There is a remarkably simple test for whether the AI boom is actually as economically transformative as its boosters say it is: Make the companies building it pay their own damn electricity bill.

Not just the meter at the server warehouse. The whole bill.

If a hyperscale data center requires a new power plant, transmission line, substation, distribution upgrade, water system, or grid-reliability backstop, put that cost on the project that caused it. If the economics still work, excellent. Build it. If they don't, then the public has just learned something extremely important about the business model.

Pennsylvania moved sharply in that direction on August 18. Gov. Josh Shapiro's new executive order requires data-center developers seeking state permits to meet Responsible Infrastructure Development standards. Among them: Developers must cover the cost of new generation, transmission, distribution, and related infrastructure needed for their projects without shifting those costs to households and businesses.

If the AI boom is real, it can survive a full-cost test.

The order also requires local approval, ends the use of nondisclosure agreements for data-center projects, demands energy and water reporting, and ties state tax benefits to compliance. Pennsylvania's special counsel for energy affordability is also supposed to work with utility regulators so data centers, rather than ordinary customers, absorb the cost of reliability measures created by their demand.

This shouldn't be treated as an anti-AI policy. It's a pro-accounting policy.

The AI industry has been allowed to narrate electricity as though it were weather: Demand is "surging," capacity is "tight," the grid is "strained," and somehow billions of dollars of wires, turbines, transformers, and land just need to appear around the technology.

But demand isn't weather. Somebody made a decision.

And there is another reason to force the accounting now: A lot of the supposed demand isn't load yet. It's proposals. Pennsylvania says more than 100 data-center projects have approached the state, while the governor says only a handful currently look viable enough to have the necessary permits. Across the country, regulators have worried about speculative projects showing up in multiple interconnection queues and inflating forecasts before anybody has proved the customer, financing, or power plan is real.

That matters because utilities build decades-long assets against forecasts. If a speculative 500-megawatt project gets counted as inevitable, everybody can end up paying for infrastructure long after the spreadsheet that justified it has disappeared.

So add another rule: Prove you're real before the public builds around you. Put down financial security. Identify the end user. Show the power source. Accept a minimum bill that covers infrastructure reserved for you. And if you walk away, you don't get to leave a transformer-shaped hole in everybody else's rates.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) reported in April that electricity consumption by data centers jumped 17% in 2025, while electricity use at AI-focused facilities rose even faster. Its 2026 outlook still sees total data-center consumption roughly doubling by 2030 and AI-focused consumption tripling.

In the United States, data centers accounted for roughly half of total electricity-demand growth in 2025, according to the IEA. The Department of Energy had already estimated that data centers consumed about 4.4% of US electricity in 2023 and could reach 6.7-12% by 2028.

There is nothing inherently illegitimate about using that much power. Aluminum smelters use enormous amounts of electricity. Steel mills use enormous amounts of electricity. Electrifying transportation and heating will use enormous amounts of electricity too. A serious industrial society needs to know how to build power.

The illegitimate part begins when one customer's expansion becomes everyone else's compulsory investment.

That risk isn't theoretical. In Virginia, the world's largest data-center market, Reuters reported this month that Dominion's fuel costs have risen nearly 90% in five years as data-center growth leaves the utility more exposed to expensive wholesale electricity. Across PJM, which serves 67 million people, the grid operator is now proposing rules that would put some new data centers first in line for curtailment during shortages unless they bring adequate power with them.

Good.

If an AI company wants the upside of scale, it can own the downside of scale too.

That means at least five things.

Make large-load customers pay for the incremental grid infrastructure they cause. Require financial security so households aren't stuck with stranded assets if a project disappears. Make large-load forecasts public enough to detect speculative projects being counted multiple times. Give communities access to energy, water, and ownership information before approvals. And establish emergency curtailment rules before the emergency arrives.

This is what mature industrial policy looks like. It doesn't worship growth, and it doesn't panic about growth. It prices the actual machine.

The alternative is a familiar political trick: Call the upside private innovation and the downside public infrastructure.

No.

If the AI boom is real, it can survive a full-cost test.

If a company needs a new power plant, let it pay for the whole damn thing.

On August 18, President Donald Trump said no talks with Iran were underway or scheduled, while the US naval blockade remained in force and Tehran insisted the Strait of Hormuz would stay closed until Washington met the terms of the June interim agreement. The impasse sharpens the most consequential question surrounding Trump’s legacy: not whether he wins or loses this war, but whether he leaves behind expanded presidential power, weakened constitutional checks on war making, and a diminished commitment to a rules-based international order. A president can leave office. A war can outlive him.

That is increasingly the danger confronting the United States. Trump’s confrontation with Iran has evolved from a military campaign into a constitutional and institutional test: Can an American president initiate and sustain major hostilities without explicit congressional authorization, and can Congress still meaningfully restrain him once the fighting has begun? The answer will shape far more than the remainder of Trump’s presidency. It will establish a precedent for every administration that follows.

The central issue is therefore not simply Trump’s foreign policy. It is the emergence of unchecked presidential power in the conduct of war. The United States entered the Iran conflict without a specific congressional authorization. Since then, the administration has advanced expansive interpretations of executive authority while Congress has struggled to reassert its constitutional prerogatives. The War Powers Resolution remains an important, if imperfect, mechanism for limiting the executive branch’s ability to sustain hostilities without congressional consent.

The danger becomes particularly acute when an administration can redefine the status of a conflict without ending the underlying military posture. The War Powers framework was designed to prevent presidents from converting temporary military action into an open-ended commitment: Absent congressional authorization, the law generally requires the president to terminate the use of US armed forces after 60 days. Yet the Trump administration has challenged the idea that this statutory clock should operate as an automatic constraint on presidential authority.

If lawmakers fail to reassert their authority, Trump’s most consequential legacy may be the normalization of a presidency capable of committing the United States to war without meaningful congressional authorization and leaving later administrations to deal with the consequences.

That creates a dangerous precedent. If a president can initiate hostilities, characterize them as limited or defensive, reinterpret the statutory clock, and then continue military operations without explicit authorization, the constitutional allocation of war powers becomes increasingly theoretical. The consequences are no longer hypothetical.

Congress has repeatedly attempted to invoke its war powers over Iran. In June, the House passed a measure directing the president to remove US forces from hostilities with Iran, and the Senate later adopted it. In July, the House again approved a war-powers resolution by 214-208, while the Senate rejected its own measure, 47-49. These votes expose the political problem: Congress is being asked to choose between institutional loyalty to the presidency and constitutional loyalty to the republic. For Republican lawmakers, the choice is especially consequential. Allowing a Republican president to expand executive authority without meaningful resistance establishes powers that a future Democratic president—or another Republican—could inherit in very different circumstances.

The question, therefore, is not whether Congress likes Trump. It is whether Congress is willing to allow presidential power to become self-expanding. Trump’s legacy also extends beyond the domestic constitutional order. His approach has placed pressure on the foundations of the liberal international system: predictable alliances, institutional constraints, multilateral diplomacy, and the assumption that American power operates within rules rather than merely according to presidential preference.

The Iran conflict demonstrates the problem with extraordinary clarity. The June agreement was intended to extend a ceasefire and create a pathway toward a permanent settlement, including negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. That framework has effectively collapsed. Trump has ruled out extending it; the confrontation around the Strait of Hormuz continues; and he has threatened military action against Oman, a US partner involved in efforts surrounding the strait. A mechanism meant to create a pathway out of war has become another stage in an unresolved confrontation.

Washington has even declared that it can maintain its naval blockade of Iran indefinitely. This is how wars acquire a life of their own. Once forces are deployed, enemies mobilize, allies become involved, economic interests are affected, and political credibility becomes attached to the outcome, withdrawal grows more difficult. The president who starts the war may eventually discover that ending it is politically more dangerous than continuing it.

And the president who inherits it may discover that he has inherited not merely a conflict, but an entire strategic architecture: deployed forces, military commitments, sanctions regimes, regional alliances, adversaries with incentives to retaliate, and political expectations that make disengagement appear equivalent to defeat.

Trump may therefore leave office, but the war may remain. This is the deeper paradox of his “America First” approach. A doctrine supposedly designed to reduce unnecessary foreign entanglements can instead produce new and potentially durable ones. The more Washington relies on military coercion without a clearly defined political end state, the more difficult it becomes to determine what victory actually means—and therefore what conditions would permit the United States to leave.

The consequences for American democracy are equally serious. Democracy does not depend solely on elections. It depends on institutions capable of constraining whoever wins those elections. If Congress becomes unwilling or unable to prevent reckless escalation without congressional consent, then the constitutional system has lost one of its most important safeguards.

This is why the current confrontation should not be reduced to a partisan dispute between Democrats and Republicans. The real issue is whether the United States still believes that war is a national decision rather than a presidential prerogative. Congress must therefore make a choice that transcends Trump himself: party loyalty or constitutional patriotism.

Republican lawmakers who defend Trump’s authority today should consider what they are actually defending. They are not merely protecting the foreign policy of one president. They are helping define the permissible scope of presidential power for decades to come. Once extraordinary powers become precedent, they rarely remain confined to the circumstances in which they were created.

The United States has survived presidents with radically different visions of executive authority. What allows the constitutional system to survive them is the willingness of institutions to impose limits on presidential power. If lawmakers fail to reassert their authority, Trump’s most consequential legacy may be the normalization of a presidency capable of committing the United States to war without meaningful congressional authorization and leaving later administrations to deal with the consequences. Trump will eventually leave the White House. The precedent he creates may not.

We are breaking past heat records, but they will not stand for long. Summer heat now arrives earlier, lasts longer, spikes higher, and lands in places that never planned for it.

For the tens of millions of Americans who work outdoors, and the millions more in warehouses, kitchens, and factories without air conditioning, there is still no federal standard requiring an employer to give a worker water, shade, rest, or training on a day when the heat can kill.

Between 1992 and 2019, more than 900 workers died from heat on the job, and every year tens of thousands more are sickened or injured—farmworkers collapsing in fields, roofers baking on exposed surfaces, laundry and dollar store workers laboring in buildings that trap heat like ovens. Those official numbers are undercounts, because heat deaths are chronically underreported.

Heat illness is not a scientific mystery. Heat stroke can kill in minutes, but staying safe is mostly about staying cool, hydrated, and getting help fast when confusion or dizziness sets in.

No one should be sent into a hotter, more volatile climate with nothing but the occasional popsicle and luck.

We protect workers from ladder falls, electric shocks, even excessive noise, with clear and enforceable rules. Yet there is still no federal standard requiring employers to provide the basics on dangerously hot days.

We came close. In 2024, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) proposed the first-ever national heat safety standard. In 2025, the agency heard weeks of testimony from workers, doctors, unions, and employers. Then the progress on a strong rule stalled.

Now, some in Congress want to bury it for good. The House Education and the Workforce Committee recently voted to advance the Heat Workforce Standards Act, which would bar the Labor Department from finalizing or enforcing the heat rule.

This isn't a pause. It's a lock on the door, designed to stop not just this administration but any future one from protecting workers from heat. The bill's sponsor called workplace heat a problem that doesn't need solving. Easy to say when you spend every day in air conditioning. Impossible to accept when your loved one doesn't come home.

The industry groups behind the bill insist protections cost too much, the argument once made against seatbelts, hard hats, and fire exits. The numbers say otherwise. OSHA estimates a single average case of heat exhaustion costs more than $79,000 in medical bills, lost time, and lost productivity. Water and rest breaks are cheap. Hospitalizations and funerals are not.

So if Washington won't act, who will?

Investors can. Companies that get ahead of this aren't only doing right by their workers; they're managing a financial risk that shows up in turnover, litigation, and lost output. The Natural Resources Defense Council and Trillium's new guide for investors gives shareholders the questions to ask in the boardroom, and boards tend to listen when the people who own the company start asking them.

States can, and are. Seven now have heat standards, and lawmakers in Pennsylvania and Virginia are working to join them. Every state that acts protects its own workers now and builds the case that no one's safety should depend on their zip code.

