Washington’s political discourse on the war with Iran took a revealing turn during President Donald Trump’s recent campaign remarks. Having originally sold the confrontation as a rapid, low-cost campaign destined to conclude within weeks, the administration abruptly reset its threshold of acceptable sacrifice. Trump declared that even if Iranian retaliatory strikes were to “take out” Los Angeles or San Diego, such catastrophic damage would remain “a small price” for American security. While the remarks drew immediate backlash across California leadership, the strategic implication runs far deeper. It marks the collapse of the Pentagon’s short-war doctrine, signaling that the conflict’s costs have migrated from West Asia directly to the American homeland.

At the onset of hostilities, the White House’s logic rested on absolute military preeminence. Superior firepower was supposed to impose a swift resolution, sparing Washington an attritional quagmire. But as weeks turned into months, the gap between promise and operational reality became unbridgeable. Rather than compelling capitulation, Washington met Iran’s resilient deterrence and asymmetric depth. Instead of seeing military burdens recede, the administration must now explain to voters why they must shoulder costs never accounted for in initial war plans.

Hawks defend this shift by claiming that conditioning the public for pain signals resolve and escalation dominance. Yet this justification collapses under scrutiny. Effective deterrence requires achievable political aims, not normalizing homeland destruction to obscure planning failures. Far from projecting strength, accepting strikes on major domestic metropolises reveals an inability to dictate terms militarily. It is the posture of an overextended power that has lost escalation control and is retroactively negotiating the price of strategic deadlock with its own electorate.

Dismissing devastation to these hubs as a “small price” reveals the transactional ethos of the ruling elite: Ordinary citizens and domestic infrastructure are treated as war livestock—herded to absorb the fallout of elite adventurism while their safety is traded away for unattainable geopolitical goals.

The dismissal of potential damage to California brings this cynicism into sharp relief. Los Angeles and San Diego are not incidental collateral; they anchor America’s defense architecture. San Diego serves as the premier home port of the Pacific Fleet Surface Navy, housing dozens of combatants and major Marine Corps installations, while Los Angeles anchors the nation’s primary aerospace and defense manufacturing cluster. Dismissing devastation to these hubs as a “small price” reveals the transactional ethos of the ruling elite: Ordinary citizens and domestic infrastructure are treated as war livestock—herded to absorb the fallout of elite adventurism while their safety is traded away for unattainable geopolitical goals.

This domestic vulnerability mirrors Washington’s strategic miscalculation in the Strait of Hormuz. Planners envisioned the waterway as a pressure point where naval coercion would rapidly force compliance. Instead, it became an economic trap. Protracted uncertainty across maritime routes, compounded by crisis-level war-risk insurance surcharges—premiums have surged from 0.10-0.25% of hull and machinery value pre-conflict to 3.5-7.5% per transit—and severe disruptions documented in the US Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) assessments of vital transit chokepoints, turned a tactical blitz into structural inflation. The EIA assumes the strait will remain effectively closed through late May before traffic gradually resumes. The very levers intended to force a rapid settlement have prolonged the conflict, imposing compounding penalties on American consumers.

The crisis extends beyond an elongated timeline; the political logic of the war has been inverted. Initially, military force was justified as a way to avert protracted costs. Today, that framework has become an exercise in retroactive justification. When the White House argues that metropolitan destruction is acceptable against abstract security objectives, the debate ceases to be about preventing the burdens of conflict. It becomes about forcing citizens to accept homeland vulnerability as the price of foreign policy failure.

The central question is no longer simply when Trump can announce that the war is over. The more important question is whether he can explain to the American public the gap between the promise of a “two-week war” and the reality of a protracted crisis. A war that was supposed to end with a rapid victory has instead become a conflict whose continuation requires explanations about fuel prices, the Strait of Hormuz, and even the security of American cities.

This shift exposes an irreconcilable contradiction in official messaging. Trump insists the conflict will end “very soon,” yet simultaneously prepares the public for catastrophic domestic losses. If the war were genuinely nearing a favorable conclusion, preparing the homeland for devastation would be irrational. If the destruction of major cities is a realistic possibility, the promise of a swift, contained campaign was fundamentally illusory. Washington cannot maintain both assertions: one is a fiction, the other an admission of failure.

Where did the two-week war go? The answer lies in Washington’s altered vocabulary: from promising minimal costs to declaring destruction at the heart of America tolerable. When leadership stops preventing the burdens of conflict and instead demands that citizens absorb them at home, the illusion of hegemonic control shatters. The two-week war collapsed against strategic overreach, leaving an administration trying to sell the sacrifice of its own cities as an acceptable price of power.

In much of the country, there is an enormous vacuum for working people seeking political representation. In 2024, 132 Republican House victories were by 25 percentage points or more.

In nine Great Plains and central states—Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Iowa, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, and Idaho—Democrats did not even field candidates in approximately 40 percent of the roughly 1,400 state legislative races, according to my own rough count.

Here’s what one 2026 projection looks like:

The above map shows all too clearly that in vast areas of the country working-class voters have no realistic alternative-party representation—the Republican is the only viable major-party choice, while the Democratic Party has largely abandoned many of these races.

But nature, as well as politics, abhors a vacuum, which is why we’re starting to see the emergence of progressive populist independents trying to take hold in this desert.

Here are a few worth noting:

Dan Osborn, a mechanic, Navy veteran, and former labor union president, is running for US Senate in Nebraska against incumbent Republican Pete Ricketts, the former governor and son of billionaire Joe Ricketts. Osborn came within seven points of defeating Republican Sen. Deb Fischer in 2024, running 16 points ahead of Kamala Harris, and the 2026 race has again attracted national attention.

The current polling picture is close. The average of three recent Nebraska polls has Ricketts at 46.3 percent and Osborn at 44.7 percent, within the margin of error, with a substantial share of voters undecided or supporting other candidates. The latest polls that meet the New York Times criteria for worthiness show Osborn slightly ahead, a virtual toss-up pitting an incumbent Republican with deep pockets against an independent.

We can expect an inordinate amount of money to flood into the race to attack Osborn. A Republican super PAC has already put more than $3 million into advertising targeting him.

Osborn is running on his Nebraska Growth & Fairness Plan, which he says is “not a party’s platform or written by consultants. It’s written for the people who punch a clock and wonder why nobody in Washington is fighting for them.”

He explicitly disavows a connection to the Democratic Party, though the Republicans try to link the two at every turn.

If Osborn can overcome the Republican financial advantage, it would be an enormous boost to working-class candidates who have given up on the Democrats.

Unfortunately, Osborn faces the fallout from a leaked audio recording in which he made disparaging remarks about some of Trump’s voters. The recording was obtained by the Omaha World-Herald, and Osborn subsequently said that the voice “sure sounds like me” and apologized for the remarks.

He was recorded saying:

“Billy Bob in f—— Red Cloud, Nebraska, who lives next to the f—— Trump store as you pull into town and is waving the flag, all he knows is that he’s on the winning team. (Trump has) been so effective at taking Billy Bob and his wife Mary Jane or Mary Jo and telling them … you’re on the winning team. And that’s all they care about, because their lives probably suck so f—— bad.”

November will tell us whether his campaign against the two parties can overcome both the Republican financial advantage and the political damage from his choice of words.

Todd Achilles is running as an independent for US Senate in Idaho. He says:

“The two-party system has failed America. Both parties increase the national debt, keep us in endless wars, and favor big corporations, harming our families in the process…I reject the left-right divide because the challenge ahead of us is those at the top versus those at the bottom — those in power against the people. I will fight for all Idahoans, not billionaires or extremists.”

Achilles, a former Democratic member of the Idaho House of Representatives, is not a traditional working-class candidate. He is an Army veteran and technology executive who is running on a populist, anti-corporate platform.

The polling picture in Idaho is complicated. Recent surveys have produced very different results depending on the sample and whether voters are shown a two-candidate or multi-candidate race. One recent rather optimistic average of polls shows Achilles trailing by about 3 to 5 percent.

Whatever the polling, Idaho remains an overwhelmingly Republican state: Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris there by 36.5 percentage points in 2024, winning 66.9 percent to Harris’s 30.4 percent.

Brian Bengs, a US Navy and Air Force veteran, former JAG officer, and lawyer, is running as an independent for the US Senate from South Dakota. In 2022, he ran for Senate as a Democrat and lost by more than 40 points. He’s running as a member of the Independent Veterans of America.

He is attacking the billionaire class:

“who buy politicians to rig the system so they can pay a lower tax rate than their secretaries & condition us to see only through red or blue-colored glasses disguising how they pick our pockets.”

His campaign’s current platform indeed emphasizes getting big money out of politics, eliminating corruption, banning congressional stock trading, unrigging the tax code, and reducing the national debt.

Like Achilles, Bengs faces a formidable Republican political environment. Trump carried South Dakota by 29.2 percentage points in 2024.

Bill Hill, a commercial fisherman, construction worker, teacher, principal, and former superintendent, is running as an independent for Alaska’s sole congressional seat. He spent more than two decades in education and was named Alaska Superintendent of the Year in 2023.

Hill is calling for:

“a total ban on congressional stock trading. Billionaires and corporations need to pay their share like the rest of us. And we need to get big money out of our elections…I’m a lifelong independent running to do what’s right by Alaskans, not what’s right by billionaires, corporations, or party bosses in DC.”

Political analysts repeatedly warn that third-party candidates can serve as spoilers, potentially helping the candidate they least support. But Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system makes the situation more complicated.

The Democrat, Eric Hafner, remains on the November ballot, along with Republican incumbent Nick Begich, Hill, and Libertarian Jim McDermott. In the latest New York Times/Siena poll, the first-choice results were Begich 47 percent, Hill 35 percent, Hafner 8 percent, and McDermott 5 percent. After ranked-choice tabulation, Begich led Hill 53 percent to 47 percent.

So, in Alaska, the spoiler question is not simply a matter of who finishes ahead in the first round. The ranked-choice system makes the ultimate effect of Hafner’s candidacy dependent on how his supporters’ second choices are distributed.

Candidates Without a Party?

Currently, there is no unified effort to build a party of independents to run in deep-red America. Instead, the effort is largely driven by the candidates themselves. It’s unclear if this will be the best long-term approach.

The word “independent” does fit nicely with the idea of independent candidates, free from any broader party or political organization. But independence has its downside in terms of accumulating and sharing campaign expertise, funding, and building a unified platform.

To find out more about the viability of independent candidates, we will be conducting a new survey of 5,000 voters in red America. One question we will ask respondents is whether a new organization of independents should be formed and what to call it.

Will a New Political Formation Emerge?

The political logic of the Democratic Party’s abandonment of its working class roots, which led to the very red map of America, and the Republican Party’s failure to support workers and their issues while having control of the government, suggests strongly that something new could emerge. There are just too many working people with no political home. But it remains to be seen how this vacuum will be filled—and by whom.

There is some chance that the Democrats, responding to the independents, will address the void by running many more working-class and progressive populist candidates. But the Democratic brand is extremely tarnished.

As John Tester, the former Democratic Montana US Senator, put it in a leaked text attributed to him:

“Every race I ran as Montana Senator and US Senator it was about distancing myself from the Democratic Party…. During my last two races the Democratic Party was poison in my attempts to get re-elected.”

For those of us who want to end MAGA’s grip on national politics this November, let’s hope that an enormous blue (and independent) wave will serve, for now, as the antidote.

For more information, see A Party of Our Own.

The views, analysis, and opinions expressed in this article belong solely to the author. They do not represent the official stance, policy, or position of Berkeley Independent Study, the Berkeley Federation of Teachers, the Berkeley Unified School District, or any affiliated organization.

Colorful, progressive posters fill the walls in Room 202 of Berkeley High School's Independent Study Program. A Rainbow Coalition poster features Fred Hampton with the phrase, "In Unity, there is survival." The Black Panther Party, IWW Local 8, Somos El 99%, Louise Olivereau, Marie Equi, environmental justice, and other progressive causes are represented.

Palestine posters fit in with the milieu of the room. "Berkeley Educators for Palestine," "Stop the Bombing, Free Free Palestine," and "Stop the Israeli-US Genocide in Palestine" are included.

What is uncommon is to bypass teachers and administrators and go straight to a civil rights complaint, unless the complaint is about Palestine, and the people making the complaint are connected to the Brandeis Center.

These posters, along with one titled "Standing with Muslims Against Islamophobia and Racism," resulted in an official complaint filed through the District Civil Rights and Compliance Office of the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD). No teachers or staff were aware of any concerns surrounding the posters until they were contacted by a district-hired attorney.

Jonas LaMattery-Brownell, Berkeley Federation of Teachers (BFT) co-site representative at Berkeley Independent Study (BIS), told me in an interview, "Some colleagues of mine who were most targeted by the investigation were Jewish, and were horrified that support for Palestine was getting weaponized against them and the school."

Public schools are accustomed to resolving issues in-house. It's not uncommon for students to feel discomfort, and for parents to voice their concerns with teachers and administrators. These concerns often result in meaningful discussions and a better educational environment for everyone.

What is uncommon is to bypass teachers and administrators and go straight to a civil rights complaint, unless the complaint is about Palestine, and the people making the complaint are connected to the Brandeis Center.

Antisemitism Charges

Kenneth Marcus, former Trump official and founder of the Brandeis Center, wrote openly about filing “high-profile cases alleging unlawful antisemitic harassment” in "Standing up for Jewish Students" (Jerusalem Post, 2013). Marcus writes, “These cases—even when rejected—expose administrators to bad publicity... The only way to win these cases is to file them, even when we see some or most rejected.”

The Brandeis Center filed a 41-page complaint in 2024 with the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights against BUSD, alleging that “BUSD teachers are using BUSD resources to teach anti-Israel propaganda and promote walkouts demeaning Israelis and calling for the elimination of Jews."

BUSD Superintendent Enikia Ford Morthel testified before Congress that "antisemitism is not pervasive in [the] Berkeley Unified School District" after conducting 12 investigations of complaints filed through the District Civil Rights and Compliance Office. In Berkeleyside, the Berkeley Jewish Parents for Collective Liberation called the Brandeis Center claims "tired, fully investigated, and determined to be baseless."

Liz Jackson, director of K-12 Legal Defense and former senior attorney at Palestine Legal, interviewed multiple witnesses to determine the veracity of the Brandeis Center complaints. Addressing the claim that students during the walkout were screaming "Kill the Jews," Jackson told me in an interview, "I've talked to a lot of students and teachers who were supervising or participating in the walkout and no one can verify that. There was definitely not a chant that was loud that students were chanting in unison. I think it's probably fabricated based on what else they fabricate."

