump cronies—in opportunities for reconstruction contracts in Ukraine and even larger profits for the commercial reengagement with Russia.

In The Atlantic, several months after Trump took office, David Frum summed up the corrupt activities of the administration this way:

Nothing like this has been attempted or even imagined in the history of the American presidency. Throw away the history books; discard feeble comparisons to scandals of the past. There is no analogy with any previous action by any past president. The brazenness of the self-enrichment resembles nothing seen in any earlier White House. This is American corruption on the scale of a post-Soviet republic or a postcolonial African dictatorship.

Frum served in the George W. Bush White House. A NeverTrumper, he nevertheless knows a little something about corrupt conservatives. Upwards of $20 billion of post-war reconstruction aid for Iraq disappeared into the ether of corruption (and the pockets of US firms, including Halliburton). Trump stands on the shoulders of giants.

Immunity and Impact

Donald Trump knows that he is a living, breathing violation of the law. That’s why he has gone to such lengths to ensure immunity—the Supreme Court decision providing presidents with immunity from criminal prosecution for their official acts, the attempt to secure exemption from IRS audits. Trump has also promised to pardon preemptively “everyone who has come within 200 feet of the Oval Office.”

Let’s tackle Trump first. His immunity is not absolute. First, it does not cover “unofficial acts.” Depending on how courts define this category, Trump (and certainly his family) could be prosecuted for corrupt business dealings that are deemed “private.” Second, immunity doesn’t apply if it can be demonstrated that criminal prosecution poses no “dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch.” That’s another tough one to parse, and it will probably fall to future courts to define. But if something is demonstrably corrupt, then it should by definition fall outside the legitimate authority and functions of the Executive Branch.

Trump has already used his broad powers to pardon the January 6 rioters and other malefactors, including 22 corrupt politicians. Trump cronies must look at this record and feel pretty safe from future prosecution.

Donald Trump knows that he is a living, breathing violation of the law.

But presidential pardons also have their limits. Such pardons can’t violate the Constitution or criminal law—though Trump has challenged these strictures—and they don’t cover future crimes. More to the point, Trump’s pardons only apply to federal prosecution. Individuals can still be tried in various states (and overseas if their misconduct took place in other countries).

The impact of Trump’s misconduct is directly related to this question of immunity. If the president and his coterie “get away with it,” then the corruption they initiated will be much harder to root out of political institutions. Unprosecuted acts can harden into precedents. Throwing Trump and company into prison would be satisfying. Ditto clawing back their ill-gotten gains. From the point of view of democracy, however, even a plea bargain in which the malefactors stay out of jail and pay a nominal penalty in exchange for pleading guilty would be a victory.

It’s best to think of Trump as an aberration, however much his behavior can be traced to past scandals, the authoritarian tendencies of previous presidents, and the oft-corrupt workings of American capitalism. Democracy, like any fiction, requires the willing suspension of disbelief. Trump’s truly an unbelievable character. Once he’s gone, it will be time to pretend that the monster has been vanquished and the rule of law restored. Only in this way will America escape its semiquincentennial with its clothing muddied but its presumably good intentions intact.

LIVE 9:00 am Eastern time, Streaming Anytime:

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

Today we discuss:

• Fireworks for this year’s July Fourth celebration are expected to cause hazardous levels of pollution around the National Mall and “very unhealthy” conditions in central D.C., according to internal National Park Service documents. The show, billed by the Trump administration as the largest pyrotechnic display in history, will include 850,000 fireworks in a roughly 40-minute show expected to start at 10:30 p.m. or 11 p.m. Combustion from large fireworks displays generates fine particulate matter, known as PM2.5. These small particles can penetrate deep into the heart and lungs, causing irritation and in some cases asthma attacks and other illnesses.

• Russia launches a large-scale missile and drone attack on Ukraine, targeting Kyiv and other regions across the country. Russia’s Defense Ministry said that it carried out a “massive strike using long-range precision air, land, and sea-based weapons and attack drones.” Moscow said the strikes targeted military-industrial facilities, fuel and energy complexes in Ukraine’s capital and the Kyiv region, as well as military airfields in the Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava, Cherkasy and Chernihiv regions.

• Ohio cities have canceled activities, opened cooling centers and made public transit more accessible as the blistering heat wave crawling across the eastern US appeared to be especially intense midweek over an area that stretched from Cincinnati to Cleveland. On Wednesday afternoon, it was 103 in Athens, 102 in Toledo and 113 just north of Columbus.

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As the United States approaches its 250th year as a nation, the festivities are widespread in DC. But even as Americans prepare to celebrate, the Trump administration is quietly working to expose some of our most treasured ocean places to harmful activities like mining, drilling, and industrial fishing.

We should be spending this anniversary lifting up our shared natural and cultural heritage. Instead, the Trump administration is spending this consequential year trashing the very idea of shared heritage by erasing history and selling out nature on land and sea. While there has been extensive coverage about how this erasure is playing out on land, the administration is also aggressively selling out our ocean heritage.

