Donald Trump hasn’t forgotten about the Insurrection Act, and neither should you. In the face of plummeting poll numbers and public outcry over the deaths of Renée Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, Trump may appear to be retreating from his threats to deploy the military to Minneapolis and other blue state cities, but any retreat is likely to prove temporary and tactical rather than a reversal of policy.

Throughout his career, Trump has been guided by the “lessons” he learned as a young real estate hustler from his odious one-time mentor and fixer Roy Cohn: Never retreat, apologize, or admit wrongdoing, and always remain on the offensive. In keeping with Cohn’s teachings, Trump has made threats to invoke the Insurrection Act dating to June 2020, when he vowed to use it to quell mass demonstrations related to the murder of George Floyd. He was reportedly restrained at the time by former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley and other “grown-ups” in his first administration.

This time around, there are no grown-ups in the building.

Since retaking the White House, Trump has doubled down on this threat. On the first day of his second term, he issued a presidential proclamation declaring a state of emergency at the southern border that directed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Homeland Security head Kristi Noem to develop plans, including using the Insurrection Act, to combat the now-familiar fantasy “invasion” of “cartels, criminal gangs, known terrorists, human traffickers, smugglers, and unvetted military-age males from foreign adversaries.” The proclamation laid the groundwork for Trump’s mass-deportation program and for giving US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol the largest budgets of any police agencies in the country.

Invoking the Insurrection Act would be the biggest gambit of all, likely resulting in a historic showdown before the Supreme Court.

Trump again threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act last June, in response to protests in Los Angeles, and then again in October over demonstrations in Chicago. Although he stopped short in both instances, he has ramped up the rhetoric to new heights in reaction to the growing resistance movement in Minneapolis. Taking to Truth Social on January 15, he warned:

If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the INSURRECTION ACT, which many Presidents have done before me, and quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great State.

Despite removing Border Patrol “commander at large” Greg Bovino from Minneapolis on January 26 in a gesture some observers saw as a modest measure of conciliation, the threats have escalated.

On January 27, Trump received a letter from the House Freedom Caucus, urging him to use ”all tools necessary,” including the Insurrection Act, “to maintain order in the face of unlawful obstructions and assemblages that prevent the enforcement of the laws of the United States.” Bolstered by the endorsement, Trump returned to Truth Social three days later to denounce Pretti as an “Agitator and, perhaps, insurrectionist.” And in another Truth Social screed on January 31, he pledged to “guard, and very powerfully so, any and all Federal Buildings that are being attacked by these highly paid Lunatics, Agitators, and Insurrectionists.” In a veiled reference to Pretti, he added that anyone caught “punching or kicking the headlights of our cars” or throwing bricks or rocks “at our vehicles, or at our Patriot Warriors […] will suffer an equal, or more, consequence.”

Whether Trump ultimately pulls the Insurrection Act trigger may depend on how he applies another of Roy Cohn’s lessons: Use the legal system to crush critics and opponents. Trump’s affinity for litigation is legendary. He has been involved in over 4,000 lawsuits, including several defamation actions taken against major media outlets like the New York Times, ABC, and CBS. In his second term, he has transformed the Department of Justice into his personal law firm, imposing sanctions on liberal law firms and elite universities by executive orders, and launching prosecutions against former FBI Director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James, journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort, and scores of rank-and-file anti-ICE protesters across the country. Even when the gambits fail, as they have with Comey and James, they send the chilling message that no one who defies or offends the president is safe.

Invoking the Insurrection Act would be the biggest gambit of all, likely resulting in a historic showdown before the Supreme Court. Trump has enjoyed extraordinary success in his Supreme Court cases, and with three of his nominees on the bench, he has reason to be optimistic about any final confrontation. Still, the outcome of any such move is uncertain.

In December, the court dealt Trump a surprising setback with an interim “shadow-docket” ruling (Trump v. Illinois) that blocked him from deploying National Guard troops in and around Chicago. The ruling was widely praised by liberal legal commentators, who saw it as a hopeful sign that the nation’s highest judicial body was willing to stand up to Trump’s incessant power grabs, at least on the use of the military for domestic law-enforcement purposes.

Unfortunately, the decision was temporary—all interim orders are—and narrow. It was also a split decision, with Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch dissenting.

At issue in the case was the administration’s interpretation of a vague phrase in a statute that empowers the president to federalize members of the Guard if he is “unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.” The administration argued the phrase referred to the inability of federal civilian law enforcement to maintain order during protests. The majority ruled instead that the phrase referred to the regular military, and that because Trump had not attempted to deploy the military and shown that it was unable to maintain order, he had not met the statute’s requirements.

As Justice Brett Kavanaugh noted in a concurring opinion, the decision said nothing about the president’s authority to invoke the Insurrection Act. Rather, Kavanaugh suggested, it opened the door for Trump to proceed. “One apparent ramification of the court’s opinion is that it could cause the president to use the US military more than the National Guard to protect federal personnel and property in the United States,” Kavanaugh wrote.

To be sure, any invocation of the Insurrection Act would face legal challenges over whether the country is facing an actual rebellion, and the extent to which the military, if activated, is subject to the same constitutional restraints as civilian law enforcement. The challenges could succeed at the district court level, but from there, all bets would be off. The mad king would no doubt follow the advice of his erstwhile mentor, refuse to retreat, and ask his friends on the Supreme Court to intervene and allow his attacks to continue.

On the evening of January 8, a friend and I parked our car in Minneapolis' Powderhorn neighborhood where Renee Good—a white, unarmed mother of three—was murdered by a federal agent. We proceeded on foot because mourners had cordoned off several blocks of Portland Avenue into a mostly quiet commons where people, instead of passing by, wandered and conversed. We walked for perhaps 1,000 feet among strangers, and we discovered a crime scene that had been transformed, overnight, into a place of pilgrimage.

Traveling south, we passed through two barricades. At the first, two young men stood behind a section of mobile fence that usually indicates a detour at a construction site. A traffic sign hanging on the fence was overwritten with a red spray-painted message: Fuck ICE. The men calmly waved their arms to alert oncoming traffic that this was a turning point.

Two white tents stood behind the second barricade, composed of wooden pallets, traffic cones, and plastic trash bins. Beneath these tents, volunteers distributed bottles of water and food from foil trays. They chatted amiably and laughed with one another. Further north, fires burned in a pair of steel barrels, one near and one far, lighting hands and faces within the outer dark.

Beyond the second blaze and across 33rd Street, we joined a broken circle of those holding vigil. With phones aglow, people recorded the flickering candles. They circled the profusion of frozen flowers. Mostly, they stood in silence with their arms around friends and loved ones.

If I tell my spouse I'm horrified that a masked gunman, on government payroll, killed a nonviolent protester, and I do nothing else, then have I chosen to accept it?

On the way back to our car—two middle-aged white men with homes in neighborhoods full of unlocked doors—we dodged black puddles, shuffled across patches of ice, and I thought of "A Hanging," George Orwell's masterwork on the numbing agents of distance and privilege.

In the essay, Orwell, who worked as an Imperial Police Officer from 1922 to 1927, describes how the hanging of a Burmese prisoner by British jailers is disrupted by unexpected empathies. A dog sprints toward the prisoner and licks his face; the prisoner uses a few of his final steps to avoid a puddle and keep his feet dry. Close enough to notice these tiny bursts of vitality, the narrator begins to feel sorrow over the particularity of the man's existence and how any single death leaves us all "with one mind less, one world less."

Then, when his noose is fixed, the prisoner begins to chant the name of his god from the gallows. And that is too much, too near, an intolerable call to attention for the jailers, warders, and magistrates standing yards away. So, the superintendent snaps the order, the prisoner is "vanished," and the rope begins "twisting on itself".

What happens next, though, is what allows the essay to transcend time, space, and experience—what makes it so awfully personal. Clearly shaken, the superintendent leads Orwell and his colleagues out of the gallows yard, past other men waiting to be hung. Upon entering the central yard, they find some reprieve: Convicts, not yet condemned, eating their breakfast—a "jolly scene, after the hanging."

The overseers begin to joke about past executions, and by the time they exit the prison gates, everyone is laughing. The further they flee, the better they feel. At last, they retrieve a bottle of whiskey from the superintendent's car and put the matter fully behind them. How far behind? With a final sentence, Orwell reminds us: "The dead man was a hundred yards away."

Throughout the essay, Orwell demonstrates how it's easier to be someone standing by than to be someone standing beside. It's easier to look on from afar than to see what is near. It's more comfortable to understand our choices vaguely, as the instruments of an order that is beyond our control, rather than specifically, as forces that inflict pain on strangers. In the end, it is preferable to regard violence inflicted on other people as if it were weather visiting some faraway place.

As we walked away from the streetlight where Renee Good's car came to a stop—one mind less, one world less—my own mind began to churn. What level of acceptance have distance and privilege inspired in me? If I tell my spouse I'm horrified that a masked gunman, on government payroll, killed a nonviolent protester, and I do nothing else, then have I chosen to accept it? What if I attend this vigil and nothing more, how many yards from the execution will I be? Far enough to put it behind me?

Today, Orwell's implicit critique of imperial insensitivity could be read as a tremor that presaged the earthquake of Omar El Akkad's One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, an explicit indictment of Americans' privileged addiction to normalcy and of our willingness to accept mass murder, in Gaza and so many other places, as a normal outcome of American life.

"Perhaps [what] it comes to, in the end, is some pathetic adherence to the idea that certain peoples simply need to be crushed," El Akkad writes. "But whoever subscribes to this idea should at least have the spine to embrace it. To look upon the body of the little girl hanging from the wall, limbs severed by the force of the blast, and say: I'm fine with this, I am this."

A block from where Renee Good's bullet-torn body lay 36 hours earlier, I could sense in myself this shameful fear that my own normalcy might be discontinued. I could already feel that unconscious scheming to which I, like so many Americans, am accustomed. How much do I have to circumscribe my role and responsibilities to feel like I am fine with this? How far do I have to walk before I begin to feel that her body doesn't exist?

This model is simple. It requires us to put our bodies on the line and to ask ourselves what, precisely, are we giving up to alleviate the suffering of others?

As we passed back through the penultimate barricade, a man called out to us. With one hand, he lifted the topmost cup from a small Styrofoam tower. With the other, he depressed a black air pot. Then, he passed the steaming cup into my freezing hands, and the aroma of chai spices entered my lungs. "Somali tea," he smiled. "Black tea with milk."

Awakened, I lifted my eyes again to the sudden solidarity that kept Portland Avenue from returning to normal. The convivial spirit of confrontation reminded me of experiences I'd had in Guatemala 20 years earlier, living and volunteering among people who instinctively placed their bodies on the line without regard for the precious barriers of privilege. The conversion of a crime scene—by people who appreciate the consequences of vanishing bodies better than me—into a sanctuary for insubordinate grief felt powerfully abnormal. These people were breaking routines and beginning to engage in actual resistance.

"Th[e] work of leaving," El Akkad writes, "of aiming to challenge power on the field where it maintains the least glaring asymmetry, demands one answer the question: What are you willing to give up to alleviate someone else's suffering?"