The people facing this risk grow our food, build our homes, deliver our packages, and cook our meals. Many of them will not ask for water or a break today—afraid of retaliation, afraid of losing a shift, afraid of losing a paycheck they cannot afford to lose. No one should have to weigh a livelihood against a life. And no one should be sent into a hotter, more volatile climate with nothing but the occasional popsicle and luck.

Employers who resist these rules imagine that breaks cost them too much. They have it backward. Heat is already hurting both workers' health and their bottom line. Protections like water and rest don't subtract from a workday, they only help workers do their job.

The toll from this summer is still being counted. Every party to this—Congress, employers, investors, states—can still decide how high it goes.

On July 11, 2026, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act became law, making it the most significant federal housing package enacted in more than three decades. Many are celebrating the bill for “simply existing.” However, for many working-class tenants, the bill is not enough.

The 21st Century Renewing Opportunity in the American Dream, or ROAD, to Housing Act contains more than 60 provisions covering housing construction, manufactured and rural housing, homeownership, rental housing, veterans’ housing, federal program reform, and community banking. Its central strategy is to increase the housing supply by reducing regulatory barriers and encouraging state and local governments to allow more construction.

The problem is that the bill relies too heavily on private-market principles to fix a housing crisis that was largely created by the private market itself.

Where new housing construction has accelerated due to reforms like those in the bill, new development is overwhelmingly catering to the wealthy. This does little to prevent the displacement of working-class neighborhoods, as overall rents continue to climb to match what landlords hope to extract from newer residents.

“Tenants today are paying more rent than they’ve ever paid for the worst conditions they’ve ever endured, but our ultimate power is our rent.”

Everyday Americans are left facing the consequences. Rapidly rising rents, home prices, and other living expenses have made housing the single largest monthly expense for millions of American families.

These rising costs are compounded by a national shortage of 7.2 million affordable, available rental homes for extremely low-income renters. Not a single state has an adequate supply of affordable rental housing for its lowest-income renters.

Together, these conditions have created a nationwide housing crisis.

There are many reasons why this crisis persists. One is financial pressure on landlords, according to Ruthy Gourevitch, director of housing policy at Climate and Community Institute.

“In the current market context, where landlords are taking out large loans to acquire properties, they have to increase rents and cut back on maintenance to make those loan obligations,” she told Inequality.org in an interview.

Private landlords are buying and leasing in a highly speculative market. They must charge high rents to maximize profits on risky loans. The brunt of that risk is borne by tenants, according to Tara Raghuveer, director of the Tenants Union Federation.

“The tenant is also the one who suffers the most when the risk starts to fall apart,” Raghuveer told Inequality.org. “That’s what’s happening right now, and this bill has nothing to do with that reality.”

When examined more closely, the ROAD Act is timid in its approach to tackling the private power that prioritizes profit over affordability. Large institutional investors were banned from purchasing single-family homes under the bill, but dominant corporate landlords in the multifamily rental market remain untouched and are still driving up rents. This bill only continues to subsidize their dominance.

The bill contains provisions that boost programs like Community Development Block Grants, enabling municipalities to finance affordable housing construction. However, these programs still result in mostly privately owned housing.

Public funds provide subsidies that feed profits to private developers and landlords. While these subsidies may start off providing affordable housing, they do not remain so in the long term, perpetuating rent instability and poor tenant protections for low-income tenants.

“Currently, the public sector plays a massive role in subsidizing private profits,” says Raghuveer. “We propose an alternative, which is that the public sector actually reclaims and owns responsibility for delivering housing.”

Profit is priority for private developers and landlords. To fight this, tenant advocates are fighting for policies that decommodify housing. Investment in publicly-owned housing can build a large supply of environmentally sustainable, high-quality housing that everyone can access, regardless of wealth or market forces.

The HOMES Act proposes one such vision for bold and broad social housing investment. It would establish a federal Social Housing Development Authority (SHDA) to build, acquire, and upgrade millions of green, affordable, publicly held housing units with permanent capped rents for mixed-income tenants.

An SHDA would allow the public to buy housing from those who took out risky loans. It also ensures that public investment and rental income result in long-term, lower, capped rents and builds a revolving loan fund for further upgrades and social housing construction.

Gourevitch, along with other housing researchers and progressive organizers, has found social housing investment consistently contributes to racial and economic housing equity, while public management allows democratic control over tenant protections, rents, and amenities.

Social housing investment can also create more climate-resilient infrastructure without relying on climate-myopic private developers.

“What we see in other countries with governments that have more agency over their housing is the ability to move at the speed and scale that the crises we face demand. In Singapore or Vienna, you see the government innovating on questions of decarbonization, energy efficiency, and resilience as different climate shocks and stressors come their way,” Gourevitch explains.

Climate resiliency upgrades under private landlords may lead to rent hikes or property flipping. Instead, Gourevitch’s research has found that, “with green social housing, what we see is that because rents are capped and stay affordable over a long period of time, those energy efficiency and decarbonization investments do not translate into displacement.”

Achieving this policy vision across the United States, under these political conditions, may seem far off. Still, tenants across the country are organizing for a different vision. Tenants are fighting for immediate rights to stay in their homes. For emergency rent caps to protect tenants’ housing stability. For broader power over their homes from their landlords.

“Tenants today are paying more rent than they’ve ever paid for the worst conditions they’ve ever endured, but our ultimate power is our rent,” as Raghuveer says. “When we organize tenants as collectives, we articulate a vision for the world that looks very different from the one we live in today.”

There is no bigger con man in the United States than Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. Not even President Donald J. Trump.

The con began in September 2005, during Roberts’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Articulate, handsome, and energetic at 50 years old, Roberts seemed to have been culled “straight from central casting,” as Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama actually remarked on the first day of the hearings. Roberts was also convincing—he famously promised that if confirmed, he would serve in the fashion of a baseball umpire, calling only “balls and strikes, and not to pitch or bat.” Seventy-eight senators, including 22 Democrats, fell for the ploy and voted to give him the lifetime assignment.

The biggest yarn Roberts told during his hearing concerned his views on the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA), a cornerstone of American democracy, which the Supreme Court gutted this past April in a redistricting case from the state of Louisiana (Louisiana v. Callais).

As is his prerogative as chief justice, Roberts assigned the task of drafting the Callais majority opinion to fellow conservative Justice Samuel Alito, who responded with a 6 to 3 ruling that held that, henceforth, Section 2 of the landmark legislation would require VRA plaintiffs to meet the nearly impossible burden of proving that redistricting maps challenged as “racial gerrymanders” were created with discriminatory intent rather than for permissible political purposes. The opinion allowed Louisiana to eliminate one majority Black congressional district. It also effectively negated legislation passed in 1982 that had amended Section 2 to permit the Justice Department and private citizens to challenge election laws that have the effect of diluting minority voting power without proving intent.

The court’s accelerating lurch to the right under his stewardship has done permanent damage to the institution, and sparked renewed calls for radical reforms.

Flash back to 2005 and it is apparent that, at best, Roberts misled the judiciary committee. In response to a question from Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy about the VRA’s constitutionality, Roberts replied, “[T]he existing Voting Rights Act—the constitutionality has been upheld. And I don’t have any issue with that.”

In fact, Roberts had plenty of issues with the VRA. As a young lawyer serving as a special assistant to Attorney General William French Smith in the Reagan administration, Roberts authored upward of 25 memos opposing the 1982 legislation. In them, Roberts urged the administration to defeat any proposed changes to the VRA and to keep the “intent test” established by a 1980 Supreme Court decision (City of Mobile v. Bolden) that required VRA plaintiffs to prove officials explicitly intended to discriminate against minority voters. Adopting the effects test over the intent test, Roberts argued, would create “a quota system [akin to affirmative action] for electoral politics by creating a right to proportional racial representation on elected governmental bodies.”

In another exchange at his confirmation hearing, this time with Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold, Roberts sought to explain away his memos as just part of the job he had been assigned at the time rather than a reflection of his personal views, saying, “I was a 26-year-old staff lawyer. It was my first job as a lawyer after my clerkships [with Second Circuit Judge Fred Friendly and Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist]. I was not shaping administration policy. The administration policy was shaped by the Attorney General... It was the policy of President Reagan. It was to extend the Voting Rights Act without change.”

Despite young Roberts’s warnings, the 1982 amendments were passed by Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support by a vote of 389 to 24 in the House and 85 to 8 in the Senate. President Ronald Reagan quickly reversed course and signed the amendments into law on June 29, 1982. In 2006, Congress extended the VRA for another 25 years with even greater bipartisan support, by a vote of 390 to 33 in the House and 98 to 0 in the Senate.

Once installed as the nation’s 17th chief justice, it didn’t take Roberts long to show his true colors, declaring in a 2007 majority opinion on busing in public schools (Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District Number One) that “the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

Two years later, in an otherwise obscure case (Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One v. Holder) involving the elected board of a municipal water district in Texas, he turned his attention to Sections 4 and 5 of the VRA, which required state and local jurisdictions, mostly in the South, with histories of egregious voter discrimination, to obtain advance federal approval—known as “preclearance”—before making changes to their election procedures. Although his opinion left the sections intact, Roberts warned that unless Congress updated the formula to determine which jurisdictions should be subject to the preclearance process, the Supreme Court might stop the process altogether.

In 2013, he made good on that threat. Writing for a 5 to 4 majority in Shelby County v. Holder, he invalidated the preclearance formula and effectively put an end to the process, reasoning that racism in American elections was a thing of the past and there was no longer any justification for singling out Southern states for remedial measures. Shelby led swiftly to an upsurge in restrictive voter ID laws, voting-roll purges, and limitations on mail-in balloting in Republican-led states across the country, especially in the South.

Although Roberts also declared in Shelby that Section 2 of the VRA “is permanent, [and] applies nationwide,” he returned to the attack with his 2019 majority opinion in Rucho v. Common Cause, holding that “political gerrymandering” claims cannot be brought in federal courts because they present nonjusticiable “political questions.” Political gerrymandering has a long history in the United States, Roberts noted, dating back to the salamander-shaped voting districts created by Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry in 1812 to give an advantage to his Democratic-Republican Party. “The Constitution,” Roberts argued in Rucho, “supplies no objective measure for assessing whether a districting map treats a political party fairly” and thus provides no basis for proportional political representation. Lacking objective standards to work with, he concluded, the federal courts had no business entering the redistricting wars.

Rucho, in turn, set the stage for Callais in 2026, which put an end to claims of racial gerrymandering, the last bastion of relief from discrimination available under the VRA. Callais gave red states permission to redesign their electoral maps to eliminate “majority-minority districts” (where a minority group comprises a majority of the population) that had been created to boost the electoral power of Black and Latine voters, who tend to lean Democratic. Election law predicts that as a result of Callais, as many as 19 seats in Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana could be eliminated, starting with the November midterms, potentially returning the bulk of the former states of the Confederacy to virtual one-party rule.

As The Nation’s justice correspondent Elie Mystal put it in a mournful post-Callais column, “The ruling effectively ends the VRA, and with it the all too brief era of multiracial democracy in America.” And as Ari Berman added in a piece for Mother Jones, Callais may have been written by Alito, but it “represents the life’s work of Chief Justice John Roberts... [who] has been trying to kill the Voting Rights Act for more than 40 years.”

The severe negative reaction to Callais forced Roberts to do damage control. Addressing a judicial conference in Hershey, Pennsylvania, in early May, he said: “I think at a very basic level, people think we’re making policy decisions, [that] we’re saying we think this is what things should be as opposed to this is what the law provides... I think they view us as truly political actors, which I don’t think is an accurate understanding of what we do. I would say that’s the main difficulty... We’re not simply part of the political process.”

The problem for Roberts is that his shtick just isn’t working anymore. Any lingering pretense of impartiality ended with his stunning majority opinion in 2024’s Trump v. United States, which offered the president near-complete immunity from criminal prosecution for his official acts. In addition to shielding Trump from legal accountability, the immunity ruling embraced the Reagan-era “unitary executive theory,” which posits that all executive power is concentrated in the person of the president, as a settled principle of constitutional law.