Having worked in the Biden administration and now both leading national conservation coalitions, we hear from communities across the country every day, who are trying to protect the ocean and coasts they love and depend on.

And what we hear is that communities don’t like what they are seeing from the Trump administration. They don’t want to be cut off from their own ocean backyards by corporate pollution. They don’t want dirty and destructive industry off their coasts. And they especially don’t want the Trump administration selling off public lands and waters to the highest bidder.

All of us who love the ocean have a chance now to be a part of the alliance to save its future.

In the Pacific Ocean, expedited permits for deep-sea mining make it easier to sell off the right to mine around the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, and American Samoa. Thousands of people in these US territories have made it clear that they oppose these mining ventures because these companies use unproven technology that jeopardizes their livelihoods. Our coalitions have engaged tens of thousands of people voicing their opposition, yet the administration has continued the process of selling off the seafloor to mining companies with little benefit to the communities that bear the risks.

The expansion of offshore oil and gas leases, which would open 34 new sales in waters off the coast of Alaska, California, and Florida, would also benefit just a handful of fossil fuel companies. In one fell swoop, they would sell out the climate; introduce the constant possible threat of an oil spill; and further threaten local fishing, recreation, and subsistence.

Reopening protected waters to industrial fishing is the same short-sighted story. Like our national parks on land, marine national monuments are protected as special places we safeguard for our children and grandchildren to enjoy. They are home to spectacular wildlife and important cultural heritage and history. However, Trump’s executive orders will lead to all of these monuments opening to industrial fishing—the largest rollback of protected areas in US history—endangering these special places and the diverse creatures therein.

Meanwhile, the federal workforce focused on public lands and waters has been decimated. If they weren’t fired through budget-slashing with the planning and accuracy of a 14-year-old playing laser tag, they quit to avoid carrying out unconscionable actions. Many of the staff who had relationships with communities are no longer in government service, replaced with corporate insiders.

These actions are as unpopular as they are destructive. Loving the ocean is as unique and universal as the American experience, and we relate to it in countless ways for sustenance, livelihoods, spiritual renewal, recreation, and more: the thrill of catching a fish for dinner, the magic of watching a whale breach, the way that just the smell of salty water can put us in a better mood. From the lush mangrove forests of the Florida Keys, to vibrant coral reefs of the central Pacific, to the rocky coastlines of New England, or the enchanting tidepools of the West Coast, there’s no reason to let the administration run roughshod over these simple, profound pleasures.

Collectively, we can push back on the Trump administration’s attack on the ocean. We’ve seen this administration abandon projects before, including the DOGE program. All of us who love the ocean have a chance now to be a part of the alliance to save its future.

For the last 250 years, past generations fought to protect our coasts and waters.

Now, it’s up to us to keep that tradition alive.

After musician after musician pulled out from President Donald Trump’s “Freedom 250” concert, he was left with Lee Greenwood, an opera tenor, a couple of military bands, and Kash Patel’s girlfriend. The anthem that made Greenwood a star, “God Bless the USA,” was written in 1985 during the height of the Cold War. It begins with the specter of loss—“If tomorrow—all the things were gone, I’d worked for all my life/ And I had to start all over with my children and my wife.” Then the wounds disappear before they’re felt: “I’d thank my lucky stars to be living here today/ Because the flag still stands for freedom and they can’t take that away.”

Ronald Reagan made the song his campaign theme while launching a new age of American inequality by systematically busting unions and cutting taxes for the wealthiest. Greenwood treats layoffs and the resulting toll on ordinary lives as a mere inconvenience. As the refrain shifts from violins and a church organ to a military march, he repeats, “I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free/ And I won’t forget the men who died who gave that right to me.”

Honoring those who died resonates powerfully. Those who risk taking bullets to defend our country deserve respect for their service and sacrifice. Yet this gives us no special grace over citizens of other lands. And doesn’t answer the question of whether or not it was necessary to put them in harms way to begin with. Because Greenwood says nothing about what freedom might demand of us, it becomes just an empty phrase, blessing all that our leaders may do, no matter how arrogant or destructive.

We were defending freedom in this view, when supporting dictators from Chile’s Augusto Pinochet to the Iranian Shah whose brutal rule laid the groundwork for the current theocracy and the war of choice that we hope has now finally ended. We’re supposedly defending freedom now as Trump cozies up to dictators like Russia's Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Recep Erdoğan, and Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman, and while Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents grab innocent people off America’s streets. When Greenwood sings, “There ain’t no doubt I love this land. God Bless the USA,” he never suggests what qualities of justice would redeem the love he declaims.

Hard as it is, we’re stronger for engaging the difficult questions about who we’ve been as a country and who we want to be.

