The Alaska Permanent Fund, established by a Republican governor nearly a half-century ago, has allowed Alaskan residents to share in the profits from oil and mineral extraction in the state.

As The New York Times explains, "Similar socialized funds—sometimes called sovereign wealth funds—are common in other conservative states." In fact, The National Interest reports that "the great majority of states that have a domestic sovereign wealth fund are solidly Republican states." Texas, Wyoming, and North Dakota, for example, all maintain multi-billion dollar public wealth funds.

Democrats need to think even bigger if they want to win back respect—and the vote. They need to consider that American productivity goes well beyond oil and gas, that it's the result of 75 years of progress in technology and medicine and finance and numerous other industries, and that it derives from the sweat and inspiration of all of our parents and grandparents. Stock market gains reflect our productive past. All of us should reap some reward from that long-term effort.

All families, rich or poor, would share in America's prosperity.

New wealth should not be taken only by the 10% of Americans who own 93% of the stock market. While the S&P 500 has gained a pre-inflation average of over 10% annually over the past half-century, the returns on that growth have accrued passively to the richest among us.

Large-scale public wealth funds have been proposed to correct the imbalance. Funding will ideally come from a Financial Transaction Tax or some form of levy on market capitalization. The argument for a Financial Transaction Tax has been made for years by Dean Baker and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). An alternative is a small tax on stock holdings. The Peoples Policy Project noted that "at the end of 2017, the market capitalization of listed domestic companies was $32.1 trillion. A one-off 3% market capitalization tax would thus bring in around $1 trillion of assets."

Current U.S. stock value is over $50 trillion. Just a 2% tax on that amount would return $1 trillion. Each one of America's 127.5 million households would earn nearly $8,000 per year. All families, rich or poor, would share in America's prosperity.

Of course, the millionaires who own almost the entirety of the stock market will resist even a small percentage payback to the country that made them rich. Despite the unlikelihood of getting the super-rich to part with their money, there's a good reason—other than the fairness of recognizing society's contribution to long-term wealth gain—for stockholders to embrace an American Permanent Fund. As noted by reliable financial sources, consumer spending directly influences stock market performance. With the massive trillion-dollar surge in consumer spending, stock market growth is likely to make up that tiny transaction or capital holdings tax, and then some.

It's certainly worth paying a nominal amount to stimulate the economy and boost one's own stock portfolio.

But where is the political will to make this happen? Perhaps a proposal by Democrats for a nationwide public fund through a Financial Transaction Tax will convince a cynical middle-class America that the Democratic vision focuses on the needs of society rather than on rich individuals.

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After the terror attack in Boulder, “The TMI Show with Ted Rall and Manila Chan” analyzes this latest clash over Israel’s war against the Palestinian people in Gaza. Mohamed Sabry Soliman, a 45-year-old Egyptian national, is accused of unleashing chaos at a pro-Israel vigil calling attention to hostages held by Hamas on Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall, yelling “Free Palestine” while hurling Molotov cocktails and using a makeshift flamethrower.

Eight people, aged 67 to 88, were injured, some with severe burns, during a “Run For Their Lives” demonstration for Israeli hostages. The FBI calls it a targeted terrorist act, tied to rising antisemitic violence amid the Israel-Hamas conflict. So far, however, the evidence only points to anti-Zionism. This assault, coinciding with the Jewish holiday Shavuot, follows the “Free Palestine” double murder of Israeli embassy staffers in Washington. Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the “vicious” assault, praying for victims’ recovery. A witness captured harrowing footage of bystanders dousing flames on a woman set ablaze. The controversy? Soliman’s illegal immigration status and cries of “End Zionists” fuel debates over immigration and ideological violence. Tune in as Ted and Manila unpack this tragedy with unfiltered insight.

Plus:

• Russia-Ukraine peace talks resume in Istanbul, with Ukraine proposing a ceasefire and prisoner swaps amid intensified drone strikes.
• Trump’s nuclear deal proposal to Iran faces scrutiny after a leaked UN report reveals secret uranium enrichment.
• Poland’s new president, Karol Nawrocki, wins on a conservative platform, signaling shifts in EU relations.

 

The post TMI Show Ep 150: “Outrage Over Boulder Attack” appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The Gaza Flotilla sailboat Madleen set off from Catania, Sicily, Italy on June 1, 2025 for a 7-day voyage to Gaza to break the 40-year illegal Israeli naval blockade of Gaza and now to stop the 600-day genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

The Madleen and her 12-person crew and participants departed Catania, Sicily, Italy about 4pm Central European Summer Time on Sunday, June 1, 2025 following four very successful community events in Catania, each event having several hundred members of the local community attending.

The Madleen is named after Gaza’s first and only fisherwoman in 2014. The ship is a symbol of the unyielding spirit of Palestinian resilience and the growing global resistance to Israel’s use of collective punishment and deliberate starvation policies.

Her launch comes just one month after Israeli drones bombed Conscience, another Freedom Flotilla aid ship, in international waters off the coast of Malta—underscoring both the urgency and the danger of this mission to break the siege on Gaza.

One month ago, on May 1, 2025, the Israeli military bombed the Gaza flotilla ship named “Conscience” in international waters off the European country of Malta as the flotilla coalition was ready to board around 35 participants onto the ship. The bombing occurred hours following the flight of an Israeli military C-130 Hercules aircraft around Malta.

In international complicity of stopping the Conscience form departing Malta, the U.S. government no doubt put pressure on the small Pacific island of Palau, which is dependent on U.S. funding through the Compact of Free Association, to cancel the flag and certification of the Conscience, which was done in the afternoon of May 1, only hours before the Israeli military bombed the Conscience.

Madleen is carrying urgently needed supplies for the people of Gaza, including baby formula, flour, rice, diapers, women’s sanitary products, water desalination kits, medical supplies, crutches, and children’s prosthetics.

The Freedom Flotilla Coalition emphasizes that this is a peaceful act of civil resistance. All volunteers and crew aboard Madleen are trained in nonviolence. They are sailing unarmed, united by the shared belief that Palestinians deserve the same rights, freedom, and dignity as all people.

The Freedom Flotilla Coalition calls on:

• Governments to guarantee safe passage for Madleen and all humanitarian vessels;
• Media outlets to report on this mission with accuracy and integrity;
• People of conscience everywhere to reject silence and take action for Gaza.

Those onboard the Madleen are:

1. Mark Van Rennes (crew) The Netherlands

2. Reva Seifert Viard (crew) France

3. Pascal Maurieras (crew) France

4. Sergio Toribio (crew) Spain

5. Thiago Ávila (Freedom Flotilla Steering Committee) (Brazil)

6. Yasemin Acar (Freedom Flotilla Steering Committee) (Germany)

7. Rima Hassan (European Parliamentarian) France

8. Greta Thunberg (climate activist) Sweden

9. Yanis M’Hamdi (journalist) France

10. Suayb Ordu (engineer) Turkey

11. Omar Fayad (Al Jazeera reporter) France

12. Baptiste Andre (Doctor) France

Democrats were understandably furious at the Jan. 6th Capitol rioters who tried to subvert the result of the 2020 presidential election. Now, however, we know that Biden and the coterie of Democrats around him undermined democracy themselves, by misrepresenting Biden as being of sound mind and body, when they knew he was anything but. Recent revelations confirm this silent coup d’état, including a former aide’s admission that White House staff hid Biden’s cognitive decline. and a new book that details how senior Democrats and media allies lied to remain in power. If the Jan. 6th rioters were guilty of treason and deserved long prison sentences for attempting to disrupt democracy, what should happen to the Democratic politicians and journalists who, unlike the Republicans, succeeded in executing a coup by deceiving the public about Biden’s fitness to lead? They subverted the democratic process more than the Capitol riot.

The post A Lame GOP Putsch vs. a Successful Democratic Coup appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Banned books. Silenced teachers. Erased histories. These aren’t education policies—they're authoritarian tactics. As of December 31, 2022, 28 states have introduced at least one anti-education measure at the state level, including legislation, executive directives, and policies. Of these, 16 states have specifically enacted anti-education legislation. Concurrently, we’re facing a new wave of fascism in the United States.

The executive branch under Trump is eroding checks and balances, impacting the civil and political rights of all people residing in the country, citizen or non-citizen alike. This moment demands that we fight for political education, the process of learning about power, systems of oppression, and collective action, so people can understand the world around them and organize to transform it. While it may feel like history repeating itself—from Mussolini’s Italy to McCarthy’s America—this moment is ours to confront. Political education is the antidote to help us resist fascism in all facets of society.

While it may feel like history repeating itself—from Mussolini’s Italy to McCarthy’s America—this moment is ours to confront.

II. The Crisis We Face

The backlash to the 2020 racial justice uprisings has come swiftly and systematically. During the 2020 uprisings, we saw waves of education online and in the streets. In the wake of the largest protests in U.S. history, right-wing groups mobilized to stop the political awakening of a generation. Christopher Rufo, alongside organizations like Moms for Liberty and Parents Defending Education, helped spearhead anti-CRT bills and book ban campaigns aimed at silencing truth-telling in schools. Even before these attacks, the U.S. faced a civic education crisis. Most Americans lacked a basic understanding of how their government works or the history that shaped it. These bills will exacerbate that crisis for decades, ensuring that American citizens are kept in the dark about their history and understanding how that history has brought the country to the current moment. This assault on truth is intentional and by design—it's a deliberate strategy by right-wing operatives to suppress knowledge and prevent resistance. Without this basic knowledge, Americans lack the tools and awareness to know how to create equity and justice in our society.

III. What Is Political Education—and Why It Matters

Political education is not just learning about politics—it’s learning how to change them. Although this is a perilous moment in American history, we aren’t powerless against forces that would keep us in the dark. Political education is how communities can begin to exercise their agency and take back their power. Yet many people have never heard of political education, or confuse it with basic civics. Political education develops the ability to recognize power and how it is wielded, builds collective power, and equips people with the skills to take action to create transformative change. With classrooms becoming restricted spaces, political education is something that can happen outside of the classroom. It can happen in book clubs, kitchen table conversations with neighbors and friends, livestreams, theaters, and more.

Political education is not just learning about politics—it’s learning how to change them.

Members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organized Freedom Schools in 1964 to teach Black youth about Black history, political power, and the struggle for civil rights, creating a wave of lifelong organizers working towards Black liberation. The Highlander Center, a training center for organizers and civil rights leaders, many of whom led the Montgomery Bus Boycott and shaped the strategies of the broader Civil Rights Movement. The 2020 uprisings sparked a wave of political education online. Abolitionist organizations and organizers like Critical Resistance, Mariame Kaba, and others educated people online, offering options beyond policing and incarceration. Many of these individuals and groups created online content like Instagram explainers, live teach-ins, podcasts, and toolkits. Political education created spaces for people to learn in solidarity and build a shared vision of a world where no one is left without the resources they need to thrive.

IV. Political Education as Resistance

The political education that arose out of the 2020 uprisings is something that right-wing politicians and figures who are leading the anti-education policies want to prevent in the future. When people come together to learn with and from one another, not only are they expanding their awareness and possibilities for the future, but they also form communities of solidarity that make transformation possible.

The political education that arose out of the 2020 uprisings is something that right-wing politicians and figures who are leading the anti-education policies want to prevent in the future.

Successful political education that leads to action includes a few key ingredients. The first is connecting history to the current political moment to understand how we got to the present. It requires awareness of local, national, and international history and naming the systems of oppression that are entrenched in the present day – white supremacy, capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy, ableism, and authoritarianism.

The next ingredient is helping learners develop critical consciousness, a term coined by the educational theorist Paulo Freire. Critical consciousness helps learners gain a deeper understanding of the world through analyzing systems and structures of power. Developing critical consciousness connects personal experiences to broader social and political forces.

Fascism is the most potent when silent—when it rewrites textbooks, silences educators, and erases memory.

Another key component of political education is a proactive learning community. Learners are encouraged to be both students and educators in a political education space, prioritizing participatory dialogue over lectures. This helps build collective analysis, group processing, conflict and resolution skills, and problem-solving. By generating knowledge collectively, learners realize that transformative change isn’t driven by individual leaders, but by collective action. The ultimate goal of political education is to move people from awareness to group action in order to change their material conditions and environment.

V. “Where to Start Your Political Education”

Despite attempts to stifle truth and education in the classroom, groups are providing political education nationwide, doing their part to develop new movement leaders ready to strengthen movements.