The unitary theory was on full display again in late-June opinions this term on immigration and independent agencies. In Trump v. Slaughter, another 6 to 3 majority opinion written by Roberts involving the firing of a Federal Trade Commissioner, the court overturned a federal law that bars the president from firing members of the independent agencies created by Congress without just cause. In the process, Roberts overruled a precedent decision that had stood since 1935 (Humphrey’s Executor v. United States), which had upheld the contested statute.

In rulings on the immigration cases, both written by Alito and resolved 6 to 3 along party lines, the court upheld the administration’s termination of temporary protected status (TPS) for an estimated 350,000 Haitian and 6,000 Syrian nationals who were allowed to come to the United States to avoid persecution (Mullin v. Doe), and authorized the administration to revive Trump’s first-term policy denying asylum-seekers the right to enter the country before reaching the US-Mexico border (Mullin v. Al Otro Lado).

The immigration decisions sparked uncommonly vitriolic dissents from the court’s three liberal Justices, exposing deepening fissures on the bench. In the asylum case, Justice Sonia Sotomayor blasted the majority, writing: “The consequences of today’s decision are predictable. More people will die. More people will attempt to cross the border illegally, and some will make it while others will not.” In the TPS case, Justice Elena Kagan all but accused the majority of enabling Trump’s racism, citing the president’s public statements accusing Haitian refugees of “eating” cats and dogs, “poisoning the blood,” and saying they come from a “shithole country” and “probably have AIDS.”

The court’s racial bias was also evident in its “shadow docket,” the term given to emergency appeals that come before the court outside of its standard “merits” docket and are typically resolved rapidly without full briefing and on an interim basis while litigation proceeds in lower courts. In one particularly egregious ruling (Noem v. Perdomo), the Court permitted immigration agents to detain suspected undocumented immigrants on the basis of race, ethnicity, language, location, and occupation, green-lighting unbridled racial profiling.

The shadow docket also included an emergency order permitting Alabama to reinstate a congressional map that eliminates a Black-majority district that the court had invalidated under the VRA just three years ago.

Even in the handful of major decisions the Trump administration lost this term, the cases were narrowly framed. In Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, with Roberts writing for a 6 to 3 majority, the court invalidated Trump’s worldwide “liberation day” tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, but left the door open for more targeted duties under different statutes. Similarly, in Trump v. Cook, with Roberts writing for a 5 to 4 majority, the court temporarily barred Trump from firing a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors while her lower-court challenges continue.

Continuing the trend, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett writing for a 5 to 4 majority in Watson v. Republican National Committee, the court held that existing federal election laws do not prevent Mississippi, and by extension other states, from counting absentee ballots postmarked by election day but received up to five days thereafter. Barrett, however, very carefully noted that her opinion did “not consider the scope of Congress’ authority to regulate federal elections” through legislation, possibly a covert nod to the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act that Trump has insisted Congress pass, which would outlaw nearly all mail-in voting.

The same is true for the court’s much-anticipated decision in Trump v. Barbara, on Trump’s Executive Order declaring an end to birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment for the children of undocumented people. In years past, the court would have unanimously rejected Trump’s gambit. Instead, in a 5 to 4 opinion written by Roberts and joined by Barrett, the order was barely rebuffed for violating the text and history of the amendment.

Roberts may have gained a small measure of redemption with his Barbara opinion, but the court’s accelerating lurch to the right under his stewardship has done permanent damage to the institution, and sparked renewed calls for radical reforms, including the imposition of term limits for the justices and, most far-reaching of all, for an expansion of the bench to as many as 13 members.

To accomplish any significant reforms, however, will require Democrats to stiffen their spines and to take back both houses of Congress later this year and the presidency in 2028. In the meantime, we can take heart that the long con Roberts started in 2005 has been exposed for all to see. And we can heed the call of New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie to remind ourselves that Roberts and his GOP confederates do not own the future of the Constitution. We do.

Events are transpiring rapidly in US-Korea relations. The Pentagon announced recently that the 11-day Ulchi Freedom Shield joint military exercises with South Korea would be cut in half a few days after President Donald Trump’s social media announcement that he would “substantially reduce” these exercises.

South Korean President Lee Jae-myung stated he respected Trump’s decision and efforts to create conditions for dialogue toward peace. North Korea’s leadership dismissed the reduction of exercises on the basis that US policy remains “hostile,” though noted that the relationship between Trump and Kim “remains excellent.”

As reports increase on Trump’s push to meet with Kim this year, US lawmakers must ensure high-level diplomacy is supported by working level talks and support policies that enable peaceful coexistence on the Korean Peninsula.

US Lawmakers Must Support De-escalation and Diplomacy

The US-North Korea summits in 2018-19 failed to produce a durable agreement. Former National Security Adviser John Bolton later admitted to derailing that process, encouraging President Trump to walk away from negotiations by demanding full denuclearization up front. These failed summits led to a prolonged freeze in US-North Korea relations.

The US Needs to Coordinate With South Korea

For 30 years, this disarmament-first policy has failed. This is why South Korea’s Unification Minister Chung Dong-young has said South Korea would no longer insist on North Korea’s complete and immediate denuclearization as the starting point for diplomacy.

The United States must act to end its longest war and pursue peace, engagement, and diplomacy. Peace cannot wait for another generation.

More than 70 years after the Korean War began, it is long past time to convert the armistice and frozen conflict into real peace. On August 15, South Korean President Lee Jae-Myung announced his desire to end hostilities and laid out a policy of peaceful coexistence with North Korea that includes respect for the North's system, no unification by absorption or hostile acts, concrete steps to restore the 2018 Comprehensive Military Agreement, resumption of economic and humanitarian cooperation, and a nuclear approach that begins with a freeze rather than demanding disarmament up front.

US Support for Diplomacy and De-Escalation Is Strong

Recent public opinion polling shows that the majority (69%) of US respondents support diplomatic engagement with North Korea. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has previously said that they would meet if Washington sets aside denuclearization as the goal of talks and accepts peaceful coexistence. US experts say that Washington must deal with North Korea as it is.

The US and South Korea have previously scaled back exercises in order to facilitate dialogue—including under President Bill Clinton’s administration prior to the 1994 US-DPRK Agreed Framework. During President Trump’s first-term diplomacy, a bipartisan group of 32 members of Congress argued that reducing joint exercises could serve as a confidence-building measure in negotiations. Congress should again raise its voice to support de-escalation with North Korea, ensure policy coordination with South Korea, support formally ending the Korean War, and ensure high-level diplomacy is supported by working level talks.

Escalation Won’t Lead to Peace

The US and South Korea have held joint military exercises for decades since the end of the Korean War. Past joint war drills have included nuclear-capable B-2 bombers, nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines, and other weapons that cause significant harm to local residents and the environment. The drills are based on operation plans that reportedly include pre-emptive strikes and “decapitation measures” against North Korea. In his post, Trump criticized the exercises as costly. He’s not wrong. A new report from the Center for International Policy reveals that the Pentagon massively underreports its military spending to maintain US bases and troops in South Korea, spending $5.58 billion in FY24, which is almost $2.19 billion more than what the Pentagon reported to Congress. A single exercise costs US taxpayers an estimated $14 million with US and South Korea planning to conduct 159 field exercises this year.

Experts argue that joint military exercises create a more threatening security environment and elicit greater provocation, despite claims of deterrence. On the other hand, 25 years of data show that when the US is at the negotiating table with North Korea, they launch fewer missile tests. Joint Forces exercises heighten military and political tensions on the peninsula, divert critically needed resources away from urgent human needs in both the US and South Korea, and delay stability on the peninsula.

It’s Time for a Proactive North Korea Policy

For over 70 years, the ongoing Korean War and escalating tensions have undermined human security for 80 million people living on the Korean Peninsula. The United States must act to end its longest war and pursue peace, engagement, and diplomacy. Peace cannot wait for another generation.

US lawmakers must support steps towards de-escalation and hold the Trump administration accountable by:

1. Speaking out in support of de-escalation measures and endorsing proposals for talks with North Korea to officially end the war and for peaceful coexistence on the Korean Peninsula;
2. Calling for clear communication and coordination between US policy and the Lee administration's policy of peaceful coexistence;
3. Co-sponsoring H.R.1841 (the Peace on the Korean Peninsula Act) to formally end the Korean War with a peace agreement; and
4. Ensuring high-level diplomacy is supported by working level talks between the US and North Korea. Congress must act as an independent check to keep any renewed process from being undermined internally.

President Donald Trump may have handed Democrats the issue they need to win Congress.

Affordability.

It is a word Trump increasingly seems unwilling to hear. He has called it a Democratic “hoax,” mocked the way his opponents use it and, more recently, suggested the media suddenly discovered the word after he returned to office.

Democrats should do exactly the opposite.

How great does America feel when you can no longer afford to live in it?

They should embrace it.

Not as another slogan to throw at Trump, but as a promise to voters: We see what it costs to live your life. We understand why it matters. And we intend to do something about it.

Because affordability is not a Washington talking point. It is the grocery bill, the electricity bill, the prescription waiting at the pharmacy, the insurance premium, the rent or mortgage payment, and the tank of gas needed to get to work.

It is everyday life.

And for millions of Americans, the political question behind all of it is brutally simple:

Can I afford my life?

That question could become one of the most powerful Democratic messages of the midterms.

Trump Already Proved It Works

Two years ago, Trump understood its power himself. During the 2024 campaign, he stood beside tables piled with groceries and attacked Democrats over rising prices. He promised Americans he would bring those costs down.

Today, the political landscape looks very different.

Food prices remain high. Gasoline prices are squeezing household budgets. And the cost of living has become the top issue for American voters.

Trump's response has too often been to argue with the premise.

That is an extraordinary political opening.

Democrats should not spend the next few months trying to convince Americans that Trump is dangerous, chaotic, or unfit for office. Those arguments have been made countless times, and most Americans have long since formed an opinion about Donald Trump.

Instead, Democrats should talk about something voters encounter every single day.

The price of living in America.

Make Affordability Personal

If instability surrounding Iran and the Strait of Hormuz pushes energy prices higher, explain what that means when someone fills the tank on the way to work—and how higher fuel and transportation costs eventually find their way into the price of food and other necessities.

If tariffs make imported goods more expensive, do not begin with a lecture on international trade. Show voters where those costs appear in their household budgets.

If healthcare, housing, electricity, and insurance consume more of a family's income, talk about that.

Then ask the question Trump may least want this election to be about: How great does America feel when you can no longer afford to live in it?

That is not an argument about ideology.

It is an argument about everyday life.

Trump has always understood the political power of making things personal. His language is simple, his enemies identifiable, and his promises easy to repeat.

Democrats too often answer with policy papers.

They should learn something from him.

Make affordability personal.

Talk about the supermarket checkout rather than an inflation chart. Talk about filling the car rather than energy markets. Talk about the prescription someone postpones because there is not enough money left in the account.

And above all, listen.

Own the Solution, Not Just the Problem

Because Democrats cannot simply replace Trump is dangerous with Trump is expensive. If they want to own affordability as an issue, they must also own the responsibility for offering solutions.

They need to explain what they would do to reduce pressure on household costs, make healthcare and medicine more affordable, address housing and energy costs, and protect consumers from policies that leave them paying more.

Not 20-point plans buried on campaign websites.

A few priorities people can remember. Promises they can repeat. Policies whose effects they can imagine in their own lives.

This may be Trump's greatest political gift to Democrats.

He has taken an issue that helped return him to the White House and increasingly allowed himself to sound dismissive of the very anxiety that made it powerful.

Democrats should not make the same mistake.

They should make affordability their own.

Not because a pollster tells them to use the word.

Because when a voter sits down at the end of the month with a grocery receipt, an electricity bill, a prescription, and a bank account that does not stretch as far as it used to, that voter does not need Washington to explain what affordability means.

They already know.

For years, Trump's opponents have explained Donald Trump.