"A Hanging" showcases the usual answer offered by people, like me, who are either enriched by empire or not harmed by its enrichment. That answer is nothing. Of course, our obligation—in the past, in the future, and certainly now—is to ask and answer this question differently.

Presently, thousands of Minneapolitans are modeling this transformation by standing watch on street corners armed with nothing but whistles, by organizing direct action that results in the arrest of protesters by the busload, by providing food and shelter to migrants targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and by actively and publicly grieving each new murder, every loss of human life.

This model is simple. It requires us to put our bodies on the line and to ask ourselves what, precisely, are we giving up to alleviate the suffering of others? It requires us to keep stepping forward and to continue asking: Are we risking something valuable enough to register in the conscience of strangers? Are we risking enough to register as a nonviolent threat to the architects of unconscionable violence? It requires us to persist, further and further beyond the fortified walls of our comfort zones, until our answers to these questions are overwhelmingly affirmative.

This model is also a map. It shows us how to leave the open space of privilege and move toward the center of the proverbial prison where a long line of people wait to be murdered with our money. And yet, if we follow this map, then freedom may be our reward.

If we follow, then we will be free to help ourselves and others. We will be free to express, with our whole body, what we were only willing to say to close friends or trusted colleagues in the past. We will be free to say: No, I am not this. I am changed.

Notice to Donald Trump and his MAGA myrmidons: It’s too late by centuries to turn the United States of American “back” into the ethnically homogenous nation for white people which it never was. And that’s nothing to be disappointed about.

Most Americans aren’t swallowing your so-called jokes depicting African-Americans as apes, your white supremacist lies about Haitians “eating the pets,” your slanders of law-abiding farmworkers as the “worst of the worst,” your creepy wails about immigrants “poisoning the blood” of America, your demand we exclude refugees who come from what you term “sh**-hole countries.”

Fear and hatred are all you offer, and relief from an imaginary conspiracy of Jews and elites which you claim are plotting to “replace” white Americans with invaders from abroad.

The reality: Americans have always been a polyglot people of multiple races and ethnicities. We did not become a multi-national, multi-ethnic people because of a scheme to open our borders. Rather, our nation and its leaders—through ambition to expand the United States—incorporated other peoples into the American mix from our earliest days. Our true history is one of diversity, even if equity and inclusion have been aspirational.

If the Anglo-Saxon whites who first colonized North America wanted it to be an exclusive homeland for white people, they should not have brought half a million enchained Africans to American shores. By the time the Constitution was adopted, the result was that one in five residents of the new nation were enslaved or free Black people.

If whites wanted North America to be an exclusive home for Anglo-Saxon white people, President Thomas Jefferson should not have made the Louisiana Purchase, bringing people of French, Spanish and African ancestry and still more Native American tribal nations into the territory of the United States.

If Anglo-Saxon whites wanted North America to be an exclusive home for white people, pro-slavery forces should not have launched the Mexican-American War of 1846-48 to seize almost half of what had been Mexico, and incorporate its Mexican population into the enlarged United States.

If Anglo-Saxon whites wanted North America to be an exclusive home for white people, we shouldn’t have employed tens of thousands of Chinese immigrant workers to build the Transcontinental Railroad, man the mines, and perform the other dangerous and dirty work that helped build the West.

And for that matter, if Anglo-Saxon whites wanted North America to be an exclusive home for “pure-bred” white people, they should not have encouraged the immigration of millions of Europeans who, at the turn of the Twentieth Century, weren’t really regarded as “white”: Irish, Italians, Poles and Slavs, eastern European Jews and others—“the wretched refuse of [Europe’s] teeming shores”—to work the mills and mines, the factories and farms of America.

Today desperate, hopeful and hardworking immigrants come from the lands south of our border, from India, from China, from the Dominican Republic. Many are fleeing horrific gang violence, persecution, or the impacts of climate change on their native lands. Undocumented immigrants—the so-called “invaders”—commonly do work native-born Americans won’t do.

Those without documentation provide most of the farm labor force. Trump’s own Labor Department has acknowledged that “agricultural work requires a distinct set of skills and is among the most physically demanding and hazardous occupations in the U.S. labor market.” “Such jobs are still not viewed as viable alternatives for many [U.S.-born] workers.”

Similarly, the labor of undocumented immigrants is critical to the meatpacking industry, food processing, construction, and elder care. Immigrants are not “replacing” American citizens—they are filling needs and struggling for a good life for themselves and their children. That’s what immigrants have always done.

It’s too late, Mr. Trump, for your sleazy appeals to racial hatred. Most Americans know that seeking to degrade others because of their race or ethnicity is deeply wrong—a violation of the values of fairness and decency we struggle to live up to, but seldom spurn entirely.

Our nation and the world have real problems—climate change, shrinking opportunity, inequality and poverty, violence and unnecessary suffering. But it has become clear to more and more Americans that your program of meanness, malice, and spleen are not the solution. It is time for you to get out of the way.

LIVE 9:00 am Eastern time, Streaming Anytime:

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

Today we discuss:

•  In the worst-case climate scenarios from unchecked greenhouse gas emissions (high-emission pathways like SSP5-8.5), global temperatures could rise 4–5°C or more by 2100 or beyond. This unleashes catastrophic threats: widespread ecosystem collapse, including near-total loss of coral reefs and Amazon dieback into savanna; irreversible multi-meter sea-level rise from melting ice sheets, flooding coastal cities and displacing hundreds of millions; intensified extreme weather—deadly heatwaves, mega-droughts, super-storms, and wildfires—causing mass crop failures, famine risks, and water wars. President Trump announces he is erasing the scientific finding that climate change endangers human health and the environment, ending the federal government’s legal authority to control the pollution that is dangerously heating the planet. The action is a key step in removing limits on carbon dioxide, methane and four other greenhouse gases that scientists say are supercharging heat waves, droughts, wildfires and other extreme weather.

•  There’s no deal to fund the Department of Homeland Security — so a partial government shutdown starts today. Who will make you take off your shoes at the airport?

• The Bangladesh Nationalist Party has claimed victory in the country’s first election since the 2024 uprising. The BNP is headed by 60-year-old Tarique Rahman, who returned to Bangladesh in December after 17 years in self-exile in London. He is the son of former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, who died in December.

• South Korea’s spy agency says Kim Jong Un’s teenage daughter, Kim Ju

Ae, is close to being designated as North Korea’s future leader.

• Gallup will stop tracking presidential approval ratings after 88 years. Trump’s last Gallup approval rating, in December, was 36%. Why the drastic decision?

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For decades, American leaders have described economic sanctions as the “peaceful alternative” to war—the space between diplomacy and bombs. Sanctions, we are told, are restraint.

But what happens when economic pressure shuts down power grids? When oil flows are deliberately constricted? When hospitals lose electricity, water systems falter, airports close, and entire populations endure 24-hour blackouts?

At what point does economic coercion stop being diplomacy and begin resembling siege?

Cuba today offers a sobering case study. Severe fuel shortages have led to prolonged blackouts, aviation fuel depletion, transportation paralysis, and mounting strain on hospitals and water systems. The United Nations has warned that without restored energy flows, the country risks systemic collapse. The Trump administration’s recent emergency measures—including secondary tariffs aimed at countries supplying oil to Cuba—mark a structural shift. The pressure is no longer confined to bilateral embargo. It now reaches third countries and energy supply chains.

Sanctions are often described as the alternative to war. But when structured to constrict energy lifelines and induce systemic deprivation, they can become war by other means.

This is not a narrow trade dispute. It is energy denial.

And energy is the backbone of civilian life.

The United States may have legitimate national security concerns regarding Cuba—allegations of intelligence cooperation with rival powers, human rights violations, regional instability. Those concerns deserve serious evaluation. But the constitutional question remains: When economic measures are structured in ways that foreseeably disrupt essential civilian infrastructure, should they remain insulated from the congressional scrutiny required for military hostilities?

The War Powers Resolution of 1973 was enacted in the shadow of Vietnam. Its purpose was simple: to ensure that decisions that risk war reflect the “collective judgment” of both Congress and the President. If US armed forces are introduced into hostilities, the president must report to Congress within 48 hours. Within 60 days, Congress must authorize the action—or it must end.

The resolution was designed to prevent unilateral executive entanglement in war.

But it was written for a world of tanks and troops.

It does not contemplate 21st-century economic statecraft—where power grids can be destabilized without a single soldier crossing a border, and where sanctions regimes can function, in practice, like blockades.

Modern sanctions are not limited to asset freezes or visa bans. Increasingly, they target energy flows, banking systems, insurance markets, and shipping networks. They employ secondary penalties—punishing third countries that engage in prohibited commerce. They leverage emergency declarations that can persist for years, even decades.

When economic measures constrict oil—the fuel that powers electricity generation, water purification, hospitals, refrigeration, aviation, and transportation—their societal impact can mirror the effects of siege warfare.

Yet constitutionally, they are treated as routine foreign commerce regulation.

That gap is no longer sustainable.

Economic power is national power. When wielded coercively at scale, it can destabilize regions, accelerate migration crises, and generate humanitarian consequences that reverberate far beyond the intended target. It can entrench ruling elites rather than dislodge them. It can undermine US credibility. And it can blur the line between pressure and punishment.

Congress must modernize the War Powers Resolution to reflect this reality.

The reform need not prohibit sanctions. Nor should it weaken legitimate national security tools. But it should establish guardrails.

At minimum, Congress should require that when emergency-based economic measures:

• Target essential civilian infrastructure such as energy or water systems;
• Impose extraterritorial penalties on third countries;
• Produce measurable humanitarian strain; and
• Are explicitly intended to compel regime-level political change;

the president must submit a formal report to Congress within 48 hours—just as required when troops are introduced into hostilities.

And within 60 days, Congress should vote to authorize, modify, or terminate those measures.

This would not equate sanctions with war. It would not declare economic pressure unconstitutional. It would simply restore shared judgment in situations where economic instruments produce effects historically associated with warfare.

Emergency powers were designed for extraordinary threats—not for structural permanence. When emergency authorities become normalized, oversight attenuates. The longer a “national emergency” persists, the less it resembles an emergency.

If sanctions are genuinely necessary to protect US security, Congress should be willing to stand behind them. If they are not, Congress should have the institutional responsibility to recalibrate them.

Democratic accountability strengthens national power; it does not weaken it.

Cuba’s current trajectory underscores the urgency. Prolonged blackouts and energy scarcity do not fall neatly on government officials alone. They cascade through hospitals, schools, food storage, transportation, and tourism. They shape migration patterns and regional stability. They can generate humanitarian crises that require international response.

History offers caution. Decades of sanctions in Cuba have not produced regime change. Studies of sanctions more broadly show limited success in transforming consolidated political systems. More often, sanctions harden elites, shift burdens onto civilians, and narrow diplomatic space.

That does not mean sanctions have no role. It means they must be evaluated not only for intent, but for effect.

Strength is not measured solely by the ability to impose pressure. It is measured by the wisdom to calibrate it.

The United States is most credible when it demonstrates that its power operates within constitutional boundaries. Updating the War Powers Resolution to address large-scale economic coercion would signal that democratic oversight keeps pace with modern instruments of statecraft.

