Set in the hills of the West Bank, The Teacher, written and directed by British-Palestinian filmmaker Farah Nabulsi, tells the riveting story of Bassem (Saleh Bakri), a Palestinian high school English teacher struggling to inspire his students under the pall of Israel's occupation.

What’s it all for—the studying, the scholarship—if only to see armed settlers burn down your village olive trees and an Israeli government demolish your family home to make way for another illegal settlement? To the Palestinian teen who speaks in despair, as though old and tired with little for which to live, the middle-aged Bassem tells his student to return to his books to “regain control” in pursuit of an education that holds hope for a better life.

Although the film is Bassem’s journey of self-blame, newfound love, and quiet yet determined resistance, we also see events through the eyes of his prized student Adam (Muhammed Abed Elrahman), who becomes Bassem’s surrogate son replacing the one Bassem lost, the one we meet only through scenes that take us back in time.

Now—during the U.S.-armed Israeli genocide in Gaza and emboldened settler movement ripping through the West Bank—it is hard to imagine Nabulsi entering the Israeli-controlled West Bank to film The Teacher.

Blessed with looks and smarts, the surrogate son Adam pours over his books at a desk in the dirt outside overlooking the village destined for erasure. His home is gone. The tractor left only slabs of cement under which Adam recovers a desk, a couch, and a pair of binoculars that afford him advance notice of a looming threat or gut punch.

One measure of a good movie is whether you care about the characters or feel compelled to watch them, regardless of whether you agree with their choices or roles in the film, regardless of whether the character is a teacher invested in his students or a cunning Israeli intelligence officer who knows exactly which emotional button to push. For character development—raw, textured—The Teacher scores 10 out of 10, not only because Bassem is heroic, protective, and ultimately selfless but because both he and Adam are tested in ways most of us never will be challenged, leaving us wondering what we would choose if we lived under occupation—the scorched land of nighttime raids and vigilante violence, where our futures are not our own, where the fork in the road between self-defense and vengeance sometimes merges and where the greater good beckons us to hush creeping doubts. Would we remember The Teacher’s words: “Revenge eats away at you and destroys from the inside”?

Reviewers from legacy media—The New York Times, the LA Times—criticize the movie for having too many subplots. “But a teacher-student bonding narrative, a legal procedure, a family tragedy, a romance, and a kidnapping thriller are a lot to hang on one character,” writes NYT reviewer Ben Kenigsberg. “Nabulsi, unfortunately, muddles the story with multiple subplots, some inelegant acting, and contrived English-language dialogue,” writes the LAT’s Carlos Aguilar.

Did these movie critics see the same film this reviewer saw?

Such undeserved criticism suggests the writers are imposing their detached notion of reality on a drama that is all too real. The critics’ desire for a less complicated storyline with more refined dialogue suggests colonization of the art form rather than criticism. Strands of multifaceted characters must not be removed to suit cinematic preferences for a formulaic Hollywood blockbuster.

Conversations in The Teacher resonate as familiar even in the most unfamiliar surroundings, where rough-around-the edges Palestinian teens stereotype Lisa (Imogen Poots), the blonde British school counselor, as a mere do-gooder. “Miss United Nations has arrived,” joke the teens who call their teacher a “player” when between cigarette puffs he locks eyes with the British import. As for the subplots—the gun behind the bookcase, the woman who emerges in only a towel, the judge who delivers injustice—these are not disconnected B or C stories but deftly interwoven branches of the A story about survival and subterfuge under the boot of a brutal occupier. Life is not simple nor a singular line, certainly not when the path to decolonization can be uncertain and torturous, both for the colonized and the colonizer, though never in equal measure.

Nabulsi—who wrote the script in Britain during the Covid-19 lockdown and met with checkpoint delays during three months of filming in the West Bank—adds depth to her story when she introduces the subplot based on the abduction of Gilad Shalit, a former Israeli soldier held captive for over five years in Palestine before released in a hostage deal that freed 1,027 Palestinian prisoners. In one of the most compelling scenes in The Teacher, a U.S. American father, an Israeli resident whose son is held hostage by Palestinians, sympathizes with Bassem having lost a son, for in a metaphorical sense the American father also lost his son after the young man insisted the family emigrate to Israel following a Birthright Israel trip. Now the father, whose wife berates him—much as Basem’s wife berated her husband for failing to protect their son—finds himself a stranger in a strange land called Israel. No, he assures Bassem, he is not one of them, one of the heartless occupiers.

Nabulsi, the daughter of a Palestinian mother and a Palestinian-Egypian father, was born and raised in London, where she pursued a career in finance and worked for JPMorgan before becoming a filmmaker. She switched careers, from stocks to scripts, after visiting Palestine to trace her family history—a mother who fled to Kuwait following the 1967 war, a father who emigrated to London to study civil engineering.

Nabulsi’s short film The Present—also set in occupied Palestine and also starring Palestinian actor Bakri—was nominated for an Oscar and won a BAFTA (British Academy Film Television Award). The Teacher—a suspenseful one hour and 55 minute drama—premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September of 2023, just weeks before October 7. During shooting Nabulsi set up large black screens to cover actors playing IDF soldiers because she feared that if villagers thought the soldiers were real, a hurricane of heartache would ensue.

Now—during the U.S.-armed Israeli genocide in Gaza and emboldened settler movement ripping through the West Bank—it is hard to imagine Nabulsi entering the Israeli-controlled West Bank to film The Teacher. Fortunately, for us, the movie audience; for Palestine, the resistance; and for the solidarity movement, marchers across the globe, The Teacher can be livestreamed on several platforms or watched in theaters from coast to coast.