Greenwood wrote the song after we invaded the 95,000-person country of Grenada, wanting to reflect “the spirit of America being proud.” Reagan made it his campaign theme, and Greenwood has been singing it at Republican rallies and conventions ever since. Trump calls it “the greatest hit of all time” and sold a “God Bless the USA Bible,” (printed in China) that contains the song. Because Greenwood says that just living in America makes us free, his version of patriotism gets reduced to signing a blank check for whatever our leaders choose to do. It’s a perfect match for this or any president who seeks to erase all limits on their power.

But Greenwood’s isn’t the sole patriotic ballad to choose from. The late Waylon Jennings’ “America” reached No. 6 on the charts the year “God Bless the USA” first came out. Written by Sammy Johns, the song affirms connection to native soil, as Jennings repeats, “America, America,” slowly and tenderly as if to a woman he loves; then admits, softly, “You’ve become a habit to me.” But he also makes tough demands—recounting his own history as an Anglo yeoman “from down round Tennessee,” then continuing, “But my brothers/ Are all black and white/ Yellow too/ And the red man is right/ To expect a little from you/ Promise and then follow through/ America.”

In a similar vein, “America the Beautiful” writer Katherine Lee Bates celebrated “purple mountain majesties,” but actively opposed America’s imperial adventures, so added lines like “God mend thine every flaw/Confirm thy soul in self-control/Thy liberty in law!” Bruce Springsteen’s whole career has been about honoring the courage and dignity of ordinary Americans, from “The Promised Land” celebrating those with “dreams that break your heart,” to “The Rising’s” portrait of 9/11 firefighters, to the “Streets of Minneapolis” chorus, “Singing through the bloody mist, we’ll take our stand for this land.”

Hard as it is, we’re stronger for engaging the difficult questions about who we’ve been as a country and who we want to be. Patriotic ballads don’t have to be political manifestos. But the best celebrate our diverse and contradictory land and acknowledge that true greatness does not flow like automatic grace. Rather, it’s fulfilled through honoring common responsibility and connection.

With democracy profoundly threatened, we need true patriotism more than ever. We can choose a patriotism of blind adulation. Or we can embrace the songs that demand the most of us.

An earlier version of this piece appeared in The Fulcrum.

As I noted in an article earlier this month, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the federal government will save $911 billion over 10 years and that 10 million people will lose health insurance as a result of Medicaid changes in H.R.1, aka the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). This bill requires near-poor, able-bodied Medicaid beneficiaries with incomes currently above the poverty line but under thresholds that depend on family size — $22,025 for an individual or $45,360 for a family of four — to navigate a maze of red tape and reporting requirements twice a year to remain enrolled. Disabled people on Medicaid, including those with cancer or end stage renal disease, will have to prove that they are too disabled to work in order to waive the work requirement.

An analysis by health policy organization KFF found that in 2023, 64 percent of adults 19 to 64 years of age enrolled in Medicaid were working either full or part-time. Nearly 30 percent were not working because of caregiving responsibilities, disability or school attendance — barriers to employment that typically exempt people from work requirements in programs that mandate them. Most of the 8 percent who were not working were retired or unemployed. The result is that only a small share of Medicaid enrollees will lose access to the program because they do not meet work requirements. However, many more will lose coverage because of the difficulty of navigating the reporting requirements and the administrative red tape built into the OBBBA for this purpose.

In June 2026, HHS released interim regulations for the changes to Medicaid that states must implement by January 1, 2027. The regulations are much more severe than the requirements in H.R.1, and have upended work that states had already done to be ready to comply by the January 1 deadline. This has forced states to scramble to be ready in just six months, an extraordinarily short window to prepare for the large changes in reporting requirements. Disenrolling people by mistake may mean the difference between life and death for Medicaid enrollees. The rollout of the new work and massively burdensome reporting requirements is likely to be bumpy.

ASPE Publishes Very Brief Fantastical Briefing Report

In conjunction with the release of the new eligibility and reporting requirements, the Department of Health and Human Services released a brief, prepared by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE), with the Orwellian title, “Medicaid Work Requirements Incentivize Employment and Are Estimated to Reduce Poverty.” The brief’s conclusion that pushing people off the Medicaid rolls will increase employment and reduce poverty is contradicted by an earlier assessment by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). CBO found that mandating work requirements would decrease what the federal government pays for Medicaid, increase the number of people without health insurance, raise costs for states, and wouldn’t increase employment.

The four-and-a half page ASPE brief has few citations for its assertions about how cutting access to health insurance for poor people will magically produce jobs for those disenrolled from Medicaid. While the authors say they have reviewed three decades of literature on work requirements in social programs, and they have an online bibliography with more than 130 references, they cite only 10 papers in the brief. As NOTUS observes, the researchers that produced the 10 papers cited in the brief are crying foul, claiming that their studies are being misused, and in some cases are being used to support conclusions that are the opposite of what the studies show. In other cases, researchers complain that while the findings of their studies may not be distorted, crucial job search supports for job seekers in their studies that are not available to people facing disenrollment from Medicaid in 2027 are ignored in the ASPE brief.

