The United States has once again launched a war in the Middle East based on false claims about weapons of mass destruction. Like the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the US assault on Iran rests on allegations that international inspectors have already debunked. But beyond the false pretext lies an even more pressing question that few officials in Washington seem willing—or able—to answer: What is the US exit strategy from its war on Iran?

President Trump has justified the attack by claiming that Iran refuses to renounce nuclear weapons. As he prepared to launch the war, Trump repeatedly claimed, “We haven’t heard those secret words: ‘We will never have a nuclear weapon.’” Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, responded by reiterating Iran’s long-standing policy, stating plainly: “Iran will under no circumstances ever develop a nuclear weapon.”

After years of unprecedented inspections, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) never found evidence that Iran had an active nuclear weapons program. In 2015 the agency declared its investigation complete and subsequently monitored Iran’s compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear agreement. The IAEA repeatedly confirmed that Iran was abiding by the deal—until the United States under Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement in 2018.

Yet the endless repetition of these disproven allegations by US and Israeli politicians has served as a political pretext for “maximum pressure” economic coercion, escalating threats, and now full-scale illegal aggression against Iran.

Opposition to a war always increases over time as the real-world results become clear to more of the public. Trump has launched this war with only one in five Americans supporting it in the first place...

Under international law, aggression is not just another war crime—it is the gravest crime of all. The judges at the Nuremberg Trials called aggression “the supreme international crime,” because it “contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” Those convicted of launching aggressive war were held responsible for all the horrors that followed. For that reason, the Nuremberg tribunal reserved its harshest punishment—death by hanging—for the defendants convicted of planning and waging aggressive war, while those found guilty only of war crimes or crimes against humanity received lesser sentences.

The wisdom of that distinction is borne out by the horrors taking place in Iran and neighboring countries today. In the first week of the US-Israeli bombing of Iran, they have already destroyed schools and hospitals and killed hundreds of innocent civilians. On March 2nd, President Trump said that the US plans to achieve all its goals in Iran through four or five weeks of this kind of mass slaughter.

At a Pentagon press conference a few hours earlier, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth was vaguer, saying it could take two to six weeks, and later said it could be eight weeks. But the US government is clearly under a number of pressures to end the war within a limited time frame.

First, the United States launched this war with already depleted weapons stockpiles, after expending thousands of bombs and missiles in prolonged campaigns in Yemen and sending unprecedented quantities of weapons to Ukraine, Israel and other allies since 2022.

If the war drags on for more than a few weeks, US forces will begin to run short of air-defense interceptors, cruise missiles, and other critical munitions, with Israeli air defenses expected to face shortages even sooner. The US and Israel are therefore gambling that they can destroy enough of Iran’s missiles before they themselves run out of interceptors needed to stop them.

Yet recent experience suggests this gamble is likely to fail. US bombing campaigns against Ansar Allah (the Houthis) in Yemen under both Biden and Trump failed to eliminate its missile capabilities or reopen the Red Sea to commercial shipping. Iran is a far more formidable opponent—twelve times larger than Houthi-controlled territory in Yemen, with missiles dispersed in hardened facilities across the country and mounted on mobile launchers disguised as civilian trucks. Destroying them all is highly unlikely.

Second, the longer this war drags on, the greater the shock it will deliver to the global economy. Iran has already attacked several oil tankers and closed the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil supply normally passes. Qatar has also halted LNG shipments after Iranian drones struck a major gas facility. This removed nearly 20 percent of the world’s traded natural gas from the market and sent prices in Europe soaring.

The role of the sovereign wealth funds of the Gulf sheikdoms in global finance means that financial markets will be further impacted as they dip into those funds to make up for the lost revenue from the disruption of their oil and gas exports.

At the same time, airlines around the world have suspended flights across much of the Middle East, rerouting aircraft around the conflict zone and stranding thousands of travelers as the war ripples through global commerce. And already, in just the first week of the war, US taxpayers are being asked to shoulder another $50 billion in war spending.

Third, Trump has until now justified his illegal threats and uses of force to Americans, and especially to his MAGA base, by keeping his wars limited in scope and duration and avoiding US casualties. But he risks failing on all those counts in Iran, and reaping a predictable political whirlwind.

A University of Maryland poll at the beginning of February found that only 21% of Americans said they would approve of a US attack on Iran, with 49% opposed. Even among Republicans, only 40% were in favor.

This time, Iran understands that the only way to deter future attacks is to inflict real costs on the US.

US governments are usually able to generate support for their wars in their early stages, with help from corporate media and retired generals linked to the arms industry whom they trot out as military experts. But opposition to a war always increases over time as the real-world results become clear to more of the public. Trump has launched this war with only one in five Americans supporting it in the first place, so he knows he must either create an illusion of success or face a dire political reaction.

To make Trump’s challenge harder, he’s gone to war against a country whose leaders fully understand all these dynamics. Iran has explicitly set out to inflict hundreds of US casualties, and to expand and prolong the war beyond the limits of the US war plan. Iran’s leaders have recognized that their scripted, symbolic response to last year’s 12-day US-Israeli war, with a few fairly harmless strikes on the US Al-Udeid air base in Qatar, was not an effective deterrent to further US-Israeli aggression.

This time, Iran understands that the only way to deter future attacks is to inflict real costs on the US. Iran killed six US troops in action in the first days of the war, has inflicted serious damage on the US 5th Fleet’s base in Bahrain, and destroyed or damaged air defense radar systems at seven US bases.

On the other side, the US and Israel are trying to destroy as many of Iran’s missiles as they can before Iran can use them. As NIAC (the National Iranian-American Council) wrote on March 3rd, “The conflict is increasingly defined by sustainability - missile inventories versus interceptor stocks.”

The course of the war will depend very much on how successful each side is in achieving these goals, as the whole world watches in horror.

Yet in Washington, the most basic strategic questions remain unanswered. At Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and General Caine’s early-morning press conference on March 2, a reporter asked the questions that should now be on everyone’s mind: “What percentage of Iranian long-strike capabilities are still in the fight? And what is our exit strategy here, and when will it be deployed?”

Hegseth appeared at a loss to answer them. He waffled and eventually fell back on the familiar claim that Iran was trying to build a nuclear weapon—Trump’s recycled weapons-of-mass-destruction narrative from the Iraq war. General Caine sidestepped the question more professionally, offering a technical explanation about the difficulty of completing bomb-damage assessments during ongoing combat.

In Washington, the most basic strategic questions remain unanswered.

But neither Hegseth nor Caine—nor any other US official—has addressed the fundamental question of an exit strategy. Since the United States has not invaded and occupied Iran, there are no US ground forces to withdraw, as there were in Iraq or Afghanistan. If US and Israeli forces begin to run low on weapons, they could simply declare victory, halt the bombing and replenish their arsenals before launching another round of attacks later.

Iran’s strategy appears designed to prevent exactly that outcome—by turning this into a war the United States will not want to repeat. That means inflicting real costs: US casualties, political backlash at home, strained relations with allies, global economic disruption and a further erosion of Washington’s standing in the world.

Even if the US is ready to end the war in a few weeks, Iran may insist on concessions, such as the lifting of illegal sanctions and US withdrawal from bases in the Persian Gulf, before it will end its attacks on increasingly indefensible US bases. Those are terms that we would encourage the US government to accept.

This would be a real exit strategy from war on Iran, not just in order to regroup and launch another bombing campaign when the US and Israel have replenished their weapons stockpiles, but to actually make peace, as Trump keeps saying he wants to do.

Israel and Iran face an existential choice between gradually destroying each other and accepting that they must learn to co-exist in the same region of the world. The United States government must decide which of those choices it will support.

When the current war is over, whatever government is in power in Iran, the United States should work to repair US-Iranian relations, and tell the Israelis that it will not take part in or support renewed Israeli aggression against Iran. That would give the people of Iran a much better chance to build the political system they want than bombing them and imposing coercive sanctions to wreck their economy.

Such a shift in US policy could finally start to unravel the whole web of illegal US and Israeli aggression and occupation that has afflicted, colonized and destabilized the Middle East for so many decades. That would be a form of regime change that people all over the region, and the world, would welcome.

In an era when images can circle the globe in seconds and newsrooms claim to uphold universal humanitarian principles; one might expect the killing of 165 schoolgirls inside a primary school to dominate international headlines. One would expect emergency debates, moral outrage, and relentless coverage. Yet in the southeastern Iranian city of Minab—where Israeli-American strikes obliterated classrooms filled with children—the world’s most influential media institutions have responded with something far more revealing than condemnation: they have responded with silence.

These were not combatants. They were not militants. They were children seated at their desks, pens in their hands, notebooks open before them, studying, whispering to classmates, and imagining futures that stretched decades ahead. In seconds, that ordinary school day turned into a massacre. Desks became splintered wreckage, classrooms collapsed into dust, and rows of coffins replaced rows of pupils.

Yet the names of these girls—165 lives extinguished before they truly began—barely entered the global conversation.

This omission is not the product of oversight. It reflects something far more structural: the hierarchy of victims that governs much of the contemporary information order. In theory, modern Western media institutions present themselves as defenders of human rights and guardians of moral accountability. In practice, their editorial priorities often mirror geopolitical interests with striking precision.

When the deaths of children generate outrage in one context but indifference in another, the moral language surrounding human rights begins to lose its integrity.

When tragedies reinforce established narratives about adversarial states, they are amplified, dramatized, and transformed into global moral spectacles. But when tragedies expose the human cost of the military actions carried out by Western powers or their closest allies, they are quietly displaced from the front page—if they appear at all.

The massacre in Minab illustrates this logic with devastating clarity.

The deaths of 165 Iranian schoolgirls do not fit comfortably within the dominant geopolitical storyline that portrays Israel and its strategic partners as defenders of stability and order in a turbulent region. Acknowledging such an atrocity would inevitably raise difficult questions: about the legality of strikes on civilian infrastructure, about the ethics of military escalation, and about the widening humanitarian toll of ongoing Israeli-American attacks across the region.

It is therefore far easier to look away.

But Minab is not an isolated tragedy. Across Lebanon, relentless bombardments have repeatedly struck civilian neighborhoods, reducing homes and streets to rubble. Across Palestine, entire communities have endured cycles of destruction that claim the lives of children whose only battlefield was the ground beneath their feet. Hospitals, schools, and residential blocks have all entered the expanding geography of devastation.

These events do not occur in a vacuum. They form part of a broader pattern in which military power operates alongside narrative power. Missiles shape the physical battlefield, while selective reporting shapes the battlefield of perception.

What emerges is not merely a media bias but a form of narrative engineering. Certain victims are elevated as symbols of universal suffering, while others—often far more numerous—are rendered invisible. Compassion itself becomes curated, distributed unevenly according to political convenience.

For Western audiences accustomed to believing in the neutrality of their information systems, this selective visibility should provoke serious reflection. The credibility of humanitarian discourse depends on consistency. When the deaths of children generate outrage in one context but indifference in another, the moral language surrounding human rights begins to lose its integrity.

The girls of Minab deserved the same recognition afforded to any victims of violence anywhere in the world. They deserved to have their stories told, their lives acknowledged, and their deaths confronted with the seriousness such an atrocity demands.

Instead, they encountered a second form of erasure.

First came the missiles that ended their lives. Then came the silence that followed.

For Western audiences accustomed to believing in the neutrality of their information systems, this selective visibility should provoke serious reflection.

In the contemporary information age, propaganda rarely announces itself openly. It often operates through absence—through the stories that never reach the front page, the victims whose names remain unspoken, and the tragedies that disappear before the world has time to notice.

The massacre in Minab therefore stands as more than a local catastrophe. It exposes a deeper crisis in the global information order—one in which the value of human life appears disturbingly contingent on political context.

And if the deaths of 165 schoolgirls in their classrooms fail to trigger universal outrage, the question is no longer about geopolitics alone.

It becomes a question about the credibility of the moral system that claims to defend humanity itself.

For nearly three years the Dominican Republic had been excitedly preparing to host the region’s biggest multilateral event: the 2025 Summit of the Americas, bringing together the leaders of nearly every government in the Western Hemisphere. But on November 3, only a month before the summit was to take place, the DR’s foreign ministry abruptly announced the postponement of the event citing “recent climatic events” (i.e., hurricanes) and “profound divisions that currently hamper productive dialogue in the hemisphere.”

Indeed, regional “divisions”—others might say “alarm” or “outrage”—had intensified during the fall of 2025 following the US’ massive military build-up in the Caribbean, its air strikes against alleged drug boats—resulting in scores of extrajudicial killings—and the threats of a US attack on Venezuela. Past summits, including the 2022 summit in Los Angeles, had seen Latin American leaders fiercely push back against US regional policies. Fearing a potential public relations disaster, DR President Luis Abinader—following consultations with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio—decided that pulling the plug was the best option.

So far there’s no word of a new date for the Summit of the Americas. This weekend, however, President Donald Trump will convene a far smaller hemispheric summit at his golf resort in Miami. The group of Caribbean and Latin American leaders that will be attending Trump’s summit—entitled “Shield of the Americas”—are fans of his aggressive interventionism, his so-called “war on narco-terror,” and his administration’s attacks on left-wing governments and movements in the region. They have earned their exclusive invitations through various forms of tribute and by pledging their continued loyalty, though it remains to be seen whether Trump and Rubio will succeed in garnering support for every point on their agenda, in particular for their effort to push China out of the region.

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Featuring a who’s who of the Latin American hard right, Trump’s divisions-free summit is reminiscent of recent Conservative Political Action Conferences (CPACs) held in Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. Like those conferences—in which Argentina’s anarcho-capitalist president Javier Milei and Chile’s far-right president-elect José Antonio Kast have shared the stage with MAGA luminaries like Steve Bannon—the “Shield” summit appears designed to further promote Trump-aligned far-right cultish ideologies in the Americas. As an added bonus, it will be held at the National Trump Doral Miami, ensuring a solid weekend of revenue for Trump’s resort as well as quick, easy travel to and from Mar-a-Lago for the US president.