On April 16, the U.K. Supreme Court made a landmark ruling that the legal definition of a “woman” must refer solely to biological sex. The implications of this decision were immediate and severe—trans women may now be strip-searched by male officers and excluded from spaces where their safety and dignity depend on recognition. At first glance, the decision may seem like a dry point of legal semantics. But in reality, it reflects a far deeper and more dangerous shift: the consolidation of an authoritarian political logic that treats trans lives as expendable in the pursuit of social order and hierarchical control.

This is not a policy based on scientific evidence or democratic deliberation. It is part of a wider cultural strategy designed to fracture public solidarity, weaponize identity, and enforce a hierarchy of who deserves protection. These strategies rely on well-worn tools: the stoking of moral panic, the resurrection of essentialist binaries, and the reduction of rights to a zero-sum contest. At the centre of it all is a necropolitical logic—one that governs through the threat of exclusion and disposability, using the unequal and conditional distribution of life, rights, and freedom as a tool to maintain dominance, privilege, and control.

Yet these politics do not operate only on a material level. They work most powerfully through identity—through constructing certain groups as more or less deserving of life. This is where queer necropolitics becomes a vital framework for understanding the terrain we are on. In this logic, queerness itself becomes a site of state violence, not because it poses a real threat, but because it disrupts the neat social categories authoritarian capitalism needs in order to manage, discipline, and divide us.

Transphobia as a Form of Moral Panic

The U.K. Supreme Court’s decision is only the latest episode in an escalating series of culture war skirmishes that target trans people under the banner of protecting women. These moral panics, like those which target and continue to target migrants, queers, and sex workers, rely on sensationalism and fear rather than evidence. They mobilize deep-seated anxieties about gender, identity, and social change into a reactionary demand for order and exclusion.

Proponents of these anti-trans positions often frame themselves as defenders of feminism. They argue that allowing trans women into women’s spaces compromises safety or dilutes hard-won rights. But these arguments closely mirror the language and tactics of far-right populist movements. They draw on a worldview in which society is fractured into antagonistic identity blocs, and in which any gain by one group must come at the cost of another. This zero-sum logic reinforces the idea that rights are scarce—and that groups must compete for recognition, safety, and survival.

The question becomes: Which oppressed group will be chosen for protection by the state, and which will be excluded?

Critically, these arguments lack grounding in either biology or social science. Claims about fixed “biological sex” ignore the robust and growing scientific consensus that sex is not binary and that human sexual traits exist along intersecting spectrums. From chromosomal variation to endocrine diversity, biological reality defies the simplistic male-female binary that the court ruling seeks to enshrine. Social science, too, has long shown that gender is a social construct with material effects, shaped by context, power, and historical processes.

Yet despite this, trans women continue to be painted as dangerous intruders, especially in spaces like sports or prisons. In sport, arguments against inclusion often rely on misinformation and biologically essentialist (and deeply racist) assumptions. However, both scientific research and legal analysis show that trans athletes face no inherent advantages—and are often at a disadvantage due to systemic barriers and social exclusion.

Through casting trans inclusion as a threat to cis women’s rights, this rhetoric not only distorts the goals of feminism but plays directly into the authoritarian politics it claims to resist. Instead of building coalitions among those historically marginalised, it encourages rivalry and suspicion. The question becomes: Which oppressed group will be chosen for protection by the state, and which will be excluded? In this framework, protection is no longer a right—it is a prize to be fought over.

The Necropolitical Logic of Authoritarian Capitalism

These attacks reveal a profound transformation in how power is exercised. It is no longer enough to control access to resources, wealth, or institutions. Authoritarian capitalism now governs at the level of life itself—who is deemed socially legitimate, who is recognized by the law, and who is left to navigate violence and precarity without protection. This form of rule is what theorists have identified as necropolitics: the power to determine who lives and who dies, not only physically, but socially, economically, and symbolically.

A queer necropolitical perspective deepens this understanding. It shows how queerness—particularly trans identities—are positioned as excessive, abject, or threatening within systems that demand legibility and conformity. Queer bodies do not just live precariously under this regime; they are actively made precarious. Their visibility becomes grounds for surveillance; their autonomy becomes justification for abandonment. Crucially, queer life—and by extension, any life that resists being neatly classified and controlled—is often only tolerated when it serves a political purpose or stays out of sight.

This logic did not emerge in isolation. It evolved from the earlier structures of neoliberalism, which systematically turned basic goods—such as housing, education, and healthcare—into commodities to be fought over. Under neoliberalism, survival became a matter of individual competition. But as the failures of that model have become increasingly visible, its competitive logic has migrated: Now it is identity itself that is rendered scarce. Rights are no longer distributed through citizenship or universal protections, but through contest between demographic groups.

This shift has produced a kind of demographic austerity. If trans people gain access to gender-affirming care, it is framed as coming at the expense of cis women’s services. If migrants seek asylum, it is painted as a drain on national resources. If Black communities organize for safety and justice, it is seen as threatening the status of white working-class voters. These dynamics reflect a necropolitical state that no longer promises inclusion through shared humanity, but only conditional recognition based on identity, utility, and submission.

In this way, trans people—and queer people more broadly—are turned into political symbols whose lives can be bartered, debated, or denied. Recent legal commentary has detailed how trans voices were excluded from the court’s reasoning. Policy analyses show how access to gender-affirming services is increasingly restricted. Meanwhile, broader populist movements are reinforcing essentialist identities globally—such as the Trump administration’s recent effort to promote racial essentialism and reject race as a social construct.

These are not isolated developments. They are the global grammar of a resurgent necropolitical order.

The Necessity of Queer Resistance to Necrophobic Politics

Faced with these conditions, the most urgent political task is to reject the premise that life must be earned through conformity. Queer politics does not simply advocate for inclusion; it challenges the very structure that renders certain lives less liveable in the first place. It refuses the logic of scarcity, of competition, of “deservingness,” and insists instead on a politics rooted in abundance, solidarity, and mutual care.

