I remember seeing the pain in my dad’s eyes when Trump’s Muslim Ban took effect. As a daughter of Mexican-Iranian immigrants, the onslaught of Trump’s anti-immigrant, Islamophobic attacks over his four years in office served as a violent and constant reminder of the ways this country has ruthlessly attacked the lives of the people I love.

As one of the first people in my family eligible to vote, it feels as if I am holding the weight of my entire family, my generation, and my future on my shoulders when I go to the ballot box. Never has my vote been just about me. It’s about what gives my family and my community the best chance at survival.

This year’s election is no different. Each vote matters, and if recent polling shows anything, it’s that this alarmingly close race between Vice President Harris and Trump will come down to the margins. The very real possibility of yet another Trump presidency has left me grappling with what life for my family, friends, and community—many of whom are undocumented—would look like if Trump took office again.

I am under no impression that Harris is perfect; but I am not fighting with her. I am fighting to move her. I will vote for Harris on November 5, but my vote is not a profession of my love for Harris or my approval. It’s about making a deliberate choice to pick the playing field for the next four years that my generation and I will be forced, one way or another, to organize under.

Under Trump’s first term, undocumented people in my community retreated into fear because nowhere felt safe, not even a simple trip to the grocery store. The risk of being pulled over, targeted by the raging enforcement apparatus Trump’s administration fortified, was enough to force many back into the shadows. Thousands of families couldn’t escape Trump's attacks. The detention centers that have existed under both Republican and Democratic presidents alike, swelled under Trump. Everyone was a target: children, parents, grandparents, and more.

To this day, there are children who have yet to be reunited with their loved ones after being ripped from their parents’ arms under Trump’s Zero Tolerance policy. They have lived their childhood years tossed from courtroom to courtroom as many of their parents fight to regain custody.

When I think about this year’s election, I wish I didn’t feel the fear I do about a future life under Trump. But I have asked myself seriously: can my community survive that again, only this time worse?

As someone who grew up with a family of immigrants, I know this is not mere speculation or exaggeration—Trump and MAGA Republicans have a plan to hurt my community. Among many other atrocious policy proposals, the anti-immigrant policies outlined in Project 2025 are designed to tear apart families across the nation– both at the border and in the very states and cities we call home.

Trump is going after everyone. He would aim to strip legal status by ending DACA, TPS, humanitarian parole and other life-saving programs that have supported hundreds of thousands of people who already live, work, and care for their families in this country. The sprawling immigrant detention camps and deportations carried under his first admin were just a glimpse at what he could do under a second term, where he has promised to use the military to conduct nationwide raids in the places where we live, work, and pray to target anyone suspected of being undocumented.

This is the reality I am grappling with as a young voter from an immigrant community. For me, my decision to vote this year isn’t about rallying behind a perfect candidate who, unfortunately, does not exist right now. Vice President Harris is far from perfect. I am outraged by the ways she’s adopted Republican talking points and rhetoric when it comes to immigration, while also ignoring the calls to end the genocide in Gaza and stop sending weapons to Israel that American tax dollars have paid for.

Still, I know the ways I’ve seen how our progressive movement has successfully pushed Democrats before. In 2012, our movement forced the Obama administration to bend to our will when we successfully won the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which has protected hundreds of thousands of immigrants from the threat of deportation. Obama didn’t do this out of the goodness of his heart. He did it because our movements demanded it and refused to let up the pressure even while he was in office. This year, we also forced the Biden administration to deliver healthcare access to DACA recipients through the Affordable Care Act and delivered a monumental achievement when we won protections for undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens in order to keep mixed status families together. The reality is, these achievements did not come easily nor did they come overnight; they required relentless pressure, strategic maneuvering, and years of being able to move tactically against every political target who sat in the Oval Office. But they have also been achievements continuously targeted by the MAGA right who have stopped at nothing in trying to decimate these life-saving programs.

Vice President Harris is far from perfect. I am outraged by the ways she’s adopted Republican talking points and rhetoric when it comes to immigration, while also ignoring the calls to end the genocide in Gaza and stop sending weapons to Israel that American tax dollars have paid for.

Harris will never be my community’s liberator. But for right now, for this election, she is my target. My goal is to stop Trump and his MAGA allies from ever getting close to the White House again. As a young person whose heritage comes from people who have crossed rivers, borders, and oceans to protect those we love, I have had to channel what it means to move with intention through turbulent waters. Our survival depends on our ability to out-strategize those who seek to oppress us.

I am under no impression that Harris is perfect; but I am not fighting with her. I am fighting to move her. I will vote for Harris on November 5, but my vote is not a profession of my love for Harris or my approval. It’s about making a deliberate choice to pick the playing field for the next four years that my generation and I will be forced, one way or another, to organize under.

This election has made me feel more determined than ever to fight for the future my community and generation deserve. We deserve to have candidates on the ballot who truly reflect our values. Who don’t take years and generations to deliver on our demands. Every day, I am committed to fighting for that future, where the conditions are in our favor, where we have amassed enough people power and political power to make the changes our communities desperately need only faster, on the timeline we set. I am casting my ballot for myself, my community, my generation, my country, and for the future I believe to be possible.

Since 1993, 60.2 million workers who had been on the job for at least three years have been laid off, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Another 75.7 million with less than three years tenure have also been let go.

In total, that's 135.9 million workers who know all too well the pain and suffering of a major disruption to their employment.

Working people understand that the periodic ups and downs of the economy can legitimately lead to job loss. But they also know that in many cases the reason they lost their job was not mismatches in supply and demand. Rather, their jobs were sacrificed to satisfy out and out corporate greed.

Private Equity and Greed

Workers know that when a private equity firm buys up the company at which they work, trouble lies ahead. Just ask the 33,000 workers at Toys 'R' Us, who lost their jobs when that fabled company was driven into the ground by KKR, a huge private equity company. KKR bought the toy giant for $6 billion in 2005. Five billion dollars of the purchase price was financed with debt, which KKR put on the Toys 'R' Us books.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist (especially not the labor-averse space mogul Elon Musk) to design simple solutions that would provide some protection against needless mass layoffs.

Then the rape and pillage commenced, as Toys 'R' Us slashed costs to service the debt, pay KKR hefty management fees, and quickly fall behind its competition, Walmart and Amazon. Aliya Sabharwal, writing in the LA Times last year, tells us:

KKR and its partners sold off Toys ‘R’ Us real estate, pocketed the money and forced the retailer to lease back its buildings. Along the way, KKR and the other firms paid themselves $250 million in “management fees” and big bonuses to hand-picked executives — right before Toys ‘R’ Us entered bankruptcy.

This kind of corporate looting by private equity has, since the 1980s, happened thousands of times in all sectors of the economy, leading to the needless loss of millions of jobs. Researchers writing for the Becker Friedman Institute at the University of Chicago have found that, on average, employment shrinks by 13 percent when a private equity firm buys a public company. As Forbes notes,

All too often when private equity professionals tout their cost cutting strategies, they do not mention that cost cutting means firing people and taking away their livelihoods.

Stock Buybacks and Greed

Workers are also learning that when hedge funds buy up company stock and demand stock buybacks, there’s job trouble ahead. Just ask the 32,000 workers at Bed, Bath and Beyond, who saw their jobs evaporate to finance stock buybacks, over and over until the company was forced into bankruptcy and liquidation.

A stock buyback, which was essentially illegal until 1982, is a form of stock manipulation. A company uses its funds, or borrows money, to go into the market place and buy up its own shares of stock. By doing so, the number of shares in circulation goes down, while the earnings per share goes up. The stock price rises even though no new value was added to the company. The rise in the share price rewards company executives, who are mostly paid with stock incentives, and moves corporate wealth into the pockets of Wall Street investors.

Starting in 2004, Bed, Bath and Beyond spent $11.8 billion on stock buybacks that, in the short term, boosted the company’s share price and enriched the Wall Street stock-sellers who had pressured the company to buy back those shares. Even as the company struggled in 2022, it spent $230 million on stock buybacks, loading the company up with even more debt to finance them. In April 2023 the company declared bankruptcy. That July, the last store of what had been, in 2011, a chain of 1,142 stores closed

The same thing is happening right now with John Deere, the huge farm equipment manufacturer. Deere wants to move 1,000 jobs to Mexico, ostensibly to remain competitive in the international farm equipment market. But Deere is competitive now. The company posted $10 billion in profits in the 2023 fiscal year and paid its CEO $26.7 million.

The real reason Deere wants to discard workers and flee to Mexico is to finance the $11.6 billion in stock buybacks it committed to over the past year.

Reducing the use of mass layoffs to provide financing for corporate and executive looting would be a big win for working people.

In 2025, Goldman Sachs estimates that corporations will conduct more than $1 trillion in stock buybacks. Tens of millions of jobs will be sacrificed to shift all that money to the richest of the rich.

Solutions Are Easy to Find, But Political Will is not

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist (especially not the labor-averse space mogul Elon Musk) to design simple solutions that would provide some protection against needless mass layoffs. Here’s a list:

1. The Security and Exchange Commission, which deregulated stock buybacks in 1982, should basically outlaw them again by limiting stock buybacks to no more than 2 percent of corporate profits. Today, nearly 70 percent of corporate profits go to stock buybacks.
2. Debt used in leveraged buyouts should be limited to no more than 10 percent of the purchase price. That would protect workers from being sacrificed to service enormous debt loads.
3. Add two simple clauses to the $700 billion of taxpayer money that goes for federal purchases of goods and services. It should read:
   1. No taxpayer money shall go to corporations that lay off taxpayers or conduct stock buybacks.
   2. For those companies receiving taxpayer money, layoffs must be voluntary, not compulsory, as is already the case for many white-collar employees.