To the Trump administration: Emergency authority carries immense responsibility. Energy denial that risks humanitarian collapse may not ultimately advance US security interests. Recalibration—maintaining targeted pressure while preventing civilian infrastructure breakdown—reflects prudence, not weakness.

To Congress: Your war powers are not limited to bullets and bombs. They extend to the conditions that make conflict more likely. Modernize the law.

To scholars, institutions, and civil society: Engage respectfully, but firmly. Present data. Highlight humanitarian indicators. Encourage constitutional balance. The debate should not be partisan. It should be structural.

Sanctions are often described as the alternative to war. But when structured to constrict energy lifelines and induce systemic deprivation, they can become war by other means.

The War Powers Resolution was born of a constitutional reckoning. Half a century later, economic statecraft demands another.

History will not ask whether America had power. It will ask whether it used that power wisely—and whether it subjected that power to the discipline of democracy.

For months now, Democrats have expressed frustration with their party’s inability to oppose Trump 2.0 and the failure to construct an alternative. In October 2025, the Pew Research Foundation found that

• Two-thirds of Democrats say they are frustrated with the Democratic Party. Fewer than half of Republicans (40%) say the same of the GOP.
• Three-in-ten Democrats also say their own party makes them feel angry. Just 19% of Republicans say the same of their own party.
• Half of Democrats say their party makes them feel hopeful, compared with 69% of Republicans who say the same of the GOP.
• Just 29% of Democrats say the Democratic Party makes them feel proud; 52% of Republicans say their party evokes feelings of pride.

The Pew research builds on earlier research from the AP-NORC. In an open-ended question (meaning that respondents are free to volunteer anything), roughly 15% of Democrats described their party using words like "weak," or "apathetic," while an additional 10% believe it is broadly "ineffective" or "disorganized." Only 2 in 10 (20%) Democrats use positive words to describe their party. The most popular positive adjectives are “empathetic” and “inclusive.”

There are certainly Democrats on Capitol Hill who express frustration with their party for not doing enough to oppose President Donald Trump and put forth an alternative. Though he is not technically a Democrat (he is an Independent who caucuses with the Democrats), Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is a regular critic of the Democratic Party. Over the last few months, Sanders has been joined by others. The Washington Post reported back in September 2025 that Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) has come to join those dissatisfied with the Democratic response to Trump:

During more than two decades in Congress, Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland has earned a reputation as a mainstream policy wonk and loyal lieutenant to Democratic leaders. So, it came as something of a shock this month when Van Hollen derided top Democrats for failing to endorse New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist. “Many Democratic members of the Senate and the House representing New York have stayed on the sidelines” in the race, even as Mamdani has captured the public’s imagination by focusing on “ensuring that people can afford to live in the place where they work,” Van Hollen told a cheering crowd of party activists in Des Moines. “That kind of spineless politics is what people are sick of.”

Democrat rank and file were frustrated by their party’s breaking ranks in the Senate on the government shutdown in November. To many Democrats, including a number of Democrats on Capitol Hill, their party ended the shutdown without winning anything. MS described the situation as:

By breaking ranks, the eight Democrats effectively stripped their caucus of leverage to force an extension of the healthcare tax credits—and decided on their own, how the party’s shutdown strategy would end. It came as a shock to most Democrats.

Disgruntled Democrats have not had many opportunities to express their frustration with their party. There have not been any real Democratic primaries. All of this changed in dramatic form with the Democratic primary February 5 for New Jersey’s vacant 11th District (the former incumbent Mikie Sherrill was elected New Jersey governor). It is certainly fair to say that the 11th District is a Democratic one, but it is not one where you would expect a progressive to do well. It is mostly affluent suburbs where many commute to work in New York City.

In a result that shocked the Democratic establishment in both New Jersey and Washington, DC, Analilia Mejia, director of the New Jersey Working Families Alliance, and the political director for Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign, won a tightly contested multi-candidate field including former Congressman Tom Malinowski who had the backing of New Jersey Sen. Andy Kim. Also in the race was Lt. Gov. Tahesha Way and Essex County Commissioner Brendan Gill.

In her campaign, Mejia spent far less than her opponents and lacked endorsement by county Democratic officials. She compensated for this by building an impressive get-out-the-vote operation and by emphasizing her opposition to the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

Mejia’s campaign was also helped by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which spent over $2 million in negative advertising attacking Malinowski. Many of the ads attacked him for a vote connected to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) funding; the group had made it clear they felt Malinowski’s openness to conditioning aid to Israel was not sufficiently supportive of Israel. AIPAC’s involvement in the race certainly hurt Malinowski, but I doubt whether it was decisive. Mejia’s win was the result of her longtime organizing in New Jersey and fact that her campaign’s message fit the mood of the electorate.

New York Times columnist Michele Goldberg recounts her conversation with a longtime New Jersey pollster:

But the longtime New Jersey pollster Patrick Murray told me he wasn’t surprised, because “this is an incredibly angry Democratic electorate.” New Jersey suburbanites, he argues, didn’t suddenly turn into democratic socialists. But they think the Democratic establishment has been feckless, and they want representatives who won’t consult a focus group before battling the president. “The underlying message,” he said, is that Democratic voters believe their party “should be on a war footing with Donald Trump.”

Mejia still must win a special general election in April before she can take her seat in Congress. However, given the district’s partisan tilt, it seems like a pretty safe bet.

The special primary election in New Jersey's 11th Congressional District was the first real chance Democrats have had to express their disapproval of the party leadership. It will certainly not be the last opportunity for restive Democrats to express their frustrations with their party. Based on what happened in New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District, status-quo Democrats have much to be worried about. On February 11, Axios reported on a conversation with Sen. Sanders:

Asked in a phone interview where else he thinks the left can win upset victories, Sanders pointed to a "Fighting Oligarchy" rally he is doing on Friday with Nida Allam, who is challenging Rep. Valerie Foushee (D-NC). "That might be another area where progressives can win a strong victory," he said. Brad Lander, the former New York City comptroller challenging Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), also has "a strong chance to win," Sanders said.

Mejia’s win in New Jersey may well be the harbinger of more wins for the left wing of the Democratic Party as Democrats look to send a message to their leadership on Capitol Hill. The Democratic leadership in Washington, DC has yet to come to terms with how frustrated and angry ordinary Democrats are not only with Trump but with their leadership as well.

Ironically, the Republican Party that insists on Voter ID laws requiring would-be voters to fully identify themselves at the polls supports ICE agents who refuse to show their faces, present ID, or stick around after they gun down American citizens in the streets of American cities. Privacy rights are for them, not for we the people.

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Trump is lying about ICE arrests. He said his deportation machine would go after only the “worst of the worst.”

According to newly leaked data from the Department of Homeland Security, less than 14 percent of the 400,000 immigrants arrested by ICE in the past year have either been charged with or convicted of violent crimes.

The vast majority of immigrants jailed by ICE have no criminal record at all. A few have previously been charged with or convicted of nonviolent offenses, such as overstaying their visas or permission to be in the country.

(In the past, alleged violations of U.S. immigration laws were normally adjudicated by Justice Department immigration judges in civil — not criminal — proceedings.)

A large proportion of the people ICE has arrested are now in jail — some 73,000 — and being held without bail. They’re in what the Department of Homeland Security calls “detention facilities.”

Many lack adequate medical attention.

The Times reported this morning that a New Jersey woman, Leqaa Kordia, who has been held at the Prairieland Detention Facility in Alvarado, Texas, for nearly a year, suffered a seizure after she fell and hit her head. She was involved in an pro-Palestinian demonstration at Columbia University in 2024 and detained for overstaying her visa, but has never been charged with a crime. A judge has twice ruled that she is not a threat to the United States.

Meanwhile, a federal judge has ordered an external monitor to oversee California’s largest immigration detention center, California City Detention Facility, citing “shockingly deficient” medical care, including cases where detainees were denied medication for serious conditions.

A 2025 U.S. Senate investigation uncovered dozens of cases of medical neglect, with instances of detainees left without care for days and others being forced to compete for clean water.

Reports from early 2026 indicate that even children in family detention centers face poor conditions, including being returned to custody after hospitalization for severe illness without receiving necessary medication.

People held in detention facilities are deprived of the most basic means of communication to connect with their lawyers and the rest of the outside world, including phones, mail, and email. Some have been split off from the rest of their families, held hundreds if not thousands of miles away from their loved ones. Some of them are children.

Many are in the United States legally, awaiting determinations about their status as refugees fleeing violence or retribution in their home countries. Or they have green cards that would normally allow them to remain in the United States. Others have been in the United States for decades as law-abiding members of their communities.

They are hardly the “worst of the worst.” Many are like our parents or grandparents or great-grandparents who came to the United States seeking better lives. We are a nation of immigrants. While this doesn’t excuse being here without proper documentation, it doesn’t justify the draconian and inhumane measures being utilized by the Trump regime.

These leaked data from the Department of Homeland Security have not received the news coverage they deserve.

Moreover, these data pertain only to ICE. They don’t include arrests by Border Patrol agents deployed by the Trump administration to places far away from the U.S.-Mexico border, such as Chicago and Minneapolis, where Border Patrol agents have undertaken aggressive and sweeping arrest operations, targeting day laborers at Home Depot parking lots and stopping people — including U.S. citizens — to question them about their immigration status.

This is a moral blight on America, a crime against humanity. As Americans, we are complicit.

Former CNN anchor Don Lemon is under federal indictment for participating in a Minnesota protest group’s obstruction of a church service. He is scheduled to be arraigned Friday. News of his prosecution took me back more than five decades to when I was a young university professor in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). At that time, President Mobutu Sese Seko’s government threatened to arrest me for my alleged involvement in student disruptions.

In both cases, increasingly authoritarian governments decided to clamp down on independent observers—journalists or others—who sympathized with community activists. To do so, they distorted what actually happened to serve their political interests. Yet, I suspect that the last person President Donald Trump wants to be compared to is a corrupt, fallen, disgraced African dictator.

In December 1970, my university screeched to a halt as the entire student body boycotted classes. With support from Zairian professors and staff, the students called for the replacement of the Protestant missionary rector, criticized for incompetence and racism. From afar, I sympathized with their position. One day, with the university offering no information on the conflict, I accepted an invitation to hop onto a student bus. As a curious political scientist, I hoped to learn more about what my students were thinking. Arriving at a dormitory, I found myself enveloped in a crowd slowly moving forward. Suddenly, I found myself standing before a mock coffin for the rector emblazoned, “Rest in Peace.” Reaching for humor, I tossed a vine I had picked up onto the coffin. Then I walked away, seeing no opportunity for discussion.

Encountering one of my best students on campus a day or two later, I asked him what was happening with his movement. We discussed the students’ perspective and actions. I posed questions in the style of a neutral reporter or scholar. At a certain point, he reiterated the students’ expressed belief that the rector had discouraged his better qualified, potential replacement. Out of sympathy with the student demands and wanting to equalize our exchange, I shared relevant information I had, which appeared to confirm their suspicion. In doing so, I later realized, I yielded to an impulse that deserved more scrutiny.

Whether or not Lemon is convicted, the Trump administration’s approach of pursuing individuals who can be loosely linked to disruptive demonstrations is likely to continue.