• Zinn Education Project – The Zinn Education Project is one of the organizations across the country raising awareness of the anti-education bills across the nation, and also providing teaching materials on teaching Reconstruction, Climate Change, Palestine, and much more.
• The People’s Forum – The People’s Forum is another organization specializing in political education with study groups, film screenings, events, and more.
• Slow Factory’s Open Edu – Slow Factory, an organization that has a bustling social media presence, hosts Open Edu a series that focuses on political education on topics of human rights, climate justice, and collective liberation.
• Local mutual aid groups and community centers – There are local organizations across the nation providing workshops, study groups, and other third spaces where people can connect, learn, and struggle together.

VI. Final Message: You Have a Role

Fascism is the most potent when silent—when it rewrites textbooks, silences educators, and erases memory. The ultimate goal of these anti-education bills is to enable more fascism and to stop people and movements from mobilizing into action. If you feel powerless, unsure how to act, or outraged by the attacks on education, the most powerful thing you can do is to prioritize learning in community to create change. When truth is under attack, teaching and learning become an act of resistance, and we need all of us in that fight.

People increasingly ask if we are in a Constitutional crisis, but we are past that. We have undergone a regime change, and are operating outside the bounds of what we have understood to be the U.S. Constitution. The President has asserted unilateral control not only of all institutions of the national government, but over institutions of civil society, too.

The Varieties of Democracy Institute, based at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, suggests that it might remove the U.S. from its list of nations designated as democracies. That seems right. In a democracy, after all, you do not fear speaking out against the government. But now, vulnerable individuals are not only afraid, some unknown number have been carted off to foreign labor camps as punishment for their political speech.

We knew some of what we’re facing was coming. Project 2025 was written by a broad coalition on the Far Right as a blueprint for the next Republican administration, as it has been since the Heritage Foundation published its first version for the incoming Reagan team. So far, according to one online tracker, of 313 discrete Project 2025 recommendations, 98 have been completed and another 66 are in progress.

But what’s happening is even more radical than what Project 2025 proposed, since what no one saw coming was Elon Musk, who has seized control of a broad range of executive agencies and their computers and payment systems. It’s a kind of techno-coup.

There are, in short, no formal institutions that consistently operate on behalf of the majority or that bind us together in common cause.

We also didn’t envision the Republican majority in Congress utterly abdicating its institutional role, or an inept Democratic Party acting mostly as if this was all business as usual. Then there’s the sheer number of elite institutions -- universities like Columbia, powerful law firms like Paul Weiss, or media organizations like ABC and CBS -- who have obeyed in advance.

As I write, there are 250 pending court cases challenging illegitimate Executive Orders (that many are nonetheless treating as law), illegal firings, funding cuts that violate Constitutional provisions and any number of statutes, extraordinary renditions (in which even legal residents and U.S. citizens have been seized by agents of the state and held without access to courts or lawyers), along with attacks on judges, opposition leaders, media, universities, law firms, nonprofits, unions, oversight and regulatory bodies, and student activists. Our courts were not built for this, and they are, even at their best, very slow (even if they are showing a bit more spine and a bit more speed than some of us anticipated).

We can be forgiven for being just a bit unnerved by the extravagant lawlessness of the second Trump Administration, even by its own historic standards. Its actions are the hallmarks of authoritarian regimes, and we should recognize that we are now living in one, even if it’s one still struggling to get its footing.

How did we get here?

We didn't exactly inhabit a paradise before Trump came on the scene. Along many dimensions of health and well-being, for many decades now people in the U.S. have fared worse than people in other rich democracies. We have had and continue to have the highest or near highest rates of poverty, child poverty, elderly poverty, income inequality, infant mortality, maternal mortality, gun violence, incarceration, substance use disorders, and death by preventable causes, while we have among the lowest rates of life expectancy, access to health care, intergenerational mobility, and, not coincidentally, of political participation.

Why have so many in the US fared so poorly compared to their peers in other countries, and why are we enduring this “democratic backsliding”?

Consider three possible explanations: Failures of the Constitution, failures of accountability, and failures of the media.

Let’s start by focusing on some specific (and long-standing) complaints about the Constitution itself.

Whatever the stubborn myths around it, the U.S. Constitution has been a disaster, corrupted from the start by its acceptance (and rewarding of) an exceptionally brutal form of chattel slavery. It’s always been a system intentionally designed to frustrate the ability of even a determined majority to exert its will. You don’t have to take my word for it. Read James Madison’s Federalist #10. Consider almost any issue that leads to our poor outcomes—access to health care, gun violence, income and wealth inequality—and large majorities in the U.S. have regularly supported reforms, often radical ones, that would improve well-being. It’s not the players that are the problem, it’s the game.

The separation of powers creates obstacles to effective governance, and our system has more veto points—places to stop action from being taken -- than any other comparable nation. In periods of divided government, when one of our polarized parties does not control all three branches, legislative action is almost impossible (although we have to account for the fact that even with the House, the Senate, and the Presidency, today’s Republican party in Trump’s first 100 days passed fewer Bills than any Congress in modern history). The public is rightly exasperated by what it sees as inaction and unresponsiveness.

Federalism exacerbates this dysfunction, making it even harder to enact and implement policies and difficult for people to know who to credit or blame. That’s more grounds for dissatisfaction and cynicism.

Our Senate is famously undemocratic. Take just the fact that California, with a population of some 39.4 million, has the same representation and votes—two Senators—as the 588 thousand people of Wyoming. Or that the filibuster allows a minority to prevent the majority from acting—40 percent (representing even fewer people than that) can obstruct everything. Minorities rule, not majorities. And because of simple geography, those governing minorities are disproportionately white and rural.

The electoral college reinscribes the imbalances of the Senate onto the Presidential election process, and creates a system, unlike any other, where the person who gets the most votes doesn’t necessarily win. That, of course, is how we got Trump the first time around, with this weird system that values land over people.

We have federal courts with much too much arbitrary power, regularly working against the majority will while made unaccountable by life tenure. They have privileged business interests over the public interest, granted money the same rights as votes, and more recently tried to strip away hard-fought victories for reproductive rights and bodily autonomy, principles of one-person-one vote and racial nondiscrimination, and the ability of federal agencies to ensure our access to clean air and water, or safe food and workplaces.

As if all that isn’t bad enough, we have what is literally the hardest constitution on the planet to amend. Because of that, we’ve only been able to change it a total of 17 times since the Bill of Rights was adopted in 1791, and two of those times were the enactment and then repeal of Prohibition.

These anti-majoritarian features combine with elite lawlessness, undermining our faith that government cares about us or can function on our behalf, which helps create the space for authoritarians to emerge. This is the accountability explanation.

The first moment in the modern period that put us on this path (setting aside Gerald Ford’s ill-conceived pardon of Richard Nixon) was the 2000 presidential election, when the Supreme Court unnecessarily intervened in order to ensure that Republican George W. Bush ascended to the presidency over Democrat Al Gore—and Gore, instead of fighting, surrendered to a judicial coup.

This becomes a pattern—the ruthlessness of Republicans and the fecklessness of Democrats.

Then there’s the failure to prosecute the war criminals in the George W. Bush administration, who, aided and abetted by members of both parties and a complicit media, lied the nation into disastrous post-9/11 conflicts that killed close to one million people, and who tortured men it detained without trial in secret “black site” prisons throughout the world.

Or take the Obama administration’s unwillingness to prosecute the bankers who would have crashed the global economy in 2008 were it not for government intervention; as it was, they created the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression itself, one marked by an exceptionally slow recovery. But not content with his failure to hold accountable the institutions and individuals that were responsible, Obama rewarded them with leadership roles in his administration. That perversity helped bring about the rise of the Tea Party, upon which the MAGA movement was built.

Add in the widespread inability of almost all institutions to hold Trump himself to account for fomenting insurrection and attempting to subvert elections.

Our poorly designed system (which assumed it could prevent the formation of political parties and therefore didn't account for them in its design) is now being exploited by a revanchist Republican party demonstrating itself to have allegiance only to its members own personal ambitions and their opposition to multi-racial democracy. One way to make sense of the past 60 or so years is that after we started, however gingerly, finally affording meaningful rights to poor people, to women, to people of color, to gays and lesbians—rich, straight, white men lost their damn minds, and have been fighting to reverse those modest gains ever since.

This moment has also come to pass thanks to Fox News and its compatriots, a propaganda system that aids and abets these anti-democratic forces, along with a legacy media filled with too many people too hungry for clicks, access, and advancement and too few committed to ensuring that their work helps people make knowledgeable judgments about the political events of the day. We have underestimated the role that our fractured and polluted information environment has played in our decline into authoritarianism (and for what it’s worth, Jeanine Pirro’s appointment in May of 2025 marked the 23rd Fox News employee to join the Trump regime).

There are, in short, no formal institutions that consistently operate on behalf of the majority or that bind us together in common cause.

Thinking about this longer history helps us see that Trump is a symptom of a larger disease, rather than a cause. He’s the culmination of decades-long trends, and to assume that once he leaves the scene things will necessarily get better is to misunderstand the nature of the problem.

Thinking about this longer history helps us see that Trump is a symptom of a larger disease, rather than a cause.

There is another argument to be made for why, for most of our history, we have not functioned as a democracy, and it’s my final point about failures of accountability. Prior to the end of the Civil War, Black Americans, especially those in the South, lived under an explicitly authoritarian regime which maintained its power through violence, threats of violence, and the formal disenfranchisement of disfavored populations. With the exception of the brief period of Radical Reconstruction from 1865-1877, in which the Northern army enforced the outcome of the Civil War at the point of a gun, the United States still functioned as a brutal apartheid regime at least until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. I was born in 1965. Anything we might even charitably characterize as "U.S. democracy" is only as old as I am.

Now the whole country is getting a taste of what it was like for many of our fellow Americans throughout most of our history. But here we are. Perhaps the South won the Civil War after all.

What should we build toward, and how?

In normal times, we could see what progressive policy reform might look like with items that are already on the agenda to one degree or another: Expand the Child Tax Credit; forgive certain categories of student loan debt; enact the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the Freedom to Vote Act; join the National Electoral Vote Compact; add a Public Option to the Affordable Care Act and work toward Medicare (or Medicaid) for All; pass the Women’s Health Protection Act; fully fund and expand Social Security; raises taxes on corporations and the rich; increase the minimum wage; forbid members of Congress from trading stocks; and fund robust public and local media.

But making a list does not address the political obstacles to such policy reforms or how one might overcome them. We need a new politics if we want to have any realistic hope of making new policy.

Besides, even if we could enact laws enshrining any of these goals as policy, so what? The MAGA regime has routinely ignored existing laws and norms and has, for all intents and purposes, destroyed the previous order. There is no policy system for us to work within. So we might as well seize the opportunity and build the nation we want, not the one the Constitution bequeathed us.

We have already established our right to do this. As Thomas Jefferson -- a slaver himself, we should note -- wrote in our first founding document:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men [we would say “people” today] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.

If we accept that the Constitutional order has already been overthrown and that we inhabit a kind of lawless state ruled by brute power and the ghostly remnants of a withered system, and that there is a right to revolution, as Jefferson articulated it, then we can use this moment to imagine the world anew, unconstrained, if we wish, by the old rules.

We need a new politics if we want to have any realistic hope of making new policy.

There is precedent in our own history for this—the Constitution itself was created by ignoring the legal process for change set forth in its predecessor, the Articles of Confederation, because they were rightly deemed unsuitable to the needs of the new nation.

More to the point, why should we be bound by a document written 238 years ago by 55 white, propertied, disproportionately slaveholding, men (and signed by only 39 of them)? What right should those dead founders have to dictate to us how we organize power or govern ourselves? Why must we be bound by their understanding of who should have full rights, or what those rights should be?

Thomas Paine, among the more fulsomely democratic of that generation of leaders, wrote on this principle:

Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all cases as the age and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies.

We are being governed from beyond the grave.

So, what lessons have we learned that should inform the construction of a new government, one that is actually of, by, and for the people? What's our ambitious, bold, 50-year plan? What’s the progressive, democratic, humanistic version of Project 2025?

What right should those dead founders have to dictate to us how we organize power or govern ourselves? Why must we be bound by their understanding of who should have full rights, or what those rights should be?

The first step must be to drive MAGA out of politics just as Germany drove the Nazis out after World War II, just as we should have tried the Confederates for treason and driven them permanently out of politics after our Civil War. Instead, President of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis, after only two years in prison, was pardoned and later died peacefully in bed at age 81. That is: We must contemplate the destruction of the Republican Party as it is currently constituted—we need to learn from our failure to cast out the traitors after the Civil War (and our failure to hold Trump accountable for his first insurrection).