Reducing the use of mass layoffs to provide financing for corporate and executive looting would be a big win for working people. Alas, we all know deep down that politicians are not about to bite the Wall Street hands that feed them. In the meantime, millions of workers will continue to be sacrificed on the alter of corporate greed.

When no political party dares to challenge Wall Street’s war on workers, there’s only one remaining alternative: working people need to build their own political movement just as the Populists did in the 1880s. There are 135 million reasons for doing so, and soon.

Israel rejects the two-state solution because it claims that a sovereign state of Palestine would profoundly endanger Israel’s national security. In fact, it is the lack of a two-state solution that endangers Israel. Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian lands, its continuing apartheid rule over millions of Palestinians, and its extreme violence to defend that rule, all put Israel’s survival in jeopardy, as Israel faces dire threats from global diplomatic isolation and the ongoing war, including the war’s massive economic, social, and financial costs.

There are three basic reasons for Israel’s opposition to the two-state solution, reflecting a variety of ideologies and interests in Israeli society.

The first, and most mainstream, is Israel’s claim that Palestinians and the Arab world cannot live alongside it and only wish to destroy it. The second is the belief among Israel’s rapidly growing religious-nationalist population that God promised the Jews all of the land from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean, including all of Palestine. We recently wrote about that ideology, pointing out that it is roughly 2,600 years out of step with today’s realities. The third is straightforward material gain. With its ongoing occupation, Israel aims to profit from control over the region’s freshwater resources, coastal zones, offshore natural gas deposits, tourist destinations, and land for settlements.

These various motives are jumbled together in Israel’s continued intransigence. Yet taken individually or as a package, they fail to justify Israel’s opposition to the two-state solution, certainly not from the perspective of international law and justice, but not even with regard to Israel’s own security or narrow economic interests.

Consider Israel’s claim about national security, as was recently repeated by PM Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations on September 27th. Netanyahu accused the Palestinian Authority, and specifically President Mahmoud Abbas, of waging “unremitting diplomatic warfare against Israel’s right to exist and against Israel’s right to defend itself.”

After Netanyahu’s speech, Ayman Safadi, Jordan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, standing beside Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa replied to Netanyahu in a press conference:

All of us in the Arab world here, want a peace in which Israel lives in peace and security, accepted, normalized with all Arab countries in the context of ending the occupation, withdrawing from Arab territory, allowing for the emergence of an independent, sovereign Palestinian state on the June 4, 1967 lines with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Minister Safadi was speaking on behalf of the 57 members of the Muslim-Arab committee, who are all willing “to guarantee Israel’s security” in the context of a two-state solution. Minister Safadi, alongside the Palestinian Prime Minister, articulated the region’s peace proposal, an alternative to Netanyahu’s endless wars.

Earlier this year, the Bahrain Declaration in May 2024 of the 33rd Regular Session of the Council of the League of Arab States, on behalf of the 22 member states, re-iterated:

We call on the international community to assume its responsibilities to follow-up efforts to advance the peace process to achieve a just and comprehensive peace based on the two-state solution, which embodies an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital on the lines of the fourth of June 1967, able to live in security and peace alongside Israel in accordance with the resolutions of international legitimacy and established references, including the Arab Peace Initiative.

The many Arab and Islamic statements for peace, including those of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), in which Iran is a repeated signatory, trace back to the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative of Beirut—where Arab countries first proposed the region’s readiness to establish relations with Israel in the context of the two-state solution. The initiative declared that peace is based on Israel’s withdrawal from the Palestinian, Syrian, and Lebanese occupied territories.

Israel claims that even if the Arab states and Iran want peace, Hamas does not, and therefore threatens Israel. There are two crucial points here. First, Hamas accepted the two-state solution, already 7 years ago, in their 2017 Charter. “Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus.” This year again, Hamas proposed to disarm in exchange for Palestinian statehood on the 1967 borders. Israel, in turn, assassinated the Hamas political chief and cease-fire negotiator, Ismail Haniyeh.

Second, Hamas is very far from being a stand-alone actor. Hamas depends on funds and arms from the outside, notably from Iran. Implementation of the two-state solution under UN Security Council auspices would include the disarmament of non-state actors and mutual security arrangements for Israel and Palestine, in line with international law and the recent ICJ ruling, which Iran voted in favor of at UN General Assembly.

The giveaway that Hamas is an excuse, not a deep cause, of Israel’s intransigence is that Netanyahu has tactically if quietly supported Hamas over the years in a divide and conquer strategy. Netanyahu’s ruse has been to prevent the unity of different Palestinian political factions in order to forestall the Palestinian Authority from developing a national plan to forge a Palestinian state. The whole point of Netanyahu’s politics for decades has been to prevent the emergence of a Palestinian state using any argument at hand.

Israel and its boosters often claim that the failure at Camp David in 2000 proves that the Palestinians reject the two-state solution. This claim also is not correct. As documented by many, including Clayton E. Swisher in his meticulous account in The Truth About Camp David: The Untold Story about the Collapse of the Middle East Peace Process, the Camp David negotiations in 2000 failed owing to Bill Clinton’s last-minute approach to deal making, combined with then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s political cowardice in failing to honor Israeli obligations under the Oslo Accord.

As time ran out at Camp David, Clinton was a dishonest broker, as were the blatantly pro-Israel US negotiators, who refused to acknowledge Palestine’s legal claim to the borders of 4 June 1967, and prevarications about Palestine’s right to its capital in East Jerusalem. The “final offer” abruptly pushed by the Israelis and their American backers on the Palestinians did not secure basic Palestinian rights, nor were the Palestinians given time to deliberate and respond with alternative proposals. The Palestinians were then falsely blamed by the Americans and Israelis for the failure of the negotiations.

Israel persists with its intransigence because it believes that it has the unconditional backing of the United States. Through decades of large campaign contributions and assiduous lobbying, the Israel lobby in the United States not only controls votes in the Congress, but also has also placed arch-Zionists in top positions in every administration. Yet due to Israel’s brutality in Palestine and Lebanon, the Israel Lobby has lost its ability to control the narrative and votes across mainstream American society.

Trump, Biden, and Netanyahu all believed that Israel could “have it all”—Greater Israel and peace with the Arab states, while blocking a Palestinian state—through a US-brokered normalization process. The Abraham Accords (which established diplomatic relations of Israel with Bahrain and the UAE) was to be the role model for normalizing relations between Israel and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This approach was always cynical (as it aimed to block a Palestinian state) but is surely delusional now. The Foreign Minister of Saudi Arabia has made crystal clear in his op-ed in the Financial Times on October 2, that the two-state solution is the only pathway to peace and normalization.

“A two-state solution is not merely an ideal; it is the only viable path to ensuring Palestine, Israel and the region’s long-term security. Uncontrolled escalatory cycles are the building blocks of wider war. In Lebanon, we are witnessing this firsthand. Peace cannot be built on a foundation of occupation and resentment; true security for Israel will come from recognising the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people.”

Israel’s ongoing intransigent opposition to the two-state solution, recently reiterated by a vote of the Knesset, has become the greatest danger to Israel’s own security. Israel is now almost completely ostracized by the international community, and also faces grave economic and military threats as the regional war expands. As just one indicator of the emerging economic disarray, Israel’s credit rating is already plummeting, and Israel is likely to lose its investment grade credit rating very soon, with dire long-term economic consequences.

Nor does Israel’s violent pursuit of its extremist vision serve US security or US interests, and the American people oppose Israel’s extremism. The Israel Lobby is likely to lose its grip. Both the US public and the US deep state are very likely to withdraw their uncritical and unconditional support for Israel.

The practical elements of peace are at hand, as we recently spelled out in detail. The US can save the region from an imminent conflagration, and the world from a possible global war of great powers. The US should drop its veto of Palestine’s membership in the UN, and support the implementation of the two-state solution under the auspices of the UN Security Council, with enforcement of mutual security for both Israel and Palestine on the basis of justice and international law.

Last month I was walking through the woods by my house at sunset when a nearly fully grown juvenile barred owl swooped over my head and landed on a branch in front of me. I was awestruck by this gorgeous bird and began doing what I’ve always done with wild animals who do not flee from me: I talk to them. We looked at each other for a long time before I decided to move on. The last thing I said to the owl after a nearly 10-minute one-sided "conversation" was, “Good night. I love you.”

Moments later, I felt a blow to my head, after which the stealthy culprit swooped to another branch to stare intently at me once more. I crouched down to grab a stick to hold above me in case the owl came after me again and slowly backed up to return home, where my husband, a veterinarian, could tend to my bloody talon wounds.

I’d heard about barred owls attacking people, but I never imagined I would be a victim. After all, I’m an animal advocate and humane educator. But I had misread everything. I was chagrined to realize that I’d been under the illusion that we were enjoying each other’s company.

Dangerous Assumptions

Just as I had misread the owl, I sometimes misread people, mistakenly assuming we’re on the same page. I often think I’m being understood, and that I’m understanding, when I’m not. This is probably true for most people. After all, it’s hard to ignore the escalating and dysfunctional levels of polarizing discourse in our culture, where mistaken assumptions and miscommunication are ubiquitous, adversely impacting our ability to come together and effectively nurture a truly healthy, inclusive, collaborative society. As playwright George Bernard Shaw once said: “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”

Every time we make assumptions, there’s a good chance we’ll be miscommunicating and misperceiving, limiting the opportunities for real communication.

