People in the United States of America continue to allow the normalization of very dangerous measures solidifying authoritarian government, and the administration of President Donald Trump continues to escalate each measure. The latest measure arrived on May 27 when Secretary of State Marco Rubio ended all embassy reviews of applications for student and exchange visas from foreign nationals, stating that a new policy including social media vetting will be announced soon. Rubio also suspended scheduling any new interviews for three types of visas that enable foreign nationals to participate in U.S. institutions: F (for students at academic institutions), M (for students in vocational or non-academic schools), and J (for teaching and research exchange visitors). The new policy has not been revealed yet.

Here is yet another case that should break the people of the U.S.—if not the feckless supposed opposition party, the Democrats—from their political paralysis. The Trump administration inherited a largely informal apparatus of campus repression relying on the defamation, arrest, and suspension of students and faculty members who opposed the U.S. role in supporting what the Israeli government now openly admits is a campaign of deliberate starvation and full land dispossession of the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank. Trump’s administration seized upon the zeitgeist already brewed by university leaders and fueled by a coalition of Zionist and far-right organizations, and seized it with an aim far more expansive than simply punishing pro-Palestinian activism and speech.

Trump is not attacking Harvard, but extorting the institution in an attempt to put its allowable pedagogies and discourses beneath his state.

Trump’s aim is a campaign of terror and intimidation against universities and colleges designed to suppress free speech and critical thinking. The “Palestine exception” has proven to be a useful proxy as its enforcers are not simply the usual MAGA suspects, but include many liberal Democrats and cultural custodians who spent the last few years warning of Trump’s dangers while gladly serving as the handmaids of a repression whose contours they foolishly believed they could limit to one supposedly justified cause. The collaboration with only nominal opponents of antisemitism was a clever move by the MAGA right, as it bound them to silence in a pivotal early phase.

Now the later phase of the Trumpian war on free speech and free thought in higher education is unleashed, and the sorts of powers that Rubio will soon wield over student and researcher visas will allow for the state to pick and choose who enters the halls of academe—and who will be punished for eventually transgressing servitude to the ruling ideology.

Some people are mistakenly calling Trump’s higher education measures an “attack on universities.” Trump’s agenda is far from an attack—it is a right-wing elite capture, in which the current liberal managerial keepers of institutions either are replaced with MAGA counterparts or the current keepers break down and comply (and some already have). Jokes abound about the possible mismatch of some poorly-educated MAGA bootlicker running Harvard or Yale, but Trump’s administration and its congressional lackeys are mostly Ivy Leaguers themselves. U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), the most strident congressional Inquisitor of college presidents, is a Yale graduate like Vice President JD Vance. Trump went to Penn. Steve Bannon went to Harvard, like Pete Hegseth.

Trump is not attacking Harvard, but extorting the institution in an attempt to put its allowable pedagogies and discourses beneath his state. He has tried the same at Columbia University, and his administration states that the University of California system is next. The Task Force on Antisemitism led by gadfly former television commentator Leo Terrell functions as a spear tip of moralistic outrage masking the shakedown that Trump’s gangster presidency is actually waging. Trump and his collaborators don’t want to shut down Harvard, Columbia, or any institution of higher education whose trustees will turn over the keys to the MAGA regime. As the DOGE “cuts” demonstrate, the Trump administration understands how to effect ideological capture using traditional but empty Republican rhetoric about balancing budgets and preventing “waste.” The goal is to claim the spoils of the state, and use all state organs to assault private institutions that harbor resistance to the state.

Of course, this ideological capture is far from abstract as it brutally impacts the lives of foreign students lawfully studying and exerting their First Amendment rights (which apply to everyone on our soil, contrary to the Trump doctrine’s insistence otherwise) in the United States. Before both the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs in May, Rubio reiterated his servile liturgy on the pro-Palestinian students targeted by the Trump administration, sometimes at the behest of Zionist organizations like Betar.

“I will continue to revoke student visas,” Rubio stated, while also repeating an argument ad hominem that the targeted students occupied and damaged campus buildings and threatened other students. When asked about the case of the now-released Tufts doctoral student Rümeysa Özturk, who was arrested and disappeared to Louisiana for the mere act of co-signing a student newspaper editorial, Rubio reset to the same defamatory lines about breaking campus rules and a visa not being a right but a privilege.

Georgetown University postdoctoral researcher Badar Khan Suri, baselessly accused by the Department of Homeland Security of spreading Hamas propaganda, was chained at the ankles and wrists during his detention at Prairieland Detention Center in Texas, where he was housed from his March arrest until a federal judge ordered his release in May. Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil, who actually holds a green card and not a visa, remains incarcerated in Louisiana and missed the birth of his child and his graduation ceremony.

While the ultimate goal of the Trump administration is a right-wing elite capture of higher education, especially its most prestigious institutions, the weaponization of the Palestine exception will not be dissipating any time soon. In the wake of federal judges freeing some of the students disappeared for their speech, Trump ally U.S. Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) declared that “Palestinianism”—by which he means all recognition of Palestinian people as human beings—is terrorism that should not be allowed in U.S. Fine also endorsed dropping an atomic bomb on Gaza to murder its entire remaining population. After the terrible murder of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim outside of the Capitol Jewish Museum by a purported pro-Palestine activist, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that even stating “Free Palestine” is equivalent to saying “Heil Hitler.” Hate speech that keeps possible opponents of authoritarianism divided—and causes real harm—tragically is one of the main currencies of Trump’s MAGA movement.

No one should expect any consistency even on the question of antisemitism, because Trump is only committed to hegemonic power for his state and its collaborators. There is no moral principles held categorically, which is why moralistic opposition politics have largely done nothing to stop Trump’s hold on power tightening. While Rubio is railing against pro-Palestine students, Trump’s white nationalist supporters were cheering the admission into the U.S. of 49 Afrikaaner farmers from South Africa, including one who had called Jewish people “dangerous” and “untrustworthy.” Again, Trump wants immigration just like he wants Harvard—just in forms that extend his ideological capture and venerate his broadly racist, patriarchal nationalism.

As international students comprise 5.9% of U.S. university admissions, they represent a mighty financial cudgel. In 2023-4, 25% of international students in the U.S. were studying math or computer science and 20% were studying engineering, they may be less likely to engage in political activism than their domestic counterparts and even before Trump more likely to keep a low profile to their host government (not to mention governments back home). Trump’s coalition includes a lot of people who are genuine extremist Zionists, so expect him to offer up more international students and for the State Department’s new policies to include social media scans of pro-Palestine content. Yet also expect Trump to be ready to make deals with any and all institutions of higher education who will cave to his demands for controlling allowable teaching and expression—and any nations who pledge that their students will arrive obedient. And, tragically, expect a lot of U.S. universities and colleges to fall in line.

Much more is at stake in Kseniia Petrova’s case than a handful of frozen French frog embryos. The latest scene in the drama played out Wednesday morning at Vermont District Court with 50 or so supporters. In contrast to the hundreds of signs for the Madhawi and Ozturk hearings, just one older woman held a small brown cardboard square she must have made herself: “Free Kseniia Petrova.”

“Do you have a connection to this case?” I asked her. Her faded T-shirt looked so different from the fashionable garb of the city scientists and allies.

“I’m just an American who’s fed up with what’s going on,” she said. She understood the importance of this moment, and so did District Judge Christina Reiss. Why were we in this Vermont courtroom again? Yet another person detained in Boston by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was whisked away and jailed in Vermont, where their attorney filed for habeas corpus, the process for challenging wrongful detention. Wednesday’s hearing was primarily on the question of whether bail would be granted.

At every stage, this case has been handled as if a neighbor who let his dog poop on someone’s lawn was put in jail for a month and charged with criminal trespassing and environmental endangerment.

Ten minutes before the hearing began, Petrova herself appeared on two big screens, a diminutive figure imprisoned in a small white room. Alone, not even an interpreter. Her dark brown hair and eyes stood out against her pale skin. She wore prison garb, an ill-fitting, short-sleeved khaki shirt with a white tee beneath it. Even so, she looked cold, holding herself.

By noon, the rule of law had won again in Vermont. Judge Reiss ruled that customs officers do not, in her words, have the power of the Secretary of State to revoke a visa on the spot. This was done to Petrova with no factual or legal basis. A customs violation is not a reason for being inadmissible to the United States. The judge brushed aside the government’s notion that there had been any undue delay in filing for habeas corpus. She ordered that Petrova be freed from ICE custody on bail, telling the government to propose release conditions by May 30. She did stop short of granting Petrova’s request that ICE be ordered not to rearrest her as soon as she is free, although her lawyer pointed out that there is strong reason to be apprehensive.

Kseniia Petrova did her boss a favor by agreeing to carry a package of frog embryos back from France for another lab leader. Perhaps she expected to be in the hands of a more rational system than she faced in Russia, which she fled after her arrest for opposing the war in Ukraine. Text exchanges after her plane landed in Boston show her light mood about the fertilized eggs: “I can’t swallow them!” she replied when asked what her plan was for getting the items through customs. But what should have been a light comedy of errors turned into a Chekovian plot with shocking escalations.

When a dog identified something unusual in Petrova’s suitcase, she was taken aside, and the scientific samples were revealed. The customs official said they had revoked her visa, meaning she was in the country illegally; she was told she could return to France and reapply to the U.S., or be sent to Russia. She chose France, an offer which was then revoked, and ICE locked her up in Vermont, then Louisiana. At every stage, this case has been handled as if a neighbor who let his dog poop on someone’s lawn was put in jail for a month and charged with criminal trespassing and environmental endangerment.

Just how serious was Petrova’s infraction? And is the person who committed it a danger to society? A flight risk?

In court Wednesday, the founder of the field of regenerative medicine, Dr. Michael West, testified that the samples were “inert, nontoxic, nonliving,” in no way a hazard. When he said they had no commercial value, Petrova visibly chuckled. He likened them to “shoe leather” as a source of potential biological hazards.

When asked about Petrova’s science, Dr. West said that she is doing excellent work in the “most valued and needed field in current medical research.”

“Would you hire her?” Dr. West was asked.

“In a heartbeat,” he replied. That got a big smile from Petrova—and a garbled objection from the government.

Prof. Marc Kirschner, Petrova’s ultimate boss, came personally to testify from the laboratory which bears his name at Harvard Medical School. He spoke of Petrova’s “significant impact” on his laboratory. Her absence is keenly felt. Her particular contribution was finding ways to quantify the “amazing pictures of tissues” from the lab’s newly invented microscope. Dr. Kirschner too was unable to imagine that she would be a danger to society. Petrova’s scientific peers also testified that she loves her job, and misses her work, her friends, and colleagues. Petrova wrote that the lab was a “paradise.” Is that the word of someone who wants to flee?

Would it have been better judgment for Petrova to submit paperwork for the preserved frog eggs? Of course. But has anyone who has ever crossed an international boundary not quietly carried at least one dubious item at some point? The government’s response to this minor offense has been Orwellian. Judge Reiss said, “The government is essentially saying, ‘We revoked your visa, now you have no documentation and now we’re going to place you in removal proceedings.’” Then the government detained her. When a bail hearing was scheduled that could result in Petrova’s release, the government only took two hours to trump up criminal charges against her. It was an obvious ploy to keep her in custody even if the judge released her.

Behavior which usually results in a small fine suddenly became criminal—subject to fines of up to $250,000 and up to 20 years in prison. Comparable cases involve boots made of endangered sea turtles or living birds smuggled in panty hose.

Do these twists and turns sound like the United States of America, or like Vladimir Putin’s Russia? At this point, Petrova will only go free if the Massachusetts Criminal Court also grants bail—and if ICE doesn’t snap her up again, or deport her to Russia. As Judge Reiss said, “Ms. Petrova’s life and well-being are in peril if she is deported to Russia,” and she is serving our national interests in research where answers are desperately needed.

So far, this drama has been something of a farce. Let’s not allow it to end in tragedy.

The slaughter goes on, usually in the name of war, which reduces human life to, at best, a strategic abstraction. Dead civilians—dead children—are collateral damage, which means they’re nothing at all.

How can we be more than just spectators as we learn, every day, more stunning details about the hell going on across the planet? How can the human race stand up collectively to the cancer of war? Humanity, in the name of nationalism, has essentially organized itself against itself: We’ve declared one another “the enemy,” which means that only some of us are human. The others are simply in the way.

And nowhere, as we all know, is the news more hellish and shocking than the stories that emerge daily from Gaza, which continues to undergo, in full view on social media... genocide. It looks like this, according to CNN:

Dr. Alaa al-Najjar left her ten children at home on Friday when she went to work in the emergency room at the Nasser Medical Complex in southern Gaza.

Hours later, the bodies of seven children—most of them badly burned—arrived at the hospital, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza. They were Dr. Najjar’s own children, killed in an Israeli airstrike on her family’s home... The bodies of two more of her children—a 7-month-old and a 12-year-old who authorities presume to be dead—remain missing.

Only one of her ten children, 11-year-old Adam, survived. Dr. Najjar’s husband Hamdi, himself a doctor, was also badly injured in the strike.

This is the context in which another piece of news emerges, an opposite event, a beam of light which, oh God, I pray represents the dawn of humanity’s future: Veterans For Peace, along with 28 co-sponsoring organizations, has launched a 40-day fast calling for an end to Israel’s genocidal war on, and starvation of, Gaza. Some of the participants gather daily in front of the United Nations headquarters in New York, aligning themselves—in all their vulnerable humanity—with the organization’s founding purpose.