As noted in a technical analysis of the ASPE brief published in Health Affairs, the brief assumes totally unrealistic employment effects. It considers two scenarios. In the first, all 5.8 million people on Medicaid — who the brief assumes will not meet the new work requirements and are not exempt from them — will increase their work effort. The report does not spell out where the 5.8 million figure comes from, but a back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests it includes about 4.2 million people enrolled in Medicaid who are working part-time and 1.6 million who are retired, unemployed or otherwise not working. The brief assumes that these Medicaid recipients will increase their hours of work at their current wage or at the average wage among similarly educated Medicaid-eligible individuals.

Part-time workers are assumed to increase their hours and those who are not working are assumed to find jobs. Unbelievably, the change in employment participation is assumed to be 100 percent in the first scenario. This is more than 23 times higher than the 4.2 percent increase the ASPE brief authors report for welfare-to-work experiments that, unlike Medicaid work requirements, involved cash assistance and provided people leaving welfare programs with substantial help for finding work.The help included employment services such as transportation and job search assistance and case management services to assist people in meeting work requirements. In the second scenario, the brief’s authors assume that 80 percent of the 5.8 million people they believe will not meet the work requirements will succeed in finding employment. This is a 57 percent increase in participation and is 13 times the welfare-to-work effect.

The reductions in poverty cited in the ASPE brief are not calculated independently, but follow from the entirely unrealistic assumptions about the increases in work participation. The earnings increase on average per family is $16,780 — a result of the built-in employment and wage assumptions. Net of the loss of benefits as their incomes rose, families of Medicaid recipients whose work participation rises experience an increase in resources or $12,034. In the first scenario, this reduces poverty by 2.9 million people; in the second, by 1.6 million.

Arkansas’ Experience with Work Requirements

The ASPE brief omits any mention of the one instance where a state — Arkansas — implemented work requirements in 2018. This is a glaring omission in a report on the effects of work requirements in Medicaid, and suggests the brief’s authors may not have wanted to report the disastrous results of this introduction of work requirements.

The application of work requirements to Medicaid is a new development and there are just a few empirical studies of the Arkansas case. A cutting edge 2026 analysis by Harvard Medical School researcher Yuji Mizushima found that total Medicaid participation declined sharply during the months in which the mandated work requirements were in effect. Mizushima examined two groups of people — those on Medicaid who were disenrolled because they didn’t meet the work requirement, and those in the general population who failed to enroll in Medicaid because of the work requirement. The author found that participation in Medicaid fell by about 28,810 adults — 18,164 who were disenrolled and more than 10,500 who did not apply or reapply for Medicaid. There was no discernible change in the number of hours worked and no increase in employment or in participation in the labor force of the Medicaid population in the months leading up to, during, or following the enforcement of the work mandate. This supports similar findings in research on the Arkansas experience in other studies. A year after Arkansas implemented work requirements, the poor results led a federal judge to pause and later to strike down the work requirement.

Conclusion

The introduction of work requirements in Medicaid in Arkansas during the first Trump administration led to a disastrous decline in access to health insurance for people who had relied on Medicaid for health care, but did not increase hours of work or employment. This stands in direct contradiction to the wishful thinking and wildly unrealistic assumptions embodied in the two scenarios in the ASPE brief, and raises unavoidable questions about why the authors failed to examine the Arkansas experience.

The United States is heavily invested in Israel and Ukraine. One of the primary arguments used to justify extravagant American military spending, intelligence cooperation, and diplomatic support on those two nations is that they are both democracies—not merely countries with elections, and not merely flawed democracies, but shining beacons of democratic representation surrounded by regions where authoritarianism and dictatorship are the norm.

What garbage! To characterize either Israel or Ukraine as a democracy, much less an exemplar of liberty, is grotesque.

Israel has 10 million people, of whom 7.8 million are Jews and 2.1 million Arabs. On paper, both groups have equal voting rights…in Israel proper.

But that’s only part of the story.

The problem for Zionists and their defenders is that Israel also occupies Gaza (2.1 million Palestinians) and the West Bank (3.4 million Palestinians plus 780,000 Israeli Jewish “settlers”). 5.5 million Palestinians under Israeli military occupation are stateless and have no right to vote.

That’s intentional.

Israel’s international image as a representative democracy depends on the legal fiction that the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank is temporary. Eventually—sooner rather than later, one hopes—the IDF will withdraw and Palestinians will get their own state side-by-side with Israel.

In reality, the Israeli government officially opposes a two-state solution. It won’t even sit down to talk about one. While consideration has been given to the possibility of annexing the occupied territories, the U.S. is opposed—and many Israeli politicians fear annexation would lead to turning the Palestinians into Israeli citizens. Palestinians have no hope of becoming democratically enfranchised.