Still, it remains to be seen whether Trump—whose overall attitude toward the region and its inhabitants oscillates between contempt and indifference—will be willing to invest real time and energy in cultivating this group of leaders.

Each of the summit invitees—numbering 12 at last count—can claim to have advanced the US administration’s regional objectives in one way or another. Many have engaged in sustained attacks against left-wing governments and movements that have resisted Trump’s imperial ambitions. Milei, for instance, has repeatedly insulted President Lula da Silva of Brazil and thrown his support behind former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, convicted last year of plotting a military coup against Lula.

Daniel Noboa of Ecuador, in addition to persecuting left-wing opponents at home, has engaged in an unprovoked tariff war against Colombia’s progressive president—and vocal Trump critic—Gustavo Petro. On March 4, for no apparent reason other than that of wanting to please Trump and Rubio, Noboa expelled the entire diplomatic staff at Cuba’s embassy in Quito. Similarly, Honduras’ recently-elected right-wing president Nasry Asfura rescinded a medical cooperation agreement with Cuba, leading to the departure of more than 150 Cuban doctors that had been serving low-income communities. This offering will have surely warmed the heart of Marco Rubio, who has been pressuring countries around the world to terminate similar agreements in order to eliminate one of Cuba’s few sources of foreign income.

Above all, the cohort of right-wingers attending the summit have been supportive of Trump’s “war on narco-terror,” currently the main vehicle for advancing Trump’s policy of expanding US political and economic influence in the region, referred to both mockingly and seriously as the “Donroe Doctrine.” The first signs of this “war” date back to the first day of Trump’s second term, when he instructed Rubio to designate various drug cartels and Latin American gangs as “foreign terrorist organizations.” It became real when, in late July of last year, the US president ordered a massive build-up of naval and aerial military assets in the south Caribbean and directed US Southern Command (Southcom) to conduct illegal aerial strikes against suspected drug boats, leading so far to over 150 extrajudicial killings of mostly unknown civilians.

On January 3, following months of threats of US intervention in Venezuela, US forces conducted an unprovoked military attack and invasion of Venezuela and abducted President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, who were flown to New York to await trial on dubious charges. The next day, the members of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC, by its Spanish initials) met and discussed a statement denouncing the illegal attack on Venezuela. Nine governments opposed the statement and effectively blocked its release. The leaders of those governments, except for that of politically unstable Peru, are now on the “Shield of the Americas” invitation list. Two other leaders who’d been elected but hadn’t taken office—Kast of Chile and Asfura of Honduras—defended the attack, and have been invited as well.

A number of governments have gone even further in embracing Trump’s “narco-terror war.” After the US administration designated the fictitious Venezuelan drug organization “Cartel de los Soles” as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, later identifying Maduro as its leader, the presidents of Argentina, Ecuador, Paraguay, and the DR (all “Shield” invitees) did the same. Given the lack of real evidence that this so-called cartel exists, the US Department of Justice removed the term from its indictment of Maduro; however, the terrorist designation remains in the books in the US and in those four Latin American countries.

Many of the governments represented at the Miami summit have adopted the term “narco-terror” in official discourse and policy statements. Noboa, whose security forces are allegedly responsible for forced disappearances and widespread human rights abuses, has launched his own “war on narco-terror” in Ecuador. On March 3 the US and Ecuador announced joint military operations targeting “terrorist organizations” with US special forces supporting Ecuadorian commandos to “combat the scourge of narco-terrorism,” per Southcom. Other summit invitees, including Argentina, the DR, Bolivia, and El Salvador appear to be getting in the game as well and Paraguay, like Ecuador, has signed a Status of Forces Agreement with the US administration, allowing the presence of US troops and providing them with immunity from local prosecution.

It’s possible that the Trump administration considers that framing US military expansionism in the hemisphere as a combined war on terrorism and drug-trafficking is helpful in garnering public support, though there’s not much indication that it has, outside of the Republican MAGA base. But it’s hard to claim, with a straight face, that President Trump is genuinely determined to fight drug trafficking knowing that he recently pardoned former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, who was serving a 45-year sentence for his role in enabling the importation of more than 400 tons of cocaine to the US. Or when one considers that one of his primary partners in his drug war is President Noboa, whose family’s business appears to be implicated in cocaine trafficking, according to a recent investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.

As of the writing of this article, there are few details about the agenda of the summit except that apparently “security” and “foreign interference” will be discussed. Regarding “security,” Trump, Rubio, and Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth—who are all reportedly attending—probably won’t need to do much to convince their allies to double down further on the “narco-terror” threat. Given recent events, it’s likely they’ll focus more on shoring up regional support for the war with Iran, which has so far received mostly tepid backing, with the exception of presidents Milei, Kast, and Santiago Peña of Paraguay, who have all cheered on the joint US-Israeli attacks. They may also seek more overt backing for the intense US regime change effort targeting Cuba, which involves an oil blockade that could soon cause a “humanitarian collapse,” according to the United Nations. Trump and many Republicans have said that when they’re done in Iran, “Cuba is next.”

By “foreign interference” the White House is presumably not referring to US interference in Latin America and the Caribbean, which has been a constant for many decades but has reached new heights under Trump. Instead, the term is widely understood in Washington as primarily a reference to China’s growing regional influence. Here it is far from certain that Trump and his team will make much progress given the massive economic benefits derived from Chinese trade and investment. China is currently the top trading partner for Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, and Paraguay and the second biggest trading partner for nearly all of the other countries represented at the summit.

Many of these leaders have engaged in strident rhetoric against the PRC, but ultimately have quietly chosen to strengthen relations with the world’s second-biggest (and soon biggest) economy. Milei, for instance, referred to the Chinese government as “assassins” and said that he refused to do business with communists. He has completely changed his tune now: At Davos this year he called China “a great trading partner” and said that he plans to visit Beijing this year.

According to a schedule that the White House shared with the media, President Trump will participate in the “Shield of the Americas” summit for two and half hours and then fly back to Mar-a-Lago in the afternoon. With 12 other heads of state present, it’s doubtful that much will be achieved. There will be speeches—one can expect a long, rambling speech by Trump in which he’s likely to congratulate himself again for his “success” in Venezuela—there will doubtless be many selfies taken with Trump, but it’s unlikely that there will be anything resembling real dialogue.

Instead, the summit’s goal appears to be, first, offering the leaders limited face time with Trump as a sort of recompense for their loyalty and various good deeds. Some of these leaders have already received decisive support from Trump. Shortly before a key congressional election in Argentina, the US Treasury offered Milei’s government a $20 billion bailout, which stabilized the country’s economy and helped Milei’s party clinch a major electoral victory. Late last year, Trump interfered in a big way in Honduras’ election by endorsing Asfura’s candidacy and threatening to exact an economic punishment on the whole country if voters didn’t elect him. Asfura ended up winning by a razor thin margin that was contested by his opponents.

For leaders of some of the smaller countries, participating in the summit is itself a big reward, one that allows them to show domestic constituencies that their pliant behavior has paid off in the form of privileged access to the US president. For Trinidad’s Persad-Bissessar, who supported Trump’s boat strikes even after Trinidadian civilians were killed, and Guyanese president Irfan Aali, who promised US oil companies “preferential treatment” in their bids to operate in Guyana’s booming oil sector, the participation in such an exclusive event with Trump is, in itself, the reward.

Finally, it’s likely that, through this brief summit, Trump and Rubio are hoping to consolidate a hemispheric posse of sorts—a group of obedient allies who will continue to defend the administration’s interventionism and its violations of sovereignty and international law and that will eagerly participate in the expansion of the US’ militarized security agenda.

Still, it remains to be seen whether Trump—whose overall attitude toward the region and its inhabitants oscillates between contempt and indifference—will be willing to invest real time and energy in cultivating this group of leaders. His appointment of Kristi Noem as “special envoy” to the summit, as part of a maneuver to remove her from the position of Homeland Security Secretary, doesn’t send the most positive signal to his far-right guests. Even they may be cringing at the thought of the future of the summit being in the hands of a firebrand immigration enforcer who played a key role in the persecution and stigmatization of migrants that beckoned primarily from Latin America and the Caribbean.

On February 26, federal agents lied to gain access to a residential building. The agents, who local officials said lacked a warrant and wore “fake badges” to impersonate New York police officers, said they were looking for a “missing child.” In reality, they were hunting for Elmina Aghayeva, a Columbia University student who the Department of Homeland Security alleges had her visa terminated “for failing to attend classes.”

Due to the efforts of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Aghayeva has since been released. Still, the incidence speaks volumes to the level of normalized cruelty and injustice inherent in our current system of immigration control and enforcement. Aghayeva is not “the worst of the worst.” Even if we accept DHS’ assessment that she needed to be detained, there was a way of doing this lawfully—one where Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents acquire a warrant, clearly identify themselves, respect her rights, and do not further erode public trust in law enforcement.

We need a new system of immigration—one that serves the common good, respects the dignity of all peoples, and aligns with the principles of a democratic society. Here are three steps we can take toward that end.

First Step: Abolish ICE

What was once a fringe position is now supported by the majority (76%) of Democrats and a plurality of US adults (46%).

While the Trump administration’s disregard for the rule of law has made ICE’s injustices more blatant, it has ultimately only exposed what the agency has been since its inception.

Given recent events, this turn is unsurprising. In the last year alone, ICE agents have: broken into people’s cars (Mahdi Khanbabazadeh and Marilu Mendez), used explosives to break into people’s homes (Jorge Sierra-Hernandez), pressed their knees into people’s necks (Tatiana Martinez and George Retes), kidnapped people (Kilmar Ábrego Garcia and Gladis Yolanda Chavez Pineda), detained hundreds of children including 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, detained over 170 US citizens including Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez and Dulce Consuelo Díaz Morales, shot people (Carlitos Ricardo Parias and Jose Garcia-Sorto), permanently maimed people (Kaden Rummler), and killed people (Silverio Villegas González, Geraldo Lunas Campos, Renee Good, and Alex Pretti).

In the name of pursuing people who commit fewer crimes than US citizens, actively contribute to the US economy, pay taxes for public services they cannot access, and culturally enrich our communities, ICE acts with reckless abandonment.

And let’s be clear: While the Trump administration’s disregard for the rule of law has made ICE’s injustices more blatant, it has ultimately only exposed what the agency has been since its inception: a lawless, bloated policing and surveillance behemoth with virtually no oversight. It was a mistake created in the frenzy following 9/11. For the good of the nation, it must be abolished (and DHS too).

Second Step: Grant Amnesty

Rather than mass deportation, we should offer amnesty for all undocumented immigrants currently living in the US who have not committed any violent crimes.

The problems with ICE stem from its basic mission: to find and deport the over 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country. Since the vast majority are law-abiding and legal status is not an observable trait, ICE agents resort to more invasive, discriminatory, and militant measures. Any alternative to ICE tasked with the same mission will likely replicate its problems.

The irony here is that deporting all undocumented immigrants would only harm the US. According to the Center for Migration Studies, Trump’s mass deportation plan “could cost over $500 billion to implement and would sacrifice billions in tax revenue per year. It also would lead to labor shortages and reduce the GDP by $5.1 trillion over the next 10 years.” By contrast, providing undocumented immigrants with amnesty would contribute $1.2 trillion to the US economy over 10 years and $184 billion per year in federal, state, and local taxes.

We cannot continue to indiscriminately violate international law and then complain when America’s victims come here seeking a better life.

That money could be used to improve the lives of millions by funding Medicare For All, tuition-free public colleges, city-owned grocery stores, and SNAP and other welfare programs, as well as building public housing and improving our crumbling infrastructure. Instead, we are actively engaging in an absurd policy of national self-harm where the only benefactors are the politicians who continuously scapegoat immigrants as well as corporations who benefit from surveilling, imprisoning, and exploiting their labor.

Beyond economic considerations, amnesty safeguards our democracy and protects human rights. The current immigration regime perpetuates racism, xenophobia, and Islamophobia, while ICE agents terrorize our communities and threaten all our lives.

Trump’s mass deportation agenda calls for separating undocumented immigrants from their friends, families, and communities. This includes 86 DACA recipients that ICE deported last year. Those people had lived in the US for most of their lives, respected its laws, and considered it their home. Now, they are being sent to an unfamiliar country—one where they may not know the language, culture, or anyone living there.

What’s more, many immigrants come to the US fleeing violence and persecution abroad. Deportation often entails purposely putting people’s lives at risk. As Farah Larrieux, a 46-year-old Haitian currently on Temporary Protected Status (TPS), said: “All these people are here because they were forced to come. […] They came to save their lives. For many, returning to Haiti now is, in practice, a death sentence, making them vulnerable to extortion and kidnapping.” If DHS succeeds in terminating TPS for Haitians, our tax dollars would go toward effectively funding her execution.

Third Step: End American Imperialism

Whether it's Haiti, Cuba, Venezuela, Gaza, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, or so many other nations, US interventionist policies fuel political instability abroad.

American imperialism must end. We cannot continue to invade, bomb, and wage wars that fuel the very mass displacement and migration that create the “border crisis.” We cannot continue to indiscriminately violate international law and then complain when America’s victims come here seeking a better life. They are not the “foreign invaders” who infiltrated “our homeland”—America invaded theirs. They have not “destroyed our country”—we destroyed theirs as they built ours. We owe them a debt: Amnesty and humanitarian aid in this context is not a gift, its reparations.

America must fund USAID, not more “forever wars.” We must work alongside foreign nations—as equals—to meaningfully improve economic and political stability around the world.