There are so many assumptions that prevent effective communication. We may assume that someone is religious because we are believers (or vice versa). Or we may inquire about someone’s astrological sign because we think astrology is a legitimate science, foisting this belief system on others without a second thought. When we meet someone who grew up in the same neighborhood we did, we may ascribe similar values and political beliefs to them. And when we meet people from different backgrounds, we may assume their values differ from ours and treat them with less openness.

I have friends who, thinking they are being generous, believe that supporters of the presidential candidate they abhor are simply “duped.” Other, less generous, friends think such supporters are either “selfish” or “stupid.” Some of my Christian friends think nonbelievers like me are “going to hell.” Some of my atheist friends think those who believe in God have a “mental disorder.” These are the actual words and phrases some have used in my presence.

Such assumptions arise effortlessly as we project our thoughts, beliefs, and emotions onto others. Unfortunately, this habit narrows our perspective and limits our ability to truly understand the complexity of others’ lives and minds. Every time we make assumptions, there’s a good chance we’ll be miscommunicating and misperceiving, limiting the opportunities for real communication. When we jump to our inevitable conclusions, we trade the possibility of true understanding for a false sense that we have communicated effectively.

Changing the Conversation

There’s a way out of this failure to communicate. It starts with something so natural to humans, and so obvious, that it hardly seems worth mentioning except for our seeming unwillingness to embrace it widely. We must cultivate and act upon our innate curiosity and desire to learn. In so doing, we eclipse a darker human propensity for "us vs. them" thinking, which leads us to perceive "the other" as a threat.

To communicate effectively with people who have different perspectives and beliefs, we must be eager to learn about those perspectives and beliefs. That means asking questions with friendliness and a true desire to understand rather than debate. It means striving to understand why someone holds a belief or position. What fears, experiences, or values drive their thinking? It means that when we hear something that challenges our worldview, we resist the urge to argue or correct and instead lean in with curiosity. In this way, we become better able to cultivate empathy, a foundation for understanding. In an increasingly polarized world, understanding becomes not just a moral imperative, but a practical one. Without it, divisions are likely to grow.

One of the lovely side effects of bringing genuine curiosity and openness to others is that we are likely to discover points of agreement. As we find those places where we can agree, division dissipates and the ties that bind us strengthen so that we can find places to collaborate. Coalitions to solve problems are usually more successful when diverse groups of people come together across divides to achieve shared goals. Whenever we allow side-taking, rather than collaborative problem-solving, to be our endpoint, we miss the opportunity to make our communities, nation, and world better.

The Role of Fear

One of the obstacles to making curiosity our default mindset is fear: fear of animosity and violence; fear of what society would become if others’ perspectives took hold; and sometimes even fear that we might be persuaded by a different perspective, which could threaten our existing identity and relationships. These fears are readily fostered in our society and sometimes within our families and communities. They may also be reinforced by our experiences. Since my encounter with the owl, I now enter the woods at dusk with some trepidation. Gone is my unadulterated joy and openness in the presence of these birds. Yet, my new fear is also a reminder that curiosity is indeed the gateway to understanding.

How to Move Forward

Had I spent a little more time cultivating my curiosity to better understand barred owls, I would have learned about their territorial nature, a trait we humans share with owls. I would have known better than to talk at a bird who had just flown low over my head and was perched staring at me, less curious than baleful. I wouldn’t have made the bird feel threatened by my refusal to leave their territory. I would have understood and been able to put my empathy into action by quickly moving along.

What would putting empathy into action look like with our fellow humans? A good first step might be to stop fomenting hostility, derision, and insults, whether spoken aloud about "others" within our perceived in-groups or on our social media. Whenever we make fun of, express hatred toward, or trivialize the perspectives of others, we perpetuate polarization and reinforce divisive thinking. This is not to say that we should make nice when someone intentionally says or does sexist, racist, homophobic, xenophobic, antisemitic, Islamophobic, or bigoted things. What it means is that we demonstrate respect for others’ divergent perspectives that stem from different lived experiences, sources of information, and long-held values and beliefs.

One might think these commonsense suggestions would be widely welcomed and adopted, but we’ve become so habituated to polarization that we often unconsciously stoke it. It’s not as if most people want to offend and be subsequently attacked, but nonetheless we regularly project our beliefs onto others and fail to consider the impacts of doing so. I projected my desires and perspectives onto the owl without endeavoring to understand the owl’s perspective. Reflecting upon the experience has made me wiser about how I might show greater understanding not only in situations with wild animals but also with my own species. Perhaps we can all learn something from an owl attack.

With little more than four weeks to go before the November elections, polls show the Trump/Harris race as “too close to call.” Winning should be a breeze for Harris and the other Democratic candidates. The GOP’s Congressional votes and policies are bad for women, children, and workers. The GOP doesn’t recognize and act against climate violence, it protects the corporate-favorable tax code, it is soft on corporate crooks, it scuttles regulatory protections for the peoples’ health, safety, and economic wellbeing and mocks the dire necessity of preparedness for future pandemics. (The military Empire with its violent war crimes and runaway budget-busting drain on our domestic necessities is supported by both Parties and not in electoral contention.)

Why so close, then? Because for years, the Democratic Party has abandoned the blue collar, New Deal roots of the Roosevelt era and ferociously dialed for the same commercial dollars as does the GOP. It has hired corporate-conflicted political consulting firms that control campaign messages, strategies and has excluded access by citizen groups to candidates, generally preferring corporatism over democracy, regardless of its rhetoric.

It also doesn’t advance any path to electoral victory to abandon half the country—the red states—and surrender them to the Republicans. The mountain states and North and South Dakota used to have Democrats representing them in the Senate. Failing to compete in these low population states concedes about ten Senate seats at the outset.

Most telling in these last remaining days is the refusal for Kamala Harris and most Congressional candidates to have front and center proven and proper vote-getting agendas reflecting the New Deal.

It also doesn’t advance any path to electoral victory to abandon half the country—the red states—and surrender them to the Republicans.

To begin with I’m referring to raising the GOP frozen federal minimum wage to at least $15 an hour from its present $7.25. Democrats need more than a throwaway line on wages. They need to pour some of the billions of dollars raised into media and groundgame campaigns around the slogan “go vote for a raise, you’ve long earned and been denied by the Republicans.” That, authentically conveyed by thousands of Democratic candidates will get the attention of 25 million underpaid and struggling workers, who make our real economy run daily. Why aren’t the Dems ringing that bell?

Another winner for 65 million elderly voters is to pledge with full throttle to increase Social Security benefits frozen for half a century and to raise the Social Security tax on the wealthy to pay for it. Astonishingly, Kamala Harris and her handlers are not championing the “Social Security 2100 Act” which had 200 sponsors in the Congress, led by Congressman John Larson and Senator Richard Blumenthal. The throwaway line is that they “will protect social security” as it deficiently exists. Talk is not enough. The Democrats need to organize and communicate to drive this message.

Third, they should be championing government-paid child care, maternal and family sick leave and the child tax credit—all opposed by the Wall Street GOP. Paid for by raising taxes on the wealthy—this issue is an 85 percent poll winner. Instead, Harris and the Dems mumble with some general rhetoric that nobody really believes. Western countries have long had such social safety net protections for families and children.

The Democratic Party has abandoned the blue collar, New Deal roots of the Roosevelt era and ferociously dialed for the same commercial dollars as does the GOP.

Get-out-the-vote efforts are still inadequate. The Party has trouble listening to Rev. William Barber who argues that just a ten to fifteen percent increase in low-wage voter turnout from 2020 would win the November elections. Instead of scapegoating the Green Party and spending money to block Third Party ballot access, the Democrats should try harder to tap into the 80 to 90 million non-voters who stay home, many of whom don’t see anything benefiting them coming from bloviating, hypocritical politicians.

If readers want more ideas for ways to get more votes, such as midnight shift campaigning, and cracking down on corporate crooks, they can obtain my usable new book “Let’s Start the Revolution: Tools for Displacing the Corporate State and Building a Country that Works for the People” and go to winningamerica.net.

Are you wondering why Tim Walz didn’t do better against J.D. Vance in the VP debate? Vance managed to normalize criminal felon Trump with his serial lies and law violations, corruption, abuse of women, awful presidential record (recall his lethal mocking of the early Covid-19 pandemic), because Walz was muzzled by the Harris campaign operatives. He was told what not to speak about and to hew to the narrow Party line. That kind of advice may sink the genocidal Democratic Party with its insular cowardliness in November.

Will these observations get the attention of the tiny number of ruling Democratic Party operatives who make most of the major decisions for their rank and file? Probably not. But similar advice from loyal party columnists like Dana Milbank, Michelle Goldberg, Eugene Robinson, Charles Blow, E.J. Dionne, Paul Krugman, among others, may breach the upper deck’s aloofness.

California is the epicenter of the national housing shortage. Over half of California renters—and four in ten mortgaged homeowners—are cost-burdened, which means they pay more than 30% of their income on housing. And I am one of them.

Yet of the 120 members of the California State Legislature, I’m one of the only five renters.

In the Bay Area district I represent, home prices average roughly $1.5 million and modest apartments rent for over $2,000 per month. It’s impossible for most working people to afford to buy a home in my district. Too many of my friends and family have been priced out of the communities we grew up in.

