President Donald Trump is again loudly complaining that the U.S. military bases in Asia are too costly for the U.S. to bear. As part of the new round of tariff negotiations with Japan and Korea, Trump is calling on Japan and Korea to pay for stationing the US troops. Here’s a much better idea: close the bases and bring the U.S. servicemen home.

Trump implies that the U.S. is providing a great service to Japan and Korea by stationing 50,000 troops in Japan and nearly 30,000 in Korea. Yet these countries do not need the U.S. to defend themselves. They are wealthy and can certainly provide their own defense. Far more importantly, diplomacy can ensure the peace in northeast Asia far more effectively and far less expensively than U.S. troops.

The U.S. acts as if Japan needs to be defended against China. Let’s have a look. During the past 1,000 years, during which time China was the region’s dominant power for all but the last 150 years, how many times did China attempt to invade Japan? If you answered zero, you are correct. China did not attempt to invade Japan on a single occasion.

You might quibble. What about the two attempts in 1274 and 1281, roughly 750 years ago? It’s true that when the Mongols temporarily ruled China between 1271 and 1368, the Mongols twice sent expeditionary fleets to invade Japan, and both times were defeated by a combination of typhoons (known in Japanese lore as the Kamikaze winds) and by Japanese coastal defenses.

Japan, on the other hand, made several attempts to attack or conquer China. In 1592, the arrogant and erratic Japanese military leader Toyotomi Hideyoshi launched an invasion of Korea with the goal of conquering Ming China. He did not get far, dying in 1598 without even having subdued Korea. In 1894-5, Japan invaded and defeated China in the Sino-Japanese war, taking Taiwan as a Japanese colony. In 1931, Japan invaded northeast China (Manchuria) and created the Japanese colony of Manchukuo. In 1937, Japan invaded China, starting World War II in the Pacific region.

Nobody thinks that Japan is going to invade China today, and there is no rhyme, reason, or historical precedent to believe that China is going to invade Japan. Japan has no need for the US military bases to protect itself from China.

The same is true of China and Korea. During the past 1,000 years, China never invaded Korea, except on one occasion: when the U.S. threatened China. China entered the war in late 1950 on the side of North Korea to fight the U.S. troops advancing northward towards the Chinese border. At the time, U.S. General Douglas MacArthur recklessly recommended attacking China with atomic bombs. MacArthur also proposed to support Chinese nationalist forces, then based in Taiwan, to invade the Chinese mainland. President Harry Truman, thank God, rejected MacArthur’s recommendations.

South Korea needs deterrence against North Korea, to be sure, but that would be achieved far more effectively and credibly through a regional security system including China, Japan, Russia, North Korea, South Korea, than through the presence of the U.S., which has repeatedly stoked North Korea’s nuclear arsenal and military build-up, not diminished it.

In fact, the U.S. military bases in East Asia are really for the U.S. projection of power, not for the defense of Japan or Korea. This is even more reason why they should be removed. Though the U.S. claims that its bases in East Asia are defensive, they are understandably viewed by China and North Korea as a direct threat – for example, by creating the possibility of a decapitation strike, and by dangerously lowering the response times for China and North Korea to a U.S. provocation or some kind of misunderstanding. Russia vociferously opposed NATO in Ukraine for the same justifiable reasons. NATO has frequently intervened in U.S.-backed regime-change operations and has placed missile systems dangerously close to Russia. Indeed, just as Russia feared, NATO has actively participated in the Ukraine War, providing armaments, strategy, intelligence, and even programming and tracking for missile strikes deep inside of Russia.

Note that Trump is currently obsessed with two small port facilities in Panama owned by a Hong Kong company, claiming that China is threatening U.S. security (!), and wants the facilities sold to an American buyer. The U.S. on the other hand surrounds China not with two tiny port facilities but with major U.S. military bases in Japan, South Korea, Guam, the Philippines, and the Indian Ocean near to China’s international sea lanes.

The best strategy for the superpowers is to stay out of each other’s lanes. China and Russia should not open military bases in the Western Hemisphere, to put it mildly. The last time that was tried, when the Soviet Union placed nuclear weapons in Cuba in 1962, the world nearly ended in nuclear annihilation. (See Martin Sherwin’s remarkable book, Gambling with Armageddon for the shocking details on how close the world came to nuclear Armageddon). Neither China nor Russia shows the slightest inclination to do so today, despite all of the provocations of facing US bases in their own neighborhoods.

Trump is looking for ways to save money – an excellent idea given that the U.S. federal budget is hemorrhaging $2 trillion dollars a year, more than 6% of U.S. GDP. Closing the U.S. overseas military bases would be an excellent place to start.

Trump even seemed to point that way at the start of his second term, but the Congressional Republicans have called for increases, not decreases, in military spending. Yet with America’s 750 or so overseas military bases in around 80 countries, it’s high time to close these bases, pocket the saving, and return to diplomacy. Getting the host countries to pay for something that doesn’t help them or the U.S. is a huge drain of time, diplomacy, and resources, both for the U.S. and the host countries.

The U.S. should make a basic deal with China, Russia, and other powers. “You keep your military bases out of our neighborhood, and we’ll keep our military bases out of yours.” Basic reciprocity among the major powers would save trillions of dollars of military outlays over the coming decade and, more importantly, would push the Doomsday Clock back from 89 seconds to nuclear Armageddon

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This story was originally published by Barn Raiser, your independent source for rural and small town news.

The preamble for the next war over water is here. Aggressive corporations are coming after the few remaining pristine places on Mother Earth—mainly on the land of Indigenous people. Nowadays, it’s not just Native people being targeted, it’s our allies.

Last month, two separate court decisions highlighted the repression being leveled on our Water Protector allies.

On March 19, a jury in Mandan, North Dakota, in Morton County, leveled a blistering $660 million verdict against Greenpeace for its part in the Standing Rock resistance against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). Anyone who was at Standing Rock knows that Greenpeace was barely there, but they have a name, and Energy Transfer, the pipeline’s owner, made an example out of them. I was in the courtroom when the verdict came in. It was sickening.

When Energy Transfer sues people for so-called defamation, they send a clear message: If you stand up, you will be punished in a lawsuit.

On March 10, Marian Moore, a Water Protector who had participated at a gathering to pray for healing, had her charges reversed by a Minnesota Court of Appeals. Her story: Marian, 67, a long-human rights advocate and environmentalist, was the daughter of Paul Moore Jr., the Episcopal bishop of New York from 1972 to 1989 who had walked with Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights movement. In this century, Marian had been active in opposing Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline, which crosses northern Minnesota, on its way from Calgary, Alberta, to Superior, Wisconsin, on lands that are subject to Native treaty rights and through waters full of wild rice, an essential food to the Anishinaabe.

On January 9, 2021, Moore was among the more than 100 Water Protectors who gathered on state Highway 169 for a prayer ceremony near a Line 3 construction site in Aitkin County. For that, she caught three charges, including trespass on critical infrastructure (a gross misdemeanor), unlawful assembly and, rather redundantly, presence at an unlawful assembly (both misdemeanors). I was a witness in her defense.

In November, 2023, an Aitkin County jury found her guilty of gross misdemeanors and sentenced her to six months in county jail, but with a stay of execution for nine months, allowing her to appeal. “I had to not trespass on any Enbridge property and be law-abiding, or I would be in Aitkin County jail for six months,” she explains to me.

Six months seems like a long time for someone who stood on a state highway to pray, looked at a construction site, and left once a dispersal order was given. “I think they targeted me because I was friends with Indigenous people and [was] bringing money to the movement against the pipeline,” says Marian.

Meanwhile out in Morton County, Greenpeace is getting socked with that ridiculous verdict. $660 million is a lot of money for some folks who were barely at Standing Rock. Aitkin County, Minnesota, and Morton County, North Dakota, are trying to teach a lesson; or, more appropriately, through these cases, corporations are trying to stifle resistance and discourage allies.

How Does This happen?

Welcome to the New Order, the one where corporations are now considered legal “persons,” protected by law enforcement and the judicial system as they press the law’s boundaries and extract precious resources.

The entire trial against Greenpeace was shameful.

Here’s how it went: The law firm Gibson Dunn carefully picked Mandan in Morton County, an oil-friendly jurisdiction where Judge James Gion denied most important motions made by Greenpeace. Four motions to change the venue from Mandan were denied. Gion would not let Greenpeace tell the jury of Energy Transfer’s terrible safety record. According to a report by Greenpeace and Waterkeeper Alliance, the Pipeline Hazardous and Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) issued 106 safety violations to Energy Transfer and Sunoco between 2002 and 2018, including failures to conduct corrosion inspections, to maintain pipeline integrity, and to repair unsafe pipelines in a timely manner within five years.

What’s so sad is that the North Dakota jury couldn’t even stand up for the water, the land, and the people.

Greenpeace was not allowed to tell the jury that Energy Transfer’s identical federal lawsuit against Greenpeace was dismissed by a federal judge. The judge effectively limited defense evidence.

Gion would not allow live streaming, so if you wanted to “see justice” you had to go to Mandan. It’s said that justice is blind, and, in North Dakota, justice is literally blind and asleep. I saw jurors asleep while on duty in the court room.

“Greenpeace did not manipulate Standing Rock, but Energy Transfer has manipulated Morton County,” Janet Alkire, chairwoman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, said in a statement shortly after the verdict.

As I drove toward Bismark from my own reservation, White Earth, a verse from the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” stuck in my head: I went down to the County Courthouse to get my share of abuse. At least that’s how I sing it. I’ve had my share. That’s what it’s like being on trial in the Deep North, especially if you’re a Water Protector.

The chances for a Native person to get justice in North Dakota or northern Minnesota are probably pretty small. Native people represent a third of the people in jail in Becker, Hubbard, and Aitkin counties. Yet, we represent only 5.2% of the population.

Standing Rock Tribal Chairwoman Alkire was appalled at the state of justice in Mandan:

I take offense to the jury verdict… We expect more from North Dakota judges and members of the jury from our neighboring communities… Neither Greenpeace nor anyone else paid or persuaded Standing Rock to oppose DAPL… Energy Transfer’s false and self-serving narrative that Greenpeace manipulated Standing Rock into protesting DAPL is patronizing and disrespectful to our people. We understand that many Morton County residents support the oil industry… But we are your neighbors, and you should not be fooled that easily.

The lawsuit against Greenpeace is called a SLAPP suit, or Strategic Litigation against Public Participation. It is intended to silence opposition. There are anti-SLAPP laws in 35 states, including Minnesota. Fundamentally, this is a question of free speech. When Energy Transfer sues people for so-called defamation, they send a clear message: If you stand up, you will be punished in a lawsuit.

“To me, this is a freedom of speech case and freedom of association case,” attorney Sarah Vogel, a onetime assistant U.S. attorney and former North Dakota agriculture commissioner, told the North Dakota Monitor before the case went to trial. Vogel, who grew up in Mandan, said, “As residents of a small state without a whole lot of power, we’d better be able to speak up. Who knows? I mean, this time, it’s Greenpeace, but who will it be next time?”

The case in Aitkin County was a little different but had some of the same premises. The idea that “outside agitators” came and did not do nice things was a theme. Greenpeace fits that narrative for Energy Transfer, and Marian Moore, who is a striking six feet two inches tall, does not quite look like a local gal.

Trey Cox is Energy Transfer’s lead attorney from Gibson Dunn (the same law firm that brought us the Chevron Donziger verdict). Cox kept referring to Water Protectors as outsiders and paid protesters. One might wonder, where Energy Transfer is from? Certainly not from Mandan. They are from Texas. Where was TigerSwan, the private security company hired by Energy Transfer from? North Carolina. And where was Frost Kennels, the company whose employees unleashed dogs on Water Protectors, from? Ohio. In other words, mercenaries.

In Minnesota, remember that Enbridge is a foreign corporation from Canada, with big swaths of pipeline networks across our north country, including aging pipes and the dirtiest oil in the world that poses a major threat to the Great Lakes, repository of a fifth of the world’s freshwater. Yet, Enbridge received priority policy protection in Minnesota during the Covid-19 pandemic and was allowed to bring in 4,300 people to build Line 3 as a part of “essential industry” in the state.

These companies also want to censure and erase any mentions of their abysmal safety records. Energy Transfer has a multitude of fines for spills, and Enbridge has the two largest oil spills on the U.S. mainland to its name. In the North Dakota trial, Greenpeace could not bring up Energy Transfer’s safety record, while in Aitkin County, the judge did not allow Marian Moore to say “treaty rights” or allude to the Minnesota case where Anishinaabe Water Protectors’ charges were dismissed in September 2023, based on the treaty and cultural beliefs, and “in the interests of justice.”

The Pipeline to Curtail First Amendment Rights

The Trump administration intends to further criminalize Water Protectors, and certainly protests in general. That much is clear. This is on top of the more than 300 anti-protest bills introduced in state legislatures since 2017, according to the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, 54 of which have been enacted and currently undermine the First Amendment right to freedom of speech and assembly.

Moreover, over the past half-century, a dangerous doctrine of “qualified immunity” has been hatched up, underwritten by the Supreme Court, to limit the ability of individuals to hold police officers accountable for violating their constitutional rights. Qualified immunity basically gives officers expanding impunity to injure, or even kill, civilians like Water Protectors.

In April 2024, North Dakota Federal Judge Daniel Traynor dismissed Sophia Wilansky’s case against North Dakota law enforcement on the grounds that law enforcement had “qualified immunity.”