The larger project is, as I have tried to do here, to demystify and ultimately delegitimize the U.S. Constitution. An 18th century white slaver’s rulebook has, unsurprisingly, failed to serve the interests of a modern, multi-racial democracy. It’s time for it to go, and next year’s 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence provides an excellent opportunity to reevaluate our history given the dire present it has led us to.

As part of that effort, we should reject the notion that courts are the final arbiter of the meaning of the Constitution or of the law. A constitution is an expression of our collective will, and we too have a right to say what it means. Federal courts should have limited jurisdiction, and members should have term limits. There are lots of good proposals for reform, but it is absurd to be governed by nine unelected wizards in black robes.

An 18th century white slaver’s rulebook has, unsurprisingly, failed to serve the interests of a modern, multi-racial democracy.

As we abandon the outdated structures of the Constitution, we must end our anomalous two-party regime. In no other system would Congresswoman Alexandia Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders be in the same political party as Chuck Shumer and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez. One way is to build something like a Parliamentary system, with multi-member districts and proportional representation, enabling there to be more parties for voters to choose from. Political scientist Lee Drutman has been thinking this through for years now. As part of that, we should expand the size of the House, perhaps by as much as twice or more its current size.

At the same time, abolish the Senate entirely—it’s irredeemable.

States have too much power in interpreting and implementing national legislation, and there is too much variation in your life chances or your access to, say, reproductive health care or your ability to vote, depending on nothing more than where you were born or where you happen to live. Mississippi, with a poverty rate three times that of New Hampshire, is in many respects an entirely separate country. There are surely other models for regional power sharing—Canadian Provinces? Swiss Cantons?—that would better equalize opportunity across the nation.

Short of that, if we are going to keep an upper chamber that serves as yet one more obstacle to a functioning government and retain something like states, then Washington, D.C. should have the same rights as other political entities, and all other occupied U.S. territories (Puerto Rico first among them) must have equal rights or be free from being under our colonial thumb. California is ungovernable in its current size and could be as many as three states; maybe New York City should be a state of its own; and why on earth do we need two Dakotas?

If we do adopt something like a parliamentary system, in which the majority party or majority coalition of the legislature then forms a government that administers the Executive Branch, we can abolish the electoral college and allow the party leader to become prime minister or president. No longer would divided government or vetoes be possible. That’s an obvious way to create some accountability to voters: Once elected, a party should actually be able to govern.

As with other systems, there should be a mechanism for No Confidence votes to quickly remove from power a failed or corrupt governing coalition, and we need to normalize that kind of turnover. One of the reasons that Trump retained office after two impeachment proceedings is that the threshold for conviction and removal is too high (and dependent upon that malapportioned Senate), and we have come to think of impeachment as an extraordinary, radical proposition rather than merely another routine means of addressing incompetence or malfeasance, which is how it was intended to function.

Since any new system that is genuinely democratic must be constructed from the ground up, it is useful, I think, for each of us to begin to open our imaginations to the world we want to see...

Elections should be funded with public money and equitable public media access. Perhaps we should consider mandatory voting, as in Australia, and look for new spaces for public input and involvement—democracy is a practice as much as anything, and we need to find ways to stitch together the deliberative decision-making that brings together communities in common cause and makes a habit of civic engagement. What’s the larger-scale equivalent of Vermont Town Meeting Day, for example?

We should simultaneously be dismantling our repressive systems of surveillance, policing, and prisons, including what Dorothy Roberts calls the family policing system, almost all of which have their roots in schemes to subjugate enslaved people, and replace them with local institutions that foster community and create conditions for actual safety and security. It is worth noting in this regard that the immigration abuses of the current administration would not be possible were it not for the racialized surveillance, policing, and hyper-incarceration apparatuses built over decades under Democratic and Republican administrations alike.

Finally, we might formally commit to a new Bill of Universal Human Rights: to food, housing, healthcare, education, and economic security, with a guaranteed minimum income or Universal Basic Income.

******

My list of potential reforms is meant merely to jump start our thinking and begin to move the Overton Window of acceptable discussion; I am under no delusion that such radical, revolutionary change is imminent (or that now would necessarily be a wise time to create new governing structures, given who holds power).

But since any new system that is genuinely democratic must be constructed from the ground up, it is useful, I think, for each of us to begin to open our imaginations to the world we want to see and to think about how to build the connections, the consensus, and the institutions that can help to get us there. If we acknowledge that, thanks to Trump, the old order is truly gone, then we have a tabula rasa, a clean slate. What should we inscribe upon it?

We have urgent work to do in the short term before we can get to this project of what we might think of as a Third Reconstruction, of course. But maybe, ironically enough, this perilous time is the moment to start thinking seriously about how we might make a better world.

“This legislation will have a lasting impact on millions of Americans by protecting the hard-earned dollars of blue-collar workers, the very people who are living paycheck-to-paycheck. I urge my colleagues in the House to pass this important bill and send it to the President’s desk to be signed into law.” —Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas)

Ted Cruz? How could this labor-hating showboat get away with posturing as a defender of the working class – especially low-wage workers who live on tips? This is the same Ted Cruz who gets most of his campaign funds from those who got rich by exploiting low-wage workers. How did Cruz, of all people, take this issue away from the Democrats, the once so-called party of the working class?

It seems the Democrats didn’t care about this issue. It was viewed by the party policy makers as flawed and not worth the effort. They only got on board after Trump trumpeted the policy change, which they then noticed was wildly popular with the public.

What does it say when Ted Cruz appears to be considering the needs of working-class people before the Democrats get around to them?

Even today, after Cruz and Trump, my progressive colleagues disparage removing taxes on tips. They correctly point out it would be better to increase the federal minimum wage for all workers, which now stands at $7.50, and $2.13 for tip workers. $2.13? Further, they argue that low-wage workers would be better served with the passage of paid family leave, refundable tax credits, and extensive universal health care.

Those are all good ideas, but wouldn’t no tax on tips complement those policies?

The progressive Economic Policy Institute claims that no tax on tips “will harm more workers than it helps.” It will

1. “Help very few workers and undermine pay increases for many more.
2. Expand the use of tipped work—a system rife with discrimination and worker abuse— potentially leading to consumers being asked to tip on virtually every purchase.
3. Deplete state and federal budgets and create new avenues of tax avoidance, especially for high earners.”

EPI makes similar arguments for no tax on overtime, saying the policy will:

1. “Encourage excessive hours of work while exacerbating inequities between workers able to work long hours and those who cannot.
2. Put downward pressure on base wages.
3. Open up a tax loophole easily gamed by high earners that would drain public budgets while further complicating the tax system.”

I have enormous respect for my brothers and sisters at the EPI. They do excellent research on behalf of working people. But in this case, I fear they are missing or ignoring the bigger political picture. The Democrats and the left should never allow the Republicans to position themselves as working-class heroes. Helping low-wage workers should be what Democrats do and no tax on tips and no tax on overtime—done right—should have been part of the party’s package before it became part of Ted Cruz’s.

For those of us who have worked for tips and valued overtime pay, getting a tax break simply means more money in our pockets. It is an immediate pay raise, even if it may not be the best way to improve the standard of living for working people. I’m having trouble understanding why a direct good for some is not a good thing.

Most tipped workers earn low wages in the food industry and in gig services like Uber. They are grossly underpaid. So much so that many don’t work enough to pay income tax and so won’t benefit, but for those who make enough getting a tax break will help. That’s appealing, which is why about 75 percent of Americans support the idea, according to a 2024 Ipsos survey.

The same goes for overtime. Nearly two-thirds of all workers are forced to work overtime as a condition of their employment. Work weeks are often extended to 50 hours or more as employers seek to avoid hiring new workers and paying their benefits. It is cheaper to run the existing workforce into the ground. But those extra hours at time-and-half are taxed more heavily, workers know, making it feel like all that extra work is getting you nowhere. A tax break will be welcomed, not shunned, by those workers.

Trump filled the breach, making the proposal in a speech in Las Vegas in June 2024, and the Harris campaign chimed in half-heartedly in support of the proposal after she entered the race in July. The two Democratic senators from Nevada, the state with the most service workers per capita, fully supported Cruz’s effort.

After the bill passed unanimously in the Senate last week, Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, belatedly weighed in with: “Working Americans—from servers, to bartenders, delivery drivers, and everything in between—work hard for every dollar they earn and are the ones who deserve tax relief, not the ultra-rich.”

Nice words for the Ted Cruz-sponsored bill, but why wasn’t a Democrat proposing this appealing policy? And where was Chuck, years ago, when runaway inequality was decimating the lives of low-wage tip workers? He was celebrating a strategy that cast aside working people in favor of higher income, more educated Republican voters. As he infamously put it in 2016:

"For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio & Illinois & Wisconsin.”

In addition to picking up Republican votes, he wants those fat campaign donations especially from those “moderates” working on Wall Street.

If the Democrats ever hope again to be the party of the working class, they should never have allowed the Republicans to get credit for such a popular proposal. What does it say when Ted Cruz appears to be considering the needs of working-class people before the Democrats get around to them?

It didn’t happen because, I truly fear, that the Democrats really have no strategy and no desire to become again the party of the working class. They seem quite content to allow the Republicans fill the breach. Good riddance!

Meanwhile, the Republicans crush the government workers who protect our air and water, workplace safety, workers’ rights to organize, public health programs, and scores of programs and projects designed to make sure that working people aren’t exploited and damaged by corporate interests that treat them as fodder in a profit-making machine. No tax on tips is exquisite Republican pandering, and an effective one.

Which leaves us at a crossroads we can no longer avoid or pretend just isn’t there or view as too difficult to achieve. The billionaires indeed have two parties. We need one of our own.

If you follow intra-Democratic discourse on social media, then you probably saw the frenzy that erupted this week following Axios’ coverage of a poll by Demand Progress that found populist messaging far outperforms the messaging being pushed by proponents of the “abundance” movement.

When asked about a candidate who wanted to “get money out of politics, break up corporate monopolies, and fight corruption,” 48.5% of respondents said they’d be much more likely to vote for that candidate and 33.1% said they’d be somewhat more likely, for a total of 81.6%. When asked about a candidate who wanted to “make the government and economy do a better job of serving working and middle-class Americans” by reducing “regulations that hold back the government and private sector from taking action,” 18.8% said they’d be much more likely to vote for that candidate and 28.9% said they’d be somewhat more likely, for a total of 47.7%. (The massive gap between the two options is actually slightly larger among independent voters, with 84.8% more likely to support the populist candidate versus 44.9% for abundance.)

At a moment when Democrats’ efficacy in defeating Trumpism carries such existential stakes, these survey results demonstrate why many of us on the left have found the campaign to make abundance the new face of the Democratic Party so deeply concerning. In the fight against authoritarianism, we simply cannot afford to repeat the mistake Kamala Harris made in 2024, when her shift away from an initially populist message to an abundance-adjacent strategy coincided with a significant drop-off in popular support – a disastrous approach that abundance advocates are working to recreate (or, perhaps more appropriately, maintain) within the Democratic Party, with the aid of millions of dollars from their crypto, AI, Big Tech, and fossil fuel backers.

In the fight against authoritarianism, we simply cannot afford to repeat the mistake Kamala Harris made in 2024...

Perhaps more revealing than the actual poll, however, have been the responses to it from the abundance camp. Abundance proponents immediately lashed out to try to dismiss the survey, cast doubt on its methodology, and explain away the obvious conclusions that Democrats should draw from its results. But each of their arguments is so profoundly weak, if not outright disingenuous, that reviewing them one by one calls into question nearly every aspect of the abundance program.

Abundance proponents’ first strategy was to attack the poll’s wording. For example, The Atlantic’s Jonathan Chait immediately sprung into action after the results were published to claim that the poll “is literally worthless, because the language is crafted to yield the desired outcome.”

Here’s how the poll described the abundance argument:

The big problem is ‘bottlenecks’ that make it harder to produce housing, expand energy production, or build new roads and bridges. Frequently these bottlenecks take the form of well-intended regulations meant to give people a voice or to protect the environment - but these regulations are exploited by organized interest groups and community groups to slow things down. This increases costs and makes it harder for us to provide for everybody’s needs. We need to push back against these groups so the government and economy can work better for working and middle-class Americans.

I don’t know how anyone could read this language and not think it’s an accurate articulation of the abundance agenda. Maybe abundance advocates could come up with a more generous framing of their argument, but if so, they haven’t provided it.