A letter the fasters wrote to U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres concludes: “Uppermost in our minds with this request to meet with you at your earliest convenience is the U.N. founding goal to save ‘succeeding generations from the scourge of war.’”

I quote these words not with a sense of “yeah, yeah” abstraction but rather because the writers are people like you and me, stepping out of their daily lives and into a determination to be part of, and help create, a world beyond war—beginning with an Israeli cease-fire and the salvation of Palestine, but hardly stopping there.

To put it another way: The words attempt to link individuals with a global institution. What I hear in these words is the call for a collective, planetary effort to transcend war. This effort must include every single human on this planet, including you and me, and demands our participation and sacrifice, not simply our shrug of hope. I hear a call for the United Nations to reinvent itself as United Humanity. And thus the future emerges.

One of the participants in the fast is my old friend Kathy Kelly. I talked to her on day six of the fast. Participants are limiting themselves to consuming 250 calories a day, she noted, which is about the amount Palestinians have available to them. Several hundred people are participating in the fast in New York, with more people, around 600 in total, throughout and beyond the United States. If you’re interested in joining the effort, visit the websites of either Veterans for Peace or Friends of Sabeel North America.

The fast is very much a public event, Kathy told me. On Memorial Day, for instance, a few days into the fast, they ceremonially honored not just veterans but some of the victims of the current genocide, bringing the al-Najjar family into public grief by reading the names of the children who were killed.

Kathy gave me a list of their names and ages. I feel like they belong here: Yahya: 12 years old; Rakan: 10 years old;; Eve: 9 years old; Jubran: 8 years old; Ruslan: 7 years old; Reval: 5 years old; Sadin: 3 years old; Luqman: 2 years old; Sidra: 6 months old. Adam, age 11, the sole surviving child, was critically injured.

Yeah, this is war. Its details matter. And as an American, I am complicit in the hell this country’s militarism has wreaked throughout my lifetime: the collateral damage, the environmental damage, it has bequeathed Planet Earth, followed by nothing more than an indifferent, strategic shrug.

So I feel compelled to return for a moment to Alaa al-Najjar, the doctor and mom who recently lost 9 of her 10 children, with her husband and last surviving child seriously injured. Her niece told CNN that

Dr. Alaa broke down when she showed the last bottle of breast milk she had expressed for her infant daughter, Sidra, whose body remains missing.

She told me today that her chest aches so much as she was breastfeeding, every day at work, Dr. Alaa pumped milk to provide for Sidra, and today she showed me the last bottle she prepared for her.

Dr. Alaa can barely speak. If you could see her face, you would understand her pain. She is only praying for her son and husband to recover.

And also, this: According to a fellow doctor at the hospital, Alaa al-Najjar has “continued to work despite losing her children, while periodically checking on the condition of her husband and Adam.”

This is peace—this is love—standing in the aftermath of war, refusing to give up. I see hope for the future here. I see humanity’s role model.

Colorful career criminal Willie Sutton once may (or may not) have been asked why he robbed banks. “Because that is where the money is,” he supposedly replied. A similar principle may explain the first foreign trip of President Donald J. Trump’s second term, which was not to a traditional U.S. ally in Europe. Rather, he set off to visit the capitals of the Gulf hydrocarbon potentates Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. In royal palaces there, he feasted and was offered hundreds of billions of dollars in investments in American companies and opportunities for the Trump Organization, too. Qatar even courted controversy by giving him a $400 million Boeing 747-8 plane to serve as a future Air Force One.

And the publicity was regal. Strikingly missing, however, was a side trip to Israel or any evident consultations with the extremist government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

If Israel gets in the way of deal-making with the Gulf plutocrats, it could become an annoyance that Trump might feel he can’t afford.

Instead, Israel was frozen out and blindsided by Trump’s pronouncements. On the eve of his trip, the president took the Israelis by surprise when he abruptly announced that he would halt his (costly and fruitless) bombing campaign against the Houthis of Yemen. Israeli leaders then had to listen to Trump proclaim that the U.S. “has no stronger partner” than Saudi Arabia, with which he brokered a $142 billion deal for American arms. The United Arab Emirates has a sovereign wealth fund of $2.2 trillion, while Saudi Arabia’s is $1.1 trillion and that country’s leader, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, has already deposited $2 billion of it in the investment firm of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund has $526 billion. And such sums don’t even include those countries’ vast currency reserves, earned by selling petroleum and fossil gas.

And in that single, several-day trip, President Trump managed to realign U.S. Middle Eastern policy to center on—and yes, it should be capitalized!—an Axis of the Plutocrats, Gulf sheikhs who are using their galactic fortunes to reshape the region from Libya to Sudan, Egypt to Syria, and who are hungrily eyeing new investment opportunities in areas like the emerging artificial intelligence industry.

Syria: A Very Strong Background

Oh, and while he was traveling Trump revealed that Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Saudi Arabia’s bin Salman had indeed convinced him to lift American sanctions on Syria, a step distinctly opposed by the Israelis. While in the Saudi capital of Riyadh, he even held a surprise meeting with fundamentalist Syrian President Ahmad al-Shara, who had once led an al Qaeda affiliate. Asked about whether the Israelis opposed the step, Trump replied, “I don’t know. I didn’t ask them about that.” In fact, The Associated Press reported that, in an April meeting with Trump, Netanyahu had specifically pleaded with him not to lift those sanctions on Syria, since he claimed he feared that the new fundamentalist government there might eventually stage an attack on Israel.

Trump appears to have been entirely unmoved by Netanyahu’s plea. After meeting al-Shara in Riyadh, the president summed up his view of the former guerrilla and supporter of hardline Salafi Islam this way: “Young, attractive guy. Tough guy. Strong past. Very strong past. Fighter.” On recognizing Damascus’s new government and issuing a waiver on those congressionally mandated sanctions, Trump observed, “Now it’s their time to shine… So, I say, ‘Good luck, Syria.’ Show us something very special.” It’s worth noting that al-Shara claims he wants good relations with all his country’s neighbors and is open to peace with Israel.

You wouldn’t know it from Netanyahu’s heated rhetoric, but during the Syrian civil war of the last decade, Israel did give medical help to the Support Front (Jabhat al-Nusra) that al-Shara founded and led when it was fighting against Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorial regime. Since al-Shara’s group sometimes persecuted the heterodox Druze minority in Syria, this step outraged Israel’s own Druze minority, some of whom at one point attacked an ambulance taking a wounded Syrian rebel to an Israeli hospital, while the group’s leaders lobbied Netanyahu to cease aiding the al Qaeda-linked outfit.

Netanyahu’s recent suggestions to Trump that al-Shara, now in control of much of Syria, poses a threat to Israel, were therefore wholly disingenuous. Moreover, the jackboot is entirely on the other foot. As soon as the revolution in Damascus succeeded, Netanyahu ordered an orgy of destruction, bombing naval ships in the Syrian port of Latakia and military installations across the country, leaving Syria virtually helpless. Israeli troops then marched into Syria, occupying swathes of its territory and taking control of a dam that supplies 40% of its water. Israeli far-right cabinet member Bezalel Smotrich then pledged that Israel’s multi-front war of expansion there would only end when Syria was—you couldn’t put it more bluntly than this—“dismantled.”

Now, Israeli analysts not only fear a resurgent Syria but also worry that since Erdogan has Trump’s ear on Syrian policy, he will be emboldened. Turkey, after all, backed the rebel group that has now taken power and is their main international sponsor. Turkish fighter jets are already operating in northern Syrian air space, and Israel’s attempt to establish hegemony over its southern regions is endangered by Turkish claims that, going back to Ottoman times, Syria has always been in its sphere of influence.

Iran: No Nuclear Dust

Trump also sidelined Netanyahu during his trip by continuing to press for a new nuclear deal with Iran. His Gulf Arab hosts showed a collective enthusiasm for the ongoing talks, and Trump revealed that Qatar’s ruler, Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani, had indeed lobbied him to begin direct discussions with Iran. The Gulf Arab monarchies fear being caught in the crossfire of any future American-Israeli war with Iran. The leaders of Qatar and the other Gulf states are anxious that the (all too literal) fallout from any aerial strikes on enriched nuclear materials in Iran could drift onto their populations, affecting their water supplies. Trump tried to reassure his hosts that “we’re not going to be making any nuclear dust in Iran,” adding that he wanted to try negotiations first in hopes of forestalling any such outcome.

During both the first Trump administration and the Biden administration, Washington’s pitch to the Gulf Arab states was that they should recognize Israel, do business with it, and form a military alliance with it against Iran. Jared Kushner succeeded in making this argument to the postage-stamp Gulf countries of the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, which signed the Abraham Accords with Israel on September 15, 2020.

Trump appears to have developed the same fascination that possessed Barack Obama when it comes to “opening” Iran the way Richard Nixon once opened China.

However, Kushner and then-President Biden failed to bring Saudi Arabia aboard. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman resisted going on a war footing with Iran, especially after the devastating 2019 attack by that country or one of its proxies on the Kingdom’s Abqaiq refinery, which underlined Riyadh’s vulnerability. Not surprisingly, then, in March 2023, the Saudi foreign minister joined his Iranian counterpart in Beijing, where the two countries restored diplomatic relations and began deconfliction talks.

Once Israel launched its total war on the Gazan population in October 2023, bin Salman could hardly sign on to the Abraham Accords. In the region, it would have looked as if he were helping to destroy the Palestinian Arabs while putting a target on Iran, one of the Palestinians’ few remaining state champions. Unlike Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia has a substantial citizen population—some 19 million people—whose opinions the government has to be at least a little bit anxious about, especially since the blood of the average Saudi is indeed boiling at the daily atrocities being committed by Israel in Gaza. Last year, bin Salman’s office leaked to Politico that he feared he would be assassinated if he recognized Israel under such grim circumstances and he insisted on the need for an independent Palestinian state (which seemed to get Washington off his back on the issue).

In addition, Trump appears to have developed the same fascination that possessed Barack Obama when it comes to “opening” Iran the way Richard Nixon once opened China. Nothing, of course, could be more unwelcome in Tel Aviv. Netanyahu has repeatedly threatened to attack Iran’s civilian nuclear enrichment facilities (though Western intelligence agencies do not believe that country actually has a nuclear weapons program). In an April meeting, Trump informed Netanyahu that he wanted to try negotiations before anybody attacked Iran and pointedly gave the prime minister a copy of his book The Art of the Deal.

Qatar: A Fundamental Role

If Qatar did convince Trump to try negotiating with Iran, then Sheikh Tamim won a major round in the contest for influence with the American president. It was a victory in keeping with Doha’s longstanding regional role as a mediator and seeker of peaceful solutions to conflict. And the rise of Qatari influence is another blow to Netanyahu, who has attempted to sideline the Gulf gas giant even though he was happy to make use of its services.

Since Hamas’ bloodthirsty October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, elements of the Israeli government and its supporters have attempted to blame Qatar for supposedly supporting and bankrolling Hamas. The allegations are breathtakingly false and serve as a smokescreen for Hamas’ actual patron (in a manner of speaking), Netanyahu himself. They were aimed, however, precisely at turning Qatar into a distrusted regional pariah, a ploy that has so far failed spectacularly.

That the fundamentalist Hamas movement came to power at the ballot box in Gaza in 2006 and could not be dislodged struck Netanyahu as a potential blessing. The bad blood between Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) on the West Bank left Palestinians politically divided. Netanyahu made that very rivalry a pretext for preventing the establishment of a state for the 5 million stateless Palestinians under Israeli occupation. He put severe import-export restrictions on Gaza but otherwise allowed Hamas to run it as its own fiefdom. Hamas rocket fire from time to time (which seldom did any real damage) was a price Netanyahu was then willing to pay. He had a close associate act as a go-between regarding transfers of money from Qatar and Egypt into Gaza for civilian aid and administration. From 2021 on, Egypt and Qatar deposited aid money for Gaza civilian reconstruction in an Israeli bank account, and then Israel transferred it to the Gazans.

That’s right: Bibi Netanyahu was once functionally Gaza’s comptroller. Moreover, in 2011-2012, the Obama administration asked Qatar to host members of the Hamas civilian politbureau so that they could take part in indirect negotiations with both the U.S. and Israel. The favor Qatar did for Washington and Tel Aviv, however, would prove burdensome to its diplomacy. In 2018, the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim, grew so frustrated with Hamas that he decided to kick its officials out and cease sending aid to Gaza. Terrified that his divide-and-rule approach to the Palestinians might be jeopardized, Netanyahu frantically dispatched the head of the Israeli intelligence outfit Mossad to Qatar to plead with the emir to continue the arrangement.

In 2020, The Times of Israel revealed that Mossad head Yossi Cohen had written a letter to Tamim about the Gaza money transfers, saying: “This aid has undoubtedly played a fundamental role in achieving the continued improvement of the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip and ensuring stability and security in the region.” As late as 2023, other Israeli government officials were still sending similar messages, according to that paper. The subsequent attempt of the Netanyahu government to shift blame for its disgraceful Gaza policy onto Qatar has struck few seasoned observers as plausible.

Regarding Trump’s recent visit, the Israeli genocide in Gaza was the one outstanding issue on which Gulf leaders appear to have made little headway. After a roundtable with Qatari business leaders, the president said of Gaza, “Let the United States get involved and make it just a freedom zone.” These remarks, wholly detached from reality, did not clarify whether he still agreed with Netanyahu on a plan to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip, which no one in the Arab Gulf could accept. In any case, insiders say Trump is frustrated that Netanyahu doesn’t “wrap up” the war, but that the president has not exerted the pressure necessary to stop it.