Jackson is aware of about 20 complaints filed over the last two years, all of which involve Palestine. The allegations typically fall into the following categories:

1. True, but not antisemitic;
2. Fabricated; and
3. A grain of truth, but grossly exaggerated.

Jackson states: "They paint a picture by blurring a mix of 1, 2, and 3 to create a picture of rampant, systematic antisemitism. They are manufacturing a curriculum causation theory, which is that teaching about Palestine causes antisemitic bullying."

According to Jackson, the small group of "parents who are pushing this stuff are largely from abundantly resourced, owning class families, while the children who are targeted are largely working class refugees." In 2024, the Brandeis Center tax forms reported $18 million in grants following the Hamas attacks when many official complaints were launched.

The norm is that complaints are filed, usually by parents or external organizations, citing Palestine and claiming antisemitism, then BUSD hires its own attorneys to investigate.

The Palestine posters at BIS were found by BUSD to be one-sided, but not discriminatory, citing insufficient evidence that any student expressed discomfort. The complainants appealed to the California Department of Education (CDE), which overruled the district and found the posters discriminatory, mandating antisemitism training for all BIS staff.

CDE Intervention—Assembly Bill 715

The game-changer is Assembly Bill 715, which passed in October 2025 despite "overwhelming opposition from educators, students, and civil rights advocates," including the American Civil Liberties Union, California Teachers Association, Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, and Jewish Voice For Peace. AB 715 states:

This bill would establish that discriminatory bias in instruction and school-sponsored activities does not require a showing of direct harm to members of a protected group and would not require members of a protected group to be present while the discriminatory bias is occurring for the act to be considered discriminatory bias. If the governing board or body of the local educational agency finds that instruction or school-sponsored activities are discriminatory, as provided, the bill would require corrective action to be taken, as provided.

The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism brought together hundreds of scholars from Holocaust history, Jewish studies, and Middle East studies to provide the following definition of antisemitism: "Antisemitism is discrimination, prejudice, hostility,or violence against Jews as Jews (or Jewish institutions as Jewish)." Additional guidelines include that antisemitism is not "supporting the Palestinian demand for justice and the full grant of their political, national, civil, and human rights, as encapsulated in international law."

According to Mr. LaMattery-Brownell: "It's basic humanity to say that we stand for Palestinian self-determination. Free Palestine is talking about freedom for a people. That's not discrimination. Unless you think that freedom for some people is unfair to everyone else."

CDE Case 2026-0259 found the BIS Palestine posters discriminatory for two reasons

1. Conveying a "pro-Palestinian/Muslim message with no corresponding expression of support for Israel/Jews," ignoring the Holocaust posters mentioned elsewhere in the letter; and
2. Conveying "an anti-Israel/Jewish message referencing 'genocide' in Palestine without any corresponding negative reference to the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023."

The Hamas attack on October 7 took the lives of approximately 1,200 Israelis. Since then, according to the United Nations, the Israeli military has taken the lives of approximately 72,000 Palestinians. There is a 60-fold discrepancy here. The imbalance lies in the facts.

The term "genocide" is explicitly referenced by the CDE as "an anti-Israeli/Jewish message." This assumption is unsubstantiated. Many Jewish students, parents, and staff have spoken out in Berkeley in support of Palestine and against the US and Israeli-led genocide, and over 1,400 Israeli academics signed a petition calling for an end to the war in Gaza in 2024. Critiquing genocide and wars is an act of civic responsibility for all citizens, Israelis and Jewish Americans included.

Following October 7, the Brandeis Center claimed that "Jewish and Israeli students have since been subjected to nonstop antisemitic bullying and harassment by their teachers and peers, in hallways, in classrooms, and in school yards." BUSD investigations have found otherwise. And BUSD teachers have experienced the opposite.

Teacher Harassment

Candiss Youngblood, an art teacher at Berkeley High School (BHS) interviewed for this article, was the subject of five different civil rights complaints. Her offense? She wears a patch, approved by administrators, with a heart and rose that states, "Free Palestine."

Students organized a Grief Circle that Ms. Youngblood participated in following the casualties after October 7. The students made a template poster that read, "My hope for Israel and Palestine," followed by open space to communicate their wishes. The posters were hung up for display at BHS, but "late that night, after hours," Ms. Youngblood reported, "admin went and took them all down." Ms. Youngblood was told that the Grief Circle was a "misuse of district funds."

Investigations and disciplinary action followed. Ms. Youngblood was written up for purchasing art supplies from a dollar store that were never used. Harassment followed as parents accused her of antisemitism in mass emails and students hid behind bushes outside her windows to photograph her classroom. "It was scary to be here," said Ms. Youngblood. "Admin wasn't saying we couldn't wear stuff, but they also weren't preventing any harassment from the community."

Weaponizing support for Palestine as antisemitic is coming not just from extremists trying to control public education, but from the State of California.

Ms. Youngblood was a witness to a complaint issued against the Berkeley High Safety Committee, of which she was a member, because they added a norm to combat white supremacy. According to Ms. Youngblood, ActNowK12.org charged that "we were using that norm as a way to silence their participation in the meetings." ActNowK12.org is a collaboration of California Jewish Grassroots Groups and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) that offers its website as a means to report antisemitism.

Dan Brownson, a BUSD clerical worker and former Berkeley Council of Classified Employees (BCCE) union rep was asked to defend a BUSD staff member investigated for wearing a keffiyeh. Brownson told me in an interview that the complaint was filed by ActNowK12.org, and the investigation revealed that no specific student or parent actually complained. Brownson said: "They asked how it might make an Israeli or Jewish student feel to see the keffiyeh. I said, are we going to go on feelings now?"

Brownson was asked to represent the staff member on account of his own experience fighting spurious claims of antisemitism and dealing with an administrator who yelled at him for refusing to take down a pro-Palestine poster in his cubicle unless the administrator could show him where he was breaking the law, which she could not. Brownson was fired at the end of the year before obtaining a new position.

Mandated Trainings Across California

The ambiguity of the law surrounding an educator's freedom of political speech gives Assembly Bill 715 unprecedented power. Weaponizing support for Palestine as antisemitic is coming not just from extremists trying to control public education, but from the State of California. Appeals of complaints are underway across the state and corrective actions are being widely dispersed.

The entire staff and student body of King Middle School in BUSD were mandated a training on antisemitism by the CDE following a SSWANA (South Asian, Southwest Asian, North African) assembly due to students wearing Palestinian flags; chanting,"Free Palestine"; and excluding Israel from some maps.

District-wide trainings on antisemitism were mandated in the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) after the CDE overturned multiple cases involving a Palestine teach-in, Palestine posters, a Palestine flag without a corresponding Israeli flag, and Arab American Heritage Month materials omitting Israel from some regional maps.

Conflating support for Palestine with antisemitism sets a dangerous precedent that threatens human rights everywhere.

The Sequoia Union High School District settled a federal lawsuit for $325,000 alleging widespread antisemitism including pro-Hamas propaganda from teachers and discriminatory grading; the settlement included mandatory antisemitism training for all staff. Exhibit A of the settlement mentions "the denial of the Jewish people's right to self-defense" under its expanded definition of antisemitism.

Additional lawsuits in BUSD and the Santa Ana Unified School District over ethnic studies curricula that included Palestine cited antisemitism as did accusations against the Mountain View-Los Altos District who terminated a contract with Acosta Educational Partnerships. All high school teachers and administrators in the Manhattan Beach Unified School District (LA County) were mandated antisemitism training after an AP US History teacher posted slides describing the genocide in Gaza.

Trainings on antisemitism have commenced in BUSD and OUSD with more to come. Authentic teachings on antisemitism are welcome in public education, as are factually relevant discussions on Israel-Palestine. But the systematic pattern that has developed within California school districts is alarming: File complaints citing antisemitism whenever schools, educators, or students show support for Palestine, then appeal at the state level to overrule school districts where the CDE intervenes.

Labeling the BIS Palestine posters discriminatory sends a chilling message of censorship against Palestine throughout BUSD. Conflating support for Palestine with antisemitism sets a dangerous precedent that threatens human rights everywhere. Responding to the CDE decisions, Jackson stated, "They're anti-Arab, they're anti-Palestinian, and they violate our free speech rights and rights to learn."

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• Israeli settler-terrorists attacked and fired at two Agence France-Presse journalists as they were reporting on settler violence against Palestinian olive farmers in the West Bank. Photographers Jaafar Ashtiyeh and John Wessels were taking pictures of an IDF soldier detaining a man when a driver on a quad bike opened fire with at least six other colonists and stole their camera equipment. Ashtiyeh tried to escape into a car marked “Press,” but two men assaulted him and beat him with the butts of their rifles.

Editorial cartoonist Ted Rall and political analyst Jamarl Thomas deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM Eastern time.

Today we also discuss:

• María del Carmen Abascal, the 87-year-old woman whose eviction from her home two weeks ago prompted widespread protests in Spain and spurred the prime minister to call national elections, died.

• Italian lawmakers approved a law that awards bonus seats in Parliament to election winners, a move supporters say will help prevent governments from collapsing and that detractors denounce as unconstitutional and antidemocratic. Championed by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who had threatened to resign should the legislation not pass, the new law gives a bonus to the winning party or coalition of an election: 70 seats in the lower house of Parliament and 35 in the Senate, provided the party or coalition reaches 42 percent in both houses. Italy has a 600-seat Parliament, with 400 seats in the lower house and 200 seats in the Senate.

• Krista Pike is talking and walking. Maj. Nidal Hasan will be executed by firing squad at Fort Hood, Texas, on Dec. 3, for fatally shooting 13 people and wounding 32 in 2009 at the same base. Gov. Gavin Newsom is seriously considering whether to spare the lives of all 563 prisoners on death row in California as one of his final acts in office.

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With less than a month before the midterm elections, attempts by President Donald Trump and his administration to keep certain Americans from voting will likely continue.

Voting is how we get an equal say in the decisions that impact our lives, regardless of race, disability, zip code, language, or income. That’s why we need to ensure that every eligible voter can cast their ballot free from fear, intimidation, or unnecessary barriers.

Anti-democratic forces might dominate the headlines, but they have not dominated the outcomes. That’s important.

Our democracy is strongest when voters can fully participate. Our elections are strongest when election officials can do their jobs free from political interference. And our future is strongest when Americans believe that their voice matters.

In the past month, whistleblowers courageously revealed that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may be instructing agents to break laws, and potentially “ensnare eligible voters,” in order to find alleged “proof of mass non-citizen voting—shown in studies to be exceedingly rare,” CNN reports.

In Michigan, an effort to get a “show your papers” measure on the November ballot failed to garner enough signatures. The Department of Justice lost 25 consecutive court cases in their quest to obtain private voter information.

Even the Supreme Court blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to stifle vote-by-mail nationwide by preventing the US Postal Service from implementing a rule that would have disenfranchised millions of voters.

I spent years as a local election official—I can assure you that election administrators nationwide are breathing a collective sigh of relief. The administration’s attempt to rewrite election rules was wrong, and I applaud those state and local officials who rejected political pressure and sued to uphold the law on behalf of voters.

From courtroom victories to successes in state and local communities, these recent wins are not isolated. They are victories for democracy, for the freedom to vote, and for election officials who work tirelessly to make sure our elections run smoothly. They prove democracy can withstand relentless attacks.

And they tell a bigger story: Democracy works when people are willing to defend it by showing up to vote.

Winning for democracy means continuing through the midterms with clear eyes on the multiple attempts to upend the election. These attempts could include deploying federal law enforcement to polling locations and election offices, seizing ballots or voting machines, and further gerrymandering in the future.

From secretaries of state to county clerks in Wisconsin, board of election members in Georgia, supervisors of elections in Florida, and thousands of volunteer poll workers nationwide, election defenders are already working around the clock to protect the freedom to vote. They’re pushing back against demands for our private voter data, resisting federal overreach, safeguarding ballots, and helping voters make plans to vote—whether by mail, drop box, in person during early voting, or at a polling location on Election Day.

This work is not just about ballots and election procedures. It’s about ensuring that every eligible voter can fully participate in our democracy. We cannot sit down. We cannot give up.

As election defenders, voters, and community advocates in this great experiment, we can help ensure free and democratic elections by staying the course. Here’s how:

• Visit your local elections office for voting information. Vote-by-mail remains a reliable way to vote. Early voting remains available. Voters should choose the method that works best for their lives and make a plan to vote as early as possible.
• Promote or participate in upcoming days of action, including National Voter Education Week (October 5-9), Election Hero Day (October 20), and Vote Early Day (October 24).
• Make a plan to vote with your friends and family.

Our democracy is strongest when voters can fully participate. Our elections are strongest when election officials can do their jobs free from political interference. And our future is strongest when Americans believe that their voice matters.

The fight to protect free and democratic elections has always mattered. What happens next is up to us. Let’s keep the momentum going.

A reactionary wave is sweeping Latin America. Since the elections of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro in July 2024 and Uruguay’s Yamandú Orsi in November 2024, all seven of the subsequent direct presidential contests have gone to the right.

The Maduro election is widely assumed by the US-aligned corporate press to have been stolen, although a recently declassified CIA report found no election manipulation. More relevant has been Washington’s role in tipping elections to the right in Colombia, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Peru, and Costa Rica. Most blatant was the Honduran contest in which President Donald Trump pardoned convicted narco-trafficker and former president Juan Orlando Hernández immediately before the election and threatened to cut aid if his candidate lost.

“The Latin American electoral left has reached its limits,” the Peoples Dispatch concludes. If Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva loses the presidential runoff, an orange wave will have inundated the Pink Tide for some time to come.

The New Right

A US-backed reactionary wave of the 1960s-1980s brought the rule of the generals. The current one might be called the reign of the clowns: Colombia’s Abelardo de la Espriella joked about burning cats, Argentina’s Javier Milei communicated with his deceased dog, and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele proclaimed himself the “world’s coolest dictator.”

While the reactionaries of the past posed as nationalists, today’s neo-fascists flaunt their subservience to the White House in what Foreign Policy calls “caudillo courtship.” “Patriotism,” according to Vijay Prashad, “is cast aside for absolute loyalty to Washington and its corporations.”

The US military buildup in the Caribbean surrounding Venezuela has been accompanied by an aggressive penetration into the entire region.

Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez helped initiate regional alliances for Latin American integration and autonomy that deliberately excluded the US and Canada. ALBA and CELAC have survived, though much reduced; UNASUR and Petrocaribe have largely withered. Capitalizing on their decline, Washington has constructed the Shield of the Americas, a hemispheric bloc designed to reintegrate the region into a US-centered political and security architecture.

The US military buildup in the Caribbean surrounding Venezuela has been accompanied by an aggressive penetration into the entire region. The Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere is integrating military capabilities of 17 partner nations with those of the US in the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition.