Greenpeace was inspired by a story called the Rainbow Warrior, where people of all colors would come together to protect Mother Earth.

A blast from an “explosive munition” was leveled at her in the early hours of November 21, 2016. Law enforcement had constructed a barricade across Backwater Bridge on North Dakota Highway 1806 to prevent unarmed Water Protectors, including Wilansky, from using the road. Morton County Deputy Jonathon Moll, had positioned himself on the turret of a Humvee and fired a flashbang grenade from his 12-gauge shotgun, hitting Wilansky, nearly severing her hand and destroying almost all of the arteries, skin, tissue, muscles, nerves, tendons, and bone in her left forearm. “At 21-years-old, I lost the use of my arm because a police officer shot me from a gun turret with an exploding grenade at a protest. My life will never be the same, but I will also not be scared away from fighting for what is right,” Wilansky said in a Civil Liberties Defense Center media release on April 6, 2024. An additional statement read: “The doctrine of Qualified Immunity is repulsive in that it allows police officers to… shoot protestors with anything they want without repercussions.”

Yes, there will be appeals. Marian Moore won on appeal. And a Greenpeace spokesperson told Barn Raiser the nonprofit will appeal the verdict, but the timing and process of the appeal has yet to be determined.

But what’s so sad is that the North Dakota jury couldn’t even stand up for the water, the land, and the people. Instead, that jury gave a Texas oil pipeline company, founded by Trump-supporting billionaire Kelcy Warren, everything it wanted and then some. That was shameful. And, without that appeals court, an Aitkin County jury would have been content to let Marian Moore sit in the slammer.

Marty Garbus is a trial attorney who has represented, among others, Nelson Mandela, Leonard Peltier, Daniel Ellsberg, Lenny Bruce, Elie Wiesel, Cesar Chavez, and Vaclav Havel. Garbus is also a member of the Energy Transfer v. Greenpeace Trial Monitoring Committee, a group that followed the trial day in and day out. Here is what he said when the jury returned its shameful verdict:

In my six decades of legal practice, I have never witnessed a trial as unfair as the one against Greenpeace that just ended in the courts of North Dakota. This is one of the most important cases in American history. The law that can come down in this case can affect any demonstration, religious or political. It’s far bigger than the environmental movement. Yet the court in North Dakota abdicated its sacred duty to conduct a fair and public trial and instead let Energy Transfer run roughshod over the rule of law.

Greenpeace has very strong case on appeal. I believe there is a good chance it ultimately will win both in court and in the court of public opinion.

What to do? Stand our ground. Make the solutions. And keep working together.

In Minnesota, we call ourselves the Home Team, and we are many colors. Marion and thousands of others told their stories and faced a lot of police for the sake of protecting water. I, for one, am grateful to them, and the new work underway by groups like Rise and Repair in Minnesota that does multi-racial organizing work around climate justice.

Weweg bi azhe giiwewag. The snow geese return.

There is greatness in the flocks of birds returning to these lands of water. Each year, they return and remind us of the life that is here, a life which needs water. I am reminded that’s who I work for. Greenpeace was inspired by a story called the Rainbow Warrior, where people of all colors would come together to protect Mother Earth. Critics say the story wasn’t a real prophecy, but I see it happening today. People of all colors coming together to protect Mother Earth is a good story for epic times. Thank you, allies.

For centuries, legal systems around the world have treated Nature as property—something to be owned, exploited, and managed for human benefit. This anthropocentric perspective has led to widespread environmental degradation, climate change, and biodiversity loss.

However, a revolutionary legal framework is emerging: the recognition of the Rights of Nature. This paradigm shift moves beyond traditional environmental laws and acknowledges that Nature itself has inherent rights, much like human beings and corporations.

The Rights of Nature concept is based on the idea that ecosystems and species are not mere objects but living entities with their own inherent rights to exist, thrive, and evolve. This legal framework challenges the prevailing notion that Nature is merely a resource for human use and instead recognizes its intrinsic value. By granting legal personhood to rivers, forests, and other natural entities, governments and courts can ensure that these ecosystems have standing in legal proceedings.

By shifting from an exploitative to a respectful relationship with the natural world, humanity can ensure a healthier planet for future generations.

The movement gained global attention when Ecuador became the first country to enshrine the Rights of Nature in its Constitution in 2008. The document states that Nature, or "Pachamama," has the right to exist and regenerate. Similarly, Bolivia passed the Law of Mother Earth in 2010, reinforcing Indigenous worldviews that see Nature as a living system with rights. Since then, countries such as New Zealand, Panama, India, and Colombia have also granted legal rights to specific ecosystems, setting legal precedents that continue to inspire the global community.

Why should we grant rights to Nature, you might ask? Traditional environmental laws often fail to prevent ecological destruction because they are based on regulation rather than protection. Corporations and governments can exploit loopholes, pay fines, or simply weigh the financial cost of pollution against profit margins. The Rights of Nature framework, however, fundamentally shifts the legal system from one of ownership to one of stewardship.

One of the most compelling cases for this approach is the Whanganui River in New Zealand. In 2017, the New Zealand government recognized the river as a legal entity, granting it the same rights and responsibilities as a person. This decision was made in collaboration with the Whanganui iwi, the Indigenous Māori people who have long regarded the river as an ancestor. Now, legal guardians, including representatives from both the government and the Māori community, speak on behalf of the river in legal matters. This recognition has already influenced policy decisions related to conservation and sustainable water management. Similarly, in 2017, the High Court of Uttarakhand in India granted legal rights to the Ganges and Yamuna rivers, acknowledging their sacred and ecological importance. Although this ruling faced legal challenges, it sparked important discussions about environmental governance and the need for stronger protections for vital ecosystems.

Despite these victories, the implementation of the Rights of Nature faces legal, political, and economic challenges. Many governments and corporations resist this shift, fearing restrictions on industrial activities. Additionally, enforcement mechanisms vary widely, and some legal rulings remain symbolic without proper institutional backing. However, the movement continues to gain momentum. Local communities, Indigenous groups, and environmental activists are advocating for the recognition of Nature's rights as a crucial tool for fighting climate change and biodiversity loss. In the United States, cities such as Pittsburgh and Toledo have passed local ordinances recognizing the rights of ecosystems, empowering communities to challenge environmental destruction more effectively.

Ecuador has witnessed several groundbreaking legal victories that affirm Nature's rights. Among these, the 2021 Constitutional Court ruling on Los Cedros Reserve was historic: The court halted mining exploration in this biodiversity hotspot, recognizing that the rights of the forest and its species, including endangered monkeys and orchids, outweighed extractive interests. Similarly, in Intag, a region long defended by local communities, legal actions based on behalf of endangered frogs and the Rights of Nature have helped suspend mining operations that threatened primary cloud forests and rivers vital to both people and ecosystems.

Another notable case is Estrellita, a woolly monkey rescued from illegal trafficking. When authorities attempted to relocate her to a zoo, a judge ruled in favor of her individual rights as part of Nature—marking the first time an animal in Ecuador was granted such recognition. These cases underscore the growing power of constitutional rights when applied to real-life conflicts between conservation and exploitation. They also reflect the tireless advocacy of Indigenous peoples, environmental defenders, and legal experts who are reshaping the legal landscape to center ecological integrity and the interconnectedness of all life.

The Rights of Nature framework is more than just a legal concept—it is a cultural and ethical transformation. By shifting from an exploitative to a respectful relationship with the natural world, humanity can ensure a healthier planet for future generations. As this movement grows, it is essential for policymakers, legal scholars, and citizens alike to support and advance this revolutionary approach to environmental protection.

The Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature (GARN) is a global network that has been at the forefront of the Earth Jurisprudence and Rights of Nature movement for the last 15 years, educating, upholding, and supporting its growth. With over 6,000 allies worldwide, GARN serves as a movement hub, connecting Indigenous leaders, civil society, lawyers, and advocates reshaping environmental governance.

Just in case I thought one couldn’t feel more forlorn right now, the word came this morning of the death of Pope Francis. It hit me hard—not because I’m a Catholic (I’m a Methodist) but because I had always felt buoyed by his remarkable spirit. If he could bring new hope and energy to an institution as hidebound as the Vatican, there was reason for all of us to go on working on our own hidebound institutions—and if he could stand so completely in solidarity with the world’s poor and vulnerable, then it gave the rest of us something to aim for.

I thought this from the start, when he became the first pope to choose the name of Francis—that countercultural blaze of possibility in a dark time—and when he showed his mastery of the art of gesture, washing the feet of women, of prisoners, of Muslim refugees. (Only Greta Thunberg, with her school strike, has so mastered the power of gesture in modern politics).

But he brought that moral resolve to the question of climate change, making it the subject of his 2015 encyclical “Laudato Si,” the most important document of his papacy and arguably the most important piece of writing so far this millennium. I spent several weeks living with that book-length epistle in order to write about it for The New York Review of Books, and though I briefly met the man himself in Rome, it is that encounter with his mind that really lives with me. “Laudato Si” is a truly remarkable document—yes, it exists as a response to the climate crisis (and it was absolutely crucial in the lead-up to the Paris climate talks, consolidating elite opinion behind the idea that some kind of deal was required). But it uses the climate crisis to talk in broad and powerful terms about modernity.

The ecological problems we face are not, in their origin, technological, says Francis. Instead, “a certain way of understanding human life and activity has gone awry, to the serious detriment of the world around us.” He is no Luddite (“who can deny the beauty of an aircraft or a skyscraper?”) but he insists that we have succumbed to a “technocratic paradigm,” which leads us to believe that “every increase in power means ‘an increase of “progress” itself’… as if reality, goodness and truth automatically flow from technological and economic power as such.” This paradigm “exalts the concept of a subject who, using logical and rational procedures, progressively approaches and gains control over an external object.” Men and women, he writes, have from the start

intervened in nature, but for a long time this meant being in tune with and respecting the possibilities offered by the things themselves. It was a matter of receiving what nature itself allowed, as if from its own hand.

In our world, however, “human beings and material objects no longer extend a friendly hand to one another; the relationship has become confrontational.” With the great power that technology has afforded us, it’s become

easy to accept the idea of infinite or unlimited growth, which proves so attractive to economists, financiers, and experts in technology. It is based on the lie that there is an infinite supply of the Earth’s goods, and this leads to the planet being squeezed dry beyond every limit.

The deterioration of the environment, he says, is just one sign of this “reductionism which affects every aspect of human and social life.”

I think Francis’s project for the Earth—a recovery of fellow feeling, with a special attention to the poor—is the only thing that can save us over time. But it will take time—obviously for the moment we’ve chosen the opposite path, as exemplified by the fact that JD Vance, scourge of the refugee, darkened his last day on Earth.

In the meantime, Francis was very much a pragmatist, and one advised by excellent scientists and engineers. As a result, he had a clear technological preference: the rapid spread of solar power everywhere. He favored it because it was clean, and because it was liberating—the best short-term hope of bringing power to those without it, and leaving that power in their hands, not the hands of some oligarch somewhere.

As a result, he followed up “Laudato Si” with a letter last summer, “Fratello Sole,” which reminds everyone that the climate crisis is powered by fossil fuel, and which goes on to say

There is a need to make a transition to a sustainable development model that reduces greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, setting the goal of climate neutrality. Mankind has the technological means to deal with this environmental transformation and its pernicious ethical, social, economic, and political consequences, and, among these, solar energy plays a key role.

As a result, he ordered the Vatican to begin construction of a field of solar panels on land it owned near Rome—an agrivoltaic project that would produce not just food but enough solar power to entirely power the city-state that is the Vatican. It is designed, in his words, to provide “the complete energy sustenance of Vatican City State.” That is to say, this will soon be the first nation powered entirely by the sun.

The level of emotion—of love—in this decision is notable. The pope named “Laudato Si” (“Praised be”) after the first two words of his namesake’s “Canticle to the Sun,” and “Fratello Sole” was even more closely tied—those are the words that the first Francis used to address Brother Sun. I reprint the opening of the Canticle here, in homage to both men, and to their sense of humble communion with the glorious world around us.

All praise be yours, my Lord, through all that you have made,
And first my lord Brother Sun,
Who brings the day; and light you give to us through him.
How beautiful is he, how radiant in all his splendor!
Of you, Most High, he bears the likeness.

The world is a poorer place this morning. But far richer for his having lived.

Tomorrow — Tuesday, April 22nd — will mark the 55th anniversary of Earth Day. The power of those 20 million voices that came out on the streets on that first Earth Day decades ago led the U.S. to create the Environemental Protection Agency and the first generation of environmental laws addressing clean air, clean water, and the threat of toxics.

Fast forward to today. Under the “Our Power. Our Planet” banner, EARTHDAY.ORG, the global organizer of Earth Day, is calling on people from all walks of life to join in “Earth Action Day”—an effort to once again mobilize people power to tackle the current generation of environmental crises.

Last year was a disaster for the planet and its people. According to NASA, 2024 was the warmest year since temperatures began being recorded in 1880. In the U.S. alone, there were 27 climate and weather events resulting in at least a billion dollars of damage — second only to 2023 with 28 such events.

While a number of factors have contributed to the increase in these catastrophic events, research demonstrates that "human-caused climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of certain types of extreme weather that lead to billion-dollar disasters—most notably the rise in vulnerability to drought, lengthening wildfire seasons in the Western states, and the potential for extremely heavy rainfall becoming more common in the eastern states.”