A Stark Pivot

Trump’s foreign policy trip marked a stark pivot away from what had long been a neoconservative version of Middle Eastern policymaking in Washington. In the era of President George W. Bush, some officials typically argued that Israel was Washington’s only reliable democratic partner in the Middle East and that all policy in the region should be organized around that reality. In the process, of course, they downplayed the plight of the Palestinians, claiming in 2002 that peace would only come in the region when the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein was overthrown. They gradually developed a rhetoric for stuffing Washington’s version of democracy down the gullets of Middle Eastern regimes—at the point of a gun, if necessary. They either marginalized Arab regimes or sought to scare them into an alliance with Israel. Their ultimate goal then was a war on Iran that would overthrow the government there. “Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran,” they used to proclaim in a creepy combination of male chauvinism and juvenile jingoism.

Trump’s own regime is, of course, not free of either toxic masculinity or a jejune hyper-nationalism. However, unlike Bush and the neocons, the 47th president seems uninterested in kicking off long, debilitating foreign wars, which his base has come to hate. Still, think of him, at least in part, as Trump of Arabia. Of course, he’s mainly interested in making money for himself and his wealthy backers there. If Israel gets in the way of deal-making with the Gulf plutocrats, it could become an annoyance that Trump might feel he can’t afford. So far, however, the president seems unwilling to make the hard choices necessary to end the genocide and position the Middle East and the U.S. for prosperity, leaving us all in limbo with only a new Trump Tower in Dubai to show for it.

Ted Rall’s cartoon calls out the media for covering up and deflecting Biden’s mental decline— hilariously and absurdly while promising to investigate who was responsible. Outlets like The Washington Post—whose reporters and editors had to have known the truth the whole time—are vowing to find who concealed Biden’s condition, as our trust in institutions continues to erode. 

The post Looking For the Real Democracy Killer appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

I didn’t become a teacher to picket in front of rocket test sites.

But I also didn’t become a teacher to watch public education be sold for scrap. So two weeks ago, I loaded up my car with signs, snacks, and plenty of water and drove out to the SpaceX facilities in Hawthorne, California. I spent the day rallying alongside a sea of educators, parents, students, and union members, gathered at Elon Musk’s place of business to protest his corrupt crusade to decimate our public schools and privatize our public goods.

I’m a special education teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Our schools, like schools all across the country, are facing pressure to tighten the belt in anticipation of DOGE cuts and federal disinvestment.

We reject that logic. As should every public servant and elected official in the country.

Preemptive austerity measures play right into the hands of the people dismantling our government. Now is the moment to dig deep. Educators across California and the nation are calling on our electeds and our superintendents to pour back into our communities, not abandon them.

Our protest was one of several rallies held across the country in response to threats to dismantle the Department of Education. From Los Angeles to Washington D.C., teachers have come together to defend every student’s freedom to learn and to stand against the extremist politicians trying to gut the resources our students and families depend on.

This administration’s end game relies on a population that is uneducated and disempowered. One where our children don’t know our histories or learn from them. Instead of nurturing young people who question the world around them, they want to produce workers that can be underpaid, mistreated, and controlled. This is about power, not policy.

And yes, the appointment of WWE’s Linda McMahon as Education Secretary is a clear sign of this administration's disdain for public education, but that agenda has long been fueled by Musk’s own contempt. His hostility toward public schools began well before his time in Trump’s orbit. Case in point: Hawthorne served as SpaceX’s main headquarters for years, until Musk opened a new hub in Texas, supposedly in protest of a California education law that protects LGBTQ+ students and upholds their right to learn.

It’s time people stop seeing Elon Musk as a visionary when he’s clearly a political actor. His attack on public education is part of a larger strategy. This administration’s end game relies on a population that is uneducated and disempowered. One where our children don’t know our histories or learn from them. Instead of nurturing young people who question the world around them, they want to produce workers that can be underpaid, mistreated, and controlled. This is about power, not policy.

Our children are not under-resourced by accident. They’re being robbed. And Elon Musk is a prime example of how that works in a democracy that’s captured by corporate interests. These people don’t want public services to work. They want to own them. Musk says our budgets are bloated, but refuses to pay property taxes. He attacks public educational programs like NPR and PBS, yet collects billions in public subsidies for SpaceX, Tesla, and Twitter/X. While teachers are forced to strike for reasonable pay raises, Musk is handed public money and then uses it to bankroll campaigns to abolish the Department of Education. This isn’t innovation, it’s extraction.

But their agenda isn’t just about schools. The forces behind Project 2025 are pushing plans to shut down entire federal departments and destabilize the programs our communities rely on. They’re calling for the elimination of Medicaid, Meals on Wheels, Social Security, and more. These cuts would devastate poor and working-class Americans, veterans, the elderly, and most of all, our students and their families. They want our kids hungry, our elders unsupported, and our communities too desperate to fight back while they steal and profit off our labor.

Although the threats to dismantle the DoE, as well as the ICE raids against our immigrant students, have made this personal, we educators are always on the frontlines of democracy. We work with students of all abilities, from all racial and economic backgrounds. We see inequity firsthand. We are workers ourselves and we know what it means to be overworked and underpaid. When we organize, we’re not just fighting for a contract. We’re fighting for a country where a child’s zip code doesn’t decide their worth.

Trump, Musk, and their wealthy allies want to run the country like a company. But a nation isn’t a business, it’s a collective promise to each other.

When we shortchange teachers, we shortchange students. And when we underfund schools, we make inequality permanent. In 2023, our union was able to enact a groundbreaking contract that provided some financial relief for many educators in our city. But for many of us, that just meant catching our breath — not catching up. We’re still behind on rent. Student loans are resuming, and many educators who had hoped for relief are facing renewed financial strain. Teachers are working second jobs, burning out, and leaving the field altogether. And when teachers leave, students feel it: high turnover leads to instability; under-resourced classrooms lead to deepened inequity.

The real crisis isn’t overspending but underinvestment. At every level, federal, state, and local leaders claim there’s no money. But the money exists. The district has it. The state has it. The feds definitely have it. They’re just hoarding it, or worse, handing it to billionaires. You don’t solve a shortage by starving the people doing the work. You solve it by investing — in people, in classrooms, in kids.

Trump, Musk, and their wealthy allies want to run the country like a company. But a nation isn’t a business, it’s a collective promise to each other. They’ve already come for federal workers. Now it’s teachers. Next, it’ll be nurses, postal workers, transit operators or anyone who doesn’t fit their agenda to drag us backward. This isn’t fear-mongering. It’s a fact.

But we will not let billionaires steal our future. We will not disinvest. We will not capitulate. We believe in a future where every child has a safe, well-funded public school. Where public goods serve the public good. And where educators are respected, not discarded.

They may have rockets. But we have each other. And we’re not going anywhere.

Last Thursday, May 22, a coalition named Veterans and Allies Fast for Gaza kicked off a 40-day fast outside the United Nations in Manhattan in protest against the U.S.-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza. Military veterans and allies pledged to fast for 40 days on only 250 calories per day, the amount recently reported as what the residents of Gaza are enduring.

The fasters are demanding:

1. Full humanitarian aid to Gaza under U.N. authority, and
2. No more U.S. weapons to Israel.

Seven people are fasting from May 22 to June 30 outside the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, where they are present from 9:30 am to 3:00 pm, Mondays to Fridays. Many others are fasting around the U.S. and beyond for as many days as they can. The fast is organized by Veterans For Peace along with over 40 cosponsoring organizations.

Remarkably, over 600 people have registered to join the fast. Friends of Sabeel, North America is maintaining the list of fasters.

Who will stop the genocide in Palestine, if not us? That is the question that the fasters and many others are asking. The U.S. government is shamelessly complicit in Israel’s genocide, and to a lesser extent the same is true for the European governments. The silence and inaction of most Middle Eastern countries is resounding. Lebanon, Yemen, and Iran, the only countries to come to Palestine’s aid, have been bombed by Israel and the U.S., with the threat of more to come. Syria, another country that stood with Palestine, has been “regime changed” and handed over to former al-Qaeda and ISIS extremists.

On the positive side, some governments are making their voices heard. South Africa and Nicaragua have taken Israel and Germany, respectively, to the International Court of Justice—Israel for its genocide, Germany for providing weapons to Israel. And millions of regular people around the globe have protested loudly and continue to do so.

Here in the United States, Jewish Voice for Peace has provided crucial leadership, pushing back against the phony charges of “antisemitism” that are thrown at the student protesters whose courageous resistance has spoken for so many. University administrators have been all too quick to crack down on the students, violating their right to freedom of speech, but even these universities have come under attack from the repressive, anti-democratic Trump administration.

Peace-loving people are frustrated and angry. Some are worried they will be detained or deported. And many of us are suffering from Moral Injury, concerned about our own complicity. How are we supposed to act as we watch U.S. bombs obliterate Gaza’s hospitals, mosques, churches, and universities? What are we supposed to do when we see Palestinian children being starving to death, systematically and live-streamed?

Because our movement is nonviolent, we do not want to follow the example of the young man who shot and killed two employees of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. But we understand his frustration and how he was driven to take forceful action. We take courage from the supreme sacrifice of U.S. Airman Aaron Bushnell, who self-immolated in front of the Israeli Embassy, asking “What would you do?”

Student protesters at several universities around the country have initiated “hunger strikes,” often considered a protest of last resort. Now they have been joined by military veterans.

“Watching hundreds of people maimed, burned, and killed every day just tears at my insides,” said Mike Ferner, former Executive Director of Veterans For Peace and one of the fasters. “Too much like when I nursed hundreds of wounded from our war in Viet Nam,” said the former Navy corpsman. “This madness will only stop when enough Americans demand it stops.”

Rev. Addie Domske, national field organizer for Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA), said, “This month I celebrated my third Mother’s Day with a renewed commitment to parent my kid toward a free Palestine. As a mother, I am responsible for feeding my child. I also believe, as a mother, I must be responsive when other children are starving.”

Kathy Kelly, board president of World BEYOND War, also in New York for the fast, said, “Irish Nobel laureate Mairead Maguire, at age 81, recently fasted for 40 days, saying ‘As the children of Gaza are hungry and injured with bombs by official Israeli policy, I have decided that I, too, must go hungry with them, as I in good conscience can do no other.’ Now, Israel intensifies its efforts to eradicate Gaza through bombing, forcible displacement, and siege. We must follow Mairead’s lead, hungering acutely for an end to all weapon shipments to Israel. We must ask, ‘Who are the criminals?’ as war crimes multiply and political leaders fail to stop them.”

Another faster is Joy Metzler: 23, Cocoa, Florida, a 2023 graduate of the Air Force Academy who became a Conscientious Objector and left the Air Force, citing U.S. aggression in the Middle East and the continued ethnic cleansing in all of Palestine. Joy is a now a member of Veterans For Peace and a co-founder of Servicemembers For Cease-fire.

“I am watching as our government unconditionally supports the very violations of international law that the Air Force trained me to recognize,” said Joy Metzler. “I was trained to uphold the values of justice, and that is why I am speaking out and condemning our government’s complicity in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.”

I spoke with VFP leader Mike Ferner on Day 7 of his Fast. The NYPD had just told him and the other fasters that they could no longer sit down in front of the U.S. Mission to the U.N. on the little stools they had brought. But Mike Ferner was not complaining.

He said: “We go home every night to a safe bed and we can drink clean water. We are not watching our children starve to death before us. Our sacrifice is a small one. We are taking a stand for humanity and we encourage others to do what they can. Demand full humanitarian relief in Gaza under U.N. authority, and an end to U.S. weapons shipments to Israel. This is how we can stop the genocide.”

More information about how you can participate or support the fasters is available at Veterans and Allies Fast for Gaza.

One of my purposes in sending you this daily letter is to give you the truth about an important issue that U.S. President Donald Trump and his lapdogs in Congress are demagoguing—so you can spread the truth.

Right now, the Senate is taking up Trump’s “Big Beautiful budget bill” (really a Big Bad Ugly Bill) that just emerged from the House.

If enacted, it would be the largest redistribution of income in the nation’s history—from the poor and working class to the rich and super-rich.

The entire work requirement would affect 7% at most. In reality, a work requirement would cause many more who are eligible to lose their Medicaid coverage. The current estimate is at least 8.6 million people.

How? The tax cut mainly benefits the wealthy. A major source of funding is at least $715 billion of cuts in healthcare spending, mostly from Medicaid.

It also contains a poison pill that would remove the power of federal courts to hold officials in contempt of court—fining or imprisoning them if they fail to follow court orders. As the courts push back against Trump, this is a critical power.

The bill cuts Medicaid spending by requiring Medicaid recipients to work.

Republicans are spreading lies about this work requirement.

Here are the facts you need to know—and share:

1. 64% of adult Medicaid recipients already work.

Many recipients work in jobs that don’t typically offer health insurance and pay little—which makes Medicaid vital. These people aren’t freeloaders mooching off the system, as Republicans claim. They’re barely scraping by.

2. Adults on Medicaid who aren’t working have good reasons not to.

• 12% are primary caregivers.
• 10% have an illness or disability.
• 7 % are attending school.