Soon, I was surprised to learn that the rector’s supporters in the university were spreading exaggerated and false versions of my involvement in the protests. I was said to have knelt before the coffin, worked to replace a Protestant rector with a Jewish one, and actively participated in students’ subsequent siege, including minor violence, of university trustees’ meeting in a private home. Declassified State Department records show that Mobutu, his minister of the interior, and the American ambassador believed these baseless reports. I was ordered to fly with my family 800 miles to the capital and report to the minister. Over 10 anxious days, I finally managed to persuade the minister that my case should be “closed.”

Last month, Don Lemon live streamed a community protest group’s disruption of a religious service in a St. Paul, Minnesota church. In the context of community resistance to Immigration and Custom Enforcement abuses, the group had discovered that one of the pastors was an important ICE official. Lemon and eight others were charged under the federal FACE Act with conspiring “to injure, oppress, threaten, and intimidate” (including chants, yelling, and physical obstruction) multiple persons in the free exercise of religion—causing termination of the service, parishioners’ flight, emergency planning, and children’s fears.

Lemon himself was accused of certain “overt acts“ in and around the church:

• Reporting on parishioners' responses to the mayhem, including a young man crying and congregants departing, he called them understandable since the “whole point [of the operation is to disrupt;”
• Physically obstructing, along with two other protesters, the pastor on three sides while peppering him with questions and ignoring his request to leave immediately; and
• Physically obstructing some parishioners attempting to leave.

Some MAGA activists condemned Lemon and the others for “storming” the church and committing an anti-Christian hate crime.

Yet, a detailed examination of Lemon’s hour-long live-stream video of the event shows a far different reality. He is mainly observing and interviewing—as I was in the Congo—plus publicly reporting on what he sees. Inside the church, he tells parishioners and viewers several times that he is “chronicling and reporting” and “not part of the activists.” He interviews protesters, the pastor, and parishioners, generally seeking their views in a neutral way. Sometimes his questioning cites protesters’ grievances, but he generally does not insist upon them. It is also clear from the video that he and nearby protesters are not obstructing the pastor, nor are they preventing parishioners from leaving the church.

Like me, Lemon indicates sympathy with the protesters, invoking the history of the US civil rights movement. At one point he tells viewers—but not others—that he supports the disruption because “you have to make people uncomfortable in these times [when ICE is committing abuses during operations against illegal immigrants].” “I believe…, he declares, "everyone has to be willing to sacrifice something.” Only once though does he seem to depart from neutrality with a parishioner. After an interchange in which he states ICE’s excesses are powering protests and his interlocutor maintains ICE is keeping America safe, he asks the latter, “Do you really believe that?” Then, as the man starts to walk away, Lemon persists by trying to present him with “facts” that immigrants have lower crime rates than natives and most detainees were not convicted of crimes.

Lemon also presents an alternative to the conflict: He suggests to both the pastor and a parishioner that they move from confrontation to calm discussion with the protesters, for that might reveal areas of agreement.

These are however minor chords in Lemon’s overall conventional reporting style. We might consider whether, in an age of flagging journalist legitimacy, a reporter’s acknowledgement of his personal perspective amid an effort to tell a story objectively can enhance audience trust.

Either way, Lemon’s remarks did not transform him into a member of the group besieging the church any more than my two encounters with student protesters made me into a member of the group besieging the trustees.

Together these cases warn that repressive governments may go after a variety of observers sympathizing with militant protesters by purveying false or distorted reports of their actions. Whether or not Lemon is convicted, the Trump administration’s approach of pursuing individuals who can be loosely linked to disruptive demonstrations is likely to continue. Worryingly, the head of the FBI has announced investigations of “paid protest campaigns” throughout the country including “organizers, protesters, and funding sources that drive illicit activities.”

I teach 12th-grade English at an urban high school in upstate New York. The poverty rate here is high. And violent crime is a common occurrence. When people ask what I’ve learned from doing this job for 18 years, I tell them I’ve come to see how hard it is to be a Black or brown person in America. And the president is making that even harder, which in turn makes my job as an urban educator harder.

February 6, on his Truth Social platform, Donald Trump posted a 62-second clip of Barack and Michelle Obama’s faces imposed over the bodies of apes. As word of this got around school on Friday, multiple students of color came to me. They wanted to know—needed to know—if Trump’s “Truth” was real. I gave it to ‘em straight. Yes, the Commander-in-Chief had trafficked in one of the oldest, most-painful tropes against African Americans. These students weren’t angry. They were frustrated. They’d been stripped of their dignity by their own president. Friday was a very difficult day at my school.

Regarding the post, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said, "Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”

This Trumpian brand of race-baiting is nothing new. You might remember Trump’s opening salvo to the citizenry was Birtherism. To enter political life by asserting Barack Obama was born in Kenya, Trump signaled an alliance with those who despised Obama because of his skin color. Trump’s depraved conspiracy was meant to make us see Obama—a self-made, sophisticated Black man—as a savage, running around some mud-hut village in loin cloth and war paint. It wasn’t a dog whistle. It was a bullhorn.

In the end, Biff Tannen always crashes his car into manure. And that’s what’s going to happen to Trump.

Do I think Trump hates Black people? No, I think Trump thrives on division, and racial division is a provocateur every time. I harken back to what then-VP Kamala Harris said about Trump on the debate stage in 2024, “It's a tragedy that we have someone who wants to be president who has consistently, over the course of his career, attempted to use race to divide the American people."

Whether it’s race or some other subject, Trump never misses a chance to pit the electorate against itself. Anything from Rob Reiner to the Superbowl halftime show, it’s all fodder for a good fight. Our country has never been more divided. Don’t believe me? Scroll through Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter), etc. The knives are out. The name calling is ugly. And it’s all about Trump. As long as Trump controls the bully pulpit, we have no hope for unity. He’ll never stop fanning the flames.

This, I suppose, is the Shakespearean flaw of a president (and a person) who must be the center of attention at all times, even if it’s manufactured attention. You might remember, in his pre-political life, Trump routinely planted stories about himself in the New York papers and tabloid magazines, using the alias John Barron to brag about “Trump’s” celebrity connections and romantic relationships.

Maybe Trump suffers from what columnist Maureen Dowd called “Obama Derangement Syndrome.” While I’m certain that’s true, or sort of true, Trump targets migrants, women, and his perceived opponents with equal cruelty. Trump’s ascension to the top of our federal government is akin to Biff Tannen winning Lorraine at the end of Back to the Future. “What’re you lookin’ at, butthead?” Who’d root for that? Apparently 77 million Americans would.

The thing about bullies, even powerful ones like Trump: Deep down, they’re cowards who lack accountability. A few hours after Ms. Leavitt claimed the public didn’t care about Trump’s post, the administration changed its story: “A White House staffer erroneously made the post. It has been taken down.” Pinning this on a make-pretend staffer? It simply doesn’t get more Biff Tannen than that.

John F. Kennedy once said, “A rising tide lifts all ships,” meaning when something good happens to the system, everyone benefits. So what’s the net result of a president who tells lies, violates the law, uses the Oval Office to enrich himself and his family, orders the Justice Department to punish his enemies? Who “benefits” inside that system?

As a teacher of 12th graders, I wish we hadn’t heaped such a seismic amount of chaos upon the next generation. But I’m also optimistic. I believe these young people will guide our broken country out of the darkness, perhaps fueled by the dignity-stripping frustration they felt when they realized Trump’s “Truth” was real.

In the end, Biff Tannen always crashes his car into manure. And that’s what’s going to happen to Trump. History will regard the Trump Era as malignantly divisive, and Trump as nothing but a two-bit bully. Bullies never win. They don’t know how to win.

Needless to say, if anyone else, from a CEO to a cashier, had posted the Obamas as apes on their social media, they’d be out of a job before breakfast.

Speaking with reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday, Trump was asked if he’d apologize for his “racist” post. The president replied, "No, I didn't make a mistake."

US President Donald Trump has a long history of trashing athletes. So when he aimed his viciousness at US Olympians participating at the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics, perhaps it should not have been a surprise. The response from US athletes has been fierce and firm: They will not be intimidated by the petulant president.

When a journalist asked US freestyle skier Hunter Hess what it was like to represent the US in this particular political moment, Hess replied: “It’s a little hard. There’s obviously a lot going on that I’m not the biggest fan of, and I think a lot of people aren’t. Just because I’m wearing the flag doesn’t mean I represent everything that’s going on in the US.” The Olympian added that he had “mixed feelings” about representing the US.

In response, Trump hopped on Truth Social to attack the athlete, mangling the US skier’s actual words along the way. “U.S. Olympic Skier, Hunter Hess, a real Loser, says he doesn’t represent his country in the current Winter Olympics,” Trump punched out with his chubby little posting thumbs. “If that’s the case, he shouldn’t have tried out for the Team, and it’s too bad he’s on it. Very hard to root for someone like this.”

Not only did Trump misrepresent what Hess conveyed, but he cued his MAGA ghouls and powerful supporters that it was time to unleash their vitriol. Right-wing boxer wannabe Jake Paul posted: “Wow pls shut the fuck up. From all true Americans. If you don’t want to represent this country go live somewhere else.” US Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) piled on, “Any person who goes to the Olympics to represent the United States and then says they don’t want to represent the United States should be immediately stripped of their Olympic uniform.”

The IOC just can’t seem to grasp the obvious reality that their thin veneer of institutional "neutrality" tends to benefit the already powerful at the expense of courageous upstarts.

To say this does not exactly embrace the goodwill that the Olympics are supposed to stand for is to make an enormous understatement. Trump wouldn’t recognize the Olympic spirit if it came up and kissed him on the cankle.

Meanwhile, Olympians have stood up in support of Hess and other athletes who are willing to embrace the political complexity of the moment. Chloe Kim, the superstar snowboarder from the United States, said, “It’s important in moments like these for us to unite and kind of stand up for one another with what’s going on.” She added, “I’m really proud to represent the United States. The US has given my family so much opportunity, but I also think we are allowed to voice our opinions on what’s going on.”

Eileen Gu, the two-time gold-medal-winning freestyle skier who herself experienced scorn and abuse when she decided to represent China, rather than the United States, at the 2022 Winter Olympics, said: “I’m sorry that the headline that is eclipsing the Olympics has to be something so unrelated to the spirit of the Games. It really runs contrary to everything the Olympics should be.”

After winning a silver medal in cross-country skiing, Ben Ogden said, “I choose to believe that I live in a country where people can express their opinions without backlash.” He added: “Certainly not... without backlash from the president. And that was really disappointing to see, but I hope it doesn’t continue like that.” Fellow US cross-country skier Zak Ketterson also pushed back: “I think it’s pretty childish to come at somebody for exercising their free speech, right, and considering that side of the political spectrum always champions free speech, it’s a little, I think, surprising to see them so triggered.”

US curler Rich Ruohonen, who is also an attorney from Minnesota, leaned on the law, noting, “We have a constitution, and it allows us freedom of speech.” He added: “What’s happening in Minnesota is wrong. There’s no shades of grey. It’s clear.” This follows fellow Minnesotan Kelly Pannek, a member of the US women’s hockey team, who said she drew inspiration from activists in her home state: “I think people have been asking a lot of us what it’s like to represent our state and our country. I think what I’m most proud to represent is the tens of thousands of people that show up on some of the coldest days of the year to stand [at protests] and fight for what they believe in.”