For the people who are already here, abiding by our laws and contributing to our communities, this is their home. Hunting and deporting them is not justice. It endangers everyone while diverting billions of dollars away from programs and policies that would benefit everyone.

Together, we can forge a better future—we simply need to take the right steps.

In response to his sentencing following his conviction on 34 felonies in May 2024, President Trump stated that he had “won the election in a massive landslide, and the people of this country understand what’s gone on. This has been a weaponization of government.”

Despite his conviction, Judge Juan Merchan sentenced him to an unconditional discharge with no consequences like prison, probation, or even fines. The judge determined that this was the “only lawful sentence” that avoided infringing on the authority of the presidency. Had that been Donald Trump’s first encounter with the law (which, of course, it wasn’t), it would have been a stark lesson in impunity.

It’s no surprise then that, in an interview last year with Kristen Welker on Meet the Press, when asked about his obligation to uphold the Constitution, Trump responded, “I don’t know.” In his conversation with Welker, he also defied a Supreme Court decision that ordered the return of immigrant Kilmar Armando Ábrego García from El Salvador, where he had been deported thanks to what the Trump administration termed “an administrative error.” Blaming the deferral of that decision on Attorney General Pam Bondi, the president stated that he was “not involved in the legality or illegality” of the case.

Despite his seemingly ambivalent feelings in that interview, he has emphatically asserted his position with respect to the law elsewhere, especially when it came to him. For example, on February 16, 2025, he wrote on X, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” Nonetheless, outright violations of the law have been a signature characteristic of his administration writ large. For example, last March, when Judge James Boasberg ordered the return of planes carrying migrants being deported from the United States to El Salvador’s CECOT prison (known for its brutality), Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem instructed the two flights to continue in clear violation of the court order. The Justice Department would subsequently argue in a court filing that the administration hadn’t violated the judge’s order because the flights carrying the migrants were no longer over U.S. territory when the ruling was issued.

In short, although the attitudes of President Trump and his administration toward legality have been guided by the belief that their power is in no way meaningfully constrained by the law, it would be a mistake to assume that they’ve governed through lawlessness alone. To focus solely on lawlessness would be to minimize the way the president and his administration have simultaneously relied on and weaponized the law itself to legitimize their violence and their violations. They have pursued an America First strategy that has centered on the expansion of executive power and the protection of narrowly defined national interests, while tossing aside both human rights and international legal norms. To fully grasp the depths of the Trump administration’s violence, lawlessness must be examined alongside the strategic use of the law to manufacture a sense of legality and a facade of legal legitimation.

Legalizing Boat Strikes to “Save Americans”

On Tuesday, September 2, 2025, on President Trump’s order, U.S. military forces conducted an airstrike against a boat that the administration claimed belonged to the Latin American gang Tren de Aragua, which he had previously designated a terrorist organization and described as “narcoterrorists.” Since that first strike conducted in the waters of the Caribbean Sea, there have been 46 subsequent boat strikes in both the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific Ocean that have killed 147 people to date. Despite the view of legal experts that such strikes are illegal extrajudicial killings, the Trump administration has insisted on their legality. In late November, for example, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth stated on X that “our current operations in the Caribbean are lawful under both U.S. and international law, with all actions in compliance with the law of armed conflict — and approved by the best military and civilian lawyers, up and down the chain of command.”

The approval Hegseth referred to came in the form of a memorandum from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. Although that memo has not been made public, sources familiar with its contents report that it frames the strikes as acts of collective self-defense undertaken in the interests of the United States and several Latin American countries. The memo also argues that, because the U.S. is in an armed conflict with the drug cartels, the strikes don’t require Congressional approval, being both in the national interest and sufficiently limited in scope, nature, and duration not to qualify as war-making. That memo has been criticized in numerous ways, with some experts insisting that the legal arguments are not only flawed, but were put together to legitimize a political decision already made by the White House.

In the last quarter-century of the War on Terror, weaponizing the label of terrorism has been repeatedly invoked to justify repressive interventions. As law professor Sirine Sinnar notes, “Through invoking terrorism, the Trump administration targets its political enemies, pushes an openly racist and xenophobic agenda, and flouts international law more brazenly than its predecessors. But it can do all this so easily because the concept of terrorism has long been selective, political, and racialized, and because Congress and the Supreme Court have largely shielded counterterrorism from accountability.” The designation of individuals as “narcoterrorists” reflects the enduring currency of this post-9/11 framework, demonstrating how the language of terrorism can be redeployed in new contexts through strategically constructed threat narratives.

The Spectacle of “American [In]Justice”

In a speech on January 3rd, President Trump announced the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores de Maduro, accusing them of conducting a “campaign of deadly narco-terrorism against the United States and its citizens,” and insisting that “hundreds of thousands — over the years — of Americans died because of him.” Further justifying his capture, Trump also claimed that the Venezuelan leader had been sending members of the Tren de Aragua gang to the United States to spread drugs and terror. As it happens, though, not only was there a lack of evidence of that, but the claim wasn’t even mentioned in the Justice Department’s indictment of the Venezuelan president. The Maduros, Trump asserted, would “soon face the full might of American justice and stand trial on American soil.” Despite such a projection of power and the assumed superiority of “American justice,” the Trump administration’s entire governing strategy has proven that just as legality is malleable, so, too, is justice.

Many have described the Trump administration’s capture of the Maduros as simply lawless, but the administration’s officials didn’t act without considering the law (in their own lawless fashion). They even requested that the Office of Legal Counsel produce an opinion on whether the president could legally direct U.S. military forces to support law enforcement in seizing Maduro and bringing him to the United States for prosecution (without, of course, any congressional action).

A heavily redacted version of the memo responding to that, dated December 23, 2025, was released on January 13th, 2026. It frames the sending of U.S. special forces and air power into Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, to capture the Maduros as a law-enforcement action to arrest a fugitive, not a military invasion (despite all the Venezuelans who died). It argues that, because of the limited duration and narrow scope of the operation, the action falls under the president’s constitutional authority and isn’t an act of war that would require congressional authorization. Although the memo did avoid making a definitive argument that the operation didn’t violate international law, it essentially tried to make that determination inconsequential by deeming the actions legal under domestic law.

Performing Legality, Producing Impunity

While the contents of the memo are certainly important, it’s no less critical to understand the purpose and function of such memos to begin with. Like other such “legal” documents, memos from the Office of Legal Counsel are designed to offer a version of “legality” that minimizes scrutiny, enables repetition, and contributes to normalizing state violence in its many forms.

Some have compared the boat-strike memos to the torture memos drafted under the Bush administration. John Yoo, one of the infamous authors of those memos, argued that, for abuse to rise to the level of torture, the result had to be nothing less than organ failure or death. So, consider it ironic that he actually criticized those boat-strike memos, despite their similarity to the torture memos’ form of impunity. In fact, when asked if he regretted the decisions he had made, Yoo said, “The only thing I regret was just the pressure of time that we had to act under.” But he also added that he “would probably do the same things again.”

Yoo nevertheless expressed skepticism about the Trump administration’s rationale for the boat strikes, saying about those supposed drug boats, “They’re not attacking us because of our foreign policy and our political system…They’re just selling us something that people in America want. We’re just trying to stop them from selling it. That’s traditionally, to me, crime. It’s something that we could never eradicate or end.”

Yoo, of course, neglected to mention that, while justifying the most brutal forms of torture at the Bush administration’s prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in CIA “black sites” globally, the torture memos provided impunity for anyone involved in creating that torture regime in the wake of the 9/11 attacks of 2001. And no court ever formally ruled those memos illegal, while Yoo, like all the other Bush administration officials involved in sanctioning the torture apparatus, never faced the slightest accountability. Even when a report on those memos was released by the Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility in 2009, recommending that Yoo and an associate of his be disciplined, it was vetoed by Associate Deputy Attorney General David Margolis, who viewed the memos as resulting from poor decision-making rather than unethical behavior. Like the torture memos, then, the boat-strike memos are meant to offer a facade of legality, while ensuring impunity.

What Yoo’s critique also conveniently overlooks is that legal memoranda like the torture memos don’t just interpret the law. Instead, they offer a threatening “legal” reality to justify certain all-too-grim interventions. Under the Bush administration, this included the denial of Geneva Convention protections based on the argument that the United States was fighting a new kind of war with non-state actors who don’t abide by the laws of war. According to their logic, if the enemy does not follow the laws of war, the United States is not required to extend full protection. This discursive rationale was used to disregard the fact that adherence to Geneva protections is non-reciprocal.

Those memos also exploit perceived gaps in existing legal frameworks to manufacture ambiguity, while, above all, staging a performance of legality. Like the torture memos, the memo authorizing the capture of President Maduro was designed to be a buffer against legal, political, or diplomatic challenges, minimizing the vulnerability of the Trump administration to judicial scrutiny and congressional action.

In his article “Citizen in Exception: Omar Khadr and the Performative Gap in the Law,” Matt Jones has written about the consequences of such performances of legality. He argues that “the law’s reliance on continual performance interventions means that gaps in the law may in fact become enshrined in law if a given authority, such as a judge, recognizes them as legitimate within the jurisprudential history of past performances.” In other words, challenging state actions as illegal, whether the conduct occurred as a result of sheer lawlessness or unsound legal rationales, can actually end up rendering the behavior legal.

Legal rationales like those provided in the torture memos also offer an administration the opportunity to act as if its behavior were legal. As Jones points out, when it came to Guantanamo, for example, “the Bush administration’s creative interpretation of the law allowed them to operate ‘as if’ their behavior were legal, knowing that, by the time the law’s reality caught up, the strategic tasks they wanted accomplished in Guantanamo would have long been completed.”

To this day, Guantanamo remains open and there has never been the slightest accountability for anyone involved in past crimes there or the indefinite institutionalization of that infrastructure of state violence.

The Architecture of Hyper-Legality and the Law’s Double-Edged Sword

To understand why the Trump administration has not always chosen to completely violate or disregard the law, it’s useful to consider the concept of hyper-legalism. In “International Refugee Law, ‘Hyper-Legalism’ and Migration Management: The Pacific Solution,” author Claire Inder, special assistant to the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, suggests that hyper-legalism “implies a commitment to lawfulness and rule-following, with an underlying disingenuousness in the understanding of ‘legality.’ It suggests that the applicability of the rules themselves is infinitely malleable by the actor purporting to comply.”

Although Inder focuses on refugee law, hyper-legalism’s relevance to a broader spectrum of governing policies is clear when it comes to Donald Trump and his administration, where a performance of legality has all too often been considered sufficient to allow them to pursue their ultimate objective of justifying whatever intervention they may deem necessary. However, that doesn’t mean that Trump and members of his administration don’t understand the limits of hyper-legalism. As Daniel Ghezelbash, director of the Kaldor Center for International Refugee Law, has argued, some actions are so egregious under international law that no amount of formalistic sophistry can legitimize them. And when that’s the case, states can resort to obfuscation as a tactic. “Obfuscation,” as he puts it, “is achieved through secrecy about what actions the government is taking and deliberate silence as to the purported legal justifications.”

The Trump administration’s refusal to release the Office of Legal Counsel memo that has provided it with supposed legal cover for those boat strikes in the Caribbean and the Pacific is emblematic of hyper-legalism and its limits. More broadly, the fact that its officials are using the law to justify egregious conduct while rejecting any semblance of transparency makes such legal arguments difficult, if not impossible, to challenge in the immediate moment. That, in turn, risks the further institutionalization of sanctioned violence, while, of course, providing legal rationales for future acts of state violence.

In his article “Hyperlegality,” legal scholar Nasser Hussain questions common assumptions about the operation of emergency laws and the idea that the measures implemented are just temporary deviations from the norm. Although he focuses on the United Kingdom, his analysis is distinctly relevant to Donald Trump’s America. He argues that antiterrorism legislation in Great Britain hasn’t just functioned as a short-term, reactive response to crisis, but has produced structural and enduring transformations in the legal order. And that’s just what’s now happening in the United States, where the latest “emergency laws” and defenses of exceptional interventions are helping to create legal frameworks and blueprints that will, in the future, only strengthen and entrench the ability of the state to enact egregious violence. In short, while the violence of the Trump administration may seem exceptional, the historical trajectory of the War on Terror should be a reminder that what we are witnessing isn’t new and isn’t likely to disappear in the future.

In analyzing the Trump administration’s governing strategy, it’s important to remember that, as Hussain argues, “the rule of law is and has always been capable of accommodating a range of repressive but legal measures.” In other words, even as the Trump administration’s remarkable disregard for the law in so many cases poses urgent challenges, the malleability of the law, as demonstrated throughout the history of the United States, should offer a warning against the seemingly commonsensical response of simply instituting more rules, regulations, conventions, and laws. After all, the law’s primary function is to preserve the state, not to deliver justice.

All too often, the law operates as a double-edged sword: it can secure rights and constrain power, but it can also legitimize repression, exclusion, and harm. Our task, then, is to understand how to wield the law strategically to challenge the violence and power of the state and to demand justice and accountability.

Whether the Trump administration cloaks its actions in legal rationales or disregards legality altogether, communities at home and abroad continue to resist. Recognizing that the law alone will not save us is not a call to despair but a call to organize and build our power. Because nothing has ever altered the course of injustice except the organized power of the people — and nothing else ever will.

On December 2, 2025, the first public reports emerged about the impending launch of “Operation Metro Surge,” a deployment of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to target undocumented Somalis in Minneapolis. Five weeks later, on January 7, 2026, ICE thug Jonathan Ross fired three shots that killed American citizen Renee Good as she attempted to drive away from him.