Perhaps they have explained him enough.

Now they should explain what they would do for the people sitting around the kitchen table.

Because that may be exactly where the next election is won.

While the US has a long history of signing treaties, making commitments, and then walking away from them (ask Native American tribes about this), this century’s record of American policy in the Middle East is something quite extraordinary. Dramatic policy shifts, broken treaties, promises made and forgotten, foolish wars fought without attention paid to the mess left for others, and the shattering of international law and conventions—all of these have done substantial damage to the region and to the trust that others have in the US.

It’s convenient for Republicans and Democrats to point the finger at the “other side” for America’s loss of standing and support in the world. In reality, there’s plenty of blame to be shared by all of this century’s administrations. President George W. Bush started the disastrous wars and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, but Presidents Barack Obama and Joseph Biden ended both badly, compounding the damage that had been done. And while Bush may have flaunted international law and conventions with the use of torture, rendition, and extrajudicial targeted killings, Obama further undermined the US’ commitment to the rule of law by refusing to call for accountability for these crimes.

Biden waxed eloquent in his defense of what he called the “international rules-based order.” But he undercut himself when it became clear that his commitment was selective since it only applied to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and not to Israel’s genocidal policies in Palestine.

And speaking of Palestine, during the first quarter of this century, no administration has taken the firm measures needed to curb Israeli behaviors in the occupied Palestinian territories or in Lebanon and now Syria. The impact has been clear: Israel acts with impunity, Palestinians have lost hope, and the people of the region have lost even a shred of belief that the US can play a constructive role in peacemaking.

If the US is to even have a place in this new order, we will need more than a just a new president with promises of change.

Upon this dismal record of this century’s first four administrations, President Donald Trump, since reentering the White House in 2025, has pounded the final nail in the coffin of trust for American leadership in the Middle East.

While on one occasion Biden went to the United Nations Security Council and secured passage of a ceasefire for Gaza—telling the council that Israel approved it, knowing full well that Israel had not agreed to its terms—Trump has taken this practice of dissembling even further. With great fanfare he assembled leaders to an event celebrating his 20-point peace plan to end the Gaza conflict. The problem, of course, was that none of the combatant parties—neither Hamas nor especially Israel—had agreed to its terms. And Trump’s boastful handling of his war with Iran has reached new levels of absurdity. On at least 42 occasions he has announced that the war was over, he had won, or that Iran was begging to negotiate on his terms, only to pivot a day or two later threatening, in violent or vulgar language, to obliterate Iran if they didn’t, as he put it, “wave the white flag” of surrender.

Added to this mess are the thousands of Lebanese who’ve been killed and the scores of villages laid waste by Israel since the Trump-backed ceasefire, the displacement and frightening violence that Israeli settlers and soldiers are wreaking in the West Bank, the continuing genocide unfolding in Gaza, and the insecurity in the Arab Gulf States housing US bases which are being recklessly attacked by Iranian missiles and drones. It is no wonder that Arabs have lost faith not only in the US’ commitment to regional peace and security, but also to the trustworthiness of the US as an ally.

A problem so big can’t be fixed by one US election. After decades of a dizzying roller coaster ride of wars based on lies, violations of international laws and conventions, promises made and then broken, and now an administration that acts impulsively and makes contradictory pronouncements as if words have no meaning—trust has been lost.

After the disasters resulting from the Bush administration’s Iraq war; its anti-Arab, anti-Muslim domestic policies; and its ill-conceived “democracy agenda,” President Obama traveled to Cairo to deliver a speech designed to open a new chapter in US relations with the region. After seven years without decisive follow-through on the promises he’d made in his Cairo address, Obama gave a long interview to The Atlantic magazine in which he blamed the Arabs for not doing enough. When I spoke with him about the speech and that interview, he told me that the expectations of the Arabs had been too high. I responded that he was the one who set the high expectations and made the promises that he would “change Washington, change America, and change the world.” “Don’t blame them,” I said, “for believing you.”

What’s evident now is that the Arab world isn’t believing US promises or even our words. They are beginning to find their way in a post-US world order by creating new alliances, finding new partners, and putting their own interests first. If the US is to even have a place in this new order, we will need more than a just a new president with promises of change. What will be required is a thoughtful examination of our decades of shortcomings and betrayals leading to new policies toward justice for Palestinians and regional partnerships and security. But acknowledging the problems is only the first step. A demonstrated and sustained commitment to implement a changed approach to the multiple crises we have helped to create or exacerbate across the region must follow. Since it took us a generation to dig deep holes for ourselves in the Arab World, getting out won’t be quick or easy. Restoring trust will take time and hard work.

Not exactly a war, but a trade war — which will impose huge costs on both American consumers and on Canada.

As I said, Trump is now completely and utterly out of his mind.

The very idea of a trade war with Canada — our neighbor, our ally, our closest friend, a nation that’s peaceful and whose people have a reputation for kindness — is absurd.

But Trump is doing it anyway. He’s imposing a 50 percent tariff on goods coming from Canada — which, remember, is an import tax paid by you and me. The tariffs account for $20 billion of the $382 billion worth of products Americans bought from Canada last year and cover a wide array of goods (the full list of more than 500 products can be found here, here, and here).

Trump has singled out several Canadian industries — especially forestry, including building products like plywood.

The obvious effect will be to make it more expensive to build houses in the United States. Couple this with the rise in long-term interest rates — i.e. mortgage interest rates — courtesy of Trump’s war spending, his tax cuts mainly for the rich and big corporations, and the giant corporate AI debt (encouraged by Trump) — and the result will be to make housing even less affordable than it already is.

This is another example of Trump’s perverse rage. I say “perverse” because I’ve come to believe that his insanity is expressing itself in ways deliberately contrary to what’s expected of a president of the United States — ways considered wrong if not stupid by most serious observers — which makes him want to do it all the more.

He’s lost his war in Iran, most Americans are struggling financially, his mass deportations are unpopular — so what does he do? He flips the finger at Canada because Canada is exactly the kind of nation that an American bully targets. Bullies always go after targets that won’t or can’t fight back.

Trump has been bullying Canada since the start of his second term. Six months ago Trump suggested the border between Canada and the U.S. was an “arbitrary” line. He’s repeatedly proposed that Canada be annexed as the 51st state. He said he’s willing to inflict “economic pain” on Canada to get what he wants. On July 1, Canada’s national holiday, Trump declined to renew the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement on trade, which means the agreement will now undergo annual reviews.

Mostly, though, Trump is enraged that Canadian prime minister Mark Carney asserted in January at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that the U.S. is no longer a guarantor of stability in the world and that middle powers like Canada must unite in order to survive. It was a forceful speech — and the first time that a U.S. ally has stood up to Trump.

The day after Carney gave his speech, Trump told the same World Economic Forum:

“Canada gets a lot of freebies from us. By the way, they should be grateful also, but they’re not. I watched your prime minister yesterday. He wasn’t so grateful — they should be grateful to us, Canada. Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements.”

Trump is a peevish, angry, perverse child.

The question I ask myself is how much worse will his behavior have to get before Republicans and suck-ups around him take some action to stop him?

These days, there is not much that can really shock or surprise me. Political developments that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago happen on a regular basis. However, I was truly appalled to read a story in the New York Times on Sunday, August 23, by Maggie Haberman and Annie Karni (two of the best in the business) which reports that:

Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the House Minority Leader, met privately in recent weeks with Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and top outside adviser, and discussed potential areas of common ground, according to five people with knowledge of the meeting. The rare engagement was held in a private space in New York City, offered up by a mutual friend of the two men, according to two people with knowledge of the meeting and a third who was briefed on it. They and others were granted anonymity to discuss a meeting about which they were not authorized to speak publicly. Through aides, neither man would comment on the session, which was described by one person with knowledge of it as a broad conversation on a range of topics.

Kushner’s incentive to meet with Jeffries is self-evident. The consensus among most pollsters and political commentators is that the Democrats will capture a majority in the House of Representatives. Historical trends, the fact that president’s party almost always loses seats in the midterms, and Trump abysmal public opinion numbers almost guarantee a Democratic majority. So, from Kushner’s perspective, it makes a lot of sense for him to start negotiating the best deal that he can get from the man he assumes will be the new Democratic speaker.

What is the rationale for Jeffries to negotiate with Kushner? It is truly hard to fathom the logic on his part. Certainly, there is a time for talks with the Trump Administration. The time is clearly after the Democrats have won a majority in the House. You always want to be negotiating from a position of strength, not when you are trying to win an election.

Given President Trump’s record on negotiating to reach a compromise which is poor to non-existent, what faith does Jeffries have in any promises that Kushner might make?

It is interesting that the revelations of the Jeffries/Kushner talks come one week after Democratic leader publicly backed away from Medicare for All on NBC’s Meet the Press. Is this just a coincidence? Perhaps it is just a coincidence, but I would argue that it is part of a pattern. Jeffries to my mind is trying to stake out a position to the right of the progressive wing of his party by abandoning policy goals like Medicare for All.

One of the guiding principles of the late Democratic Speaker of the House, Thomas “Tip” O’Neill, was that “all politics is local.” Democratic Leader Jeffries should remember this adage. The Democrats who will join the next Congress in January of 2029 are likely to support a leader who is committed to fighting against the Trump Administration and delivering on things like Medicare for All which is widely supported by the American people. Right now, it looks like Jeffries will not meet this bill.

As I get older, I understand impatience better than I used to.

Time feels less theoretical. Work we meant to do someday starts asking why it has not arrived. Impatience can clarify. It can push us to repair what can still be repaired, say what needs to be said, and act before the chance disappears.

But impatience can also corrupt judgment. It can turn urgency into recklessness. It can convince us that fast means right.

That matters because Americans have grown dangerously impatient with government. We want problems solved now. We want leaders who promise to cut through the noise, ignore the process, and deliver immediate results. Some frustration is warranted. Government can move too slowly. Bureaucracy can be maddening. In the face of fires, floods, pandemics, wars, economic collapse, and constitutional threats, government must act quickly.

But the American system was not designed primarily for speed. It was designed for friction.

Yes, friction sounds like failure, but in a constitutional democracy, friction can be protective. The founders built separated powers, checks and balances, courts, federalism, staggered elections, and constitutional limits. These were restraints, not efficiency tools.

James Madison put it plainly in Federalist No. 51: “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” The founders did not trust leaders to remain wise or restrained. They designed a system in which power would be checked by other power. The system was never meant to satisfy impatience. It was meant to survive it.

Donald Trump did not create American impatience, but he has weaponized it. His appeal rests, in part, on the promise that complex problems are simple, experts are unnecessary, delay signals weakness, and only he can deliver immediate results.

He said COVID-19 would “disappear,” even as scientists warned that the virus required testing, mitigation, vaccines, public communication, and time. He repeatedly promised to end Russia’s war against Ukraine quickly, saying he could do so in 24 hours, even before taking office. He claimed drug prices would fall by 1,200, 1,300, 1,400, even 1,500 percent, a mathematical absurdity. He promised prices would come down on “day one.” He said he could make Chicago safe in “one month.”

The pattern matters more than any single claim. Promise the impossible. Set expectations that no serious policy process can meet. When reality intrudes, blame rivals, judges, bureaucrats, governors, Democrats, immigrants, journalists, scientists, or an invented enemy within.

The same impatience appears in governance. The rushed, no-bid contract for the Reflecting Pool episode offers a cautionary example. Trump and his allies initially pointed to vandalism after the newly renovated Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool began peeling and turning green. A man was indicted. Yet prosecutors later sought to dismiss the case after new information indicated the damage stemmed from flawed or rushed contractor work, not vandalism. What evidence was presented before a citizen was charged? What evidence was missing?

The episode illustrates how the politics of speed can operate: rush the project, bypass safeguards, blame an enemy, and only later confront the facts. No-bid contracts may be justified in emergencies. But when used for vanity projects or politically favored priorities, they bypass the friction meant to protect taxpayers, expert review, and public trust.