3. So, 93% of all Medicaid recipients either already working or having good reason not to.

The entire work requirement would affect 7% at most. In reality, a work requirement would cause many more who are eligible to lose their Medicaid coverage. The current estimate is at least 8.6 million people.

4. The work requirement kicks eligible people Medicaid because of its burdensome and confusing reporting requirements.

It’s not really meant to put people to work. It’s a shady way of kicking people off Medicaid to fund tax cuts mainly for the wealthy.

In Arkansas, which tried a work requirement for Medicaid, more than 18,000 people who were eligible lost coverage mainly because of the paperwork reporting hoops they had to jump through.

5. When Arkansas enacted work requirements, there was no significant change in employment rates.

Because, again, Medicaid recipients already have high rates of employment to begin with.

6. If Republicans really want to put people to work, they’d make it easier to get Medicaid—not harder.

After Ohio expanded Medicaid, enrollees had an easier time finding and holding down a job.

Access to healthcare means people can manage chronic conditions, afford medication, or receive mental health treatment—all of which helps people keep their jobs.

Republicans are spouting lies about a work requirement for Medicaid because they’re really trying to push eligible people off it—to help finance their big tax cut mainly for the rich.

Senate Republicans can afford to lose only three Republican votes. Otherwise, the Big Bad Ugly Bill is dead. Please share these facts.

LIVE 10 AM Eastern time, Streaming Anytime:

It’s global crisis Thursday on “The TMI Show with Ted Rall and Manila Chan,” diving into a geopolitical powder keg! Ten years ago, President Obama pushed for a nuclear deal with Iran while Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu rattled sabers and threatened to bomb Tehran’s nuclear-power enrichment facilities. Now, Trump faces the same threat from the Bibster, but the stakes are higher. Netanyahu’s coalition leans on far-right extremists, and Iran is weaker than ever—its proxies Hamas and Hezbollah are battered, and Assad’s regime in Syria just collapsed. Bibi’s threats to strike Iran’s nuclear sites might not be just talk this time.

Back in 2015, the JCPOA forced Iran to gut its nuclear program and allow inspections in exchange for sanctions relief, though it was permitted to enrich uranium at low levels until 2030. Trump scrapped the deal in 2018, slapping sanctions back on. Now, Iran has enriched uranium to 60% purity—experts say it’s less than a year from a bomb if it wants one. (It says it doesn’t—and the CIA believes them.) Netanyahu sees a nuclear Iran as an existential threat and wants it crushed, while Trump thinks Iran’s vulnerability makes it ripe for a deal. Just yesterday, Trump told Bibi to hold off on bombing.

Public support for Israel is waning in wake of its genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza—only 46% of Americans still support Israel, the lowest in 25 years, with even some conservative voices like Tucker Carlson backing away. Will Trump and Netanyahu clash, or will diplomacy win?

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“Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, pulls from 200 interviews in order to expose Democrats’ cover-up of Joe Biden’s cognitive and physical decline from his son Beau’s death in 2015 through his presidency and into his misbegotten 2024 reelection campaign. The book’s thesis is that Trump’s return to power was the direct result of Biden’s decision to run again despite his dementia, symptoms of which caused his catastrophic debate performance and subsequent withdrawal from the race.

Like a motorist gawking at the debris of a gruesome accident, I couldn’t put down this eulogy for American electoral democracy. Part of it, I’ll admit, was how thoroughly “Original Sin” vindicated my own assessments of Biden dating back to 2020, which did not make me popular with Democrats. Mainly, though, it’s a page-turner.

What Biden and his coterie of minders did to himself, the Democratic Party and the country—far and away the biggest political scandal in U.S. history—is too big to fit into one book, no matter how essential or well-written, both of which “Original Sin” is.

An “original sin” is a metaphor that recalls Adam eating the forbidden apple. It is a foundational error, systemic problem or inherent defect that leads to future negative consequences. Frederick Douglass argued that slavery was the “great sin and shame of America”—the nation’s original sin. William Jennings Bryan said “the fruits of imperialism…is the one tree of which citizens of a republic may not partake.”

In the same way that a number of factors contributed to humanity’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden—Eve’s insistence, Adam’s deference and curiosity, and of course that rascally snake—the Democratic Party’s plot to install a mentally-diminished Biden into the White House, keep their ruse going for four years and overplay their hand by trying for another four stemmed from motivations and had ramifications that don’t appear in Tapper and Thompson’s book.

When I evaluate sin—is it one? if so, how serious?—I put myself in the shoes of the perpetrator and ask myself: might I have done the same thing in the same circumstances? Reading “Original Sin,” I have to say, no way. No one with a scintilla of decency would have done what Jill Biden and a cabal of self-appointed Biden gatekeepers nicknamed “the Politburo”—Chief of Staff Ron Klain, Senior Advisor Mike Donilon, Senior Advisor Anita Dunn, and Deputy Chief of Staff Jen O’Malley Dillon—did.

They carried out a silent coup d’état.

They’re traitors.

It gets short shrift in the book, but a big portion of the original sin of the Biden presidency is the raison d’être of his first campaign—to stop Bernie Sanders. Bernie was the early favorite in the Democratic primaries. Party bosses should have been pleased. He consistently led Trump in national head-to-head polls during February and early March 2020, with margins ranging from 4 to 9 points, often outperforming or matching other Democratic candidates like Joe Biden, who finished fourth in Iowa, fifth in New Hampshire and a distant second in Nevada.

But Sanders’ attacks on corporations and the “billionaire class” and promise to turn away big-money contributions pissed off the party’s wealthy donors and corporate-aligned leaders. His proposals to break up big banks and tax billionaires threatened the financial elite who held sway over the DNC. Better to lose with a corporate candidate, they decided, than to win with a self-described “democratic socialist.” On February 27, 2020, The New York Times ran a piece with a shocking headline: “Democratic Leaders Willing to Risk Party Damage to Stop Bernie Sanders.” A few days later, the day before Super Tuesday, party leaders secretly orchestrated joint high-profile endorsements from rival candidates Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Beto O’Rourke, who dropped out and backed Biden.

Would it really have been so awful to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour and give sick people access to Medicare For All? For the billionaire class, obviously yes.

But why Biden and not one of the other 21 primary contestants? Klobuchar didn’t have enough name recognition. Buttigieg didn’t do well with Blacks. Like Bernie, Elizabeth Warren was too radical for the big corporate donors.

Establishment Democrats claimed Biden was the most electable. But that wasn’t why they elevated him. Bernie, after all, was at least as electable as Biden. It came down to politics—Biden was a corporatist—and familiarity. And Biden was mentally and physically weak. For the big money people, the ability to push him around was a feature, not a bug.

Roughly 40% of American vice presidents become president, whether by succession or getting elected on their own. The main job of a vice president is to be qualified and prepared to become commander-in-chief.

Choosing a vice presidential running mate, therefore, is obviously not a decision to be undertaken lightly. That goes double when the president is, at age 78, the oldest ever elected. According to “Original Sin,” the universal consensus in Bidenworld was that Kamala Harris was unpleasant, untalented and not up to the job of running for president, much less serving as one. When the president dropped his reelection bid, most people in the party leadership didn’t want her to jump in because her polls were no better than his.

The book doesn’t spend much time on how and why Harris got the nod for veep. But surely a significant part of the original sin that led to Trump 2.0 was the party’s inability to quickly transition to an appealing figure to replace Biden. Kamala’s campaign was such a disaster, polling in the low single digits, that she was forced to withdraw in 2019, without having participated in a primary. On that basis alone, she never should have been considered to run with Biden.

Biden pulled out of the race in July 2024. Four years too late.

By all accounts, he had become utterly incapable of doing the job as president. Yet he remained in office another six months. What if World War III had broken out during that time? It made no sense to tacitly admit Biden was senile while allowing him to continue pretending to work as president.

He should have resigned when he dropped out, leaving Harris as the incumbent president. Her campaign would have benefited from the optics of taking the oath of office, governing, and being seen with foreign leaders. And Biden would have made history by bringing about the first presidency by a woman of color.

Last but certainly not least, the book barely touches upon the Gaza War. It takes note of the fact that many younger voters decided not to vote at all rather than to turn out for Biden due to his age. But many were also furious at both Biden and Harris for supporting the Israeli onslaught against the innocent people of Palestine.

So many original sins! Sadly for the nation, it’s not just Democrats who must atone.

(Ted Rall, the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of “Never Mind the Democrats. Here’s WHAT’S LEFT.” Subscribe: tedrall.Substack.com.

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Alejandro G. thought that driving full-time for Uber in Houston offered freedom—flexible hours, quick cash, and time to care for his young son. But that promise faded fast.

“There are hours when I make $20,” he told me. “And there are hours when I make $2.” As his pay dropped, he pawned his computer and camera, began rationing the insulin he takes to manage his diabetes—putting his health at risk—and started driving seven days a week, often late into the night, just to break even.

Alejandro, whose real name is withheld for his privacy, is one of millions of workers powering a billion-dollar labor model built on legal loopholes. Companies like Uber insist they are tech platforms, not employers, and that their workers are independent contractors. This sleight of hand allows them to sidestep minimum wage laws, paid sick leave, and other workplace protections, while shifting the financial risks and responsibilities of employment onto the workers. It also lets them avoid employer taxes, draining funds from public coffers.

If gig workers were properly classified, public companies would have to disclose pay data, showing just how far below the median these workers earn, and how high executive compensation soars above them.

A new Human Rights Watch report looks at seven major platform companies operating in the U.S.—Amazon Flex, DoorDash, Favor, Instacart, Lyft, Shipt, and Uber—and finds that their labor model violates international human rights standards. These companies promise flexibility and opportunity, but the reality for many workers is far more precarious. In a survey of 127 platform workers in Texas, we found that after subtracting expenses and benefits, the median hourly pay was just $5.12, including tips. This is nearly 30% below the federal minimum wage, and about 70% below a living wage in Texas.

Seventy-five percent of workers we surveyed said they had struggled to pay for housing in the past year. Thirty-five percent said they couldn’t cover a $400 emergency expense. Over a third had been in a work-related car accident. Many said they sold possessions, relied on food stamps, or borrowed from family and friends to get by. Their labor keeps the system running—but the system isn’t built to work for them.

By classifying workers as contractors, platform companies avoid paying core employment obligations while retaining tight control over how the work is done. The platforms often use algorithms and automated systems to assign jobs, set pay rates, monitor performance, and deactivate workers without warning. In our survey, 65 workers said they feared being cut off from a platform, and 40 had already experienced it. Nearly half were later cleared of wrongdoing.

Companies use incentives that feel like rewards but function more like traps. Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash dangle “quests,” “challenges,” and “surges” to push workers to stay on a shift for longer or hit quotas. These schemes lure workers into chasing bonuses that rarely reflect the true cost of the work. One Uber driver in Houston said, “They are like puppet masters. They psychologically manipulate you.”

Access to higher-paying gigs is also conditioned on behavior. Platforms use customer ratings and performance scores to shape who gets the best jobs. One Shipt worker in Michigan said her pay plummeted immediately after she received two four-star reviews, down from her usual five. Ratings are hard to challenge, and recovering from a low score can take weeks. Workers feel forced to accept every job and appease every customer, reinforcing a system that rewards compliance over fairness.

These aren’t the conditions of self-employment. They’re the conditions of control.

This labor model also drains public resources. In Texas alone, Human Rights Watch estimates that misclassification of platform workers in ride share, food delivery, and in-home services cost the state over $111 million in unemployment insurance contributions between 2020 and 2022. These are public funds that could have strengthened social protection or public services. Instead, they’re absorbed into corporate profits—a quiet transfer of public wealth into private hands.

In 2024, Uber reported $43.9 billion in revenue and nearly $10 billion in net income, calling the fourth quarter its “strongest ever.” DoorDash pulled in $10.72 billion, up 24% from the previous year. Combined, their market valuation exceeds $250 billion.

But workers are pushing back, and policymakers are starting to listen. From June 2 to 13, the 113th session of the International Labour Conference—the United Nations-backed forum where global labor standards are negotiated—will convene to debate a binding treaty on decent work in the platform economy. The message is clear: Workers are demanding rules that protect their rights.

The U.S. can start by updating employment classification standards and adopting clear criteria to determine whether a platform worker is truly independent. We also need greater transparency. If gig workers were properly classified, public companies would have to disclose pay data, showing just how far below the median these workers earn, and how high executive compensation soars above them.

This isn’t about rejecting technology. It’s about making sure new forms of work don’t replicate old forms of exploitation or create new ones, by hiding them behind an app.

Alejandro doesn’t need an algorithm to tell him when to work harder. He has a right to a wage he can live on, protections he can count on, and a system that doesn’t punish him for getting sick, injured, or speaking up.

He and millions like him built the platform economy. It’s time they shared more than the burden.

At the core of most demands for the U.S. empire, we’re asking for kindergarten ethics—is that a stretch? It’s what the climate movement teaches about our relationship with the Earth: not to take and take and extract and extract because we have a reciprocal relationship. For most of its history, the U.S. has ignored this, and that continues to be the case when it comes to the string of accusations leveled against the current president of Burkina Faso, Ibrahim Traoré.

And if all of us—the climate movement, peace lovers, people with basic compassion—want to save the planet, we need to stand against the attempts of the U.S., NATO, and Western powers in trying to intervene in the Sahel’s process of sovereignty.