Good’s murder marked an inflection point in the Trump regime’s iron-fisted war against immigrants across the U.S. — a war that has proven to be about much more than targeting “criminal aliens” as more activists find themselves caught in ICE’s brutal dragnet. Less than three weeks after Good was killed, federal agents gunned down Alex Pretti, another American whose murder enflamed a nation already in tumult over ICE’s tactics and its indiscriminate targeting of whole communities, citizen and non-citizen alike.

Both murders during Operation Metro Surge were followed by a similar pattern. First, Trump regime officials immediately assassinated the characters of Good and Pretti as “domestic terrorists.” When that backfired as the public learned about the victims — one, a poet and mother of three, and the other, a VA hospital nurse and registered gun owner — the regime quickly moved to cover up details of the murders, blocking Minnesota officials from the federal investigations.

But something else also took place in between the mayhem. The day before Pretti was killed, more than 50,000 Minnesotans packed the streets of Minneapolis in subzero temperatures and a biting negative 30-degree windchill to demand the withdrawal of all federal agents from the city. The march was in response to calls for a general strike by local faith and labor leaders and saw hundreds of businesses closed in support of the protests.

This was a natural response for a city already primed for mass mobilization after weeks of building networks for community organizing and resistance to ICE’s draconian crackdown. Federal agents had all but suspended civil rights as they laid siege to Minneapolis, abducting at least 3,000 people, terrorizing neighborhoods, and conducting warrantless home raids. ICE aggressively targeted residents with harassment and assault based on nothing more than their skin color and accents.

At first, the campaign of terror only escalated as the city fought back. Masked agents rammed into civilian vehicles; sprayed tear gas and pepper spray at families and children; beat protestors and threw bystanders to the ground; and, ripped people out of their vehicles. School attendance dropped by as much as 50 percent and businesses suffered. At the same time, resistance drew popular support, with residents turning out in droves to ICE observer trainings, joining Signal groups to rapidly respond to ICE activity, and supporting mutual aid for immigrant families too afraid to leave their homes.

While not a general strike in the traditional sense, the culmination of this organizing on January 23 showed a highly organized, popular movement growing in size and strength. That is significant because protests against Trump’s anti-immigrant shock-and-awe crusade have often been spontaneous outbursts of riotous fury, including last June in Los Angeles where Trump deployed thousands of National Guard troops to provide cover for ICE raids. This was followed by similar deployments and protests in Portland and Chicago.

At the same time, ICE's overreach prompted a national backlash. When agents in Minneapolis kidnapped and detained a father and his five-year-old son, Liam Conejo Ramos, heart-wrenching images of the child — his innocence evoked by the blue bunny ears hat and Spiderman backpack he wore — provoked a national outcry that ended in Liam and his father's release from ICE detention. Many other children, however, have not been as fortunate.

Whereas during the first Trump regime the images of children being separated from their families and held in camps outraged much of the world, today the regime detains children and parents together in detention centers with abhorrent conditions. At notorious facilities like the one in Dilley, Texas, children and families are subjected to verbal abuse by guards, inedible food, 24-hour fluorescent lights, and rampant medical neglect.

Now, with two-thirds of Americans opposed to ICE, it seems Trump’s manufactured anti-immigrant hysteria — drummed up by a steady stream of racist vitriol and demonizing tropes — cracks easily under the boot of ICE’s savage attacks. But how that public opposition to ICE is mobilized also matters. Rapid-response confrontations with federal agents are necessary and provide tantalizing content for social media but are generally less effective at drawing wider layers of society into the struggle.

Organized Labor Vs. ICE Fascism

Last June in Los Angeles, a large rally of union members and other activists gathered in Grand Park. Protesters demanded the immediate release of David Huerta, president of SEIU California and SEIU-United Service Workers, who was arrested during ICE worksite raids days before. Following a weekend of raids and violent clashes between federal agents and protesters, the rally in Grant Park was backed by the L.A. County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, and drew thousands in a defiant protest against ICE and National Guard troops.

In similar fashion, organized labor’s involvement has been integral to Minneapolis asserting itself as the latest flashpoint of resistance to the Trump regime’s authoritarian agenda.

No, January 23 did not see an economic shutdown of workers on strike across core industries. But the Minnesota AFL-CIO-endorsed “general strike” did show the capacity and appetite for such escalation in the future. Perhaps just as important, it elevated the call for a “general strike,” from the marginal domain of fringe leftist communities, further into popular consciousness.

Of course, Minneapolis is no stranger to struggle and mass strikes. Even before the city thrust the Black Lives Matter movement onto the national stage following the police lynching of George Floyd in 2020, Minneapolis was home to one of the most significant general strikes in U.S. labor history when Teamster truck drivers spurred an economy-wide work stoppage that shut down the whole city in 1934.

But in terms of power and militancy, today’s labor movement looks entirely different from what existed in 1934. Most workers are unorganized and unions are weak, paralyzed by anti-union laws and weighted down by their own institutional bloat and sclerotic leadership. With the top brass of most major labor unions more at home in their corporate-style offices while mingling with Washington DC’s professional class and Democratic Party functionaries, it’s no wonder there is an entire generation of workers in the U.S. today that lacks any literacy in working-class struggle and trade union principles.

This matters because unions have, in the past, commanded a unique juncture of society — a critical conduit for mass mobilizing among broad sectors of the population, recruiting whole communities into struggle while inoculating them against the racist and reactionary forces that sought to divide working people against each other.

Today’s war on immigrants is the opening salvo of a broader war against dissent and toward an American fascism that serves caviar for the corporate oligarchs and chains for the rest of us. Worse, we lack the collective class power to effectively fight back.

Building upon the regime’s anti-immigrant repression, Trump has expanded law enforcement power to target “anti-fascist” and “left-wing activities.” That means more government witch hunts against political dissent, like the activist in Texas currently facing federal charges and up to 40 years in prison for merely transporting “Antifa” literature.

As federal agents have withdrawn from Minneapolis in recent weeks, they leave in their wake communities that are organized but also deeply scarred. While local businesses begin to recover, the trauma lingers for many families and children who remain fearful of leaving their homes. There is also deep distrust and persistent doubts that ICE’s rampage has truly wound down.

The collective trauma in Minneapolis is by design, part of the intended pay-off of a massive surge in ICE funding to the tune of $75 billion. Alongside the funding surge, the DHS’s “Defend the Homeland” recruitment campaign — replete with xenophobic overtones and neo-Nazi iconography — has more than doubled the number of ICE agents with a fresh crop of deputized MAGA adherents now menacing communities nationwide.

“ICE is a descendent of violent systems, like slave patrols, boarding schools, Jim Crow law enforcement, and political policing,” writes Cris Batista of Mijente, a Latinx and Chicanx-led immigrant justice organization. “Immigration enforcement is deeply embedded in the racist, white supremacist foundation of the United States. Like their slave catcher ancestors, ICE and CBP disregard human rights to uphold systems that benefit the rich and the powerful.”

From this history, it follows that the propaganda of the Trump regime has been a barrage of callous and juvenile trolling to feed the far-right’s sadistic revelry in human suffering, including ASMR-style videos from deportation flights and “Alligator Alcatraz” merchandise. This posturing also makes sense given the ghoulish architect behind the regime’s anti-immigrant, culture-war agenda. While Stephen Miller has spawned so much of Trump’s policies and approach, he does not hide the larger dystopian future to which he hopes his war on immigrants will lead. It’s no secret that Miller’s obsessive homages to “Western Civilization” aspire to a nation dominated and led by whites only — a social and political order that can only be enforced by despotic repression.

Building Resistance from Within and Without Unions

In the midst of all the chaos and cruelty, something unexpected happened over the past year: more workers in the U.S. have joined the labor movement.

According to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics last month, union membership rose to a 16-year high in 2025. While reports frame this increase as taking place despite Trump attacks on labor, including thousands of union workers in the federal government, one can argue that the boost in union ranks is also because of the regime’s anti-worker policies. That’s particularly likely in the face of Trump’s dismissive attitude toward the affordability crisis, perhaps leading more cash-strapped workers to look for the higher wages and workplace protections secured in collective bargaining.

This growth in union membership also occurred despite the fact that most unions in the U.S., with some important exceptions, have declined to take on significant and sustained organizing efforts.

“Evidence abounds that many millions of workers would join the unions but for any opportunity to do so,” writes veteran union leader and organizer Chris Townsend. “Without unions organizing actively on any significant scale, there exist few avenues for the unorganized to connect with the unions, let alone join them. The assorted labor leadership in the unions for the most part consider new organizing to be too difficult, too expensive, too controversial, or too exhausting to seriously pursue. This justifies their inaction and profiteering from the unions, with lavish lifestyles and pursuits taking the place of the hard slogging work to reach out and mobilize the unorganized masses.”

Stronger unions are needed now more than ever to confront the oppressive machinery of Trump’s authoritarianism. But building union strength starts with a deep commitment to new worker organizing and aggressively educating existing union members, especially the 75,000-plus newly organized members who voted to unionize workplaces over the past year. These are tasks that existing union leaders have been either unable or unwilling to carry out.

For activists, there is no simple path to addressing these needs within the labor movement. It will take rank-and-file leaders agitating and building worker power inside of their unions, with militant caucuses pressuring leaders to answer the call of history to fight against the totalitarian oppression of working people and the poor. And, where union leadership is unresponsive and derelict in this struggle, the work of building organizations of workers outside of official union structures must be undertaken.

While none of that work is easy, it is existential for immigrant communities and the working class as a whole.

Yesterday’s firing of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, like the removal of senior border patrol official Greg Bovino several weeks prior, is a profound testament to the power of Minneapolis’s fierce, union-backed resistance. Much like Bovino became the Gestapo-outfitted face behind Operation Metro Surge, Noem's tenure ends with an ugly legacy of shamelessly leading one of the most racist and violent crackdowns on immigrants and activists in U.S. history. And that's owing, in no small part, to the steadfast organizing of Minneapolis communities.

“One senior ICE official I asked about Noem’s firing attributed it in large part to the Minneapolis protests, saying the whole episode has been devastating for ICE and its morale,” journalist Ken Klippenstein reported. “The evidence for this seems overwhelming, with Congress repeatedly raising the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good throughout Noem’s Senate hearing yesterday.”

The lesson from Minneapolis is clear: we need movements with the capacity and courage to confront Trump’s nascent police state with mass strikes.

Because if there is an anecdote to ICE and rising fascism in the U.S., it is to be found in an organized and empowered working class.

By Ralph Nader March 6, 2026 When you closely observe the media, it is astonishing to discover how many very newsworthy stories both camps ignore. 1. Impeachment of Trump—every week, Tyrant Trump adds new acts to his “dangerous dictator” rap sheet. He is the most Impeachable president in American history by far. So why isn’t…

The illegal and deeply unpopular US war of aggression against Iran is incurring massive human and financial costs, which will continue to climb for years to come. The Pentagon has already spent billions on weapons used in the assault, and is now preparing to ask for even more money. A new $50 billion request to fund additional munitions is expected to land in Congress before this week ends.

Rather than spending $50 billion to fuel more wanton death and destruction, Congress should be funding human needs. The entire $50 billion package, which will top-up the Pentagon’s already colossal $1 trillion budget, would be enough to help reverse some of the harms of H.R.1, including all of the following:

• Extend the ACA healthcare subsidies for one year to save millions of families from devastating insurance premium increases ($35 billion);
• Restore annual SNAP benefits to 2.4 million people who lost their benefits due to work requirements this month and are now at risk of hunger (about $5.5 billion), and
• Provide Medicaid services to nearly 2 million people who couldn’t otherwise access healthcare this year (about $9.5 billion).

Congress must not permit a dollar more of public money to be spent on this catastrophic war of choice. Our tax dollars should be supporting families at home, not bombing them abroad.

When people from abroad ask me what’s going on with President Donald Trump’s second term, I tell them that he is unlike other US presidents who were strongly influenced by special interests and big money. Instead, he is a charismatic cadaver that big moneyed and special interests have harvested, sometimes complementing each other but other times clashing with a base drive for power at the root of the corpse.

The Trump cadaver appears particularly conflicted in its peace rhetoric and its policies of militarism and war. His longtime campaign speeches of wanting to stop wars, to be the “peace candidate,” and his more recent infantile desire and arm-twisting to receive the Nobel Peace Prize stand in stark contrast to his record as president. During his first term, he amplified Barack Obama’s drone war, dropped a MOAB on Afghanistan in 2017, launched strikes on Syria, and had the top IRGC commander Qasem Soleimani assassinated just after New Year’s in 2020. Minus the assassination, this was well within the norm for the late 20th and early 21st century imperial presidency; suffice to say that first term Trump was not a peace president.

In his second term, Trump became a full-blown authoritarian war hawk while still claiming to be anti-war and an enabler of peace. Before the 2024 election, powerful interests, the military-industrial complex, the Israeli lobby, business interests, and the tech monopolists all made plans to harvest inside Trump should he get elected. This array of special interests realized that they could make use of this blundering cadaver to ensure their ends were met. These special interests were extremely successful.

Project 2025 came into being with the goal of tearing away the social safety net for Americans in its target of the “administrative state.” Trump claimed he had no idea about this project during the campaign, but, once in office, he instituted its policies and hired its authors. This project complemented the extremist right’s anti-immigrant agenda led by Stephen Miller. The results have been ugly: While food stamps have been cut and US citizens and residents from abroad were being gunned down in the streets, the military got half a trillion more dollars annually. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the private paramilitary, received eight times what it has historically at just over $80 billion.

There are no adults in the room to constrain cadaver Trump and his policies of internal and external mass violence, piracy, and war.