To address this urgent crisis, I have tirelessly pursued a policy that has successfully ended housing shortages in jurisdictions around the world: social housing.

Social housing is the public development of housing for residents of mixed incomes. I have introduced the California Social Housing Act every year since I took office. I fought to become Chair of the Select Committee on Social Housing, and I’ve participated in delegations to Vienna, Austria, and Singapore to study their social housing systems.

As that dream becomes impossible for so many Americans, there remains one tool that has realized that dream for millions of people around the world.

Vienna and Singapore have important lessons for us on how social housing can actualize housing as a human right.

In both cities, social housing emerged from crisis. After a crushing defeat in World War I, Vienna saw the collapse of its monarchy and extremely overcrowded living conditions. Singapore experienced destruction during World War II and emerged from both Japanese and British colonization with a severe housing shortage. Squatter settlements were devastated by fire in 1961, leaving about 16,000 people homeless. Today, the two governments are identified with opposite ends of the political spectrum—left-leaning Vienna compared to the more right-leaning Singapore—but both housed their populations through social housing.

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In Singapore, the Housing and Development Board builds 99-year leasehold flats that it sells to citizens. It has built so many units that roughly 80% of Singapore’s population live in them. Nine out of ten of these residents own their homes. Homeowners have the right to resell them, rent them out, and pass them to their heirs. These condos appreciate in value over time, enabling them to generate wealth. Only citizens and permanent residents may buy these flats, so no private equity firms, corporations, or speculators can game this system.

Vienna—sometimes referred to as the “Renters’ Utopia”—builds social housing for rent with indefinite leases that tenants never need to renew and can even pass down to their children. Over 60 percent of its residents live in social housing. As in Singapore, most residents qualify for social housing under the high income cap that encompasses 75% of the Viennese population. This income limit only applies when the tenant moves in. Without constant eligibility screenings, tenants may remain even if they make more money in the future, enabling socioeconomic integration of social housing neighborhoods. Residents pay about a third less rent than their counterparts in other major European capitals. Even private sector renters enjoy strong tenant protections.

While Singapore and Vienna offer different social housing models, both governments prioritize creating housing for the public good. The foundation of their policies are the finances, land banking powers, and expertise to build housing as a human right.

The result? Both are consistently ranked as the most livable cities in the world.

California today is well positioned to implement what Vienna and Singapore undertook in the past century. What’s needed here is the political will to bring social housing to our state. We can’t afford to wait.

The harsh reality is that California has roughly 30% of all people experiencing homelessness in the nation. The Golden State must build at least 2.5 million more homes by 2030 to end the current shortage. But California built just 85,000 housing units annually from 2018 to 2022.

California today is well positioned to implement what Vienna and Singapore undertook in the past century. What’s needed here is the political will to bring social housing to our state. We can’t afford to wait.

Today’s social housing proposals avoid the mistakes of the past by creating socioeconomically integrated, financially self-sustaining housing. And momentum is building nationwide. In 2023, my social housing bill was approved with two-thirds majorities in both houses of the California Legislature, but was vetoed. In 2023, Seattle voters approved a ballot measure to create a social housing developer. The state of Hawaii has passed legislation to develop social housing. Montgomery County, Maryland, is at the forefront of creating publicly developed, mixed-income housing through the Housing Opportunities Commission. The Commission serves roughly 17,500 renter households and owns more than 9,000 rental units.

Earlier this year, British Columbia, Canada, announced a CAD $4.95 billion (USD $3.67 billion) social housing initiative. Called BC Builds, the plan is to build 8,000 to 10,000 homes over the next five years, which could be the world’s largest new social housing program in decades.

The American dream has long been centered on having your own home. As that dream becomes impossible for so many Americans, there remains one tool that has realized that dream for millions of people around the world.

Let’s learn from our global peers and embrace social housing as a proven tool to solve our housing crisis.

The world may have dodged an immediate bullet when the U.S. intelligence agencies warned, this week, that by giving in to Ukraine’s pleading for long range missiles that could attack targets deep into Russia, we would be poking the Russian bear beyond its patience without even influencing the outcome of the war in Ukraine’s favor.

There had been a sense of waiting with bated breath in the wake of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent announcement that he would lower the threshold for Russia’s use of nuclear weapons, as the U.S. and its NATO allies broadcasted their plans to ignore a repeated “red line” articulated by U.S. President Joe Biden not to provide arms to Ukraine which could be launched deep inside Russia.

Britain is playing its usual provocative role by sending clear messages that it would welcome U.S. approval to let Ukraine use its “Storm Shadow” long-range missiles. We just got a short breather, in light of this recently issued public U.S. intelligence evaluation.

Mother Earth grows impatient with the folly of humankind.

Despite repeated requests to the U.S. from Putin to honor U.S. promises made to Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin that the U.S. would not expand NATO east of a unified Germany, when the wall came down and Gorbachev ended the Warsaw Pact and Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe without a shot, the U.S., driven by visions of Empire, steadily expanded NATO eastward.

It began with former U.S. President Bill Clinton’s annexation of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic in 1999; followed by Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia in 2004; and Albania, Croatia, Montenegro, and North Macedonia between 2009 and 2017. At one point Putin was so dismayed at this expansion, he asked the Clinton administration if Russia could join NATO, but he was denied membership.

Putin made it very clear to the U.S. and NATO that Russia, which shares a long border with Ukraine, would not tolerate Ukraine becoming a member of NATO. After the U.S. supported a 2014 coup d’état replacing the pro-Russian president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, with Petro Poroshenko who immediately announced that only the Ukrainian language would be recognized in Ukraine, a civil war broke out in the eastern part of the country where the majority of the people were Russian and Russian speaking. More than 14,000 people were killed in that war before Russia invaded Ukraine.

Putin provided a draft agreement in 2021 to the U.S. proposing that Ukraine remain neutral and that the Donbass region, undergoing the civil war, remain in Ukraine as a federation and have the right to speak Russian. The U.S. completely ignored the proposal, and Putin invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

Putin was negotiating for a cease-fire with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy six months after the invasion, but Boris Johnson, the British Prime Minister came to Ukraine and told Zelenskyy not to make the deal! And the slaughter continues, with more than 20,000 civilians and 100,000 soldiers killed.

Thanks to the brief respite we just received from imminent nuclear annihilation, thanks to the sensible U.S. intelligence services who took Putin’s recent warnings as a reason for caution in pursuing a headlong and heedless expansion of military aid to Ukraine, it is time to change the conversation with bold new proposals.

Proposals that are guaranteed to bring us a respite from the growing terror. Proposals that will bring a shift in planetary consciousness allowing us to respond cooperatively to the impending cataclysmic climate disaster down the road! Mother Earth grows impatient with the folly of humankind.

Here are a series of steps that are guaranteed to bring us peace on Earth if the U.S. is ready to mobilize against the MICIMATT (Military Industrial, Congressional, Intelligence, Media, Academic, Think Tank complex) and work for peace!

• Take up repeated Russian and Chinese proposals in the United Nations and in frequent speeches for a treaty to ban weapons in space;
• Take up repeated Russian and Chinese proposals in the U.N. to negotiate a cyberwar ban treaty;
• Reinstate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia, and get U.S. missiles placed by former Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump out of Poland and Romania;
• Remove U.S. nuclear weapons stationed in five NATO states—Turkey, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Belgium—as a deal for Russia removing its recently placed weapons from Belarus;
• Take all nuclear weapons off high alert, and separate the warheads from their delivery system as China does—the wisdom of the East; and
• Dismantle NATO and pull it back from Russia’s border immediately

The ball, as they say, is in the U.S. court. Or as Pogo Possum, a character in Walt Kelly’s 1950s comic strip was known to say, “We met the enemy, and he is us!”

There is no doubt that Russia and China would be willing partners in these new initiatives. They have been proposing them to the United States for more than 10 years!!

With the first anniversary of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel approaching, the death toll in Gaza climbing to more than 41,500, and Israel inflicting ever more extreme violence on the West Bank and now on Lebanon as well, something very different happened recently in a poky classroom at Columbia University. Two young men, one Palestinian and one Israeli, both of whom had lost people they deeply loved to the conflict, came to speak not about fear and anger, revenge or oppression, but about reconciliation, friendship, and peace.

One of them was Arab Aramin, a 30-year-old Palestinian from Jerusalem whose little sister, Abir, had been shot and killed in front of her school by an Israeli soldier. She was 10 years old.

The other was Yonatan Zeigen, a 36-year-old Israeli who grew up on the Kibbutz Be’eri near the Gaza border, where his mother, the renowned peace activist Vivian Silver, was killed by Hamas on October 7, 2023.

“We all need to shape an alternative reality where no one should pay this price. Otherwise, it will happen again and again.”

Both men are fathers, both thin and lightly bearded, and both are members of the Parents Circle, a joint Israeli-Palestinian organization of 750 bereaved people working together to end the cycle of revenge that has so scarred their lives. They and other members of the group were touring New York City and the Boston area to introduce the Parents Circle and its philosophy to Americans.

Moving From Anger to Empathy

I went to hear the men speak when they were at Columbia and was surprised to find them tucked away in one of the most remote corners of the university, in perhaps the smallest classroom I’ve seen in all my decades teaching there. It seemed chillingly symbolic that a group carrying a message of reconciliation in this time of extreme violence and conflict should be relegated to such a hidden and shabby spot.