Meanwhile, the International Olympic Committee has remained conspicuously quiet. Rather than standing up for Olympic athletes and their free speech rights, the self-proclaimed “supreme authority” of the games has sat silent.

When asked about Trump’s behavior at a Milan Cortina 2026 press conference, IOC spokesman Mark Adams said, “I am not going to add to the discourse because I don’t think it’s very helpful to heat up any discourse like that.” So much for the IOC’s slogan “putting athletes first.” According to the IOC’s most recently available tax documents, Mr. Adams makes $528,615 in reportable compensation (and another $100,838 in additional compensation from the IOC and related organizations), but apparently that isn’t enough to inspire him to do his job right.

Perhaps the IOC is too busy clamping down on Ukrainian skeleton athlete Vladyslav Heraskevych for wearing a helmet commemorating athletes from his country who were killed in the war with Russia. Or maybe they are still admiring their handiwork from when they forced the Haitian delegation at the Milano Cortina Olympics to remove the Haitian revolutionary Toussaint Louverture—the former slave who led a revolution that created the world’s first Black republic in Haiti in 1804—from their uniforms, arguing that Louverture’s image violated Olympic rules barring political symbolism.

The IOC just can’t seem to grasp the obvious reality that their thin veneer of institutional "neutrality" tends to benefit the already powerful at the expense of courageous upstarts. In sitting silent in the face of Trump’s attacks on athletes, the IOC is facilitating the slide toward authoritarianism. With the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics on the horizon, it’s time for the IOC to wake up from its bumbling slumber.

Trump’s attacks on star US athletes is part of a larger pattern. After all, this was the grump who attacked Megan Rapinoe during the 2019 World Cup, tweeting, “Megan should never disrespect our Country, the White House, or our Flag, especially since so much has been done for her & the team.” Six years later, Trump is at it again. Rapinoe refused to back down. May these athletes continue to show the collective courage to do the same, to stand up to power.

LIVE 9:00 am Eastern time, Streaming Anytime:

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

Today we discuss:

•  In a bizarre episode of epic incompetence and lack of coordination, the Trump Administration shut down El Paso’s airspace—originally for 10 days—over a party balloon. First, it turns out the Defense Dept. lent a high-powered anti-drone system to the Border Patrol. Who turned it on without permission. To shoot down a “Mexican cartel drone.” Which didn’t exist. Fearing passenger jets would tumble out of the sky, a panicked FAA—who never got a call from the Border folks playing with their borrowed toy—ordered a shutdown. Organ transplant recipients may die as a result. Then the Trump Administration reflexively spun tall tales to cover it up. We’ll try to peel away the many layers of insanity here.

•  Asked about the Epstein Files under oath, AG Pam Bondi helpfully points out that the Dow Jones Industrial Average is a record high.

• As Trump dispatches a second carrier battle group to the Persian Gulf, he tells Netanyahu he prefers to negotiate with Iran, rather than bomb it—for now.

• House Republicans advance the SAVE America Act, which would pass Americans’ voter information to the Dept. of Homeland Security, require proof of citizenship to vote and require special paperwork for people who have changed their names, like women and trans people.

• Russians are being evacuated from Cuba.

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For months, we have warned of a drive by President Donald Trump and his administration to undermine the 2026 election. It is unprecedented, outlandish. Now Trump himself is blaring his intent—and over the past week, the public issue has exploded. The fight for a free and fair vote is taking shape, especially after House Republicans on Wednesday night passed the euphemistically named SAVE Act.

Make no mistake: The SAVE Act would stop millions of American citizens from voting. It would be the most restrictive voting bill ever passed by Congress. It is Trump’s power grab in legislative garb.

Effectively, the bill would require Americans to produce a passport or birth certificate to register and thus to vote. Brennan Center research shows that 21 million people lack ready access to these documents. Half of all Americans don’t have a passport, for example. and millions of married women who have changed their names might need to jump through extra hoops to vote.

With passage in the House (not for the first time), it will be up to senators to block it. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) declared it “dead on arrival.” But this time around, a mobilized outside drive is pushing lawmakers to restrict voting. “It must be done or democracy is dead,” instructed Elon Musk. The SAVE Act will not expire quietly, surrounded by loved ones. It’s on all of us to stand up and speak out, once again.

Each time Trump declares that his goal is to “nationalize” the election—not for the greater good, but for his own political interests—the stakes become clearer.

And now we see how it fits into the broader strategy.

In recent days, Trump has repeatedly demanded that Republicans “nationalize” the elections on behalf of his political party. Each time his aides try to clean up his remarks, he doubles down. “A state is an agent for the federal government in elections,” he wrongly insisted.

Constitutionally, that’s upside-down land. The Constitution is unambiguous: States run elections. Presidents have no role.

Congress, appropriately, can enact national legislation. It should use that power to pass national standards to protect the freedom to vote, not restrict it.

Then there’s the appalling abuse of federal law enforcement. We still do not know why Kash Patel’s FBI raided election offices in Fulton County, Georgia nearly two weeks ago. A judge has ordered that the underlying legal papers, secret until now, be released. ProPublica reports the raid may be linked to agitation by a “conservative researcher” who has peddled discredited conspiracy theories.

Intelligence chief-gadfly Tulsi Gabbard showed up at the Atlanta raid. FOMO? Amid Justice Department ducking and a denial by Trump, Gabbard wrote to Congress that in fact the president ordered her to go even though her office plays no part in elections. Now it turns out that Gabbard last year obtained voting machines in Puerto Rico. And Trump’s allies in 2020 claimed that Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, long dead, had masterminded a plot.

This is comic opera stuff. But it’s deadly serious, too—certainly for the public servants in Fulton County. It all aims to send a message to intimidate election officials around the country. If you preside over an election and we don’t like the result, we may come after you.

Steve Bannon, the Trump strategist who served prison time for defying a congressional subpoena, declared on Tuesday, “We’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November. We’re not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again.” When we see how politicized and aggressive immigration forces have become, that threat becomes more than a podcaster’s bombast.

Here, the law is clear: That would be a federal crime. My colleague Sean Morales-Doyle explains: “Can the president send troops or ICE agents to polling places? No—both federal and state laws explicitly prohibit the federal government from carrying out these implied threats.” It’s a federal crime to intimidate voters, too.

In coming months, if we see abuses of power like this, what can we all do to ensure that voters have their voice?

So far, we and others have staved off Trump’s worst impulses. After Trump signed an executive order last year purporting to unilaterally rewrite election rules, we sued the administration, and we won. And as the Trump administration continues to sue states for sensitive voter information, courts in California, Michigan, and Oregon have reaffirmed states’ right to refuse.

State and local governments, too, must be ready to act to protect the polls.

And voters will need to know that, despite all the noise and drama, we can make sure the 2026 elections are free, fair, secure, and, yes, uneventful. It may require voting early or by mail, for example.

In an election year, voting rights advocates often ponder whether pointing to threats risks demobilizing citizens. At some point, warning about voter suppression can accidentally dampen participation.

Not this year, it seems. Each time Trump declares that his goal is to “nationalize” the election—not for the greater good, but for his own political interests—the stakes become clearer. When he wrongly insists American elections are “rigged,” as he did over the weekend, it’s more than bluster. He’s saying the quiet part out loud.

In 2026, the right to vote will demand a fight to vote.

On February 5, with the expiration of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New START, the only bilateral arms control treaty left between the United States and Russia, we are guaranteed to find ourselves ever closer to the edge of a perilous precipice. The renewed arms race that seems likely to take place could plunge the world, once and for all, into the nuclear abyss. This crisis is neither sudden nor surprising, but the predictable culmination of a truth that has haunted us for nearly 80 years: Humanity has long been living on borrowed time.

In such a context, you might think that our collective survival instinct has proven remarkably poor, which is, at least to a certain extent, understandable. After all, if we had allowed ourselves to feel the full weight of the nuclear threat we’ve faced all these years, we might indeed have collapsed under it. Instead, we continue to drift forward with a sense of muted dread, unwilling (or simply unable) to respond to the nuclear nightmare. In a world already armed with thousands of omnicidal weapons, such fatalism—part suicidal nihilism and part homicidal complacency—becomes a form of violence in its own right.

Given such indifference, we risk not only our own lives but also the lives of all those who would come after us. As Jonathan Schell observed decades ago, both genocide and nuclear war are distinct from other forms of mass atrocity in that they serve as “crimes against the future.” And as Robert Jay Lifton once warned, what makes nuclear war so singularly horrifying is that it would constitute “genocide in its terminal form,” a destruction so absolute as to render the Earth unlivable and irrevocably reverse the very process of creation.

Yet for many, the absence of such a nuclear holocaust, 80 years after the US dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is taken as proof that such a catastrophe is, in fact, unthinkable and will never happen. These days, to invoke the specter of annihilation is to be dismissed as alarmist, while to argue for the abolition of such weaponry is considered naïve. As it happens, though, the opposite is true. It’s the height of naïveté to believe that a global system built on the supposed security of nuclear weapons can endure indefinitely.

Nuclear weapons are human creations, and what is made by us can be dismantled by us.

That much should be obvious by now. In truth, we’ve clung to the faith that rational heads will prevail for far too long. Such thinking has sustained a minimalist global nonproliferation regime aimed at preventing the further spread of nuclear weapons to so-called terrorist states like Iraq, Libya, and North Korea (which now indeed has a nuclear arsenal). Yet, today, it should be all too clear that the states with nuclear weapons are, and have long been, the true rogue states.

A nuclear-armed Israel has, after all, been committing genocide in Gaza and has bombed many of its neighbors. Russia continues to devastate Ukraine, which relinquished its nuclear arsenal in 1994, and its leader, Vladimir Putin, has threatened to use nuclear weapons there. And a Washington led by a brazen authoritarian deranged by power, who has declared that he doesn’t “need international law,” has stripped away the fragile façade of a rules-based global order.

Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and the leaders of the seven other nuclear-armed states possess the unilateral capacity to destroy the world, a power no country should be allowed to wield. Yet even now, there is still time to avert catastrophe. But to chart a reasonable path forward, it’s necessary to look back eight decades and ask why the world failed to ban the bomb at a moment when the dangerous future we now inhabit was already clearly foreseeable.

Every City Is Hiroshima

With Hiroshima and Nagasaki still smoldering ruins, people everywhere confronted a rupture so profound that it seemed to inaugurate a new historical era, one that might well be the last. As news of the atomic bombings spread, a grim consensus took shape that technological “progress” had outpaced political and moral restraint. Journalist Norman Cousins captured the zeitgeist when he wrote that “modern man is obsolete, a self-made anachronism becoming more incongruous by the minute.” Human beings had clearly fashioned themselves into vengeful gods, and the specter of Armageddon was no longer a matter of theology but a creation of modern civilization.