Several weeks ago, Michael Langley, the head of U.S. Africa Command (or AFRICOM), testified in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee and stated that Ibrahim Traoré, the current president of Burkina Faso, “is using the country’s gold reserves for personal protection rather than for the benefit of its people,” an absurd claim, considering that the U.S. Department of Defense, which Langley works for, has stolen $1 trillion from U.S. taxpayers in this year’s budget alone. What’s more, AFRICOM itself has a deadly, well-documented history of plundering the African continent, often in coordination with NATO.

As people of the world rise against imperialism and neocolonialism, it is up to us in the U.S. climate movement to stand unequivocally in support of projects of self-determination.

Take a guess why Langley might want to delegitimize Traoré’s governance and the larger project of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES)—made up of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger—all of which have recently allied under a confederation after recent seizures of power. Any takers? Hint: The answer is natural resources and military presence. Traoré has nationalized Burkina Faso’s foreign-owned gold mines in an attempt to actually use the land’s resources to benefit its people. Similarly, upon taking power in Niger, current President Abdourahamane Tchiani nationalized uranium and banned foreign exports. Notably, a quarter of Europe’s uranium, crucial for energy usage, comes from Niger. Considering Traoré’s crucial role in developing the identity of the AES as one of the more vocal and charismatic leaders, targeting Traoré is part of a larger project by the U.S.-E.U.-NATO axis targeting the AES project at large. Recently, this new AES leadership has launched new green energy and educational initiatives. Meanwhile, the U.S. has pulled out of the Sahel states as the AES asserts its sovereignty in defiance of decades of Western-backed instability.

Traore’s Burkina Faso is not the first Pan-African project to come under attack by the U.S.-E.U.-NATO axis of power. Just as the vague claims from Langley serve to cast doubt on Traoré’s ability to lead a nation, past Pan-African leaders who have dared to challenge imperialism and prioritize their citizens have also come under fire. For instance, former president of Burkina Faso, Thomas Sankara, was assassinated in 1987 after putting the Burkinabè people’s needs first by rejecting International Monetary Fund loans and demands, implementing nationwide literacy and vaccine campaigns, and spearheading housing and agrarian reform. Time and again, France and the U.S. have taken decisive action against leaders who have promoted Pan-Africanism and environmental stability over the interests of Western powers. We’re watching it happen live now, and have a responsibility to stand up for Traoré and the AES before it’s too late.

When a country doesn’t bend its knees to Washington, the standard U.S. playbook is one of environmental death, either via hybrid or classic warfare. Venezuela has refused to grant U.S. corporations unfettered access to its oil reserves—the world’s largest—and thus has been forced to use them as a lifeline. The U.S. has punished Venezuela by imposing unilateral sanctions that have prevented the proper maintenance of the country’s oil pipelines, resulting in harmful leaks. In the Congo—one of the lungs of the Earth—the West’s decades-long quest for uranium and other rare minerals has led to mass deforestation, destroyed water quality, and unleashed military forces that have killed millions. And of course, the U.S. is backing the ecocide and genocide in Palestine in order to maintain the existence of a proxy state in an oil-rich region.

When the U.S. military—the No. 1 institutional polluter in the world—“intervenes,” the only environmental outcome is climate collapse. And even when countries play by Washington’s rules, the U.S. will still militarize, build more toxic bases, seek continued extraction, and create mass poverty. For the survival of the people and planet, we must resist this imperial expansion.

Any movement concerned with moving from an extractive to regenerative economy must stand against U.S. and Western intervention in the Sahel and for Pan-African projects and a multilateral world. The emergence of a multipolar world means that projects like the AES have partners beyond the region: During Traoré’s most recent visit to Moscow, he met with the heads of state of Russia, China, and Venezuela. The U.S., of course, threatened by the loss of its dominion, insists on pursuing a dangerous cold war against China, to contain China’s influence, refuses to cooperate on green technology, and plows through any region that it views as a battleground, be it the Asia-Pacific or the Sahel. And always at the expense of life in all forms.

So if we are in a project for life, why, then, are we often met with hesitation in climate spaces to stand against this imperialist extraction? We need to reflect on a few questions. Whose lives do we sacrifice for “strategy”? Which environmental sacrifice zones are we silent about because of the “bigger picture?” What extraction and militaristic buildup do we let happen to theoretically prevent planetary death that is already happening via our own government down the road? Are we avoiding building connections with popular movements because of donors who only fund dead ends? We have a choice to make: Allow the doomsday clock threatening climate death and total catastrophe to keep ticking or reverse course and breathe life into something new.

Traoré’s historic meeting with China, Russia, and Venezuela is a glimpse of what’s on the horizon. As people of the world rise against imperialism and neocolonialism, it is up to us in the U.S. climate movement to stand unequivocally in support of projects of self-determination.

Although our lifestyles will certainly look different once we no longer have uninhibited access to the gold, cobalt, uranium, and other resources that are routinely extracted from the African continent and its people, we must prioritize building a more just, healthy relationship with the planet and all of its people. If leaders such as Traoré succeed in revolutionizing agriculture and resource extraction at a sustainable pace that benefits workers, what might that signal for a new world order in which exploited Africans and their lands do not form the cheap material base for the world? What might we build in place of extractive economies to usher in a green future for all?.

Robert Francis Prevost was recently named as Pope Francis’ successor to one of the leading religions in the world, which makes the fact that 60% of U.S. Catholics think abortion should be legal in all or some cases even more powerful. But the reality is that laws, stigma, misinformation, and disinformation—or deliberately wrong information—continue to pose substantial barriers for many.

Wanting people to have access to accurate abortion information is actually what led me to library school.

Before Roe v. Wade was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, I volunteered at a Texas abortion fund. One instance that often replays in my head is when an abortion seeker reached out and shared they had an appointment at a clinic that week. However, the name did not sound familiar to me, which was an immediate red flag given the small number of clinics that had managed to remain open in the face of many restrictions.

While I might not be a librarian yet, I have witnessed firsthand the unfortunate consequences of people not knowing how to spot misinformation or where to find the facts.

So I did what I was trained to do: a quick online search to verify. When I discovered their website, it was filled with false information. I knew my fears had come true. This person did not have an appointment.

All I could do was provide emotional support and gently state the facts: This is a state-funded fake clinic and is meant to dissuade you from accessing the care you need, but real clinics exist.

After I walked them through the next steps—which consisted of making several more calls: first to an actual abortion clinic nearest to them and then back to us for funding once an appointment had been secured—I felt defeated.

I knew how to spot fake clinics because I had been taught what to look for. But knowing what kind of information to look for and where is not a skill everyone has time to learn, especially an abortion seeker in a hostile state where the hourglass to access is always quickly running out of sand.

In my first year of my Master’s in Library and Information Science program, I learned a series of lessons.

People from all walks of life use the public library. Students who need to use the public computers for homework, immigrant families attending bilingual story time, and retirees conducting personal research, just to name a few. All these people deserve to be there and have their information needs met.

Sometimes that information goes against our personal beliefs, but it is our job to provide information to those who ask for it without bias or judgment. As stated in the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights, our profession affirms that every person in our communities has the right to books and other resources of interest, information, and enlightenment.

While I might not be a librarian yet, I have witnessed firsthand the unfortunate consequences of people not knowing how to spot misinformation or where to find the facts.

One way librarians can address these issues is by using comprehensive information sources like INeedAnA and AbortionFinder, two public databases that provide verified information regarding abortion clinics, state laws, and more. Knowing they exist is an easy way to be prepared for an inevitable question from a patron. If one of your tasks as a librarian is to create LibGuides, those online resource guides that cover a range of topics, or other forms of guides, consider adding these websites to those on abortion. If your library has a public bulletin board, download a flyer or other printable graphic to share with your community.

To be sure, librarians and library workers are not in positions to provide legal or medical advice, and doing so could have serious ramifications. However, there is nothing illegal about simply giving someone information. If anything, this is how we uphold our communities’ freedom to information, and that is our professional responsibility regardless of our individual views.

LIVE 5 PM Eastern time, Streaming Anytime:

On the “DeProgram” show with controversial political cartoonist Ted Rall and brilliant CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou, we tackle the news of Elon Musk’s departure from Washington, DC. Musk, a key advisor to Trump, has stepped back from his role in the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), after five fiery months. Musk says he’s shifting to focus on Tesla and SpaceX, with plans to spend only one or two days a week on government policy issues. Musk’s exit follows backlash over DOGE’s aggressive cuts, including the dismantling of USAID, which Musk boasted about “feeding into the wood chipper.” Critics like Rep. Mark Pocan say he’s scooting to dodge scrutiny, pointing to controversies like his alleged Nazi salute at Trump’s inauguration and ties to Germany’s far-right AfD party. With Tesla facing brand damage and declining sales, Musk’s move raises questions about his influence on Trump’s agenda and DOGE’s future. Join us for a smart dissection of this unfolding saga.

Plus:

• US-Iran talks escalate as Trump signals a potential nuclear deal breakthrough.
• Gaza Humanitarian Foundation lambasted after fatal food distribution fiasco.
• New Russia sanctions? Trump considers them amid heightened Ukraine tensions.
• Trump’s dismissal of military historians stirs fears of historical revisionism.

 

 

The post DeProgram: “Musk Flees the DOGE House” appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Fifteen years ago, in May 2010, I was one of approximately 700 persons that sailed on seven unarmed civilian ships to break the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza and bring needed food, medicines, and materials to Palestinians in Gaza who were suffering under the brutal, inhumane policies enacted by the Israeli government, which included a naval, land, and air blockade of Gaza.

These policies included “putting Palestinians on a diet” by reducing the caloric intake of persons living in Gaza by allowing a much reduce number of trucks carrying food into Gaza.

Hard to Predict or Believe the Cruelty of the State of Israel Toward Palestinians

I don’t think 15 years ago we could have predicted the cruelty of the Israeli government as it now conducts the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians living in the West Bank.

We could not have predicted that the international community would allow the Israeli government to bomb Gaza every day for over 19 months causing over 55,000 deaths, tens of thousands dead under the rubble, hundreds of thousands injured and wounded either physically or psychologically, and the entire 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza having to move over and over again as the Israelis bombed Gaza from north to south, from east to west.

We are well aware that violence is the Israeli approach to anyone and any vessel challenging their genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

We could not have predicted that even after the genocide became apparent to everyone including those making money from weapons or funds for political campaigns, that the United States, Germany, and other Western European countries would continue to supply bombs and other military killing munitions to the Israeli government.

Nor could we have predicted that the international community would allow Israel to cut off all food, medicines, and water for over 90 days after the brutal bombing of 17 months.

Citizens Telling Our Governments to STOP Their Support for Israel Through Support for the Flotillas

Since 2008, around 31 unarmed civilian ships filled with hundreds of activists from around the world have attempted to break the illegal Israeli naval blockade of Gaza. In 2008, five small ships actually got into Gaza, the first ships from international waters that had arrived in Gaza in over 40 years.

Since December 2008 with the 22-day Israeli attack on the people of Gaza called “Operation Cast Lead,” no ships have gotten into Gaza.

Yet we keep sending ships with brave people willing to stand up to Israel and symbolic cargo to end the naval blockade of Gaza.

Israeli Military Increasingly Violent Toward Unarmed Civilian Ships—Including BOMBING ships!

Crew and participants on each of the ships that have attempted to break the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza have been met with some level of violence. After 10 Turkish citizens (including one Turkish American young man) were killed and 50 Turkish citizens wounded 15 years ago on May 31, 2010, on the large Mavi Marmara ship, crew and participants on other ships have been beaten up, tasered, and mistreated on the subsequent ships.

On May 2, 2025, Israeli commandos bombed a Gaza Freedom Flotilla ship called the Conscience, so named to remind every person in the world that each is a part of the conscience of the world and they should be doing everything within their power to stop the Israeli genocide, and their government’s complicity.

The May 2, 2025 bombing came directly after an Israeli C-130 aircraft was flown from Israel and circled the European island nation of Malta. The Conscience was anchored in international waters 13 kilometers off Malta.

The Conscience was hit by two explosive devices fired from drones. Crew members report hearing drones around the ship prior to the explosives hitting and seriously damaging the ship.

Several of the 13 crew members and 6 non-crew participants were injured by shrapnel and broken glass caused by the explosives.

Organizers of the Gaza flotilla had planned for 32 participants to join onboard the Conscience later in the morning of May 2. Had the explosive detonated on the ship six hours later, many others could have been injured.

Israel Directs the U.S. to Order Palau to Cancel the Flag and Certification of the Conscience

We know there was much international complicity in the bombing of the Conscience. About 12 hours before the bombing, the small Pacific island nation of Palau, which will receive $890 million from the United States over the next 20 years through the Compact of Free Association, cancelled the flag and certification of the Conscience, giving no reason. The annual income of Palau citizens is $17,000.

I understand that the classified cables will be available soon from the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, Israel requesting that, at the direction of the State of Israel, the U.S. State Department and White House direct Palau to cancel the flag of the Conscience.

Additionally, the agency we had hired to conduct the transfer of participants from shore to the Conscience reported that they had never received any interest from Maltese government officials on the transfer of persons to ships until the day before the attack on Sunday, May 1, a national holiday in Malta, when the agency was deluged with calls from Maltese officials informing them that the flag and certification of the Conscience had been cancelled... on a Sunday… without explanation of the reason for the cancellation. The U.S. Embassy in Malta no doubt informed the Maltese government of Palau’s cancellation of the flag as soon as it was cancelled at the direction of the U.S. government.