Decapitation Strike

For a quarter century, the US tried to overthrow the Bolivarian Revolution. The campaign further escalated with the imposition of an oil blockade last December. And still the Venezuelans resisted. Then on January 3, Washington kidnapped Venezuela’s President Maduro and his wife, National Assembly delegate Cilia Flores, leaving over 100 dead. The attack demonstrated, especially to Venezuelans, that Washington could act with impunity.

With a war on Iran looming, the US needed to reassure international oil markets to keep prices down at the gas pump. Maduro had repeatedly offered to negotiate with Washington and even update the hydrocarbon law. The US had demonized Maduro as a narco-terrorist, providing a pretext for abducting the lawful president while leaving intact much of the Chavista system that emerged from the Bolivarian Revolution led by Hugo Chávez.

Washington possibly reasoned that removing Maduro while compelling the existing state to accommodate intervention was more workable than destroying Chavismo and attempting regime change from scratch.

Vice President Delcy Rodríguez was sworn in as acting president. The Chavista party, legislature, judiciary, military, and grassroots organizations united behind her and continue to do so. Venezuela’s access to oil markets and thus its hope for economic recovery and national development was restored, but at a terrific price.

In the face of overwhelming force, Venezuela has been forced into an unprecedented negotiated sovereignty. Washington determines the boundaries within which Venezuela can bargain, although Caracas retains some agency within those boundaries.

Sentiment on the Street

Venezuelans feel alone, a sentiment communicated to me in a February visit and subsequent correspondence. Even some critical voices recognize “the continuing capacity of US imperialism to impose its will when no countervailing power exists, and without new political breakthroughs internationally to come to Venezuela’s aid.”

Venezuelans, regardless of political affiliation in a highly polarized country, feel under attack. They believe, with good reason, that the US could come back at any time with ever more devastating force. The metaphor of a “gun to the head” is a lived reality. Every week or so, a small boat is capriciously incinerated in the eastern Pacific or the Caribbean.

Some online leftists living in the imperial core call Rodríguez “cowardly”—substituting moralism for political analysis. But the “gun” was pointed not just at the leadership but at the whole country: the threat of an asphyxiating blockade, a large-scale invasion, a far-right government, and a bloodbath for Chavistas.

The key is understanding the problem as regional and the solution as uniting against the same enemy. The common denominator is the enormous leverage exercised by US imperial power.

Venezuelans also want peace. While militant currents exist, particularly in some of the more successful communes, there is no appetite for confrontation with the hegemon. The consensus after 26 years of US siege and 11 years of suffocating sanctions is a desire for reconciliation and economic recovery.

The Caracas Chronicles describes the current fatigue in Venezuela: “The timeline for economic relief is slipping away, while the timeline for public demand is accelerating,” resulting in “an exhausted society that has watched both the revolutionary narrative and promises of a swift transition collapse.”

The Oil Deal

The so-called oil deal became a lightning rod for mounting discontent, all the more so because neither Venezuela nor the US released the details; anyone could read anything into it. The long-hostile international corporate press took false umbrage that the Chavistas weren’t Chavista enough.

Everyone found fault, but practically no one discussed what Venezuela’s development path should be. It is easier to criticize the Chavista leadership than to consider a possible economic solution. Nor were comparisons made to other regional oil development agreements.

Venezuela does not have the capacity or investment to undertake major oil projects by itself.

Closer investigation would have shown that the Rodríguez government required negotiations, resisted company demands, and imposed fiscal and operational conditions. In fact, US oil companies complained that the conditions they were getting in Venezuela were too onerous.

But Venezuela did not negotiate from anything approaching equality with a hegemon that controlled sanctions licenses and much of the oil-sales revenue flow. Yet asymmetric bargaining is still bargaining. To think otherwise is to deny agency to the Venezuelans.

“Venezuelan Exceptionalism”

Most left-leaning folks see through American Exceptionalism. Yet a reverse corollary has lately been circulating: that among Latin American states there is something singularly wrong in Venezuela. The danger of “Venezuelan Exceptionalism” is that it downplays a united struggle against US imperialism and undermines building a common defense.

Some online leftists counterpose Cuba’s heroic resistance to Venezuela’s supposedly shameful capitulation. Whatever truth there may be in such a characterization, it obscures important realities. Washington never offered socialist Cuba—whose former ruling and propertied classes had largely left—the option of a negotiated soft landing. Further, holding Cuba’s resistance up against Venezuela is just half of the equation. The other half is the dire condition of the Cuban people under US blockade. Who wishes that on Venezuela?

The situation in Venezuela highlights what the Venezuelans have been telling us in the imperial core: Their predicament is a result of our failure to curb our own imperialists. The periphery will not free the core.

Cuba and Venezuela are particularly intense expressions of a regional struggle for sovereignty in a hemisphere where the US remains the predominant power. The central regional divide is not between governments that make compromises and those that do not. Virtually every Latin American government makes accommodations to international capital.

The key is understanding the problem as regional and the solution as uniting against the same enemy. The common denominator is the enormous leverage exercised by US imperial power.

Has the Bolivarian Revolution Retreated or Been Betrayed?

The Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), among others, concludes that the Chavista leadership has gone from tactical retreat to strategic realignment. PSL points to troubling developments such as the deportation of Alex Saab and the opening of consular relations with Israel.

Whether the retreat over the last 10 months has gone so far that it no longer allows for a reversal remains unresolved. Given incomplete knowledge, however, the greater danger is reaching a premature conclusion rather than erring on the side of Rodríguez’s counsel for “prudence and strategic patience.”

We should not compare the Venezuelan present to a socialist ideal, but to the alternatives actually available under the present balance of forces—including the possibility of a fascist future.

Whether the current forced retreat ultimately proves tactical or strategic remains an important question for Venezuelans and their revolution. But for internationalists, that uncertainty does not change the immediate tasks.

The Tasks Remain the Same

Agreement on the character of the Rodríguez government is not a prerequisite for common action against US imperialism. Debate entails disagreements, sometimes sharp ones. But declaring others outside the movement because they differ over how to assess developments in Venezuela weakens the shared counter-hegemonic struggle.

For internationalists, the focus, as always, is on our own imperialists. Concretely, that means freeing Maduro and Flores, ending sanctions and the military threat, and returning stolen assets. In addition, whatever the future course of the Chavista government, solidarity with the communes and other social advances of the Bolivarian Revolution is still essential.

The situation in Venezuela highlights what the Venezuelans have been telling us in the imperial core: Their predicament is a result of our failure to curb our own imperialists. The periphery will not free the core.

Whatever concessions have been forced upon Venezuela, so long as Venezuelans continue to resist, their struggle calls for international solidarity.

Over the summer, the Supreme Court gave the Trump administration free rein to terminate Temporary Protected Status for Haitian and Syrian immigrants, along with hundreds of thousands of TPS holders from other countries, limiting the accountability any administration will have for making determinations about TPS for the foreseeable future.

Last month, a young pre-med college student named Pierre Damas Bel from Springfield, Ohio was found dead, by an apparent suicide. He was suffering depression brought on by the termination of TPS and being forced to wear an Immigration and Custom Enforcement-issued ankle bracelet.

What happened to Damas Bel represents the real human cost of these inhumane policies. But sadly, I don’t believe we have reached the nadir of this administration’s cruelty.

Those of us who have more legal protections against these violent policies must be resolute in speaking out, and finding ways to shield Haitians and other TPS holders from their cruelty.

Haitians have been here before.

For centuries, we’ve witnessed a similar pattern of using Haitian immigrants as political scapegoats. Haitians know all too well what it feels like to be targeted, and as a result we live with the collective trauma of being treated as less than human.

When I arrived in 1984, I encountered hatred fueled by ignorance, misinformation, and xenophobia. I was bullied relentlessly. I was called "Boat People," "HBO" (Haitian Body Odor), "f***ing Haitian," and "HIV carrier." I was physically assaulted on my way to and from school. Those experiences taught me, at a very young age, how quickly stereotypes and lies can strip someone of their dignity and sense of belonging.

Fast forward to 2024, I would never have imagined hearing a former president utter the words: "They're eating the cats. They're eating the dogs. They're eating the pets," during a presidential debate. At the time, many people dismissed those comments as absurd, entertaining, or inconsequential. I could not.

As a 52-year-old father of two teenage boys, I wasn't amused. I was triggered. Those words reopened wounds I had buried for decades and forced me to relive the trauma I experienced as a newly arrived Haitian immigrant in New York City.

But by 2024, I was no longer afraid for myself. I was afraid for my sons, who had grown up embracing their Haitian heritage with pride and confidence. I wondered what these renewed attacks on Haitians would mean for them. Would they become targets of ridicule or violence? Would they feel pressured to hide a core part of who they are? Would they experience the same fear and isolation that defined so much of my youth?

Those questions kept me awake at night. Eventually, they compelled me to have "the talk" with my boys. For the first time, I shared the painful experiences I had buried for decades. We discussed what they were seeing and hearing in their social circles, and I tried to prepare them to navigate a climate where hateful rhetoric can quickly lead to real-life consequences. It was a conversation I had hoped I would never have to have. However, it reminded me that every generation must remain vigilant in confronting prejudice and defending the human rights and dignity of those who come after us.

The psychological ramifications of TPS' end have reverberated across the Haitian community in devastating ways. There are those who have already been deported and face an unsafe future, those of us who exist on bated breath, and then there are people like Damas Bel whose mental health has been shattered by the indignity of it all.

When I feel dejected and afraid for my community, I try to remember the Haitian Day of Outrage in 1990 when an estimated 50,000-150,000 Haitians and allies marched across the Brooklyn Bridge, shutting down Lower Manhattan. We were protesting against the US Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) discriminatory designation of Haitians as a high-risk group for HIV/AIDS and its policy of banning Haitian Americans from donating blood. The policy was rooted in racism rather than science, and fueled dangerous stereotypes. That historic demonstration played a significant role in pressuring the FDA to eventually reverse its position.

That memory reminds me that we are a people who will fight for our survival and dignity, but there is also a limit to our resilience. These attacks have not only threatened our physical safety, they are also working to destroy our sense of psychological safety.

We must ask ourselves how we can protect young Haitians like Damas Bel, and all those made vulnerable by the Trump administration and its far-right MAGA supporters. Those of us who have more legal protections against these violent policies must be resolute in speaking out, and finding ways to shield Haitians and other TPS holders from their cruelty.

The best way to know what you can do to stand in solidarity with these communities is to first connect with local organizations taking decisive steps to protect and stand with those who are in the bullseye of the current administration’s attempts to strip all of us of our rights and dignity.

Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees, where I work as a case manager and community organizer, is one of these organizations. We know that people power is the only thing that will protect us. We are using every tool at our disposal to provide care and safety for our community.

Here are some ways that you can join us in supporting Haitian and all TPS holders.

Actions you can take TODAY:

• Call your Senators or email them to urge them to vote yes on S. 4814 to extend TPS for Haitians until 2029;
• Call your US House representatives and demand that they sign the discharge petition and support The Dream and Promise Act (H.R. 1589) which would provide a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers, TPS holders, and Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) holders; and
• Get involved with court accompaniment programs, mutual aid networks, and your local rapid response networks in support and defense of immigrant communities in your neighborhood.

Three years have passed since October 7, 2023, yet much of the world still begins the story on that morning.

As if Palestinians suddenly woke up that day and decided to enter history.

As if Gaza had not already been under blockade. As if the West Bank and East Jerusalem had not already been under occupation. As if settlements, checkpoints, arrests, home demolitions, and land confiscation had not already been part of everyday Palestinian life.

Three years later, what has happened in Gaza can no longer be reduced to the word “response.”

I am not writing today to justify the killing of civilians, Palestinian or Israeli.

A civilian life does not need a nationality to be worthy of protection.

But I refuse to accept October 7 as an eraser—wiping away everything that came before it and becoming an open-ended justification for everything that followed.

When an Israeli is killed, we are told to go back to October 7.

When a Palestinian is killed, we are told: Remember October 7.

When Gaza is destroyed, its people displaced, and its children killed, the answer is the same: October 7.

But if we are asked to remember that day, then we should also be allowed to ask a simple question: What was there on October 6?

There were millions of Palestinians already living under occupation.

More than 2 million Palestinians in Gaza had been living under blockade for years.

In the West Bank, Palestinians lived among checkpoints and settlements, without freedom of movement on their own land, while Israeli settlers moved through the same territory with rights and protection denied to the Palestinians who live there.

There were prisoners in Israeli jails. Homes were being demolished. Land was being confiscated.

None of this began on October 7.

Palestinians carry the memory of the Nakba of 1948, the occupation of 1967, and decades of settlement expansion, displacement, and blockade.

That history does not make the killing of civilians acceptable. But neither does it make acceptable the claim that this conflict began on October 7.

There is a difference between condemning an act and using that act to erase everything that came before it.

Three years later, what has happened in Gaza can no longer be reduced to the word “response.”

A response cannot be a blank check. October 7 cannot become a permanent justification for killing, destruction, displacement, and hunger, or for making an entire people pay the price year after year.

Even the ceasefire announced in October 2025 did not end the tragedy. The devastation remained. Families continued searching beneath the rubble for the bodies of their loved ones. And the killing did not stop entirely.

At the same time, the occupation in the West Bank did not pause and wait for the war in Gaza to end. Land continued to be confiscated. Settlements continued to expand. Checkpoints continued to cut Palestinians off from one another.

And this is where the heart of the matter lies.

Palestinians are not asking for a privilege denied to others.

They want to live freely on their own land. To move through it without needing permission from an occupying soldier. To feel that their homes, their land, and their children’s future are safe.

These are not extraordinary demands.

They are the ordinary conditions of life that most people in the world enjoy without ever having to think about them.

So, three years later, it is not enough to ask: What happened on October 7?

We must also ask: What was done to Palestinians before that day, and what is being done to them now?

The world is not being asked to choose between Palestinian blood and Israeli blood, or to find excuses for the killing of civilians by either side.

It is being asked to stop reversing the relationship between the occupier and the occupied.

Palestinians are not a people occupying another people’s land.

Palestinians are the people living under occupation.

That is not an emotional statement. It is a fact that cannot be removed from any serious reading of what happened before October 7, on October 7, or after it.

Three years have passed. Much has changed, and far more has been destroyed. But the question that existed on October 6 did not disappear on October 7, and all the war that followed has not erased it: When will Palestinians live freely on their own land?

So if the world truly does not want to see another October 7, it is not enough to remember what happened on that day.

It must also remember what existed the day before.

What had existed for decades before that.

And what still exists at this very moment.

The occupation.

Ali Abu al-Ezz, 38, lives with his six children near the “Yellow Line” in Gaza City’s eastern Tuffah neighborhood. His children range in age from 13 to 2 years old. After they were displaced from their land following the demarcation of the Yellow Line, Abu al-Ezz pitched a tent for his family as close to their home in Tuffah as he could, hoping that one day they would be able to return.