The one specific criticism I have seen came from Adam Jentleson, self-appointed warrior against “the groups,” who wrote, “This is a good example of how groups cook polls. Candidates typically say ‘cut red tape,’ which probably performs better than just ‘bottlenecks.’ But the group massages the question wording [to] get the outcome they want.” But that’s just not how abundance proponents frame their program. In Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s agenda-defining book, "Abundance," the word “bottleneck” is used over a dozen times. The phrase “red tape” does not appear once. Bottleneck also frequently appears throughout the authors’ other writings on this subject, and in the materials of the institutions backing the abundance campaign. If this isn’t a compelling message, that’s not an issue of unfair wording – it’s a problem with the abundance message, as pushed by abundance’s top messengers.

The reason I’m advocating for Democrats to campaign as economic populists – and then govern as such – is because all evidence indicates that this strategy gives us our best chance of beating fascism, before it’s too late.

The next move from the abundance camp was to attack the very idea of comparing populist and abundance messaging, given that it’s possible for Democrats to embrace both programs. As Jentleson put it, “This binary is silly and it’s a structural problem to have foundations pumping millions into calcifying it. The top Dem electoral performers talk about breaking up concentrated corporate power AND cutting gov’t red tape.” There are two big problems with this argument. First, the poll actually tested this point directly. One of the survey’s questions combined populist and abundance messaging to see how a both/and approach performed. Lo and behold, while the combined message did much better than the plain-abundance option, it did significantly worse than the plain-populist one.

But even more importantly, this “we can do both” line completely sidesteps the reality that most of abundance’s top backers have spent the last six months actively fighting to stop Democrats from embracing populism. Matt Bennett, co-founder of Third Way, a centrist think tank that has been a major booster of the Abundance agenda, recently complained that “demanding economic populism is its own form of purity test” and argued that Democrats should stop using a “fighting the oligarchs” message. Jonathan Chait just published a piece about abundance titled “The Coming Democratic Civil War” which stated with admirable honesty that “progressives are not wrong to see the abundance agenda as a broader attack on their movement.” At one Abundance promotion event, Derek Thompson said, “What is ‘oligarchy’ doing for you? The tool they have used to explain the world fails to do so.” In another interview he said, “On the Democratic side, there is a fight, and it’s happening right now, and our book is trying to win a certain intra-left coalitional fight about defining the future of liberalism in the Democratic Party.”

For the abundance camp to contend that they never claimed their program could help Democrats win elections is gaslighting, pure and simple.

In reality, there are pieces of the abundance program that could fit in with a populist agenda. For example, it’s often been progressives who have led the fight against exclusionary zoning. But the abundance movement – its top proponents, the institutions behind them, and the interest groups that are, to use Jentleson’s words, “pumping millions into” standing them up – have generally presented abundance as either in conflict with economic populism or, as Thompson put it, as an alternative that must displace progressivism in “defining the future” of the Democratic Party. Given the battle lines they have drawn, information about which framework voters respond best to seems extremely important. And let the record be clear: The idea of merging populism with abundance is a concession they are making only now that it’s clear that abundance alone could spell disaster for Democrats at the polls.

But it is the final argument from the abundance camp that is both the most disingenuous and the most telling. Many abundance proponents responded to the poll’s evidence that abundance offers Democrats a weak message to run on by arguing that their framework was never meant to be an electoral program. As Vox’s Eric Levitz argued, “[T]he point of abundance reforms is to govern well, not win elections.”

The idea of merging populism with abundance is a concession they are making only now that it’s clear that abundance alone could spell disaster for Democrats at the polls.

Of course, this claim is patently false. Abundance proponents have, beyond any shred of a doubt, been pitching their program as the electoral strategy that will give Democrats their best shot at defeating Trumpism. In his keynote description of abundance in The Atlantic this March, Thompson could not have been more explicit on this point, writing, “If Trump’s opponents are going to win at the polls, they will need to construct a new political movement, one that aims for abundance instead of scarcity.” For the abundance camp to contend that they never claimed their program could help Democrats win elections is gaslighting, pure and simple.

And yet, accepting this claim entails accepting an even more devastating indictment of the abundance movement. Because in the midst of Trump’s ongoing authoritarian takeover of our country, winning elections is the number one existential goal we must achieve. Yes, I am a progressive, so I want to see economically populist governance because I believe it will improve Americans’ lives and strengthen the prospects of our shared future. But I believe the same about maximalist policies on a number of social issues that I’m not advocating for Democrats to campaign on. The reason I’m advocating for Democrats to campaign as economic populists – and then govern as such – is because all evidence indicates that this strategy gives us our best chance of beating fascism, before it’s too late.

This debate matters greatly, because the stakes are so high. If abundance isn’t going to help Democrats defeat MAGA, then abundance advocates – or at least the ones who care about ending Trumpism – should stop trying to “define the future of the Democratic Party.” Let’s leave that work to the Democrats who are trying to orient our party around a vision that voters actually do find compelling.

Wherever we turn today, the drumbeats of a foreboding crisis in the country grow louder. It’s telling us that an authoritarian drift is pushing hard against the gates of once-inviolable institutions of democracy, like press freedom, due process, and independent higher education. They are institutions that have long fronted the American brand in the global imagination and have served as invitations to replicate a coveted liberal order whose hinges are now ready to blow.

If the din of apocalyptic warnings is overwhelming, then disengage from all media, store canned foods, and wait for the collapse to pass. But for those unwilling to abdicate critical judgment, there are more generative responses. As worn out as it may sound, it’s useful to seek out story and metaphor again, not as escapism, but as epistemological tools to help us divine the bearing of a crisis whose logic is as erratic as its logic-masters. Dystopian fiction quietly endures as one of the few genres honest enough to envisage the coming shape of our contemporary decline and also show us subversive ways out.

George Orwell is overdone. Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is not. The sci-fi novel imagines a future in which books are banned, and the “firemen” of society are tasked not with putting out fires but with starting them. They hunt for and incinerate books because they threaten the nation’s purity project, which requires an erasure of key archetypal effects of education: unfiltered understanding of the past; the influence of pastness on the present; how to gaze at possible futures; and how to learn, question authority, and change.

A university that survives only by avoiding discomfort and confrontation is no longer a university; it is a finishing school churning out bureaucrats for the group-think industry.

But at the thematic crux of the novel, there’s a “fireman” who turns against the power structure he loyally served; he becomes an exemplar of radical thinking that rouses an inner rebellion and then outward resistance. At first, the fireman (the knowledge arsonist), Guy Montag, develops a strange curiosity about the contents of books he torches and, soon thereafter, is unable to ignore the uprising festering within.

Montag’s rebellion in Fahrenheit 451 begins not with ideology, but with something more audacious, the reclamation of curiosity as a seditious start of transformation. In the story, there are like-minded underground groups of “book people” who commit to memory outlawed texts and carry them in their minds like sacred relics. The book people become insurgent archivists, radical bearers of culture and literature, who refuse to let fire and epistemic erasure win. Montag’s epiphany was not about resistance in the grand sense. It was smaller, personal, and ultimately more combustible.

Back to real life, we are witnessing a concerted effort to distill national heterogeneity to a single-story perspective that requires, among other things, torching the core purposes of the university. It has come in the form of curricular restrictions, federal scrutiny of university departments in the social sciences and humanities, the surveillance of dissent on campuses, punishing legal public opprobrium, and the unannounced disappearing of student visas. All of these are pursued with threats of financial sanctions.

It extends into language itself. Words, such as diversity, gender, Palestine, genocide, trans, race, intersectionality, settler colonialism, slavery, and regrettably many more are treated as incendiary or soon about to be. So too are symbols—like the black-and-white checkered keffiya, the Muslim hijab, and watermelon pins. These are not random interventions but are part of a supremacy logic designed to narrow what may be safely taught, learned, spoken, or even worn in public.

Like the book people in fiction, the stewards of higher education in the United States are at the frontlines of struggle and resistance. The academic response has been slow but is now accelerating. The campaign to pull government funding from departments, to demand compliance in curriculum, intimidate foreign students, or to criminalize critical language is not a sideshow—it is the main point of authoritarianism.

At a granular level, options exist for faculty who have administrators genuflecting before the bullies. In the sanctity of the classroom, faculty need to double down on teaching students how to be radicals—not in the caricatured sense of rage or rejection, but in the deeper, older meaning: those who fearlessly go to the root. To be radical is to trace the origins of a threat. Not to prune, not to decorate, but to ask: Where is this coming from? What malignant ideology or state covetousness is feeding this descent?

In line with what bell hooks insisted, the classroom remains the most radical space of possibility when it links education to freedom and refuses the myth of neutral knowledge. The warnings are clear: Knowledge stripped of emancipatory intent risks becoming the passive wing of oppression—a handmaiden to the very structures it claims to critique. A university that survives only by avoiding discomfort and confrontation is no longer a university; it is a finishing school churning out bureaucrats for the group-think industry.

The university is under state pressure because, in part, it is an archive of an imperfect past, a seeker of repair, and crucible of dissent. It remains one of the few systems capable of producing decolonized knowers of society.

In this moment of disruption, to teach, to write, and to read critically are no longer normative acts expected of rigor and scholarship; they have become, in face of federal bullying, acts of defiance that refuse to accept that language and curiosity are the property of political power structures.

Imagine a U.S. president embarking on a lavish trip to the Middle East, signing major deals with Arab leaders—while Israel, its long-time ally, isn’t even invited to the table. This hypothetical scenario, which could easily have occurred with Donald Trump’s return to power in 2025, is a warning bell for a decades-old policy that has held America’s credibility hostage: unconditional support for Israel.

This alliance has not only stripped the U.S. of its role as a credible peace broker but has also made it complicit in human rights violations and an obstacle to democracy in the region. The time has come for the U.S. to drastically curtail its massive aid to Israel and instead invest in democratic institutions and comprehensive peace across the Middle East.

Israel: A Saboteur of Peace

Every time a genuine hope for peace has emerged in the Middle East, Israel’s actions have worked to destroy it. In the 1990s, the Oslo Accords promised Palestinian autonomy, but Israel quickly doubled down on illegal settlements in the West Bank, turning hope into despair. Between 1993 and 2000, the number of settlers grew from 110,000 to over 200,000. In 2000, the Camp David negotiations collapsed due to Israel’s insistence on retaining control over parts of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

U.S. military aid to Israel—including $12.5 billion in direct support since October 2023—has become inseparable from accusations of human rights violations.

This pattern continued. In 2005, Israel withdrew from Gaza, but instead of enabling peace, it imposed a suffocating blockade that turned the lives of 2 million Palestinians into a nightmare. Since October 2023, Israeli attacks on Gaza—backed by U.S. arms—have killed over 60,000 people, many of them civilians. These assaults, executed with 500-pound bombs supplied by the U.S., have obliterated any prospects for diplomacy. With unwavering American support, Israel has not only undermined peace but also fueled regional instability.

America’s Credibility at Risk

U.S. support for Israel—which has included $310 billion in financial aid since 1948 and 49 vetoes of United Nations resolutions critical of Israel—has disqualified Washington from being seen as a neutral mediator. When the U.S. recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in 2017, Palestinians withdrew from negotiations, plunging the peace process into a deadlock. This policy has strained America’s relations with Arab countries and opened doors for China and Russia to increase their influence in the region.

Public opinion in the U.S. is also shifting. According to a Gallup poll from March 2025, only 46% of Americans support Israel—the lowest in 25 years—while 33% sympathize with Palestinians. This shift, particularly among younger generations, reflects growing dissatisfaction with a policy that undermines the very values of human rights and democracy America claims to uphold.

Human Rights and Democratic Contradictions

U.S. military aid to Israel—including $12.5 billion in direct support since October 2023—has become inseparable from accusations of human rights violations. Amnesty International and other watchdogs have accused Israel of using American-supplied weapons in attacks on civilians, in violation of the Leahy Law. Yet the U.S. has ignored these concerns and continued arms transfers.

Domestically, Israel’s policies—such as expanding illegal settlements and curbing judicial independence—clash with the principles of liberal democracy. These contradictions have damaged America’s reputation as a defender of democracy and eroded public support. A Pew survey from March 2024 found that 51% of Americans held a negative view of the Israeli government.

A Path Toward Peace and Democracy

Scaling back support for Israel could free the U.S. from this political quagmire. Reducing the $3.8 billion in annual military aid would pressure Israel to commit to a two-state solution and recognize Palestinian statehood. This shift could deter destabilizing actions like military offensives and settlement expansion, and pave the way for comprehensive peace.

Rather than continuing military expenditures, the U.S. should invest in strengthening democratic institutions in the Middle East. Supporting civil society organizations in Palestine, Jordan, and Egypt—and enhancing regional diplomacy—could lay the groundwork for lasting peace. This approach would not only restore America’s credibility as a force for peace but also aid in resolving other crises, such as nuclear negotiations with Iran. The Abraham Accords proved that multilateral diplomacy can normalize relations, but this time, Palestinians must be included.