This form of resistance is especially vital in confronting necrophobic politics—the cultural and institutional tendency to reject or erase those who live outside normative scripts of gender, sexuality, race, or ability. Queer resistance confronts this head-on, not by asking for tolerance, but by building new ways of relating, surviving, and resisting violent normative logics. It appears in grassroots movements for the collective ownership of our spaces, mutual aid networks, in trans-led care collectives and cooperatives, and in artistic and theoretical projects that imagine life beyond legibility.

The culture and legal war against trans people is not a side issue. It is a central front in the struggle over what kind of society we want to live in.

The point is not simply to expand the margins of acceptability. It is to dismantle the very system that produces social death in the first place. As recent academic research and political analysis show, authoritarian capitalism survives by creating artificial crises of identity, which can then be managed, exploited, or repressed. Queer resistance makes those crises unmanageable. It refuses to play the game of identity competition. It recognizes that our survival depends not on winning favor from the state, but on transforming the conditions that make such favor necessary.

This resistance is already under way. Across courts, classrooms, and communities, people are challenging the reduction of identity to threat and fighting to build alliances across difference. Even as the far-right attempts to recapture the public imagination with a nostalgic vision of fixed categories and rigid roles, queer communities continue to model what it means to live otherwise—to live together and otherwise—outside the confines of binary thinking and zero-sum fear.

The culture and legal war against trans people is not a side issue. It is a central front in the struggle over what kind of society we want to live in. Will we be divided into discrete groups, each vying for conditional safety under an authoritarian state? Or can we build a world where life is not reduced to a bargaining chip, but recognized as fundamentally shared, entangled, and worth protecting—simply because it exists?

Queer politics answers this question with a resounding refusal to accept the terms as they have been offered. It defines freedom not as something won by denying others their rights or survival, but as the shared pursuit of joy, dignity, and possibility through the creation and exploration of diverse ways of living. And in doing so it provides the radical blueprint for a different and better future.

When a leader has ignored the legislative and judicial branches of government, has made hundreds disappear like under Pinochet, has targeted people based on speech, and rules by executive order, there is no other way to describe them but as a dictator.

Who, then, is to blame for the American dictator’s rise? It’s neoliberalism, stupid.

The 50-plus years of neoliberal policies have undercut unions, deregulated industry, enabled wild corporate profits, padded the pockets of politicians, and enabled the revolving door whereby elected figures could become lobbyists after leaving office.

On the American dictator’s first day in office, he began dismantling democracy by creating an executive order to end the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship.

Other neoliberal policies that have harmed the American people are free trade and the outsourcing of jobs. Complementing job loss from overseas, the unregulated development of industrial robots and AI has swallowed even more employment. The U.S. political leadership gave minimal attention to planning what would be next for the unemployed and underemployed that resulted from their job gutting policies.

Ever true to hyper-capitalist policies, the “market forces” were allowed to play out. So, service industry jobs became the default for many, although this industry, too, has seen the increase in “efficiency,” or using AI and machines rather than people. For those employed in the service industry, with its minimal benefits and lower salary, it’s a far cry from manufacturing and white-collar jobs that they would have likely had if not for the neoliberal agenda.

This has led to extreme economic and social precarity.

A corollary to neoliberal industrial policies was media deregulation, particularly the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, which led to “The Rush Limbaugh Show” and a media ecosystem that allowed for the creation of Fox News and MSNBC.

For the less educated, it became more challenging to discern fact from fiction. People listened to outrageous media personalities who were often flat-out lying and began miming them in pointing to and decrying shadows on the wall. Rising demagogues made use of these scapegoat shadows, defining them as immigrants and those who oppose the Palestinian genocide.

Exacerbating decades of decline and a decade of xenophobic populism, inflation rose after the Covid-19 pandemic and was often misattributed to former U.S. President Joe Biden. The American people chose the alternative to Biden’s vice president even though President Donald Trump had ignited an insurrection against the United States on January 6, 2021, and embraced (with a wink) the extremist-right Project 2025 plan before the 2024 election.

On the American dictator’s first day in office, he began dismantling democracy by creating an executive order to end the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship.

In just three months, the dictator has set to work destroying American democratic institutions and civil rights protections. And for this mammoth calamity, we have decades of neoliberal deregulation to thank.

Like millions of other people, I was deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Pope Francis, one of the most vocal and humble advocates for sharing the world’s resources.

Since assuming the throne of St Peter in 2013, the Pope championed many causes that are dear to progressive activists—from agroecology to post-growth economics, fossil fuel divestment, arms trade regulation and global monetary reform.

But at the heart of his advocacy was a focus on ending inequality both globally and on a national basis, repeatedly calling upon governments to redistribute wealth and benefits to the poor in a new spirit of generosity.

I first recall being struck by Pope Francis’ headline-grabbing speech in 2014, when he urged the United Nations to promote a ‘worldwide ethical mobilization’ of solidarity with the poor to help curb an ‘economy of exclusion’ that is taking hold everywhere today.

A year later in 2015, the papal encyclical Laudato Si’—subtitled ‘On care for our common home’—made bigger headlines around the world with its powerful critique of laissez-faire ideology and its destructive effects on the environment. The trenchant letter expounded on the responsibility of rich countries to address their ‘ecological debt’ to less developed countries, with an acknowledgement of ‘differentiated responsibilities’ in addressing climate change. It was a radical entreaty for resource transfers between the Global North and South, and significant reductions in the consumption of non-renewable energy within developed countries.

The eloquent discourse of Laudato Si’ also reflected the core understanding of many environmental activists—that the climate and inequality crises are inextricably interconnected. Again and again, Pope Francis railed against our collective indifference to widespread human suffering. He persistently argued that the welfare of nations is interrelated, so the massive poverty and hunger experienced in the fragile economies of developing nations is, in turn, reflected in the destruction of the natural environment. Hence the urgency of remediating the enormous discrepancies in living standards throughout the world, which calls for a sense of global solidarity and interdependency that is tragically lacking in human affairs.