The visitors began by asking us, the audience of about 20 people, to introduce ourselves. Among us were several Israelis, a few Palestinians, a Jewish law student from Iran, and other students and teachers from a variety of departments around the university, including political science, Middle East studies, and in my case, the Graduate School of Journalism. One man startled us by saying he was a Palestinian who lived in Ireland and had once fought with and killed people for the Irish Republican Army but is now devoted to promoting peace. Like the rest of us, he had come to hear how the speakers had moved from grief and anger to promoting reconciliation and empathy.

“Peace Became Irrelevant”

After the introductions, Zeigen and Aramin, each squashed into one of the old wooden desk chairs cluttering the room, opened by telling their own stories with striking honesty, for it is impossible to talk about reconciliation in a land mired in conflict without also bringing up heartbreak, history, and hate. Zeigen, who wears his hair shorn tight to his head, emphasizing his finely boned face and huge brown eyes, began by describing his mother. “She was a feminist, a peace activist—she devoted her life to that,” he said, his voice instantly sad. “I grew up knowing lots of Palestinians because of her work. She would take us into Gaza to meet her friends. But I knew my Israeli peers did not experience this because of the divisions between our peoples.”

Once he was grown, Zeigen became an activist himself, soon moving to Haifa to study law, thinking that would be the best way to help forge peace. But after he married and became a father, while no progress was being made between Israelis and Palestinians, he began to give up. “Peace became irrelevant and I fell into a political coma,” he told us.

He switched from law to social work and had two more children. “I tried to hold onto the fantasy that I could live a normal life.” He did not wake from that political coma until October 7, when his wife told him what was happening. He called his mother at the kibbutz while it was under attack.

“We Decided to Say Goodbye”

“We talked through the morning about how the once celebrated Israeli Army was not coming, a dual experience of knowing something was happening but being unable to understand it, to grasp the scope.” Then he heard shots and screaming through the telephone. “They are in the house,” his mother told him.

“I asked her, what should we do? Keep talking or say goodbye? We decided to say goodbye.” He paused, then told the audience, “I was lucky.” He gestured to two other members of the Parents Circle sitting nearby, Layla Alshekh, a Palestinian, and Robi Damelin, an Israeli, both mothers who lost children to the conflict. “Most of us do not get to say goodbye.”

Zeigen’s own mother was killed in the safe room of her house that day, but he was unable to find out her fate for a long time because the house had been burned down. At one point, she was considered a hostage, then her bones were found and identified and he knew for sure.

“I sat down and said, ‘What now? What should I do with this pain and helplessness? What should all of us do?’ I realized my illusion of safety was gone. That we all need to shape an alternative reality where no one should pay this price. Otherwise, it will happen again and again.”

“We Are Not Weak People Who Kill”

Aramin, who also wears his hair cut short and has huge brown eyes, spoke next, telling the rapt audience that he was only 13 when his sister died. She had just bought some candy and was standing outside her school when an Israeli border guard shot her with a rubber bullet and killed her.

“She was everything to me, my second mother, even though she was younger, because I was just a stupid, naughty boy,” he said with a sad but wry smile. “I kept going into her room to find her before I remembered she was not there. All I could think about was taking revenge. But I had no gun, so I lied to my parents, stopped going to school, and went to the checkpoint instead to throw stones at Israeli soldiers.”

Luckily for him, a friend of his father saw what he was doing and reported him to his parents. His father sat him down and told him it was time to have a talk.

“I began to learn that if you want to kill yourself, keep hating your enemy. If you want to save yourself, then learn about your enemy.”

Aramin’s father, Bassam Aramin, had himself been arrested for throwing stones at Israeli soldiers when he was 16, and served seven years in an Israeli jail for his actions. But whenever Aramin asked his father how he had been treated in prison, Bassam refused to answer. A founder of Combatants for Peace, which describes itself as “an organization of former Israeli and Palestinian combatants leading a nonviolent struggle against the occupation,” and a member of the Parents Circle himself, Bassam only wanted to talk about peace.

“Abir’s murder could have led me down the easy path of hatred and vengeance,” he wrote in an autobiographical essay, “but for me there was no return from dialogue and nonviolence. After all, it was one Israeli soldier who shot my daughter, but 100 former Israeli soldiers who built a garden in her name at the school where she was murdered.”

“My father is my hero,” Aramin told us. “When I said I wanted to kill the soldiers who killed my sister, he told me, ‘We are not weak people who kill. We have strength in other ways.’ But I still needed revenge. So, he said, ‘I understand, but first you must make peace with yourself.'”

Bassam then took his young son with him to Germany, where he had been invited to give a talk. While there, he and Aramin also toured the former Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald.

“He wanted to take me out of my stress, but he also wanted me to learn about the narrative of the other side,” Aramin explained to me later.

“I started to cry like crazy for all the people who had died there,” he told us in that classroom. “But then I felt even more confused. I realized I knew nothing about my enemy. All I knew of them was that they had killed my sister, and that they were the soldiers who would storm into my house at five in the morning to harass my father because he had a Palestinian ID and my mother had an Israeli ID, so they were not supposed to be in the same bed.”

His mother was Palestinian, but because she had been born in East Jerusalem, she had a Jerusalem ID that looked Israeli. That was enough to subject them to persecution.

“So, I taught myself Hebrew and I began to learn that if you want to kill yourself, keep hating your enemy. If you want to save yourself, then learn about your enemy. I began to lose hate and fear of the other side. But it took me seven years to make peace with myself and to understand that behind every Israeli is a human being.”

Both Aramin and Zeigen agreed that the first step toward ending the cycle of revenge is for Israelis and Palestinians to listen to each other’s stories, learn each other’s language, and come to see one another as the humans we all are.

Listening From the Heart

The Parents Circle conveys this message not only by holding talks like the one at Columbia, but through videos of bereaved people telling their stories, an online guide to conflict resolution, and an educational program aimed at both children and adults called Listening From the Heart. The goal is to move people away from thinking in binary terms of “us versus them,” “victim versus oppressor,” or “right versus wrong” to considering instead how to accept people’s differences while working toward peace.

“Our organization does not advocate a political solution to the conflict,” explained Shiri Ourian, executive director of American Friends of the Parents Circle, who was touring with Aramin and Zeigen. “Our vision is for a reconciliation process to be alongside any political solutions.”

Zeigen elaborated further in a text: “Declaring in advance a solution (one or two states, federation, etc.) is not constructive if there is no ability to reach that solution in total agreement. The point of the Parents Circle is to train both peoples to accept or reach a solution from a place of equity, of acknowledging each other’s narrative, pain, and reasoning, and to be able to build trust and a shared future.”

As one of the organization’s campaigns stated, “If you have lost a family member due to the conflict, and you are also tired of the never-ending cycle of loss of life, we would like to see you with us.”

Banned

At home in Israel, the Parents Circle has been sending bereaved Palestinians and Israelis to talk together in schools for some 20 years. It also runs youth programs and an Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Day every spring, which the organization says is the largest such jointly organized peace event in Israel.

These actions have long been controversial in a land where so few Israelis and Palestinians ever get to know one another, but since October 7, the Israeli government seems to see the Parents Circle as downright dangerous—so much so that the Israeli Education Ministry recently banned its speakers from entering schools at all. (Twice!)

The first ban took place in April 2023 which, according to The Jerusalem Post, the ministry excused by citing a new rule prohibiting any educational program that “slanders” the Israel Defense Forces or its soldiers. The Parents Circle sued, a judge reinstated its right to speak in schools, and then the Ministry barred them once again. The Circle has been battling that decision in court ever since.

Yuval Rahamim, Israeli co-director of the Parents Circle Families Forum, lamented the ban in a blog he wrote in September 2023. “A generation that grows up shielded from alternative viewpoints is ill-equipped to engage in meaningful dialogue, bridge gaps, and work towards peaceful solutions… In such a scenario, the cycle of animosity and mistrust continues unabated.”

Letting Go of Revenge

In their talk at Columbia, Zeigen and Aramin also emphasized that understanding and even friendship between their peoples is essential if lasting peace is ever to be achieved. This doesn’t necessarily mean forgiving those who kill, it only means letting go of the need for revenge. “I do not want my son to see his sister or brother die like I did,” as Aramin put it.

Both men were quick to add that the members of the organization hold a wide range of views about how to solve the conflict, but the view they all have in common is this: Nobody wants anyone else’s child, brother, sister, mother, or father to die in the name of their own loved ones. As Rahamim wrote, “The tears shed by a bereaved Palestinian mother are no different from those of a grieving Israeli mother.”

Once Zeigen and Aramin had finished telling their stories, they took questions from the audience and, naturally enough, given that we were at Columbia, the subject of campus protests came up. Neither man seemed much impressed.

“Instead of exporting solutions, you have imported the conflict,” Zeigen told us. That made a few of us blink.

“If you want to promote peace in Israel, give up the flags,” he continued, adding that he has nothing against the flags and their symbolism, but that in protests, they only serve to emphasize divisions. “Put the flags down and hold up peace signs instead.”

Aramin agreed. “The land doesn’t belong to Palestinians and it doesn’t belong to Jews,” he said. “God gave it to us all.”

If only more people would listen right now, with Gaza lying in rubble; Israeli bombs crushing southern Lebanon; war spreading ever more widely across the region; and tens of thousands of children, women, and men maimed or killed.

Warning: This piece discusses suicide, gun violence, and mental health. If you or someone you know is in crisis, please call or text 988, or visit 988lifeline.org/chat to chat with a counselor from the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

Last year, I received a text that would change my life forever. I was told that my close friend, Jordan, had died by firearm suicide. Calls from classmates came crashing in and emails from my school flooded my inbox. A wave of shock rushed over me and it felt like time had frozen, even as I watched the world continue on.