In the United States, of course, a majority of Americans greeted the initial reports of the atomic bombings of those two Japanese cities in a celebratory fashion, convinced that such unprecedented weapons would bring a swift, victorious end to a brutal war. For many, that relief was inseparable from a lingering desire for retribution. In announcing the first atomic attack, President Harry Truman himself declared that the Japanese “have been repaid many fold” for their strike on Pearl Harbor, which inaugurated the official American entry into World War II. Yet triumph quickly gave way to a more somber reckoning.

As the scale of devastation came into fuller view, the psychological fallout radiated far beyond Japan. The New York Herald Tribune captured a growing unease when it editorialized that “one forgets the effect on Japan or on the course of the war as one senses the foundations of one’s own universe trembling a little… it is as if we had put our hands upon the levers of a power too strange, too terrible, too unpredictable in all its possible consequences for any rejoicing over the immediate consequences of its employment.”

Some critics of the bombings would soon begin to frame their concerns in explicitly moral terms, posing the question: Who had we become? Historian Lewis Mumford, for example, argued that the attacks represented the culmination of a society unmoored from any ethical foundations and nothing short of “the visible insanity of a civilization that has ceased to worship life and obey the laws of life.” Religious leaders voiced similar concern. The Christian Century magazine typically condemned the bombings as “a crime against God and humanity which strikes at the very basis of moral existence.”

As the apocalyptic imagination took hold, others turned to a more self-interested but no less urgent question: What will happen to us? Newspapers across the country began running stories on what a Hiroshima-sized bomb would do to their downtowns. Yet Philip Morrison, one of the few scientists to witness both the initial Trinity Test of the atomic bomb and Hiroshima after the bombing, warned that even such terrifying projections underestimated the danger.

Deaths in the hundreds of thousands were, he insisted, far too optimistic. “The bombs will never again, as in Japan, come in ones or twos. They will come in hundreds, even in thousands.” And given the effect of radiation, those who made “remarkable escapes,” the “lucky” ones, would die all the same. Imagining a prospective strike on New York City, he wrote of the survivors who “died in the hospitals of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Rochester, and Saint Louis in the three weeks following the bombing. They died of unstoppable internal hemorrhages… of slow oozing of the blood into the flesh.” Ultimately, he concluded, “If the bomb gets out of hand, if we do not learn to live together… there is only one sure future. The cities of men on Earth will perish.”

One World or None

Morrison wrote that account as part of a broader effort, led by former Manhattan Project scientists who had helped create the bomb, to alert the public to the newfound danger they themselves had helped unleash. That campaign culminated in the January 1946 book One World or None (and a short film). The scientists had largely come to believe that, if the public had their consciousness raised about the implications of the bomb, a task for which they felt uniquely responsible and equipped, then public opinion might shift in ways that could make policies capable of averting catastrophe politically possible.

Scientists like Niels Bohr began calling on their colleagues to face “the great task lying ahead,” while urging them to be “prepared to assist in any way… in bringing about an outcome of the present crisis of humanity worthy of the ideals for which science through the ages has stood.” Accepting such newfound social responsibility felt unavoidable, even if so many of those scientists wished to simply return to their prewar pursuits in the insulated university laboratories they once inhabited.

The opportunity to ban the bomb before the arms race took off was squandered not because the public failed to recognize the threat, but because the government refused to heed the will of its people.

As physicist Joseph Rotblat observed, among the many forms of collateral damage inflicted by the bomb was the destruction of “the ivory towers in which scientists had been sheltering.” In the wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that rupture propelled them into public life on an unprecedented scale. The once-firm boundary between science and politics began to blur as formerly quiet and aloof researchers spoke to the press, delivered public lectures, published widely circulated articles, and lobbied members of Congress in an effort to secure some control over atomic energy.

Among them was J. Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Los Alamos Laboratory where the bomb was created, who warned that, “if atomic bombs are to be added as new weapons to the arsenals of a warring world… then the time will come when mankind will curse the names of Los Alamos and Hiroshima,” a statement that left some officials perplexed. Former Vice President Henry Wallace, who had known Oppenheimer as both the director of Los Alamos and someone who had directly sanctioned the bombings, recalled that “he seemed to feel that the destruction of the entire human race was imminent,” adding, “the guilt consciousness of the atomic bomb scientists is one of the most astounding things I have ever seen.”

Yet the scientists pressed ahead in their frantic effort to avert future catastrophe by preventing a nuclear arms race. They insisted that there was no doubt the Soviet Union and other powers would acquire the weapon, that any hope of a prolonged atomic monopoly was delusional, and that espionage was incidental to such a reality, since the fundamental scientific principles needed to build an atomic bomb had been established by 1940. And with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the secret that a functioning bomb was possible was obviously out.

They argued that there would be no effective defense against a devastating atomic attack and that the US, as a highly urbanized society, was uniquely vulnerable to such “city killer” weapons. With vast, exposed coastlines, they warned that such a bomb, not yet capable of being delivered by a missile, could simply be smuggled into one of the nation’s ports and lie dormant there for years. For the scientists, the implications were unmistakable. The age of national sovereignty had ended. The world had become too dangerous for national chauvinism, which, if humanity were to survive, had to give way to a new architecture of international cooperation.

Teaching Us to Love the Bomb

Such activism had its intended effects. Many Americans became more fearful and wanted arms control. By late 1945, a majority of the public consistently supported some form of international control over such weaponry and the abolition of the manufacturing of them. And for a brief moment, such a possibility seemed within reach. The first resolution passed by the new United Nations in January 1946 called for exactly that. The publication of John Hersey’s Hiroshima first as a full issue of the New Yorker and then as a book, with its intense portrayal of life and death in that Japanese city, further shifted public sentiment toward abolition.

Yet as such hopes crystallized at the United Nations, the two global superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, were already preparing for a future nuclear war. Washington continued to expand its stockpile of atomic weaponry, while Moscow accelerated its work creating such weaponry, detonating its initial atomic test four years after the world first met that terrifying new weapon. That Soviet test, followed by the Korean War, helped extinguish the early promise of an international response to such weaponry, a collapse aided by deliberate efforts in Washington to ensure that the United States grew its atomic arsenal.

In that effort, former Secretary of War Henry Stimson was coaxed out of retirement by President Truman’s advisers who urged him to write one final, “definitive” account defending the bombings to neutralize growing opposition. As Harvard president and government-aligned scientist James Conant explained to Stimson, officials in Washington feared that they were losing the ideological battle. They were particularly concerned that mounting anti-nuclear sentiment would prove persuasive “among the type of person that goes into teaching,” shaping a generation less inclined to regard their decision as morally legitimate.

Stimson’s article, published in Harper’s Magazine in February 1947, helped cement the official narrative: that the bomb was a last resort rooted in military necessity that saved half a million American lives and required neither regret nor moral examination. In that way, the opportunity to ban the bomb before the arms race took off was squandered not because the public failed to recognize the threat, but because the government refused to heed the will of its people. Instead, it sought to secure power through nuclear weapons, driven by a paranoid fear of Moscow that became a self-fulfilling prophecy. What followed were decades of preemptive escalation, the continued spread of such weaponry globally, and, at its height, a global arsenal of more than 60,000 nuclear warheads by 1985.

Forty years later, in a world where nine countries—the US, Russia, China, France, Great Britain, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea—already have nuclear weapons (more than 12,000 of them), there can be little doubt that, as things are now going, there will be both more countries and more weapons to come.

Such a global arms race must, however, be ended before it ends the human race. The question is no longer what is politically possible, but what is virtually guaranteed if we refuse to pursue the “impossible.” Nuclear weapons are human creations, and what is made by us can be dismantled by us. Whether that happens in time is, of course, the question that now should confront everyone, everywhere, and one that history, if there is anyone around to write or to read it, will not excuse us for failing to answer.

LIVE 11 am Eastern THURSDAY, and then streaming whenever you wanna hear/watch it:

Conservative syndicated editorial cartoonist and comic strip creator Steve Kelley, formerly of the San Diego Union-Tribune and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, joins DMZ America co-hosts and colleagues Ted Rall (from the Left) and Scott Stantis (from the Right) to break down the current state of the Trump Administration in its second year.

A partial government shutdown looms, Trump’s approval ratings on immigration–a good issue for the president usually–are tanking and the nation increasingly looks and feels a lot like the chaotic late 1960s. MAGA world appears to be coming apart at the seams, yet Democrats seem unable to seize the moment. What IS the real State of the Nation?

The post “Steve Kelley on the State of the Nation” | DMZ America Podcast | Ep 228 appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

On Wednesday, Washington, DC will witness two historic moments, both carrying the banner “peace.”

After 15 weeks, the 2,300-mile Walk for Peace, led by a group of Theravada Buddhist monks, will reach its conclusion at the National Mall. Meanwhile, just under two kilometers away at the White House, President Donald Trump will meet internationally wanted war criminal Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss the prospect of imminent military escalation in Iran and Gaza.

On Tuesday, February 10, both Netanyahu and monk and spiritual leader, Venerable Bhikkhu Panakkara, invoked peace when explaining their respective journeys to the capital. Before boarded Wing of Zion, Israel’s state aircraft, Netanyahu told press, “I will present Trump with principles for negotiations with Iran that are important not only to Israel but to everyone who wants peace and security,” adding, “In my opinion, these are important principles for everyone who wants peace and security in the Middle East.” At the same hour in Washington, Venerable Bhikkhu Panakkara addressed the thousands gathered outside the National Cathedral, offering a different vision: “We are not walking… to bring you any peace. Rather, we raise the awareness of peace so that you can unlock that box and free it, let peace bloom and flourish among all of us, throughout this nation and the world.”

Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, will gather near the Lincoln Memorial to witness and honor the end of the monks’ spiritual trek from the Huong Dao Vipassana Bhavana Center in Fort Worth, Texas. At least hundreds more, will gather to protest the arrival of Netanyahu.

For all that separates these events in character and intent, each carries a vision of humanity and America, a reflection of alternate futures for the country and the world.

The monks will walk from the Peace Monument near the Capitol down to the Memorial. It will likely be a continuation of the exchanges that have marked their journey: flowers, bows, clasped hands, and smiles. They arrive after bearing unusually cold winter months, following an ascetic tradition of eating just one meal per day and sleeping beneath trees.

Nearby, Trump and Netanyahu will be fortified away from protesters, protected by gates, barricades, drones, and agents, meeting in richly adorned rooms, exercising a power over the future of the Middle East that is both absolute and unpredictable. Netanyahu is reportedly expected to insist that to secure Phase II of the “ceasefire” Peace Plan that never was, Israel must escalate its ongoing genocidal attacks against the entirely displaced civilian population in Gaza. He is also anticipated to lobby for terms, particularly regarding ballistic missile programs, that could deliberately undermine a US-Iran deal—a predictable objective of the Israeli government.

Trump, who proclaims “peace through strength” as the White House doctrine, may be dangerously receptive to Netanyahu’s vision. Almost notoriously, he has sought to brand himself with peace—relentlessly chasing the Nobel Peace Prize, styling himself the self-proclaimed “peace president” at rallies, staging photo ops, making self-aggrandizing speeches, and founding the so-called Board of Peace, which he will soon celebrate at the newly renamed Donald Trump Institute of Peace in DC (formerly the US Institute of Peace). Peace has become a banner he claims, brands, and projects onto his political identity.