Some of the more absurd behavior that we’ve seen over the past year speaks to the forces within the Trump cadaver fighting it out within him. The creation of a Board of Peace for administering Gaza is antithetical to peace and justice. Its main goal is to serve the ultra elite in constructing luxury resorts and likely allow only the most obeisant Gazans to remain as servants to the wealthy. The Trump cadaver endlessly complained about not receiving the Nobel Peace Prize and then overthrew and kidnapped the Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, to essentially loot the country’s oil. Trump deployed ceaseless rhetoric against the neocons but then fulfilling their wet dreams by attacking Iran's nuclear facilities with Israel in 2025 summer. Now, again with Israel, Trump has attacked Iran for no clear reason other than to ensure Israeli regional hegemony and that no country opposes the policies of US empire. In this sense, cadaver Trump has become not just a wannabe dictator of the US, but a wannabe dictator of the world. Clearly, after catering to some anti-war populist campaign rhetoric, the military-industrial complex and pro-Israeli interests took the cadaver by the reins.

As of this writing, there have been 1,230 Iranians killed, including 180 from a girls’ school—a likely war crime. Europe’s most powerful countries, Germany, France, and Great Britain, issued a statement in response to the conflict. Rather than condemning the aggression of an out-of-control empire that no longer chooses to rationalize its mass violence, they condemned the Iranians for responding to the onslaught of Israeli and US attacks. As if Iran should just sit on its knees and get pummeled. It seems as if Trump’s threats of tariffs and taking over Greenland have turned these European leaders into puppets. It calls to mind the “protesters” calling for the shah of Iran to be reinstituted. As if the solution of Iran’s independence and intransigence to the US world order is to have another puppet rule Iran, just like the last one, Reza Pahlavi. It was this last shah who was likely responsible for more deaths of Iranian protesters than recent Iranian government crackdowns.

Today the empire no longer tries to rationalize its wars or pretends to adhere to international law. It is rather an empire gone mad: a strange mix of Viking-era looting and rampage with might-is-right 19th century European colonialism, which Secretary of State Marco Rubio cleverly paid homage to at the Munich Security Conference.

There are no adults in the room to constrain cadaver Trump and his policies of internal and external mass violence, piracy, and war. The leading Democrats in Congress have offered tepid criticism of the latest Iran War only on procedural grounds. That leaves it up to the people, progressives, and burgeoning anti-war sentiment on the right to put an end to these US-generated foreign bloodbaths. And to prevent the continuous rise of inclinations of mass destruction within the Trump cadaver once and for all.

On our recent delegation to Venezuela, one quote echoed again and again — a warning written nearly two centuries ago by Simón Bolívar in 1829:

“The United States appears destined by Providence to plague America with misery in the name of liberty.”

For many Venezuelans, that line no longer feels like history. It feels like the present.

The January 3 US military operation that seized President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores marked a dramatic escalation in a conflict that Venezuelans describe not as sudden but as cumulative—the culmination of decades of pressure, sanctions, and attempts at isolation. “We still haven’t totally processed what happened on January 3,” sanctions expert William Castillo told us. “But it was the culmination of over 25 years of aggression and 11 years of resisting devastating sanctions. A 20-year-old today has lived half his life in a blockaded country.”

Carlos Ron, former deputy foreign minister and now with the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research, described the buildup to the invasion as the result of a carefully constructed narrative. “First there was the dangerous rhetoric describing Venezuelans in the United States as criminals,” he said. “Then endless references to the Tren de Aragua gang. Then the boat strikes blowing up alleged smugglers. Then the oil tanker seizures and naval blockade. The pressure wasn’t working, so they escalated to the January 3 invasion and kidnapping of President Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and the deaths of over 100 people.”

While in the United States the events of January 3 have largely been forgotten, replaced by a devastating war with Iran, in Venezuela the reminders are everywhere. Huge banners draped from apartment buildings demand: “Bring them home.” Weekly protests call for their release.

In the Tiuna neighborhood of Caracas, we met Mileidy Chirinos, who lives in an apartment complex overlooking the site where Maduro was captured. From her rooftop, she told us about that dreadful night, when the sky lit up with explosions so loud her building shook and everyone ran outside screaming.

“Have your children ever woken up terrified to the sound of bombs?” she asked.

We shook our heads.

“Ours have,” she said. “And they are US bombs. Now we understand what Palestinians in Gaza feel every day.”

She told us psychologists now visit weekly to help residents cope with the trauma.

Within days of the US invasion, the National Assembly swore in Vice President Delcy Rodríguez as acting president. President Trump publicly praised Rodríguez for “doing a good job,” emphasizing his strong relationship with her. But from the beginning, she has been negotiating with the United States with a gun to her head. She was told that any refusal to compromise would result not in the kidnapping of her and her team, but death and the continued bombing of Venezuela.

The presence of US power looms large. Nuclear submarines still patrol offshore. Thousands of troops remain positioned nearby. Every statement and decision made by the government is scrutinized. And on February 2, despite Trump’s praise for Delcy Rodríguez, he renewed the 2015 executive order declaring Venezuela an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to US national security.

The visits from the heads of the CIA and Southern Command have undoubtedly been difficult for the government to swallow. Delcy’s revolutionary father was tortured to death in 1976 by a Venezuelan government that worked closely with the CIA. The US Southern Command coordinated the January 3 attack.

But the government is not without leverage.

“The United States thought the state was weak, that it didn’t have popular support, that the military was divided,” said Tania Díaz of the ruling PSUV party. “January 3rd could have triggered looting, military defections, or widespread destabilization. None of that happened.”

The United States has overwhelming military dominance, but it was also aware that millions of Venezuelans signed up to be part of the people’s militia. This militia, along with the army that remained loyal to the government, gave Washington pause about launching a prolonged war and attempting to replace Delcy Rodríguez with opposition leader María Corina Machado.

While Machado enjoys enthusiastic support among Venezuelan exiles in Miami and the Trump administration recognized her movement as the winner of the 2024 election, the picture inside Venezuela is very different. The opposition remains deeply divided and Trump realized there was no viable faction ready to assume power.

Besides, as William Castillo put it bluntly: “Trump does not care about elections or human rights or political prisoners. He cares about three other things: oil, oil, and oil.” To that, we can add gold, where the US just pushed Venezuela to provide direct access to gold exports and investment opportunities in the country’s gold and mineral sector,

Certainly, under the circumstances, the Venezuelan leadership has had little choice but to grant the United States significant influence over its oil exports. But while Trump boasts that this is the fruit of his “spectacular assault,” Maduro had long been open to cooperation with US oil companies.

“Maduro was well aware that Venezuela needed investment in its oil facilities,” Castillo told us, “but the lack of investment is because of US sanctions, not because of Maduro. Venezuela never stopped selling to the US.; it is the US that stopped buying. And it also stopped selling spare parts needed to repair the infrastructure. So the US started the fire that decimated our oil industry and now acts as if it’s the firefighter coming to the rescue.”

In any case, the easing of oil sanctions—the only sanctions that have been partially lifted—is already bringing an infusion of much-needed dollars, and the government has been able to use these funds to support social programs.

But in Venezuela the conflict is not seen as simply about oil. Blanca Eekhout, head of the Simon Bolivar Institute, says US actions represent a brazen return to the 1823 Monroe Doctrine. The doctrine originally warned European powers not to interfere in the Western Hemisphere, but over time it became a justification for repeated US interventions across the region.

“We have gone back 200 years,” she said. “All rules of sovereignty have been violated. But while the Trump administration thinks it can control the hemisphere by force, it can’t.”

The historical contradiction is stark. In 1823, the young United States declared Latin America its sphere of influence. A year earlier, Bolívar envisioned a powerful, sovereign Latin America capable of charting its own destiny. That tension still echoes through the present.

Bolívar’s dream is also being battered by the resurgence of the right across the region. The left in Latin America is far weaker than during the days of Hugo Chávez. Bolivia’s Evo Morales and Ecuador’s Rafael Correa have been replaced by conservative leaders. Cuba remains under a suffocating US siege. Progressive regional institutions like CELAC and ALBA have faded, and the vision of Latin American unity that once seemed within reach now feels far more fragile.

In Caracas, the situation is tangled, contradictory, and volatile. But amid the uncertainty, one thing felt clear: the Venezuelan left is not collapsing. It is recalibrating.

As Blanca told us before we left:

“They thought we would fall apart. But we are still here.”

And in the background, Bolívar’s warning continues to drift through the air—like a storm that never quite passes.

Power is felt, attributed, invisible, all-important, descriptive, without shape, and so much more. There is personal power, governmental power, and the collective power of the people. Power can be bought, sold, traded, bestowed, even rescinded. It can be good or bad, positive or corrupt. However you might wish to describe power, one thing is clear: How it’s used depends on the society in which we live.

At present, of course, our society is one in which President Donald J. Trump is the quintessential seeker of power, a man who needs power the way most of us need food. And as it happens, he has at his beck and call not just the entire military establishment, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement (and so much more). With him in the White House, power is distinctly in fashion.

Personal Power

Married and with children, my brother, who was a veteran, kept guns in his basement. “To hunt,” he told me when I objected. But he didn’t hunt, not in Nassau County where he lived, not by taking part in a sport that cost money he didn’t have to travel somewhere, get licenses, and who knows what else. Did he keep guns because he felt afraid? Absolutely not, he insisted. Was his neighborhood one with many break-ins? No, he assured me. So, why did he need weapons in his basement? He couldn’t say, except that it was important to him to own them.

Why? I kept asking him. As a soldier, he reminded me, he had been taught that without his gun he was in danger of being killed.

Under the Trump administration, when more is taken away from so many people than given to them, guns offer those who carry them a reprieve from a sense of powerlessness over their daily lives and futures.

Had he been a man of means, that inculcation wouldn’t, I suspect, have been as powerful, but he wasn’t and never did feel empowered. He’s gone now, but his world isn’t. Guns remain as much a staple in the United States as potatoes.

Well-off families keep guns, too, hopefully in locked places and have the money to buy hunting rifles, licenses, and whatever other paraphernalia they need. But in the United States today, all too many guns—sometimes even untraceable “ghost guns”—aren’t locked in boxes, but carried by young people on the streets and even sometimes into schools. The guns on the streets of inner cities, in rural areas, and even in some suburbs are all too often unlicensed stolen ones. And a desire or need to be seen, known, or heard all too often leads to someone shooting others with one of those weapons in a mall, movie theater, or school. Nearly 47,000 people died of gun-related injuries in this country in 2023. Such shootings occur more often in the United States than in any other nation. Why?

Under the Trump administration, when more is taken away from so many people than given to them, guns offer those who carry them a reprieve from a sense of powerlessness over their daily lives and futures. Many of them are young people alienated by a society that cares little about their well-being. With gun in hand, they experience steadiness, security, and yes, hope (however false it may prove to be).

With a weak social safety net, a gun offers a false sense of personal power and security. Should anyone come too close and aggravate the anger that may be boiling inside, however, that gun could go off. And who wouldn’t be angry? Too many young people in working-class families today are unsure where they might be headed and fear the dead-end jobs that they know lie in their future. The Trump administration, of course, offers such young people little or nothing—and if they weren’t born in the United States, they face the everyday menace of fear, degradation, and deportation. In America today, immigrants have become the scapegoats for such unvarnished racism that it takes one’s breath away. And don’t imagine that this is about so-called borders. Not a chance! Rather, it’s part of Donald Trump’s and his adviser Stephen Miller’s plan to rid the country of as many people of color as they can, with the end result, they hope, being white supremacy.

Though guns should be difficult (if not impossible) to obtain, like drugs, they are, in fact, available around more or less any corner in the most impoverished areas of any state. To stop the acquisition of guns, we would need more than enacted laws. We would also need to strengthen hope and offer a deeper belief in the daily safety of those who don’t for a moment feel taken care of in the most powerful country in the world.

And there’s no hiding from those in need how power is used to procure more and more money for the already wealthy, the Trumpian billionaires of our world.

Why should some, but not most of us, have an equal chance to do more than survive? For too many, their present and future safety becomes their personal problem, while Trump and crew are busily engaged in pursuing military and imperial power to gain yet more wealth for themselves and other billionaires, none of which enhances the power of the American people. And don’t forget that Donald Trump’s blatant racism is a vile infection that spreads daily from the Oval Office.

From Toy Guns to Machine Guns to Tanks

From toy guns to actual machine guns, the United States offers a constant example of how to express power through weaponry. There are the guns of war, the guns of intimidation, and the guns used against countries whose governments we choose to assault. Take Venezuela, where a recent US military sneak attack killed untold numbers of civilians and snatched its president to imprison him in the United States. That, I say, is one hell of a lot of nerve. The Trump administration certainly didn’t do that to make life better for the Venezuelan people, but to steal that country’s oil riches, which Trump plans to use for the benefit of US oil companies.

And with that in mind, let me head into the past for a moment. In 1968, when riots erupted in many communities to protest the killing of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., tanks first appeared on the streets of American inner cities—big, bulging, heavy vehicles, much like the ones being used in the Vietnam War that was then still raging.

That moment could, in fact, be seen as the public start of the militarization of this country’s police—the start but far from the end of it, which we see today, 77 years later, in many states like Minnesota. There, masked, gun-carrying (as in the old West) Border Patrol and federalized ICE agents have invaded, terrorizing and killing innocent civilians and pulling people out of their cars to deposit them in deportation camps. Such scenes not only increase the frustration and fear of so many Americans, but also the desire to carry licensed (or unlicensed) guns to protect themselves.

ICE is the most recent incarnation of weaponization in this country, in which the agents themselves have become the weapons.

Such macho terrorizing actions as in Minnesota, Chicago, Los Angeles, and so many other places in this country, involving the rounding up of immigrants, are all too much like the 1930s Gestapo in Nazi Germany rounding up Jews. The use of such terror is not only sanctioned by the Trump government but also encouraged by racists like Stephen Miller. He is the quintessential representation of where this country is headed, if not stopped and stopped quickly.