Challenges and the Urgency of Change

Reducing support for Israel won’t be easy. Lobbying groups like AIPAC and certain U.S. lawmakers will resist. But such resistance must not deter a necessary course correction. Without change, the U.S. will remain complicit in crimes that destroy prospects for peace. A gradual, coordinated shift—aligned with Arab allies and strengthened diplomacy—can prevent regional destabilization.

Ending a Dangerous Illusion

Unconditional U.S. support for Israel, which has repeatedly sabotaged peace, is no longer defensible. This policy has tarnished America’s image as a champion of human rights and democracy, while trapping the Middle East in a cycle of violence. The time has come for the U.S. to sharply reduce aid to Israel, recognize Palestine, and invest in regional peace and democracy. This is the only path to restoring America’s global standing and ending decades of instability.

In a historic moment, the International Finance Corporation became the first development finance institution, or DFI, to adopt an explicit policy on remedy. On April 15, IFC published its Remedial Action Framework, formalizing a commitment to address environmental and social harms caused by IFC-supported investment projects.

This milestone is not only a leap forward for IFC but also a hopeful sign for communities harmed by development projects around the world. The Remedial Action Framework (RAF) is a cornerstone in a broader shift at a moment when the World Bank Group is planning to undertake a major overhaul of the environmental and social accountability systems on the public and private sides of the institution. The RAF sets the stage for a profound institution-wide commitment to avoid and remedy harm at the entire World Bank. Whether the grievance mechanisms and accountability systems of the institution change, or amendments to the environmental and social policies occur as part of this overhaul, the principles and drive for this cultural shift at the institution must now be rooted in the notion that remedy is possible at the World Bank.

As project-affected communities have illustrated through the years, harm is harm—no matter what type of investment may have led to it.

The IFC/Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) framework is the result of years of advocacy, discussion, and perseverance by numerous stakeholders both outside and inside the institution, as recognized in the RAF itself. The strenuous efforts from civil society organizations (CSOs) and project-affected people from around the globe stemmed from firsthand experience of harm as well as technical recommendations and proposals to ensure that the remedy is centered on the rights and the needs of those who have been harmed.

The RAF is a fundamental part of an approach that will focus on remedy but will also make considerations about when and why to exit a project responsibly, as established in its Responsible Exit Approach issued in October 2024.

How the IFC/MIGA RAF Works

It is particularly meaningful that the RAF acknowledges that, like all development institutions, IFC and MIGA must play a role in the “remedial action ecosystem.” This recognition signals a full understanding of the core tenet of international law, namely that institutions should avoid infringing on the human rights of others and should address adverse human rights impacts when they have contributed to harm.

The RAF aims to provide a structured approach to address harm arising from the environmental and social (E&S) impacts of projects supported by IFC/MIGA. While the emphasis on the differentiated roles that IFC/MIGA and their clients play in providing remedy for harm remains, the support by IFC and MIGA for these remedial actions is a central part of the equation, focusing on:

• Prevention and Preparedness
• Access to Remedy
• Contribution to Remedial Action

The RAF will apply to all IFC-supported investment projects and all investment projects covered by MIGA political risk insurance guarantees. It makes distinctions for IFC/MIGA’s support for remedial actions, asserting they will vary depending on each case, stemming from factors such as the type of investment, proximity to harm, and other factors. Reaching an understanding of how these factors will be considered will require more detail than what is included presently in the RAF.

IFC/MIGA’s contribution to remedy will entail the use of influence and leverage to encourage clients to take remedial action, as well as providing support for enabling activities, such as fact-finding, technical assistance, and community development activities. Ultimately, the extent and effectiveness of these contributions will depend on the levels of engagement and participation from those seeking remedy.

While the RAF does contain references to institutional risks associated with providing direct funding for remedial actions by IFC/MIGA, it also acknowledges that the primary focus on enabling activities is meant to minimize these risks.

Notably, the RAF was approved on an interim basis, pointing to the importance of its three-year piloting phase to implement the approach. Practical application and enforcement of the RAF will certainly be the biggest challenge, but the inclusion of regular interactions with stakeholders, updates, and a final assessment to be conducted with the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO) to incorporate lessons learned to perfect the final policy is positive.

Prevention and Preparedness

The RAF emphasizes sustainability frameworks and the value of strengthening prevention and preparedness and facilitating remedy through grievance mechanisms, echoing a long-standing demand from civil society that avoiding harm must be prioritized over managing its aftermath. It is admirable to finally have IFC recognize the crucial need to identify and manage E&S risks and potential impacts to avoid harm in the first place, but this too will require a change in operations and culture at IFC so that every aspect of IFC’s operations is seen through an environmental and social lens—a shift that aligns with a human rights-based approach.

Assessing a client’s preparedness and capacity to properly identify and mitigate environmental and social risks and to provide access to remedial actions in the event of harm is one of IFC/MIGA’s primary roles. If IFC/MIGA are committed to the complementary roles required for remedial action implementation, then this primary role becomes ever more salient and fixed to its new mandate.

The RAF should be praised. It has also created an opportunity to institute an approach to remedy within the entire World Bank Group at the perfect moment.

And as IFC begins the process of updating its Sustainability Framework, it is the perfect time to capture the principles and thrust of the Remedial Action Framework and Responsible Exit Approach in a manner that enhances broad adoption and integration of the approach to remedy at the entire institution.

Although the RAF does not mention the Responsible Exit Approach—including a reference to IFC/MIGA’s leverage over a “former client”—it nods to its relevance by recognizing the challenges faced when clients are not willing to address situations of harm. Planning with clients to ensure a responsible exit from all projects—and leveraging the role of IFC/MIGA in contributing to remedy through enabling activities—remains fundamental.

Accessing Remedy

Based on the background provided in the RAF, one would assume that the framework is the result of the 2018 external review of the E&S accountability of IFC and MIGA, including the role and effectiveness of the CAO. Yet, civil society organizations that have been advocating for accountability and remedy for decades would quickly point to problematic projects such as Alto Maipo, Titan Cement, and Tata Tea, recalling the numerous communities who filed complaints proving the inadequacy of the system. For many of them, the ultimate catalyst for the turnaround would be the Tata Mundra case. This case—and the landmark Jam v. IFC litigation by Indian fisherfolk—highlighted the gaps in accountability when IFC dismissed the CAO’s findings and recommendations to bring the project into compliance and to provide remedy for communities.

Considering this history with the CAO, it is all the more notable that IFC/MIGA has embraced access to remedy as part of the holistic approach to remedial action within the RAF. They recognize the vital necessity of putting in place effective, reliable, and independent grievance mechanisms to address complaints raised by project-affected people when things go wrong.

IFC/MIGA emphasizes the client’s creation of an effective project-level grievance mechanism while maintaining the existence of IFC’s internal grievance mechanism—the Stakeholder Engagement and Response office—and the CAO. Together, these mechanisms make up the diverse cadre of options with varied levels of outcomes and results. By acknowledging the opportunity to capture lessons from the RAF’s initial implementation to inform updates to IFC/MIGA Sustainability Frameworks and the upcoming CAO Policy review, IFC/MIGA notably endorses raising the level of engagement and usefulness of these mechanisms.

For some time, CSOs and project-affected communities have been advocating for improvements to the CAO and grievance mechanisms at DFIs worldwide. Years of experience and long-standing collaboration led to the creation of the Good Policy Paper Guiding Practice from the Policies of Independent Accountability Mechanisms. These recommendations have been useful for numerous institutions seeking to improve their accountability frameworks with the ultimate goal of facilitating access to effective remedy.

What Constitutes Remedial Action for IFC and MIGA?

As stated in the RAF, “IFC/MIGA as development institutions have a role to play in the context of the broader remedial action ecosystem and may contribute to remedial action in the following ways:

• Use of available financial, contractual, and/or relationship influence and leverage to encourage clients and other responsible parties to take remedial action to address harm […]
• Provide support for enabling activities, including fact-finding, technical assistance/capacity-building, and/or community development activities.”

Even though the role of the client vis-à-vis IFC/MIGA is permanently interlinked, IFC/MIGA has approved an approach to remedy that still puts the client at the forefront of managing E&S risks and impacts, as well as funding and implementing remedial actions.

The initial perception of what was possible for a World Bank institution has evolved, noting IFC/MIGA’s commitment to contribute to Remedial Action as set forth in the RAF. While restating their role in using financial and contractual leverage to encourage clients to take remedial actions to address harm, IFC/MIGA will also provide support for enabling activities that will allow clients to provide solutions to project-affected people.

The scope of enabling activities may potentially allow for a broad range of actions by IFC/MIGA. While this will require practical experiences from the piloting phase to test and perfect the framework, initial considerations of enabling activities as presented in the RAF are promising as a minimum starting point:

• Fact-Finding: To provide additional information that may inform the creation and design of remedial actions by a client, IFC/MIGA may contribute funding to hire third-party experts who can complement dispute resolution and compliance processes at the CAO. In past cases, the lack of funding for these fact-finding efforts has become an obstacle that may stall or even stop dispute resolution processes between community complainants and clients, resulting in fruitless efforts.
• Technical Assistance and Capacity Building: Communities that have been harmed are often the most willing to act, working collaboratively to rehabilitate their lands or recover their waterways and ways of life. By providing funding for technical assistance and training so project-affected communities can address environmental impacts such as contaminated water sources, IFC/MIGA will be respecting a community’s agency and rights to remedy in direct ways. IFC/MIGA’s clients may also receive this type of assistance and capacity building to aid in implementing and monitoring corrective and remedial actions.
• Community Development Activities: The resilience of communities that have lost their livelihoods due to environmental harm is often a measure of their dignity and cultural identity. By demonstrating that community opinions are received in the design, launch, and implementation of community development programs offered, IFC/MIGA will legitimize their role, encouraging ownership of these programs and activities.

Additionally, while IFC/MIGA expect that enabling activities will be the preferred mode of engagement in most cases where project-level remedial action is warranted, the RAF states that this does not prevent them from proposing other modalities for approval by the Board.

Cost of Remedial Actions and the Role of IFC/MIGA and Their Clients

A major question and point of contention over these last years has been the cost of providing remedy. Here, the matter of differentiated roles has a direct bearing on the question of cost when IFC’s client is responsible for managing E&S risks and impacts. Something worth noting is the fact that private sector clients who joined IFC/MIGA consultations on the approach to remedial action were never opposed to remedy, but mainly concerned with how this could be done. They acknowledged the role of a project developer in remedying harms resulting from project construction, operations, etc. Their main question was always how to implement such a policy and how the costs would be allocated.

The RAF is clear about the costs for remedy, stating that under IFC’s Sustainability Framework, clients are responsible for managing E&S risks and impacts as well as funding and implementing remedial actions. While this would seem straightforward, the purpose of DFIs and the implementation of their mandates are at the core of an often nebulous division of roles. Considering this, the detailed description of IFC’s Sustainability Frameworks within the RAF comes into focus, as it is precisely the issue of a client’s ability to comply with IFC’s E&S policies and standards that makes IFC’s adjacent role more obvious and essential.

As we face environmental and climate crises globally, and financial institutions join in multiplying funds available to address the growing need for solutions, we can now point to the first remedial action framework and concrete driver for ways of addressing harm and providing remedy.

For instance, if IFC’s E&S due diligence at project appraisal is done properly, and if supervision and regular monitoring during project implementation are carried out entirely, then IFC can be sure that its client has managed E&S risks and impacts. As a result, the client adhered to IFC’s Performance Standards, applying the mitigation hierarchy correctly by taking all measures necessary to prepare for and avoid or minimize adverse impacts to the environment and preventing harm to people. However, when IFC fails to supervise and monitor its client properly, or when initial due diligence is lacking, or it neglects to notice a low-capacity client, then the risks are likely to materialize, causing harm.

If IFC realizes these errors, it may request corrective actions and changes to E&S Action Plans, so its client brings the project into compliance, yet this is not guaranteed. These are precisely the types of errors that have led affected communities to file complaints at the CAO, and the issues IFC has been grappling with for many years, ultimately leading to internal shifts and restructuring in E&S governance at the institution after assessing the entire accountability system.

Funding for contributions to remedial action by IFC will be obtained through the project’s funding structure, donor trust funds, IFC’s administrative budget, or operational risk capital. At the same time, MIGA’s contribution to remedial action activities is limited to available trust funds or existing budgetary resources.

Ultimately, the fact that IFC/MIGA has incorporated the possibility of using its own financial resources to contribute to remedial actions in the RAF, while still mentioning their concern for the risk of doing so, points to a change in perceptions that will ideally continue to shift the mode of thinking at the entire institution. Simply said, remedy should be seen as the goal from now on and something that should color all decisions at development finance institutions.