During the coronavirus pandemic, Francis also set out the challenge for rich nations to cooperate and distribute the vaccine freely to the world, rather than hoarding resources and treating one’s own nation first. The 2020 encyclical titled Fratelli tutti—‘Brother’s all’—made clear that Covid-19 was exposing existing inequalities, and fraternity on a state level requires richer countries to help poorer ones if we are to give meaning to the equality of human rights. Clearly, the world failed to heed Pope Francis’ plea to ensure recovery from the crisis tackled poverty, inequality and the climate emergency by ‘sharing resources in a just and respectable manner’.

Another theme that Francis constantly returned to was the need for cancelling the debts of countries unable to repay them. In his final papal bull for the Jubilee Year 2025, titled Spes non confundit—‘Hope does not disappoint’—he described debt forgiveness as a matter of justice more than generosity, and again decried the true ecological debt that exists between the Global North and South.

Francis was rightly known as the ‘Pope of the peripheries,’ standing up for the most vulnerable and marginalized peoples. He made clear his opposition to Western government policies of battening down the hatches and draconian responses to international migrants. Soon after taking office, Francis visited the Italian island of Lampedusa where he condemned European ‘indifference’ to the drowning of migrants crossing the Mediterranean in small boats. He later visited numerous camps for excluded migrants and refugees living ‘ghost lives in limbo,’ calling upon us to see Christ in the stranger and outsider. This was a sharp rebuke to reactionary politicians like Trump, Meloni, and Orbán, instead emphasizing the need for ‘universal fraternity’ as influenced by St. Francis of Assisi, after whom the Pope took his name.

It was a fitting testament to Francis’ advocacy for the poor and forgotten that he died hours after calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. In his annual Urbi et Orbi —‘To the City and World’—message on Easter Sunday, the day before he died, Francis repeated his appeal to the warring parties to "come to the aid of a starving people that aspires to a future of peace." Few politicians, it seems, have followed the Pope's counsel throughout his 12-year-long pontificate. Which now leaves it up to us, the ordinary people of goodwill, to uphold Francis’ tireless advocacy and hope for a better world.

Millions of people across the United States and parts of Canada and Mexico recently witnessed a total solar eclipse—a rare and breathtaking alignment of the Earth, moon, and sun. Scientists had predicted its precise timing and path years in advance, with detailed maps showing where the event would be most visible.

Across the U.S., communities prepared—gathering in fields, schools, and rooftops with protective glasses and cameras in hand. They trusted science. They trusted preparation. They showed up.

In the same week one year later, over 600,000 people across all 50 states signed up to protest against U.S. President Donald Trump and his ongoing threat to democracy for the Hands Off Protests in 1,300 locations. These protests were not spontaneous—they were planned, anticipated, and powerfully aligned. Total estimates for the day’s peaceful protests are 3 million people.

It is not always possible to predict the exact moment of breakthrough, but one can prepare for the shift through mutual aid, political education, youth leadership, and conflict transformation training.

If it is possible to chart the movement of celestial bodies with such precision, then it is also possible to chart the social conditions that produce change. Responses to the conditions that cause criminality, injustice, or violence can also be charted and faced.

A crime can unfold in seconds, but its consequences—especially in marginalized communities—can last a lifetime. The root conditions that set the stage—poverty, childhood trauma, environmental injustice, disinvestment in education, and systemic racism—are all in place and can be addressed.

Knowing the precursors of injustice, it is prudent not to sit still and wait for tragedy before taking action. It is best to approach social justice the same way the world prepares for an eclipse—with foresight, community, and coordination.

Research from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) confirms that adverse childhood experiences (ACEs)—like neglect, abuse, or household dysfunction—can have long-term impacts on health, behavior, and justice involvement. Communities with higher poverty rates have higher crime rates, not because of moral failure, but due to decades of disinvestment and inequality.

As someone who has spent decades working for criminal and social justice reform in communities and far beyond, I see that systems and practices can indeed seed meaningful social change.

The Theory of Change is a framework that maps how and why desired change is expected to happen in a particular context. It’s not magic. It’s modeling. And when used correctly, it helps communities anticipate outcomes and align resources toward justice.

Like eclipse chasers who travel to be in the “path of totality,” social justice organizers prepare to be where the change is coming. They build coalitions, train communities, and develop infrastructure so that when the time is right, they do not to miss the moment to act.

At this time in history when daily political efforts are aimed at reversing timeworn, proven paths to social justice, such as defunding financial assistance to federal programs, universities, associations, and individuals based on principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion, it is urgent to prepare and put into place ways to counter the effects.

This preparation involves policymakers, funders, nonprofits, communities, advocates, individuals, families, institutions, and faith-based organizations to work toward the goal of social change of equity, fairness, access, and justice.

You cannot stare directly at an eclipse without special tools. Similarly, you often can’t see the slow build of a movement until it’s in full swing. Yet humans can sense change—like animals do before an eclipse, like trees that darken and cool in response to a shadow overhead.

Similarly, social change is intangible yet deeply felt. It is not always possible to predict the exact moment of breakthrough, but one can prepare for the shift through mutual aid, political education, youth leadership, and conflict transformation training.

Preparation now is crucial. Facing funding cuts nationally to vital services, rollbacks of civil rights protections, and an increasing normalization of political violence, it is urgent to create needed structures that assess possibilities in order to anticipate and respond proactively.

Throughout history, research shows that Black women have sensed these shifts and led people and communities through them—not just during well-known moments—but in everyday resistance throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.

For example, Rosa Parks didn’t just refuse to give up her seat one time; she was a seasoned organizer and a supporter of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or the SNCC Legacy Project. Shirley Chisholm wasn’t just the first Black woman to run for president—she helped reframe what political leadership looks like.