The news about plastic pollution is similarly dark. Earth Action reported that on last September 5 – Plastic Overshoot Day – the amount of plastic waste exceeded the capacity of waste systems to manage. An estimated 220 million tonnes of plastic waste were expected to be produced in 2024, with 66 percent of the population living in places where the amount of waste exceeds local capacity. While negotiation of a strong global treaty on plastics last year held forth the promise of handling some of these issues, negotiators failed to reach an agreement and the talks drag on while the industry continues to pollute year after year.

All of this is taking place in the face of increasing scientific news about the harmful impacts of plastics on humans and their health. World Wildlife Federation reported that humans could be ingesting up to 5 grams of plastic each week and a recent report found that high levels of plastics have been found in human brains. Additional research has shown that plastics are associated with everything from cancer to endocrine disruption, which can impair reproduction, growth, and cognitive abilities. Wildlife is also suffering, with plastic ingestion and entanglement contributing to starvation and strangulation, among other issues.

For years we have been told by the plastics industry that we can clean up and recycle our way out of this problem , but continued use of plastics however means continued use of fossil fuels and recycling has been demonstrated to be largely myth due to factors including quality degradation, contamination, and non-recyclable content.

What is the common thread of all these challenges facing our planet and the survival of its people ? The cause of all of these threats can be traced to one source: human greed and disregard.

But the encouraging and hopefully inspiring news is that the solutions to these problems also rest in the hands of the people. We have the collective power not only to protect our planet but also to improve lives and livelihoods.

The link between greenhouse gas emissions and climate change is now scientifically indisputable. According to the United Nations, fossil fuels make up 75% of greenhouse gas emissions and 90% of carbon dioxide emissions. The good news from the International Renewable Energy Agency is that 90% of global electricity can and should come from renewable sources by 2050.

Slowing the climate crisis is only one of many reasons to switch to renewables. Renewable energy prices are falling, and in most places of the world today, it is the least expensive option. Other benefits range from preventing unhealthy air associated with the burning of fossil fuels to creating up to 30 million jobs to supporting energy security.

Whether you choose to power your home or vehicle with renewable energy, support community solar, or call on government leaders for more research and investment, the options for taking action to accelerate the transition to renewables are many. Similarly, as consumers we can choose plastic-free products, demand a reduction in the use of plastics from businesses, while at the same time pressuring government leaders to reduce production globally, end the use of toxic ingredients, and improve waste management systems.

So this Earth Action Day exercise your power! We need to demonstrate to our leaders in government and business that we are still here, we are a witness to their actions, and we will hold them accountable to do right by our planet and its people.

What is the mission of the Washington, D.C.-based Tax Foundation? Even a quick review of the Tax Foundation’s output makes it perfectly plain: to help make average Americans see the richest among us as terribly overtaxed.

Hardly a Tax Foundation report goes by without one iteration or another of this overtaxed claim. Just last fall, the Tax Foundation produced a study that had billionaire Warren Buffett paying taxes at a rate of over 1,000 percent.

A few years back, early in the Biden years, I deconstructed another Tax Foundation claim, that the passage of tax changes the Biden White House was then pushing would leave the estate of a hypothetical taxpayer worth $100 million facing a tax rate of 61.1 percent. My response detailed the absurdity of that claim.

But what if that 61.1 percent had turned out to be an appropriate calculation? Would that 61.1 percent rate have really amounted to an oppressive tax levy? The Tax Foundation sure wants people to think so.

So let’s take a closer look at the Tax Foundation’s mythical ultra-rich taxpayer and let’s tweak the Tax Foundation’s hypothetical facts to make them just realistic enough to work with.

Suppose we assume our mythical taxpayer originally paid $1 million for the asset that ended up worth $100 million at her death 25 years later. That would leave $99 million of taxable gain. And a $1 million asset appreciating to $100 million after 25 years would have an average annual rate of return of 20.23 percent, a realistic rate for the sort of “home run investments” the ultra-rich actually make.

Let’s also ignore the exemption from federal estate tax — currently $14 million per individual, $28 million for a married couple — and treat the entire amount remaining from the $100 million after payment of income tax as subject to a 40 percent estate tax.

Applying the Tax Foundation’s methodology from that point, we would end up with a total effective tax rate just shy of 65.8 percent, nearly five percentage points higher than the 61.1 percent rate that had our friends at the Tax Foundation clutching their pearls. Wow! Sounds stunningly oppressive, huh?

Actually, no. The reason: The Tax Foundation’s presentation deceptively ignores the tax reduction magic of buy-hold for decades-sell, the tax loophole that causes the effective annual tax rate on the growth in the value of investments to decline as the rate of return and length of the holding period increase.

Our mythical taxpayer would be the quintessential beneficiary of this tax reduction magic. She would see her investment gains compound for 25 years without paying a nickel in income tax, all while her asset’s value was increasing by 20.23 percent per year.

The Tax Foundation, you see, makes quite the fuss over the one-time tax a mythical taxpayer’s estate would pay in the year of her death, but conveniently forgets about the taxpayer’s zero tax rate for the previous 25 years running.

That focus on a once-in-25-years tax payment ignores the full picture. To see that more clearly, consider the impact that a 65.8 percent tax would have on a mythical taxpayer’s overall investment return. At an after-tax annual rate of return of 15.18 percent, an asset with an initial value of $1 million will be worth $34.2 million in 25 years, exactly the amount left of the mythical taxpayer’s $100 million after her estate’s one-time tax payment of $65.8 million. That would be a 25 percent reduction in the pre-tax annual rate of return of 20.23 percent.

In other words, that supposedly onerous 65.8 percent tax at the time of the Tax Foundation’s mythical taxpayer’s death translates to an effective annual tax rate of just 25 percent.

Had the Tax Foundation’s mythical taxpayer been required to pay federal tax, covering both current income tax and future estate tax, at an annual rate of 25 percent on the growth in her investment’s value, and had she sold off just enough of the investment each year to pay the tax, her estate would be left with the same amount in the year of her death as it would have after paying the supposedly oppressive income and estate tax due under the terms of the Biden budget.

So, to review, the Tax Foundation concocted a hypothetical situation to show the proposals in Biden’s budget rated as extreme and oppressive. But even though that hypothetical is so concocted it couldn’t be found in the real-life situations of even the richest Americans, the supposedly oppressive one-time tax rate paid by the Tax Foundation’s mythical taxpayer translates to a modest effective annual tax rate of just 25 percent.

The bottom line: Once we take into account the impact of buy-hold for decades-sell, the tales of horror that apologists for the ultra-rich concoct to advocate against any meaningful tax increases on their deep-pocketed friends turn out to be not at all horrible.

Unless you’re horrified at the prospect of a reformed tax system that prevents the already obscene concentration of American wealth from becoming even worse.

In 2003, the Macedonian police arrested Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen vacationing in their country. They handed the unfortunate man over to the CIA, who shipped him off to one of their “black sites.” For those too young to remember (or who have quite understandably chosen to forget), “black sites” was the name given to clandestine CIA detention centers around the world, where that agency held incommunicado and tortured men captured in what was then known as the Global War on Terror. The black site in this case was the notorious Salt Pit in Afghanistan. There el-Masri was, among other things, beaten, anally raped, and threatened with a gun held to his head. After four months he was dumped on a rural road in Albania.

It seems that the CIA had finally realized that they had arrested the wrong man. They wanted some other Khalid el-Masri, thought to be an al-Qaeda associate, and not, as Amy Davidson wrote in the New Yorker, that “car salesman from Bavaria.”

El-Masri was not the only person that representatives of the administration of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney mistakenly sent off to another country to be tortured. In an infamous case of mistaken arrest, a Canadian citizen named Maher Arar was detained by the FBI at JFK Airport in New York while on his way home from a vacation in Tunisia. He was then held in solitary confinement for two weeks in the United States, while being denied contact with a lawyer before ultimately being shipped off to Syria. There, he would be tortured for almost a year until the Canadian government finally secured his release.

An “Administrative Error”

I was reminded of such instances of “extraordinary rendition” in the Bush-Cheney era when I read about the Trump administration’s March 2025 deportation of Kilmar Armando Abrego García to a grim prison in El Salvador. Because of threats against him and his family from Barrio 18, a vicious Salvadoran gang, Abrego García had fled that country as a young teenager. He entered the U.S. without papers in 2011 to join his older brother, already a U.S. citizen.

He was arrested in 2019, while seeking work as a day laborer outside a Home Depot store and handed over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which accused him of being a member of another Salvadoran gang, MS-13. This proved a false claim, as the immigration judge who heard his case agreed. While not granting Abrego García asylum, the judge assigned him a status — “withholding from removal” — which kept him safe in this country, because he faced the possibility of torture or other violence in his homeland. That status allowed him to work legally here. He married a U.S. citizen and they have three children who are also U.S. citizens.

Then, on March 12, 2025, on his way home from his job as a sheet-metal apprentice, he was suddenly stopped by ICE agents and arrested. They told him his status had been revoked (which wasn’t true) and promptly shipped him to various detention centers around the country. Ultimately, he was deported to El Salvador without benefit of legal assistance or a hearing before an immigration judge. As far as is known, he is now incarcerated at CECOT, the Center for the Confinement of Terrorists, a Salvadoran prison notorious for the ill treatment and torture of its inmates. While built for 40,000 prisoners, it now houses many more in perpetually illuminated cells, each crammed with more than 100 prisoners (leaving about 6.5 square feet of space for each man. It is considered “one of the most dangerous prisons in the Western Hemisphere” with “some of the most inhumane and squalid conditions known in any carceral system.” Furthermore, among the gangs reported to have a substantial presence at CECOT is Barrio 18, the very crew Abrego García fled El Salvador to escape so many years ago.

The Trump Justice Department has now admitted that they made an “administrative error” in deporting him but have so far refused to bring him home. Responding to a Supreme Court ruling demanding that the government facilitate his return, the Justice Department on April 12th finally acknowledged to the D.C. district court that he “is currently being held in the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador.” Its statement continued: “He is alive and secure in that facility. He is detained pursuant to the sovereign, domestic authority of El Salvador.” On April 14, 2025, in contemptuous defiance of the supreme court, President Trump and his Salvadoran counterpart Nayib Bukele made it clear to reporters that Abrego García will not be returning to the United States.

Previously, the government’s spokesman, Michael G. Kozak, who identified himself in the filing as a “Senior Bureau Official” in the State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, had failed to comply with the rest of Judge Paula Xinis’s order: to identify what steps the administration is (or isn’t) taking to get him released. The judge has insisted that the department provide daily updates on its efforts to get him home, which it has failed to do. Its statement that Abrego García “is detained pursuant to the sovereign, domestic authority of El Salvador” suggests officials intend to argue that — despite paying the Salvadoran government a reported six million dollars for its prison services — the United States has no influence over Salvadoran actions. We can only hope that he really is still alive. The Trump administration’s truth-telling record is not exactly encouraging.

Extraordinary Rendition

The technical term for such detainee transfers is “extraordinary rendition.” “Rendition” involves sending a prisoner to another country to be interrogated, imprisoned, and even possibly tortured. Rendition becomes “extraordinary” when it occurs outside of normal legal strictures, as with the cases of el-Masri and Ahar decades ago,, and Abrego García today. Extraordinary rendition violates the United Nations Convention Against Torture, which explicitly prohibits sending someone to another country to be mistreated or tortured. It also violates U.S. anti-torture laws. As countless illegal Trump administration acts demonstrate, however, illegality is no longer a barrier of any sort to whatever its officials want to do.

Two other flights left for El Salvador on the day Abrego García was rendered. They contained almost 200 people accused of being members of a Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, and were similarly deported under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 without any hearings. Are they actually gang members? No one knows, although it seems likely that at least some of them aren’t. Jerce Reyes Barrios, for example, was a Venezuelan soccer coach who sought asylum in the U.S. and whose tattoo, celebrating the famous Spanish soccer team Royal Madrid, was claimed to be evidence enough of his gang membership and the excuse for his deportation.

Andry José Hernández Romero is another unlikely gang member. He’s a gay makeup artist who entered the United States last August to keep a pre-arranged asylum appointment. Instead, he was arrested and held in detention until the Tren de Aragua flights in March. The proof of his gang membership? His “Tres Reyes” or “Three Kings” tattoos that were common in his hometown in Venezuela.

In fact, all 200 or so deportees on those flights have been illegally rendered to El Salvador in blatant defiance of a judge’s court order to stop them or return those already in the air. None of those men received any sort of due process before being shipped off to a Salvadoran hellhole. In response, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele tweeted, “Oopsie… Too late” with a laughing-face emoji.

Even U.S. citizens are at risk of incarceration at CECOT. After Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with President Bukele, the State Department’s website praised his “extraordinary gesture never before extended by any country,” an offer “to house in his jails dangerous American criminals, including U.S. citizens and legal residents.” Trump reiterated his interest in shipping “homegrown criminals” to El Salvador during his press conference with Bukele. As former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance has observed, “If it can happen to Abrego Garcia, it can happen to any of us.”

It Didn’t Start with Trump

It’s tempting to think of Donald Trump’s second term as a sui generis reign of lawlessness. But sadly, the federal government’s willingness to violate federal and international law with impunity didn’t begin with Trump. If anything, the present incumbent is harvesting a crop of autocratic powers from seeds planted by President George W. Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney in those war on terror years following the attacks of September 11, 2001. In their wake, the hastily-passed Patriot Act granted the federal government vast new detention and surveillance powers. The Homeland Security Act of 2002 established a new cabinet-level department, one whose existence we now take for granted.