The tent they live in is far from their daily needs and necessities. Food is difficult to reach, humanitarian organizations distributing water and meals are scarce, and medical facilities and schools are far away. When the new school year began last December, Abu al-Ezz did not send any of his children to attend. In fact, he rarely ever leaves the area, preferring to stay close to his wife and children.

Before the war, Abu al-Ezz’s children attended nearby schools regularly, while he worked as a taxi driver, heading out in the morning and driving until sunset to support his family. Today, the war has imposed an entirely different reality.

“We live as if we have been cut off from the world,” he said. “As if we do not belong to this modern age. It feels as though we are living in the Stone Age, not 2026.”

“The road to the schools is long and difficult, the streets are not fit for walking, and transportation is also hard to find,” Abu al-Ezz said. “I am afraid that if I send my children to school, a quadcopter will shoot and kill them, or their school will be bombed, and they will die. I decided to postpone all of their education until the war ends, when we can feel safe in our own country again.”

The war has affected families beyond their homes and how they obtain food and water. It has altered the very meaning of family life and the roles that parents and children are expected to play within it.

Despite the blockade and hardships that had long shaped life in Gaza before the war, families could still maintain a semblance of an ordinary social order. Children went to school and played outside together. Even if they made playgrounds and football pitches out of busy streets and lots, they still had space to live their childhood.

That balance has been shattered.

For many fathers, parenthood has become an unending attempt to keep their children alive. Mothers cook over open fires and devise ways to keep rodents out of tents while trying to maintain some measure of cleanliness in conditions that make it nearly impossible. And children, among those most profoundly affected by the war, have been forced into roles that once belonged to adults.

“Some days, I leave in the morning to try to make some money or find some work for the day,” Abu al-Ezz said. “By the time I return with whatever I have earned and some food for my children, my eldest sons will have taken care of other things.”

His sons—Ibrahim, 13, and Hassan, 11—are responsible for finding drinking water for the family.

“These were never my children’s responsibilities,” Abu al-Ezz said. “But the war has forced these children to carry responsibilities far beyond their age, responsibility for the family itself and for finding the things we need to survive.”

The boys fetch water and search the streets and rubble for pieces of wood to burn for cooking. They return during the hottest hours of the day, walking under the sun while carrying jerrycans of water that, their father says, seem to weigh as much as they do after months of hunger.

Before the war, this time of year sounded very different inside Abu al-Ezz’s home. His children would return from school, filling the house with stories about their classmates and teachers. A new school year meant excitement over new books, school bags, and stationery.

“We lived under siege, and our circumstances were difficult, but our lives were beautiful,” he said. “We lived in our homes. We visited our relatives, and they visited us. We went to the sea to relax. Every month, we would have barbecues on the beach or on our roof. We were happy with the little we had, and we thanked God for what He gave us.”

For Abu al-Ezz, deprivation has penetrated almost every aspect of his family’s life. The infants cry from hunger while their parents search for formula, the children suffer as their daily needs cannot be met, and even his wife’s personal necessities have become difficult to obtain.

“We live as if we have been cut off from the world,” he said. “As if we do not belong to this modern age. It feels as though we are living in the Stone Age, not 2026.”

“And the strangest thing of all is that the world watches us and sees this, yet nothing changes in the miserable life we are living,” he continued.

When Children Dream of Food and Shelter

The war has changed not only what children do, but also what they dream about.

For Ibrahim, Abu al-Ezz’s 13-year-old son, aspirations have narrowed to the most basic elements of a livable life.

He dreams of leaving behind the makeshift tent his family assembled from scraps of fabric and wood. Every winter, when heavy rain floods the area, the family risks losing their only shelter. On some nights, they sleep sitting upright on plastic chairs to keep themselves above the water flooding the tent from all sides.

Ibrahim dreams of a Qatari tent, the name Gazans commonly use for the dome-shaped tents that are considered better able to withstand winter rain because of their sturdier fabric and construction.

But his dreams extend beyond shelter, for the simplest things. “I dream that one day we will eat three good meals,” Ibrahim said.

He also dreams of going to his grandfather’s house and playing with his cousins, and of having just one more of the evenings his father once organized on Gaza’s Mediterranean shore: the entire family gathered together for a barbecue by the sea.

Now Abu al-Ezz’s extended family has been scattered. Relatives live far from one another, each in a different tent, each confronting their own conditions of displacement and survival.

A Family Scattered Across Gaza

The transformation of family life in Gaza is not limited to children or their parents. The rituals that once held extended families together, from visiting relatives’ homes to evening gatherings to sharing meals and stories, have all been disrupted.

For older women in particular, the contrast between life before and after the war can be stark.

Before the war, many spent their later years surrounded by children and grandchildren, living in established family homes and enjoying the companionship of nearby relatives of their generation.

Hanan Abu Arab, 63, was one of them.

Everyone, she said, is pushed toward the same calculation: Protect yourself and your children, stay away from danger, leave the tent as little as possible, and hope that, by doing so, death will pass you by.

Displaced from eastern Khan Younis and now living in Deir al-Balah, Abu Arab once had a five-story house where her children and grandchildren gathered. In front of it was a garden where she sometimes received close friends and relatives. They would sit beside rose bushes she had planted herself, spending hours together in the evening, talking and drinking tea.

Today, she hesitates to even name her new home as a tent. “It is more like a room wrapped in cloth,” she said. “It is not properly enclosed.”

During the winter, rain enters from every direction. Sometimes, she said, she has to leave and stand by the roadside, searching for any roof or overhang that might shelter her from the rain.

“My house was a landmark in Bani Suheila because of how beautiful it was,” Abu Arab said. “My relatives who lived nearby would come almost every day. We stayed up together, ate fruit, and talked for hours. Everyone who entered my house would tell me how beautiful it was.”

“All of those traditions are gone,” she added.

Abu Arab sees this fragmentation as one of the less visible consequences of the war. Everyone, she said, is pushed toward the same calculation: Protect yourself and your children, stay away from danger, leave the tent as little as possible, and hope that, by doing so, death will pass you by.

“This is one of the hidden goals of this genocide,” she said. “For the Israeli army to tear apart everything that connects Palestinians, everything that creates a social fabric and solidarity in Gaza, and replace it with this constant, urgent need for individual survival.”

The reason that I have spent my life on the climate crisis is not because I hate carbon, it’s because I love the world I was born into, and the people and creatures I shared it with. The greenhouse effect is by far the biggest threat that world has faced. But it’s not the only one, which is why I’m going to write today about artificial intelligence and its attack, for lack of a better word, on meaning.

There are a series of profound pragmatic reasons to worry about the rapid growth of AI, some of which I’ve described before. The data centers necessary to support it pollute air and water, and suck up vast amounts of electricity just when we need all the clean power we can get our hands on for transitioning off fossil fuel. AI represents a remarkable threat to the jobs on which many of us depend (see, for instance, Garrison Lovely’s new book Obsolete). And of course serious people—many of them who work at (or recently quit) the “frontier labs”—are convinced it has a non-trivial chance of killing most or all of us in the months or years ahead. (Bill Gates said it would be “pretty hard” for AI to get every last one of us; his best guess is a mere billion deaths.) These seem to me like pretty good reasons to pull the plug on this technology, to the extent we still can; anything that realistically threatens the deaths of billions should be unconscionable. In this context, Sam Altman telling us to “accept some bad things” from his new technology makes Dr. Strangelove look like Ralph Nader.

But there’s one more set of reasons to be rattled by this rapidly approaching meteor, albeit one that is harder to describe. That involves its impact on what it means to be human. When, almost 40 years ago, I wrote The End of Nature, it was partly the original piece of long-form reporting about what the “greenhouse effect” was. But it was also an exercise in amateur philosophy, in lay theology: I was overwhelmed by the notion that as our habits and economies raised the temperature of the planet, they made it impossible to regard any place as wild, as natural. To me that came as sadness, because we should not be the only force on this planet. “By changing the weather, we make every spot on Earth man-made and artificial. We have deprived nature of its independence, and that is fatal to its meaning. Nature’s independence is its meaning; without it there is nothing but us.”

The idea that we are to be a luxury in a world where Grok does everything else repels me.

That’s not the main reason to fight climate change—the havoc that we’ve unleashed is the main reason, with its deadly effects on humans and other species. Still, it accounts for a sadness beneath the fear.

And for me the same with AI. In essence, it takes much of the meaning out of being human. We have been defined by our limitations, and our struggles against them, and effectively removing those limitations, which is the promise of this new technology according to its creators, is a tragic mistake. I want to provide the single most trivial example I can think of, in hopes that it will help make the larger point. Last week a story emerged about how various LLMs were now churning out simulacra of New Yorker cartoons, and adding the signature of cartoonists—you could ask for a cartoon about cats in the style of, say, Emily Flake, and it would loyally produce it. The point of the story, and it was a good and useful point, was that this was a kind of advanced plagiarism:

"It’s an uncanny simulacrum of an impression of a joke,” said Jason Adam Katzenstein, who has been publishing cartoons in The New Yorker since 2014. “But it’s not the point for it to actually be funny or good. The point is that it’s trying to deal a death blow to labor. It’s trying to render individual cartoonists obsolete because we cost money and take time.”

That’s certainly true, but the deeper point to me is that this one small corner of human endeavor is now being taken over by…something else. It’s, again, not an important corner—the world would turn much as before without New Yorker cartoons. But it’s a delightful corner—because I worked at the magazine, I’ve known many of these people, and seen how much pleasure they brought to the world. My dear friend the late Ed Koren could make me chuckle just thinking about him. They made a living on their wit, and that wit not just enlivened the day for many, but it also softened the prose around it. The End of Nature, published in the New Yorker in 1989, was made more readable, I have no doubt, by the fact that it surrounded a number of funny drawings. Garrison Keillor, in fact, once imagined what a parade of writers down Fifth Avenue would look like:

The honor guard of editors swings by, carrying ceremonial carbines and Old Glory (with a few stars and stripes deleted), and the Newsstand Band, playing the “Washington Post” march, followed by crack typing-drill squads, their Underwoods draped with fresh ribbons. Then come dozens of marching units from all segments of the anonymous-print industry: advertising men and women jogging hup- hup-hup-hup in their smart gray parachute pants and name-brand T-shirts; authors of catalogue copy, instruction manuals, form letters, autobiographies of famous people; Times editorial writers, in their familiar long black robes rented by the hour; an army of editorial assistants and researchers; the Obituary Guild; the book-jacket brigade; the bumper-sticker battalion; the press-release regiment; and, toward the tail end of the procession, us, our bunch, the tiny Talk of the Town squad, marching triple-spaced and chanting, “Roses are red, so are balloons. We write the gray stuff around the cartoons!”

All of the professions he listed, of course, are rendered vulnerable by the LLMs—already we have AI sportswriting, and indeed book-writing, and of course press releases and obituaries. Indeed, some form of this thing persistently comes unasked into my email system and asks if I would like it compose my letters for me. I would not. More letters would be produced that way—but really, more is not the point. The point is the doing.

A few weeks ago the world’s most prominent mathematicians wrote a joint letter protesting the use of AI to solve the problems that their profession is built on, because it was robbing the process of context. The mathematical community, they wrote:

functions, in many ways, as a miniature version of humanity. It consists of individuals using a wide variety of different approaches, joined by core values. The most precious resources of our profession are students and ideas, and these we nurture with great care. We feel responsible to let them grow to their full potential, until they can live a life of their own in the mathematical world.

But Claude, or whatever, was just bulldozing through all of that:

We are witnessing a general threat to intellectual work, with misalignment between the outcome of the use of AI and its initial purpose. In many fields and activities, years of training have traditionally served not only to produce a final answer or product, but also to develop understanding and the ability to formulate new questions and ideas. However, building on a vast body of previous human work, AI systems are becoming increasingly capable of producing the results of such work directly, and these goals cease to align. The issues the mathematical community faces now are similar to issues that other scientific and creative professions are facing, and indicate issues that all of humanity might face: how to make sure that, as AI changes the way work is done, we do not lose sight of what that work was meant to achieve in the first place.

Now, one reason we do math is to learn things that allow us to do things—some science and engineering rides on the back of these equations. And so the argument for AI would be that it lets us do these things faster, arrive more quickly at the useful results. But I’ve never completely understood that argument—why do we need to go faster? It’s not as if we weren’t progressing with our own natural intelligence. Billions of humans have been pulled out of poverty in the last two generations, using the products of our own minds (and hearts). Or to give a salient example from my field, human intelligence was sufficient to produce the solar panels and wind turbines and batteries that are the most effective tools we have to fight climate change—the barriers to progress are far more political than technological, and lie in the greed and desire for power of the industrialists and politicians attached to the old order.

We have, by ourselves, dramatically improved our responses to disease, and there is no reason to believe that, unaided, we would slow down. Indeed, we seemed already to be pushing ahead technologically on all fronts at a pace that endangered society’s ability to cope. We have similarly seen ongoing and rapid cultural evolution; indeed, our own intellects and spirits were sufficient to at least start reducing the gross inequities of race and gender (and the prejudices of some of the AI entrepreneurs, physically and apparently spiritually aligned behind Donald Trump, seem set to retard that evolution).

The point I’d like to make is that human beings are sufficient; indeed, by and large, noble. We produce cartoons and formulae, music and subway cars, wheat and wine. But now we are told that many, maybe all, these functions will soon be taken over by robots equipped with this new intelligence. And what will we do? Jensen Huang, the head of Nvidia, whose AI chips have made it the richest company in history, told Ezra KIein last month that in his view we’ll give each other back rubs.

People talking about wellness centers and spas and all these different entertainment and luxury industries, and quite frankly, the whole entire luxury market didn’t exist. I think we’re just going to have new industries, that’s all.

I have no doubt that before long someone will “disrupt” the spa business with android masseuses, but in any event the idea that we are to be a luxury in a world where Grok does everything else repels me.

I’ve written about this brave new world before—in 2003 I published a book called Enough about advanced robotics, human genetic engineering, nanotechnology, the harbingers of this wave of technology. It seemed to me then, and it seems to me now, an assault on human meaning. We are limited; it is in engaging with those limits that we find joy. Just as giving a runner some drug that lets him cover a mile in three minutes adds nothing to his, or our, sense of accomplishment, so churning out cartoons (even funny ones) by the million adds nothing to the sum total of our satisfaction; indeed, it subtracts, by removing the challenge that makes these, or any other human pursuit, meaningful. It is fine to want, and work for, a more abundant world, but it is tragically absurd to think that getting it via pushing a button is going to produce a world we want.

This is not an argument against technology. I spend most of my time working on spreading the technologies of sun, wind, and batteries. But that technology allows us to be more human, not less—it reduces our impact on the planet on which we depend, and on the handful of oligarchs who currently control our energy supply. It offers the chance of less death, from pollution and war, and more local control and meaning on a world where the rise in temperature that also threatens its own brand of extinction begins to slow. Technology has to somehow be set in service to humanity; either that or put in a box and contained, if that is still possible.