Despite the Possible Israeli Violence Toward Flotilla Ships, Another Gaza Flotilla Ship Madleen Will Sail Over the May 31-June 1, 2025 Weekend

As organizers of the flotilla, we recognize that Israel has dramatically increased its killing of Palestinians and with the bombing of the Conscience has issued another warning to the worldwide community that if you challenge Israeli policies they will bomb you and the nations from where you come will not care… as they don’t care how many Palestinians Israel has killed.

But despite this warning on May 2, we have many people who are willing to put their lives on the line in hope that their action will spur worldwide condemnation and isolation of Israel and force them to stop the genocide.

You may think we are crazy, but we have made public the departure of the next wave of the Gaza flotilla sailing to break the illegal Israeli naval blockade of Gaza

Our participants know that the Israeli Navy has already made plans as to how the Madleen will be stopped.

The history of the Gaza flotilla shows that Israel will shoot from helicopters unarmed civilians standing on the top deck of our ship (Mavi Marmara).

We know Israel will board our ships and beat up and taser captains, crew, and participants. (Marianne, Estelle, Al Awda, Freedom)

And now we know that Israel will bomb our ships. (Conscience)

What’s Next from the Israeli Navy? Nonviolent Stopping of Ships? NO!

Despite having nonviolent means available to stop ships of the flotilla, such as

• Damaging the propeller (which they did to two ships in 2011),
• Blocking the forward movement of our ships by putting their ships in front of ours and bringing the ship to a halt and waiting until our ship has to return to a port for water or food, or
• Asking NATO ships to stop our ship (and hopefully NATO would take into account international maritime law which Israel does not)…

We are well aware that violence is the Israeli approach to anyone and any vessel challenging their genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

Would Israel on Steroids Use Torpedoes Against an Unarmed, Civilian Ship Filled with Activists Challenging a Genocide????

We have no doubts the Israeli military may use other weapons against the flotilla, including torpedoes from submarines. The “order of battle,” or units and equipment used by the Israeli Navy in stopping ships from the flotilla has included all classes of naval vessels form large warships, to small boarding boats, to submarines, from surveillance aircraft, to drones, to helicopters.

We do not put out of the range of possibilities that the Israeli Navy, that has been firing naval artillery guns from their ships into Gaza, might want to give their submarine crews an opportunity to participate in the killings by the Israeli government of Palestinians and activists from around the world.

According to Naval News, Israel’s latest submarine, INS Drakon (“Dragon”), was launched in Kiel, Germany in 2023 and it shows a significant growth in Israeli submarine capabilities. It has a unique design with a large “sail,” which could be used for autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), uncrewed air vehicles (UAVs), loitering munitions such as drones (which may have been used in the attack on the Conscience ship), or even a rescue submersible, as well as for launching a missile.

Join the Departure for the Gaza Flotilla Ship Madleen in Catania, Sicily May 30, 31st and June 1, 2025

You may think we are crazy, but we have made public the departure of the next wave of the Gaza flotilla sailing to break the illegal Israeli naval blockade of Gaza… in the hope that greater publicity about the mission of the ship might provide some measure of protection… or at least knowledge that the ship is sailing and outrage if anything happens to it.

If you are near Sicily, please join us for the events around the departure of the ship Madleen over the weekend of May 30, 31, and June 1 in Porto di San Giovanni li Cuti, just outside of Catania, for solidarity with the Palestinian people in a series of panels, cultural programs, and community gatherings.

Has neoliberal globalization run its course? Should the Left be on the side of tariffs or protectionism? Can Left internationalism be revived? Political scientist, political economist, author, and journalist C. J. Polychroniou tackles these questions in an interview with the independent French-Greek journalist Alexandra Boutri.

Alexandra Boutri: In a recently published essay, you argue that the Left should endorse a new vision of globalization and fight accordingly for a new world order. Can you briefly spell out the pitfalls of neoliberal globalization and why the current world order is a failure?

C. J. Polychroniou: The first thing that stands out about neoliberal globalization is that it has led to an extremely high degree of economic inequality by altering patterns of income distribution and resource allocation while at the same time undermining economic and social rights. As Miatta Fahnbulleh put it a few years back in an essay that appeared in Foreign Affairs, the system “is not working in the interest of the majority of people.” The actual record of neoliberal globalization on economic growth has also been quite dismal, with postwar “managed capitalism” outperforming the neoliberal model on every count. On top of that, under the form of globalization prescribed by neoliberalism “the average global temperature has risen relentlessly,” as Robert Pollin has pointed out. Neoliberal globalization has been bad for people and the environment alike.

Trump’s domestic agenda is the most neoliberal since the onset of neoliberalism.

As far as the current world order is concerned, it would be hilarious if it weren’t so tragic. We have a world in permanent crisis literally since the end of the Second World War, with the nuclear sword of Damocles hanging over humanity’s head. The Doomsday Clock is now closer than ever to midnight. The current war in Ukraine, the annihilation of Palestinians in Gaza and the seizing of land in the occupied West Bank by violent religious extremists under the protection of the Israeli army speak volumes of the dramatic failure of the United Nations and the so-called international community. There is no lawful world order. International law only applies when it suits the strong.

Alexandra Boutri: Has neoliberalism’s model of globalization run its course?

C. J. Polychroniou: The current system has been in a terminal state since the outbreak of the global financial crisis of 2007-08. The resurgence of right-wing nationalism across the globe is interrelated to the profound contradictions built specifically into the neoliberal version of globalization. The backlash against globalism by the likes of U.S. President Donald Trump and his MAGA faction needs to be understood in connection with the changes that are occurring in the world economy. Trump is using protectionism as a means of altering the global supply chain in favor of U.S. production and imposing tariffs to reduce the U.S. trade deficit but is simultaneously unleashing the most vicious form of neoliberalism inside the country. He is attending to the mythology of American Exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny by trying to reassert the dominance of the United States in the world economy while destroying functioning government as part of a plan to axe safety-net programs and letting corporations run roughshod over labor. Trump’s domestic agenda is the most neoliberal since the onset of neoliberalism. It constitutes an open war against working people and social rights, against the poor and the environment. It’s all about making the rich richer and the poor poorer. It’s a domestic agenda based on the politics of astonishing greed and shocking cruelty. Trump’s election therefore does not mean the end of neoliberalism or of globalism.

Alexandra Boutri: Free trade or protectionism? Is this an actual choice for the Left?

C. J. Polychroniou: It depends on what one means by the “left.” You have left-wing liberals, social democrats, left-wing socialists, communists, and anarchists. Left with capital L tends in some circles to refer to the anti-capitalist, socialist-communist-anarchist camp. Personally, I don’t consider the Democrats in the United States or the Social Democrats in Europe as part of the Left. Their loyalty is to capitalism. Hence, they are not agents of transformational change. They want to maintain the existing socioeconomic system but with some modifications in place to make it less disagreeable. The social democratic tale was about capitalism with a human face. It was a popular political program for the first few decades after the end of the Second World War, and it was of course an improvement over laisses faire capitalism and a bourgeois state that catered exclusively to the interests of the capitalist class. Nonetheless, we should be reminded of an old radical dictum: There cannot be democracy, social justice, and equality as long as power belongs to capital.

It may have taken voters quite a long time to realize that the parties of the establishment left had sold out to global capitalism, but when they did, the consequences were cataclysmic in their impact.

The debate regarding free trade versus protectionism is as old as political economy. For what it’s worth, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels confronted this issue back in the 1840s, in the struggles over the Corn Laws. Marx saw free trade for what it is—i.e., “freedom of capital,” and mocked the claim of free-traders that the absence of tariff barriers would abolish the antagonism among classes. But this does not mean that Marx took the side of protectionism, which he saw as a system to defend the status quo. Thus, as he put it, “One may declare oneself an enemy of the constitutional regime without declaring oneself a friend of the ancient regime.”

Interestingly enough, though, Marx ends up in the end endorsing free trade but purely on political grounds because he saw the free trade system as accelerating the prospects of radical change.

The goal of the Left is to move beyond capitalism by constructing an equitable and sustainable economy and a just world order. Rudolf Hilferding, in his book Finance Capital, published more than a century ago, wrote: "The proletariat avoids the bourgeois dilemma—protectionism or free trade—with a solution of its own; neither protectionism nor free trade, but socialism, the organization of production, the conscious control of the economy not by and for the benefit of the capitalist magnates but by and for society as a whole."

Alexandra Boutri: Until recently, antiglobalization was exclusively associated with parties and movements of the Left. However, internationalism has historically been a core component of the Left’s ideological worldview. What happened to Left internationalism but also to social democratic parties whose collapse coincides with the collapse of the antiglobalization movement and the emergence of right-wing antiglobalism?

C. J. Polychroniou: The antiglobalization movement came to life in the 1990s and peaked during the early 2000s. It was inspired mainly by so-called far-left ideologies which saw free trade agreements, multinational corporations, and international economic organizations such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank promoting a new version of colonialism. During those years, millions of people turned out across the world to raise their voice against global corporate power. Center-left and reformist left parties in general did not join the protests against global capitalist expansion for the simple reason that they had embraced neoliberalism and were being showered in turn by campaign cash from big corporations and the financial sector. In a word, they had betrayed the working class in the same manner that the socialist parties had betrayed internationalism in 1914 at the start of the First World War.

The history of European social democracy may be summarized as follows: a period of rather impressive achievements on the social, political, and economic fronts during the first few decades following the end of the Second World, which were made possible because of the role of different actors in the emergence of a social democratic consensus, and capitulation to neoliberal capitalism in the latter part of the 20th century, especially after the end of an era where you had leaders like Willy Brandt in Germany, Bruno Kreisky in Austria, and Olof Palme in Sweden who were undeniably dedicated to the struggle for social justice and economic democracy. The leaders that came after them across the European continent took the position that Keynesian economics no longer had applicability in the new world economic order that had emerged following the collapse of the Bretton Woods system and that fiscal orthodoxy was the way to go. In the 1980s, the so-called socialist governments of Francois Mitterrand in France, Bettino Craxi in Italy, Felipe González in Spain, and Andreas Papandreou in Greece not only failed to carry out even the minimal set of promises they had made to voters during the pre-electoral period, but their economic programs followed the neoliberal prescriptions proposed by the IMF and the World Bank.

The antiglobalization movement of the 1990s was associated with far-left politics and was attacked as such by mainstream media and the establishment parties across the political spectrum. In the eyes of many citizens across Europe, the “left” was still represented by social democratic and socialist parties. It may have taken voters quite a long time to realize that the parties of the establishment left had sold out to global capitalism, but when they did, the consequences were cataclysmic in their impact.

In 2000, 10 out of 15 countries in the European Union still had social democratic or socialist parties in government even though they had abandoned all the traditional social democratic ideas and policies. Nearing the end of the second decade of the new millennium, we could find social democratic parties in government in only two countries in Europe. Even the euro crisis did not help the parties of the traditional left to make a comeback. What was happening instead is that far-right parties were gaining ground across Europe and around the world. The far-right was reinventing itself with a backlash against globalism. The European far-right even adapted the language of the left to its own ends. Of course, it succeeded in doing this by taking advantage of the betrayal of center-left parties as well as of the left’s fractiousness and disunity—issues that have long plagued the left worldwide. Defeating the far-right is, of course, of paramount importance for the future of democracy and of the Left.

The history of Left internationalism is too long and complex to discuss here. Suffice to say, though, that it has both positive and negative aspects. The Second International betrayed the cause of socialism. The Third International, which was created by Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky in 1919, was a powerful force toward world revolution, a major step toward world socialism. However, under Josef Stalin, it became purely an instrument of Soviet state policy to advance the Stalinist view of “socialism in one country.” And the Red Lord officially dissolved the Third International in 1943.

It's hard to revive Left internationalism when the left is fractured and there is so much confusion about what the left even represents in today’s world. Of course, there is a plethora of progressive social movements at the forefront for social change, but the return of Left internationalism inspired by the vision of socialism needs a dramatic turnaround on the global ideological and political landscape.

In the postwar era, Cuban internationalism stands virtually alone as an alternative form of globalization. Still, the Left needs a new internationalism that combines solidarity and the quest for social justice and equality with a global climate change policy. The latter is by far the most important issue facing humanity in the 21st century, and nothing would be of greater importance than if the new Left internationalism was built around taking on the greatest challenge of our times—i.e., preventing Earth from becoming unlivable.

LIVE 10 AM Eastern time, Streaming Anytime:

Prepare for a frightening episode of “The TMI Show with hosts Ted Rall and Manila Chan,” joined by Dr. Reese Halter. We’re tackling disturbing reports that the Trump Administration has directed the FBI to surveil, question, and harass peaceful climate-change and environmental activists. In Boston, at least six activists, including members of Extinction Rebellion, were visited at their homes by FBI agents with no clear motive, evidently intended as intimidation.

Elsewhere, groups like the Appalachian Community Capital Corporation and DC Green Bank, funded by Biden-era grants, face FBI probes for alleged fraud, which looks like harassment ordered by right-wing EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin to push against environmental justice initiatives.