As I wrote more than a decade ago, after September 11th, torture went “mainstream” in the United States. The Bush administration cultivated an understandable American fear of terrorism to justify abrogating what, until then, had been a settled consensus in this country: that torture is both wrong and illegal. In the face of a new enemy, al-Qaeda, the administration argued that the requirements for decent treatment of wartime detainees outlined in the Geneva Conventions had been rendered “quaint.” Apparently, wartime rights granted even to Nazi prisoners of war during World War II were too risky to extend to that new foe.

In those days of “enhanced interrogation,” I was already arguing that accepting such lawless behavior could well become an American habit. We might gradually learn, I suggested, to put up with any government measures as long as they theoretically kept us safe. And that indeed was the Bush administration’s promise: Let us do whatever we need to, over there on the “dark side,” and in return we promise to always keep you safe. In essence, the message was: there will be no more terrorist attacks if you allow us to torture people.

The very fact that they were willing to torture prisoners was proof that those people must deserve it — even though, as we now know, many of them had nothing whatsoever to do with al-Qaeda or the September 11th attacks. (And even if they had been involved, no one, not even a terrorist, deserves to be tortured.)

If you’re too young to remember (or have been lucky enough to forget), you can click here, or here, or here for the grisly details of what the war on terror did to its victims.

The constant thrill of what some have called security theater has kept us primed for new enemies and so set the stage for the second set of Trump years that we now find ourselves in. We still encounter this theater of the absurd every time we stand in line at an airport, unpacking our computers, removing our shoes, sorting our liquids into quart-sized baggies — all to reinforce the idea that we are in terrible danger and that the government will indeed protect us.

Sadly, all too many of us became inured to the idea that prisoners could be sent to that infamous offshore prison of injustice at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, perhaps never to be released. (Indeed, as of January 2025, of the hundreds of people incarcerated there over the years, 15 war on terror prisoners still remain.) It should perhaps be no surprise, then, that the second time around, Donald Trump seized on Guantánamo as a possible place to house the immigrants he sought to deport from this country. After all, so many of us were already used to thinking of anybody sent there as the worst of the worst, as something other than human.

Dehumanizing the targets of institutionalized mistreatment and torture proved to be both the pretext for and a product of the process. Every torture regime develops a dehumanizing language for those it identifies as legitimate targets. For example, the torturers employed by the followers of Augusto Pinochet, who led Chile’s 1973 military coup, typically called their targets “humanoids” (to distinguish them from actual human beings).

For the same reason, the Israel Defense Forces now refer to just about anyone they kill in Gaza or on the West Bank as a “terrorist.” And the successful conflation of “Palestinian” with “terrorist” was all it took for some Americans to embrace Donald Trump’s suggestion that Gaza should be cleared of its people and turned into the “Riviera of the Middle East” for Israelis, Americans, and foreign tourists.

Trump’s representatives have used the same kind of language to describe people they are sending to that prison in El Salvador. His press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, referred to them as “heinous monsters,” which is in keeping with Trump’s own description of his political opponents as inhuman “vermin.” At a rally in New Hampshire in 2023, Trump told the crowd, “We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.” Here he was talking not only about immigrants, but about U.S. citizens as well.

After years of security theater, all too many Americans seem ready to accept Trump’s pledge to root out the vermin.

It Can Happen to You

One difference between the Bush-Cheney years and the Trump ones is that the attacks of September 11, 2001, represented a genuine and horrific emergency. Trump’s version of such an emergency, on the other hand, is entirely Trumped-up. He posits nothing short of an immigration “invasion” — in effect, a permanent 9/11 — that “has caused widespread chaos and suffering in our country over the last 4 years.” Or so his executive order “Declaring a National Emergency at the Southern Border of the United States” insists. To justify illegally deporting alleged members of Tren de Aragua and, in the future (if he has his way), many others, he has invented a totally imaginary war so that he can invoke the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, which was last used during World War II to justify the otherwise unjustifiable internment of another group of dehumanized people in this country: Japanese-Americans.

Donald Trump has his very own “black site” now. Remember that El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele is perfectly willing to receive U.S. citizens, too, as prisoners in his country. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Jackson, made that point in a statement that accompanied that court’s recent order requiring the Trump administration to facilitate Kilmar Abrego García’s return to the United States. They wrote, “The Government’s argument, moreover, implies that it could deport and incarcerate any person, including U.S. citizens, without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a court can intervene.”

As the justices remind us, it can happen here. It can happen to you.

From Gulf of America to mass expulsion of “illegals” (people of color) to continuing genocidal complicity in Gaza to whatever the daily news brings us... welcome to Trump America! Welcome to the small-minded white nation so many long for, free once again from those large, inconvenient values—e.g., the Declaration of Independence—that keep disrupting the way things are supposed to be.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...”

Cone on! In Trump America, those words were never meant to be taken literally. They create a sense of what I call empathic sanity, which has led to, for instance, the civil rights movement. But as President Donald Trump understands, empathic sanity can’t compete politically with hatred and fear—the creation of some good solid enemies—especially when mainstream Democrats, in their desperation for financial backing, are more than willing to shrug and minimize their values in the name of compromise.

If all people are created equal, my God, that pushes the limits of today’s world beyond the awareness of most legal bureaucracies, not to mention beyond the actions of most governments.

Trump, on the other hand, snorts at compromise, at least publicly, and pushes the agenda that works politically. He’ll do so even in defiance, for instance, of the Supreme Court, which recently demanded the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from the hellhole prison in El Salvador to which he was sent without trial, without charges, without any chance to plead innocence. Garcia is a legal U.S. resident (father of three children who are U.S. citizens, husband of a U.S. citizen) and didn’t commit a crime, but he was snatched by ICE agents out of the blue and sent to a foreign prison. Team Trump has ignored the court’s demand for Garcia’s return, declaring that his deportation was an act of “foreign policy”—which they can conduct free of oversight.

This is all about clearing the country of enemies: of non-whites. Call them terrorists, call them criminals—dehumanize them—and then deport them. In Trump America, this is foreign policy. Millions of Americans are now in fear of deportation—for expressing the wrong political opinion (stop bombing Gaza), for simply being the wrong color.

And as Thom Hartmann pointed out, Trump is planning to up the ante. His team could start going after “you and me”—U.S. citizens who simply annoy him politically. Hartmann quotes Trump, in conversation with El Salvador’s authoritarian president, Nayib Bukele: “Home grown criminals. Home growns are next.”

And he adds, referring to the prison where Garcia was sent (the U.S. pays El Salvador for its use as a human dumping ground): “You gotta build about five more places. It’s not big enough.”

Trump as a looming Hitler? Yes, I’m sure that’s part of the current state of America, but in the present moment the primary issue is the full-on return of racism. As Clarence Lusane writes in The Nation:

There is a straight line from the 2017 “unite the right” rallies in Charlottesville to the far-right-led “Stop the Steal” movement to lies about Haitians eating cats and dogs to Donald Trump’s first day in office upon his return to power. No president in the post-civil-rights era has been as racially aggressive as the now-47th president.

Trump, Lusane notes, is the nation’s “white nationalist in chief.” His actions three months into his second term range from renaming the Gulf of Mexico (what was it again... Gulf of Some Country a Little Further North) to “re-renaming” military bases after Confederate generals to shutting down all DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) programs to stopping “the expanding population of Black, Latino, and Asian people in the United States.”

Indeed, Lusane writes: “The second coming of Trump will be one long slog through the bowels of racial animus and juvenile reprisals. Permanent resistance is the way forward.”

Permanent resistance is certainly necessary, but as I think about what this means, I return to the concept of empathic sanity—that is to say, valuing all of humanity and working to create a world that works for everybody. There’s more to this than simply “opposing Trump”—fighting, you know, our enemy. It’s also a matter of honoring and acting in sync with large, complex values.

What might this mean? Here’s one example, from Jewish Voice for Peace, regarding a rally a number of organizations held recently—on Passover—in New York City. Common Dreams quotes the organization’s social media post about it:

We are outside Federal Plaza to say: Stop arming Israel. End Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Free political prisoners held by ICE. Stop the attacks on immigrants, trans people, and students.

They chanted for peace in all directions: “None of Us Are Free Until All of Us Are Free.”

Jewish Voice for Peace organizer Jay Saper, whose great uncle had been at Auschwitz, put it this way:

This Passover, the Jewish festival of liberation, we cannot celebrate as usual while Palestinians in Gaza face famine and the U.S.-backed Israeli government uses starvation as a weapon of war.

The Seder ritual cannot be theoretical: It calls us to strengthen our commitment to the liberation of the Palestinian people. We commend the courageous students and all people of conscience raising their voices in dissent to Israel’s genocide in Gaza and call for the immediate release of Mahmoud Khalil and all political prisoners.

“The Seder ritual cannot be theoretical”: That hits the heart of it. No real values are theoretical. If all people are created equal, my God, that pushes the limits of today’s world beyond the awareness of most legal bureaucracies, not to mention beyond the actions of most governments. This is not a simplistic cry. It forces us to grope for understanding that lies well beyond the borders we have set for ourselves.

Hassan’s life was not always confined to a single room. But when he became a refugee, he didn’t just lose his home, he lost his freedom and independence.

Hassan is a young refugee man from Sudan with a physical disability that requires him to use a wheelchair. Before the war in Sudan forced him to flee to Egypt, he lived in an accessible home, which allowed him to move around independently. Now, he is trapped without a wheelchair on the fourth floor of a building with no elevator. His apartment is completely inaccessible, forcing him to spend 24 hours a day in bed.

I learned about Hassan’s journey on a call I convened as part of my role leading the Disability Inclusion and Accessibility Program at the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), a global legal aid and advocacy nonprofit. Our work to ensure that forcibly displaced people with disabilities have equal access to pathways to safety and lasting refuge has never been easy, but since U.S. President Donald Trump took office, it has become nearly impossible. This population is under attack for being refugees, people with disabilities, and beneficiaries of U.S. foreign aid.

“He thinks if only the president knows what he is going through, and that all his resettlement expenses will be taken care of by volunteer sponsors in the U.S., he will change his mind.”

The sheer volume of anti-immigrant policies enacted by the Trump administration risks obscuring the harm each one inflicts on real people. The executive orders issued by the new U.S. administration since January 20 have been devastating for many, but especially for refugees with disabilities and their families. It has also been a loss for the local communities ready to welcome them.

During my meeting with Hassan, I met some of the generous families in Ohio who had come together to support Hassan and his family. When they learned about the Welcome Corps, the private sponsorship program which allows Americans to directly support refugees, the families worked day and night to meet all the requirements to sponsor Hassan’s resettlement to the United States.

“Since then, Hassan has been focused solely on how living in the U.S. will change his life. Without a job and unable to leave his home, he has been spending all of his days following the progress of his sponsors. But the complete ban of the refugee admissions program destroyed all his dreams. It was like a tornado demolishing all we had built with just a few words,” one of Hassan’s sponsors told me.

Hassan is just one of millions of people with disabilities forcibly displaced around the world. While the United Nations doesn’t collect data on the exact number of refugees with disabilities, estimates suggest there may be nearly 18 million people with disabilities in need of resettlement. With the end of programs like the Welcome Corps and the cuts to U.S. foreign aid, their already shaky support system has all but collapsed, leaving refugees with disabilities and their families with zero support.

I have learned in my career as a refugee rights advocate and disability inclusion activist that refugees with disabilities are the last group to be included and the first to be excluded. When challenges arise, refugees with disabilities are on the frontlines.

In nearly every refugee-hosting country, refugees with disabilities are denied access to the services available for citizens. Many of them cannot even obtain disability certificates. As a result, refugees with disabilities and their families solely rely on humanitarian assistance provided by the United Nations or NGOs to access medical support, rehabilitation, assistive devices, and many other needs: a tiny stream of support which is now almost dry with significant cuts to U.S. foreign assistance funds.

It is extremely hard to meet the resettlement eligibility criteria set forth by the U.N. and many destination countries. Having a medical need that can’t be met locally can be a factor in being considered for resettlement, but many refugees with disabilities do not have the information and resources necessary to request this consideration. Those who can access this process often get rejected, and even for those who are accepted, the refugee process is long and complicated. This can mean years, sometimes decades, without life-saving healthcare, accessible homes, or any education or growth opportunities.

That is why innovative programs like the Welcome Corps were a beacon of hope for many refugees with disabilities who were left out of the U.N.-based resettlement. And now, Trump’s refugee ban is pushing them back into a situation where even the inadequate support they used to receive has been demolished due to the foreign aid cuts. Even though federal judges have blocked the government from further implementing the refugee ban and the cuts to USAID, the government has done little to comply with the orders.

The dire situation of people like Hassan requires the Trump administration to take immediate meaningful steps to resume the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. Such a resumption would be consistent with recent federal court orders and congressional intent. Funding for humanitarian and refugee assistance programs, in particular disability inclusion funding, must also be immediately restored. Those advocating for refugee rights also need to prioritize finding solutions for refugees with disabilities and include their voices in their advocacy.