In addition to guns, ICE Agents carry other weapons of war: fire suppressers, lasers, accessory mounts, dump pouches, magazine wells—and they use drones. Pepper spray and other debilitating substances are also being used against those who protest the terror.

War is now being waged against Americans on the streets of our country, which is not only antithetical to all our laws but distinctly unconstitutional and, of course, immoral to the nth degree. Such weapons are perfected for one reason: to kill.

Unsurprisingly, ever more money is once again being spent on the Defense Department (now the Department of War), instead of on health, education, science, and so much else. And Donald Trump wants to spend far more. Guns over butter is an old meme, which we simply must not accept.

People Power

In Minnesota, ordinary people organized against the fascistic actions of ICE. Their resistance was not only brave, but an important example of the ways in which the people have chosen the good over the actions and behaviors of a bad government, president, and the Stephen Millers of this world. As demonstrated in Minnesota, we Americans have refused to go quietly into ICE’s nightmare. We wouldn’t stand for such injustice and intuitively began organizing to meet the needs of our neighbors and those who are being treated horribly. Watch groups, food groups, school groups, even singing groups were organized by ordinary citizens, inspired by an innate sense of justice and an innate hatred of injustice.

The struggle of Americans during the siege of Minnesota has indeed had results. The Department of Homeland Security, President Trump, Stephen Miller, and their cohorts have lost some credibility and perhaps some of their ability to frighten people into obedience. It’s more than unfortunate, however, that, in the process, children had to (and will continue to have to) experience the unjust power exhibited by ICE and Trump.

The use of guns will undoubtedly continue to be a staple of Donald Trump’s war of intimidation, clearly focused on developing a society where white supremacy rules. (See Project 2025.) His followers are laying the groundwork for the few to rule the many at the cost of our freedom.

We the people have power, too. There is power in knowledge, power in organizing, and power in resistance, all of which can be used to halt the brutality and lies of this administration.

The Russian playwright Anton Chekhov once wrote that, if you introduce a gun in Act One, make sure to use it by the end of the play. In other words, unless stopped, what the Trump administration has been doing will only grow more brutal. Its attempt to militarize this country goes beyond the Department of War to other government departments like the Department of Homeland Security. Its plebeian belief that might is the only right (and only its right) is also its way of opening a road leading to an authoritarian government, where voting itself will undoubtedly become endangered.

We’re living through an exceptionally dark time where tyranny, lies, and encroaching fascism at home, and the rapidly accelerating destruction of our planet (again, with a distinct helping hand from President Trump) are happening in tandem. Our elected representatives have shown themselves to be spectacularly ill-prepared in the face of such threats.

But neither the president nor his government owns the people. We the people have power, too. There is power in knowledge, power in organizing, and power in resistance, all of which can be used to halt the brutality and lies of this administration. Moreover, the people have the numbers. If we wish not to be overtaken by an authoritarian government in whose hands so many more will suffer, then it’s important to resist now.

We the people know how to do that. We have done so throughout history. We have rallied and demonstrated. We have called on our neighbors, friends, and families. We have called on our local media. We have called on members of Congress. We have written letters and posted signs and billboards. We have sat in protest, walked in protest, and even gone to jail in protest. And we weren’t to be stopped. We made our voices heard across society. We appeared in thousands of towns and cities across America.

The history of this country has shown not once but many times that people together resisting and fighting for justice (without guns) can win. It was how Social Security was won, how child labor was ended, how the Vietnam War was made ever more difficult to pursue, and that’s just to start down a long list of examples. Recently, on MS Now, TV host and political analyst Lawrence O’Donnell said:

The protesters always win,
And people die,
But protesters always win.

History proves O’Donnell right.

The murderous madman from Mar-a-Lago, who claims himself worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize, has unleashed yet another war, this one across the Mideast. President Donald Trump has demonstrated again and again the absence of any consistent foreign policy, except a perfunctory willingness to unleash military might. Since returning to office last year Trump has attacked Nigeria, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Venezuela, and Iran twice, and he has threatened “friendly” takeovers of Denmark (Greenland) and Cuba.

For Trump, foreign policy is dedicated not to peace, but first of all to secure access to mineral and petroleum resources, and second to make the world understand his dealmaking prowess. But even by mercenary standards, he falls short. His efforts to secure “peace” in Africa, the Caucasus, the Mideast, and Ukraine reveal a doddering dictator dedicated only to securing access to strategic resources, not at all a statesman interested in peace. In fact, Trump’s diplomatic efforts reflect a transactional approach to accumulate wealth through minerals, oil, and natural gas for himself and his extended family, and secondarily to US companies.

Trump claims to have ended eight wars. None of his touted agreements have actually ended a war. The so-called “Washington Accords” between Congo and Rwanda in December 2025—in the name of peace—actually aims at a strategic partnership between the US and Congo that gives American companies priority access to the country’s significant reserves of strategic cobalt, copper and lithium. The accords failed to end the fighting.

Trump insists his efforts alone ended the decades-long war between Armenia and Azerbaijan. But an August 2025 agreement has not been ratified or implemented, nor was the agreement new, nor American-brokered, but the product of bilateral negotiations between Baku and Yerevan. The agreement instead mentions a Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) connectivity project to be built solely by American companies with railways, communication networks, and pipelines for oil and gas. (It does not help to win peace in the Caucasus that the intellectually impaired Trump insists that Azerbaijan is Albania.)

Trump promised an end to the war in Ukraine on day one of his second term. He obviously has not delivered, and he has no interest in ending the war. Nor does Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump insists that Ukraine give in to Russian territorial demands. In exchange for US access to Ukrainian mineral resources and its nuclear power stations, Trump says he will guarantee the peace that follows. But the Trump “peace” deal requires nothing from Russia in return. To dazzle Trump, Russia cleverly promised the US $12 trillion in economic deals involving fuels and minerals should a treaty be signed. But this is a Kremlin ploy given that the promised amount is six times Russia’s GDP. Putin’s representatives deftly deployed dollar signs to excite Trump’s mineral fantasies.

Granted, Trump supported an Israeli-Palestine ceasefire in September 2025, but it, too reflects his base acquisitive interests. Trump said of the deal, in a fit of self-adulation, “All I've done all my life is deals. The greatest deals just sort of happen… And maybe this is going to be the greatest deal of them all.” In fact, the “Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict” has not led to peace or demilitarization. It ultimately endorses a US takeover of the Gaza Strip, the expulsion of all Palestinians, and the construction of a Gaza Mideast Riviera, replete with Trump skyscrapers and glass-front condominiums for the wealthy.

Not content with the halting pursuit of mineral rights and property deals in Africa, Russia, Ukraine, and the Middle East, Trump determined to secure petroleum in South America. In January 2026 Trump ordered the bombing of Venezuela to remove its leadership and bring its President Nicolás Maduro and his wife to the US for prosecution. Trump celebrated the invasion as an end to the flooding of the US with fentanyl by violent Venezuelan “narco-terrorists.” But this was a typical Trump lie: The drug comes from Mexico and China, and Trump’s real interest was in ownership of Venezuelan oil reserves which at one time were controlled by US companies. Those companies remain skeptical today of any investment to rebuild the industry. And so, president promised that the US is going to "run" Venezuela "until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition.”

The same pattern of lies, ignorance, and violence came to a head in Iran. If Trump was truly interested in peace, he would not have unilaterally abandoned the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (2016) with Iran that had secured its agreement not to build nuclear weapons and permitted onsite inspections of its facilities. Trump withdrew from the accord in 2018 simply because it was an accomplishment of Barrack Obama.

Trump wanted war with Iran, no matter the consequences. As a first step, in June 2025, the US and Israel bombed Iranian nuclear facilities, with Trump pompously—and falsely—proclaiming their obliteration. And even as US and Iranian negotiators were close to a new deal in Oman in this weekend, in which Iran had agreed again to full verification of sites and never to build nuclear weapons, Trump started a second war with Israel’s help. Pursuing regime change against common sense and his advisers’ informed assessments, he ordered missiles to kill Iranian leadership in the gratuitously named mission “Operation Epic Fury.” And now the US is stuck in a Trumpian world of unending violence that is spreading from Iran to Israel to Bahrain to US bases in what many observers are now calling “Operation Epstein Fury”—a war to divert attention from Trump’s pedophile scandal at home.

So confident about this war are the president and his advisers that they sat about, smirking, in his Mar-o-Lago “situation room” to gloat over this most recent war, with maps and photos, likely of military secrets, visible on the wall, not far from the bathroom in which Trump kept stolen classified documents. What’s up next for the decrepit, violent, and ineffective leader? Sending federal troops wearing body armor and armed with chemical weapons and M-4 carbines into US cities to subjugate dangerous blue states?

The Army got 20 years of my father’s life including two tours in Vietnam. In return, it gave him nightmares he never named and cancers connected to his service. He wouldn’t talk about what happened over there—not even when I asked.

He came home and spent decades fighting a war nobody could see. The PTSD was severe and completely untreated. In those years, nobody used the term. They just called men like my father “difficult” or “distant.” My mother raised five daughters alongside him, absorbing the weight of his trauma so we all carried pieces of it with us.

He finally found some peace later in life. Then a prostate cancer diagnosis—a disease appearing on the US Department of Veteran Affair’s official list of conditions presumed to be caused by Agent Orange. He won the fight. Then leukemia reared its ugly head, and, at 66, the war finally finished what it started decades earlier.

My mother and my four sisters endured his suffering as our own for his entire life while the country sending him to war simply moved on.

The question before this country is whether it is willing to do this again—to commit another generation to a war with no defined objectives, no exit strategy, and no congressional authorization.

I have spent 25 years as an educator, teaching young people to recognize patterns and think critically about the world around them. I am watching a pattern unfold right now, and I am compelled to speak about it.

On February 28, the United States and Israel launched a massive military campaign against Iran—Operation Epic Fury. In six days, the conflict has killed at least 1,230 people in Iran—including over 150 schoolgirls killed in a single strike on an elementary school—and six American service members. The defense Secretary declared “America is winning” and said the operation was in its early days, promising more to come.

The scale is staggering. Iran has launched more than 500 ballistic missiles and 2,000 drones in retaliation. Israeli and American strikes have hit residential neighborhoods, hospitals, and a UNESCO World Heritage site in Tehran. The World Health Organization has documented 13 attacks on Iranian health infrastructure. Iran’s internet has been blacked out for over 100 hours, cutting 88 million people off from the outside world.

And the conflict is metastasizing daily. A US submarine sank an Iranian warship off Sri Lanka—the first torpedo fired at an enemy vessel since World War II. NATO forces shot down an Iranian missile heading toward Turkey—the first time in this conflict a missile has threatened a NATO member. Drones struck Azerbaijan. Qatar is evacuating residents near the US Embassy. An Iranian drone strike shut down Qatar’s liquefied natural gas exports, triggering a potential energy crisis from India to Italy. The Strait of Hormuz is effectively closed.

The same week, American forces began combat operations in Ecuador—the latest step in a hemisphere-wide military expansion including the capture of Venezuela’s president and strikes on alleged drug boats killing over 150 people.

None of it was authorized by Congress.

The parallels to Vietnam are not abstract. They are specific and structural.

Vietnam began with the Gulf of Tonkin incident—an alleged attack later investigation revealed never happened, built on intelligence deliberately distorted. The justification for the Iran campaign has followed a strikingly similar pattern. The administration pointed to nuclear weapons and ballistic missile threats, but US intelligence assessments contradicted those claims, projecting Iran could not develop such capabilities before 2035. The United Nation’s nuclear watchdog confirmed Iran was not days or weeks from having atomic weapons. Within days, the official rationale cycled through nuclear concerns, protest crackdowns, “imminent threats,” and finally open regime change.

Vietnam escalated through incremental steps, each framed as a necessary response to the last. What began with 900 military advisers in 1960 had swelled to more than 500,000 ground troops by 1968. The Iran trajectory mirrors this arc—economic sanctions gave way to Houthi strikes, then a targeted air campaign in 2025, and now a war spanning multiple continents and drawing in NATO for the first time. Senior officials have left the door open to ground forces.

Vietnam had the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution—passed with only two dissenting votes—handing the president unchecked authority. Iran has something arguably worse: no authorization at all. The War Powers Resolution, the very law Congress created in 1973 because of Vietnam, was voted down in the Senate on March 4 by a margin of 47 to 53. The eighth time Congress has refused to assert its constitutional war authority since June. The tool exists. The will to use it does not.

And perhaps the most damning parallel: Just 72 hours before the strikes began, Iran’s top diplomat declared a deal to avert war was within grasp. Oman’s foreign minister confirmed Iran had agreed to never stockpile enriched uranium and accept full international verification. Talks were still happening in Geneva when the first missiles hit. Diplomacy didn’t fail. It was abandoned.

There is one more parallel Americans must reckon with. Iran is not a country poised to collapse under bombardment and accept a government designed in Washington. It is a nation of 88 million people with a civilization stretching back millennia. It survived the Mongol Empire, the British Empire, a US-backed coup in 1953, and an eight-year war with Iraq in which the world armed its enemy. Modern history does not contain a single instance of Western military force successfully transforming a Middle Eastern nation into a stable democracy. Iraq took 20 years and failed. Afghanistan took 20 years and failed. Libya collapsed into chaos. What reason is there to believe Iran will be different?

My father was sent to fight a war lasting two decades, killing 58,000 Americans and over 2 million Vietnamese, achieving nothing it promised. The dying didn’t stop when the war ended—veterans kept falling for decades to Agent Orange cancers and untreated trauma. Their families carried the cost in silence. My family carried it in silence.

The question before this country is whether it is willing to do this again—to commit another generation to a war with no defined objectives, no exit strategy, and no congressional authorization. The institutions supposed to prevent this—Congress, the War Powers Resolution, the constitutional separation of powers—have each failed in turn.