This damages civic life. When leaders tell people that hard problems have instant solutions, they train the public to distrust any institution that moves cautiously. Courts become corrupt if they do not rule correctly immediately. Congress becomes useless if it debates. Scientists become suspect if they revise conclusions as evidence changes. Civil servants become saboteurs if they insist on law, data, procedure, or competence.

That cycle breeds anger, then apathy, and sometimes violence. People are promised salvation, only to be forced to live with disappointment when those promises collapse. Some give up on government. Others conclude the system has been stolen from them. A politics of impatience becomes a politics of grievance.

Science suffers because it rarely moves at the pace of political appetite. The scientific method requires hypotheses, evidence, peer review, replication, correction, and humility. Sometimes science moves fast, as vaccine development did during COVID. Even then, speed depended on decades of prior research, sustained investment, global collaboration, and careful testing.

The renewed vilification of Dr. Anthony Fauci follows the same pattern. Fauci’s record, like the country’s COVID response, can and should be scrutinized. But scrutiny is not the same as ritualized blame. Science advances through uncertainty, correction, and argument. A politics addicted to instant answers treats those virtues as evidence of deceit.

None of this excuses slow government when speed is required. Delay can be deadly. Leaders who hide behind process because they lack courage deserve criticism. But democratic slowness is not always dysfunction. Sometimes it is deliberation: hearing competing arguments, weighing evidence, protecting minority rights, identifying unintended consequences, and asking whether today’s satisfying answer will become tomorrow’s disaster.

We live in a culture shaped by technology’s impatience. Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg once celebrated the motto “Move fast and break things.” In business, that mindset can drive innovation. In government, the stakes are higher. When government breaks something, people may lose health care, rights, homes, jobs, legal protections, or even their lives.

Impatience asks, “Why is this taking so long?”

Democracy asks, “What happens if power moves too quickly?”

As citizens, we need a longer horizon. A republic cannot be run on impulse, grievance, or magical promises. Some things must be done quickly, but when rights, law, science, power, and the public good are at stake, the better standard is not speed. It is judgment.

For many, summer is a time for refreshing salads, burgers with lettuce, and fresh berries. But multiple growing outbreaks of cyclosporiasis are draining that summer fun, forcing people to look at fresh produce and wonder, “Will this give me explosive diarrhea?”

These outbreaks, now making up the biggest in US history, weren’t inevitable. They’re linked to President Donald Trump’s funding cuts, Big Ag’s control of our food supply, and yes, even climate change.

This cyclosporiasis outbreak is a bright red, flashing warning light. Without quick action and systemic changes to our food system, the next outbreak could be much, much worse.

What Brought This Sh*t On?

Cyclosporiasis is an intestinal infection caused by the parasite Cyclospora cayetanensis. It contaminates and lays eggs on produce including leafy greens, raspberries, snow peas, basil, and other herbs. Eating those eggs can cause us intestinal pain, low-grade fever, explosive diarrhea, and other medical problems.

Cyclospora is sending us a dire warning that our leaders must heed: We need to invest in public health, climate change response, and a sustainable, diverse food system that bucks corporate control.

From May 1 to August 4, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed over 10,000 lab-tested cases of cyclosporiasis and 517 hospitalizations. Forty-seven states are reporting cases, with the largest outbreak spanning 15 states. Michigan health officials have reported over 12,000 cases in that state alone. In August, Michigan reported the first and second deaths from this outbreak.

Handwashing and washing produce aren’t entirely effective in eliminating Cyclospora—only cooking produce to at least 158°F can kill the parasites. That, plus the ongoing confusion on where these outbreaks originated, has contributed to this summer’s continuing unease around leafy greens and other produce.

Overwhelming evidence for the Midwest outbreaks points to shredded iceberg lettuce from Taylor Farms de Mexico. Taylor Farms is not a new name in food safety headlines. In fact, from 2009 to 2026, its products have been implicated in more than a dozen foodborne illness outbreaks, ranging from deadly E. coli outbreaks to Listeria, Cyclospora, and Salmonella.

Just this month, in addition to their connection to the historic Cyclospora outbreak, Taylor Farms is now involved in a Salmonella outbreak affecting 27 states and about 345 people. This summer of sickness highlights the role Taylor Farms has played in sickening thousands of individuals across the United States over the years, with little to no significant repercussions from the federal government.

How Trump’s Cuts Made This CyclosporaOutbreak Worse

The US has established programs designed to study, track, and help contain foodborne illnesses. But in recent years, funding for these programs has failed to keep up with the need. And the Trump administration has only made things worse by slashing staff and funding.

The Trump administration cut key grant and funding programs that state health departments rely on to track foodborne illnesses. Last year, due to staffing cuts, the Administration paused a quality control program conducted through the FDA’s Food Emergency Response Network (FERN) at least through September 2025. This program included quality control work on lab testing for Cyclospora in spinach. It’s unclear whether the program is back up and running today.

Rather than Make America Healthy Again, Trump’s cuts show blatant disregard for food safety and public health.

FERN’s system of federal, state, and local laboratories defends and responds to contamination in the food supply. It tests food samples during large-scale outbreaks to help identify the source of contamination.

Meanwhile, at the CDC, Trump’s budget and staffing cuts have led to downgrades to the FoodNet program. FoodNet tracks long-term trends in foodborne illness rates across 10 states. But with Trump’s cuts, FoodNet was forced to stop tracking 6 of the 8 pathogens it has historically tracked. Cyclospora was 1 of the 6 on the chopping block.

Collectively, those six pathogens cause an estimated 111,000 hospitalizations and 418 deaths each year. One of them, Campylobacter, causes up to $6.8 billion in economic damages every year.

Rather than Make America Healthy Again, Trump’s cuts show blatant disregard for food safety and public health. Quick and comprehensive data collection is an essential line of defense in detecting and containing foodborne illness outbreaks—without it, we’re left fighting in the dark.

Big Ag’s Dominance = More Foodborne Illness

This Cyclospora outbreak also highlights the dangers of our corporate-controlled, highly consolidated food system. Lettuce and leafy greens are common causes of foodborne illness because most are irrigated using polluting substances, or they’re produced near disastrously polluting factory farms.

Factory farms are a huge culprit of this contamination problem. These facilities exist to make raising livestock as cheap as possible for the sake of corporate profits, storing up to a million animals in tight confines. Leafy greens grown near factory farms are regularly exposed to pathogens in the waste that these facilities produce in abundance.

Cyclosporasis in particular spreads via human waste, and Big Ag has long spread sludge from human sewage on agricultural land as fertilizer.

In short, our profit-at-any-cost, highly consolidated food system trades public health for corporate gain.

Moreover, as the industry searches for more water sources, it’s increasingly turned to “recycled” wastewater. While this water moves through treatment plants before it hits fields, that’s often not enough to make it totally pathogen-free. Studies have shown that bacteria and pathogens persist in wastewater after treatment, and research suggests that “using treated wastewater for agricultural irrigation may cause food chain contamination.”

These dangerous business practices aren’t the only way Big Ag is driving more foodborne illness. Taylor Farms, the corporation at the heart of today’s largest Cyclospora outbreaks, has acquired or invested in 10 other companies in just eight years. It runs 22 production facilities in North America and sells 40% of “value-added salads” in the United States.

This consolidation—fewer and bigger companies controlling more of our food—makes our food system even more vulnerable to shocks. Now, Cyclospora shows us the outsized influence a single company can have because of its massive reach. A single corporation can send an illness across the country.

In short, our profit-at-any-cost, highly consolidated food system trades public health for corporate gain.

Climate Change Makes Everything Worse, Including Cyclospora

Since the 1990s, cyclosporiasis outbreaks have occurred each year, typically from May through August. As climate change makes summers hotter and longer, the window for Cyclospora to spread also widens, as the parasite thrives in warm, humid conditions.

Studies also show that climate change and climate disasters will cause more food spoilage and foodborne illnesses. Hotter temperatures promote the growth of pathogens such as Listeria, Campylobacter, and Salmonella, while floods can contaminate food supplies with sewage and agricultural runoff.

Right now, our corporate-dominated food system is utterly unprepared for how climate change will impact our food.

Moreover, as climate change drives more and longer droughts, the US Department of Agriculture will likely encourage farms to turn to wastewater as a solution. The agency has called treated wastewater “the irrigation wave of the future.”

Right now, our corporate-dominated food system is utterly unprepared for how climate change will impact our food. While government agencies recommend we irrigate our crops with wastewater, Trump is demolishing climate and public health programs and funding.

Cyclospora is sending us a dire warning that our leaders must heed: We need to invest in public health, climate change response, and a sustainable, diverse food system that bucks corporate control. Or they’ll guarantee another foodborne illness outbreak, rather than making Americans healthy.

Social Security is a promise between generations. When far-sighted visionaries like President Franklin Roosevelt and Frances Perkins imagined what would come to be today’s Social Security system, they were thinking about the workers and their families who would rely on Social Security for years to come.

For 91 years, Social Security has been how Americans take care of each other. For 91 years, people across our country have fought to protect the hard-earned Social Security benefits that rightfully belong to everyone. To honor Social Security’s 91st birthday, we are renewing our commitment to stay in that fight.

It’s hard to imagine what it would have been like to be alive during the Great Depression. With millions of workers unemployed, it would have been difficult to overcome a sense of pervasive hopelessness and despair. But the founders of Social Security didn’t lose hope. They knew that it was possible to come together in community and solidarity. They imagined a better, more economically secure future. We also share that same ability to imagine and fight for a better future. If the founders of Social Security were able to resist being demoralized by the Great Depression, we can overcome our current circumstances.

The founders of Social Security laid down a gauntlet for future generations. It’s up to us to continue to carry out this vision of a society where we all join together to take care of each other.

While their fight will never be finished, the founders of Social Security laid down a gauntlet for future generations. It’s up to us to continue to carry out this vision of a society where we all join together to take care of each other. As part of that effort, Social Security Works held a town hall to celebrate Social Security’s 91st birthday, providing a reminder of the work that needs to be done to continue FDR’s legacy.

We believe that we're all in this together. And so we choose through Social Security...to care for those in the dawn of life, and those in the dusk of life. That's what we do through Social Security, and ain't nobody going to take it from us or from our grandchildren. - @martinomalley.bsky.social

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— Social Security Works (@socialsecurityworks.org) August 14, 2026 at 1:24 PM

As former Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley put it, “We believe that we’re all in this together.” O’Malley is articulating the greatness of Social Security, the way it ties families and communities to each other. In a resolute note of defiance, O’Malley warned, “That’s what we do through Social Security, and ain’t nobody going to take it from us or from our grandchildren.”

You have billionaires pay into Social Security on all of their income like the rest of us do, and then we prevent cuts and can actually expand benefits. This beloved system has lasted for 91 years and because it works so well for working people, it's going to last for another 91 and beyond.

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— Social Security Works (@socialsecurityworks.org) August 14, 2026 at 11:28 AM

Alex Lawson, Executive Director of Social Security Works, explains why Social Security has worked so well for 91 years, and how it can continue working well for the indefinite future: continuing to protect working people by making sure the wealthiest pay their fair share. Lawson observed, “You have billionaires pay into Social Security on all their income like the rest of us do, and then we can prevent cuts and actually expand benefits.”

Social Security is the greatest act of compassion and caring that a free people had ever enacted of by and for themselves. It's gone on for 91 years without ever missing a payment.

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— Social Security Works (@socialsecurityworks.org) August 14, 2026 at 11:32 AM

As former Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley articulated, Social Security represents the highest and best of American values. O’Malley noted that “Social Security is the greatest act of compassion and caring that a free people had ever enacted of, by, and for themselves.”

We are the cavalry.We can build whatever future we can imagine, and Social Security is the crown jewel of that society that we can imagine, a society that takes care of ourselves.That's why I'm so certain that we will win this fight. - @alaw202.bsky.social

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— Social Security Works (@socialsecurityworks.org) August 14, 2026 at 1:21 PM

Striking the same optimistic note as former Commissioner O’Malley, Social Security Works Executive Director Alex Lawson shared his confidence that today’s generation of activists can win this chapter of the fight for Social Security’s future: “We are the cavalry. We can build whatever future we can imagine, and Social Security is the crown jewel of that society that we can imagine, a society that takes care of ourselves. That’s why I’m so certain that we will win this fight.”