Hassan’s sponsor told me: “I don’t know how to respond when Hassan asks me about the future. He wishes to speak to the president himself to explain his situation. He thinks if only the president knows what he is going through, and that all his resettlement expenses will be taken care of by volunteer sponsors in the U.S., he will change his mind. Hassan wants the president and the American people to know that when given the opportunity in a more accessible environment, refugees with disabilities can flourish and fulfill their potential.”

I couldn’t say it better myself.

As the mother of a childhood cancer survivor from a coastal Alabama cluster, I reflect on the 15th anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon disaster with anger and frustration at the countless lives needlessly destroyed by the spill and its “cleanup.” But more than anything, I am afraid… I am afraid because the same chemicals that wrought havoc on Gulf communities aren’t being disposed of—they are being rebranded to be reused.

During my seven years of assisting cleanup workers at a Miami-based law firm and Government Accountability Project, I saw the stuff of medical nightmares manifest in real life as I came face-to-face with an innocuously named monster: Corexit. Corexit is a chemical oil dispersant that was used liberally in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster to break up oil slicks into smaller droplets that can be submerged underwater. While Corexit was once described as being “as safe as dish soap” by a BP executive, the final chapter of its use in the Deepwater Horizon disaster was not to be told via feel-good commercials of freshly cleaned ducklings. It is still being written by outsiders documenting the broken lives of the men and women who can no longer speak for themselves after volunteering to clean the Gulf.

Many of the men and women who volunteered to clean the Gulf, a body of water that bound together their communities, jobs, and very way of life, died in the months and years after exposure to Corexit, often from serious diseases including blood and pancreatic cancers—silencing their voices long before justice could be served. I personally knew dozens who were exposed and subsequently left the Earth far too soon.

The corporate shell game of rebranding these toxic chemicals under new names must not distract us from the fundamental truth that these dispersants should never be used again in our waters.

I still think about Captain Bill, who came to us when Stage 4 colon cancer appeared after running a supply boat to the sinking Deepwater Horizon rig. He did not believe all the hype from environmentalists about the dangers of dispersants until he got crop-dusted with them. He developed softball sized cysts all over his body filled with bacteria and was left with just months to live. He left behind a wife and three children, including a young son with autism.

I remember Sandra, a woman who always exuded joy during the 20 years I’d known her. Her job for BP required her to hop on and off oil-contaminated boats; she tragically developed a rare myeloproliferative disorder that ended her life at age 60. She left behind a husband who missed her so profoundly that he lasted only a few months without her.

Corexit has been proven to have deadly side effects within humans, but that won’t stop corporate greed from slapping a new label on it and sending it to a different country. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was in the process of finalizing new rules and regulations governing the usage of oil dispersants. Right before the rules were set to be finalized, the manufacturer of Corexit abruptly discontinued its product line which constituted over 45% of globally stockpiled dispersants. This was likely not coincidental; the new EPA rules require manufacturers to truthfully report known or anticipated harm to human health and wildlife from their products. Corexit’s parent company chose to withdraw from the U.S. market while re-registering the same toxic products in the United Kingdom and Brazil in 2024, with France also considering approval.

People and communities were falsely reassured about the safety of the working conditions, as BP told workers personal protective gear was unnecessary when dealing with the chemicals. Now, with the risks and threats of exposure known, the protective gear could have saved hundreds of lives and communities from devastation.

Fifteen years after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the legacy of Corexit dispersants continues to manifest in the broken bodies and shattered lives of those who were exposed, including those who spoke out to save future generations. The corporate shell game of rebranding these toxic chemicals under new names must not distract us from the fundamental truth that these dispersants should never be used again in our waters. The time has come to close this dark chapter in our history and commit to solutions that truly protect both our coasts and the people who call them home.

Across the country, cannabis users today will celebrate 4/20, a day synonymous with the plant's consumption and a symbol of its growing acceptance.

But for thousands of people still incarcerated for cannabis-related offenses, 4/20 is not a day of celebration; it’s a reminder of an unjust system that has yet to make amends.

The legal landscape around cannabis has evolved dramatically. Forty-one states now have some form of legal cannabis. Cannabis companies are going public on Wall Street, dispensaries are opening in high-end shopping districts, and tax revenues from legal sales are funding schools and infrastructure.

Nevertheless, tens of thousands of people remain imprisoned for the very substance that is now a billion-dollar industry. Millions of individuals are also still coping with the life-long burden of having a cannabis conviction on their record.

This is a moral and economic outrage that demands an immediate solution.

President Donal Trump and his administration have a chance to go further than President Joe Biden ever did on cannabis by pardoning every individual imprisoned for cannabis at the federal level.

That’s not as unlikely as some might think.

On the campaign trail, Trump said he was starting to “agree a lot more” that individuals should not be criminalized for cannabis when it’s being legalized across the country. He even posted, “I believe it is time to end needless arrests and incarcerations of adults for small amounts of marijuana for personal use.”

In his first term, President Trump commuted the sentences of 16 people and pardoned 6 individuals for cannabis offenses. He also championed the bipartisan sentencing reform bill, the First Step Act, which was designed to promote rehabilitation, lower recidivism, and reduce excessive sentences for certain federal drug offenses.

He’s not alone in his administration. J.D. Vance told Joe Rogan that his overall philosophy on marijuana and psychedelics is to “live and let live,” and reaffirmed that he feels people should not be criminalized over cannabis. Elon Musk, the de facto head of DOGE, famously smoked a blunt on Rogan’s podcast.

Clemency isn’t the only place where President Trump can go further than his predecessor. He could also significantly boost America's budding cannabis industry by rescheduling cannabis. This would both reduce tax burdens and help the United States tap into an industry projected to reach over $100 billion by 2030, while also easing the burden on law enforcement and the judicial system.

Rescheduling is also an opportunity for Trump to deliver for Black and Brown communities, who suffer the most from outdated cannabis policies and supported the president in record numbers in 2024. On average, Black individuals are more than three times more likely than white Americans to be arrested for cannabis despite similar consumption rates. President Trump can help right an injustice that has gone on far too long.

Both granting clemency for people convicted of cannabis-related crimes and rescheduling cannabis would be immensely popular decisions for President Trump. A YouGov poll found that 70 percent of Americans support clearing criminal records for past non-violent marijuana-related convictions. According to an American Civil Liberties Union poll, 84% of registered voters support the release of people serving time for crimes that are no longer considered illegal.

Only one in 10 Americans believe marijuana should not be legal at all, according to the Pew Research Center.

The time for incremental change is over. The cannabis industry is booming, generating billions in revenue and creating jobs. Yet, thousands remain imprisoned for actions that are now considered perfectly legal.

This is a moral and economic outrage that demands an immediate solution. President Trump has a penchant for bold action and the power to turn 4/20 into a day for real celebration through cannabis clemency and rescheduling.

He should seize this moment and right the wrongs that every president this century has kicked down the road.

Followers of the Small Is Beautiful school of environmentalism (to which I subscribe) often critique globalization and advocate localism. The controversial new Trump tariffs seem purpose-made to choke off global trade and promote American domestic manufacturing. Am I thrilled?

Let’s unpack the goals and tactics of both eco-localism and the Trump tariffs and see where there’s congruence, and where there’s contradiction.

Where the Eco-localists Are Coming From

Trade makes many folks materially better off by enabling a local abundance of resources or skills to be shared across a wider area. However, increased trade often worsens economic inequality and depletes and pollutes the environment faster than would otherwise happen. Therefore, eco-localists see trade as a mixed benefit whose unintended negative impacts must be carefully managed.

Globalization of trade raises the stakes of both benefits and risks. On the risk side of the leger, taken to the extreme, it leads to a world in which everything is for sale, all resources are depleted, pollution is everywhere, labor is exploited to the maximum degree, and everything is owned by a tiny number of super-rich investors and entrepreneurs.

The scope of globalization that’s happened in the last few decades is unequaled in human history (the spread of the Roman Empire is one of several smaller-scale precursors). Corporations and banks delivered the technology and capital; trade agreements like NAFTA and trade partnerships like the E.U. contributed the legal framework; and fossil fuels provided abundant, concentrated, storable energy for manufacturing and transport. The result is an integrated global market in which a single product, such as a smartphone, may incorporate design elements from skilled workers in the U.S.; raw materials from 20 countries; and assembly by poorly paid workers in China, Vietnam, or India. The phone can then be sold in scores of nations. The intended benefit is that billions of people get to use a technology that, by its very nature, requires global supply chains, internationally shared technological expertise, and stable rules of economic cooperation and investment. The unintended side effects are that a few people become unimaginably rich while nature is poisoned and people’s mental, physical, and social health deteriorates.

Within the deteriorating circumstances of a world seemingly on the verge of environmental ruin and global conflict, eco-localist strategies are looking more and more sensible.

The winners of the globalization game include a growing global billionaire class and a fast-growing middle class in China, India, and other manufacturing hubs. Middle-class consumers around the world win by getting cheap goods. Corporations and investors reap a windfall.

However, society and nature are losers when globalization worsens inequality while speeding up depletion and pollution. Global economic inequality declined during some decades of the 20th century, but it did so mainly because of the Great Depression and two World Wars. Otherwise, the last century saw a relentlessly widening gap between rich and poor—a trend that has accelerated in the past two decades, not just in the U.S., but in China, India, and elsewhere. Indigenous cultures in less-industrialized nations are hardest hit, as globalization uproots people from traditional village life, thrusting them into cities and factories. Meanwhile, forests disappear, carbon accumulates in the atmosphere, wild creatures vanish, and floods and fires devastate more communities.

The United States, the country that invented consumerism, in part to deal with a glut of production, used to be the world’s manufacturing powerhouse. But, with cheaper labor available in Asia and the “productivity” gains from automation and other technologies, the U.S. has instead become the top global consumer, a center of global finance, the primary military superpower, and the trendsetting conductor of international rules of commerce. The share of U.S. jobs in manufacturing has declined by 35% since the 1970s. And that decline has created political and social problems including political polarization, which in turn is undermining democracy in the U.S. and other countries.

Eco-localists argue that globalization is authoritarian by nature: Increasingly, multinational corporations rule the world. Individuals and communities are powerless by comparison.

Eco-localists make the following recommendations to governments and communities:

• Incentivize cooperative, worker-owned businesses;
• Promote the meeting of human needs through non-market means—i.e., the sharing economy;
• Focus on the well-being of people and nature instead of simply aiming to grow GDP;
• Tax the rich and provide more economic security (including education and healthcare) for lower-income people;
• Re-localize production by regulating big corporations so that smaller, local producers and sellers can remain competitive; and
• Strengthen the rights of communities (including the rights of nature) and the fabric of democracy.

Where the Tariff Terrorists Are Coming From

The Trump tariffs are an unfolding story that changes daily. The goals of this astonishing set of new, constantly shifting trade policies are somewhat unclear, as statements by the president and other officials are sometimes contradictory. U.S. President Donald Trump himself has a longstanding fascination with tariffs, which he sees as coercive tools for achieving various international ends, not all of them economic.

Trump often laments the fact that America runs a trade deficit with many nations. In Trump’s mind, any trade deficit is a loss, and he wants America to win. Here is Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, speaking on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday, April 6:

We’ve got to start to protect ourselves... and we’ve got to stop having all the countries of the world ripping us off. We have a $1.2 trillion trade deficit, and the rest of the world has a surplus with us. They’re earning our money. They’re taking our money, and Donald Trump has seen this, and he’s going to stop it.

Still, trade rebalancing doesn’t seem to be Trump’s only aim. Tariffs could be used either as a weapon to extort concessions from other nations, or as a durable source of income for the government and a way to restructure trade over the long haul, favoring U.S. domestic manufacturers. Trump has cited both purposes. But they are fundamentally incompatible: If successfully used as a bargaining chip, then tariffs will be negotiated away and therefore will provide no long-term income to the government. If they are meant to be held in place to provide long-term income (Trump has even mooted the notion of replacing income taxes with tariffs), then there’s nothing to negotiate. As a side note, there’s one other possible motivation: Tariffs—with carve-outs to specific businesses, industries, or countries—have historically been used as a tool for corruption.

After the announcement of dramatically high tariffs on all nations on April 2 (dubbed “liberation day” by the administration in an Orwellian turn), the U.S. bond market immediately saw a dramatic sell-off, causing the interest rate the government pays on its debt to soar. Trump relented, delaying most tariffs for 90 days while leaving a 10% tariff in place on all nations except China, which he targeted with a 145% tariff. China has responded with its own 125% tariff on all U.S. imports. China has also cut off exports of strategic raw materials. It seems that the trade war Trump has initiated is almost entirely directed toward Beijing; much lower tariffs on other countries could conceivably be used to coerce those countries to stop doing business with China.

A possible outcome would be the commercial isolation of China and the end of its rise as a global superpower capable of eclipsing the U.S. However, if this is indeed Trump’s goal, his strategy seems to ignore the fact that China already has a broad sphere of influence, including trade alliances with Brazil, India, Russia, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates (i.e., the BRICs countries). Further, engineering a clash between the U.S. and its European allies on one side and BRICs nations on the other might not end well, given the fact that Trump has already torched his country’s leadership of the Western alliance through his authoritarian posturing, his undermining of NATO, and his threatening of friendly nations with enormous tariffs. We’re already seeing the European Union negotiating with China to lower trade barriers to Chinese electric vehicles. Prospects for driving a wedge between Asian nations and China might be even worse.