Israeli Jewish settlers living in the West Bank enjoy full voting rights in Israel proper. This exposes the regime’s apartheid system. Jewish and Arab residents of the same military administration are not only treated differently by the authorities; they are even officially subjected to radically different punishments for the same offenses. Occupation is a legal status that cuts only one way, against Arabs. If the West Bank were truly “occupied territory,” everyone who lived in the zone would be considered stateless, including the settlers.

Israel evacuated its Jewish settlers from Gaza in 2005 in order to focus on its campaign of land seizures in the West Bank; Israeli Jews in Gaza were entitled to full voting rights, even though they lived under occupation.

Adding to the sense that Israel is using the delineation between its own territory and those it captured from Egypt and Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War (which it began as a war of aggression) as a fig leaf for de facto apartheid is the nearly 60-year length of the military occupation, widely regarded as one of the longest in the modern era. Most conflicts are resolved much faster, or lead to annexation and/or integration with the victorious invader. Israeli policy toward the Palestinians, intended to relegate them to a permanent state of legal purgatory, is incompatible with democratic norms.

Imagine if the United States were to invade Canada, and they created a new Black Zone under military occupation, then forcibly moved Black citizens there. Even allowing its remaining citizens to vote, the rump U.S. could safely ensure its white-dominated political and cultural character. But it wouldn’t be a real democracy.

That’s effectively what Israel has done to the Palestinians it controls.

Israel cannot permanently disenfranchise a third of the human beings under its control, yet call itself a democracy. It must either set the Palestinians free or annex their territory into a one-person, one-vote republic encompassing all of historic Palestine.

A representative democracy requires at least two political parties, which between them represent the majority of the population. Opposition parties must have access to public debates and journalistic outlets, and be permitted to campaign openly. Elections must be held on a regular basis in accordance with rules that are clearly defined and widely understood. By these standards, Ukraine is not a democracy either.

Ukraine justifies its abandonment of democracy with circular logic.

Ukraine’s constitution prohibits holding presidential, parliamentary, or local elections under martial law. President Volodymyr Zelensky declared martial law after Russia invaded in February 2022. The term to which he was elected officially ended in May 2024, but under martial law the constitution extends the incumbent president’s tenure until a new one is elected—in this case, perhaps never. Parliament’s term also gets extended until, possibly, forever. Martial law, declared by a president who stays in office indefinitely as a result, has been repeatedly renewed by a parliament which also gets to keep their jobs for the foreseeable future as a result.

Zelensky has repeatedly said that martial law is required in wartime, though his nation’s constitution is silent on that point.

When it suits him, that requirement becomes optional. In order to deflect criticism that his declaration of martial law is self-serving, especially when that criticism comes from the president and vice president of the United States, Zelensky began offering to hold elections last year. Despite the ongoing conflict and martial law, he said he was “ready” for elections and would push for legal changes to allow them during martial law.

Nineteen anti-Zelensky political parties have been suspended or banned. (Five remain.) Some banned parties had their assets seized by the government. Opposition leaders have been subjected to house arrest.

In a move that would have made Brezhnev blush, Ukrainian TV channels were merged into a single “United News” station broadcasting censored, government-approved content. Print and online news outlets that criticized the junta have been shuttered.

So Ukraine is a country that does not hold presidential or parliamentary elections, has no plans to do so, uses weasel words to explain its policies about suspensions of political rights, imprisons opposition politicians, censors the media, and bans rival political parties. If that’s a democracy, so is North Korea.

If you want to support Israel, there are many reasons to do so. It’s the only Jewish state, its high-tech sector has business relationships with Silicon Valley, and the Mossad is an intelligence partner of the CIA. But Israel is not a democracy. And you shouldn’t say or think that it is.

Similarly, there are reasons to support Ukraine. It was the victim of an invasion, and if you are worried about Russia, Ukraine is tying down Putin. But it’s not a democracy. And you shouldn’t say or think that it is.

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

 

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On June 4, 2026—after nearly 1,000 days of genocide in Gaza—Smith College asserted that the concern of Smith students and alumni about the college’s complicity in shipping weapons into the genocide, “is not directly aligned with the college’s core mission, values, operations, and strategic priorities.” This despite pride that Smith’s leadership takes in its divestment from companies doing business in apartheid South Africa in 1985-86.

This statement came from Smith’s Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility (ACIR), a subcommittee of the Investment Committee of the Board of Trustees. The ACIR’s statement rejected a 32-page proposal (“Smith College Ethical Investment Policy & Procedure”), submitted in November 2025 by Smith Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Alums for Justice in Palestine (AJP). The proposal requested that Smith divest its $2 billion endowment of stock in corporations supplying weapons and other support for Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people and create an ethical and transparent investment policy.