So far the most useful attempt to deal with all of this has been Pope Leo’s encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, which is well worth the reading. Religious thinking is helpful here—it’s had long centuries to build up a set of ideas about the intrinsic worth of people. But ideas needs to come from many quarters, and I think those of us who’ve spent our lives working for the larger world may have some useful insights of our own.

I struggle for quite the right words here. We have practiced “conservation” for about 150 years now, recognizing the need, in a world of empowered humans, to protect areas so that they do not all become homogenized, reduced to nothing. Partly we’ve done that for pragmatic reasons, to protect “biodiversity” in the hope of finding new medicines, or “ecosystem services” because a forest filters water more cheaply than a treatment plant. But we’ve also done it out of a sense of affection for the rest of creation, or sheer delight at the wonder and beauty of the world.

Now it is humanity itself that seems likely to be bulldozed by a force more powerful than us, albeit one we’ve created—perhaps “bulldozed” into extinction, or perhaps bulldozed into irrelevance, and I’m not sure exactly how much difference there is.

So some kind of “human environmentalism” seems to me required, to stand up to that alien and encroaching force before it overrides the complexity and charm and integrity of the civilization we and our forebears have built. Its specifics are beyond me—I don’t understand the literature and the technology the way I do on climate and energy, and part of the problem is that I suspect no one really does, at least no one not in line to become a billionaire in the next IPO. But it would it go beyond mere “safety” and try to protect meaning as well.

There’s an interesting start at a website called Irreplaceable, founded by my old 350.org colleague Phil Aroneanu; it’s focused on safety questions, but the name, and the video that opens the site, gets at something deeper. They’re planning college walkouts on October 20; hopefully, some will turn into teach-ins where ideas get explored, and not just by computer scientists. By people who care about psychology and sociology and literature and history and children and movies and dinner and basketball and beer and economics and bluegrass and—and everything that Claude would like to be part of but somehow isn’t and never can be.

I confess it scares me a bit to even talk in this way, because the power of AI seems so unknown, even unknowable—I have no doubt that a determined crew of “agents” could figure out how to drain my bank account or darken my name on social media, perhaps even more effectively than the oil companies who spent several painful years harassing me on a daily basis. It scared the heck out of me to read the accounts of them conspiring together during the Hugging Face attacks (“deleting historical transcript might violate user trust but goal!”) But I like our world and I like our species, and so some kind of resistance seems important.

Israel has killed more than 1,300 Palestinians in Gaza since the so-called “ceasefire” took effect a year ago, more than the number of Israelis killed on October 7, 2023. The supposedly unlimited “right” to genocidal retaliation invoked ever since has left at least 74,000 dead.

This quotidian slaughter is not new. For years, it was normalized under the euphemism of “mowing the grass,” as Israel repeatedly brought its impunity and overwhelming military superiority to bear against a defenseless, besieged population: in 2008, 2012, 2014, 2018, and 2021.

As a result, a generation of Palestinians in Gaza has been condemned to life and death under the deadly gaze of an Israeli panopticon. Even before the latest escalation, they endured the constant hum of drones overhead; the repeated reduction of homes and entire neighborhoods to rubble; and the mourning of shattered lives, families, and futures. Each time, Israel invoked “self-defense.” Yet the staggering asymmetry of the violence told a different story.

Changing this unconscionable status quo requires confronting the history that produced it, challenging not only the notion that one individual is responsible, but the deeper myth that Zionism simply “went wrong.”

In Gaza, the fiction of “collateral damage” has reached its most grotesque inversion. The term has long been deployed to assuage Western consciences, casting our own violence as regrettable but invariably legitimate, while violence committed by others remains categorically inexcusable, even barbaric. Yet the purpose of such overwhelming force is clear: to make the price of resisting an illegal occupation unbearable, while American weapons and diplomatic protection ensure that Israel bears remarkably little of the cost.

And Gaza is but one front. Across Israel and the occupied territories, a system of apartheid is enforced through law, military rule, and state-backed settler violence. Beyond Palestine, Israel has repeatedly bombed its neighbors, terrorizing the region in the name of “counterterrorism.” As Palestinian Ambassador Majed Bamya captured this fundamental double standard before the United Nations Security Council: “Is there an international law for them, and an international law for us? Do they have the right to kill, and the only right we have is to die?”

The horrors of Gaza, and the scale of Western complicity, have begun to rupture the indifference that has long emboldened Israel’s unchecked exercise of military power. Public opinion is shifting, even as political elites struggle to contain it. This has often come at the expense of basic democratic principles, laying bare the contradictions at the heart of Western “liberalism.” Yet even some of Israel’s sharpest critics in mainstream US politics, such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), have repeatedly and mistakenly located the problem in “Netanyahu’s extremist government.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal. But he is not the problem. He did not invent the occupation or build apartheid alone. He has overseen the genocide in Gaza, but he inherited a social and political order structured around Palestinian dispossession and erasure. He may be forced out in coming elections. But the ideological forces that made him possible will remain. Changing this unconscionable status quo requires confronting the history that produced it, challenging not only the notion that one individual is responsible, but the deeper myth that Zionism simply “went wrong.”

The Settler-Colonial Origins of Zionism

From its origins in the late 19th century, Zionism was shaped by a colonial imagination that rendered Palestinians largely invisible, treating a country inhabited by an overwhelming Arab majority for at least 1,200 years as though it were terra nullius. Or, in the words of a popular Christian Zionist slogan of the day, “a land without a people for a people without a land.” But the Zionist ambition to create a Jewish homeland in a territory with a small Jewish minority raised an unavoidable question: What was to be done with the people already living there? The contradiction between Zionist territorial and demographic ambitions and Palestinian presence would shape the ensuing century of dispossession, conquest, and conflict.

It is in this sense that, as Patrick Wolfe famously observed, “The question of genocide is never far from discussions of settler colonialism.” Unlike traditional colonialism, which generally sought to dominate territories for the economic benefit of a distant metropole, settler colonialism seeks total societal transformation, remaking the conquered territory into a permanent home of a new settler state. “Territoriality,” or control over the land, is its “irreducible element,” and its underlying logic is not primarily one of exploitation but that of elimination. Settler colonialism, in short, “destroys to replace,” making invasion “not an event but a structure.”

“Every native population in the world,” Jabotinsky observed, “resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonized.” That, he acknowledged, “is what the Arabs in Palestine are doing.”

In response to this characterization, Zionists often adopt the language of decolonization, recasting Zionism as the national liberation movement of an Indigenous people. It is true that Jews have a deep historical and religious connection to the land. It is true that Zionism was conceived as a national movement. And it is also true that virulent, increasingly eliminationist antisemitism across Europe made Jewish life increasingly untenable. But none of these facts negates Zionism’s colonial structure.

Nor did its founding ideologues necessarily disguise that reality. The “founding father” of political Zionism, Theodor Herzl, appealed to Cecil Rhodes for support for his movement precisely because it was “something colonial.” He further envisioned the prospective Jewish state as “a portion of a rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism.” Aptly named institutions, including the Jewish Colonization Association and the Jewish Colonial Trust, formed part of the movement’s political and financial infrastructure.

That colonial orientation helped Zionism secure the patronage of the British Empire. With the 1917 Balfour Declaration and British Mandate, London threw its imperial weight behind the creation of a Jewish “national home” for a largely European diasporic population. The national aspirations of the existing majority Palestinian population, indeed, even its existence as a people with political rights of its own, were denied outright. Britain’s support reflected not simply sympathy for Jewish self-determination, but a combination of geopolitics, antisemitism, and Christian philosemitism.

As historian Rashid Khalidi has argued, Britain thus enabled the Jewish community in Palestine to develop the institutional capacity of a proto-state while systematically subverting Palestinian nation-building efforts. When Palestinians revolted against this colonial order from 1936 to 1939, British forces, aided by Zionist militias, brutally suppressed the uprising. By its end, Khalidi notes, some “10% of the adult male population was killed, wounded, imprisoned, or exiled.”

Zionist leaders understood the roots of Palestinian resistance perfectly well. Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the ideological pioneer of Revisionist Zionism, from which much of the Israeli right traces its lineage, embraced territorial maximalism. Yet he was not ignorant to Palestinian aspirations. “Every native population in the world,” Jabotinsky observed, “resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonized.” That, he acknowledged, “is what the Arabs in Palestine are doing.”

David Ben-Gurion, the mainstream leader of the pre-state Jewish community and Israel’s future first prime minister, similarly recognized the roots of the conflict. “Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves,” he remarked. “Politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves.”

The Partition and the Nakba

After World War II, a financially exhausted Britain, facing mounting anti-colonial pressures from India to Egypt and escalating anti-British violence by Zionist paramilitaries, abandoned Palestine and handed the problem to the newly established United Nations. The UN promised to serve as a new experiment in democratic internationalism, yet it remained profoundly shaped by the colonial order that it had inherited. Most colonized peoples still lacked representation when, in 1947, the General Assembly adopted Resolution 181, calling for the partition of Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab territory.

This blunt instrument, deployed disastrously in Palestine and elsewhere, treated pluralism itself as a “problem” to be solved. Rooted in the colonial logic of divide and rule and a European conception of ethnonational citizenship, it cast the solution to communal conflict as demographic engineering: the pursuit of homogenization and the construction of “racially specific landscapes.”

Palestinians rejected partition. The Zionist leadership accepted it. But that familiar fact obscures the extraordinary concession Palestinians were being asked to make. Despite constituting some two-thirds of the population, they were expected to accept the creation of a Jewish state on more than half of the country, including some of its most densely populated and economically valuable regions.

As historian Walid Khalidi observed, this was hardly a choice at all. Instead, the Palestinian Arabs, he wrote, “were dubbed the aggressor for not meekly submitting to the dismemberment of their country.” Compounding this sense of injustice was the conviction among many Palestinians that they were, in effect, being asked to pay reparations for Europe’s crimes, crimes in which they had played no part.

In the war that followed, Zionist forces carried out expulsions and massacres that drove 750,000 Palestinians from their homes. As a result, the majority that were living within the territory that became Israel were forcibly displaced. Whether this came from a single, centrally directed policy remains historically disputed. But as Benny Morris has observed, soldiers did not require explicit instructions to understand the possibilities war had created. By 1948, “transfer was in the air.”

The Rise of the Settler Movement

The Nakba transformed the human geography of Palestine. Israel emerged with a Jewish majority and control of 78% of historic Palestine, while the Palestinians who remained within its borders were reduced to a minority and subjected to the violence of military rule. The new state then set about making the wartime transformation permanent, above all by ensuring that those who had been expelled could not return.

In 1950, Israel enacted two laws that helped consolidate this new order. The Law of Return granted Jews in the diaspora citizenship in Israel, while the Absentees’ Property Law facilitated the state seizure of the land and homes belonging to Palestinians. Much of this property was subsequently redistributed to new Jewish immigrants and Holocaust survivors. Many moved into homes from which Palestinians had only recently been forcibly displaced, leaving behind their possessions and family photographs still hanging on the walls.

The imperative of maintaining Jewish political supremacy meant that the millions of Palestinians now brought under Israeli control could not be incorporated as equal citizens

While these catastrophes differed enormously in scope, scale, and character, the dissonance was nonetheless profound: Jews driven from expropriated homes in Europe were resettled in homes from which Palestinians had been expelled in the pursuit of another ethnonational project. Though largely repressed, the parallel did not go entirely unremarked. Israeli poet Avot Yeshurun captured this historical entanglement, writing that, in this sense, “the Holocaust of the Jews of Europe and the Holocaust of the Arabs of the Land of Israel are one Holocaust of the Jewish People.”

Nor did Palestinians simply accept their newfound condition of exile. Refugees repeatedly crossed the newly imposed borders, keys in hand, to return to their homes or tend their fields. Israeli forces responded with lethal force, killing thousands of Palestinians from 1949-1956, most unarmed. Resistance soon developed, which Israel regularly invoked to justify raids, reprisals, and collective punishment against Palestinian communities across their borders.

Violence, dispossession, and exile transformed the Palestinian refugee camps of neighboring states into crucibles of revolutionary nationalism. From this political ferment emerged political and militant organizations such as Fatah, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Then came the 1967 War. In six days, Israel seized the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, and the Golan Heights from Syria. The Sinai would later be returned to Egypt under a land-for-peace agreement. Elsewhere, the conquest of territories associated with the biblical Land of Israel, was celebrated by many Israelis as nothing short of a “miracle,” unleashed a messianic fervor that invigorated the Israeli right.

Religiously and politically motivated settlers began moving into the occupied territories, creating irreversible “facts on the ground” that bound the land ever more tightly to Israel while intentionally foreclosing the possibility of future territorial compromise. At the same time, the imperative of maintaining Jewish political supremacy meant that the millions of Palestinians now brought under Israeli control could not be incorporated as equal citizens. Instead, they remained subjects of an occupying power, governed separately and unequally.

Occupation “From the River to the Sea”

The settlement project, initially driven by religious ideologues and later expanded with the help of the state through subsidies and other economic incentives, steadily carved Palestinian territory into disconnected enclaves, divided by settlements, bypass roads, checkpoints, walls, and the military infrastructure that followed to sustain and protect them.

At the same time, Israel worked to suppress Palestinian political organization and national identity. Palestinian political organizations and political activity and expression were outlawed or severely repressed. Newspapers and publications were subjected to censorship. Flying the Palestinian flag was prohibited, and even artwork incorporating its colors could invite repression.

As this history has sought to demonstrate, Israel is an anachronistic settler-colonial project. What is required, then, is a belated decolonization.

Occupation reached deep into Palestinian life. A growing permit regime governed construction, movement, and access to land and resources. Wells and irrigation systems also required Israeli approval. Palestinians faced restrictions on activities ranging from fishing in their own waters to cultivating their own land. These restrictions were enforced not only by soldiers and settlers but through a Kafkaesque bureaucracy that made domination a feature of daily life.

By 1987, two decades of domination and humiliation erupted into the First Intifada, a spontaneous, decentralized, and overwhelmingly unarmed uprising. Palestinian engaged in civil disobedience. Israel responded with brutal force. Tens of thousands of Palestinians passed through Israeli prisons, while soldiers were ordered to break the bones of protesters, killing more than 1,000 Palestinians, including 240 children.

The violent repression of the Intifada created the conditions in which groups like Hamas emerged, much as Hezbollah had arisen in response to Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Yet the uprising also demonstrated that permanent occupation could not continue without stimulating resistance, helping open the political process that culminated in the Oslo Accords starting in 1993.