These actions threaten free speech and the right to advocate for environmental causes. Why are nonviolent activists in the government’s sights? What does this mean for civil liberties and environmental justice? With sharp analysis, Ted, Manila, and Dr. Halter, a renowned environmental scientist, will unpack the motives behind this crackdown, examining its chilling effect on activism. The TMI Show delivers unfiltered insights, cutting through mainstream narratives to reveal the truth. This critical discussion is a must-watch for those concerned about government overreach and the future of environmental advocacy. Tune in live or stream anytime to stay informed on this urgent issue. Join The TMI Show for a compelling exploration of power, policy, and principle.

The post TMI Show Ep 147: “FBI Targeting Climate Activists” appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Dear Taka,

You asked for news and some analysis about what is happening here in the U.S. You may be sorry that you asked.

Back in February, I shocked a Bikini Day* workshop by reporting about what could only be described as fascist assaults on U.S. constitutional democracy. Unfortunately, I was not exaggerating. Trump and his MAGA allies are in the midst of fighting a counterrevolution to consolidate white supremacy, to multiply the obscene wealth of the richest oligarchs—especially Trump and his family—in the tradition of monarchs and feudal lords, and to impose the structures and repression necessary to maintain a plutocratic, and potentially military, dictatorship.

Drawing on the foundation of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 report, from day one of Trump 2.0 ambitious and opportunistic operatives and incompetent but loyal cabinet members, Trump has excelled in further enriching himself and his cabinet while doing his best to deliver punishing retribution to all who have or will challenge him, including leading celebrities like Bruce Springsteen and Beyonce. With a firehose of Executive Orders—many either unconstitutional or illegal—Trump has sought to remake U.S. government in the kleptocratic tradition of the 1890s Gilded Age, spiked by nostalgic efforts to recreate Jim Crow apartheid, and smash-and-grab imperialism (think Greenland, Panama, and Gaza).

Trump is no intellectual shining light, but he rules in the autocratic, but less enlightened tradition of former French President De Gaulle. In 1950, soon after assuming power, De Gaulle humiliatingly upbraided a member of his cabinet by saying that the official had been appointed to his position because he was stupid, and that his stupidity ensured his loyalty.

On the subject of stupidity, just the other day Kristi Noem—the current head of Homeland Security and former governor of South Dakota who once boasted about shooting her dog—revealed her dangerous ignorance. This is the beautiful cabinet member who recently and obscenely posed in a tight sweater, pin up style, in front of hundreds of jailed and dehumanized deportees in a El Salvador gulag jail that has been compared to Nazi concentration camps. She demonstrated the truth of the Gaullist model of Trump/MAGA rule when she was asked during a Senate hearing if she knew the meaning of habeas corpus. She failed that basic test, saying that it is a law that allows the president to deport immigrants. She didn’t flinch when she was then corrected with news that it is the 13th century’s most essential and founding principle of Anglo-Saxon governance. Referred to as “show us the body,” the writ of habeas corpus established the right of anyone who has been imprisoned to come before a judge for adjudication of the legality of his or her detention. And it was written into the U.S. Constitution 250 years ago in direct response to the abuses of King George III. Without the right of habeas corpus, we are all vulnerable to arbitrary arrest, imprisonment, and of being disappeared.

But clearly Trump is not all powerful. In the tradition of a schoolyard bully, he is brutal to those he sees as weak, but he retreats when those with as much or more power stand up to him. He retreated when Putin and Netanyahu refused his efforts to win ceasefires in Ukraine and Gaza and when China embarrassingly forced him to back down from threatened 145% tariffs.

Our good fortune is that despite Republicans clicking their heels and saluting every Trumpian whim or executive order and the business-as-usual instances of most Congressional Democrats, three hopeful guardrails—in the form of the stock market, the courts, and a popular opposition movement—have emerged. Trump measures his political standing and survival by the daily Dow Jones average (which dropped 800 points the other day, losing a LOT of people a LOT of money). And the courts have almost consistently ruled against his illegal deportations, shuttering government agencies, and withholding funds from universities.

The outstanding questions on which our future depends are whether Trump will obey Supreme Court decisions, and if martial law will be declared to prevent the 2026 Congressional elections, which Trump and MAGA likely will lose. Vice President JD Vance (it hurts to refer to that lost soul as vice president) has said that the Trump government need not obey court rulings. As the saying has it, the Supreme Court has no army to enforce its decisions, and as we saw with Trump’s January 6, 2021, attempted coup and his more recent pardoning of insurrectionists, Trump, MAGA, and their armed goons do not feel bound to honor electoral democracy.

The good, if not happy, news is that millions here have not rolled over and played dead. In a worst-case scenario, those of us committed to constitutional democracy and the rights and freedoms that flow from it may need to insist on popular sovereignty via a massive and nationwide general strike.

An estimated five million people came out to protest in major cities and smaller towns on April 5, and there have been almost daily demonstrations ever since. These actions give us affirmation, stoke our courage, and prepare the way for the future. It is my sense that if we are prepared, Trump’s refusal to fulfill a particularly significant Supreme Court order or the cancellation of the 2026 election could serve as the trigger for a general strike.

We have a lot of organizing to do between now and then and recalling the past some of us are stressing the absolute importance of remaining and calling for NONVIOLENT resistance. Dictators, kings, and autocrats from time immemorial have inserted violent agents provocateurs into popular movements to discredit them. The history of the Nazi 1933 Reichstag fire hangs over us, and the Palestine rights movement just suffered significant blowback when a frustrated and lost soul assassinated two Israeli embassy employees in Washington, D.C.

It is an uphill struggle and hardly an entirely new situation. I’ve been reminded how the masters of wealth in Germany in the 1920s and 30s believed that they could use and control Hitler and his Nazis to reinforce their privilege and power. They were quickly swallowed up by Nazi totalitarianism once they’d bought the 1933 election for Hitler. Trump’s father was a Ku Klux Klan slumlord. The roots of MAGA lie in racism and in the myth of the “Lost Cause” of the Confederacy during our civil war. And over the last couple of years several compelling histories have been written about the failed U.S. coups of the 1930s and that era’s American Firsters who were manipulated by German agents.

Moving from abstractions, histories, and systems analyses, let me provide the texture of detail, we can turn to the May 21 edition of last week’s New York Times. More than 100 days into the Kakistocracy (the word for a corrupt, incompetent autocracy) we could read the following headlines in that paper:

• “Justice Dept. to Halt Its Oversight of Local Police Accused of Abuses” (Freeing police to be as brutal as they want to be outside of the law - especially targeting people of color, but we are all vulnerable.)
• “U.S. Formally Accepts Plane from Qatar” (As Trump accepts the most obvious bribe and attempts to circumvent the constitution’s emoluments clause which was written to preserve national independence.)
• “Trump Ally Embraces a Plan to Name and Shame Enemies” (If the Justice Department can’t prosecute some “enemies” like James Comey, Bruce Springsteen and Beyonce, it will do its best to harass them.)
• “With Inquiry into Cuomo, Justice Dept Singles Out a New Political Target” (As in most autocracies and dictatorships, opposition politicians are threatened with jail or imprisonment.)
• “G.O.P. Aims to Cut Clean Energy Perks Flowing to its Own Turf” (Funding for clean energy initiatives for Republican as well as Democratic Congressional districts is being slashed.)
• “Public Health School at Harvard is Reeling as U.S. Pulls Funding” (Labs and scientists who play essential roles in the national health system are being shut down.)
• “Energized by Kennedy, Texas ‘Mad Moms’ Chip Away at Vaccine Mandates” (The way is being prepared for the next epidemic or pandemic.)
• “Trump Broadside Embroils Leader of South Africa” (As he deports hundreds of thousands of people of color and provides military and diplomatic support for the Israeli genocide in Gaza, Trump attempts to humiliate South Africa’s ANC president and welcomes white South Africans with the false claim of a white genocide.)
• “Trump Wants DOGE Records to Stay Secret” (How and why thousands of essential government workers and congressionally approved spending were cancelled at great cost to the country’s future.)
• “Florida Sets Pace for Education Overhaul” (Privatization of education is being pressed, while the clock is turned back on racial and gender justice, and 1984 memory holes are imposed.”
• “Aide Had Intelligence Report Rewritten Because It Contradicted Trump” (The senior aide to the Director of National Intelligence, who is Trump’s nominee for the Dept. Of Counter Terrorism Intelligence, demanded the rewrite of a report that contradicted the false claim of a Venezuelan gang “invasion.”)
• “Farm Chemicals Debate Riles Republican Senator” (Some in MAGA are crazier than Kennedy and are fighting to protect cancer causing fertilizers.)
• “Israeli Soldiers Fire in Air to Disperse Western Diplomats in West Bank” (This atrocity was carried out while Trump supports the Israeli genocide and no public criticism was made by the Trump Administration.)
• “U.S. Bill Might Revive a Global Feud Over How Corporations are Taxed” (Reversing a Biden era policy, the goal of zero taxes for wealthy corporations and their owners.)
• “Way U.S. Left Afghanistan Prompts Call for Inquiry” (Trump failed to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan in his first term, and did they expect roses for the departing Americans?)
• “U.S. Debt Soars Toward a Record, Entering a New Realm of Risk” (Moody’s has reduced its U.S. credit rating, and the dollar is no longer assured to serve as the world’s reserve currency which has boosted U.S. prosperity for 80 years.)

That was all in a single day’s depressing paper. And if that wasn’t enough, the day ended with the Times reporting that in a classical dictatorial action, the Trump administration banned Harvard University from enrolling foreign students. Ninety years ago, during the Great Depression and Jim Crow apartheid, the liberal theologian and later Cold Warrior Reinhold Niebuhr wrote that a critical method used by those exercising illegitimate power to retain their ill-gotten privilege is to deny education and knowledge to those they are committed to exploiting. The attack on Harvard and the other pinnacles of U.S. academia is being pursued under the false flag of antisemitism. Harvard’s president is Jewish, and Secretary of Defense Hegseth just appointed an openly antisemitic woman who shares neo-Nazi posts as the Pentagon’s spokesperson.

Fortunately, those who skipped to a Times op-ed page last week in order to preserve their sanity and to contain their fears came to an excellent and encouraging article by Nicholas Kristoff. “Well-Tested Ways to Undermine Autocrats.” It drew heavily upon and shared the scholar Gene Sharp’s studies of nonviolent actions to fight for democracy: humor and mockery (Czechoslovakia and China,) call out their corruption (Navalny in Russia as the outstanding example,) and focusing on the power of one: “individual tragedy rather than the sea of oppression (the abused fruit seller in Tunisia who sparked Arab Spring or Iranian women who refuse to wear the hijab.)

Lani and I, who as white citizens are not yet especially vulnerable, will be outside the Massachusetts State House on Monday at an Indivisible rally. Our demand: Massachusetts’ lackluster Democratic governor should order the police to arrest masked and unidentifiable ICE (Immigration, Control and Enforcement) operatives who are kidnapping our immigrant neighbors and even some U.S. citizens from our streets.

More than a few of us take heart and courage from African Americans’ centuries of struggle for freedom and dignity and from resistance to fascist dictatorships around the world. How could we not be inspired by the European women and men we knew in the 1970s who had engaged in resistance to Hitler’s rule or by your compatriots who were harassed and jailed for refusing to kowtow to 1930s and 40s Japanese militarism? And I take heart from an Argentine friend who over breakfast remarked that her mother had survived and “lived through two coups.” And then there are the Hibakusha* who say, “Never Give Up!”

P.S. There is also the reality of Trump’s acceleration of the American Empire’s decline. In high school and college, we were taught that there was a taboo against naming our country an Empire, but we were instructed there is a straight line from the Greek, Roman, and British empires down to our land of liberty. Two years ago, I finally read Mary Beard’s SPQR Roman history. She argues that the Roman republic was corrupted and brought to an end after roughly 500 years by too much wealth, deluging Rome’s political system, and by militarism brought home from Rome’s foreign conquests and colonial rule. Oh, so familiar!

*For U.S. readers with whom this letter is being shared Bikini Day is an annual commemoration of the 1954 Bravo H-Bomb test, 1,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima A-bomb. It decimated Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Island, poisoned Japanese fishermen and much of Japan’s food supply, and sparked the creation of Japan’s peace and disarmament movement. And Hibakusha are A- and H- Bomb victim survivors.

Midway through this month, Democratic Representative Hakeem Jeffries sent out a fundraising text saying that he “recently announced a 10-point plan to take on Trump and the Republicans.” But the plan was no more recent than early February, just two weeks after President Trump’s inauguration. It’s hardly reassuring that the House minority leader cited a 100-day-old memo as his strategy for countering the administration’s countless moves since then to dismantle entire government agencies, destroy life-saving programs and assault a wide range of civil liberties.

Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is so unpopular with the Democratic base that a speaking tour for his new book—abruptly “postponed” just before it was set to begin more than two months ago—still hasn’t been rescheduled. The eruption of anger at his support for Trump’s spending bill in mid-March made Schumer realize that being confronted by irate Democrats in deep-blue states wouldn’t make for good photo ops.

Last month, a Gallup poll measured public confidence in the Democratic congressional leadership at just 25 percent, a steep drop of nine points since 2023 and now at an all-time low. Much of the disaffection comes from habitual Democratic voters who see the party’s leaders as slow-moving and timid while the Trump administration continues with its rampage against democratic structures.

Away from the Capitol, the party’s governing body—the Democratic National Committee—is far from dynamic or nimble. Maintaining its twice-a-year timetable, the 448-member DNC isn’t scheduled to meet until late August.

In the meantime, the DNC’s executive committee is set to gather in Little Rock, Arkansas on Friday for its first meeting since December. That meeting is scheduled to last three hours.