My school held an assembly to honor Jordan’s memory, but it all became a blur between the tears, hugs, tissues, and funeral.

Jordan holds a special place in my heart. Not only because we were on the same lacrosse team, but because she was a shining light and a good friend. She was always there for me when I needed her, but little did I know Jordan was battling a thunderstorm on the inside.

Amidst all my grief, there was a part of me that was also angry because politicians sent their condolences, but no action was taken. I wanted something to change.

There are thousands of students and young people just like me across the country who are committed to creating a future free from gun violence.

The tragedy of this story isn’t just about Jordan; it’s the fact that her story is not unique. When there are over 3,000 young people who die by gun suicide in an average year, something has to change. Stronger gun safety measures, like secure storage requirements, in our country can save lives and prevent more friends and families from feeling the pain I’ve felt.

Firearm suicide has a deadly and devastating impact on my generation. Over the past decade, gun suicide rates for young people have increased faster than any other age group, reaching a near-record high. When it comes to attempted suicide, guns are especially deadly. We have to do more to reduce easy access to guns in a moment of crisis since the majority of people who survive a suicide attempt don’t go on to attempt again.

Those statistics should be a wake-up call for every gun owner, politician, and person in the United States on why it’s so important to prevent firearm access for someone contemplating suicide. That’s where laws like secure storage requirements come in.

Secure storage is the practice of gun owners making their homes and communities safer by storing their guns securely. This means storing a firearm unloaded, locked, and separate from ammunition. Research shows that most firearm suicides attempted by youth occur at home, and households that securely store guns and ammunition reduce this risk by 78% comapared to those that don’t.

There is a direct correlation between securely storing a gun at home and saving a life from firearm suicide. That’s why we need lawmakers at every level of government to increase awareness around secure storage practices and pass laws that require gun owners to store their guns securely.

With just one month until election day, it’s time for American voters to come together and elect leaders who will fight to protect our communities from gun violence. From electing Vice President Harris and Governor Walz at the top of the ticket to voting for gun sense candidates down ballot, these are the candidates that are fighting to end gun violence while the other side is doing absolutely nothing.

Even in the face of tragedy, I still have hope. Firearm suicide, just like all forms of gun violence, is preventable.

After the loss of my best friend, I felt devastated and I wanted to find a community that shared my similar experiences. I soon discovered Students Demand Action, the nation's largest youth-led gun prevention group, and started a chapter at my school. Since then, I have been actively involved in fighting for gun violence prevention in California, and I’m just getting started.

We should all be aware of the warning signs and how to help when someone is in crisis. Whether it’s having a private conversation to let someone know you’re there for them or sharing mental health resources, that one step could save a life.

There are thousands of students and young people just like me across the country who are committed to creating a future free from gun violence. Guns are the leading cause of death for my generation, meaning youth firearm suicide is just one piece of a much larger puzzle. When guns are accessible to anyone, anywhere, at any time—no one is safe.

But even in the face of tragedy, I still have hope. Firearm suicide, just like all forms of gun violence, is preventable. Joining Students Demand Action allowed me to turn my pain into purpose and together, we can end America’s gun violence epidemic by creating a future for our generation that’s free from gun violence.

On 7 October 2023, Hamas launched an offensive into southern Israel to irrevocably shatter an unsustainable status quo. While the crisis that has now persisted for an entire year did indeed erupt on that day, it had been decades in the making.

Israel's initial response was to unleash a genocidal campaign against the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip. Motivated by revenge and bloodlust, it was designed to not only kill and destroy on a massive scale but to make the Gaza Strip unfit for human habitation.

Genocide was the price Israel's western sponsors were prepared to pay for Israel to make an example of the Gaza Strip and, in so doing, to re-establish its shattered power of deterrence.

Insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters

To ensure Israel could rampage through the Gaza Strip with impunity and escape any accountability for its actions, Israel's western sponsors and allies, led by the United States, willingly shredded the rulebook of international law and the norms and values that underpin it.

Each successive Israeli obliteration of yet another red line - the bombing and destruction of hospitals, schools, and refugee centres, the indiscriminate transformation of communications devices into hand grenades, and the killing and wounding of hundreds to rescue four captives - was justified as a legitimate act of self-defence.

In the process, the world has been transformed into a much more dangerous place for us all on the altar of Israeli impunity.

Failed strategy

For much of the past year, Israel has failed not only to achieve anything of military significance in the Gaza Strip, but it has also failed to enunciate a strategy. Slogans like "total victory" and a Churchill complex are no substitute for political vision.

Genocide was the price Israel's western sponsors were prepared to pay for Israel to make an example of the Gaza Strip and re-establish its shattered power of deterrence

This now appears to be changing. Israel's assassination of Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, and with him virtually the entirety of the movement's military command, has given it the confidence that it can dismantle the coalition known as the Axis of Resistance.

Its key initiative in this respect is the invasion of Lebanon currently underway, and in which all the red lines violated in Gaza are being crossed again, once more with nary a peep from capitals that habitually preach to rivals, adversaries, and other lesser beings about the sanctity of the rule of law, human rights, and similar principles.

Follow Middle East Eye's live coverage of the Israel-Palestine war

As has been clear from the outset, Israel's ultimate aim is regime change in Iran, on the mistaken assumption that an Iranian government disengaged from the conflict with Israel will transform the Palestinians, and Arabs more generally, into powerless sheep.

Israel appears to be convinced that the road to Tehran runs through the southern suburbs of Beirut.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed as much on 30 September when he vowed that Iranians would soon achieve "freedom" from their leaders.

Israel's agenda requires it to engineer a direct military confrontation between Washington and Tehran, and in US President Joe Biden, it may well have found the candidate that has thus far eluded it.

Yet Lebanon has repeatedly proved to be the graveyard of Israel and American hubris.

Whether in 1982, when Ariel Sharon's Operation Big Pines laid the basis for Hezbollah's emergence, or in 2006, when Condoleezza Rice's "birth pangs of a new Middle East" turned out to be a miscarriage.

The coming weeks will determine whether Israel can once again resume unilaterally resolving the Palestine question on its own terms, and with it to seal the fate of the Palestinian people, or whether 7 October will go down in history as the moment the Zionist project in Palestine began to unravel.

The United States has a chance to save Ukraine billions of dollars, and at no cost to U.S. taxpayers, by pushing for an end to the unfair and harmful surcharge policy of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The IMF is currently reviewing this surcharge policy, which hits Ukraine—and other highly indebted borrowers like Kenya, Ecuador, Argentina, Barbados, and Egypt—with additional charges on top of standard interest and service fees. Human rights and development experts consider surcharges to be counterproductive and contrary to international human rights law. The IMF should take this opportunity to permanently end its surcharge policy for highly indebted borrowers.

Surcharges are penalty fees levied on middle-income countries with high levels of IMF debt. There are two types of surcharges exacted by the IMF: level-based surcharges and time-based surcharges. Level-based surcharges add 2 percentage points in fees to a country’s outstanding IMF credit when it surpasses 187.5% of a country’s quota to the Fund. Time-based surcharges add another percentage point of fees when a country’s IMF debt exceeds this threshold for over 36 or 51 months, depending on the lending facility. Some countries, including Ukraine, are paying both surcharges, amounting to an additional 3% points of fees.

In Ukraine’s case, surcharges will add nearly $3 billion to the war-ravaged country’s debt burden over the next decade even as it needs an estimated $9.5 billion in emergency financing for recovery and reconstruction just this year.

The IMF and Treasury Secretary Yellen have previously claimed that surcharges incentivize timely repayment to the IMF. However, countries are struggling to repay the IMF due to exogenous shocks, not a lack of appropriate incentives. Surcharges are counterproductive as they push countries facing crises—including war, the COVID-19 pandemic, and climate disaster —further into debt. It is no coincidence that, prior to the pandemic, only eight countries were paying IMF surcharges; today 23 countries are paying these fees.

In Ukraine’s case, surcharges will add nearly $3 billion to the war-ravaged country’s debt burden over the next decade even as it needs an estimated $9.5 billion in emergency financing for recovery and reconstruction just this year. Experts say efforts to relieve Ukraine’s debts could change the course of the war. Ukraine recently reached a much-needed deal to restructure its debts. Keeping surcharges in place would diminish the benefits of this restructuring, as it sends $3 billion that could be spent on recovery, reconstruction, and defense back to the IMF. Surcharges have already cost Ukraine $621 million between 2018 and 2023. Discontinuing surcharges would save Ukraine billions of dollars in its hour of need.

Following intense criticism of surcharges by leading economists, developing countries, and U.S. members of Congress, the IMF announced earlier this year that it would carry out a review of the controversial policy. Following consultations with IMF stakeholders— in particular, the US Treasury Department—the Fund is expected to announce the results of its review, and any recommendations of changes to the policy, before the IMF’s Annual Meetings in October. It’s worth noting that the IMF has previously recognized the profoundly harmful and counterproductive consequences of similar past policies, moving to discontinue them in 1974, 1981, and 1992.

Yet, among wealthy countries, there appears to be resistance to terminating, or even significantly reforming, the current surcharge policy. It is particularly troubling that much of this resistance appears to be rooted in the hope that the income from surcharges can supplement projected funding shortfalls for the IMF’s Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust (PRGT) facility, which offers low-income countries interest-free and concessional loans. The IMF, the US Treasury, and other observers have previously discussed surcharges as a source of income for IMF lending via the PRGT.