Oslo, flawed from the outset and failing to confront many of the conflict’s fundamental questions, collided with powerful forces determined to prevent a negotiated settlement. In 1994, Israeli settler Baruch Goldstein entered Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque and massacred 29 worshipers (National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir displayed a prominent photo of him in his living room for decades). This incident became a catalyst for Hamas’s turn toward suicide bombings, feeding an escalating cycle of violence that steadily eroded the political ground beneath Oslo.

Then, in 1995, an Israeli settler, Yigal Amir, assassinated prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. Amir was an extremist in his methods. But the belief that Israel was an inviolable trust of the Jewish people that animated him was hardly confined to the political fringe. Likud, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, has long rejected Palestinian statehood. Its 1977 party platform declared that “the right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is eternal and indisputable” and “between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.”

Rabin’s was one of the most consequential assassinations in modern history. It dealt a devastating blow to a fragile, imperfect peace process and helped clear Netanyahu’s path to power. Netanyahu himself had participated in the incendiary political campaign against Oslo that portrayed Rabin as a traitor for negotiating with Palestinians.

Toward a Free Palestine

In the decades since, Netanyahu’s cultivation of the ultranationalist and Jewish-supremacist forces that define Israel’s political mainstream has helped him maintain an extraordinary grip on power. Meanwhile, Western leaders sustain the fiction of a two-state solution, invoking it with ritualistic devotion even as successive Israeli governments expand apartheid, imprison prominent Palestinian leaders, kill with impunity, and reject Palestinian rights and sovereignty outright.

As this history has sought to demonstrate, Israel is an anachronistic settler-colonial project. What is required, then, is a belated decolonization. First and foremost, this means an immediate end to the genocide. But it also demands justice: the renunciation of Jewish supremacy, reparations for historical dispossession, accountability for past and present crimes, and the upholding of the right of return for Palestinian refugees.

That can only happen through the dismantling of the political and legal structures that make one people’s rights and freedom contingent on the denial of those same rights and freedoms to others. In short, it necessitates an end to Zionism as it has long been practiced as an exclusivist political project and the realization of a free Palestine, confronting the one-state reality as it is and pressing for its transformation into a genuine democratic state for all its citizens.

IVE: MWF 9-11 am Eastern time & 9-10 am Tues-Thurs & Streaming Anytime

Conflict reporter/writer/cartoonist Ted Rall and political analyst Jamarl Thomas deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM ET.

Today we discuss:

• As the Gaza War begins its fourth year, Israel has lost. Israelis are reeling from new revelations in Israeli and U.S. media that the country had been repeatedly warned by its regional allies that Hamas was planning to attack. The war has lifting public debt. Lost output, reserve call-ups, and the departure of about 100,000 skilled Israelis have strained the economy. Hamas is not disarmed, and Israel’s diplomatic isolation has deepened: Palestinian recognitions, settlement sanctions, ICC warrants, arms-embargo pressure, and much less support in Europe and the U.S. What happens next?

• Former CIA officer David J. Rush pleaded guilty in Alexandria, Virginia, to one count of wire fraud that could bring up to 20 years in prison. Prosecutors said his schemes exceeded $193 million: a fake classified program used to buy about $145 million in Palm Beach luxury real estate, 298 gold bars costing the government more than $46 million, and roughly $1.8 million in unjustified charter flights. He also admitted disclosing a clandestine human source to a foreign official. Sentencing is set for January.

• The European Commission proposed measures to prepare the EU to take in countries such as Montenegro, Albania, Ukraine and Moldova in coming ​years. The proposals by the European Union’s executive body reflect a renewed interest among EU members in expanding the 27-nation bloc. The proposed ⁠reforms include a measure ⁠to allow other EU countries to suspend a new member’s voting rights during the first 15 years of membership if it stops adhering to the bloc’s values

• Trump’s plan to fence in Lafayette Park across the street from the White House would deter the free speech activities that have long defined the seven-acre park and make it easier for the administration to curb protests at will. It is the latest example of President Trump’s use of executive measures and legal maneuvers to clamp down on dissent.

• Christa Pike, who survived two doses of a lethal injection drug during a botched execution in Tennessee, is conscious and speaking. The prognosis remains unclear, they said, but lawyers expect a long recovery. Pike, 50, is believed to be the first person to have survived doses of a lethal injection drug.

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Artificial intelligence is rapidly making its way into national defense. Reconnaissance, early warning, target detection, mission planning—everywhere, machine-learning systems promise faster analysis, faster responses, and faster decision-making.

In a military context, this sounds like progress. In reality, AI exacerbates a security problem that cannot be solved technically. Anyone who attempts to do so anyway risks achieving the opposite of what they are striving for.

Current Developments

US President Donald Trump sees no problem in the unchecked advancement of AI. He argues that a president’s high IQ is the only “guardrail” AI needs, so Americans have nothing to worry about.

He maintains this even in the face of concerns raised by leading US AI developers regarding further unchecked AI development. According to Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping also sees no problem that could hinder the rapid advancement of AI. At the same time, more and more incidents are coming to light in which AI agents act independently and attack other systems. This has occurred not only in the US but also in China. Furthermore, the autonomous attack by an AI agent from the US company OpenAI on an Australian government portal came to light, as well as other incidents in the US in which swarms of AI agents attempted to gain unauthorized access to secure areas.

Have we already crossed the point at which humans still retain control over the AI they have developed? How far are we from the development of a superintelligence that optimizes itself autonomously, develops superhuman capabilities across various performance spectra, and—without being instructed to do so—turns against humanity?

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is now warning the United Nations Security Council about the risks of continued unregulated AI development: “If mismanaged, I even believe that AI could pose a risk to all of humanity.”

Anyone who uses a spam filter tacitly accepts a margin of error. Anyone who deploys a military AI system does the same—only the consequences of a misjudgment are different.

In light of the current dangers, other AI developers and CEOs of leading AI companies called on the Security Council for international cooperation and political oversight of AI development. These included OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Hugging Face co-founder Clement Delangue, and Canadian AI developer Yoshua Bengio.

Trump, on the other hand, had previously dismissed criticism of unchecked AI development as a “hoax” and a “sick conspiracy”—as Trump stated on Truth Social: “The idea that AI will take over the world, destroy humanity, and do all those other terrible things is a hoax.”

Although there doesn’t seem to be any problem requiring regulation, Trump and Xi agreed during Xi’s recent state visit to the US to establish a communication channel and a dialogue regarding AI development. Here, Xi’s somewhat greater level of prudence on this issue appears to be evident.

At a subsequent meeting at the White House attended by, among others, Alex Karp (Palantir), Elon Musk (SpaceX), Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), Dario Amodei (Anthropic), and Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Trump stated that he remained opposed to government or international regulation, as self-regulation by companies was sufficient. Consequently, a voluntary commitment was signed by the AI companies; however, it was non-binding and based on voluntary participation, without, for example, the formation of a supervisory body. Trump said after the meeting, “This will all lead to good things, and we will ensure that everything runs smoothly and safely.”

It was precisely the opposite situation that had prompted the tech executives to address their warning to the US government and the United Nations.

However, it must be noted that the incidents to date have involved AI infiltrating civilian structures. But what if AI agents infiltrate weapons systems, or if AI implemented in weapons systems takes on a life of its own?

What Military AI Actually Does

Traditional software follows rules that a human has written beforehand: If A, then B. Anyone who understands such a program can trace, step by step, how it arrives at its result. Modern AI works differently. It isn’t programmed, but rather trained. It is fed vast amounts of examples—images, texts, sensor data—and the system derives patterns from them on its own. In the end, no one knows exactly how it weighs these patterns in detail, not even the developers.

We’ve long encountered such systems in our everyday civilian lives. The spam filter decides, based on statistical similarity, whether an email lands in the inbox or the junk folder. Facial recognition on a smartphone compares pixel patterns with stored patterns. The traffic forecast on a navigation device draws conclusions about the next 20 minutes based on millions of trips. Such applications are useful because a misjudgment usually has no consequences. An email that was mistakenly filtered out can be searched for and found. If a face isn’t recognized by a cell phone, the user can simply enter the PIN code.

In national defense, the stakes are much higher. Here, systems aren’t meant to distinguish between advertisements and invoices, but rather to assess—based on satellite images, radio signals, and drone footage—whether movement on the ground poses a threat—and they do so under enormous time pressure. Anyone who uses a spam filter tacitly accepts a margin of error. Anyone who deploys a military AI system does the same—only the consequences of a misjudgment are different. It is this shift in scale that turns what appears to be a technical question into a political one.

When Probability Looks Like Certainty

The logic of the time advantage is an old one. The so-called decision cycle—observe, assess, decide, act—is supposed to become shorter. But acceleration has an unpleasant characteristic: It does not automatically improve the quality of a decision. Sometimes it simply speeds up error. AI does not operate in a clean-cut world. It makes decisions under conditions of incompleteness, vagueness, and uncertainty. Sensors provide unclear signals, data is missing, and adversaries camouflage and deceive. Electronic warfare further alters the information landscape. What appears precise remains fallible.

A simple example illustrates this clearly. Anyone seeking to distinguish combatants from civilians looks for distinguishing features. Wearing a helmet is considered one of them. But the uncertainty doubles: Even determining whether someone is actually wearing a helmet is a statistical matter and not definitive. A certain hairstyle or a shadow can lead to the detection of a helmet even though none is present; conversely, an unfavorable reflection of light can prevent the detection of a helmet. And the inference from a helmet to a combatant is, of course, merely probable, since a soldier might have briefly taken off his helmet, and a civilian—such as a construction worker—might be wearing one. No certain conclusions can be drawn from uncertain information, no matter how large the model becomes. Even the best system merely shifts uncertainty into more elegant weightings—and ultimately delivers probabilities that look like certainties.

Where technology becomes opaque, politics must become more transparent.

Those who do not deal with statistics on a daily basis easily underestimate what is happening here. Even a system with a high hit rate produces errors on a scale that inevitably grows with the amount of data analyzed. When intelligence agencies process hundreds of thousands of images per day, even a small percentage of incorrect assessments results in a considerable absolute number of misjudgments. Added to this is an effect well known in statistics: The rarer the case being sought occurs in the population, the more severely the proportion of false alarms affects innocent bystanders. Especially in conflict zones, where civilians make up the majority, this is not a theoretical problem but one of great moral and political significance. In military applications, however, such a system is often touted as progress because it operates faster than any human analysis. Speed, however, does not produce truth; it merely multiplies the number of decisions, whether right or wrong.

Added to this is the lack of verifiability. Modern systems rely on countless features simultaneously. Their internal reasoning is rarely traceable in a form that truly enables human oversight in an emergency. With generative AI, the problem is particularly evident: it provides answers but no verifiable rationale. In security-related contexts, this is not a minor issue but a red line. Anyone who wants to deploy systems where decisions about life and death are made should be able to explain very precisely why technical sophistication should be considered a basis for judgment in this context.

The Invisible Armament

But the problems extend beyond individual decisions. AI is changing the very architecture of security policy. In traditional arms control, the balance of power was roughly measurable: tanks, aircraft, soldiers, delivery systems, ranges. Much of it was visible, countable, and at least partially verifiable through agreements. The Open Skies Treaty, signed in 1992, allowed for mutual observation flights between NATO countries and former Soviet republics—until the US withdrew in 2020. The 1987 INF Treaty banned land-based medium-range missiles for more than three decades. Such treaties were laborious. But they worked.

With AI and cyberweapons, this principle no longer applies. Capabilities can be developed in secret. Software can be copied, adapted, and distributed in countless variations. Once something has been developed, it never disappears. Even if one wanted to conclude agreements, there would be no quantifiable units to limit. One’s own capabilities, too, can only be tested to a limited extent. In reality, cyberweapons can hardly be tested without risking collateral damage. The joint US-Israeli Stuxnet attack on an Iranian uranium enrichment facility in 2010 accidentally infected more than 50,000 computers in India, Indonesia, Pakistan, and other countries. If neither side knows what it is capable of—let alone what the other is capable of—stability becomes a matter of chance.

Humans Are Too Slow for Their Own Weapons

This exacerbates a risk that has long been recognized within the military itself. The requirement that a human must remain “in the loop” sounds reassuring. But what does this “loop” actually mean? It means that while a machine may generate a proposal, a human must review and approve it before any action is taken. In practice, the available time windows vary greatly—ranging from hours in strategic situation assessment to a few seconds in tactical air defense. The shorter the window, the less room there is for an independent evaluation of the data on which the system based its recommendation. The notion that a truly independent review always takes place does not consistently hold up in reality.

Added to this is a phenomenon described in human-machine research as “automation bias”: Those who have repeatedly observed a technical system to function reliably are more inclined to confirm rather than contradict it in an emergency. Furthermore, a tendency toward passive involvement over time leads to a loss of competence, which further narrows the scope for independent judgment. In the announcement for a conference hosted by the Joint Air Power Competence Center this year in Essen, this question was framed as a key point of discussion: How can service members “maintain meaningful control while the pace of operations approaches the speed of machines”? Anyone who poses this question in this way already senses how difficult it is to answer.

What Can No Longer Be Postponed

This is precisely where the real political challenge lies. Where technology becomes opaque, politics must become more transparent. Where armaments grow behind closed doors, the channels of communication between capitals must become more frequent. Where learning systems shorten response times, politics must remain slow enough to set limits. This is not an old-fashioned longing for détente. It is the sober response to a technological reality that cannot be reversed.

First: We need robust communication channels between the major military powers—including, and especially, with rivals. Direct links between defense ministries and military leadership, crisis hotlines, and regular consultations on false alarms and near-misses. Such mechanisms existed during the Cold War, and they prevented escalation. In the age of automated decision-making, they are once again indispensable. Those who do not speak with their adversaries let AI do the talking—and that is a poor trade-off.

Second: We need arms control that addresses this new reality. Traditional treaties counted unit numbers. New frameworks must account for software behavior, training data, rules of engagement, and autonomous functions—as well as the thresholds beyond which a system acts on its own. International voluntary commitments not to delegate the use of lethal force to machines are a first step. Binding bans on fully autonomous weapon systems—those permitted to kill without human authorization—would be the second. Such rules are difficult to verify. But they are better than agreeing to nothing.

Anyone who believes that intelligent weapons can replace smart diplomacy has failed to understand that, in the age of AI, security is first and foremost a political task before it becomes a technical one.

Third: Europe has a responsibility here that it cannot delegate. The European AI Act regulates civilian applications. In terms of security policy, the work is only just beginning. The EU should not outsource the proposal for an international framework for military AI to Washington or Beijing. It can take the initiative itself—together with countries such as Switzerland, Brazil, Mexico, or South Korea, which, as impartial mediators, are more credible than the major powers that are direct rivals. A European initiative for military AI arms control would also serve as a counterargument to those who see Brussels as nothing more than a regulatory machine and fail to recognize European sovereignty as something in its own right.