My father’s stories are gone. He took them with him. But the political machinery sending him to Vietnam is running again, and it is not too late to shut it down. It requires only the people who swore to uphold the Constitution actually doing so—and the rest of us demanding it.

Current poverty (living below half the median income in a given year) is associated with approximately 183,000 deaths among Americans aged 15+ per year (about 6.5% of total deaths in that age group). Cumulative/long-term poverty (persistent over 10 years) is associated with around 295,000 deaths in the same year (about 10.5% of deaths), making it the fourth-leading contributor to mortality, behind heart disease, cancer, and smoking. This places poverty ahead of factors like obesity, diabetes, drug overdoses, suicides, firearms, accidents, stroke, and homicide.

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LIVE 9:00 am Eastern time, Streaming Anytime:

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

Today we discuss:

• ICE Queen Kristi Noem is out at Homeland Security. Not because she unleashed thugs on Americans or covered up their murders. Because she blamed Trump for her own self-aggrandizing ad campaign and got caught in her on-the-job affair. Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma will replace her. And what’s this Shield of the Americas thing she’s going to do next?

• 1,300 Iranians have been killed by the U.S. and Israel. The death toll from Israeli attacks on Lebanon rose to at least 123, as a new wave of strikes pounded the Lebanon and Hezbollah warned Israeli residents to evacuate towns within 3 miles of their northern border. Yesterday, Israel threatened residents that they should leave Beirut’s southern suburbs, prompting a huge exodus from a swath of the capital’s densely populated area known as Dahiyeh, home to half a million Lebanese.

• Trump tells Axios he needs to be personally involved in selecting Iran’s next leader—just as he was in Venezuela. Khameini Jr. is pre-nixed. Freedom, it seems, isn’t very free.

• No money for high-speed rail, new schools, the homeless, or healthcare subsidies—but the U.S. government has $2 billion a day for the Iran War.

MERCH STORE: https://www.deprogram.live

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Kristi Noem will no longer be the face of the Department of Homeland Security, labeling peaceful citizens defending liberty as “domestic terrorists.” President Donald Trump is now appointing her to a new position of “special envoy in the Western Hemisphere.”

Wherever she goes next, we should remember her DHS debacle wasn’t her first deception rodeo. It turns out that Noem has a long history of twisting the truth to serve the powerful.

In 2017, nearly a decade ago, we caught then-Rep. Kristi Noem (R-SD) telling a whopper fib about her family’s experience with the estate tax—or what Noem called the “death tax.”

The estate tax, our nation’s only levy on the inherited wealth of multimillionaires and billionaires, has been in place since 1916. In its first half century, it helped put a brake on the build-up of concentrated wealth and power, discouraging dynastic fortunes that threatened democracy.

It’s strangely fitting that Noem, who now slanders law-abiding immigrants and the citizens defending them as “domestic terrorists,” played a big role in gutting those taxes on the rich.

But for the last 30 years, the estate tax has been under right-wing assault, including a steady drumbeat for its repeal. And one tactic they’ve used is to claim the tax applies to small farmers and other working Americans, rather than the tiny percentage of extremely wealthy estates it actually targets—exclusively multimillionaires and billionaires, the top 0.01%

Noem’s personal political narrative, repeated at town hall meetings during her 2010 campaign for Congress, is a yarn about a rapacious and greedy federal government imposing an estate tax on her struggling family.

In a 2015 speech on the House Floor and in a 2016 op-ed for Fox News, Noem repeated the estate tax story. After her father died, Noem claimed, “We got a bill in the mail from the IRS that said we owed them money because we had a tragedy that happened to our family.”

“We could either sell land that had been in our family for generations or we could take out a loan,” Noem said, adding that “it took us 10 years to pay off that loan to pay the federal government those death taxes.” Noem says the episode was “one of the main reasons I got involved in government and politics.”

In December 2017, Noem was appointed by then-House Majority Leader Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to the joint committee working to reconcile the 2017 Trump tax bill—which at the time included a proposal to eliminate the federal estate tax altogether.

That month, I published a widely circulated op-ed about Noem in USA Today arguing that “her sad family saga doesn’t add up.”

My commentary surfaced several simple facts: The federal estate tax has a 100% exemption for spouses. In other words, if a spouse dies, the estate’s assets go to the surviving spouse without any estate tax. Corinne Arnold, Kristi Noem’s mother, was alive during these years. (In fact, she is still alive now at 78 years and was active in Kristi’s second campaign for South Dakota governor in 2022.)

Estate tax attorney Bob Lord noted at the time: “It’s hard to believe the estate of a farmer who died in 1994 and was survived by his spouse was subject to the tax. It easily could have been deferred. That would have been a no-brainer.”

Moreover, the process of filing a return can be extended for years, especially for operating farms.

The combination of family tragedy and populist outrage makes for a potent partisan story, but veers from the truth. In the years she campaigned as a victim of the estate tax, Noem’s family actually cashed millions in government farm subsidies. Between 1995 and 2024, her family’s Racota Valley Ranch in Hazel, South Dakota deposited $4.9 million in government subsidy checks.

A few days after my USA Today article, the Argus Leader, South Dakota’s biggest statewide newspaper, wrote an editorial: “Time for Kristi Noem to Get Her Tax Story Straight.” In her now well-known deflective fashion, Noem fired back that it was “fake news.”

If Noem’s estate tax story is true, she could easily put our doubts to rest. She could explain why her family didn’t use a spousal exemption, share a redacted “bill” from the IRS, or disclose who provided the loan she allegedly received. But she hasn’t.

In the meantime, Noem has helped gut the estate tax, contributing to the growing concentration of wealth that threatens our economy and democracy.

Under the Trump tax bill Noem worked on, the federal estate tax now exempts the first $15 million of wealth for an individual and $30 million for a couple. And as governor of South Dakota, Noem fortified the state’s role as a trust haven, attracting billionaires interested in forming dynasty trusts to hide wealth and use loopholes to avoid federal taxes.

The Trump administration and its allies have blamed immigrants for all manner of social ills—including struggling schools, expensive housing and healthcare, and more. In reality, the blame more often lies with extremely wealthy people who won’t pay their fair share of taxes to support public programs.

So it’s strangely fitting that Noem, who now slanders law-abiding immigrants and the citizens defending them as “domestic terrorists,” played a big role in gutting those taxes on the rich.

These lies—about the estate tax, about immigrants, about protesters—have something in common: They protect the powerful. As lawmakers attempt to hold Noem accountable for the reckless activities of Immigration and Customs Enforcement—and consider her for future jobs—they should keep this early story in mind.

Israel has again escalated its genocide of the Palestinians into an all-out regional war. Although the speed and intensity slowed, it never stopped killing in Gaza or Lebanon, and has now begun massively bombing Iran for the first time since June 2025. Israel’s patron, the United States, has joined in the immoral, unjustifiable slaughter in Iran.

According to Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), after only four days of carpet bombing the densely-populated capital Tehran and throughout the country, Israel and the United States have killed at least 1,097 civilians, including 181 children. At least 5,402 people have been injured. Another 880 reported deaths are under review to determine whether they are civilians. Many more Iranian military personnel have been killed. The opening salvo of this latest illegal war of aggression included the bombing of a girls’ primary school, a massacre that killed at least 175 people, mostly children.

The Israelis have been trying to push the United States to attack Iran for more than 30 years. American politicians of both major political parties have been threatening to attack Iran for decades. Both countries finally created their opportunity to launch the war they dreamed of. The most cruel and violent movements in both countries have taken power and have made clear they will slaughter as many people as possible to further their geopolitical goals: inflicting maximum damage and creating instability to weaken a perceived regional rival.

Despite decades of American violence justified with lies, there are still those who believe the absurd propaganda about liberation and human rights. I have seen Israelis raising the monarchist flag of Iran, as if supporting the son of the deposed dictator will endear themselves to the population of the country. Somehow, there are still naïve Israelis and Americans who genuinely believe their countries are killing schools full of little girls to “save” the women of Iran. To those dupes I say: If you believe that, I can offer you the Brooklyn Bridge at a very reasonable price. The warmed-over “Global War on Terror” rhetoric was laughable in 2001 and even more so today.

Every single living current and former American president, and many of the dead, should be arrested and brought to trial for their war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocides.

Some years ago, I attended a live poetry reading in the DUMBO neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York near that same bridge. It was part of a Nowruz, Persian New Year, festival. Unfortunately, I cannot remember the name of the poet or the poem he read aloud, but one line has stuck with me ever since: “After the bombs, before the next.” That is the reality for tens of millions of Iranians, Palestinians, Lebanese, Yemenis, and on and on. Never knowing when, not if, the United States, Israel, and their allies will start bombing their country again.

In the decade plus since that night, I have met many Iranians, some of whom I count among my dearest friends. At this very moment, I cannot contact them because of the ersatz holy war being waged by Israeli and American religious fanatics and far-right fascists. I do not know if my friends or their families are safe. I hope with every fiber of my being that they are.

In a moment of mass killing and sickening triumphalism, Americans must speak out against this aggression. No caveats, no hedging. Neither Israel nor the United States have a right to attack any country they want. The moment US or Israeli jets—at this point a distinction without a difference—take off to bomb Tehran, Beirut, or anywhere else, those governments are responsible for the consequences of those actions. In the short term: Americans must demand Congress uses the powers it has to reign in the imperial presidency. In the long term, we must agitate and work toward accountability for killing.

I will close by reiterating a call I have made many times before: Every single living current and former American president, and many of the dead, should be arrested and brought to trial for their war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocides. To that call I will add Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, already a fugitive from an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant for his crimes in Gaza, and every other living Israeli prime minister. Those efforts are the minimum we should demand, and must be the first step in a long accountability process for my friends, their families, and the 93 million other Iranians now under attack.

“The missile hit during the school’s morning session. In Iran, the school week runs from Saturday to Thursday, so when US and Israeli bombs began falling at around 10:00 am on Saturday, classes were under way. At a point between 10:00 am and 10:45 am, a missile directly hit Shajareh Tayyebeh school, in Minab, southern Iran, demolishing its concrete building and killing dozens of seven to 12-year-old girls.” —The Guardian

War is not an abstraction. It’s living hell... or dying hell. When the United States and Israel (President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) started bombing Iran, I felt the collective human soul begin to vibrate once again, and I began screaming to myself: This is not who we are!

Even though it is.

Our “interests” are what matter, right? Individual human lives are far less important—just read the news. And the larger the death toll, the more abstract those lives get. What isn’t abstract, apparently—what really matters—are the nation’s interests, whatever the hell those are. And interests grow increasingly simplistic as a war goes on, ultimately amounting to winning... not losing.

Every new war reopens an enormous question: How do we evolve beyond this?

I must stand up to this lie and its missiles. I must join the millions—billions?—of others around the globe and stare this lie in its face. We are fully human, not half-human or 10% human or whatever, Mr. President. I am connected to all of humanity, all of life. And so are you. When someone is murdered, part of all of us is murdered.

So I refuse to look at this latest war with abstraction or indifference. As I write, the estimated total of Iranian deaths by US and Israeli bombs is over 1,000 (and the number may well have gone up since I began this sentence). A total of 153 cities across Iran have been damaged by the bombing, according to NBC News, and at this point there have been over 1,000 attacks on the country.

And yes, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the “supreme leader,” has been killed. He was a brutal leader. But his murder does not justify all the others, let alone does it justify the possibility of another US “war without end” and the shattering and slaughter of an entire country.

I return to The Guardian words quoted above, which, as far as I’m concerned, get at the true nature of war. They refer to the US-Israeli bombing of a girls’ school in Minab, a coastal city in southeastern Iran on Saturday morning, just as “Operation Epic Fury” began—and just after school started.

The Guardian story continues:

Photographs and verified videos from the site, which the Guardian has not published due to their graphic nature, show children’s bodies lying partly buried under the debris. In one video, a very small child’s severed arm is pulled from the rubble. Colorful backpacks covered with blood and concrete dust sit among the ruins. One girl wears a green dress with gingham patches on her pockets and the collar, her form partly obscured by a black body bag. Screams can be heard in the background.

One distraught man stands in the ruins of the school, waving textbooks and worksheets as rescuers dig by hand through the debris. "These are the schoolbooks of the children who are under these ruins, under this rubble here," he shouts. "You can see the blood of these children on these books. These are civilians, who are not in the military. This was a school and they came to study."

Iranian state media reported that 168 people were killed in the school’s bombing—mostly young girls, but also teachers and staff. And 95 others were injured. And the hellish nature of this story doesn’t necessarily end here. According to research by Al Jazeera, the bombing of the Shajareh Tayyebeh school may have been deliberate, not simply an accident, but there’s no definite proof of this. In any case, whether deliberate or “collateral,” the bombing happened. And it was not an abstraction.

When a new war begins, humanity’s cancer continues. As the Cabinet of the Progressive International put it:

These strikes did not begin today. They are an extension of a longer project to redraw the map of West Asia by force. From Afghanistan to Iraq, Libya to Syria, Yemen to Iran, each escalation is a stepping stone in a broader project to suffocate regional sovereignty in the service of US and Israeli interests. Each has left behind shattered states, displaced populations, and the wreckage of societies that dared to assert independence.

Imperialist war does not liberate peoples—it subjugates them.

Every new war reopens an enormous question: How do we evolve beyond this? There will always be conflict—not to mention fear, greed, the complexity of getting along—but I know... and so do many others... that we can scrape and crawl and find our way beyond turning conflict into war. We can and we must. Extinction also looms.

The United States and Israel launched attacks on Iran on February 28, propelling the entire region into a predictable cataclysm of unprecedented proportions.

This puts paid to the alleged “peacemaking” project of US President Donald Trump, who was supposed to be keeping the country out of international wars rather than actively seeking to expedite the end of the world.