This is the second time that Smith’s Board of Trustees has refused to divest from genocide. In 2024, after a 13-day occupation of the College Hall administration building by some 50 members of SJP, the ACIR ruled that SJP’s earlier divestment proposal, “did not meet the threshold for taking action.” (To see, in their entireties, the November 2025 AJP-SJP Ethical Investment Policy and the ACIR rejection of it, as well as an alum sign-on letter pledging to withhold donations to Smith until it divests, please visit the linktr.ee of Smith AJP.)

Ongoing Slaughter in Palestine, Lebanon, Iran

A sign is seen on the grass at Smith SJP's People's University, Chapin Lawn, April, 2026. (Photo by Jennifer Scarlott)

As Smith AJP and SJP pointed out in a June 10 press release, the ACIR’s denial came amid the US-Israeli war against Iran; ongoing strikes in Lebanon and Gaza in violation of ceasefire agreements; and land theft and violent displacement of Palestinians and Lebanese by Israel in Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank. Between February and June 2026, US-Israeli attacks have killed at least 3,468 people in Iran and 3,371 people in Lebanon, displacing over a million in Lebanon. Since October 2023, the US-Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza has taken at least 100,000 lives and probably many more, a significant number of them women and children. New reports document Israel’s targeted killing of children in Gaza (under the age of 18) and deliberate reproductive genocide in Gaza. Between 9-10,000 Palestinians, including children, are imprisoned by Israel—often without charge or any legal recourse and under the direst of conditions including torture and rape. Earlier this year, the Israeli Knesset passed a racist death penalty law applying only to Palestinians.

Smith will celebrate its students, alumni, faculty, and staff who fought courageously for Smith’s future and for a just and safe future for Palestinians and all people. One day, Smith officialdom will cite it as a reason to attend the college.

Israel has damaged or eradicated more than 81% of built infrastructure in Gaza, including 22 of 38 university campuses. This scale of destruction is enabled by companies the AJP-SJP Ethical Investment Policy would have eliminated from Smith’s portfolio (see the United Nation’s list from 2025 for examples). Many of these entities are also guilty of human rights violations in the United States. Palantir, for example, is one of the largest contractors for the Department of Defense and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Ending economic support for imperial violence around the world is “a necessary step to end the genocide and dismantle the global system that has allowed it,” explains Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur for the Palestinian Territories.

A close look at the June 4, 2026 ACIR statement rejecting the November 19, 2025 AJP-SJP Ethical Investment Policy provides a clear understanding of the failed leadership of Smith College:

Rejection of the Proposal: Trustee Claims vs. Reality

A sign is displayed at Smith SJP's People's University, Chapin Lawn, April, 2026. (Photo by Jennifer Scarlott)

1. Societal Significance & Impact: Human Rights and Genocide in Gaza

Trustee claim: In one portion of its response regarding the “societal significance” of the AJP-SJP proposal, the ACIR stated:

In explaining the societal significance of the issue at the heart of their proposal, the petitioners cite the broad impacts of global human rights violations tied to weapons production and proliferation and the relationship to harming women. [We] concluded that such human rights violations are significant to society at large and can cause broad economic, environmental, health, or social impact. This is true not only of the violations occurring in Palestine, but of similar violations occurring throughout the globe. The proposal aligns with ACIR’s principles and guidelines on this matter.

Apparently not entirely comfortable with this ethical assertion, the ACIR then rushed to contradict itself by denying the AJP-SJP contention that “academic institutions carry an outsized symbolic and structural role capable of reshaping market demands.”

“While Smith’s endowment could be considered large in the context of higher education endowments,” the ACIR opined, “it is not large enough in the context of the broader investment arena to influence demand in any noticeable way… [therefore we] conclude that the proposed action would not measurably affect social change.”

Reality: In making this remarkably limp, amoral, and contradictory assertion, the ACIR ignores a common-sense argument presented to it in the AJP-SJP proposal:

Smith has a chance to make history by taking a principled stance against mass atrocities devastating racialized peoples worldwide and becoming the first historically women’s college and "Seven Sister" to do so—joining institutions such as King’s College, Cambridge; the California Institute of the Art; and the University of San Francisco in committing to an ethical investment policy.

A current student said, “You cannot be an institution that raises up the voice of activist alums, using them as examples of what this institution creates and stands for, and continue to invest in the war machine that these activists spend their lives advocating against.”

SJP noted that the ACIR recently added a new statement to its website: “The endowment is not a tool for responding to global events.” In fact, however, the ACIR itself was created because of student organizing to combat global climate change—which in turn led to Smith’s announcement in 2019 that it would divest from fossil fuel companies within 15 years.

And what about SJP-AJP’s expression of explicit concerns, throughout the Ethical Investment Policy, about the genocide in Gaza? Here, the ACIR doubled down on its hedging. While it acknowledged that SJP and AJP expressed concern about the genocide in Gaza, it deflected, noting that there are many human rights violations “occurring throughout the globe.” This is an all-too-familiar talking point used by Zionists trying to deflect attention from the Gaza genocide.