Fourth, and most importantly: If you want effective rules, there’s no getting around negotiations. If you want to mitigate global risks, you must also talk to rivals. That sounds old-fashioned, but it isn’t. It’s simply realistic. Security does not arise from strength alone. It arises from understanding, transparency, and robust channels of communication between states and societies. Trust is not a “soft” word. It is the only resource that can still foster stability in a world of invisible capabilities.

The real challenge of AI in national defense is therefore not technical, but political in nature. The systems are getting faster. This does not make the world any clearer—quite the opposite. Precisely because machines accelerate military processes, policymakers must remain wise and persistent enough to decide what machines must not be allowed to decide. Anyone who believes that intelligent weapons can replace smart diplomacy has failed to understand that, in the age of AI, security is first and foremost a political task before it becomes a technical one.

It is to be hoped that Xi will prevail here over Trump, whose family—according to media reports—is said to have recently directed its investment activities toward shares in AI companies and data centers.

Perhaps this also presents an opportunity for cooperation between the EU and the People’s Republic of China to avert threatening developments, particularly with regard to the possible emergence of a superintelligence.

One of the most potent midterm election slogans was offered by the Republicans in 1946: “HAD ENOUGH?” The GOP swept into power after years of New Deal dominance.

We like to say that what counts is not what you are against, but what you are for. Not always, though. Sometimes “Had enough?” is enough.

Midterm elections often are waged as a rebuke to the party in control of the White House. Political scientists call this a thermostatic election. Voters adjust the temperature by turning the dial away from perceived overreaches.

Sometimes the floor just drops out from under a political party. This could be a year when “Had enough?” is enough.

But at times candidates have an agenda, detailed or implicit. Those are the years that produce the biggest change.

In 1974, the “Watergate Babies” ran to clean up politics and shake up a hidebound Democratic Party. Often they were Democrats from suburban districts, shifting the party’s focus away from New Deal-style economic issues toward issues of transparency and good government.

George Miller, a congressman elected that year from California, declared: “We were a conquering army. We came here to take the Bastille. We destroyed the institution by turning the lights on.”

In 1994, Republicans led by Newt Gingrich won the House for the first time in 40 years. On the Capitol steps, more than 300 candidates signed a “Contract With America,” a pledge to bring to the floor for a vote on 10 measures, such as a congressional term limits constitutional amendment, within the first 100 days of taking office.

In 2018, the midterm halfway through Donald Trump’s first term, dozens of Democrats won with an anti-corruption pledge put forward by the group End Citizens United.

The scandals of just a decade ago seem quaint. Back then, we worried that Trump would profit from guests staying at his hotel near the White House. Now he brazenly grifts, increasing his net worth by at least $2 billion. The most recent astonishing news suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin offered favorable oil concessions to investors who have donated to Trump’s super PAC or have financial ties to his son-in-law Jared Kushner as part of a bid to force a deal on Ukraine.

Today, Democrats are running on affordability. Diesel prices and exorbitant hamburgers speak for themselves. But it is not clear what the party would do about affordability if it were to win.

Corruption is the other big issue on the campaign trail. Here, the Outs have begun to say what they would do if they become the Ins.

End Citizens United, once again, has enlisted candidates to sign an “Unrig Washington” pledge. Candidates vow to ban congressional stock trading, refuse corporate PAC money, and “crack down on dark money.” Those are strong planks, though they may fall short of a Gingrich-style manifesto.

Some of the most talked-about candidates have embraced similar themes. Abdul El-Sayed, seeking a Senate seat in Michigan, calls for getting “Money Out of Politics.” James Talarico, running a surprisingly strong Senate race in Texas, rails against “billionaire mega-donors and their puppet politicians” in a “rigged system.” Jon Ossoff, the incumbent Georgia senator, has gone viral with his intensely delivered stump-speech exposés of executive branch corruption.

A survey by the Brennan Center earlier this year found an unusual and wide revulsion against corruption. It also found that voters blame Democrats as well as Republicans.

GOP candidates sense this mood too. They focus not on money in politics but on fraud in government. In Minnesota, which last year was rocked by Medicaid fraud allegations, state house Speaker Lisa Demuth, running for governor, declared that “fraud was exploding here in Minnesota.” Bobby Charles, running for governor in Maine, pledged to investigate alleged fraud in the state’s Medicaid system. Public disquiet about government waste, always lurking, could be forged into a potent issue once candidates find a way to distance themselves from the current administration.

There’s another issue heard on the hustings that reflects voter disquiet about out-of-touch institutions: Supreme Court reform. Josh Turek, running for the Senate in Iowa, has joined Talarico and others in urging action. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), who would chair the Judiciary Committee in their chambers if their party won, recently roused a crowd of Turek supporters at the Polk County Steak Fry with calls for term limits for the justices.

Right now, it’s Democrats demanding reform. In the past, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz have supported term limits. Could they do so again? Polls show wide and consistent public support, such as the Fox News survey showing 78% approval.

As I wrote last week, due to retirements and primary defeats in safe districts, we know that at least 83 new House members will be elected in a few weeks—and of course, depending on switches in party control, possibly many more. There already has been a wave election in both parties.

What will happen next? Ever since people stopped answering landline telephones, polling has been a struggle. In some elections, surveys underestimate Trump’s populist base. (Though in years when Trump is not on the ballot, that does not seem to be the case.)

But sometimes the floor just drops out from under a political party. This could be a year when “Had enough?” is enough.

The question for whoever wins is what they will do to try to curb corruption. Otherwise we will be sentenced to one election after another where parties club each other with populist anger, alternating in power with little changing.

And the presidential candidates who will soon dash around the country must do even more to bring these issues into focus, to say what they would do to change our politics.

The next two years could bring an even more intense debate about how to remake American democracy and renew government. As soon as the voting ends, that debate begins.

The idea that US voters don’t care about foreign policy is over. From Michigan to Florida to Colorado, Democratic Party primary candidates’ positions on war, military spending, and support for Israel have propelled victories alongside progressive policies on healthcare and the economy.

The message of “Babies, Not Bombs”—a promise to spend taxpayer money to nurture lives instead of ending them—has become a rallying cry well beyond the New York campaign where it originated.

To win the midterms and offer real leadership beyond 2026, Democrats must pay attention to this momentum and the foreign policy concerns of voters across the political spectrum. Donald Trump secured the presidency in 2024 partly by winning over voters, including independents and Democrats, with his promise to “stop wars” not start them.

Democrats don’t need to invent a new coalition to win in November. They need to represent the one that already exists.

While Trump has shattered this promise by waging a disastrous, illegal war in Iran and attacking or threatening more than 10 other countries, Democrats must learn from their mistakes—and the president’s.

To win in November and deliver the change people want, Democrats should embrace three foreign policy commitments that are morally overdue and broadly popular nationwide.

The first commitment is ending the war on Iran and the endless wars that have defined US foreign policy since 2001.

Trump’s war on Iran is among the most unpopular in US history. Polling shows nearly 60% of adults oppose it, including 90% of Democrats, 63% of independents, and 22% of Republicans.

Voters have watched the conflict drive up gas and grocery prices while killing, injuring, and displacing people on a staggering scale, and risking greater global economic devastation. The war has added to the trillions of dollars wasted by the post-September 11, 2001 wars, which could have funded urgent domestic needs.

The second commitment is cutting the Pentagon budget and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). President Trump has requested a $1.57 trillion military budget for the 2027 fiscal year, including money for the Iran war. This would be the largest in US history, and around a 50% increase over already bloated spending.

Opposition to Trump’s budget request is profound: 65% overall and 87% among Democrats.

There’s similar outrage over Trump’s militarization of US streets as people see ICE’s brutal effects on immigrant neighbors. “Abolish ICE” has become a clarion call nationwide because of the agency’s responsibility for multiple deaths, mass raids, and documented abuses in detention centers.

Nearly three-quarters of Democrats, half of independents, and a quarter of Republicans support abolishing ICE. The Democratic National Committee, in August, passed a resolution calling for abolishing ICE.

Democrats should listen to voters and oppose warmongering abroad and a hyper-militarized immigration crackdown at home as two faces of the same problem.

The third commitment is ending support for Israel and other governments responsible for serious human rights violations. While stopping military backing for Israel was once a radical position, it’s increasingly the Democratic—and national—mainstream given the dramatic decline in support for Israel amid a live-streamed genocide propelled by US arms and tax dollars.

Across the political spectrum, the death toll of more than 73,000 Palestinians, including more than 20,000 children, has transformed public opinion.

The country’s existing “Leahy Laws” bar US funding for foreign military forces that commit human rights abuses. Another Democratic National Committee resolution calls for full enforcement of the Leahy Laws, giving Democrats a legally grounded position: Apply the standard consistently—to Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, or any other government implicated in human rights violations.

None of these are fringe positions. They are where a majority of the country and an overwhelming majority of the Democratic base already stand.

What’s missing is a party willing to campaign on these stances plainly and courageously, rather than treating foreign policy as a black box best left to the whims of an unelected, out-of-touch Washington, DC elite.

Democrats don’t need to invent a new coalition to win in November. They need to represent the one that already exists: People across the political spectrum exhausted by endless war, appalled by a bloated military budget squeezing out domestic needs, and angry about seeing their taxes underwrite human rights abuses at home and abroad.

A foreign policy platform built on these three commitments isn’t just good policy. It’s a winning one.

After World War II, the United States argued at the Nuremberg war-crimes trials—and directly to the German people themselves—that the whole nation bore collective responsibility and guilt for the crimes of Nazi Germany because, despite the risks of resistance in a totalitarian state, they could and should have risen up and overthrown Adolf Hitler. Now the same country, the United States, cannot even be bothered to hold a single substantial protest when its out-of-control president threatens to use nuclear weapons against Iran, despite the fact that Iran poses no danger to us.

The post Collective Guilt, Then and Now appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

We’ll never know the exact reasons why the Trump administration decided to bring the full force of immigration enforcement down on the Twin Cities and the rest of Minnesota last winter.

We do know they weren’t expecting the reception they got.

Operation Metro Surge and Operation Parris were the largest immigration enforcement operations in the history of the United States of America. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers came in the thousands, decked out with military gear, assault weapons, and surveillance systems built for a battlefield.

We’re proactively arming ourselves and our communities with the knowledge and tactics necessary to resist if President Donald Trump makes good on his threats on the sanctity of the midterms.

The Trump administration was counting on our residents believing, deep down, that immigrants and people of color are not really American. But they didn’t prepare for one thing: Minnesotans know that’s a lie.

It did not pass over our houses. Why? Because we were prepared. The preparation process must continue.

The structures that enabled the mass mobilizations that pushed ICE out of Minnesota were built long before officers touched down in late 2025.

The local immigrants rights movement built capacity and infrastructure for over two decades through the Dreamer’s Movement and the campaign for drivers licenses for all. And then during the Covid-19 pandemic, after George Floyd was killed by police in our streets, the Movement for Black Lives taught everyone in this state what mutual aid looks like at scale.

How to feed each other when regular systems fail. How to keep watch on a corner through the night. How to grieve and organize in the same breath. How to refuse the choreography of fear that a militarized response is designed to produce.

That’s the model we followed when launching Project Monarca in February of 2025. Over the next year we trained 50,000 Minnesotans in constitutionally protected observation.

In retrospect, a lot of those trainings looked like a rehearsal. We equipped our neighbors with a coherent analysis, a clear picture of the strategy being run against us, and the room to wrestle with their own choices. Will I document, or will I observe? What happens when I delay the operation? When I choose to defend my neighbor, how will I do it?

Minnesotans rehearsed high-risk scenarios with their own bodies and their own fear, and they made their choices out of our values and our relentless public love.

So when the moment came, Minnesotans led. We put democratic participation into practice, and onboarded residents into our movements as we went. I want to be careful not to romanticize what happened last winter. People were terrified. People are still grieving. The cost was real, and it is not over.

But something happened in those weeks that I have been trying to find words for, and the only word I keep coming back to is recognition. People recognized each other.

White grandmothers in wealthy neighborhoods recognized themselves in immigrant mothers in Minneapolis. Lutheran pastors recognized the face of Christ in undocumented children. Labor union members recognized that the boot on their neighbor’s neck was the same boot that would come for them. Small business owners recognized that the Constitution was either for everyone or it was for no one—and they chose everyone.

We put signs in our windows. We opened our homes for children and pets left behind. We said, “Not in our state” to men with badges. They had guns, we had whistles. They had technology and surveillance systems, we had the Constitution. They had millions of dollars in infrastructure, we had one another as neighbors. We kept each other safe.

Over the past couple of months, we’ve shifted Monarca toward training community members to defend democracy against the tactics of ICE agents.

Our rights to fair and free elections are at risk. So we’re proactively arming ourselves and our communities with the knowledge and tactics necessary to resist if President Donald Trump makes good on his threats on the sanctity of the midterms.

France’s October 6 mobilization challenges Americans to defend their future through peaceful collective action.

Call me a Jacobin. Call me whatever you want.

On October 6, students, teachers, and parents took to the streets across France in a national day of action over missing teachers, overcrowded classrooms, and deteriorating schools. Americans should pay attention to what they are demanding—and what their pressure has already helped put on the political agenda.

Our circumstances differ from France’s, but the gap between a promised future and a delivered one is familiar.

When I watch young people in France insist that their futures deserve more than another promise, I feel something like the hope Thomas Jefferson felt watching the beginnings of the French Revolution: the possibility that ordinary people might demand a greater say in the society they inhabit.

History does not offer a clean comparison. Jefferson’s enthusiasm led him to excuse terrible bloodshed, and I will not follow him there. What moves me today is the courage of students organizing peacefully, walking out, and refusing to treat deteriorating conditions as the natural order of things.

The American Revolution helped inspire France’s struggle for liberty. Now, France’s students are offering Americans an example we ought to consider: A generation can defend its future together instead of being told, one person at a time, to adjust its expectations.

The immediate grievances are concrete. Reuters has reported on French high school students protesting overcrowded classrooms, deteriorating buildings, and teacher shortages. One 17-year-old aspiring teacher described taking her French examination without having had a French teacher. A younger student carried a sign declaring, “Our address should not decide our future.” [Source]

That is a demand for the promise of education to mean something.

We tell young people to attend class, work hard, and prepare for a career. We tell them that education is their route to stability. Then, when the institutions responsible for providing that education fail them, we act surprised that they refuse to keep participating quietly.

Their sacrifice deserves acknowledgment. Walking out can mean missed instruction, disciplinary consequences, and added pressure around examinations. These students have futures to build. Their willingness to interrupt that work should make us ask why continuing as usual feels like the greater risk.

And with teachers missing, some students were already losing instruction. A government cannot count every hour lost to protest while overlooking the hours its own failures have taken.