Barbara Jordan called out President Richard Nixon with such clarity it redefined accountability in American politics. Tennis icon Serena Williams crip-walked across a tennis court and reclaimed joy on a global stage. First Lady Michelle Obama wore sleeveless dresses and shattered expectations of what dignity and leadership looked like in a Black woman’s body.

A 2021 Texas A&M University study reports, “Black women, through their inclusive, community-based activist endeavors, continue to carve out fugitive spaces and counterpublics where counternarratives are actively generated to fight for a more equitable and inclusive democracy that serves all.”

As a Black woman, I see that Black women are the eclipse, the unexpected alignment. They have known through history how to bring light through the dark.

Social change can happen in quiet corners—in small towns, church basements, classrooms, or in the act of mentoring one young person. It doesn’t have to be a massive protest or a U.S. Supreme Court ruling. It can be both.

But when those moments do arrive—like the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the LGBTQ+ rights movement—they are rarely surprises. They are the result of decades of work, layered with setbacks and strategy.

As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” But that arc doesn’t bend on its own. It requires intention and action.

It is time not just to watch the changes happening, but to prepare and to make change, witnessing the outcomes together.

LIVE 10 AM Eastern time, Stream on demand after that:

In this episode of “The TMI Show,” hosts Ted Rall and Manila Chan dive into two pressing issues shaping the national conversation: President Donald Trump’s Ukraine peace plan and his escalating feud with Harvard University. The episode, set against the backdrop of recent geopolitical and domestic tensions, offers a sharp, no-nonsense breakdown of these developments, grounded in the latest news.

First, the hosts unpack Trump’s proposed peace framework for the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which has sparked global debate. The plan, discussed in London, would allow Russia to retain most occupied Ukrainian territories, including Crimea, while requiring minor withdrawals. Ukraine would not join NATO. Sanctions would end. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has publicly rejected ceding land, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s decision to skip a ceasefire summit signals U.S. frustration. With Putin open to talks but Zelensky resistant, the hosts explore the diplomatic tightrope and its implications for global stability.

Switching gears, the episode welcomes guest Sabrina Salvati to dissect Trump’s war on Harvard. Sabrina Salvati is a Boston-based leftist educator, activist, and host of the Sabby Sabs podcast, known for her incisive commentary on healthcare, education, and criminal justice issues. On April 18, the Trump administration accused Harvard of failing to report foreign donations, intensifying pressure after the university rebuffed demands for sweeping changes. Trump even called for revoking Harvard’s tax-exempt status, prompting defiance from other institutions like Columbia. Salvati joins to contextualize this clash, examining its roots in Trump’s broader push against academic autonomy.

The post TMI Show Ep 123: “Trump Wants Peace in Ukraine & War with Harvard” appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

In April of 2020, one of us was navigating reentry during a global pandemic, while the other was working to implement the largest-ever cash assistance program specifically for people returning from incarceration. With the publication of groundbreaking research, five years later, we know that cash assistance has a positive impact on public safety. It’s time to scale this proven strategy to California’s recidivism challenges.

Karina:

I grew up in Los Angeles, where 1 in 3 children grow up in poverty. Despite a loving mother, I was placed in the foster care system at an early age—a system known to be a pipeline to incarceration. During my third pregnancy I was incarcerated, and I spent the next three years trying to figure out how I would support my family when I got out. With no savings and limited resources, I had no idea how I would get back on my feet.

Without any support for essentials like food, rent, or even a cellphone, the challenge of rebuilding a life is insurmountable.

The pandemic forced employers to go remote. I didn’t have access to a computer or money to buy one, and I didn’t have a clue on how I would afford housing. My kids have pulmonary issues, and I couldn’t see or live with them without risking exposure.

While incarcerated, I learned about the Returning Citizens Stimulus (RCS), a first-of-its-kind initiative launched by the Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO). RCS offered financial support to people returning from incarceration. I received $2,750 in installments over two months after my release.

RCS cash made all the difference because getting and keeping a job right out of prison was nearly impossible. I applied to a job at a warehouse known for hiring justice-impacted people. I was fired on my day off because of my time in prison. For people like me this experience is commonplace. Without any support for essentials like food, rent, or even a cellphone, the challenge of rebuilding a life is insurmountable.

RCS covered my immediate needs, such as new clothes, transportation, and I could pay off my restitution. It even allowed me to take my kids out for a meal for the first time in three years. Today, I’m a member of CEO’s policy and advocacy team, where I’ve been able to use my story to advocate for direct cash assistance.

Sam:

In April 2020, when many justice-impacted people, like Karina, were locked out of government support, CEO—being one of the largest reentry services providers in the nation—conceived of and implemented RCS. The program delivered $24 million in direct cash payments to over 10,000 people returning from incarceration.

Research nonprofit MDRC’s most recent independent evaluation of the RCS program in Los Angeles and Alameda counties found that RCS reduced parole violations by nearly 15% for up to a year after enrollment with noteworthy statistical significance—meaning we can be almost certain it was the cash assistance that drove the outcomes. Parole is a costly and punitive system that accounts for 27% of all admissions to state and federal prisons and costs the U.S. over $10 billion annually.

Programs like RCS prove that a small investment at a critical time can lead to transformational change—for individuals, for families, and for entire communities.

Programs like RCS don’t just improve lives—they reduce unnecessary incarceration and save public funds. A short-term financial intervention had long-term impacts on reducing both violent and technical parole violations. It’s simple: When people have the resources to succeed, they don’t cycle back into the system.

Prop 36 is primed to roll back California’s progress in reducing its incarcerated population. More people are likely to go to prison, and less money will be directed towards reentry. The need to invest in solutions proven to halt the revolving door of incarceration have never been more necessary. California has already implemented direct cash assistance before and has a whole host of organizations ready to put it in action once again.