At this point, the ACIR threw on the brakes, refusing to refer to the Israeli-US slaughter in Gaza as a genocide at all. Instead, it referred to the genocide as "violations occurring in Palestine" and "the issue," and then stated that those “violations” and that “issue” fail to rise to a level of sufficient alignment with the “values” and “priorities” of the college.

The UN Special Committee on Israeli Practices, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention, Genocide Watch, Amnesty International, Doctors Against Genocide, Human Rights Watch, Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres), Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, B’Tselem, and other organizations have officially concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

Is the leadership of the College unaware that numerous expert global organizations identify the war on Gaza as a genocide?

Do the Trustees know better than the organizations listed above?

Does the leadership of Smith College deny that genocide is occurring in Gaza?

2. Financial Impact & Fiduciary Duty

Trustee claim: In the June 4 rejection, the ACIR argued that 1) because Smith’s weapons investments are commingled with other stocks, divestment “would force the college to exit premier, diversified commingled (investment) funds…; 2) “Additionally, the endowment does not include direct investments in any businesses, so divesting from specific businesses is not possible”…; and 3) [divestment] would impair the Investment Office’s ability to retain top-tier asset managers, a direct conflict with the board’s legal obligations to steward the financial health of the endowment in perpetuity.”

Reality: All three parts of the above statement are an obfuscation (arguably, deliberate attempts to mystify the investment process), amounting to outright falsehood. And, it would seem, Smith’s Trustees are laboring under outdated understandings of ethical investment practices—which they don’t seem to be laboring under where divestment from fossil fuels is concerned.

We interviewed an investment professional who confirmed what all honest investment professionals know and that can easily be researched—Smith’s assertion regarding commingled investments is a “red herring.” “A competent investment manager,” she said, “can readily create accounts that filter out weapons makers and other corporations that are complicit in genocide.”

In addition, the expert pointed out, “Investing in corporations implicated in ‘grave human rights abuses’ fails commonly accepted ESG (environmental, social, and governance) risk assessments intended to protect investors and society at large.”

Among the genocide-complicit companies Smith invests in through commingled funds are Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon RTX, L3Harris (now partnering with Palantir on various projects), Northrup Grumman, Hexcel, and General Dynamics. Case closed.

A further reality around financial-fiduciary ethics and responsibility must be grappled with by the Smith College community: In rejecting the November 2025 AJP-SJP Ethical Investment Policy, the ACIR failed to acknowledge that at least 10 of the 30 members of the Board of Trustees have financial connections with Israel. The following sample is indicative of this reality among at least one-third of the Trustees:

• Susan May Molineaux, chair of Smith’s Board of Trustees, is a member of the board of directors of Geron biopharmaceutical company. Geron’s largest shareholders—RA Capital Management, BlackRock, and Soleus—invest in Israeli firms. BlackRock is a major investor in arms corporations providing weapons to Israel.
• Anu Aiyengar, vice chair of the Board of Trustees, is the global co-head of mergers and acquisitions at J.P. Morgan Chase, which, the company says, has been “committed to serving clients in Israel since the 1960s.” (J.P. Morgan Chase is the world’s leading investor in fossil fuel companies. Aiyengar’s position is also notable given that Smith began the process of divesting from fossil fuels in 2019.)
• Andrea Auerbach, chair of Smith’s Investment Committee and ACIR, is a partner in and head of global investment for Cambridge Associates, a firm that provides investment services in Israel and is partially owned by two entities doing business in Israel: the Belgian investment firm Sofina, and, according to Cambridge Associates, “the Rothschild family.” Ms. Auerbach is also on the board of the UCLA Investment Company, managing UCLA’s $5 billion stock portfolio. UCLA has refused to divest from genocide despite an active campus movement in favor of divestment.

3. Community Consensus

Trustee claim: In its June 4 rejection of the divestment proposal, the ACIR contended that it “does not meet the necessary threshold of community consensus,” apparently at least in part because some in the Smith community do not support it. This begs the question, how does one define consensus?

Reality: The Ethical Investment Policy was developed by Smith community members over the course of more than 14 months. This process was led by current and former students in direct consultation with faculty and other Smith community members, as well as via meetings with the administration throughout the summer of 2025. During the 14 months that the proposal was being developed, including in the six months after its submission in November of 25, Smith community members took many actions demonstrating support for it. In so doing, they established broad-based consensus for both divestment and for an ethical and transparent investment policy that culminated in an eight day People’s University on Chapin Lawn in May.

In the spring of 2024, after the SJP occupation of College Hall, a campus-wide student body referendum was held in which 89% voted for divestment. AJP circulated a statement among alums in which signatories pledged not to donate to the college until it agrees to divest—over 830 alums representing 50 years of graduating classes have signed the pledge thus far.

SJP circulated two petitions for divestment, one in November of 2025 and one in the spring of 2026. Each petition was signed by slightly more than 500 people. In the second spring 2026 round, 56 campus organizations also signed the petition.