Trump’s strategy does have its cheerleaders. Here’s influencer Ken Rutkowski’s breathless paean:

[Tariffs represent]... a new economic philosophy that restructures the global trade system, repositions the American worker at the core of the system, and challenges the 30 years of offshoring conventions. [They are] a decades-in-the-making strategy to restore industrial self-reliance, real wage growth, and economic security. The new playbook views tariffs as versatile tools. This regime sees them not only as revenue generators but also as negotiation triggers and economic equalizers. Protection? Yes. Leverage? Absolutely. Alignment? Finally. From Wall Street to Main Street. The endgame? A more balanced global economy where America consumes less and produces more, while China consumes more and exports less. It’s a forced rebalancing—one tariff at a time.

Trump’s tariffs are often said to benefit U.S. workers in the long run. Yet this ostensible objective seems contradicted by the administration’s fascination with AI—which, according to Bill Gates, will eliminate all but three kinds of jobs. Further, our supposed worker-centric future is being designed by billionaires, whose interests rarely coincide with those of workers.

If the Trump tariff goal is a world dominated by America, it’s an America that is itself dominated by super-wealthy elites, an America that is no longer a fully functioning democracy, an America with no checks or balances on executive power, an America with no law that its top officials are required to obey, and an America where noncitizens and potentially citizens as well can be whisked off the streets without warning and deported to foreign prisons. New York Congressman Ritchie Torres summed up the situation well:

If a superpower were intent on engineering its own decline, it would antagonize its allies, paralyze its economy with the certainty of uncertainty, erode confidence in the world’s reserve currency, discard due process, defund medical and scientific research, sabotage the most critical form of critical manufacturing—domestic chipmaking—and grow its deficit until debt service devours the largest share of its budget.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration, steeped in hostility toward environmental protection, will not use tariffs to avert environmental catastrophe. Not only has Trump abandoned the Paris climate agreement, but his domestic policies include promoting coal mining and oil drilling, softening pollution regulations, expanding logging on federal lands, and weakening if not killing the Endangered Species Act.

Is There Any Overlap? And What Direction Should We Embrace?

Tariffs could reduce global trade, which seemingly would align with eco-localists’ aims. Perhaps tariffs could be used to protect communities and livelihoods, and as a form of economic defense against globalization. However, eco-localists tend to see tariffs as a tool of last resort, one that often has nasty unintended consequences, such as increased international hostility and higher prices for essential goods. The word “tariff” rarely shows up in books on ecological economics. However, in Beyond Growth, pioneer ecological economist Herman Daly did discuss tariffs briefly:

Nearly all policies for sustainability involve internalizing external environmental and social costs at the national level. This makes prices higher. Therefore free trade with countries that do not internalize these costs, or do it to a much lesser extent, is not feasible. In such cases there is every reason for protective tariffs.

Tariffs, used protectively, could slow or even reverse globalization, providing time and wherewithal for societies to deal with the unintended side effects of recent decades of corporate-led trade expansion. However, this hinges on using tariffs explicitly and consistently to promote policies that reduce pollution, resource depletion, and unfair treatment of workers. There is nothing in the Trump team’s statements to suggest these are significant aims.

Many eco-localists advocate deliberately shrinking the industrial economy to reduce its impact on nature. Shrinking the U.S. economy is not Trump’s explicit goal, but it is an almost certain result of his tariff policies. Liberal and conservative analysts agree that trade barriers will, in David Frum’s words, “make U.S. goods more expensive to produce, costlier to buy, and inferior to the foreign competition.” But rather than reining in trade for the purpose of reducing pollution and exploitation of workers, Trump and his team seem to be intent on accelerating environmental degradation (fossil fuel products are exempt from U.S. tariffs) and increasing economic inequality by weakening government health and safety programs and doling out lavish tax cuts to the rich.

So, even though both eco-localists and Trump administration officials have at times promoted the use of tariffs, they propose using them for entirely different reasons, and, presumably, would achieve very different results. One group is concerned with protecting nature and minimizing economic inequality so that humans and other species can persist. For Trump and his team, the environment is irrelevant, and workers are chumps useful merely for gaining national power. Once achieved, that power can then be leveraged internationally through belligerent tariffs, with the goal of bludgeoning the entire world into submission.

The Trump team’s maximalist power grab is certain to provoke reactions. The world has been plunged into a trade war, but trade wars have a nasty tendency to turn into shooting wars. Within the deteriorating circumstances of a world seemingly on the verge of environmental ruin and global conflict, eco-localist strategies are looking more and more sensible. While there is no likelihood of their national adoption in the U.S. anytime soon, they are perhaps most applicable and effective at the community scale.

Indeed, this is the moment when eco-localism is most desperately needed. As soaring consumer prices, supply chain disruptions, and reductions in government-provided funding and services threaten communities, localists can help bolster local markets and inspire mutual aid efforts, helping mobilize folks to take more responsibility for their own collective resilience and well-being.

“Someday the wealthiest people, deprived of their ability to extract super-profits from developing countries, will turn their attention inward and gobble up the middle and working classes here in the U.S.”

So predicted my economics professor in 1962 at New York’s New School. These words were unbelievable to my 22-year-old ears. Picket fences were springing up all across America, accompanied by paid vacations, job security, and pensions. Expansion of our rights was the only vision on my horizon.

Riding a postwar economic boom, young people like myself were tearing down entry barriers to the middle class. Legal segregation was about to fall, women were gaining access to traditionally “male” jobs, and unions flourished. We enjoyed complete freedom of speech. No way could we be gobbled up.

Now every sector of public life is on the verge of privatization, with our hobbled Post Office the latest target. While not entirely new, this is an upleveling of the plunder.

“The independence movements exploding in Africa, in India, all over the world, will force the wealthiest Americans to seek the predatory profits they are used to at home,” my professor declared. “They will pauperize the U.S. working and middle classes.”

His words lingered, smoldering in the back of my mind. Could this ever come to pass in “the home of the free”? I knew about our blemished past, with its human slavery and genocide of Indigenous nations, yet still I held fast to our promise of democracy for all. The rule of law would never allow oligarchs to plunder our country the way we had plundered others.

In 1964, when the shockingly conservative Barry Goldwater became the Republican candidate for president, I wondered about the prediction. Could this be the moment we began to tumble? In the early morning hours I voted, praying (and I was not then a praying woman) that Lyndon Johnson, the Democratic incumbent, would prevail. He did in a landslide, winning 61.1% of the popular vote. “That was a trial balloon,” my professor said. “They haven’t gathered enough strength yet.”

Republicans went to work winning local elections, then state level. In 1980, when President Ronald Reagan broke the air controller’s strike, I worried again. And union strength—that hold-the-line power—did decline, but enough folks didn’t fold and we retained our democracy.

Yet today the government disappears people without due process; threatens to cut benefits for working people while installing tax cuts for the wealthy; and demands oversight of universities, our bastions of free thought. What is this but the super-profit power grab my professor predicted so long ago?

Republicans have already narrowed our rights—reproductive and voting—to erase 20th-century gains. They’ve gutted public programs, underfunding education and offering for-profit and nonprofit charter schools instead. Our highly efficient public Medicare program has had to compete with private plans for the last 28 years.

(I always understood that a government plan, without profit, would be more cost-effective. I did not know how much better its coverage was until I needed open-heart surgery and my cardiologist asked, “Do you have original Medicare or an Advantage plan? Oh good, original. I can get you right into the hospital. With Advantage it takes weeks.” The private plans, I learned, often deny prior authorization, knowing that only 11.7% of people reapply despite the vast majority of reapplications gaining approval. In my 20 years with traditional Medicare no physician-requested treatment has ever been denied.)

Now every sector of public life is on the verge of privatization, with our hobbled Post Office the latest target. While not entirely new, this is an upleveling of the plunder.

Our population has been shocked and awed, just as intended. Yet we are waking up to great effect, beginning to fight back: Witness the 5.2 million demonstrators in April 5 Hands Off protests. Hundreds of grassroots organizations, taking root in local communities, have been preparing for this moment.

The president of Harvard University, Dr. Alan Garber, has just added the strength of that venerable institution to those holding the line. “The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,” he wrote, refusing a federal government demand for oversight. Other respected universities and colleges are rushing to support Harvard, even creating mutual defense pacts to support each other in case of government attack.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) Fighting Oligarchy tour is drawing massive, unprecedented crowds, like the 30,000 who lined up for three miles this week, awaiting a rally in conservative-leaning Folsom, California.

The tide is turning, with brave judges, educators, lawyers, courageous fired government whistleblowers, and countless others in every occupation stepping up.

Once more, people are holding the line. Once more, my old professor’s doomsday prophecy will not manifest. Not now. Not on our watch.

We’ve held off the Big Steal this long. We can do it again.

Unless you’ve lived in South Dakota—which Kristi Noem represented in Congress and later served as governor—there’s a good chance that if you recognize her name, it’s due to the video clip from inside a prison in El Salvador that featured the new secretary of Homeland Security in front of a cell full of shirtless, tattooed, shaven headed Venezuelan deportees that she denounces—while sporting a $50,000 Rolex watch. An immediate effect of which was to raise anew the question of why President Donald Trump had appointed her to a position for which she appeared to have little to no relevant experience.

Some attributed it to her exhibiting a superior level of sycophancy during last year’s vice-presidential speculation season. No, thought others, in such times fawners sprout like toadstools after a summer rain; surely there must be something special about this one. And now, a theory—involving America’s upcoming war with Denmark and Noem’s previous career PR highpoint—the story of how she had once shot her 14-month-old dog, out of frustration at her inability to train her.

For those who savor the surprises of the Trump years, the recently articulated hostility to Denmark has to rank as top tier. We can imagine that he himself was actually as amazed as the next American to learn that humongous Greenland is actually an autonomous territory of otherwise tiny Denmark. And, real estate being the president’s primary business interest, he has decided that the U.S. has greater need for the world’s largest island than Denmark does. Heads that take Trump seriously—as well as those that don’t—were set spinning alike by this newly enunciated national security priority. But as the now ubiquitous, but previously unfamiliar, north pole-centered maps clearly show—across the ever-shrinking Arctic ice pack from the U.S. lies… Russia!

Imagine, if you will, her standing there—in front of a pound filled with chained, baying, deported Great Danes—shotgun in hand, and Rolex on wrist.

The thing is, though, Trump doesn’t actually seem all that concerned about Russia as a security threat. During his February 28 Oval Office encounter with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, he went so far as to tell him that “Putin went through a hell of a lot with me.” He’s even claimed that it was Ukraine that started the war with Russia. And the fact is that the secret potential war plans on which the Pentagon intended to brief Elon Musk—before public outcry put the kibosh on the idea—concerned China, not Russia. Which should make it pretty clear which nation is actually being ginned up as the “national security threat.”

Now, the fact is that Trump has never particularly been known for an expansive interest in or knowledge of geography that doesn’t hold some kind of business angle for him. Could it be, then, that he thinks Greenland would actually provide some kind of buffer against China? This all, of course, is speculative, but what we do know is that so far as the prospect of the U.S. taking possession of Greenland, Trump says he “thinks there’s a good possibility that we could do it without military force”—which should be quite reassuring to us all, although he cautioned that “I don’t take anything off the table.”

Hey, that’s what the man said, so let’s imagine what happens when the absurd gets serious. Some may recall that when France proved a tough sell on the endless War on Terror, announcing its intent to veto any United Nations resolution calling for invasion of Iraq, the U.S. House of Representatives responded by altering the menus of three congressional cafeterias—renaming French fries as “freedom fries.” (None will recall, however, when the U.S. entry into the First World War against Germany turned frankfurters into hot dogs.) So, if Denmark continues to balk at the presidential whim, we can no doubt look forward to ordering Cheese Americans to go with our coffee in the future.

But the ire directed at the willful little Scandinavian nation will not likely stop at the pastry shop. Which is what brings us back to the question of what Kristi Noem’s doing here. Well, the story she told about her dead dog was that she was “untrainable,” “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with,” “less than worthless … as a hunting dog.” “I hated that dog,” Noem said. The final straw came when she dropped in on some neighbors, let the dog escape her control, and it proceeded to kill the neighbors’ chickens. After paying for the chickens, she took the dog to a gravel pit and shot it. But that’s not all. She then realized that “another unpleasant job needed to be done,” and went back and got a goat her family had who was “nasty and mean,” prone to chasing and knocking down her kids. Oh, and he smelled bad—“disgusting, musky, rancid.” So she shot the goat too. Didn’t get the job done on her first shot though. Had to go back to the truck for a another shell to finish him off.

None of this story, you must understand, required any sort of hard-nosed investigative journalism to uncover. It comes from a book that Noem herself wrote: No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward, an autobiography—her second—written when she was preening for the vice-presidential nod. She recounted the bizarre anecdote, she says, as an example of her willingness to do “difficult, messy, and ugly” things when they just had to be done. As we know, she didn’t ultimately land the nomination. Some suspect it was because it took her two shots to get the goat. Who knows, but Trump did ultimately decide he wanted her around.

Should the president’s Greenland-Denmark obsession continue to meander on, the campaign against Danish aggression surely won’t stop at the breakfast counter. And it’s when we start to envision additional targets that the potential Kristi Noem role in all this starts to take shape. The most obvious display of this alien roadblock to American national security? It’s the dogs, of course—Great Danes being pretty much the Greenland of dog breeds. The threat that canines of that size—in the service of an enemy power—would pose to America’s most vulnerable citizens—our children—is too obvious to require discussion.