Implementation and What’s Next

The RAF was approved by the Board of Directors of both IFC and the MIGA on April 3 on an interim basis for three years. Implementation of the RAF during the pilot phase will require IFC/MIGA’s regular engagement with stakeholders to receive input and share updates.

As an essential part of the initial six months of implementation, IFC and MIGA, in consultation with the CAO, will have to define and track key performance indicators related to efficiency and effectiveness to ensure proper monitoring of the interim approach. IFC/MIGA will also monitor implementation, providing the boards with briefings and annual monitoring reports.

A final assessment in consultation with the CAO will be carried out at the end of the three-year period. The final policy will incorporate lessons learned and proposed revisions for review by the boards.

Remedy or Bust

The RAF should be praised. It has also created an opportunity to institute an approach to remedy within the entire World Bank Group at the perfect moment. As project-affected communities have illustrated through the years, harm is harm—no matter what type of investment may have led to it. As we face environmental and climate crises globally, and financial institutions join in multiplying funds available to address the growing need for solutions, we can now point to the first remedial action framework and concrete driver for ways of addressing harm and providing remedy.

Other institutions are now following suit. The IDB Group has indicated for several years that internal discussions on Remedy and Responsible Exit were already underway. Most recently, IDB Invest has prepared a draft approach to Responsible Exit based on the IFC/MIGA model and has been engaging with civil society and project-affected communities to receive feedback, while also moving on internal discussions for a remedy framework.

In the days following the approval of the IFC/MIGA Remedial Action Framework, CSOs had the opportunity to meet with IFC. The conversations had an immediate change in tone. This was a different conversation with other approaches for new projects, new contracts, thinking through how to make this framework a reality, with a sense of pride.

This was not lost on anyone. It revealed the legitimacy of having a framework and accompanying Responsible Exit Approach set to paper, as approved by the boards of these institutions. It showed its significance, its weight as a standard to follow, as a directive to take, and as a way forward for an institution that has finally recognized that development can sometimes have negative impacts, and that those impacts can lead to harm for communities. But now there is a way to address these harms and provide remedy, the commitment to do so has been set, and many are ready to make this happen, as challenging as it will undoubtedly be.

Opposition by former high officials in Israeli’s military and national security establishment and Israeli allies – France, England, and Germany—to the aimless killing of civilian families in Gaza is increasing. The mainstream, U.S. media has no excuse to cease its incomplete and biased reporting on the horrific genocidal mass slaughter in Gaza. Former Deputy Minister of Economy Yair Golan called out Netanyahu for “engaging in baby killing as a hobby.”

These denunciations fortify the long-standing documented condemnations by sixteen Israeli human rights groups, including “Breaking the Silence,” whose most recent report details how Israeli platoons in Gaza use Palestinians as “human shields.”

It is time to examine the shortcomings—some imposed and some self-inflicted—in the U.S. mass media’s coverage of an out-of-control brutal Israeli regime, weaponized and funded daily first by Biden and now by Trump.

1. Start with the vast undercount of deaths in Gaza (population 2.3 million) since October 7, 2023. Curiously, the media disbelieves Hamas claims, except for its Ministry of Health report of fatalities. Hamas, the elected government of Gaza, only reports the deaths that can be confirmed by name from hospitals, clinics, and mortuaries, most of which have been destroyed or gutted. So, day after day, newspapers dutifully reported Hamas’ fatality toll—now at 54,300.

Nobody in the academic community, UN, and international relief world believes this low number. Their unofficial estimates ranging from 250,000 to 500,000 deaths. Most of these groups readily agree that almost all the survivors of the deadly bombardments of civilians and their homes, markets, hospitals, and food, fuel and other emergency infrastructures, such as destroyed water mains and electric circuits, are either sick, injured, near death, and starving.

The media has no hesitation in estimating the number of Syrians killed during the civil war over the Assad dictatorship (500,000), or the number of Ukrainian deaths following Russia’s invasion. Somehow, they can’t see that Hamas has an interest in undercounting to avoid greater condemnations by its people for not protecting them. The media should put their reporters to work on documenting a more realistic death toll. At 500,000 fatalities, the intensity of political, diplomatic, and civic pressure is quite different than the fictional 54,300 figure.

2. Netanyahu’s ban on all independent journalists from entering Gaza, including U.S. and Israeli reporters, makes it difficult to get more facts and sources on the ground. The Israeli army has killed over 300 Palestinian journalists, some with their families. Some of their apartments were targeted by U.S.-made missiles. Last year, 75 major media organizations protested this exclusion in a full-page ad in the New York Times. Signers included the New York Times, Washington Post, and Associated Press. Their effort to cover the carnage in Gaza was to no avail. Bibi Biden would not back them up. The censorship continues under Trump.

However, these are powerful media outfits with reporters close by in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. They can do much more to get the gates to Gaza opened to tell the world the grim stories of the mass killing fields that are creating the risk of a wider Middle East War. Why the media does not press harder is itself an untold media story.

3. All this world-shaking violence started when, whether by colossal blunder or contrivance, Netanyahu’s ultra-modern border security apparatus collapsed in all its parts on October 7, 2023. He has tellingly blocked any official investigation. This is a story that must be probed until Netanyahu’s responsibility for enabling Hamas is exposed. Earlier he had bragged about supporting and helping to fund Hamas year after year because of Hamas’ opposition to a two-state solution.

Instead, absence of a full investigation allowed Netanyahu to turn his blunder into a U.S.-backed series of attacks against Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. As an elderly Nazi holocaust survivor told the New York Times after October 7th, “This should never have happened.”

4. The coverage of courageous Israeli human rights groups—including soldiers, rabbis and joint Israeli and Palestinian initiatives inside Israel—is very thin. The U.S. media has given vastly more coverage to disputed claims by Netanyahu et. al of mass rapes on October 7th, debunked by Israeli media scrutiny, then it gives these truthful strivers for peace. Why?

Moreover, what could possibly be the reason for the major U.S. newspapers completely ignoring the Veterans for Peace’s (VFP) constant street protests via its 100 Chapters in the U.S. including its present 40-Day Fast in communion with the starving Palestinian families in Gaza? Just this week, The Washington Post had a prominent two-page spread showing adopted dogs in Ukraine since the invasion.

5. The slant in coverage is on the other side as well. The immensely powerful “Israel government can do no wrong” domestic lobby, led by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), has escaped investigation or even an arm’s length deep feature in major newspapers. Yet in Congress, powerful AIPAC has a “minder” attached to every Senator and Representative and has sponsored primary challenges to lawmakers brave enough to mildly criticize it for being Netanyahu’s bullhorn. AIPAC won’t even support getting American reporters inside Gaza or allowing airlifts of horribly burned or amputated Gaza children to ready and able hospitals in the U.S.

The slant infects words used and words suppressed. The New York Times and CBS regularly refer to Hamas’ terrorism, but Netanyahu has killed vastly greater numbers of Palestinian civilians for political purposes, and that mass slaughter is referred to as “Israeli military operations.” In repeating day after day that 1200 Israelis were killed, the press does not say, as they do for Hamas, that Israel’s government does not differentiate between civilians and combatants. In fact, about 400 of the 1200 were Israeli soldiers and some police officers.

All this mass bloodshed is getting to former elected Israelis. This week in an op-ed in Haaretz, former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert accused Netanyahu of “war crimes” in Gaza. Look for many more members of Israel’s political and security establishment to start speaking out and protesting.

“What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians," wrote Olmert. "We’re not doing this due to loss of control in any specific sector, not due to some disproportionate outburst by some soldiers in some unit. Rather, it’s the result of government policy—knowingly, evilly, maliciously, irresponsibly dictated. Yes, Israel is committing war crimes.”

Shockingly, Donald Trump is still afraid of Netanyahu who arrogantly broke the ceasefire Trump took credit for and thumbed his nose at Trump by doubling down on the deepening Palestinian Holocaust and ignoring Trump’s warnings about people starving in Gaza. Month after month, Netanyahu blocks thousands of trucks with humanitarian aid on Gaza’s borders paid for by American taxpayers.

Soon this pressure cooker will explode in ways either predicted by the Pentagon or unforeseen as a “Black Swan” event. The deadly impact of Israel’s war against a long-defeated small Hamas guerrilla force on our own country’s weakening democratic institutions —from freedom of speech to Congress—is reaching the awareness of ever more Americans.

The Environmental Protection Agency is rolling back critical protections that ensure safe drinking water. These regulations help ensure that our water is free of PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals,” an especially hazardous form of industrial chemicals that linger in the environment indefinitely.

PFAS are damaging to human health at even the lowest doses. Exposure to PFAS can contribute to serious illnesses including kidney cancer, liver disease, thyroid disorders, or autoimmune disorders. There are no current treatments to remove PFAS from the body.

Despite the evidence of these dire health risks, the administration is shirking their responsibility to protect people across the country from PFAS exposure.

At the end of the day, we should all be able to agree that the health and safety of our communities starts with clean water and safe food, and make this work a priority.

Now, it is more urgent than ever for state and local leaders to step up, fill this gap, and protect their communities from PFAS exposure. It’s a massive undertaking, but fortunately, there is a clear path forward.

Advocates and experts across the country have already begun to chart the way—because they’ve had to. Even though prior PFAS regulations were important, they’ve never been enough to fully protect our water, our land, or our bodies from pollution.

I encourage leaders to look to Maine as a model to follow: Maine has emerged as a national leader in addressing PFAS contamination through comprehensive state-level initiatives that demonstrate the urgent need for federal action. We're the first state to require manufacturers to report intentionally added forever chemicals in products. Perhaps most significantly, the state is working toward the elimination of PFAS from consumer products, addressing the problem at its source rather than merely managing its consequences. Maine's regulatory approach has implemented some of the nation's most protective drinking water standards for PFAS compounds, recognizing that even minute concentrations pose serious health risks.

My own work in Maine has focused on advancing programs to monitor, test, and limit PFAS in our water and food supply. Over the years, we’ve realized that establishing strong drinking water standards is just the beginning of ridding our communities of PFAS. Now, we’re tackling contamination in the food supply by working with farmers to test their land and crops and make the technical changes necessary to produce safe crops and livestock.

Our state's PFAS Advisory Fund provides critical support to farmers whose agricultural operations have been devastated by PFAS contamination, primarily through the historical application of contaminated biosolids to farmland. Complementing this effort, the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association (MOFGA) established their PFAS Emergency Relief Fund to offer direct assistance to organic producers facing immediate financial hardship from crop losses and farm closures due to contamination.

Maine has also taken the bold step of banning the land application of sludge, eliminating a primary pathway for PFAS contamination of agricultural soils.

These comprehensive regulations serve multiple critical purposes: protecting the health of farmers who work the land and face direct exposure to contaminated soils, safeguarding consumers with safe food, and preserving our most treasured and irreplaceable resources—soil and water.

I urge more local leaders to champion these initiatives with your own representatives. Every town and state has a unique political landscape, and some of these programs might not advance easily. We need new innovation and lots of legwork to develop and advance the right solutions for everyone. But at the end of the day, we should all be able to agree that the health and safety of our communities starts with clean water and safe food, and make this work a priority.

Where the federal government won’t protect us, we will take action ourselves—by raising awareness, pushing for strong state-level responses, and stopping PFAS contamination before it causes further harm.

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It’s time to get DeProgrammed! Join political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou, who bring you incisive analysis on today’s most urgent issues. Today, Ted and John dive into the latest developments shaking everything from economics to a fallen rap baron. Trump makes a bold move to double tariffs on steel imports to 50%, an attempt to reindustrialize the Rust Belt while supporting Biden’s stalled Nippon Steel-US Steel partnership in Pittsburgh, drawing $14 billion in investment. Will this acquisition, justified under trade laws but contested for Trump’s referring to immigration and drug trafficking, revive the steel industry or fall flat? Next, immigration takes center stage as the Supreme Court allows Trump administration to end Biden-era humanitarian legal protections from 500,000 immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, paving the way toward mass deportations. Additionally, ICE has escalated entrapment at courthouses, nabbing migrants immediately after the government drops deportation charges. Will people stop showing up? We pivot to the Iran talks, where Gulf leaders are pushing Iran to engage while pushing the US to restrain Israel, as Israel itself faces growing pressure from Europe over Gaza. Finally, the Sean Combs trial continues as testimony from his ex-assistant “Mia” described severe emotional distress and alleged assaults—but defense attorney Brian Steel is challenging her via her social media posts and texts from 2016. The sex trafficking and racketeering trial reminds us that we are not past the point of he-says-she-says. Tune in for unfiltered, hard-hitting commentary that cuts through the noise, unpacking these stories with the sharp wit and outsider perspective only Rall and Kiriakou can provide.