But while he may assert himself as the peace president, who has “ended eight wars,” he remains the president who in very recent months, has initiated sheer terror and chaos. He has kidnapped other Presidents, deployed the National Guard, and unleashed violent immigration agents on American cities; he has embraced systematic family separations of immigrants and migrants, celebrated patterned executions in the Caribbean, defunded healthcare and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits for millions in favor of building out a military-grade Immigration and Customs Enforcement budget and a fantasy golden dome, wields tariffs and economic coercion as erratic weapons of global power, seeks to colonize and ethnically cleanse Gaza to fulfill his son-in-laws Rivera vision, escalates regime-change operations around the globe, and more recently has manufactured a humanitarian crisis in Cuba. He is also the once-close ally, confidant, and facilitator of Jeffrey Epstein, and, like Epstein, a sexual predator.

Here, in DC today, two very different notions of peace converge.

In the White House, some of the world’s most dangerous, most criminal, and cruel men convene with the fate of millions in their hands, scheming war and exercising it through greed, supremacist ideology, and a state apparatus that shields them from accountability. Their peace is loud, flashy, and enforced. It slaps itself on trophies and buildings. It holds ceremonies of the utmost excess. It is severed from justice and empathy. It requires death. It requires war. It is ever attached to “security.”

There is also a peace carried to mark the end of a long, deliberate walk across the city. This peace, marked on a white flag, is humble and steady, disciplined and tempered—peace as practice, not strategy, not spectacle, but ethic. A testament to humanity’s highest aspirations. People from across the country join it, of every origin, faith, and language, observing in reverence and quiet joy. They honor the hope and tradition the monks have devoted themselves to, a practice rooted in mindfulness, compassion, and self-restraint. Along the way, they may hear again what Venerable Bhikkhu Panakkara has repeated throughout the journey: “Today is going to be my peaceful day.” For the last time, the monks offer those who witness the chance to share in this intentional presence.

For all that separates these events in character and intent, each carries a vision of humanity and America, a reflection of alternate futures for the country and the world. Today in the nation’s capital, history is being made—among those who claim power and peace, and those who live it.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat is a professor of history at New York University; her Wikipedia biography describes her as “a scholar on fascism and authoritarian leaders.” With these credentials, she has written an opinion piece in the New York Times telling us that dictators and would-be dictators generally make their economies worse and lead a precarious existence. Their efforts often “backfire,” as she puts it.

While this theory might seem like comforting evidence that history “proves” that dictators will get their comeuppance, it is actually a counsel of passively sitting on our hands and waiting out the authoritarian leader: either to await his death, or hang on till he’s ousted from power by his own miscarrying plans. If history proves anything, it’s that patient optimism is not a virtue.

Ben-Ghiat's area of expertise is Benito Mussolini and the fascist era in Italy, and she uses him as an example of a dictator getting what’s coming to him. After surrounding himself with sycophants and employing consistently disastrous military strategies, Mussolini was deposed in 1943 by the Fascist Grand Council: “He spent his last years as the head of the Nazi puppet state the Republic of Salò, his phone tapped by the Germans. He was killed by anti-Fascist partisans in April 1945.”

His demise—being strung up like a side of beef at a Milan filling station—may have been poetic justice, but wasn’t the cost just a little too high? He ruled Italy for 21 years until he was deposed, and by the time of his death, much of the country was in ruins. Italian campaign veteran and Stars and Stripes cartoonist Bill Mauldin described the landscape as “ghostlike,” recalling walls standing in the moonlight surrounded by rubble, with empty, "single unblinking" windows looking out like eyes. That’s what tends to happen when a dictator’s plans backfire – he pulls the whole country down with him.

The author’s more contemporary example is Vladimir Putin. At the beginning of 2022, she says, Putin had it all, including gold toilet seats in his Crimean palace. But according to Ben-Ghiat, he invaded Ukraine to shore up his waning popularity, a move that did not work out as planned. The Russian dead have piled up, Russia has become more dependent on China, and the economy has sputtered under the burden of the war.

If the cultural constellation provides a measure of both elite and popular support, the dictator can endure for years.

But so what? Putin has been in power for 25 years, and shows no sign of going anywhere soon. Perhaps some faction in the army or the FSB might “terminate him with extreme prejudice” (as the phrase in Apocalypse Now termed an assassination), because they would be the only ones with the firepower to do so, but I suspect Putin’s likely successors would not transform Russia into another Denmark. And Ben-Ghiat undermines her own thesis by reminding us that Donald Trump shows every sign of being willing to bail Putin out of his international difficulties.

Unfortunately, dictatorial systems tend to be more durable than she thinks. How many times in the last four decades have we heard that the Iranian regime is on the point of collapse? Even a usually savvy observer of international relations like Lawrence Freedman has flatly claimed “the regime is doomed.” Perhaps in the long run Freedman will be proved right, but the people in Iran have to live in the short run.

And sometimes the long run is very long. North Korea, possibly the most repressive regime on the planet, has been run as a family business by the Kim dynasty for 78 years. With a per capita GDP that is less than one-sixtieth (note: not one-sixth, one sixtieth!) of South Korea’s, it is the most spectacular example in the world of how dictatorships ruin economies. It also experiences periodic famines. Famine is the single biggest marker for the total failure of a governing system; historically, the one thing any regime wanted to avoid was bread riots in the big cities. Ask the shades of Louis XVI or Tsar Nicholas about it.

Yet, if the regime is repressive enough, as North Korea’s is, it can use lack of food as a regime stabilizer. The army, the secret police, and the regime’s vocal supporters get food as a reward; access to enough calories to survive becomes the reward for loyalty. The rest, as in North Korea or China during the Great Leap Forward, can subsist on grass, wood shavings, and potato peels, and will be too physically debilitated to overthrow the system, even if a comprehensive system of surveillance and informers did not exist.

Donald Trump certainly does not have a hold on the United States like that of Kim Jong-un on North Korea, or Putin on Russia. But even in a “mild” dictatorship, the odds are high that living standards for the average person will decline, free speech will be stifled, and culture will stagnate into regime propaganda and kitsch. Social trust, already in steady decline in the United States since the 1960s, will crater to the levels of Somalia or Yemen.

Without social trust, the economy cannot be entrepreneurial and innovative (as opposed to crony-ridden and subsisting on government favoritism), and our civil society cannot be vibrant and voluntaristic with so many informers about. Art and intellectual activity will wither; our public universities, once the best in the world, will decline to the level of Bob Jones U. or Trump’s own fake university.

I believe that Ben-Ghiat fundamentally errs in emphasizing the dictator, rather than the political and social culture that allows a dictator to reach the top, and that can sustain him in power despite his disastrous mistakes. If the cultural constellation provides a measure of both elite and popular support, the dictator can endure for years.

There is a solid American base of popular backing for fascism, and Trump’s departure from the scene will not cause these people to come to their senses as if by magic.

As in all dictatorships, Trump has a circle of elite supporters. Only in this case, the extent of their international influence is orders of magnitude greater than any previous group of oligarchs. Our American class of billionaires, deci-billionaires, and centi-billionaires dearly loves Trump for the fact that the bribes they render unto him are smaller than the taxes they would have to pay in normal circumstances.

As a bonus, the billionaires receive no-bid contracts; the return on their investment is so great that the public groveling they must periodically perform is well worth it. These malefactors of great wealth will stand like a praetorian guard to protect the privileges they have received under Trump. Any attempt to return America to a functioning representative democracy under the rule of law cannot succeed over the long term unless there is a firm reckoning with our billionaire class.

Finally, dictators must have at least some popular support. Trump’s opponents must contend with the uncomfortable fact that in three consecutive presidential elections, the number of Americans who voted for him grew each time. There is a solid American base of popular backing for fascism, and Trump’s departure from the scene will not cause these people to come to their senses as if by magic.

Ben-Ghiat is trafficking in platitudes by saying that dictators make decisions that are terrible for their countries. That is the nature of dictators and the sycophants who fawn over them; competent and moral people are systematically weeded out of the governmental apparatus and replaced by yes-men. As Hannah Arendt observed 75 years ago:

Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.

None of this is to say that Trump and his goons cannot be levered out of power. But there is no basis for us to complacently wait for his mistakes to cause the scales to fall from the eyes of his supporters in a miraculous fashion. Making America a decent society will require a tough-mindedness and unflinching determination that Merrick Garland so conspicuously lacked when he had the chance. We must not fail the next chance.

Marta Jiménez, a hairdresser in Cuba’s eastern city of Holguín, covered her face with her hands and broke down crying when I asked her about Trump’s blockade of the island—especially now that the U.S. is choking off oil shipments.

“You can’t imagine how it touches every part of our lives,” she sobbed. “It’s a vicious, all-encompassing spiral downward. With no gasoline, buses don’t run, so we can’t get to work. We have electricity only three to six hours a day. There’s no gas for cooking, so we’re burning wood and charcoal in our apartments. It’s like going back 100 years. The blockade is suffocating us—especially single mothers,” she said crying into her hands “and no one is stopping these demons: Trump and Marco Rubio.”

We came to Holguín to deliver 2,500 pounds of lentils, thanks to fundraising by CODEPINK and the Cuban-American group Puentes de Amor. On our last trip, we brought 50-pound bags of powdered milk to the children’s hospital. With Trump now imposing a brutal, medieval siege on the island, this humanitarian aid is more critical than ever. But lentils and milk cannot power a country. What Cubans really need is oil.

There were no taxis at the airport. We hitchhiked into town on the truck that came to pick up the donations. The road was eerily empty. In the city, there were few gas-powered cars and no buses running, but the streets were full of bicycles, electric motorcycles, and three-wheeled electric vehicles used to transport people and goods. Most of the motorcycles—Chinese, Japanese, or Korean—are shipped in from Panama. With a price tag near $2,000, only those with family abroad sending remittances can afford them.

Production across the economy is grinding to a halt. Factories can’t function without electricity, and many skilled workers have given up their state jobs because wages are so low.

Thirty-five-year-old Javier Silva gazed longingly at a Yamaha parked on the street. “I could never buy one of those on my salary of 4,000 pesos a month,” he said. With inflation soaring, the dollar now fetches about 480 pesos, making his monthly income worth less than ten dollars.

Cubans don’t pay rent or have mortgages; they own their homes. And while healthcare has deteriorated badly in recent years because of shortages of medicines and equipment, it remains free–a system gasping but not abandoned.

The biggest expense is food. Markets are stocked, but prices are out of reach—especially for coveted items like pork, chicken, and milk. Even tomatoes are now unaffordable for many families.

Holguín was once known as the breadbasket of Cuba because of its rich agricultural land. That reputation took a severe hit this year when Hurricane Melissa tore through the province, destroying vast areas of crops. Replanting and repairing the damage without gasoline for tractors or electricity for irrigation is nearly impossible. Less food means higher prices.

Production across the economy is grinding to a halt. Factories can’t function without electricity, and many skilled workers have given up their state jobs because wages are so low. Jorge, whom I met selling bologna in the market, used to be an engineer at a state enterprise. Verónica, once a teacher, now sells sweets she bakes at home—when the power is on. Ironically, while Marco Rubio claims he wants to bring capitalism to Cuba, US sanctions are crushing the very private sector that most Cubans now depend on to survive.