The attacks put an abrupt end to the negotiations underway between the US and Iran—to the delight of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has always viewed as anathema anything remotely resembling diplomacy or the pursuit of peace.

‘Trigger Iran to Retaliate’

Three days before the joint strikes, a Politico exclusive (2/25/26) reported that “senior advisers” to Trump “would prefer Israel strike Iran before the United States launches an assault on the country.” As per the report, administration officials were “privately arguing that an Israeli attack would trigger Iran to retaliate, helping muster support from American voters for a US strike.”

Nor has much attention been paid to the hundreds of other casualties of the US-Israeli strikes, which is unsurprising given the media’s tendency to humanize Iranians only when they can be portrayed as victims of their own government.

So much for subsequent US-Israeli attempts to cast the assault as “preemptive” in nature. Indeed, there is nothing at all “preemptive” about forcing Iran to retaliate; this is instead what you would call a deliberate provocation.

Unfortunately for the “senior advisers,” Trump and Netanyahu ultimately opted to pull the trigger simultaneously, thus depriving the US administration of its fabricated casus belli.

‘A Clear Explanation of the Strategy’

In the aftermath of the strikes, certain US corporate media outlets unleashed ostensible critiques of the war—having apparently spontaneously forgotten their own fundamental role in paving the warpath by devoting the past several decades to demonizing the Iranian government (or “regime,” as we are required to refer to imperial foes).The New York Times editorial board (2/28/26), for example, immediately penned an intervention titled “Why Have You Started This War, Mr. President?”—the headline of which was later amended to “Trump’s Attack on Iran Is Reckless.”

This is the same New York Times, of course, that has been known to publish such masterpieces as “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran” (3/25/15), a 2015 call to arms by former US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton.

Now, after calling out Trump’s “reckless” attack, the Times editorial board proceeds to undertake its own rationalization of war on Iran—provided it is overseen by “a responsible American president” who takes the time to offer “a clear explanation of the strategy, as well as the justification for attacking now, even though Iran does not appear close to having a nuclear weapon.”

Because Trump could give fuck all about being “responsible,” however, the US newspaper of record assumes the duty of laying out the litany of Iranian transgressions for its readers, such as the killing of “hundreds of US service members in the region”—decisive proof that “Iran’s government presents a distinct threat because it combines this murderous ideology with nuclear ambitions.”

Never mind the hundreds of thousands of regional deaths wrought in recent years by the (already nuclear-equipped) US military, including on account of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, which the Times and like-minded media did their best to shove down the throats of the American public.

‘Few Recent Parallels’

Following the weekend’s strikes on Iran, many US media were quick to mention the Iranian government’s response to protests that erupted in December against high inflation. The Washington Post (2/28/26), for instance, specified that the “strikes come in the wake of a violent crackdown by Iran’s security forces… on anti-government demonstrations.”

Citing reports of “more than 7,000 people dead,” the Post went on to lament that “the level of violence against protesters has few recent parallels, human rights groups say.”

Not mentioned in such reports is the key role devastating US sanctions on Iran—a form of lethal violence in themselves—played in fomenting the protests in the first place. Ditto for Israel’s own admitted interference; Mossad’s Farsi-language X account urged Iranians to “go out together into the streets. The time has come.” The Jerusalem Post (12/29/25) reported that the intelligence agency continued: “We are with you. Not only from a distance and verbally. We are with you in the field.”

“Foreign actors are arming the protesters in Iran with live firearms, which is the reason for the hundreds of regime personnel killed,” Tamir Morag of Israel’s right-wing Channel 14 remarked (Times of Israel, 1/16/26). “Everyone is free to guess who is behind it,” he winked.

But by repeatedly bringing up Iranian state brutality, US corporate media effectively distract from the brutality of the strikes on Iran, which happen to be perpetrated by two states that have zero “parallels” in terms of “levels of violence.” The ongoing US-backed Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip has officially killed more than 72,000 Palestinians since October 2023, though household surveys indicate the true toll could be substantially higher (Lancet, 2/18/26).

In its own anti-war-but-not-really dispatch, the Times editorial board also took care to reference how Iran “massacred” protesters, as well as the fact that the government “oppresses women”—forever a favorite talking point of the same media outlets that advocated for bombing Afghan women to save them from the Taliban.

Unuseful Victims

It can be safely filed under the “can’t make this shit up” category that among the first casualties of the current war on Iran were the at least 175 people confirmed dead in a missile strike on a girls’ elementary school in the city of Minab.

While the establishment media initially treated this particular atrocity as a brief aside (Washington Post, 12/28/26; Wall Street Journal, 12/28/26)—leaving the job of actual reporting to independent outlets like Middle East Eye (2/28/26) and Drop Site News (2/28/26)—it eventually became unavoidable. As the corpses of young children are of no use to the imperial narrative when they are killed by the US and Israel rather than by Iran, however, the requisite moral condemnation has been in short supply.

Nor has much attention been paid to the hundreds of other casualties of the US-Israeli strikes, which is unsurprising given the media’s tendency to humanize Iranians only when they can be portrayed as victims of their own government. While the death toll made headlines in outlets like Al Jazeera (3/2/26) and Truthout (3/2/26), in major US media like the New York Times (3/2/26) and Washington Post (3/2/26), it was basically a footnote.

Three US troops killed in Iran’s retaliatory strikes, on the other hand, have received considerable airtime, with the Associated Press (3/1/26) noting that these were “the first American casualties in a major offensive that President Donald Trump said could likely lead to more losses in the coming weeks.”

And as the entire region rapidly goes up in flames, it seems those senior US advisers may have gotten their casus belli, after all.

Cynicism, illusions, and imperialist ambitions are accompanying the bombs raining down on Iran in this war between gangster states. Public feuding between President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had seemingly brought relations between their two countries to an all-time low over Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza. But the differences between them were grossly exaggerated by liberal media. This second and far more intense bombing of Iran, which followed the attacks of June 2025, was planned well in advance. The United States and its regional proxy, Israel, share a common desire to assert the latter’s hegemony over the Middle East.

Why did the bombing of Iran happen now? Yes: Trump wished to deflect attention from the Epstein files, the fascist tactics of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the “affordability crisis,” a host of diplomatic setbacks, and a sinking approval rating that stands at 43%; indeed, Netanyahu’s numbers have fallen to 30%. Both leaders need a win. Attacking the retrograde Iranian regime should appeal to independent voters and Trump’s base. It should do the same for Netanyahu, who will only gain support from the orthodox religious-settlement parties on which his coalition rests. And the risk seemed worth taking: Iran looked weak in light of lingering effects from the June 2025 bombings, the collapse of its national currency, and the massive early 2026 protests that swept the country. All of this made Iran appear weak—just how weak it is remains to be seen.

Geopolitics and crude realism are driving events: Trump and Netanyahu both assume that the strong can act as they wish and that the weak will suffer what they must. Only Iran has been left standing among Israel’s regional rivals: Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco have either tacitly or formally recognized the “Zionist entity.” Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States are doing brisk business with it. Syria has been torn apart by the civil war that culminated in the fall of its murderous president, Bashar al-Assad. Iraq is still plagued by the legacy of internal strife following the American invasion of 2001. Lebanon is a mess. As for Palestine, it is plagued by ever-expanding Israeli settlements, the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, and a crisis of sovereignty. It was not now or never when it came to attacking Israel’s most dangerous enemy, but now seemed a particularly opportune time.

Neither American nor Israeli foreign policy is unique. At different points in history, all “great powers”—England, Italy, France, Germany, Japan, and Russia—pursued policies that simultaneously strengthened their regional hegemony, expanded their “living space,” secured their spheres of influence, and used horrific tactics to achieve their aims. The justifications remain roughly the same: the national interest is being served; its security requires proactive measures; the victims will benefit from defeat; and, of course, imperialism is realizing the nation’s “destiny.”

Opportunities exist for progressive forces to act decisively. However, most Democrats remain fixed on formal rather than substantive criticisms.

Not some biblically ordained mission of the Jewish people regarding the conquest of Judea and Samaria, not the non-existent Jewish world conspiracy described in the fabricated “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” not American fears of a non-existent Iranian nuclear weapon, and not the desire to spread democracy, inspired the war. Far better reasons can be found. There are material and psycho-political gains that the United States and Israel would gain with respect to oil (prices), real estate, annexation projects, inflation of group narcissism, and the celebration of an unpopular president for conquering a hated enemy seem too obvious to require further elaboration.

Iran is the most vocal enemy of the United States. Defeating it would nicely complement attempts to reaffirm the United States’ regional hegemony over Latin America and the Caribbean called for by the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 and new versions of what was once known as its “manifest destiny.” National security is the lame justification for attacking “narco-terrorist” states, but also for acquiring Greenland, and the desire for more living space, which has led to demands that Canada become the 51st state. The United States is intent on asserting itself as the independent world hegemon that is accountable only to itself. This helps explain its growing separation from Europe and NATO, its withdrawal from international treaties and organizations, and its abandonment of the multilateral approach to crisis situations.

Justifications for the bombing of Iran have shifted from the need to defend the protesters to being “proactive” in the face of an “imminent threat” to the dangers attendant on the regime building a nuclear weapon and its unwillingness to "make a
deal.” But the bombing didn’t take place until the protesters were slaughtered, the CIA itself denied that an attack on the United States was imminent, and President Barack Obama had already sealed a complicated deal with Iran that prevented it from developing a nuclear device for military purposes. Insisting that he could get a better deal, however, President Trump tore up the existing agreement on May 8, 2018.

Of course, that attempt failed. Monitoring Iran became impossible as new opportunities emerged to rekindle its suspended nuclear enterprise. Given American-Israeli views and prejudices about Iran, it mattered little that Iran just recently claimed (as it had while negotiating with Obama) that it was only interested in developing nuclear energy for domestic purposes. Following the bombing of Iran in June 2025 by the United States and Israel, their leaders insisted that Iran’s nuclear facilities had been destroyed. But this was a lie: Its nuclear facilities survived. Trump and Netanyahu are now trying to turn the falsehood into truth.

There should be no misunderstanding: Iran’s theocracy is corrupt, self-righteous, dictatorial, and incompetent in its administration of economic affairs. The country was experiencing a downward economic spiral, and near collapse, when its government cracked down on protesters; its criminal inhumane actions resulted in 10,000 deaths and 50,000 arrests. However, these courageous revolts in the name of democracy are intertwined with the cynical reality that we are experiencing now. The cunning of history is in effect as Trump calls upon Iranians to overthrow their regime now, because they will “never get a better chance,” and thereby heightens the prospect for further reprisals and perhaps even civil war.

What will happen once the regime falls is apparently of secondary concern just as it was before the American invasion of Iraq. Belief that the Iraqi people would celebrate the arrival of American troops was naïve at best and though opposition to its leader, Saddam Hussein, was widespread, internal divisions existed between various tribal-religious militias often with very different political aims. It was the same following the fall of Bashir al-Assad in Syria and any number of uprisings in Africa. Arguably the greatest of all political philosophers, Thomas Hobbes, warned that to topple a sovereign without having another ready to step in is a recipe for chaos; it is a lesson that the United States has yet to learn.

The stakes have only grown with the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader the Ayatollah Khamenei and various important officers of the noxious Revolutionary Guard. Unsurprisingly, the announcement of Khamenei’s death was not only greeted by joyful celebrations, but by outbreaks of public mourning. Iran is divided, and the consequences appear ominous. Some members of the Supreme Council, which will choose Khamenei’s successor, have popularly based military followings. Clashing ambitions and other contentious concerns could lead them to turn against one another or, as a religious combine, against a democratic opposition whose leadership and goals remain unclear.

Meanwhile, the war is expanding as Israel sends troops into Lebanon in order to eliminate Hezbollah and Iran strikes the Gulf States and the US embassy in Riyad, Saudi Arabia. There is hardly a state in the region that that has not been subject to missile hits or worse, and President Trump has said that he might employ ground troops, which can only mean invasion. Nor should Iran count on its neighbors for support. Iran is Shiite and Sunni Muslims in other Middle East countries are unlikely to engage in a show of solidarity; indeed, the Arab League has been notably cautious in its response to the crisis. There is also little likelihood that criticisms and condemnations will translate into serious consequences for the aggressors. The regional balance of power is secure, and the religious zealots and xenophobic settlers, whose parties are keeping Netanyahu afloat, are surely happy.

Meanwhile, Iran and its citizenry are already paying an inordinate price for this Western escapade, suffering over 1,000 dead in the first few days of the conflict and devastating attacks on the infrastructure. It is likely to get worse. American and Israeli aims remain unclear; “mission creep” is taking place as the goal shifts from forcing Iran to the negotiating table to assuring “zero” capacity for Iran to build a bomb to regime change to regional reordering. But, then, there is time to decide. The president who once constantly complained about American involvement in foreign wars has stated that citizens should prepare for a long conflict. Hopefully not too long, of course, since Americans tend to celebrate foreign wars when they start, but quickly become impatient when the body bags start coming home—and they will.

Opportunities exist for progressive forces to act decisively. However, most Democrats remain fixed on formal rather than substantive criticisms. They are primarily engaged in legalistic attacks on President Trump for not consulting Congress before declaring war, acting unilaterally, and ignoring the Constitution. That is insufficient. Judgments must be made should Trump’s attack on the Iranian theocracy prove successful—and regarding the new circumstances that this might create. The Democratic Party has not offered its own version of what policies will serve the national interest when it comes to the Middle East. It has not explicitly condemned American imperialism, and it has not punished Israel for its outrageous behavior in Gaza and the West Bank. of Israel. In short, the party has not presented even the rough outlines of an alternative foreign policy. Unless Democrats rise to the occasion, their prospects for changing America’s standing in the world and recapturing its promise are bleak as the midterm elections approach in 2026.