As Social Security turns 91, its future hangs in the balance. In just five years, Congress must take action, or allow a 22 percent benefit cut to go into effect. Rather than cut our hard-earned benefits, Congress should make millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share, so we can protect and expand benefits for everyone.

One year ago, President Donald Trump declared a “crime emergency” in Washington, DC, claiming, without evidence, that the city had been “overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people.”

In response to this alleged crisis, Trump deployed roughly 800 members of the DC National Guard as well as more than 1,000 National Guard members from several cooperating states “to protect law-abiding citizens from the destructive forces of criminal activity.” A year later, 4,600 troops patrol the city against the wishes of the district’s elected local government.

This deployment violates long-standing American traditions, jeopardizes public safety, and has already cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars—all without any discernible impact on violent crime rates in Washington. Yet Trump wants to keep troops here, and he’s counting on Americans to stop paying attention. We can’t let that happen.

From the beginning, Trump’s claim of a “crime emergency” stood on weak footing. In fact, the murder tally in Washington had declined from 274 in 2023 to 187 in 2024.

The founding generation would immediately have seen the danger in a president trying to normalize the domestic use of troops.

But even if day-to-day crime in Washington had instead been trending upward, that would not have justified the invocation of emergency powers. Such powers are intended for sudden, unforeseen crises—the definition of an emergency—that normal legal frameworks and systems are too slow-moving to address. Urban crime, in contrast, is a foreseeable, ongoing problem that can and should be addressed employing the ordinary tools of government.

Use of the military raises additional concerns. A president deploying troops to police street crime is unprecedented; it violates centuries of American civic tradition and political thought. Americans have long rejected military interference in civilian affairs, and particularly military involvement in law enforcement, because an “army turned inward” can easily become an instrument of tyranny. Domestic deployment of the military is a tool of last resort, to be used only when civilian authorities are overwhelmed.

There are other, more immediate reasons to be wary of domestic military operations. Military personnel, including members of the National Guard, are trained to be soldiers, not police officers. Most National Guard members have little or no training in local criminal law, how to uphold constitutional rights, or how to preserve and collect evidence. Over the past year, there have been disturbing incidents where guard members have improperly detained DC residents and, in at least one documented case, used excessive force.

Trump’s use of the National Guard in Washington has also largely failed to serve its stated purpose. Although there was a narrow reduction in opportunistic property crime over the first six months of the deployment, recent analysis has found little to no impact on violent crime. On the other hand, the deployment has proven to be extraordinarily expensive for taxpayers, with a current cost of over $3 million per day.

Those costs will only accelerate in light of the recently announced $292 million deal to provide National Guard members deployed to Washington with apartment-style housing. In return for these huge sums of money, guard members across DC are spending their days standing idle on street corners and in metro stations—a form of non-activity euphemistically labeled “presence patrols.”

Yet Trump shows no signs of reversing course. To the contrary, he has doubled down. A “summer surge” brought the number of guard forces in DC close to 5,000, and the administration has announced that it intends to keep troops here through January 20, 2029, at an estimated cost of $1.4 billion beyond the money already spent.

The duration of the deployment might be what’s most concerning. No true emergency can be predicted to remain in place for another two-and-a-half years. If there was any doubt before, it’s now clear that the deployment was never meant to be a quick response to an immediate crisis.

It is designed to normalize something that should never be normal in this country: the use of the military as a domestic police force. It would be a small step from National Guard forces assisting in the arrest of people who dip their hands in the reflecting pool to guard members policing protests. And if Trump were to try to illegally block Congress’ certification of the 2028 presidential election—this time using military force, rather than exhorting an angry mob—there would be thousands of troops already arrayed within a short distance of the US Capitol.

It is no small irony that armed troops are patrolling the streets of our nation’s capital in the same summer as the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. That document denounces King George III for, among other things, using “among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.” The founding generation would immediately have seen the danger in a president trying to normalize the domestic use of troops.

We must see it, too. The longer the deployment lasts, the less shocking the sight of National Guard forces on nearly every street corner becomes, and the easier it is to view the situation as a new normal. The American people must resist that instinct and demand an end to the deployment.

It was 1974. The Bronx was burning. Abandoned cars littered the streets, and New York City teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. I’m still surprised my overprotective Holocaust-survivor parents let their preteen daughter ride the subway to school every day, but somehow they did.

For five years—from eighth grade through high school—I took the No. 5 Dyre Avenue train from our apartment in the Pelham Parkway neighborhood of the Bronx to my Jewish day school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The commute was nearly an hour each way and always coincided with rush hour.

Mornings weren’t so bad; I lived near the beginning of the line and could usually get a seat. But heading home, the 86th Street platform was packed five to eight people deep.

When it was my turn to board, I would throw my entire body weight onto the person in front of me, as the person behind me did the same. We all pushed forward together, forcing ourselves into an already crammed car, as more people tried to pack in behind us.

The more choices we have about how we travel or whether we go to private schools or fancy gyms, the easier it becomes to spend our lives among people much like ourselves. Distance makes it easier to dehumanize.

Once the doors closed, we stood packed together in a dense sea of bodies. When the train lurched, the entire crowd swayed as one. Usually, I breathed through my mouth to avoid the smell of sweat and bad breath. I tried to pull away from a hand on my behind that might have been accidental, but probably was not. I remember thinking I was too young for this.

At the time, I hated riding on the subway. But more than 50 years later, I’m grateful for that commute—for the way it forced a visceral reminder of our shared humanity.

Now, like three-quarters of Americans, I go everywhere by car. It’s faster and more convenient but I never see my fellow travelers—only their vehicles speeding past on the highway. And while I don’t miss the discomfort of the subway, I feel more cut off from other people’s lives.

When you don’t see people, you know them less. When entire groups remain unseen it becomes easier to turn them into abstraction—to fear them, dismiss them, or vilify them. It’s much harder to do that when you’ve stood shoulder to shoulder with someone, both of you grasping the pole as the train jolts you from side to side.

These were the days before smart phones or even portable music players. There was little to distract me from just looking and listening to the people around me. For two hours a day, I heard people speaking Spanish. I absorbed its rhythms long before I understood the words. Years later, when I finally learned the language, I picked it up quickly.

The subway exposed me to a depth of poverty I hadn’t seen in my own working-class Jewish neighborhood. I saw people asleep on the seats, curled around garbage bags that held everything they owned. There was a young man with no legs or lower torso who moved through the cars on a wheeled platform, collecting money. I watched him cross the treacherous gaps between cars as the train rattled and swayed.

The subway also showed me where people lived. Unlike highways, which are designed to bypass neighborhoods, the elevated train trestle cuts straight through them.

The No. 5 ran through the South Bronx at a time when more than 80% of buildings had burned or been abandoned. On dark winter evenings, we passed through blocks of hollowed-out shells, with the occasional occupied apartment. From the train I could see into people’s living rooms, glowing blue from the television.

As a teenager, I didn't know much about redlining, disinvestment, or the policies that had helped create those conditions. I only knew that children my age lived there and I wondered what it was like to grow up in what felt like a war zone.

There are, of course, other ways to encounter difference. My husband, a nurse in one of the poorest communities in Massachusetts, has cared for people from all walks of life. But that’s a different kind of interaction. People meet him when they’re sick, in pain, or in crisis. When you commute, you’re simply sharing space.

But not all forms of transportation create the same kind of shared space. Recently, riding the Amtrak train home from Philadelphia, I watched miles of rundown brick rowhouses slide past the window. Some were boarded up. Inside the train, however, the conversations I overheard were about road races in Cancun and the best spin classes in Manhattan. The passengers' lives appeared far removed from the neighborhoods we were passing through.

Having last lived in a city decades ago, my rural life is now quieter, more controlled. I move from one place to another sealed inside a car. It’s comfortable and efficient. But it’s made my life smaller. It’s made it possible to live a life where one rarely sees anyone outside one’s own orbit.

How can that not affect one’s ability to empathize—if your neighbors, coworkers, and classmates all reflect some version of yourself? The more choices we have about how we travel or whether we go to private schools or fancy gyms, the easier it becomes to spend our lives among people much like ourselves. Distance makes it easier to dehumanize.

Which is not to say that riding the No. 5 Dyre Avenue made me a kinder person. I still judge people; I could be nicer and more patient. But the commute gave shape and texture to lives I might otherwise reduce to stereotypes. Day after day, it reminded me that everyone, just like me, was simply trying to get home.

The world knows Bethlehem as the city of the Nativity. It is a city of churches, olive groves, ancient stone streets, and a history that attracts pilgrims and visitors from across the globe. For many, Bethlehem symbolizes peace, hope, and human resilience.

Yet in recent weeks, another image has emerged. Overflowing garbage containers. Piles of waste left uncollected for days. Unpleasant odors drifting through neighborhoods. Stray dogs searching through torn plastic bags. Flies, rodents, and growing public concern about health and sanitation.

For residents, these scenes are disturbing. For visitors, they are difficult to reconcile with the image of one of the world's most recognized and beloved cities. But the garbage accumulating in Bethlehem's streets is not the real story. It is merely the most visible symptom of a much larger crisis. The question is not why a container is overflowing. The question is what happened to the system behind it.

At first glance, it may seem like a simple municipal problem. A shortage of fuel. A broken truck. Workers on strike. Delayed collection rounds. The reality is far more complicated.

The environment does not understand politics. It understands only what we do—or fail to do—to protect it.

Waste management depends on an entire chain of institutions, workers, vehicles, roads, fuel supplies, disposal facilities, municipal revenues, and public cooperation. When enough pressure is placed on that chain, it begins to break. And in Bethlehem, pressure has been building for years.

The city has suffered repeated economic shocks. The tourism sector, once a major source of income, was devastated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Before it could fully recover, the war and the broader economic crisis brought new hardships. Businesses struggled. Workers lost jobs. Household incomes declined. Many families found themselves prioritizing food, rent, and basic necessities over municipal fees.

As revenues declined, local institutions found it increasingly difficult to sustain essential services. At the same time, operational costs continued to rise. Fuel became more expensive and, at times, harder to secure. Vehicles required maintenance. Equipment aged. Service providers struggled to balance growing needs with shrinking resources.

The crisis does not stop there.

Road closures, military gates, and movement restrictions have increasingly complicated daily life throughout Bethlehem Governorate. What should be a routine collection route can suddenly become longer, slower, or more expensive. A delayed truck today may become an overflowing container tomorrow.

Even the final destination of the waste is not immune from these pressures.

The Al-Minya landfill, which serves communities in southern parts of the West Bank, represents a critical component of the region's waste management system. Any disruption affecting access, transportation, security, or operations along this chain eventually reaches the streets of Bethlehem and surrounding communities.

The result is a problem that residents experience every day. A container left uncollected. A street corner filled with waste. A smell that lingers in the summer heat. A growing sense that something is no longer working as it should.

When waste accumulates, the consequences extend beyond appearance.

Overflowing garbage attracts stray dogs, insects, rodents, and other disease vectors. It increases environmental risks and can create fire hazards during hot weather. It affects public health, community well-being, and the quality of life in neighborhoods already facing multiple challenges.

This is why waste management should never be viewed as a secondary service. It is not simply about removing garbage from the street. It is about protecting public health. It is about preserving human dignity. It is about maintaining the environmental quality of cities and communities. It is also about protecting the people who perform this difficult work.

One night, at around 2:00 am in the morning, I drove into Bethlehem to take my wife to catch an early bus to Allenby Bridge Boarder with Jordan. While most of the city slept, sanitation workers were already on the streets. Wearing reflective orange uniforms, they swept roads, emptied containers, and loaded waste onto trucks. Few residents would ever see them. By sunrise, most traces of their work would have disappeared.