Who—then—better qualified to conduct a national anti-Great Dane campaign than Noem? Imagine, if you will, her standing there—in front of a pound filled with chained, baying, deported Great Danes—shotgun in hand, and Rolex on wrist. Could there be a more powerful image of the nation’s determination in a life and death struggle with Denmark—and if need be against Europe itself? And should any Great Dane think to resist arrest, well, we know that Noem is one government bureaucrat whose bark is not worse than her bite.

Far fetched, you say? Scoff you may, but remember what else you used to consider far fetched until not so long ago. I know that if I had a Great Dane, I’d be thinking about lifestyle alternatives for the dog—perhaps even getting a saddle and trying to pass it off as an Icelandic pony. And I’d get real nervous if I heard that Noem was in town.

As of late, she’s been called ICE Barbie for her appearance at deportation raids. The future? Kristi Noem: Bane of Great Danes? As we are well aware, crazier things have already happened.

Dear President Trump:

We are Harvard Law students who have read the lengthy and comprehensive list of demands on our Harvard University by your staff. They are assuredly designed to turn this institution of higher education, older than the U.S.A., into a fiefdom under your iron rule. As modest students of medieval history, we see that your demands provide a status for the peasants – the students, the vassals – the faculty, but no one for the role of the Lord of the Manor.

It is obvious that you want to become the LORD OF THE MANOR. We have a proposal. There is no more exalted status at Harvard than that of the law professors. They are the best and brightest law professors in the land; if you doubt that, just ask them. They are specialists in knowledge of the law. However, they are not specialists in the seriously destabilizing arena of lawlessness.

Quite candidly, we believe and can document that you are the world’s expert on lawlessness – its range, depth, rewards and modes of escape from accountability. For some unfathomable reason, you have been far too modest about your unparalleled knowledge in this fast-expanding area of immune business and political activity. We make this claim after reading your statements – about twenty of them – where you explicitly declare your superior knowledge over all in such subjects as “trade,” “technology,” “drones,” “construction,” “devaluation,” “banks,” – “renewables,” “polls” and even “the power of Facebook.” (See the book, “Wrecking America: How Trump’s Lawbreaking and Lies Betray All” by Mark Green and Ralph Nader, 2020).

Missing from your expansive proclamations of expertise is the subject of LAWLESSNESS. Having engaged in over 3000 lawsuits and having been sued under tort law and indicted under criminal law, you have demonstrated an escapist skill that even seasoned attorneys find breathtaking. No sheriff has ever caught you. Only one prosecutor has ever convicted you. E. Jean Carroll won two civil tort cases with damages that are still on appeal.

One of your remarkable tactics is interminable stalling of the legal process. Another is how you can personally and continually attack in public, with tough language, the judges and other judicial personnel with complete impunity. As we know from our studies, such vituperative language in the United Kingdom would have landed you in contempt of court and a jail term.

Now, therefore, here is our proposal to fill the position of LORD OF THE MANOR, without impinging on your Day Job as president of the United States. With your permission, we will approach our Dean and request that he appoint you as a VISITING FULL PROFESSOR OF LAW CONDUCTING THE FIRST AND ONLY COURSE IN LAWLESSNESS – its nature, function and strategies of escape from the long arm of the rule of law. It would be the largest class in Harvard Law School history, overflowing our largest auditorium, AUSTIN HALL.

YOU would provide, effortlessly from your extraordinary memory, empirical information never before revealed and analyzed.

Your self-awareness is exceptional, having said in 2019 – “With Article II, I can do whatever I want as President,” and having openly wished that you could be King. To understand the rule of law better, it is necessary to understand the outlaws. This is especially true for you, Mr. President because you once declared, “I know more about courts than any human being on earth.”

Going deeper, you are eminently qualified to lecture us on regions of lawlessness abroad and how you think one should try to establish peaceful and law-abiding governance. The Middle East comes to mind. By enlisting the law school’s reservoir of scholarship on these conflicts you could establish yourself as a Nobel-Prize worthy implementor of a profound peaceful PRO-SEMITISM between Arab and Jewish Semites. Just envision your going to Norway to receive the coveted Award that your detractors could never believe was remotely possible.

We anticipate your affirmative response and understand fully if a condition of your acceptance is that the course be taught by Zoom from the Oval Office. Should you wish to have your lectures streamed to a wider audience, the Law School has all the requisite facilities.

Just your exalted title “Honorable visiting Professor of Law, Donald J. Trump” along with your presiding over the White House will anoint you as the LORD OF THE MANOR. You would be addressed by all members of the Harvard University community as “MY LIEGE.”

We look forward to hearing from you.

Very truly yours,
Harvard Law Students

Donald Trump promised that he would lower prices on day one of his new term in office. He also promised to end the war in Ukraine on his first day. Neither of those quite panned out. But it looks like he might accomplish something not on his list, he quickly ended the manufacturing boom he inherited from President Biden.

You may not know of this boom because it didn’t get much attention during the campaign. This was partly because it was in construction not employment.

Biden’s record on employment in manufacturing was pretty good given the reality of the pandemic, but it did not surge. His recovery package quickly brought back the 600,000 manufacturing jobs lost in the pandemic. We had gotten back those jobs by the spring of 2022. But then growth had trailed off and by the end of his term, manufacturing employment was only slightly higher than it had been at its pre-pandemic peak.

But factory construction tells a very different story. There was an unprecedented boom in factory construction in the Biden administration, as shown below.

Real construction more than doubled over the course of his administration. (These data are adjusted for inflation.) And this was all Biden’s doing. Construction of factories was edging downward under Trump, even before the pandemic.

It should not be a surprise that factory construction rose under Biden, this was by design. His three major bills on long-term spending, the infrastructure bill, the CHIPS Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), were all designed to boost segments of manufacturing in the United States. Specifically, the goals were to increase production of high-end computer chips, electric vehicles, batteries, solar panels, and other items needed for a green transition.

And these bills worked to a remarkable extent. This boom in factory construction has not yet led to an employment boom in manufacturing, in part because factories are mostly still under construction. But we also are not likely to see a huge employment boom for the simple reason that productivity growth means that factories don’t employ as many people as they used to.

Even large factories tend to employ in the hundreds, not the thousands or occasionally tens of thousands in the factories of half a century ago. Many of the hundreds of people employed in these new factories will be getting good paying jobs, especially if they are union jobs, but it is hard to make much of a dent in a labor force of 160 million workers. The idea that we ever again see a large share of the workforce employed in manufacturing is an illusion that lives only in Donald Trump’s head.

But the good news on manufacturing is in the rear-view mirror. Thanks to Trump’s tariffs threats and his deliberate attacks on President Biden’s programs, it looks like manufacturing employment will be headed downward for the immediate future.

At this point in the administration, we have limited data, but there are a few things we can say with confidence. Factory construction in February was already down 1.4 percent from its October level. Factory construction doesn’t just stop on a dime. It can take two or three years to build a factory. This means factory construction is likely to stay relatively high through 2025, but the direction is clearly downward. Employment is also more likely to go down than up in the year ahead.

This is confirmed by a series of surveys of manufacturers across the country. The New York district Federal Reserve Bank survey of manufacturers found that its expectations index had fallen to a level that was lower than either the trough of the pandemic or the Great Recession. The Philadelphia Fed’s index also plunged, although not to the same extent. Noteworthy in this survey was a sharp decline in expected employment. The ISM nationwide survey of manufacturers also showed expectations of future employment falling sharply.

It seems Trump’s actual and threatened tariffs are the biggest factor here. Our manufacturing is thoroughly integrated with the rest of the world now. If companies have to pay high taxes on the material and components they import from our trading partners, it’s an increase in their costs. They will either have to pass this on in higher prices or eat in the form of lower profits. Either way, it is likely to dampen production.

The uncertainty on future tariff levels is even more harmful. Companies have little basis for deciding on expansion plans if they don’t know whether imports from major trading partners will be taxed at rates of over 100 percent or near zero, as was the case before Trump took office. The rational thing for managers to do in this situation is to delay investment until the picture becomes clearer.

We also know that spending on durable goods soared after Trump’s election, as people attempted to beat the tariffs. Durable goods consumption grew at a 12.4 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter of last year, driven entirely by purchases in November and December, following the election. This pretty much guarantees a slump this year, since people who bought a car in December will not buy another one this summer.

The overall picture for manufacturing does not look very bright right now, especially with Trump doing everything he can to undermine the spending and subsidies that are still to go out the door from the IRA, the infrastructure bill, and CHIPS act. Donald Trump may not be able to claim he ended the Ukraine war or lowered prices on his first day in office, but he does have a credible claim that he brought a quick end to the factory construction boom he inherited from Joe Biden.

How ironic: The most inefficient bureaucracy in government turns out to be Donald Trump’s “Department of Government Efficiency.”

That could be humorous, except that DOGE — a creature of the right-wing Project 2025 — has been devastating to millions of people. And it’s about to get worse. Elon Musk — the flighty überrich autocrat put in charge of “efficiency” by his buddy Trump — is now going after the Social Security deposits of 73 million senior citizens.

But wait, hasn’t Trump himself promised (loudly and often) that he would not ax this essential retirement program? Yes… but Elon is his “gotcha.”

Rather than an honest kill, Musk is strangling the program with bureaucratic red tape. Claiming to be cutting waste, he’s eliminating 7,000 people who administer the program, shouting, “Bureaucratic excess!”

Except, Social Security is actually a renowned model of government efficiency, spending less than 1 percent of its revenue on administration. So by whacking the people who do the work, Musk is actually whacking the people who are due to receive their earned benefits.

For example, he’s decreed that the public can no longer apply for benefits or resolve questions by phone. Instead, they must now travel in person to some distant Social Security office. But the staff there has also been decimated, so people who’ve come from afar are told to go back home and call for an appointment — a call that will often not be answered.

What’s at work here is a Musk-Trump ploy to wreck Social Security’s remarkable record of efficiency. Their intent is to make the service so bad that they can then let profiteering corporations privatize your retirement. Don’t let them.

Trump’s historic first 100 days are just around the corner. How is the U.S. doing? What are the global implications, including for climate and the environment, of Trump’s policies to create a “new world order” and “Make America Wealthy Again? In the interview that follows with independent French-Greek journalist Alexandra Boutri, political scientist/political economist, author and journalist C.J. Polychroniou argues that both the future of U.S. democracy and of humanity as a whole are at great risk because of an ignorant, self-serving autocrat at the helm of the world’s most powerful nation.

Alexandra Boutri: Trump’s first 100 days are nearing the end. What have we learned so far about Trump’s second term and his direction for the country?

C. J. Polychroniou: The first thing that ought to be said is that there are significant differences between Trump’s first and second terms. This time he has a much clearer agenda, largely thanks to Project 2025, and is better prepared to see it through to the end. The aim is to undo race and gender progress, restore white dominance, deregulate the economy and use whatever means are available to further enrich the super-rich, and use economic coercion to secure U.S. hegemony. It’s a thoroughly anti-democratic, blatantly neofascist vision that spells serious trouble for the future of democracy, especially given America’s fragile democratic convictions. Indeed, one of the most shocking things so far is the ease with which the country is heading toward a 21st century version of fascism under Trump’s second term.

One of the most shocking things so far is the ease with which the country is heading toward a 21st century version of fascism under Trump’s second term.

This disturbing development speaks volumes of the weaknesses of the U.S. labor movement as well as of the overwhelmingly apolitical nature of civil society. Where are the nationwide protests? The national strikes against the destruction of what is left of U.S. democracy? As for the eerie complacency of the Democrats, it is hardly surprising why there is such a huge loss of trust in the leadership of the Democratic Party.

Alexandra Boutri: Are we witnessing a revolution in the making?

C. J. Polychroniou: With regard to what Trump is doing to American society and its institutions, the right word is “counterrevolution.” Trump is carrying out a fascist destabilization of society in order to stop a progressive agenda, establish new forms of political legitimacy, and suppress, if not eliminate, threats from below. With regard to foreign affairs, he sees the world as a zero-sum game. But it would be naïve to think that what he is after are the interests of the average American citizen. Trump has nothing but contempt for working people. He is both after a world order and an economic regime at home that enriches corporations and the ultrawealthy at the expenses of the many.

Trump is carrying out a fascist destabilization of society in order to stop a progressive agenda, establish new forms of political legitimacy, and suppress, if not eliminate, threats from below.

Alexandra Boutri: Why is the Trump administration so keen in controlling education and taking over cultural institutions, such as the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts?

C. J. Polychroniou: Exerting power over education, taking control of cultural institutions and silencing the press are primary aims of every self-respecting authoritarian regime that wishes to take over civil society in order to transform a country’s political landscape and colonize the consciousness of its citizens. Mussolini did so in Italy; Hitler in Germany; Franco in Spain; and even the colonels of Greece. What Trump and the thugs surrounding him are doing are precisely just that: they are trying to suppress ideas they despise, silence dissent, and convert citizens into a nation of sheep. Fascist goals, fascist tactics. Pure and simple. And, sadly enough, he seems to be doing it with great ease as a huge portion of the American citizenry has already been turned into a nation of sheep. Now it's only up to that small but courageous community of American dissenters and radicals to stand up to the ignorant and stupid autocrat.

Alexandra Boutri: China is standing up to Trump’s bullying tariffs, but the same cannot be said about Europe. Why is that?