The governor and lawmakers must renew funding for Helping Justice-Involved Reenter Employment (HIRE). This program, set to sunset this fiscal year, has already distributed more than $500,000 in needs-based payments to justice-impacted people across the state, pairing cash support with pathways to good jobs.

Programs like RCS prove that a small investment at a critical time can lead to transformational change—for individuals, for families, and for entire communities.

Karina:

RCS offered me agency to determine my own career path. I could provide for my family while also pursuing a fulfilling job. As someone who was able to build a life through RCS, it is my responsibility to push for programs, like HIRE, that will have a lasting and significant impact on the future of my city, my state, and people returning home.

Picture this: You’re a kid in New York City living in the South Bronx and you have asthma. While friends go outside to play, you stay behind, worried that an asthma attack could send you to the hospital. Your neighborhood is surrounded by three highways and five bridges, with 300 trucks driving by every hour spewing toxic pollution. Unfortunately, this is common for many children in the lower income areas of the city who face disproportionate air pollution. Children in the South Bronx face a 17% asthma risk, over double the national average. In 2016, asthma-related ER visits were over six times higher in New York City’s low-income areas.

Neighborhoods like the South Bronx and Harlem are uniquely vibrant, but their problem with pollution is not unique as over a third of us—39% of the country—live in areas with failing air quality grades. Despite this clear public health crisis, the Trump administration is actively dismantling solutions to reduce these transportation emissions that disproportionately harm low-income communities and communities of color.

Traffic, industrial activity, and other sources create Particulate Matter 2.5 (soot) pollution. In NYC, soot contributes to 2,000 deaths and 5,150 emergency visits and hospitalizations for respiratory and heart disease each year.

Increased emergency room visits, cancer rates, and even premature deaths are the consequences of our current economic system and policies that pollute our communities, schools, workplaces, and places of worship. Traffic, industrial activity, and other sources create Particulate Matter 2.5 (soot) pollution. In NYC, soot contributes to 2,000 deaths and 5,150 emergency visits and hospitalizations for respiratory and heart disease each year. For people of color this risk is greater as they are 2.3 times more likely than white people to live in a county with failing air quality grades. Our freight system, which moves the goods we all rely on, creates especially dangerous “Diesel Death Zones,” that harm primarily low-income and communities of color. Freight trucks and buses make up less than 10% of the vehicles on U.S. roads, but are responsible for more than half of the soot and nitrogen oxide emissions from the transportation sector. Decades of racist zoning decisions, weak environmental and public health protections, and other discriminatory policies have resulted in a dirty transportation system that overwhelmingly hurts our communities.

The reality is not hopeless: The electrification of personal and freight vehicles, the expansion of mass transit, and other strategies can expand affordable transportation options, reduce air pollution, and save lives. Electrifying trucking and transitioning our grid to clean renewable energy would result in over $1.2 trillion in public health benefits and an 84% decrease in deaths from diesel emissions by 2050. With public transit expansion, we could further reduce emissions and lower transportation costs for families. Currently, low-income families spend around 30% of their salary on transportation, but with transit expansion we could save residents in urban areas an average of $2,000 per year. This would also open up options for those unable to drive and save 84,000 lives from traffic fatalities by 2050. The bottom line is that transitioning to cleaner vehicles and improving public transit makes us healthier and more connected, reduces emissions driving climate change, creates jobs, and boosts the economy.

For decades, WE ACT for Environmental Justice has advocated for and advanced equitable, clean transportation regulations and investments at the city, state, and federal levels. In New York, our initiatives, including the successful Dirty Diesel campaign, helped reduce emissions from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (MTA) bus fleet by 95% citywide. At the Federal level, WE ACT and the “Clean Air for the Long Haul” cohort worked with the Biden-Harris administration and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to update federal regulations to reduce pollution from vehicles. We also advocated passing the largest ever investments for climate justice, which provided long-needed funds for decarbonizing transportation through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), as well as to advance landmark executive orders. After decades of advocacy, the Biden-Harris administration finally began moving toward a holistic approach to center environmental justice.

Freight trucks and buses make up less than 10% of the vehicles on U.S. roads, but are responsible for more than half of the soot and nitrogen oxide emissions from the transportation sector.

Today, this progress is under threat as the Trump administration and Republican allies are determined to attack environmental justice and dismantle these policies. On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14154 “Unleashing American Energy,” which called to repeal the “Electric Vehicle (EV) Mandate.” The term “EV Mandate” conflated several federal and state regulations that curbed vehicle emissions. Under the false banner of protecting consumer choice, the administration aims to undo protective emissions regulations, despite pleas from even automakers not to do so. In addition, the administration has rescinded memos that directed state transportation agencies to take into account environmental justice in transportation planning. Most viciously, the administration illegally froze funds for programs like the Clean School Bus Program, established under IIJA, which supports school districts in transitioning to clean, zero-emission buses. This threatens the health of children and families, and puts school districts in a difficult position.

Instead of making our health a priority, the administration has chosen to delay progress in order preserve a pollution-producing and car-centric status quo. Actions violating the U.S. Constitution, rule of law, and sound science, along with ignoring the needs of everyday people, have become hallmarks of this administration. Now, Trump and his allies are attempting to illegally remove California’s right to lead in the clean transportation transition by repealing the state’s waivers to regulate vehicle emissions. The administration is also interfering in NYC’s efforts to curb emissions and to fund the MTA’s public transportation through congestion pricing.

Right now, we need our elected officials to stand up for their constituents, for clean air, and for our future. Vulnerable communities across the country bear the overwhelming majority and heavy toll of air pollution, economic struggles, and worsening extreme weather driven by the climate crisis. Our leaders should address these issues, not make them worse to serve the interests of polluting industries.