The post DeProgram: Steel Deal, Immigrants Under Threat, Iran Nuke Talks, Sean Combs appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

May 31 marks 16 years since Dr. George Tiller—an abortion provider and reproductive justice advocate in Wichita, Kansas—was assassinated by a radical anti-abortion extremist outside his church. Dr. Tiller’s murder is a stark reminder of the violence and hatred that abortion providers face daily, and was a tipping point that led to better security measures for health centers.

In the wake of Dr. Tiller’s assassination, health centers across the country strengthened their security, determined to protect patients and staff from violence. Now that protection hangs by a thread. In March, the Trump administration announced that it would stop enforcing the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, a federal law that prohibits the threat or use of force, obstruction, and property damage to reproductive health care centers and protects people like Dr. Tiller and clinic escorts who try to ensure patients’ access to care. Rolling back these protections in the name of political ideology puts lives at risk and undermines decades of work to keep patients and staff safe.

Let me tell you what this looks like in real life.

As we remember and honor Dr. Tiller's life, I urge Congress to uphold the FACE Act. Dismantling this critical legislation sends a message that condones political violence.

As a volunteer escort with Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio, I try to help patients feel safe when they come to access healthcare. I do it because, regardless of the care patients are seeking, they are needlessly subjected to name-calling, shaming, and harassment. Sometimes I use a large umbrella to visually block protestors filming patients without consent. Sometimes I help someone park farther away, where it is quieter and feels safer. I do what I can to offer warmth and dignity during a moment that can feel vulnerable, stressful, and deeply personal.

In return, I have been screamed at, had my photo taken by strangers, and have been threatened. I am not alone.

Attacks against reproductive healthcare centers, staff, and clinic escorts are not an anomaly. In the United States between 2023 and 2024, there were 621 incidents of trespassing in reproductive health centers; 296 death threats or threats of harm to abortion providers, patients, and clinic escorts; and at least 37 incidents of stalking. Behind these numbers are providers and volunteers like me and Dr. Tiller, who put their lives on the line to ensure that patients receive the care they need.

Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, states throughout the Southeast and Midwest have enacted extreme abortion bans. Patients drive to our Ohio health centers with license plates from all over the country for vital reproductive healthcare. I help them find secure parking spaces away from protestors so they can enter and exit their vehicles safely. My fellow volunteers and I distract patients from the vitriol that protestors throw their way as they walk from their cars to enter our health centers. We all show up because we believe everyone deserves access to compassionate, quality care without harassment.

The people shouting at our patients do not speak for the majority. In 2023, Ohioans voted decisively to protect reproductive rights in our state constitution. Voters sent a clear message: We believe in bodily autonomy, privacy, and access to healthcare. Yet the federal government is abandoning us at the doorway where we are most vulnerable.

The FACE Act matters. It protects patients and providers facing harassment and threats just for seeking or providing healthcare. This is not abstract policy—it is about our neighbors, friends, and family. Everyone should be able to access medical care without fear.

As we remember and honor Dr. Tiller's life, I urge Congress to uphold the FACE Act. Dismantling this critical legislation sends a message that condones political violence. Ensuring safety is the bare minimum we can offer to the doctors, nurses, and volunteers who make great sacrifices to keep our communities healthy. We cannot let personal feelings and political ideology override public health and safety.

We all deserve to feel safe when we seek medical care. And those of us who help make that care possible deserve to be protected, too.

Hardly a day goes by without the phrase "Donald Trump is a danger to the world" being given new life. The threat posed by the U.S. president applies of course to the U.S. itself, which is in danger of sliding into fascist authoritarianism, and to the planetary boundaries that the billionaire cabinet is enthusiastically trampling all over with its "drill, baby, drill" policy.

What is less noticed is another global threat being driven by the MAGA insurrection movement in the White House, which has declared war on democracy, the state, and the planet. It is the risk of nuclear war. Although Trump is calling for an end to the fighting in Ukraine, which would reduce the threat of nuclear weapons being used in this crisis hotspot, the overall dangers have increased with the new administration.

First of all, it should be kept in mind that in the U.S., the president has sole authority, without restrictions or consultation, to order a nuclear attack against any target at any time, for any reason. He does not have to consult with anyone, and the decision is beyond any control. This is made possible by the so-called "nuclear football" (officially called the "presidential emergency satchel"). Military personnel who carry it accompany the president wherever he goes.

Trump's hara-kiri and doomsday politics, which destroy trust and rely on macho gestures instead of nuclear restraint and international cooperation, are a permanent source of instability and escalation.

The U.S. president can therefore carry out nuclear strikes at any time, which would mean hundreds of millions of deaths and probably the end of humanity. Experts and some politicians in Congress warn that this is a risky, vulnerable, and undemocratic procedure, established by the Eisenhower administration in the late 1950s, which places the decision about the possible end of the world in the hands of a single person. On the other hand, this arrangement is a central element of the U.S. nuclear deterrence strategy, which is intended to send a frightening message to the world.

The mere fact that Donald Trump has once again concentrated this power in his own hands is a danger in terms of the possible use of nuclear weapons. The reasons for this are obvious. Trump has shown himself to be unpredictable, erratic, and emotionally unstable as a person and political leader. His endless lies, provocations, humiliations, and calls for violence are widely known. When he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden, he initiated and supported an attempted coup on January 6, 2021. As the new president, he ultimately pardoned 1,500 convicted violent criminals, including neo-Nazi leaders who participated in the storming of the Capitol. He also faces multiple charges, including for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in his favor, and was convicted of rape by a New York court last year.

In October 2024, over 200 mental health experts warned before the election that Donald Trump was dangerous due to his symptoms of severe, untreatable personality disorder, which they diagnosed as "malignant narcissism." This makes him completely unfit for leadership, according to the health experts. Mary Trump, Donald Trump's niece and a clinical psychologist, also warned against his reelection. In her book Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man, she calls her uncle a sociopath. In it, she describes his upbringing in a dysfunctional family that promoted greed, cruelty, and racist and sexist behavior.

At first glance, it may seem reassuring that Trump declared during his first term that nukes were "the biggest problem in the world" and that his goal was to get rid of them. In February 2025, after taking office again, he said, "There's no reason for us to be building brand new nuclear weapons. We already have so many." Unfortunately, this is just rhetoric. Trump has done nothing in this direction so far and has actually increased the nuclear risks through his actions.

In 2018, during his first term as president, Trump announced his withdrawal from the nuclear agreement with Iran, which had successfully limited the uranium enrichment of nuclear fuel in exchange for sanctions relief. Since then, Iran has accelerated its nuclear weapons program. Estimates suggest that Iran could produce several bombs in a matter of months or even weeks. Shortly thereafter, following a series of escalating threats, Trump suggested that North Korea had agreed to denuclearization. Talks followed, but an agreement never materialized.

Furthermore, the first Trump administration indicated to the U.S. Congress that if deterrence against China failed, the U.S. would have to "win" militarily. Peter Kuznick, professor of history and director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University, told Truthout: "U.S. politicians seem so panicked about China's enormous growth and the way it is challenging U.S. hegemony in the Pacific that they are willing to risk nuclear annihilation to prevent it."

Researchers at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists warned earlier this year, as they moved the Doomsday Clock to 89 seconds before midnight—midnight means "game over" for humanity—that the United States has "embarked on the world's most expensive nuclear modernization" and that "the 2024 election results suggest the United States will pursue a faster, more expansive nuclear investment program. It is possible that the United States will expand its nuclear efforts to include more nuclear options, rely more on nuclear brinkmanship to advance its security and deterrence goals, and shun proven efforts to reduce nuclear dangers. The United States is now a full partner in a worldwide nuclear arms race."

This is taking place amid chaotic DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) attacks led by Elon Musk against the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), in which hundreds of scientists and experts responsible for the country's nuclear security were fired. It is unclear whether all of them have returned to the agency after the layoffs were reversed and whether security gaps are to be feared.

The Trump administration is meanwhile pursuing a "peace through strength" strategy in its foreign policy. This is the motto of former U.S. President Ronald Reagan, under which the U.S. launched a historic wave of rearmament. Republicans in the U.S. Congress also support this concept. They want to fuel the arms race by increasing the already historically high U.S. defense budget. There are calls on Trump to demonstrate to Russia that the U.S. holds global supremacy. And there is pressure to resume nuclear testing in order to win the arms race, which observers view as very worrying. The military establishment is even calling for the reintroduction of tactical nuclear weapons into the U.S. arsenal, which can be used in regional wars, which would mean further dramatic destabilization.

But what increases the nuclear risks above all is that, just months after taking office, the Trump administration has triggered "potentially the fastest and most dangerous acceleration of nuclear arms proliferation around the world since the early Cold War." His repeated "America First" statements, saying that the U.S. no longer feels bound by partnerships and would not come to the rescue of allies in an emergency, have left them feeling abandoned by the United States.

This has sparked a debate in European capitals about whether the U.S. nuclear umbrella can still be relied upon. France and the U.K. have offered to fill the gap. In an interview in March before his election as Germany's new chancellor, Friedrich Merz did not even rule out the idea of developing his own nuclear bomb. And in Poland, Prime Minister Donald Tusk is now talking about his country "must reach for the most modern capabilities also related to nuclear weapons." In Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is openly considering reintroducing a nuclear deterrent.

The risk of nuclear weapons spreading further across the globe is greatest in East Asia. During his 2016 election campaign, Trump said that Japan and South Korea might have to develop nuclear weapons. "It's only a matter of time," he said. Former South Korea's right-wing president, Yoon Suk Yeol, finally welcomed the deployment of U.S. tactical weapons in South Korea and intended to arm his country with nuclear weapons. Even though Democratic Party candidate Lee Jae-myung, who is leading in the presidential election polls (official vote is on Tuesday, June 3), is skeptical about South Korea going nuclear, the debate continues in the country. Political scientists Jami Levin and Youngwon Cho see this as a fatal development:

While Trump has been busy burning bridges in Europe and North America, his allies in East Asia—South Korea and Japan—have been watching the implosion of the U.S.-led international order in dismay. They have no alternative to the American nuclear umbrella but to build their own deterrent capabilities.

Polls show that more than two-thirds of South Koreans support their country acquiring nuclear weapons independently of the U.S.

Above all, the increasing confrontation with China is viewed with concern. The tariff war that Trump started against Beijing could exacerbate the security crisis in the Pacific and end in a military conflict, according to fears. Trump's trade attacks are reinforcing the trend toward "decoupling," i.e., the economic disentanglement of the two economies from one another. This, in turn, could lead to a rivalry in which both sides are tempted to harm each other through proxy conflicts and attacks on national security. At the same time, strategy papers from the Pentagon show how easily an economic war can escalate into a military conflict (which would put the nuclear option on the table between the two nuclear powers), according to Jack Werner of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in the U.S.:

In a context of mounting economic pain on both sides, with surging nationalism in both countries becoming a binding force on leaders, both governments are likely to choose more destructive responses to what they regard as provocations from the other side. A single misstep around Taiwan or in the South China Sea could end in catastrophe.

Trump's economic and military advisers in the White House are geared toward confrontation with China. That is also the purpose of the presidential order to build a new space-based missile defense system, known as the "Golden Dome." Since Reagan, there have been repeated attempts to initiate such programs. U.S. President Barack Obama wanted to build ABMs (anti-ballistic missiles) in Eastern Europe, but it was only in the wake of the Ukraine war that the Czech Republic gave the green light.

However, all these missile defense systems are not about the possible interception of nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles, i.e., self-defense, which cannot work technically, as military analysts have determined. ABM is, as the Rand Corporation, among others, explains, "not just a protective shield, but an enabler of U.S. actions." Lawrence Kaplan, professor at the U.S. Army War College and former senior editor of The New Republic, sums it up as follows: "In other words, missile defense is about preserving America's ability to exercise power abroad. It's not about defense. It's about offense. And that's exactly why we need it."

Even if such defense systems are incapable of preventing nuclear first strikes, they have the advantage of theoretically intercepting retaliatory strikes by enemies in response to a first strike. This means that there would be no threat of self-destruction, which could encourage military planners in the U.S. to launch first strikes while other nuclear powers lose their deterrent capability. And the message of Trump's "Golden Dome" has been received by those who were targeted. China, like Russia, has described the announcement from Washington as a "destabilizing" initiative.

While Trump has initiated negotiations in the Ukraine war that could reduce the nuclear dangers between NATO and Russia, he is simultaneously increasing them in the Pacific in an economic and military confrontation now focused on his main adversary, China, which increases the likelihood of a nuclear conflict.