Their presence reminded me that waste management is not an abstract system. It depends on real people working under difficult conditions, often exposed to hazards that most citizens never think about.

But workers alone cannot solve this crisis, neither can municipalities, nor can citizens. Responsibility is shared.

Citizens must reduce the waste they generate, support cleaner public spaces, and contribute to the sustainability of essential services whenever possible.

Municipalities and service providers need stronger planning, better resource management, and long-term financial stability.

National institutions must support local governments struggling under extraordinary economic and political pressures.

And international partners should recognize that environmental services are not luxuries. They are fundamental to public health, social stability, and human dignity.

There is another reason this issue deserves greater attention. Pollution does not recognize borders. Smoke from burning waste does not stop at a checkpoint. Contaminated water does not respect political divisions. Air pollution travels wherever the wind takes it.

The environment does not understand politics. It understands only what we do—or fail to do—to protect it. That is why environmental protection requires cooperation, shared responsibility, and long-term vision.

Bethlehem does not simply need more garbage trucks or more containers. It needs investment in sustainable solutions. It needs stronger institutions. It needs public awareness. It needs serious efforts to reduce waste generation, expand reuse and recycling, and create economic opportunities through a circular economy approach.

Most importantly, it needs recognition that environmental challenges are not isolated technical problems. They are deeply connected to economic conditions, governance, public services, and the daily lives of ordinary people.

The overflowing containers seen today across Bethlehem are telling a much bigger story. They are telling the story of a city under pressure, a story of institutions struggling to maintain essential services, a story of workers trying to do their jobs under increasingly difficult circumstances, a story of economic hardship, environmental vulnerability, and a community searching for sustainable solutions.

And perhaps they are also reminding us of something simple: Garbage does not appear overnight. Neither do environmental crises. Both are the result of problems left unresolved for too long.

If Bethlehem is to remain the beautiful city that the world knows and cherishes, addressing those problems can no longer wait.

Imagine 2-year-old Malek, growing up in an Arabic-speaking home, entering childcare for the first time. At home, language carries feeling, memory, and family connection. In care, it may be the first time he learns that only one language is recognized and that the other must stay behind. As New York City expands care for 2-year-olds, the public conversation has largely centered on key logistics: seats, speed to implementation, and salaries for home-based providers. Another fundamental question is how this expansion will shape children’s relationships to language, community, and belonging, especially for multilingual families whose experience with formal education is associated with estrangement from their home culture and language.

For decades, growing up with more than one language was wrongly framed as a deficit; it was once described as “semilingualism.” A large body of research has documented the social, communicative, and educational benefits of multilingualism, including stronger connections to family and community, and broader cultural and economic opportunities. The evidence is clear: Multilingualism is an asset, not a liability, supporting not only how children learn, connect, and participate in the world, but also adding to their professional pathways in the future.

Anyone who works in education knows the pattern of language loss that begins when a child enters the school system. Over time, heritage languages begin to fade, a loss that is often normalized as an inevitable part of schooling and assimilation. Research, including our own, shows that heritage language attrition follows a predictable pattern when children enter settings where one language dominates socially and institutionally, causing the dominant language to expand at the expense of the other. This is not only a cultural issue; it is foundationally developmental. Sustained exposure to both languages supports more stable language development, while early shifts away from the heritage language can disrupt that balance.

In one of the most linguistically diverse cities, we continue to reproduce monolingualism despite overwhelming evidence of the benefits of multilingualism. New York City’s 2-K program, with its focus on community- and home-based providers, is significant not only for expanding access, but for reshaping how early education is experienced. These programs, and their providers, who are often members of the same community as the families, offer services that are qualitatively different from formal institutional care, offering environments where language, culture, and relationships are not separated from learning, but are its foundation. They are truly a child’s home away from home.

Taken together, the expansion of 2-K home-based care can reshape how language, culture, and education interconnect as a foundation for learning.

In home-based settings, children are more likely to hear and use multiple languages in meaningful, everyday interactions with caregivers and children across ages. Care is organized around relationships and participation, rather than standardized expectations of academic performance. These are not incidental features. They are developmental conditions that support how language is sustained, how children come to belong, and how communities reproduce themselves across generations.

If supported intentionally with professional development opportunities, mentorship, and resources, these community environments could play a critical role in addressing one of the most persistent and overlooked challenges in US education: the systematic erosion of heritage languages beginning in early childhood. One proven way to enhance language development in home-based settings is strengthening the quality of adult-child interactions. In a randomized controlled trial we conducted in linguistically diverse communities, we found that babies in home-based child care vocalized far more when their providers used a program designed to strengthen relationships than did babies in the control group. We also found that the program led to reductions in background noise (such as television and other electronic sounds).

Together, these transformations in the babies’ language environment point to a simple lesson: When caregivers are intentionally supported in building warmer, more responsive interaction patterns, children’s language environments improve in measurable ways. This matters because early language development lays the groundwork for school and lifelong success. Providers can be supported to embed language-rich emotionally responsive interactions across home and care settings, and to facilitate collaboration between families and early learning environments. This potential will not realize itself; it requires deliberate investment.

In addition, home-based settings may address a critical gap in New York’s Early Intervention (EI) system. EI under federal law, is intended to provide support early in a child’s life, before small differences become larger barriers. Each state defines its own criteria. In New York, children with mild delays in a single developmental area, such as communication, often do not qualify for services. The result is inequity: Families with resources turn to private providers, while others must wait until delays become severe enough to meet eligibility thresholds. What is intended as early intervention becomes, in practice, delayed access.

Language can also be supported through family-centered approaches that sustain bilingual exposure when designed from a strengths-based perspective. In our work with Arab American families in New York, this meant creating community-based spaces where parents strengthened their children’s bilingual language use and their own sense of belonging, along with a renewed commitment to bilingualism, and greater confidence in navigating and engaging with public institutions such as libraries and educational spaces. In clinical treatment settings, birth-to-five therapists strive to provide both treatment and supervision in the home languages; it is simply best practice.

As early care becomes more widely available for younger children, providers in these settings are increasingly positioned to notice differences in children’s development, support social participation, and guide families toward resources. This requires ongoing professional support, not only in developmental frameworks, but in approaches that are culturally grounded, transdisciplinary, inclusive, and evidence-based. This means building an interprofessional, holistic, and community-based system of care that brings speech-language pathologists, early childhood educators, mental health professionals, and other healthcare providers to work alongside home-based caregivers and families collaboratively as partners embedded in the same communities.

Evidence from community-based programs shows that when caregivers are supported in building responsive, relational environments, children’s communication skills increase. They grow not through more instruction, but through more meaningful engagement. The question, then, is not only how many seats we create, but what those seats make possible and whether we are willing and able to build the systems needed to sustain them. Home-based providers are already embedded in the communities they serve, often sharing language, culture, and lived experience with families. With intentional and focused support, they will be uniquely positioned to sustain children’s languages, relationships, and development. Without it, expansion risks reproducing the very inequities it seeks to address.

Taken together, the expansion of 2-K home-based care can reshape how language, culture, and education interconnect as a foundation for learning. This direction challenges approaches that pathologize differences and individualize the effects of poverty. It offers a possibility we can realize in New York, where children thrive without giving up who they are, and systems, not families, are accountable.

For Malek, this means entering childcare without being pulled away from his language, home, and identity. Arabic does not stop at the classroom door; it lives in caregivers’ voices and neighborhood interactions. His mother is not measured against narrow expectations of “engagement,” but recognized as a partner in his learning through everyday interactions grounded in their culture. She is not positioned as lacking. Malek does not have to choose between belonging and opportunity because he grows within both.

You’d never know it by the title “Dancing in the Dark,” but the Washington Spectator’s recent investigation is about the various steps (mostly illegal) Trump is taking, including the use of enforcement tools and violence, to prepare to reverse any overall Democratic victory in the November Congressional races. The authors, Mark Medish and Joel McCleary, believe Trump needs such a coup to save himself from impeachment, congressional investigations and subpoenas seeking more proof of crimes throughout his lawless, corrupt, dictatorial regime.

Currently, Trump’s polls are so low that he is endangering enough Republican seats in the House and Senate to give the feeble, corporate money-indentured Democratic Party a chance to win control of Congress. This is precisely what Trump fears, even though he has control of the Executive Branch and the immunity given him by six Injustices of the Supreme Court. Take note, he knows that impeachment and removal from office in the Senate are final, not reviewable in the federal courts.

In 23 single-spaced pages, Medish and McCleary walk readers through the events, directives, ballot seizures, and draft emergency orders Trump could use to assert federal control over a midterm election and use a domestic paramilitary force of unprecedented size and budget. Trump and his minions have already expanded their dictatorial control of our democratic institutions. (See: The V-Dem Institute’s Democracy Report 2026.)

To obstruct the vote in key precincts, then fabricate a need for national-security powers to purge and miscount ballots, falsely charge fraud, illegally seize ballots, threaten precinct workers, and claim without evidence foreign interference are preparations for instant escalation.

They then describe the “Devil’s Accordion File” meaning “the elements of a ramified, radical strategy to hold on to power at almost any cost as we approach the test of the 2026 elections…” Although they describe Trump as a brilliant mastermind concentrating extraordinary power in his hands, they remind us that he is also in “full command of his office, directing the Justice Department, the FBI, ICE (the largest new federal police force in American history) the IRS, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Communications Commission, the intelligence community and the armed forces. [Under total acolyte Pete Hegseth.] He is using each agency in a coordinated attack on his political adversaries in ways that would have been dismissed as fantasy only a few years ago.”

Trump’s iron grip on institutional controls was further strengthened by the Trump/Musk DOGE criminal enterprise which tore through federal agencies in 2025, closing some, shredding others, grabbing huge troves of personal data on Americans, and destroying the non-partisan civil service that could have used federal laws to resist his coup d’état.

Focusing on swing electoral districts—including those politically redistricted earlier this year—and on the various junctures between now and the final certification process in the House of Representatives on January 3, 2027, the authors write that “the political will, personal motivation, legal architecture and technical infrastructure by now [are] all in place.” They could have added Trump’s unlimited pardon power to facilitate the violence and theft by his criminal operatives.

Trump has also precluded any opposition from corporations and the “contented classes” with tax cuts, non-regulation, subsidies and other inducements from which his family also lavishly benefits. (In 2025 Trump took in $1.1 million an hour when measured over a 40-hour workweek —see my column $1.1 MILLION AN HOUR!!—Trump’s Personal Profit in 2025.)

To obstruct the vote in key precincts, then fabricate a need for national-security powers to purge and miscount ballots, falsely charge fraud, illegally seize ballots, threaten precinct workers, and claim without evidence foreign interference are preparations for instant escalation.

Trump tried a dress rehearsal in his July 16 national televised address, pushing his Save America Act, which is stalled in Congress. The speech “bombed” drawing widespread criticism, ridicule and dismissal even by the mainstream media along with some of his Republican partisans.

Undeterred and personally deeply fearful of losing, Trump plunges ahead. He makes the notion that “it can’t happen here” the Achilles heel of Democratic Party opposition, which had better prepare—and work overtime.

The authors warn: “The full election subversion strategy mixes subtlety and brutality, subterfuge and open tactics. It represents unprecedented intensification and escalation of the attack on our once seemingly settled Constitutional order…”

Led by Stephen Miller, his fascistic White House adviser, Trump and his Injustice Department have already launched attacks on so-called “antifa” advocates labeling them “domestic terrorists.” Trump could falsely use this moniker to include any of his selected political opponents. Remember, in 2025, he called for the execution of six Democratic Members of Congress, including two Senators, for reminding U.S. soldiers that they have under Army law a legal obligation to resist illegal orders from their superiors. Hegseth filed charges against Senator Mark Kelly (Dem. Ariz.), a retired Navy Captain for making such a statement; the case was dismissed in federal court.

Trump has often mentioned using the vaguely worded Insurrection Act, which he claims could enable him to quell unrest, including by using unrest as the pretext for his own false-flag operation. Imagine the chilling effect of Trump arbitrarily and illegally deploying federal soldiers to a city or region.