We have the opportunity to clean up our dirty transportation sector, address and reverse decades of discriminatory policies, and better our lives. Children with asthma; families; and residents of the South Bronx, Harlem, and communities nationwide deserve clean air and fair, accessible transportation. The Trump administration and allies are pushing to shift us into reverse; instead, we must protect our clean transportation progress and drive positive change forward.

Much to my astonishment, some voters thought Donald Trump might be a “peace president.” I never bought it, so won’t outline the case for such magical thinking here, but his major increase already excessive U.S. weapons transfers to Israel as it continues its illegal genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, and recent, contradictory statements by Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio regarding working to end Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine, or throwing in the towel on diplomacy, should by now have disabused anyone that Trump is a consistent peace advocate.

In the wake of his and Elon Musk’s taking a sledgehammer to all manner of government programs, in both domestic and foreign policy, there is real concern more countries than the current nine—the U.S., Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea, which are all upgrading their nuclear arsenals, at an exorbitant opportunity cost to be paid in unmet human and environmental needs—might decide to build their own nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, the view is one of unpredictability, rather than stability, coming from Washington. That should frighten us all. So Donald Trump looks now to be more of a Proliferation President than a Peace President.

In an interview last fall with Fox News personality Sean Hannity, President-Elect Donald Trump stated, “nuclear weapons are the biggest problem we have.” Were he prone to reflection and self-accountability (admittedly a laughably far-fetched notion), Trump might admit he exacerbated the problem in his first term in office.

Trump petulantly pulled the U.S. out of the multilateral Iran anti-nuclear deal, which had effectively capped Iran’s nuclear program well short of the ability to produce The Bomb. Now his administration is exploring a new agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear program, and/or threatening to bomb Iran if it doesn’t agree to whatever he proposes. To Trump’s credit, he recently told Israel not to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, which it would need U.S. military assistance including in-air refueling to do, though Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hasn’t given up on the idea. The world, already aflame in too many places, holds its breath.

Moreover, Trump ditched the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, and the Open Skies Treaty. He infamously threatened North Korea with “fire and fury” before embarking on failed, bizarre bromance summits with Kim Jong Un. Just last week the U.S. flew nuclear capable bombers over North Korea on the birthday of its founder, Kim Il Sung. The North Korean government understandably viewed the U.S. war drills with South Korea as a “grave provocation” and threatened unspecified retaliation. Meanwhile, nuclear weapons and overall Pentagon spending soared, under Biden and now Trump, to over $1 trillion per year. Weapons contractors could not be happier, but for the rest of us, the state of world affairs is beyond alarming.

After four years in which former President Joe Biden did little to correct these problems, the world faces Trump anew with considerable trepidation. Might he reverse course and embrace an historic opportunity to halt the new arms race and pursue nuclear cuts? He can’t just be trusted to do so, though perhaps his ego (desire for a Nobel Peace Prize?) and whatever strange symbiotic authoritarian relationship he has with Russian President Vladimir Putin might factor in. Trump is planning a military parade in Washington on his birthday in June, and wants to build Golden Dome, a Star Wars-type missile defense system over the U.S., which again might well spur other countries to increase their nuclear weapons in order to overwhelm such a system, whether it would work to protect the United States (highly unlikely) or not.

Regardless, history shows us that progress toward peace, disarmament, and enhanced global security for all only happens with sustained public pressure. It can’t be left only to capricious politicians. The wild card of Trump aside, there needs to be a two-track strategy to advance an anti-nuclear, pro-disarmament agenda.

On the one hand, those who have realistic ideas about increasing world peace need to continue advocating prudent steps to reduce the nuclear danger via international disarmament diplomacy; rejecting Sole Authority for any president to launch a nuclear first strike; declaring a No First Use of nuclear weapons policy for the United States, regardless of who is in the White House; cutting funding for the New Arms Race (the estimated $1.7 trillion over thirty years “nuclear modernization” scheme, especially the Sentinel Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, which doesn’t work and is absurdly over budget, and other new nuclear weapons systems); and building support for the UN’s Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

On the other hand, while President Trump is unpredictable—and could possibly leverage several factors to pursue nuclear weapons reductions with Russia, China (very doubtful), and possibly other states—the Dr. Strangeloves in the “defense establishment” are pushing hard for the possible resumption of full-scale nuclear weapons explosive testing, which the U.S. has eschewed since 1992, and possibly exceeding New START deployment limits of 1,550 strategic nuclear warheads for both Russia and the U.S. That treaty, the only one remaining that limits U.S. and Russia’s deployed nuclear arsenals, is set to expire February 4, 2026, with no talks to extend or improve it ongoing. The Nukes Forever crowd propose increasing funding for and accelerating new nuclear weapons systems and warhead factories, and limiting congressional oversight while streamlining approval for such unproven programs, and more.

Anyone who cares about U.S. and global security needs to oppose, and in some cases work to pre-empt, such steps toward the nuclear brink. Stopping any move to resume nuclear weapons testing might well be key to reviving broad domestic and global opposition to nuclear weapons.

A clear eyed analysis shows Trump has never shown genuine interest in peace except for possible political gain. Then there is his bizarre bond with his tyrannical counterpart, Vladimir Putin, at the expense of Ukraine's (and Europe's) independence. This Trump-Putin relationship, along with Trump's fanciful yet terrifying imperialist goals (including possible conquest of Panama, Greenland, Gaza, and maybe Canada) and the high stakes economic, political and possibly military competition with China, make him seem much more militaristic than pacific.

So those expecting Trump to be a Peace President are likely to be sorely disappointed. The rest of us should remain vigilant and advocate opportunities for real progress toward peace and disarmament.

Harvard University is under the worst assault by the U.S. government since the McCarthy era, but other Ivy League schools and state universities are also sitting in the crosshairs. Harvard is especially newsworthy for the breadth of the attack on its administration, faculty and programs, but other prestigious public and private universities have been put under the federal government microscope. This national blitzkrieg against higher education was kicked off by campus demonstrations blamed on antisemitism and the apparent unwillingness or inability of college administrators to protect Jewish students from harassment.