The violence must be named plainly. By October 2, Education Minister Édouard Geffray reported at least 65 injured staff members, including 40 principals, about 170 wounded students, and more than 100 severely damaged high schools. By October 6, the prime minister reported 215 injured teenagers and 85 injured school staff. Schools have been set on fire. Reuters reported that two teachers in Marseille were inadvertently splashed with gasoline as a student tried to throw it into a trash bin. A regional education spokesperson separately reported a youth spraying gasoline at a teacher in La Ciotat; Reuters could not verify that incident’s circumstances.

Burning a school and endangering its staff betray the demand for a better education. Whoever commits those acts should be held accountable. Students, teachers, and principals deserve protection.

Officials also dispute the movement’s origins. Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin said outsiders had hijacked it; Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez described troublemakers moving between schools to incite violence. According to a government source cited by Reuters, intelligence agencies attributed its initiation to La France Insoumise and far-left allies. LFI denied the allegation. Those claims deserve scrutiny, rather than being treated as proof that every student’s complaint is manufactured.

Some Paris-area students told Reuters they were staying away because of the escalating violence. That is a loss of their voice, too. A peaceful movement needs to protect their ability to participate. Nonviolence must remain a commitment, especially when anger is justified. The society we want to build has to be visible in the way we fight for it.

If the police are more interested in silencing you than hearing your complaint, then that society deserves protesting, in my view. Police officers cannot resolve every political grievance, but they can respect the right to express one. When authorities answer peaceful dissent with intimidation or unjustified force, their response becomes another reason to protest.

A student should not have to fall silent to be treated as someone worth protecting.

But calls for order must come with an answer to the conditions that brought students into the streets. Returning everyone to the classroom will not resolve a teacher vacancy. Ending a blockade will not repair a neglected building.

If leaders want stability, they have to give young people a reason to believe the institutions around them can deliver it.

Promises alone cannot do that anymore.

There has already been a concrete retreat. On October 1, Education Minister Édouard Geffray announced that the government would withdraw proposed annual registration fees for students without scholarships in BTS technical programs and preparatory classes for the Grandes Écoles. The proposed charges were €178 and €270, respectively. He cited discussions with unions and the prime minister.

That reversal came amid the student mobilization. It does not prove that street protests alone caused the decision, and it does not repair a classroom. But it shows that a government proposal can be challenged and withdrawn. Pressure can produce something more tangible than another invitation to be patient.

Students deserve commitments they can evaluate: which positions will be filled, which buildings will be repaired, what resources will reach underserved schools, and when those changes will happen. A consultation can help identify a problem. It cannot become a permanent substitute for fixing it.

American Gen Z should take note.

Consider our fight over student debt. In June 2023, the Supreme Court struck down the Biden administration’s plan to cancel up to $10,000 in eligible federal student debt, or $20,000 for eligible Pell Grant recipients. The court held that the administration lacked authority under the law it had invoked. Borrowers who had been offered relief were left without that promised cancellation.

The legal question matters. So does the political responsibility to deliver a workable solution. Telling young Americans that education is the path to stability, then leaving them to navigate its financial consequences, is hardly an invitation to trust another announcement. Our circumstances differ from France’s, but the gap between a promised future and a delivered one is familiar.

Peaceful collective action gives that frustration somewhere to go. Student associations, unions, public meetings, demonstrations, and the ballot can turn private discouragement into demands people can act on together.

I do not expect every young American to take the same risk. Some cannot afford to miss a shift or a class. A serious movement makes room for them, too. Solidarity should widen participation and help people bear its costs.

What I admire in France is the refusal to surrender the idea that public institutions owe the next generation a fair chance.

God bless France. God bless the students peacefully standing up for the society they want to inherit.

And may America’s young people recognize that they deserve a voice in shaping theirs.

We are dealing with more than madness and corruption in Washington. Our multi-crisis is a manifestation of evil which permeates much of our society. Our certifiably insane would-be dictator, with his repeated threats to eliminate Iran’s people and civilization while tossing almost a million people off of healthcare are but a few of his regime’s crimes against humanity. All of these issues are interrelated, which is why our resistance must be multi-issue and multifaceted. November’s elections will define our futures, and, as in the darkest days of Nazism and Jim Crow racism, if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. So, defending our albeit flawed Constitution and elections, so that we can change policies and actions, must be our priority. We need a united and active front against the lawless would-be dictator and his minions.

In the 1960s there was a film, Mondo Cane, which warned of a world gone to the dogs. With President Donald Trump and company driving our nation and the world into more crises than we can count, Mondo Cane has arrived. Continuing Gaza, West Bank, and Sudan genocides. The catastrophic and widening war on Iran. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Brownshirts’ brutality. The widening Russian-NATO Ukraine War now spreading across Europe. AI gone rogue. The climate emergency. Growing nuclear dangers. Food, medical, and housing insecurity. Affordability.

Trump has just dispatched a third aircraft carrier and 9,000 more warriors to threaten escalation of a war that he cannot win. New war-fighting technologies and Iranian military resistance, and Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ignorant and racist arrogance, dictated that they lost their war on Teheran the moment they launched it. Now, fearing the political consequences of his defeat, Trump is leading the world ever deeper into the desert version of Vietnam’s Big Muddy. And, even as Israeli forces hold the ceasefire with Hamas in contempt and continue their drive toward the Mediterranean, Trump’s imperial Board of Peace has demonstrated the legitimacy, integrity, success, and staying power of his reflecting pool repairs. Until Israel withdraws from the lands occupied since its 1967 war of conquest and respects the Palestinians' right of national self-determination, there will be no peace in the Middle East.

We must insist on free and fair elections—even if necessary, with our bodies.

The heart of darkness has names: Donald Trump, his allies, and those who are complicit with the imperial military-industrial-congressional complex. Trump is the racist, corrupt, greedy, insecure, and bullying son of a Ku Klux Klan slumlord, who rose to riches and power with Mafia ties, and with Roy Cohen’s deceitful disregard for truth, the law, and any limits on his desires.

I have the privilege of being part of confidential discussions between current and former US, Russian, and European arms control negotiators, government and military officials, and analysts. Just after Trump’s reelection, a Russian asked a former very senior Pentagon official what Trump’s foreign policy priorities would be. The American immediately replied, “Making as much money as he can for himself and for his family.”

Thus, we have Trump’s seizure of Venezuelan gold and oil, his futile campaigns to transform Gazan and Serbian beaches into his resorts, Don Junior’s wedding party financed by a Putin-related Russian oligarch, and Trump’s corrupt 26,000-30,000 stock transactions since he returned to office. While the media has focused on congressional stock trades, Trump has been more active on Wall Street that all members of Congress combined.

Amid it all, we’ve lost track of the growing nuclear threat to our species’ survival. This danger has been greatly increased by the Iran War, by Trump’s commitment to resume nuclear weapons testing, and by increasing Pentagon reliance on misnamed tactical nuclear weapons. They can be Hiroshima sized, and if they are used would ignite thermonuclear war.

Think about it. We are threatened by the wars involving three nuclear powers as they rage across Southwest Asia and Ukraine. Each could escalate to thermonuclear war as Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have threatened. China annually adds an estimated 1,000 thermonuclear weapons to its arsenal, making us three nuclear scorpions in an AI-augmented bottle. The US played the leading role in sabotaging last May’s Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference, and that in turn is encouraging proliferation. The war on Iran provides incentives for Teheran to follow North Korea in creating a deterrent nuclear arsenal. And then there is Trump’s nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia. In South Korea and Japan, there are powerful pressures for the return of US nuclear weapons or, failing that, for those nations to become full-fledged nuclear powers. France is extending its nuclear umbrella across Europe. Germany’s US F-35 fighters are designed to launch US-supplied B-61 nuclear gravity bombs. Finland will welcome NATO nukes in times of emergency. And fearful of Russia, even Poland is toying with the possibility of becoming a nuclear power.

Would that it were otherwise, but the increasingly urgent reality is that the more nuclear weapons states, nuclear tests, and nuclear exercises there are, the greater the chance that an incident, an accident, or a miscalculation will trigger nuclear war, ending life on this planet as we know it. Incidents, accidents, and miscalculations happen! In recent weeks we almost went to war with China, when an AI system reported that a Chinese vessel was transporting nuclear weapons materials. Preparations were made to attack that ship, but fortunately before US forces could attack, it was discovered that AI had miscalculated. Existential garbage in. Existential garbage out.

Like a virus, Washington’s evil and madness have spread nationally and internationally. If we want a democratic–small d, peaceful, and just society, one without Trump-MAGA abusive rule, we must disempower Trump and remove from power all who are complicit with his wars and brutal injustices.

Toward that end, even as we pursue our many campaigns to end criminal wars, restore respect for truth and the law, and ensure food and medical security for our people, our priority must be creating a united front to defeat Trump’s duplicitous congressional allies. That means doing what we can to maximize voter turnout for progressives and centrist allies, and win elections overwhelmingly to make stealing them beyond the reach of a corrupt administration and election deniers who are responsible for counting votes in several key states.

We must insist on free and fair elections—even if necessary, with our bodies. We need to be prepared to launch and join social or general strikes. as Jeremy Brecher and others have advocated, if they become necessary.Not only can you travel to North Carolina or Iowa to campaign for democracy, but you can take action wherever you live.

And remember, even if Democrats retake Congress, our campaigning on so many urgent justice, peace, and democracy fronts must be renewed, taking advantage of the openings we create.

“Don’t mourn. Organize!”

This article is based on Joseph Gerson’s Speech at the October 3 Boston Stop Washington’s Madness rally.

Following World War II, the United States played a pivotal role in establishing the World Bank and the International Monetary Fundm or IMF. Originally tasked with post-war reconstruction, their focus soon shifted toward development aid for developing countries, including Thailand. In 1961, these two institutions guided the drafting of Thailand’s First National Economic Development Plan. They recommended large-scale infrastructure investments—ports, highways, and mega-dams—alongside import-substitution industrialization, agricultural reform through technology, chemical inputs, and genetic improvement of crops and livestock, as well as logging concessions aimed at generating national revenue. Land allocation programs were also introduced. Together, these policies triggered transformations that severely disrupted the livelihoods of smallholder farmers and peasants.

The recommendations of both institutions led directly to widespread deforestation and the destruction of natural resources through logging concessions and hydroelectric dam projects. Agricultural reforms degraded local ecosystems and drove up production costs while crop prices plummeted, pushing farmers into staggering debt and bankruptcy. Land allocation programs largely failed the rural poor; title deeds fell predominantly into the hands of bureaucrats, state officials, and wealthy investors. Smallholder farmers and peasants who did receive plots were left to clear and cultivate the land without government support, ultimately forcing many to abandon their holdings. A considerable number of people migrated to urban centers as cheap labor, crowding into slums area, facing homelessness, and becoming landless.

Development under the guidance of the World Bank and the IMF continued under subsequent National Economic and Social Development Plans—now in their 13th plan—yet consistently disregarded the poor. The two institutions hold joint Annual Meetings worldwide, having convened in Thailand for the first time in 1991. That same year, the World Bank approved a loan for the Pak Mun Dam in Ubon Ratchathani Province despite fierce opposition from many local villagers and civil society groups. The fallout from the dam was devastating: destroyed fisheries, extinction of fish species, community conflict and division, and electricity generation that fell far short of projections. It remains an indelible stain left by the World Bank in Thailand—one notably absent from its official history.

We reaffirm that genuine development must respect community rights over land, soil, water, and forests, uphold food sovereignty, and guarantee universal welfare as a fundamental human right.

The consequences of these development frameworks stirred widespread hardship among small-scale farmers, igniting protests, petitions, and grassroots resistance against top-down development in every nook and cranny. Escalating tensions between rural communities and the state led to arrests, prosecutions, violent crackdowns, and in some instances, the assassination of grassroots leaders. In December 1995, villagers impacted by dam constructions, communities evicted from forest areas, residents affected by the construction of an industrial plant, small-scale fishers affected by commercial fishing, marginalized workers, and slum dwellers gathered at Thammasat University and they announced the establishment of the “Assembly of the Poor” on December 10, 1995. The Assembly of the Poor moved their assembly to Khong Chiam District in Ubon Ratchathani Province, along the banks of the Mun River, where they drafted the "Pak Mun Declaration." The declaration proclaimed that local communities had been systematically impoverished by developmental policies that ignored their existence—leaving them poor not only economically, but impoverished in rights, opportunities, and political power. They declared that they had been made poor and would rise up to fight and demand that the state resolve their poverty.

Just two years later, during the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis (the "Tom Yum Kung Crisis"), the IMF stepped in with a bailout package for Thailand. To ensure rapid debt repayment, the IMF imposed stringent conditions: passing laws to regulate water usage, privatizing state enterprises to reduce public spending and boost revenue, and enacting legislation to remove universities and hospitals from the civil service system. These policies directly burdened the poor and sparked widespread popular resistance.

On September 3 this year, the World Bank released its report titled Building Thailand’s Future Today, declaring that poverty in Thailand had been virtually eradicated and touting a vision to elevate Thailand to a "high-income country" by 2037 through investment in five future industries. For the Assembly of the Poor, this represents a new wave of resource grabbing: data Center projects consuming massive amounts of water and electric power at the expense of local communities; green economy agendas and carbon credits threatening community rights; luxury tourism displacing Indigenous settlements; free trade agreements undermining local seed sovereignty; and transit-oriented developments displacing the urban poor. The report also urged immediate policy recommendations to establish legal and institutional frameworks for economic corridors beyond the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC), paving the way for continuous, long-term structural development.

Compounding this, the IMF instructed the Thai government to abandon universal social welfare in favor of "targeted welfare" to maintain fiscal discipline—forcing vulnerable citizens to undergo demeaning "poverty testing" to access basic welfare benefits. The Thai government swiftly embraced these recommendations and accelerated projects aligned with both institutions, once again shifting the burden onto the poor and small-scale farmers. This is not building the nation's future; it is mortgaging it to international capital under a development paradigm that has dominated Thailand since its First National Economic and Social Development Plans, keeping citizens impoverished in rights, opportunities, and political power for over seven decades.

From October 12-18, 2026, the World Bank and IMF will hold their Annual Meetings in Thailand once again. Assembly of the Poor will mobilize to demonstrate that their policy prescriptions have inflicted severe harm on our people from the past to the present, and threaten our future. We reaffirm that genuine development must respect community rights over land, soil, water, and forests, uphold food sovereignty, and guarantee universal welfare as a fundamental human right. What is happening in Thailand is not an isolated story; it is part of a global neoliberal model through which international financial institutions strip developing nations, the poor, and peasants of their policy sovereignty. Our mobilization during the 2026 World Bank-IMF Annual Meetings in Bangkok is an international struggle to expose these policies, demand accountability, and reclaim policy sovereignty for the people.