Repression on Campus

A sign announces Smith SJP's People's University, Chapin Lawn, April, 2026. (Photo by Jennifer Scarlott)

It is important to note that since the 2024 occupation of College Hall, the Smith administration and Board of Trustees joined with the leadership of many US colleges and universities angered by student activism for Palestine in the spring of 2024 by taking steps to limit speech and “expressive activity” on campus. In October of 2025, president Sarah Willie-LeBreton issued a new “Policy Governing Time, Place, and Manner of Expressive Activity.” The euphemistically titled policies are repressive and draconian. According to many at Smith, they were not developed in full consultation with the Smith community, as Willie-LeBreton claimed in a campus-wide message. Fourteen members of the editorial board of The Sophian objected to the policy and its manner of development and implementation.

The new policy, the impact of which the ACIR does not acknowledge in its rejection of the Ethical Investment Policy, has instilled fear among Smith students and the broader college community and dampened activism.

An example of the impact of the new policy: During the eight day SJP-established “People’s University” on Chapin Lawn in May of this year, students faced intimidation tactics by the college. Some Smith Campus Safety officers and administrators followed students entering and leaving the People’s University; used surveillance cameras, student card readers, and cell phone locators to track student movements; and addressed students by their names despite their use of face masks and head coverings to shield their identities from the administration and its Conduct Board.

One student stated: “We remain committed to pursuing change at Smith, despite efforts to silence us. The school has begun the process of punishing individuals and Smith SJP as a whole for the People’s University. On June 4, three minutes before communicating the ACIR’s rejection of the November 25 proposal, the school emailed SJP that we would be required to appear before Smith’s ‘Conduct Board’ in the fall to determine our punishment. The Conduct Board process is a very isolating experience, but we are working hard to protect our community in the face of administrative attacks.”

Where Does Smith College Go from Here?

It is difficult not to conclude, both from Smith’s repeated rejections of divestment from genocide and from its punitive responses to student activists, that the leadership of the college hopes to produce graduates who will fit smoothly into the current US ruling class, with all of its racist, imperialist, militarist, extractivist, and even genocidal values.

We are horrified that the Smith administration and Board of Trustees are comfortable with limiting their students’ First Amendment rights and seeking to deter them from the justice- and human-rights-based consciousness and activism so deeply needed on campus and in the wider world the students will soon move into.

As residents of the Western Massachusetts communities in which Smith is embedded, we are profoundly concerned with the future of the college and its students. We are urgently committed to the popular uprisings—so often led, throughout history, by students—needed to end the mass killing by Israel and the US in Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, Yemen, and elsewhere. Tragically, however, through the June 4 ACIR statement, Smith College expresses,

1. A lack of concern about genocide, apartheid, and occupation;
2. Disinterest in the ways in which the refusal to divest lead to Smith’s complicity in genocide, apartheid, and occupation; and
3. Dismissal of conscientious and courageous student activists and alums.

We echo Katherine Sullivan, class of 1975:

I can’t think why a liberal arts institution like Smith College, founded on lofty ideals and now committed to such noble aims as equity, inclusion, diversity, and excellence, would want to be invested in weapons or technologies of war, genocide, and environmental devastation. Ever. Let’s put our money where our mouths are. Let’s invest in green technologies, innovative health and medical initiatives, and other activities that benefit humankind. Let’s be a light in this dark world.

Ultimately, we know, as author Omar El Akkad stated in the title of his 2025 book on Gaza’s genocide—One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This—that Smith will celebrate its students, alumni, faculty, and staff who fought courageously for Smith’s future and for a just and safe future for Palestinians and all people. One day, Smith officialdom will cite it as a reason to attend the college. May that day come soon.

But it will not come under the college’s current leadership. At this juncture, nearly 1,000 days into the current genocide in Gaza, we call on the Smith Board of Trustees to resign, and for the college to undertake a process that will lead to truly democratic and ethical governance and education.

LIVE 9:00 am Eastern time, Streaming Anytime:

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

Today we discuss:

• President Trump reaped a stunning windfall in 2025, including $1.4 billion from his family’s cryptocurrency businesses. In total, he raked in at least $2.2 billion. That compares to a minimum of $622 million for all of 2024. One of his biggest hauls was when an investment firm tied to the UAE bought nearly half of the Trump family’s main crypto company, World Liberty Financial, blurring the line between foreign policy and private enterprise. He also collected hundreds of millions of dollars from sales of his $TRUMP memecoin and World Liberty’s sale of its own digital tokens.

• In another stunning victory for the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, Melat Kiros, a 29-year-old democratic socialist, clobbers Representative Diana DeGette, a 15-term incumbent and Zionist, in the Denver area. Also, highly-connected Colorado Senator Mike Bennet becomes the first sitting Senator in 15 years to be primaried out.

• The US Supreme Court votes 5-4 against Trump, preserving birthright citizenship—barely.

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