I talked to people on the street who blame the Cuban government for the crisis and openly say they can’t wait for the fall of communism. Young people told me that their goal is to leave the island and live somewhere they can make a decent living. But I didn’t meet a single person who supported the blockade or a US invasion.

“This government is terrible,” said a thin man who changes money on the street—an illegal but tolerated activity. But when I showed him a photo of Marco Rubio, he didn’t hesitate. “That man is the devil. A self-serving, slimy politician who doesn’t give a damn about the Cuban people.”

Others put the blame squarely on the United States. They point to the dramatic improvement in their lives after Presidents Obama and Raúl Castro reached an agreement and Washington eased many sanctions in 2014–2016. “It was the same Cuban government we have now,” one man told me. “But when the US loosened the rope around our necks, we could breathe. If they just left us alone, we could find our own solutions.”

The only way Cubans are surviving this siege is because they help one another. They trade rice for coffee with neighbors. They improvise—no hay, pero se resuelve (we don’t have much, but we make it work). The government provides daily meals for the most vulnerable—the elderly, the disabled, mothers with no income—but each day it becomes harder as the state has less food to distribute and less fuel to cook with.

At one feeding center, an elderly volunteer told us he spends hours every day scavenging for firewood. He proudly showed us a chunk of a wooden pallet, nails and all. “This guarantees tomorrow’s meal,” he said—his face caught between pride and sorrow.

So how long can Cubans hold on as conditions worsen? And what is the endgame?

When I asked people where this is leading, they had no idea. Rubio wants regime change, but no one can explain how that would happen or who would replace the current government. Some speculate a deal could be struck with Trump. “Make Trump the minister of tourism,” a hotel clerk joked, only half joking. “Give him a hotel and a golf course—a Mar-a-Lago in Varadero—and maybe he’d leave us alone.”

Who will win this demonic game Trump and Rubio are playing with the lives of eleven million Cubans?

Ernesto, who fixes refrigerators when the power is on, places his bet on the Cuban people. “We’re rebels,” he told me. “We defeated Batista in 1959. We survived the Bay of Pigs. We endured the Special Period when the Soviet Union collapsed and we were left with nothing. We’ll survive this too.”

He summed it up with a line Cubans know by heart, from the great songwriter Silvio Rodríguez: El tiempo está a favor de los pequenos, de los desnudos, de los olvidados—"Time belongs to the small, the exposed, the forgotten."

In the long sweep of time, endurance outlasts domination.

On a February morning in 2026, the opening days of Black History Month, something unthinkable appeared on the official social media platform of the president of the United States: a video inserting the faces of Barack and Michelle Obama onto cartoon apes, set to "The Lion Sleeps Tonight." It flashed at the end of a broader montage promoting 2020 election conspiracies and remained online for roughly 12 hours before deletion.

This was not a careless post. It tapped directly into a long, cruel lineage of racist caricature used to demean and dehumanize Black people. That this imagery came from the nation’s highest office demanded more than embarrassment, it demanded accountability. But what followed was predictable: dismissive deflection, minimization, and no consequences. The White House initially labeled criticism “fake outrage,” claimed it was “just a meme,” and then said it was “erroneously posted by a staffer.” No staffer has been named, and the president publicly declared no one would face repercussions. When pressed on an apology, he said he “didn’t make a mistake” because he had not seen the offensive portion.

Rhetoric cannot erase history. This episode, jarring as it was, is most meaningful as a mirror: It reflects a longstanding pattern of denial, obfuscation, and racialized harm that extends far beyond any single meme or social post.

Long before this video ever appeared, Donald Trump’s public life was intertwined with racial controversy. In 2011, he propelled himself into national headlines by demanding Barack Obama release his birth certificate, questioning whether the first Black president was even born in the United States. He called Obama a “foreign-born fraud,” despite clear evidence to the contrary. This birther campaign wasn’t a slip of judgment; it was a deliberate, sustained effort to delegitimize and diminish the first Black occupant of the White House—a strategy that inflamed racial distrust and energized nativist resentments across the country.

Trump’s repeated insistence that he is “not a racist” functions as a rhetorical shield. It resonates rhetorically but cannot wipe away decades of documented behavior, public statements, and the lived experiences of those harmed by policy and symbolism.

That pattern continued. In 2018, Trump reportedly referred to Haiti, El Salvador, and several African nations as “shithole countries,” expressing preference for immigrants from Norway. Such language dehumanizes entire nations and the predominantly non-white populations within them, shaping global perception and domestic attitudes alike.

The harm extends into domestic policy and public memory. In the late 1980s, during the Central Park Five case, Trump took out full‑page newspaper ads calling for the death penalty for five Black and Latino teenagers later exonerated by DNA evidence. Even after their innocence was proven, he publicly insisted on their guilt, reinforcing false narratives that fanned racial fear and distrust.

Long before he was in politics, his real estate company was sued by the US Department of Justice for discriminating against Black tenants, steering them away from apartments while offering vacancies to white applicants. The case was settled under a consent decree—but the episode underscores a pattern of exclusion that predates his political career.

Through all of this, denial has been central to the strategy. Trump routinely insists personal friendships with Black Americans prove he cannot be racist. But anecdotes do not outweigh outcomes. Leadership is not measured by denials or self‑serving narratives; it is measured by decisions, actions, and real consequences for communities.

Viewed in this light, the racist imagery that briefly appeared on the official feed is not a rogue error. It is consistent with an administration that has repeatedly deflected harm while avoiding responsibility. When damaging content appears and the response is to blame an unnamed staffer, with no transparency, no accountability, no corrective action, it signals at best a tolerance for racial insensitivity and at worst tacit acceptance of damaging narratives from the nation’s official channels.

Beyond symbolic offenses, the lived realities of millions reflect deeper injury. Immigration enforcement under the administration has subjected families from Latin America, Africa, and Asia to detention, deportation, and family separation, deterring entire communities—disproportionately people of color—from seeking healthcare, education, and legal protections. Threats to Medicare jeopardize access to care for Black, Latino, and Indigenous seniors already navigating health disparities, compounding generational inequities. Efforts to slash support for public education disproportionately affect students in underfunded schools—disproportionately Black, Latino, and Indigenous—by stripping Title I funding, free lunch programs, after‑school initiatives, and protections against discriminatory practices. Proposals to restrict the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) leave hundreds of thousands, again disproportionately people of color, struggling with food insecurity and impossible choices between rent, medicine, and nourishment.

These threads are not separate. Families impacted by immigration enforcement often rely on SNAP or local schools, all parts of a social fabric that, when weakened, frays most quickly at its most vulnerable edges.

Representation at the top matters, too. In the second Trump administration, only a handful of Black officials hold top leadership roles, including Scott Turner as Housing and Urban Development secretary and Lynne Patton in White House outreach. Most high‑level offices remain overwhelmingly white, signaling whose voices shape policy and whose perspectives are absent from critical debates.

Language and civic rituals shape how a nation understands justice, belonging, and whose histories are honored. Martin Luther King Jr. Day is more than ceremony; it is a moral touchstone. Yet this year, the administration failed to recognize the holiday officially and removed it from the federal list of free pass days in national parks, a symbolic demotion that strips public access and diminishes public commemoration. Such action may seem bureaucratic, but it is telling: When national institutions downgrade the public recognition of a civil rights icon while championing narratives that demean Black leadership, the message is clear.

Trump’s repeated insistence that he is “not a racist” functions as a rhetorical shield. It resonates rhetorically but cannot wipe away decades of documented behavior, public statements, and the lived experiences of those harmed by policy and symbolism. True leadership is not measured by denials but by accountability and moral clarity.

The Obama video, the birther attacks, the attempts to delegitimize Black leadership, the Central Park Five advertisements, the housing discrimination lawsuit, and the “shithole country” comments are not isolated incidents. They form a pattern in which racialized harm is consistently dismissed, deflected, or minimized, even as policies continue to disproportionately affect communities of color.

Moral leadership demands more than words. It demands recognition of harm, centering those most affected in decision‑making, and ensuring that power and opportunity are equitably shared. On these measures, the administration’s pattern of deflection, denial, and exclusion is a failure, one that cannot be concealed behind memes, conspiracy theories, or personal relationships. For a nation still wrestling with the legacy of race, the cost of inaction is lived, generational, and real.

One year ago, the Trump administration launched an agenda putting polluting corporations over our health, lives, and future. This week marks the anniversary of the first-ever environmental justice executive order, and yet we are left in the wake of dozens of harmful orders from Trump rescinding that very order and more targeting environmental justice. Along with unprecedented health and environmental rollbacks, this administration is forcing our communities to bear the greatest costs. Now, local leadership is essential. Groundbreaking state and local laws are filling gaps, showing what is possible, and building momentum for what’s next.

While the federal government unlawfully claws back lifesaving investments such as billions of dollars of grants to clean up water, remove lead, and create clean energy jobs in disadvantaged communities, they’ve also attacked over 30 environmental protections, including undoing stronger soot pollution regulations, and gutted bedrock laws. These actions will cause environmental justice neighborhoods (communities of color and low income) to suffer major consequences, with even more toxic pollution and growing impacts of climate change—threatening jobs, families, and lives.

Seventy-eight million people of color live with dangerous air pollution, and, in 97% of US counties, Black people have the highest death rates from soot pollution. In 2025, 75% of the US population—255 million people—were exposed to “dangerous, life-threatening” heat. In NYC, Black people represent 50% of heat-related deaths, despite being only 25% of the population.

These outsize health harms are no accident. A history of redlining was followed by a disproportionate amount of pollution being dumped in communities of color's backyards. Cumulative impacts are the result. Put simply, cumulative impacts are the combination of many sources of pollution and pressures in an area creating a multiplying effect. Visit any community of color or low income overloaded with highways, industrial, or chemical facilities—like the South Bronx, Newark, or “Cancer Alley” in Louisiana—and you will experience the soot, smog, heat, toxic fumes, and smells that show what cumulative impacts really are. Cumulative impacts laws can be a solution by checking the amount of polluting facilities in an area before allowing more to be built, ending old loopholes for existing facilities, limiting new pollution, and more.

The time for reimagining and recommitting to our ambition to achieve environmental justice is now.

State laws can inform and complement the creation of federal laws like the Environmental Justice for All Act, introduced by the late Reps. Donald McEachin (D-Va.) and Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) in 2020. This act embodies input from communities from across the US, and has the promise of being reintroduced by a new generation of congressional champions, inspired by state progress.

We also need these laws to be backed by strong implementation. It is a key moment in New York as the Department of Environmental Conservation is developing rules to carry out the cumulative impacts law. In New Jersey, their Department of Environmental Protection is issuing its first permit decisions based on the cumulative impacts law. These decisions need to set a precedent to break with business as usual, while implementing the strongest conditions in accordance with the environmental justice law. In both cases, the process to put these laws into action must offer real protections and meaningfully include communities.

The time for reimagining and recommitting to our ambition to achieve environmental justice is now. State and local governments must step up in the face of federal attacks and maintain the momentum that environmental justice communities demand and deserve. In this moment, we need more state and local cumulative impact laws that hold the promise of a long-overdue vision of safe and healthy places to live, work, play, and pray.