Among wealthy countries, there appears to be resistance to terminating, or even significantly reforming, the current surcharge policy.

Post-pandemic funding needs have depleted PRGT resources and the program is in need of replenishment. It may be necessary for the IMF to increase its lending through the PRGT in response to the growing needs of developing countries. However, squeezing highly indebted countries such as Ukraine to do so would be a perverse solution. These same middle-income countries have also largely been left out of pandemic-related debt relief initiatives and are struggling to recover under the weight of a failing international financial architecture. Funding for the PRGT shouldn’t come at the expense of these countries.

There are better and more effective alternatives to relying on surcharges to fund the PRGT. These include: donations from the U.S. and other advanced economies, gold sales, and changes to the IMF’s internal accounting practices. Surcharges are infinitesimal compared to the IMF’s much-vaunted $1 trillion lending firepower. The IMF has vast reserves of gold that remain largely undervalued. These gold reserves are currently valued at the 1960s rate of approximately $47 per ounce. Valued at current market rates of approximately $2,556 per ounce, the IMF’s gold reserves would be worth $228 billion. The IMF could sell a portion of these reserves or adopt mark-to-market accounting practices to fund the PRGT.

Indebted middle-income countries like Ukraine should not be expected to subsidize PRGT lending when better alternatives exist. A permanent end to surcharges would eliminate an increasingly significant barrier to sustainable recovery in many developing countries. Given that the U.S. holds a de facto veto over IMF policy changes, the stance of the U.S. Treasury Department will be instrumental. Refusing to change the surcharge policy today would be a major missed opportunity for Secretary Yellen and the world.

In just six days, 121,000 hectares burned, seven people died, and over a hundred were injured in the fires that ravaged Portugal. Luís Montenegro, the country’s prime minister, faced with this calamity, promised to go “after those responsible” who, “in the name of private interests, are capable of jeopardizing the rights, freedoms, and guarantees, and the very lives” of citizens. This is a bold statement. Arson and blame in the face of the fires that annually devastate the country are a permanent reality.

We speak of arson when referring to the intentional and deliberate act of igniting a fire. For example, it is considered arson if someone sets fire to a forested area, whether motivated by malice, economic reasons, or merely for fun. In Portugal, arson is a variable that is far from explaining the devastating fires that destroy lives each year. Like in other Mediterranean countries, about one-third of the fires have a criminal, deliberate origin. However, the final outcome of these ignitions in Portugal is significantly different from that of countries that can be compared to ours.

The atmospheric conditions, increasingly characteristic of the Mediterranean territory—extreme drought and heat—combined with strong winds, low humidity, and nighttime heat, along with abandoned lands and extensive eucalyptus monocultures, create the perfect conditions for fires to ignite with the proportions and impacts of those that killed 66 people in Pedrogão Grande in 2017, 45 people on October 15 of the same year, and seven people in the fires of mid-September this year.

We can be certain that for these companies, the destruction of our lives will not lead to a reduction in profitability—at least until there is nothing left to destroy.

These conditions are neither “natural” nor mere coincidence. They derive from intentional acts, the consequences of which were known and taken into account by companies and governments. For decades, major emitting companies have been aware of the impacts of burning fossil fuels and the greenhouse gas emissions from their economic activities. They knew that these impacts would lead to loss of life on a global scale and could culminate in the extinction of the human species. Despite this, they continued to invest in these activities, expand them, and profit from them. For decades, governments have received warnings from the scientific community, and they even acknowledged this problem with weak laws that pretend to address the issue. But even today they continue to subsidize fossil fuels and emitting industries, facilitating projects that increase emissions. Government leaders and company managers knew they were condemning people to death, devastation, and extinction through climate and social collapse.

Cellulose companies, such as Navigator and Altri, supported and assisted by successive national governments, have turned Portugal into the perfect ground for chaos to ignite. Portugal has the largest relative area of eucalyptus in the world and, in absolute terms, competes with giants like Australia, Brazil, China, and India. These companies profit from the export of paste and paper, fully aware of the impacts of their activities on the territories and populations where they operate. It is relevant to remember that the cellulose business is highly emission-intensive, and Navigator is the company responsible for the most greenhouse gas emissions in Portugal. In addition to being aware that they are driving the planet toward chaos, they simultaneously invest in bioenergy, biomass, and green hydrogen businesses, allowing them to enhance their propaganda through new ventures masked as green, even monetizing the burned raw materials, further maximizing their profits. We can be certain that for these companies, the destruction of our lives will not lead to a reduction in profitability—at least until there is nothing left to destroy.

These companies effectively “in the name of private interests are capable of jeopardizing the rights, freedoms, and guarantees, and the very lives” of all living people, and also of those yet to be born. Together with other emitting companies and the governments that support them, they are setting fire to all people and the planet. Montenegro’s promises and words are empty, coinciding with a state budget that adds more fire to society and is also a reiteration of violence against ordinary people. It is in our hands to stop normalizing these attacks and to halt them, united and with strength.

The Pact for the Future, adopted by world leaders at the high-level United Nations Summit of the Future in September, ambitiously calls for a world free of nuclear weapons and a recommitment to disarmament during a time when all nuclear states are undergoing nuclear modernization efforts and tensions that could indicate the beginning of a new arms race. Meanwhile, the Fragile States Index notes indicators of weakened domestic human security factors within these states. Yes, states are proliferating and modernizing their arsenals in response to rivals doing the same, but where did this cycle start, what magnifies it, and how does it impact the people within these countries?

Peace comes not only through the protection from outside threats, but by fostering individual security through strong health, educational, and justice institutions. While states invest in deterrence, human security needs go unmet, and civilians develop mistrust in the government and other countries.

The United States has seen a decline in social cohesion and an increase in state fragility over the past decade, and the fractionalized population is on even greater display this year with the upcoming election. State fragility is also evident in an increase in political violence—demonstrated by two assassination attempts of a former president—democratic backsliding, an attempt to overturn an election, extreme gerrymandering, and restricting voters’ access to the ballot box.

Spending on non-defense programs and instead investing in the civilian sector decreases unemployment rates and contributes to economic security for the public.

Looking at only high-level, international interactions misses domestic factors that contribute to countries feeling less inclined to participate in diplomatic, arms control solutions, or having more isolationist practices. In 1997, Scott Sagan published a piece called, “Why Do States Build Nuclear Weapons?: Three Models in Search of a Bomb,” explaining the lack of attention to the “domestic politics model.” Today, amid a potential start of an arms race and a massive change in the global order, these factors are once again ignored.

Diplomacy and arms control is hard between countries when the people in those countries cannot decide what to do about it.

The decline in social cohesion isn’t just reflected in levels of trust that U.S. civilians have of other U.S. civilians. If you don’t trust your next-door neighbor, you sure aren’t primed to trust someone from a different country. Low levels of social trust make a populace more vulnerable to influence using “othering” rhetoric about international enemies and even allies. So, while U.S. citizens experience insecurity and instability at home, a policy that gives the illusion that the nation is strong placates grievances. Research shows that the public’s support for defense spending and a willingness to use force is related to low social trust.

While projecting power to internal and external audiences through nuclear modernization, the United States ignores insecurity at home.

According to a report by Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, the cost of a strong military also includes the forgone investments into human security:

Decades of high levels of military spending have changed U.S. government and society—strengthening its ability to fight wars, while weakening its capacities to perform other core functions. Investments in infrastructure, healthcare, education, and emergency preparedness, for instance, have all suffered as military spending and industry have crowded them out.

Project 2025, written by many former Trump administration advisers, calls for an expansion of the U.S. nuclear arsenal in order to “deter Russia and China simultaneously.” Countering China, and using it as a “pacer” is not only touted by the Trump campaign. The U.S. Nuclear Posture Review calls on modernization in order to deter China and its growing nuclear forces. However, even if China did reach the high end of projected growth in nuclear force, it would not be close to the 3,700 nuclear weapons that the United States has in its arsenal. The United States is undergoing a $1.2 trillion effort of nuclear modernization over the coming decades in order to keep its deterrent force strong.

From 1974 to 1987, an increase in defense spending worsened unemployment rates among Americans, but was specifically harmful to Black Americans and women. When non-defense spending increased, unemployment rates reduced. During this time, the United States was significantly proliferating its nuclear arsenal in the Cold War, and the strategic spending percent of the defense budget went from 11% to 16%. This was because the shift in spending toward a nuclear buildup necessitated hardware and technical spending rather than personnel spending.

The current budget for U.S. Nuclear Forces is $75 billion a year, however the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate for the 2023-2032 period of $756 billion is $122 billion more than the year before’s estimate of $634 billion for the 2021-2030 period. There are many other ways that the United States could spend this money than on a weapon that should never be used, but universal early childhood education (“Pre-K”) is estimated to cost $20-46 billion per year, and there would still be a few billion to spare.

Spending on non-defense programs and instead investing in the civilian sector decreases unemployment rates and contributes to economic security for the public.

In a preliminary study conducted at the Nonproliferation Education and Research Center at the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, it was found that a weak security apparatus—one of the indicators in the U.S. Institute of Peace’s Global Fragility Index—was associated with a low state sentiment score in the 2005-2022 Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conferences. A state’s sentiment score increases as it gives examples of its own fulfillment of its obligations under the treaty but decreases as the state blames other states for not fulfilling their obligations. In a way, it measures a state’s own sense of responsibility in the process or its willingness to blame other member states for the degradation of the system.