C. J. Polychroniou: You have here two entirely different situations. China is a single, unified country. The European Union (EU) is a group of 27 independent countries with different histories, cultures, languages, customs, and interests. These member states work together to promote peace, security and economic efficiency. But the EU lacks a unified military and a centralized fiscal authority. Moreover, Europe is more dependent on trade than either China or the U.S. And since the end of the Second World War, Europe’s defense is also too reliant on the U.S. It is thus hardly surprising that EU senior officials have been desperately trying since the start of Trump’s tariff actions to appear conciliatory and even willing to bend over backwards to appease America’s new King. They were forced to impose new tariffs on specific U.S. products in retaliation for Trump’s 25 percent tariffs on imported steel and aluminum. But don’t forget that Trump even rejected EU’s offer to drop tariffs. And, of course, the EU has now paused its countermeasures on U.S. trade tariffs as a response to the U.S. delaying by 90 days its so-called reciprocal tariffs.

China is not backing down because it can afford to do so. Its leadership knows that it can deal with the side effects of a trade war far more effectively--and less painfully--than the U.S. can. The extent to which Trump seems to understand the realities of the U.S.-trade relationship, let alone of the mechanisms that the Chinese government has at its disposal to deal with economic side effects, is highly questionable.

Indeed, it’s safe to say that a U.S. trade deal with Europe will eventually take place no matter what. Italy’s neo-fascist but politically savvy prime minister Giorgia Meloni may be able to secure an EU-U.S. trade deal in a fashion that no top EU official could, perhaps only because Trump is smitten with her. But what happens with China is anyone’s guess. There are both economic and geopolitical considerations behind Trump’s hostility towards China. And the Chinese no longer view their country as a semi-peripheral country in the global capitalist world. China’s global influence is growing, so its leaders are not going to be intimidated by Trump’s chicken game over tariffs.

Alexandra Boutri: One last question. How would Trump’s energy and deregulation policies impact the fight for climate change?

C. J. Polychroniou: When all is said and done, this is the most important issue of all facing the future of humanity. We have a planet on the precipice. I hate to sound pessimistic, but the odds are already stacked against us. Trump’s manic energy and deregulation policies, which come on top of a mania to deny climate change, will make the task of net-zero emissions by 2050 simply impossible to achieve.

We have a planet on the precipice. I hate to sound pessimistic, but the odds are already stacked against us.

I say this because Trump’s energy and deregulation policies will encourage other fossil-fuel hungry nations to continue with the further exploration and consumption of the poisons that are destroying the planet. In addition, and indicative of what’s happening on the ground with regard to the fight against global warming, a new study by the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst reveals that “governments throughout the world continue to subsidize both the consumption and production of oil, coal, and natural gas.” Overall fossil fuel subsidies, for 2023, amounted to $1.1 trillion. Obviously, such a staggering amount in subsidies to the fossil fuel industry seems to indicate that governments across the world only have worries about short-termism and think very little about the future of humanity. But that’s what capitalism is all about, isn’t it?

Harvard University is providing a lesson that most children learn in elementary school but many leaders of America’s most important institutions have forgotten: The only effective way to deal with a bully is to fight back.

Trump’s Pretext

Columbia University was the first target in U.S. President Donald Trump’s disingenuous crusade against antisemitism. Disingenuous because he claimed that the school’s failures caused Jewish students to feel unsafe. His supposed remedy—withholding $400 million in federal funds—is a non sequitur.

And it’s hypocritical. Did any of these Trump antisemitic episodes make Jewish students feel safer?

• He angrily defended his 2016 campaign Twitter post, “Crooked Hillary—Makes History.” It showed the image of a six-pointed star that included the tagline, “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever.” Evoking a longstanding historical smear against Judaism, dollar bills rained down in the background behind Clinton’s photo.

• He narrated a 2016 campaign ad saying, “The establishment has trillions of dollars at stake… For those who control the levers of power in Washington and for the global special interests—they partner with these people that don’t have your good in mind… that have bled our country dry.” As examples, the ad cut together video clips of billionaire George Soros, former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, and former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein—all of whom are Jewish.

• In August 2017, after counterprotesters in Charlottesville clashed with torch-wielding white nationalists and neo-Nazis chanting the Nazi-associated phrase “blood-and-soil” and “Jews will not replace us,” Trump said, “I think there is blame on both sides. You look at both sides… You also had some very fine people on both sides.”

• In October 2018, Trump hosted white nationalist and Holocaust-denier Nick Fuentes, who spews antisemitic rhetoric, at Mar-a-Lago. Performer Ye (formerly Kanye West), whose antisemitic comments resulted in his suspension from social media platforms, appeared with Trump at a press appearance in the Oval Office.

• And in February 2025, Trump praised as “brilliant” Vice President JD Vance’s Munich speech, which embraced Germany’s far-right political candidate.

“We’re really watching an attack on higher education under the guise of fighting antisemitism, but I cannot emphasize enough how much it will not actually protect Jewish students,” according to Erin Beiner, director of the student wing of J Street, a liberal Jewish-American lobbying group.

Trump’s Real Agenda

Trump’s attack on elite universities seeks to replace academic freedom of thought and speech with Trump-determined ideology and personal fealty to him. He’s working from a role model’s template.

In a February 2024 interview, Vice President JD Vance held out Hungary as an example to emulate: “The closest that conservatives have ever gotten to successfully dealing with left-wing domination of universities is Viktor Orbán’s approach in Hungary. I think his way has to be the model for us: not to eliminate universities, but to give them a choice between survival or taking a much less biased approach to teaching.”

But Orbán is not offering a “much less biased approach to teaching.” He is demanding instruction centered on his view of history and the world.

Conservative activist Christopher Rufo, who has championed Trump’s strategy of attacking America’s universities, observed that when Orbán assumed power in 2010, he wanted “to strengthen Hungary’s cultural foundations—family life, Christian faith, and historical memory—and to create a conservative elite capable of maintaining them.” His “starting point” was education:

• Orbán signed legislation effectively banning Central European University, a liberal-arts institution founded by the financier George Soros to help rebuild academic life after the fall of Communism;

• He closed gender and women’s studies departments at Hungarian universities;

• He took control of the budget of the Hungarian Academy of Science, which funds research institutes in history, literature, and science; and

• He put loyalists on boards that control public university oversight.

As Rufo explained, Orbán is “using muscular state policy to achieve conservative ends.”

Sound familiar?

Columbia Folded

Columbia rolled over on Trump’s demands, including a requirement that went to the heart of university governance and academic freedom: a review of the university’s department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African studies; the Center for Palestine Studies; and similar academic entities.

On March 23, after giving Trump everything he wanted, even Trump’s secretary of education believed that Columbia was “on the right track so that we can now move forward.” She was optimistic that the $400 million would be released soon.

Three weeks later Trump wanted more. With the $400 million still in limbo, the Department of Health and Human services froze another $250 million of funding from the National Institutes of Health.

Harvard Fought

When Trump made even more draconian demands on Harvard University, it said, “No”—even as Trump threatened to withhold $9 billion in federal funds. Seeking functional control of the university, Trump wanted:

• An outside auditor to ensure that each and every academic department is “viewpoint diverse”—which the Trump administration has not defined;

• Plagiarism checks on all current and prospective faculty members;

• All hiring data and subjecting it to federal government audit through at least 2028;

• All admissions data for admitted students and applicants, sorted by race, national origin, grade-point average, and performance on standardized tests, and subjecting it to federal government audit through at least 2028;

• Cessation of all programming related to diversity, equity, and inclusion; and

• Overhauling academic programs that the Trump administration says have “egregious records on antisemitism” and subjecting certain departments and programs to external audit, including the Divinity School, the Graduate School of Education, the School of Public Health, and the Medical School, among others.

Harvard’s President Alan M. Garber responded:

The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights…

No government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.

Hours later, Trump suspended $2.2 billion in federal multiyear grants to Harvard—an especially devastating blow to Harvard-affiliated hospitals. The next day, he threatened Harvard’s tax-exempt status, even though federal law prohibits the president from “directly or indirectly” telling the Internal Revenue Service to conduct specific tax investigations.

Harvard’s final outcome remains uncertain, but capitulation produces certain disaster.

Meanwhile, Harvard is showing the world how to beat a bully.

It snowed Wednesday night in the Green Mountains, a typically beautiful late-season fluff-fest. Which meant I got to rise at 6 this morning and go for a ski before the spring sun turned it to slush—helpful, because I needed to clear my head a little.

That’s because word came that night that, having dispensed with immigrants, law firms, humanitarian workers, and universities, the Trump administration was now turning its crosshairs on climate advocates. Nothing specific yet, but E&E News was reporting on widespread rumors that the administration planned (on Earth Day no less!) to cancel the tax-exempt status of many green groups:

“There's lots of rumors about what terrible thing [Trump] wants to do on Earth Day, to just give everybody the middle finger,” Brett Hartl, director of governmental operations at the Center for Biological Diversity, said.

An environmental funder granted anonymity to speak freely speculated Trump might try to do to nonprofits what he’s threatened to do with universities.

“The rumors feel credible because this is playbook they use,” the funder said. “That’s why people are taking it very seriously.”

Another environmentalist expressed concern that the administration could attempt to target green groups by defining efforts to limit fossil fuel development as a threat to national security.

The threat comes amid the ongoing decimation of federally funded climate science. In the last few days, for instance, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has announced it will no longer be maintaining its remarkable map of sea-surface temperatures, while the National Institutes of Health said it was no longer gathering information on the health impacts of global warming.

The NIH said in an internal document obtained by The New York Times that it was the agency’s new policy “not to prioritize” research related to climate change. The document also described the organization’s intent not to fund research on gender identity, vaccine hesitancy, or diversity, equity, and inclusion. N.I.H. employees were instructed to tell researchers to “remove all” mention of the topics and resubmit their applications, even if the main focus was unrelated.

The policy shift on climate change, first reported by ProPublica, stands to drastically limit U.S.-based research into its health effects, which tries to answer questions like whether events like wildfires and heatwaves can affect cardiovascular health and pregnancy.

But now the administration is targeting those who take that science and try to turn it into change. They are the undergunned and outmanned equivalent of the armies of corporate lobbyists, producing the reports and briefing papers that try to stand up to the tide of right-wing media. I know a great many of these people, and I admire their work endlessly; it’s an honor to be counted among them, even if I’m only a volunteer. It was perhaps inevitable that Trump and his team would target us; together we’ve been making life harder for his clients in the fossil fuel industry. And in the new America, if you don’t knuckle under you get a knuckle sandwich. Figuratively speaking. One hopes.

Anyway, there are two questions worth asking. One is, will Trump pay any price for these attacks on climate science and advocacy? He’s not immune to the laws of politics—he clearly paid a price for his absurd tariff policy, which is why he backed off. In the case of tariffs, Trump’s problem was more or less immediate feedback: The bond market threatened to take down the American economy—”got a little queasy” as the president put it—and so he blinked. Slightly longer term feedback will likely come in the form of a recession. The phrase du jour, repeated endlessly, was that he had “touched a hot stove.”

My guess is, very few people would drill for oil without compensation; a great many people will try to defend the planet even if it costs them a lot.

By that standard, one assumes the administration doesn’t fear blowback from a mere hot planet. And yet even if it doesn’t work as fast the bond market, the world’s climate system is now malfunctioning in more or less real time. March was the hottest March on record, topping 2024 by just a smidge; meanwhile, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere grew at a record pace last year, apparently because overheated forests are losing some of their capacity as a carbon sink. We’re headed toward what is already forecast to be a more-active-than-usual hurricane season. Trump now owns all this in a way none of his predecessors did: They (with the exception of former President Joe Biden) may not have done much about climate change, but they didn’t insist it was a hoax. So when Tampa drowns or Tucson bakes or whatever happens next, it may stick to him in a way it hasn’t before. He’s got no credible scientific defenders (although the climate denial crew did enlist Elon Musk’s Grok 3 AI to write a paper last week). Damage to his brand is at least a possibility, especially if Democrats display even the slightest skill in linking, say, rising insurance premiums to the climate crisis.

The other question is, will this stop the climate movement? Of course it will make things harder, diverting time and attention and money from important work to dealing with lawyers and auditors; I get to work with paid staff at places like Third Act, and they are not just deeply good people, they are also crucial to making volunteers much more effective.

But the conceit of the right-wing has always been that climate scientists and activists are in it for the money, right down to insisting that protesters outside Tesla dealerships have been paid by George Soros. (I’ve taken my “Kia EV’s Rule” sign out several times, and no check yet!) This has always been an absurd claim: Climate scientists are not getting rich, and most activists could make more money doing almost anything else. Meanwhile, oil executives do get very rich indeed (Trump’s Energy Secretary, fracking honcho Chris Wright, is reportedly worth $171 million), and the success of their companies is due in no small part to an endless collection of tax loopholes and federal, state, and local subsidies. My guess is, very few people would drill for oil without compensation; a great many people will try to defend the planet even if it costs them a lot.

We’ll find out. We’re gearing up for the public launch of SunDay, the nationwide September mass action in defense of renewable energy. If you’re in the Boston area, come to Old North Church at 6:30 pm on Saturday April 26 for a launch ceremony (green lantern in Paul Revere’s steeple!); if you’re anywhere else, we’re doing a digital nationwide launch on April 28. Draw us a sun today to help! Here’s this week’s inspiration, from Lisa Gundlach.