The DNC’s bylaws say that the executive committee “shall be responsible for the conduct of the affairs of the Democratic Party in the interim between the meetings of the full (Democratic National) Committee.” But the pace of being “responsible” is unhurried to the point of political malpractice.

The extraordinary national crisis is made even more severe to the extent that top Democrats do not acknowledge its magnitude. Four months into his job as the DNC’s chair, Ken Martin has yet to show that the DNC is truly operating in real time while the country faces an unprecedented threat to what’s left of democracy. His power to call an emergency meeting of the full DNC remains unused.

This week, Martin received a petition co-sponsored by Progressive Democrats of America and RootsAction, urging the DNC to “convene an emergency meeting of all its members—fully open to the public—as soon as possible.” The petition adds that “the predatory, extreme and dictatorial actions of the Trump administration call for an all-out commensurate response, which so far has been terribly lacking from the Democratic Party.” Among the 7,000 signers were more than 1,500 people who wrote individual comments (often angrily) imploring the DNC to finally swing into suitable action.

As several dozen top DNC officials fly into Little Rock’s Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport, they will bring with them the power to begin shifting the direction of the Democratic Party, but the chances of a positive course correction look meager. The DNC’s current executive committee is a bastion of the party establishment, unlikely to signal to grassroots Democrats and the general public that the party is no longer locked into automatic pilot.

The pattern is a sort of repetition compulsion, afflicting Democratic movers and shakers along with the party as an institution. While many journalists focus on the ages of congressional leaders, the lopsided power held by Democrats in their 70s and 80s is merely a marker for a deeper problem. Their approaches are rooted in the past and are now withering on the political vine.

Even with the rare meeting of the DNC’s executive committee just a couple of days away, the official Democratic Party website was still offering no information about it. The apparent preference is to keep us in the dark.

But anyone can sign up to watch livestream coverage from Progressive Hub, during a four-hour feed that will begin at 12:30 pm Eastern time on Friday. Along with excerpts from the executive committee meeting as it happens, the coverage will include analysis from my RootsAction colleagues Sam Rosenthal, who’ll be inside the meeting room in Little Rock, and former Democratic nominee for Buffalo mayor India Walton. The livestream will also feature an interview with Congressman Ro Khanna, who has endorsed the call for an emergency meeting of the full DNC.

Right now, the Democratic Party appears to be stuck between Little Rock and a hard place. The only real possibilities for major improvement will come from progressives who make demands and organize to back them up with grassroots power.

The Trump administration seems intent on undermining America’s ability to make human rights a significant element of its foreign policy. As evidence of that, consider its plan to dramatically reduce policy directives and personnel devoted to those very issues, including the dismantling of the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Rights, and Labor. Even worse, the Trump team has attacked a crucial global institution, the International Criminal Court, and put it under crippling sanctions that have ground its operations to a halt—all for telling the truth about Israel’s illegal and ongoing mass slaughter in Gaza.

The Trump administration’s assault on human rights comes against the background of years of policy decisions in Washington that too often cast aside such concerns in favor of supposedly more important “strategic” interests. The very concept of human rights has had a distinctly mixed history in American foreign policy. High points include the U.S. role in the Nuremberg prosecutions after World War II, its support for the United Nations’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, and President Jimmy Carter’s quest to be the “human rights president” in the late 1970s. But such moments have alternated with low points like this country’s Cold War era support for a series of vicious dictators in Latin America or, more recently, the way both the Biden and Trump administrations have backed Israel’s war crimes in Gaza, actions that a number of reputable independent reports suggest constitute nothing short of genocide.

The Trump administration’s position couldn’t be clearer. It seeks to permanently undermine the ability of this country to promote human rights in any form.

Amid such ups and downs have come some real accomplishments like support for the democratic evolution of the government in the Philippines, the passage of comprehensive sanctions on apartheid South Africa, and the freeing of prominent political prisoners around the world.

Some critics of the human rights paradigm argue that such issues are all too regularly weaponized against American adversaries, but largely ignored when it comes to this country’s autocratic allies like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and El Salvador. The solution to such a critique is not to abandon human rights concerns, but to implement them more consistently across the globe.

The Transactional President

In the short-term, forging a more consistent approach to supporting human rights is a daunting task. After all, the Trump administration’s position couldn’t be clearer. It seeks to permanently undermine the ability of this country to promote human rights in any form by gutting the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Rights, and Labor and making other changes that will further shift foreign policy toward the transactional and away from anything that has a hint of the aspirational. Discussions about incorporating Greenland into this country, turning Canada into our 51st state, further militarizing the U.S.-Mexico border, cutting a coercive mineral deal with Ukraine, seizing the Panama Canal, or building tourist hotels in a depopulated Gaza—however farcical some of the notions may seem—have taken precedence over any discussion of promoting democracy and human rights globally.

Donald Trump relishes building closer ties to autocrats, typically embracing Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and, at one international meeting, on seeing Egyptian leader Adel Fatah El-Sisi in the hallway, shouting, “There goes my favorite dictator!” In addition, strongmen like Nayib Armando Bukele Corteaz of El Salvador have helped enable his administration’s most egregious human rights violations to date, snatching up U.S. residents and sending them to a horrific Salvadoran prison without even a hint of due process.

The Trump administration has also proposed shuttering dozens of embassies globally and plans to slash State Department bureaus that disseminated expertise to areas plagued by crisis and war; worked to combat human trafficking; or advised the secretary of state on human rights issues relating to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Sweeping Trump administration proposals have even included replacing the Foreign Service Institute, the nation’s center for diplomatic learning, with an office devoted to “global acquisition.” Meanwhile, even as the administration dismantles America’s basic diplomatic infrastructure, it has made no moves to close a single one of America’s more than 750 overseas military bases or scale back the Pentagon’s bloated budget, which is now heading toward the trillion-dollar mark annually.

Under the Trump administration’s current approach, the face of America—already long tilted toward its massive military presence globally— is likely to be slanted even more toward military threats and away from smart diplomacy. Trump’s crew is also seeking to shut down the collection of basic data on human rights by restricting the kinds of abuses covered in State Department human rights reports. Over the years, those reports have evolved into standardized, reliable sources of information for human rights advocates and activists seeking justice in other countries, as well as political figures and journalists operating under repressive regimes.

Such objective human-rights reporting, now increasingly missing in action, had also served as an early warning system in determining which U.S. partners were more prone to engaging in reckless and destabilizing behavior that could draw this country into unnecessary and intractable conflicts.

By diluting such critical evidence-gathering mechanisms, successfully used in the past to turn other states away from violations of human rights, the administration is undermining its own future international influence. It’s also weakening critical domestic legislation meant to guarantee that this country doesn’t contribute to gross violations of such rights. While U.S. human-rights policies have at best been inconsistent in their execution, when this country has moved to protect the rights of individuals abroad, it has indeed contributed to global stability, curtailed the root causes of migration, and reduced the ability of extremist groups to gain footholds in key nations.

The Trump administration, however, has it completely backward. This country shouldn’t be treating human rights as, at best, a quaint relic of a past age. Creating a genuine policy of promoting them is not only the right thing to do, but also a potential tool for enhancing this country’s influence at a time when economic and military tools alone are anything but sufficient and often do more harm than good.

Washington’s role in enabling Israel’s destruction of Gaza brought human-rights hypocrisy front and center even before the second Trump administration. For the next nearly four years, count on this: Jettisoning human rights from U.S. policy will be the order of the day.

The American Human Rights Record Over the Last Half-Century

Jimmy Carter campaigned on a platform promoting human rights, which was seen as a breath of fresh air in the wake of the lies and crimes of President Richard Nixon’s administration at home and abroad. Under that rubric, Carter called out repressive regimes, made it easier for refugees from such countries to enter the United States, and elevated the human consequences of denying such rights above narrowly defined strategic concerns. Unfortunately, once he became president, he also abandoned his principles in key cases, most notably in his support for the Shah of Iran to the bitter end, opening the door to the rise of the Islamic extremist regime of Ayatollah Khomeini and decades of enmity between the United States and Iran.

As president, Ronald Reagan had supported democracy movements like Solidarity in Poland, while funding and arming right-wing, anti-democratic movements that he labeled “freedom fighters” in Afghanistan, Angola, and Nicaragua. The biggest human rights achievement during his two terms in office arrived despite him, not because of him, when Congress overcame his attempt to veto comprehensive sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa.

On balance, this country has all too often employed human-rights rhetoric as a justification for the use of force rather than as an actual force for democratic reform.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and, in 1991, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, President George H.W. Bush would play an active role in the reunification of Germany, while supporting democratic transitions from communist states throughout Eastern Europe. At the same time, his administration used human rights as a tool of warfare, as when it invaded Panama to depose dictator General Noriega. At the time, that intervention was rationalized as an effort to restore democracy and protect the human rights of Panamanians. That operation, however, sparked an outcry from, among others, the U.N. General Assembly and the Organization of American States, both of which condemned the invasion as a violation of international law.

Over time, the State Department indeed expanded the range of rights it recognizes and defends—an expansion that is now under relentless attack. The Clinton administration was the first to grant asylum to gay and lesbian individuals facing persecution in their homelands. At that time, the U.S. also enacted the International Religious Freedom Act, which established an ambassador and a commission focused on protecting and promoting religious freedom internationally. Even so, that administration’s human rights record proved mixed at best. Bill Clinton himself has expressed regret over his tepid response to the Rwandan genocide and his refusal even to describe that atrocity as a genocide while in office. Still, no previous president of our times could have imagined an American asylum or immigrant policy geared only to White South Africans, as is now being implemented by the Trump administration.

The idea of humanitarian intervention—military action to prevent atrocities—has backfired in some prominent cases, causing instability and chaos, death and destruction, rather than improvements in the lives of the residents of the targeted nations. Meanwhile, the devastating American wars of this century, from Afghanistan to Iraq, caused staggering death tolls and devastation.

The 2005 Responsibility to Protect doctrine epitomized the double-edged sword of human rights rhetoric. The leading role of Barack Obama’s administration in the 2011 NATO-led “humanitarian” intervention in Libya, which was soon transformed into a destabilizing regime-change mission, marred his presidency. At the same time, Obama did help promote international rights and protections for LGBTQ+ peoples, while his administration’s work on the U.N. Human Rights Council also helped develop commissions of inquiry to investigate human rights violations in Syria, North Korea, and Muammar Qadhafi’s Libya.

On balance, this country has all too often employed human-rights rhetoric as a justification for the use of force rather than as an actual force for democratic reform. Still, as imperfect as the implementation of human rights principles has been, that’s hardly a reason for it to be abandoned outright, as seems to be happening now.

Human Rights as an Early Warning System

Regimes that engage in systematic human rights abuses domestically are also more likely to engage in reckless, destabilizing behaviors in their own regions and beyond. Such was the case with Saudi Arabia, which spearheaded a brutal invasion of Yemen that began in March 2015 and lasted for more than seven years. That war resulted in nearly 400,000 direct and indirect deaths through bombing and the devastating effects of a blockade of Yemen that slowed imports of food, medicine, and other vital humanitarian supplies. (And mind you, as is true of Israel’s ongoing horror in Gaza, that war in Yemen was carried out with billions of dollars’ worth of U.S.-supplied arms.)

The Saudi regime has never been held accountable for its campaign of slaughter in Yemen. If anything, it has been rewarded. During his recent visit, in fact, President Trump announced a $142 billion arms deal with that nation, a multi-year arms package for Riyadh that the White House described as the largest defense cooperation agreement in history. If the past is any guide, that deal could end up being considerably less than the present sum suggests, but the very existence of such a deal represents a vote of confidence in the Saudi government and its reckless de facto leader, Mohammed Bin Salman, that could get the United States entangled in another Saudi-initiated conflict.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE), which partnered with Saudi Arabia in the Yemen war, ran a series of secret prisons in that nation where its personnel and their Yemeni allies engaged in widespread torture. More recently, the UAE has been supplying weapons to rebel forces in Sudan that have committed systematic human rights abuses. And it supported opposition forces attempting to overthrow the internationally recognized government of Libya. Not only did the U.S. impose no consequences on its frequent arms client, but it declared the UAE a “major defense partner.”

Restoring Human Rights as a Policy Goal

If America is to be more than a garrison state that bullies other countries and takes a what’s-in-it-for-me approach to international relations, the concept of human rights will have to be preserved and revived in the wake of Donald Trump’s presidency.

Advocates of “hard power” should think twice before throwing U.S. human rights commitments into the dustbin of history. At a time when rights at home are under unprecedented assault, Americans need all the allies they can get if they are to help build a world grounded in responsive governance and a spirit of pragmatic cooperation. Values-based cooperation will be essential for tackling our most pressing existential crises, from climate change and pandemics to the ascendancy of arbitrary and repressive regimes.

Unfortunately, the current administration has shown no interest in speaking up on behalf of human rights, much less using them as a tool to promote more responsive governance globally.

Throwing rights overboard in pursuit of narrow economic interests and a misguided quest for global dominance will not only cause immense and unnecessary suffering but it will undermine U.S. influence around the world. The “pragmatists” who denigrate human rights in favor of a transactional approach to foreign relations are promoting a self-defeating policy that will do great harm at home and abroad. A better approach will, unfortunately, have to await a new administration, a more empathetic Congress, and a greater public understanding of the value of a foreign policy that takes human rights seriously with respect to allies and adversaries alike.