At Columbia University, it did seem that university administrators were slow to recognize the need to confront pro-Palestinian demonstrators who harassed Jewish students in various ways, including obstruction by protestors of students’ access to classrooms and demonstrators’ expressions of hateful racist and religious sentiments. On the other hand, when Columbia and other universities did make sincere efforts to crack down on rowdyism threatening to campus operations and culture, media and government criticism only intensified. The half-life of Ivy league college presidents began to resemble the longevity of postings on Tik-Tok.

The most recent U.S. government demands on Harvard University and others go well beyond concerns about antisemitism, however. There is clearly an underlying bias in the Trump administration toward Ivy League and other universities that are supposedly teaching uncritical liberal political ideologies and suppressing free speech on the part of conservatives. These allegations of liberal bias in higher education are not new, but the Trump administration has demanded what amounts to ideological audits of campus curricula, together with executive orders demanding the disbanding of offices promoting diversity, equity and inclusion across the government and in federally funded colleges and universities.

Has any other democratic country declared war on its own higher education system?

The assumptions on which the current war on higher education is based deserve closer scrutiny. For example, the argument that universities are both excessively antisemitic and too liberal contradicts what we know from research on political attitudes within and outside of higher education. Antisemitism is most apparent in small towns and rural areas and among far-right groups, including neo-Nazis, promoters of the supremacy of the “Aryan race” and others who are detached from any connection to mainstream political thinking. College faculty liberals are the least likely to appear among persons committed to antisemitic biases, compared to other occupations and to the general public. Nor is there any evidence that a majority of American college students have antisemitic or other ethnic, national or religious biases.

Instead, universities have been buffeted by two forces in politics outside of the college classroom and halls of Ivy: intense polarization of political discourse; and online radicalization of some individuals within and outside of higher education. The combination of polluted political discourse and digitally driven radicalization has swamped efforts by college administrators to find a resolution to conflicts involving two competing political objectives. Those competing objectives are free speech as protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, on one hand; and, on the other, the desire to protect students and others from campus harassment that interferes with learning and denigrates a person instead of critiquing an idea.

This balance between competing objectives can be difficult to define in particular conflict situations. How far can free speech and purportedly peaceful demonstrations go before they cross the line into harassment, intimidation, or destruction of property that is unacceptable in an academic community? There is no abstract solution: each case is unique. That is why universities have established elaborate procedures for fact-finding and adjudication of allegations of student misconduct according to academic standards and, when necessary, possible violations of law. Professors, administrators, and student representatives spend a considerable amount of time sorting out these things on campuses across the country.

On the other hand, government intrusion into the micromanagement of universities or, even worse, into the contents of courses and curricula, will almost always be counterproductive to student learning and to academic excellence. One reason that the United States prevailed in the Cold War was the creation of strong partnerships between the U.S. government and higher education, especially with regard to basic and applied research in science and engineering. The list of research breakthroughs promoted by federal funding of colleges and universities included not only technologies and discoveries that improved our quality of life, but also contributed to our national defense. American experience in the 20th century showcases the fact that education is our first line of defense.

Will this successful past be repeated in the present century, or will we chase our scholars and scientists into a fugitive relationship with elected and appointed government officials? Has any other democratic country declared war on its own higher education system? Finally, one notes with interest the number of prominent conservative politicians with Ivy League academic degrees: including the current President and Vice President and not a few Republicans in the U.S. Congress and in the Trump administration. Somehow, they survived the allegedly biased experience of an Ivy League education.

A society that jails peaceful students for protesting or writing essays signals a chilling collapse of freedom. Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian Columbia University graduate, was arrested by ICE in March 2025 for leading pro-Palestinian protests, despite holding a green card. Transferred to a Louisiana detention center, he faces deportation for vague “foreign policy risks,” sparking outrage over free speech suppression. Similarly, Yunseo Chung, another Columbia student, had her green card revoked and was detained for participating in anti-war demonstrations, highlighting a pattern of targeting activists. At UCLA, Badar Khan Suri, an Indian postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown, faced detention after DHS accused him of Hamas ties for his protest involvement, with no clear evidence. These cases reveal a democracy fraying, where dissent invites punishment. Will silence become complicity?

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LIVE 3 pm Eastern and Streaming Afterward:

In this compelling episode of DeProgram, hosts Ted Rall and John Kiriakou tackle three pressing issues dominating U.S. policy: Iran’s nuclear talks, the State Department’s drastic overhaul, and chaos at the Department of Defense.

The discussion on Iran centers on recent U.S.-Iran negotiations in Rome, with senior negotiators set to reconvene on April 26, amid Tehran’s insistence on peaceful nuclear intentions and U.S. threats of military action if talks fail. They explore how Saudi Arabia’s defense minister’s visit to Tehran reflects regional tensions.

The State Department segment examines a draft executive order, reported by The New York Times, proposing to eliminate Africa operations, shut embassies, and cut bureaus on climate, human rights, and democracy by October 1, sparking panic among diplomats despite Secretary Marco Rubio’s “fake news” dismissal.

Finally, the hosts address the Pentagon’s turmoil, highlighted by a report of a former aide’s op-ed calling it “total chaos” under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, citing leaked texts on Yemen airstrikes and firings of top staff like Dan Caldwell and Darin Selnick. Rall and Kiriakou dissect these events with their signature clarity, questioning U.S. policy motives and systemic flaws. DeProgram challenges listeners to see through mainstream narratives, offering incisive analysis on Iran’s talks, the State Department’s restructuring, and the DoD’s disarray, making it essential listening for understanding global power dynamics.

The post DeProgram: Iran Nukes, State Dept Shakeup, and Pentagon Pandemonium appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.