The same applies to the Middle East. The Gaza war waged by Israel's Netanyahu government, a nuclear power, continues to be enabled by the U.S. with weapons and diplomatic blockade, while Trump has promoted the ethnic cleansing of the completely sealed-off enclave with his "Riviera Plan" remarks. The massacre of Palestinians, which has been going on for over a year and a half, has the potential to set the entire region ablaze. This is evident from the military exchanges with the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Iran. Israeli Minister of Heritage Amichai Eliyahu even suggested in an interview that dropping a "nuclear bomb" on the Gaza Strip was "an option."

Israel is also regularly indicating that one prepares for an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. Tehran has declared that it will hold Washington responsible if this happens. This could spark a full-scale war in the region that would draw the U.S. into the conflict, with all the dangers that this entails. At the same time, Trump is exacerbating the conflict himself. Although he wants to negotiate with Iran, he has announced military action if Tehran does not agree to his deal and end all uranium enrichment—which experts consider a dangerous hardline demand that will ultimately lead to war. They argue that it is unnecessary and unacceptable for the country because it would also rule out the civilian use of nuclear power for Iran. Trump threatened that if Tehran did not completely shut down its nuclear program, there would be "all hell to pay," while "all options are on the table"—which is an implicit threat of a nuclear strike.

A similar threat was directed at Russia. On social media, Trump stated on May 28: "What Vladimir Putin doesn't realise is that if it weren't for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened in Russia, and I mean REALLY BAD. He's playing with fire." Putin's confidant and Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, Dmitry Medvedev, replied: "Regarding Trump's words about Putin 'playing with fire' and 'really bad things' happening to Russia. I only know of one REALLY BAD thing—WWIII."

It is at this point a war of words between two nuclear powers. But Trump's hara-kiri and doomsday politics, which destroy trust and rely on macho gestures instead of nuclear restraint and international cooperation, are a permanent source of instability and escalation. It is therefore important to raise public awareness of the existential threat once again as civil society pressure on governments especially in countries that possess nuclear arms has to increase by seeking ways to revive the policy of détente—i.e. negotiations on disarmament and arms control, as took place in the 1970s under U.S. President Richard Nixon and in Germany with Chancellor Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik. Even under President Bush senior, there were initiatives launched that reduced the risks. These deescalation efforts are the results of organized peace movements that made a difference. Even in the dark times today there are still possibilities for addressing the dangers of atomic annihilation.

By Ralph Nader May 30, 2025 Opposition by former high officials in Israeli’s military and national security establishment and Israeli allies – France, England, and Germany – to the aimless killing of civilian families in Gaza is increasing. The mainstream, U.S. media has no excuse to cease its incomplete and biased reporting on the horrific…

I rarely ask you to look at charts. Today is an exception. This one is from the Economic Policy Institute. It compares the typical American’s pay starting just after World War II (light blue line) with the nation’s increasing productivity since then (dark blue).

The chart shows the widening divergence between the rise of pay and the yields from productivity.

In the first three decades after World War II, the typical American’s pay rose in tandem with the nation’s growing productivity. The benefits from higher productivity were broadly shared.

But then, starting in the late 1970s and dramatically after 1980, pay barely grew, even as productivity continued to soar. The benefits from higher productivity went increasingly to the top.

Why?

I’ve been looking into this question for a long time.

I’ve also been living it, as head of policy for the Federal Trade Commission under Jimmy Carter, secretary of labor in the Clinton administration, and an economic adviser to Obama. I’ve chronicled this in my upcoming memoir, Coming Up Short.

Much of the answer has to do with a giant upward shift in power.

It started in 1971, with a memo written for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce by Lewis Powell exhorting corporations to play a far more active role in American politics. They did, and their increasingly active role paid off, at least for their CEOs and top investors.

It continued through Reagan’s tax cuts and deregulation, his legitimization of union bashing, and the emergence of corporate raiders who insisted that corporations maximize shareholder value above all else.

And onward through George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton’s North American Free Trade Agreement, their support for China’s accession to the World Trade Organization, and their deregulation of Wall Street.

And then through George W. Bush’s tax cut — again, mainly for big corporations and wealthy individuals — and Barack Obama’s bailout of Wall Street after it nearly destroyed the world economy.

Deregulation. Privatization. Tax cuts. Free trade. Stagnant pay for most. A soaring stock market for the top.

That’s the legacy of neoliberalism.

It also brought us Trump — who exploited the anger and resentment stirred up by all this and pretended to be a strongman on the side of the working class (while quietly giving the emerging American oligarchy everything else it wanted, including a giant tax cut; he’s readying another as you read this).

Now some neoconservatives, posing as “moderates,” are hijacking the story and trying to rehabilitate neoliberalism.

Consider David Brooks, who wrote recently in The New York Times that:

— “wages really did stagnate, but they did so mostly in the 1970s and 1980s, not in the supposed era of neoliberal globalism.” (Brooks is wrong. Look at the above chart. Pay did begin to head up again in the 2000s but the pay-productivity gap has continued to widen.)

— there was “a return to higher productivity and higher wage growth, from 1994 to today. That is to say: Median wages have grown since NAFTA and the W.T.O., not declined.” (Wrong again. Look at the chart.)

— “the inequality gap is not as great as one might think.” (Well, I think it significant, and most analysts agree.)

— “the basic approach to economic policymaking that prevailed between 1992 and 2017 was sensible and … our job today is to build on it.” (Sensible only as compared to Trump’s first and second terms. But as I said, hardly sensible when you consider that widening inequality combined with unbridled globalization, deregulation, and union-bashing contributed to the rise of Trump.)

Neoliberalism should not and cannot be rehabilitated.

We need instead a strong, bold progressive populism that strengthens democracy and widens prosperity by:

— busting up big corporations,

— stopping Wall Street’s gambling addiction (e.g. replicating the Glass-Steagall Act),

— getting big money out of politics, even if this requires amending the Constitution,

— requiring big corporations to share their profits with their average workers,

— strengthening unions, and

— raising taxes on the super-wealthy,

— to finance a universal basic income, Medicare for all, and paid family leave.

Those now trying to rehabilitate neoliberalism won’t like any of this, of course, but we cannot return to the path we were on. It will just lead to more Trumps, as far as the eye can see.

On May 27, 2025, NPR and three of its member stations filed a federal lawsuit against President Donald Trump and senior administration officials, challenging the legality and constitutionality of a sweeping executive order that seeks to eliminate all federal funding for public media. The order, signed in secret on May 1 and titled “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media,” instructs federal agencies and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to sever direct and indirect support for NPR and PBS.

The White House claims public broadcasters have become ideologically compromised—too progressive, too elite. But the lawsuit lays bare what this order truly represents: an act of retaliation against protected speech, an attempt to coerce editorial compliance through financial pressure, and a direct violation of the First Amendment and the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967.

This isn’t just a legal question. It’s a campaign to punish an institution for refusing to perform ideology—or worse, for refusing to perform for profit.

Calling NPR “left-wing” isn’t just a complaint—it’s a tactic. It frames the pursuit of truth as bias, and intellectual legitimacy as partisanship.

The attack on NPR is not incidental. It is part of a broader, systematic effort to hollow out the institutions that sustain a shared civic life. It arrives amid a sweeping retreat from democratic infrastructure, in a media environment already distorted by market forces and polarized spectacle. The point is not to shrink government, but to starve the parts of it that still serve public truth.

And when that truth is no longer institutionalized—when public media is stripped away—we are left with a brittle and binary media ecosystem. One pole is built on the commodification of dissent: branded, aestheticized resistance packaged for affirmation but divorced from redistribution. The other is built on grievance-fueled nationalism: disinformation-heavy, algorithmically weaponized, and driven by a hunger for cultural control.

To be clear: This is not a critique of independent movement journalism, which continues to speak truth to power. The critique is directed at large-scale, corporate liberal media that simulates transformation while avoiding structural change. Between that and right-wing propaganda lies a collapsing middle—where nuance, contradiction, and collective understanding once lived.

Over the past decade, American institutions have developed a method of control that depends not on silencing dissent, but absorbing it. Dissent becomes aestheticized. A movement becomes a marketing slogan. A crisis becomes a campaign. Moral performance replaces material change. The result is a politics of gesture—rhetorically progressive, materially stagnant.

This logic has reshaped journalism itself. Newsrooms adopt the language of equity while preserving internal hierarchies. Social platforms reward provocation, not precision. Engagement becomes the end goal. As backlash rises, even institutions that once embraced equity quietly retreat—rewriting mission statements, cutting DEI staff, and recasting structural critique as reputational risk.

In this context, public media has held a distinct line. NPR hasn’t turned itself into a lifestyle brand. It hasn’t gamified its coverage or collapsed journalism into performance. Its reporting focuses on infrastructure—housing, public health, rural economies—topics long abandoned by commercial outlets because they don’t scale.

What’s at stake isn’t just funding—it’s whether journalism can still exist as a civic discipline rather than a partisan weapon or a market product.

And yes, it has a tone. That tone reflects a commitment to method, verification, and proximity to academic and professional norms. That is precisely what’s under attack. Calling NPR “left-wing” isn’t just a complaint—it’s a tactic. It frames the pursuit of truth as bias, and intellectual legitimacy as partisanship. The same campaign now targeting NPR has already targeted public universities, climate science, and historical scholarship.

This executive order wasn’t born of fiscal conservatism. It came from a worldview where facts are threats unless they’re profitable or loyal. On the surface, this is about money. Beneath it lies a deeper question: Can democracy survive without institutions committed to unmonetized, unmanipulated truth?

Public media is one of the last places where journalism operates outside of market logic. If it falls, we’re left with only two choices: branded content that performs outrage for engagement, or weaponized narrative designed to dominate. In that void, journalism becomes either commercialized or coerced.

We’re already living in the early stages of that collapse. Local papers are gone. Regional reporting has been gutted. What remains is a patchwork of influencers and platforms, each calibrated to a target audience, each echoing a self-reinforcing narrative.

Public media’s refusal to conform—to accelerate, to provoke, to monetize—is now treated not as moderation, but as provocation.

The lawsuit NPR has filed is necessary. But it also marks a threshold. What’s at stake isn’t just funding—it’s whether journalism can still exist as a civic discipline rather than a partisan weapon or a market product.

Public media is quiet. It’s moderate. It rarely declares. But in a media economy built on spectacle and churn, quietness itself has become an act of resistance.

The attack on NPR is not just political retaliation. It is a warning. It shows how intolerable independent institutions have become in a country where truth is measured by allegiance and journalism is judged by its usefulness to power.

The refusal to commodify dissent, the refusal to monetize distrust, is no longer just a professional standard. It is a political act.

And in a democracy increasingly organized around spectacle, that act may be the last thing keeping the lights on.

The revolution, Gil Scott-Heron once wrote, would not be televised. If NPR falls, it will not be broadcast at all. Not because no one is speaking—but because the signal has been cut.

LIVE 10 AM Eastern time, Streaming Anytime:

Brace yourself for a chilling episode of “The TMI Show with Ted Rall and Manila Chan,” delving into the haunting 20th anniversary of Natalee Holloway’s murder. In 2005, the 18-year-old woman vanished during her high school graduation trip to Aruba, sparking global headlines. Natalee was last seen with Joran van der Sloot, who was arrested multiple times but never convicted of her murder due to Aruba’s statute of limitations. Finally,in 2023, van der Sloot confessed to killing her following his signing to a plea deal for extortion and wire fraud, admitting that he bludgeoned her and dumped her body in the sea. This closure, after nearly two decades, has reignited debates over justice, international law, and travel safety. Why did it take so long to get the answers? How do legal loopholes impact cases like this?

Join guest Ally Pennington, Artifacts and Programs Manager at the “Alcatraz East Crime Museum,” for an interview exploring these questions. The museum’s new exhibit, “International Journey to Justice: Catching Natalee Holloway’s Killer,” opened April 18th to mark this milestone. We’ll also unpack why Americans are obsessed with grisly crimes and what draws millions to crime museums? What else awaits at Alcatraz East? Expect a wild ride through history with artifacts like Ted Bundy’s VW Beetle and O.J. Simpson’s Ford Bronco.

Plus:

• Russia’s fossil fuel billions help its war in Ukraine, with €883bn earned since 2022 despite Western sanctions, evidencing that sanctions never work.
• A paranoid NATO plans a massive troop boost, raising 120–130 brigades to counter Russia, with Germany urged to add 40,000 soldiers.

The post TMI Show Ep 149: “True Crime: Our National Obsession” appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.