In their conclusion, “What Is to be Done,” the authors have numerous suggestions for the citizenry and state officials. However, they omit the need to mount an Impeachment drive, which, as it intensifies, can serve as a deterrent to Trump. He knows that his blatant disregard for the Constitution and his mounting impeachable offenses could further provoke the public and Congress to use this final remedy provided by our Founding Fathers—telling Trump: “You’re Fired.” This is Trump’s biggest nightmare. Remember the stubborn Richard Nixon, who after winning 49 of 50 states in 1972, was forced to resign when his Republican base collapsed in Congress before the 1974 elections.

In my podcast interview with Joel McCleary, I suggested that he and his allies (he served in the Carter White House) press some House Democrats to conduct a public “shadow hearing” on Impeaching Trump, an effort that polling shows is already supported by 90% of Democratic voters and two-thirds of Independents. (See our July 22, 2026 Symposium on Impeachment.) He replied: “I think that’s a fantastic idea.” We’ll see if these savvy authors can move from words to action. As a 14th century Chinese philosopher once wrote: “To Know and Not to Do is Not to Know.”

Furthermore, the group Indivisible seems to be planning another mass protest march in the Fall. It should replace its weak, obsolete name of “No Kings” with “Impeach Trump Now.”

“American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again,” declared the State Department in a new video tying, somewhat improbably, the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 to killing people on boats in the Caribbean and Pacific 200 years later. Blowing up speedboats supposedly to stop fentanyl smuggling—which notably does not come to the US on speedboats—appears senseless. As a counter-narcotics strategy, it is ineffective, an assessment echoed by the DEA. The performative violence overshadows its role in building a new US policy towards the hemisphere: acts of murder as a tool to create permanent structures of US dominance and extraction.

Laid out in the December 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS), the “Donroe Doctrine” aims to restore US preeminence in a region where it has been eclipsed by China, convert security claims into exceptional military authority against “narco-terrorists,” institutionalize that authority through permanent commands, “enlist and expand” governments aligned with Washington, and use it to secure strategic and commercial access. The desired end: military cooperation, trade agreements, access to critical minerals and rare earths, likely accompanied by shady personal deals for the Trump family. Democratic backsliding, in a region where democracy is still relatively young, is a necessary condition for its success.

The Donroe Doctrine's architecture is still under construction. Latin American governments can still resist Washington’s pressures, refusing to co-create his transactional order. Greater regional integration would rebalance that bargaining power, helping less powerful countries impose conditions, defend constitutional limits, reject particular operations, and withstand the costs of US pressure. More than 100 legislators, political leaders, and experts from 15 countries are gathering at the Third Pan-American Congress in Montevideo this weekend to strengthen regional collaboration, the basis for an alternate architecture to one premised on US domination.

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Resistance to US coercion, however, also depends on democratic repair within the region. Governments captured by authoritarian leaders cannot provide a durable basis for sovereignty. Corruption erodes state capacity and public trust, making foreign military solutions more appealing. The Trump administration is betting on a hemispheric doctrine that favors authoritarian leaders, eager to share in corruption.

The Donroe Doctrine’s highest profile proof of concept began with airstrikes on boats off the coast of Venezuela, to the killing of fishermen in the Pacific—since revealed to be a covert CIA program—to August’s announcement of a new Joint Task Force-Western Hemisphere, establishing a standing headquarters for efforts to turn such extrajudicial killings into joint operations with allied governments. This maps onto the administration's Shield of the Americas, a coalition of right-wing Latin American governments allied with the Trump administration. From the abduction of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro to the boat strikes murders, all leaned on two forever wars framing and justification that long predated Trump: The War on Drugs and the War on Terror.

The Trump administration is betting on a hemispheric doctrine that favors authoritarian leaders, eager to share in corruption.

Targeting supposed smugglers, many of them probably fishermen, as “narcoterrorists” is a way to move trafficking from the framework of criminal law into the claimed authorities of war. Suspects become targets not of investigation but of immediate execution, secret assessments replacing due process and evidence in courts. The urgency of national security puts executive discretion over judicial authority. The boat strikes publicly declare exceptional authority of the executive. The Pentagon’s and CIA’s programs institutionalize it.

Like the War on Terror, this framing pictures an enemy and creates an industry to manage. It creates quid pro quo partnerships with other governments who leverage military cooperation into access to US foreign assistance, weapons, intelligence, and diplomatic cover for unsavory ends, whether domestic repression, corruption, or state murder of their own. With public opinion showing falling trust in all institutions but the military, stoking fears of all-powerful narcoterrorists serve mutual interests of reactionaries in Washington, Bogotá, and Tegucigalpa. The main risk is that it creates bureaucratic structures that outlive sitting administrations. With multilateral cooperation and institutions on the decline, this new military-industrial complex makes it nearly irreversible.

It also creates tools for meddling in domestic partisan politics. The success of Trump’s “Shield of the Americas” is predicated on Latin America’s continued turn to the right. Ecuador and Colombia have already agreed to “joint” military strikes on their territory, which are likely to become unilateral US strikes. Trump openly intervened in supporting the election of Nasry Asfura in Honduras, as it is currently doing with Flávio Bolsonaro in Brazil. That many of these allies are themselves tied to the drug trade is of little consequence: Colombia’s President de la Espriella made a career as a defense attorney for top narcos, Ecuador’s president Noboa’s family’s fruit business was found to be transporting cocaine, and Honduras’ former president Juan Orlando Hernández won a Trump pardon after his US conviction on drug-trafficking charges.

The project functions more easily where democratic foundations are weak and leaders face fewer constraints from citizens, legislatures, courts, and independent institutions, reflecting Trump’s own effort to weaken checks on executive authority inside the United States. Bukele in El Salvador provides a marquee case for using the specter of crime to consolidate a permanent “state of exception” and authoritarian rule. Such regimes can authorize operations, share intelligence, sign agreements, allocate land, and suppress opposition with less scrutiny.

Democratic scrutiny can expose the climate costs of extraction, contest land allocations and territorial interventions, demand transparency over contracts, and insist that resource wealth benefit the public. Corruption circumvents those checks by connecting external power with local gatekeepers able to transfer public resources and protect the bargain. The lack of transparency surrounding more than $13 billion collected by the United States from Venezuelan oil sales illustrates the scale of the accountability problem.

For the region, the emerging system depends on governments choosing to participate and institutions holding its authority. As progressives in the United States, we must challenge the false counternarcotics claims, unchecked lethal force, and waste of public resources sustaining this project, and hold our government accountable. Regional resistance and democratic repair must proceed together.

Since last fall, I and a group of fellow animal rights activists have been holding protests at the upscale Lincoln Park restaurant Galit, urging it to stop serving foie gras. Each weekend, activists hold signs, chant, shout through a megaphone, write on the sidewalk with chalk, and pressure Galit to remove foie gras from its menu. We are a grassroots group of people from all walks of life who care about animals. Our group is made up of people with diverse occupations and perspectives, but we are united by an opposition to the worst abuses animals face. Now, Galit and one of the top law firms in the country have dragged us into court, calling our protests “harassment.”

Our group chose to protest at Galit—after emailing the restaurant for two months, initially seeking to remove foie gras from its menu through dialogue—because of its progressive values. The restaurant prides itself on paying its workers well, and providing a robust benefits package, including paid time off, substantially subsidized health insurance, and retirement benefits. The restaurant is closed on major holidays, allowing employees to have a holiday as well. It reports inclusive hiring practices and provides harassment and bystander intervention training. Galit’s website notes that its two co-owners have Israeli and Palestinian-Cuban-Spanish backgrounds. Galit is rightly proud of these practices, which are uncommon in service industries. But all too often, such values exclude the most vulnerable of all: animals.

Foie gras is a luxury product made from the fattened liver of ducks and geese, using a process called gavage, in which birds have a pipe forced down their throats in order to force-feed them to the point that their livers become painfully engorged and diseased. It is, frankly, systematic torture. That’s why entire countries, states, and cities have banned it, including nearly all of Europe, the UK, Australia, Israel, Türkiye, India, Argentina, California, New York City and, just last month, Portland, Oregon. Each of these bans is based primarily on the cruelty involved in foie gras production.

In the US, animal rights activists have been protesting this for around 30 years. Over the last few years, these protests have intensified and largely focused on specific restaurants—holding protests just like those I’ve participated in at Galit. Our movement has succeeded in getting 400 restaurants across the world to permanently remove foie gras from their menus. Our protests urge Galit to join the ranks of restaurants that have made this ethical choice, extending the same concern to animals as it has to so many other important values.

Instead, Galit went to court. After attempting to limit our protests by urging police to issue tickets to demonstrators—each of which has been dismissed—Galit and its general manager have filed for anti-stalking orders against me and other protesters.

The restaurant is represented, for free, by the top law firm Jenner & Block. This is rather stunning. Jenner & Block is known for handling major litigation, including arguing several cases before the US Supreme Court. The firm is also notable for the stand it took early in the second Trump administration, refusing to cave to Trump’s demands that it not represent the president’s political foes, while other large law firms folded. Jenner & Block described its position as a principled stance against political interference with a client’s right to vigorous, uncompromising representation. For this, it was targeted by a Trump executive order. The firm vowed to remain “fearless.” But once again, when it comes to animals, principles go out the window. Jenner & Block knows full well that protesting is not harassment or stalking, that it is protected by the First Amendment. Yet the firm has provided its prestige legal services—and attached its name—to an effort to protect a local restaurant from a dozen animal advocates armed with megaphones and chalk.

There is yet another odd twist to this story. While Galit has refused to remove this single product, the result of extreme animal cruelty, from its menu, some have begun accusing us of protesting not to stop it from serving foie gras, but because we are antisemitic. They argue that, because we are protesting against Galit and not other Chicago restaurants that serve foie gras, we are targeting it because one of its owners is Israeli (the critics do not explain how such a motivation makes sense in light of Galit’s own website reporting that the other owner identifies at Palestinian-Cuban-Spanish). But some members of the group protesting against foie gras at Galit, too, are Jewish and Israeli, and Israel itself is among the countries that have banned the production of foie gras.

Accusations of antisemitism are cynical at worst and intentionally ignorant at best. First, it underscores how so many people simply cannot see that animals might be worthy of treatment short of torture. Apparently, it makes more sense that we would target Galit due to antisemitism than that we chose to protest there because we want it to bring its treatment of animals into line with the restaurant’s otherwise admirable values. Antisemitism makes more sense than that a commitment to values like workers’ rights, community, and equality should include a commitment to animal welfare. It is not out of hatred for Galit, but out of respect for its stated values, that we chose to press it to stop serving foie gras.

It also saddens me because I, myself, am halachically Jewish. That is to say, I am Jewish on my mom’s side of my family. In recent years, I have been a regular at a Chabad house. For a while, I was there every shabbos evening. I have spent the last year teaching middle school math at a haredi school in West Ridge, wearing a kippah every day at work.

To be clear, across the country, protests to stop restaurants from selling foie gras have proceeded one restaurant at a time. This is a decision based on strategic value and activist capacity, and it has proven remarkably successful. Were Galit to provide a written commitment to, and stick to, a foie gras free policy, we will move on to another restaurant.

In the meantime, activists will continue to protest Galit. (Unfortunately, for now, I cannot personally participate in these protests because of Galit’s baseless lawsuit against me.) The judge presiding over Galit’s request for a protection order—again, oddly, filed by the top law firm Jenner & Block—threw out the complaint. But Galit has amended its complaint and continues to seek restraints on our protests.

It is worth wondering why one of the nation’s top law firms is representing a local restaurant, pro bono, in an effort to restrain the protests of a dozen animal rights activists. We may also wonder why Galit is so committed to serving a product that multiple entire countries have deemed too cruel to allow its production. All of this, rather than simply adopting a foie gras free policy.

I do believe there will come a time when Galit sees foie gras for what it is, and agrees to a foie gras-free policy. Force feeding is not kindness. It’s not food, it’s violence.