The findings demonstrate a relationship between domestic institutional factors and how states behave at the international level. Specifically, states that have political insecurity have a lower confidence in the NPT process. They express less confidence in other member states by calling out misactions, and do not express how they contribute directly through their own policy to uphold the nonproliferation regime.

When U.S. institutions are weakened, leaders may continue to evade responsibility by blaming all institutional issues on outside actors through scapegoating. Some scholars argue that the pursuit of a nuclear weapons program provides a unique opportunity to divert a political legitimacy crisis, such as in the case of Iran, and that activities such as the testing of nuclear weapons are so salient, they show a deliverable that gains a party in power prestige.

Global power politics does not exist in a vacuum. While understanding dynamics between states is important, state fragility is a lens through which to understand the origins of broiling tensions that prevent the pursuit of diplomatic arms control solutions. The United States is not the only state seeing a decline in social cohesion indicators; however, it is necessary to turn inward and stabilize domestic human-security factors before we can address rivals, competitors, the axis of evil, or whatever label makes us feel more secure. Addressing instability within the country will make the United States more legitimate in its claims, and institutions will have more capacity to handle outside threats as the populace is more secure.

Leaving home on a south Florida summer day, we’re typically greeted with a wall of hot, humid air. We Floridians are quite familiar with long and languorous summertime mornings, oftentimes followed by afternoon thunderstorms. Summertime is also accompanied by the possibility of a hurricane–something we’re witnessing again right now in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.

So far, we’ve usually responded by spending fistfuls of money on air conditioning to cool inside spaces, avoiding the midday sun if we can, and getting out of town for cooler climes if we have the means. Such aspects of life in the Sunshine State are the trade-off for basking in the abundant sunshine, warm temperatures, and tropical landscape of our so-called “winter.”

But it’s getting harder than ever to enjoy the summer outdoors. And summer is only getting longer.

If we want to protect the great outdoors in our state—and, even more so, protect those communities most vulnerable to extreme weather and climate change impacts—the stakes of this election are clear.

The number of heat advisories we’ve had the last few years seems endless. Those should be raising red flags for even the most adamant climate deniers. The heat is not going away. If anything, it’s going to get worse. And it threatens our health and well-being in the process.

For example, WPTV reported that “Palm Beach County projects that by 2040, we’ll see between 35 and 49 days with highs over 95°F in a year. By 2070, that number could be between 81 and 112 days, according to the county’s projections.”

A recent story in The Washington Post described a possible nightmare scenario, where a hurricane knocks out power for 48 hours in the midst of a heatwave. The suffering and health emergencies in such an instance would be dramatic and especially impactful for the economically distressed and elderly. South Floridians experienced a similar such scenario in 2017 during Hurricane Irma, when the power failed at a nursing home in Hollywood and nine residents died when inside temperatures soared. The reality of the climate crisis means that, sadly, this won’t be the last time we experience such tragedies.

Reducing the likelihood of hot days and other climate change impacts is an existential challenge for the state of Florida if it hopes to protect the safety of its citizens. And it is why we need to elect climate champions this November who can address the root causes of climate change—greenhouse gas emissions—and guide us to a more livable future.

The tightening U.S. Senate race in Florida, between Debbie Mucarsel-Powell and Rick Scott, features candidates who take very different views of climate change and how to address it. The Senate majority, and with it, the future of climate change investments funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, could very well be decided by this race. The IRA is supercharging the transition to clean energy. The choice for south Floridians should be clear if we want to slow the climate threat.

Debbie Mucarsel-Powell is a dedicated climate champion. Time and time again, she has shown herself willing to address both climate adaptation—repairing and preventing climate change caused damage—and mitigation—reducing the sources of greenhouse gas emissions. She has been characterized as a “leading freshman voice on environmental issues, especially water policy” during her time in the House of Representatives, where she introduced legislation to protect coral reefs and secure annual funding for restoration of the Everglades. She also unveiled a report in fall 2020 with fellow House of Representative members Kathy Castor (D-Fla.) and Ted Deutch (D-Fla.) about how climate action will bring important health and economic benefits to the Sunshine State. If elected to the Senate, her consistent, dedicated support for both climate adaptation and mitigation actions will help Florida and the nation move toward a more livable, resilient future.

As governor, Scott reportedly nixed the mere mention of “climate change.” In recent years, he has acknowledged that climate change is real, but he has opposed important climate change mitigation measures, such as the Green New Deal and the Inflation Reduction Act. Egregiously, now-Senator Scott did not sign onto a letter in 2023 calling on the Biden administration to implement an Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) workplace federal heat standard—which would have helped workers cope with the heat while on the job. He is willing to help fund particular impact remedies such as beach renourishment and even Everglades restoration, but adaptation measures alone are not sufficient for slowing the source of the problem. Senator Scott remains unwilling to support the kind of clean energy legislation that is absolutely necessary to put our state on a better path when it comes to climate.

As a hiker, biker, and gardener, I love Florida’s outdoors. If we want to protect the great outdoors in our state—and, even more so, protect those communities most vulnerable to extreme weather and climate change impacts—the stakes of this election are clear. We cannot miss the chance to move our state toward a future that takes climate action seriously.

It’s a sad but familiar spectacle — as people die at the hands of U.S. weapons in a faraway war zone, the stock prices of arms makers like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin soar. A piece posted yesterday at Forbes tells the tale: “Defense Stocks Hit All-Time Highs Amidst Mideast Escalation.”

One wonders how the executives of these companies feel about their products being used for mass slaughter in Gaza and dangerous escalation in Lebanon. For the most part they’re not talking, although they are glad to occasionally inform their investors that “turbulence” and “instability” means their products will be needed in significant quantities by our “allies.”

And, not unlike the Biden administration, they tend to couch their rhetoric in terms of a “right to self-defense.” They act as if Israel’s killing of 40,000 people and displacing millions more — the vast majority of whom have absolutely nothing to do with Hamas, nor any way to influence their behavior — can somehow be white washed by calling it a defensive operation.

No one who steps outside the bankrupt world of official Washington to look at the impacts on actual human beings in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon can take the notion that U.S. weapons are being used for defense in the current Middle East war seriously.

Peter Thiel and his colleagues at Palantir are an exception to the closed mouthed approach of executives at the larger weapons companies. When asked how he felt about his company’s technology to pick targets in Gaza, he said “I'm not on top of all the details of what's going on in Israel, because my bias is to defer to Israel. It's not for us to second-guess every, everything.” And Palantir CEO Alex Karp flew the entire company board to Israel earlier this year to show solidarity with Israel’s war effort in Gaza.

At least Palantir’s leaders are honest and open about where they stand. Leaders of firms like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, and Boeing that supply the weapons that have laid waste to Gaza and are now pounding Lebanon prefer to hide behind euphemisms about promoting defense, deterrence, and stability, and assisting allies.

But what about when those allies are engaged in widespread war crimes that prompted the International Court of Justice to say that Israel’s war on Gaza could plausibly be considered a genocide? Is it morally acceptable to just cash the checks and avert one’s eyes, or do the companies profiting from this grotesque humanitarian disaster have a moral responsibility for how their products are being used?

A few years ago, during the height of Saudi Arabia’s brutal invasion of Yemen — enabled by billions of dollars of U.S.- and European-origin weapons — Amnesty International probed this very point. In a report entitled “Outsourcing Responsibility,”the group provided the findings of a survey it had done of 22 arms companies, asking them “to explain how they meet their responsibilities to respect human rights under internationally recognized standards.”

Amnesty noted that "many of the companies investigated supply arms to countries accused of committing war crimes and serious human rights violations, such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE.” None of the companies queried provided evidence that they were doing any sort of due diligence to ensure that their weapons weren’t being used to commit war crimes or human rights abuses. Fourteen companies failed to respond at all, and of the eight that did answer Amnesty’s questions gave variations on the theme of “we just do what the government allows.”

This casts influential arms makers as innocent bystanders who await government edicts before marketing their wares. In fact, weapons manufacturers spend millions year in and year out pressing for weaker human rights strictures and quicker decisionmaking on the sale of arms to foreign clients.

The weapons merchants are right about one thing. It is going to take changes in government policy to stop the obscene trafficking of weapons of war into the world’s killing zones. That will mean breaking the web of influence that ties government policy makers, corporate executives, and many members of Congress to the continued production of weapons on a mass scale. We can’t expect a profit making entity like Lockheed Martin to regulate itself when there are billions to be made fueling conflicts large and small.

Which means the responsibility for ending the killing and the war profiteering it enables falls to the rest of us, from students calling for a ban on arming Israel to union members looking to reduce their dependency on jobs in the weapons sector to anyone who wants a foreign policy driven by what makes us safe, not what makes Palantir and Lockheed Martin rich.

Israel has assassinated the leader of Hezbollah and killed many of its members by way of booby-trapped pagers and walky-talkies. After a blitzkrieg bombing campaign, Israel once again invaded Lebanon this week to escalate its campaign against the paramilitary-cum-political party. Meanwhile, it continues to wage war against Hamas in Gaza. It has bombed various locations in Syria. And it has even attacked the Houthis in distant Yemen.

The Israeli government has never tried to hide its larger objective: weaken the sponsor of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. Israel is really fighting against Iran.

At the United Nations last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu displayed a map of the region labelled “The Curse.” It showed a swath of the Middle East in black that encompassed Iran, Syria, and Iraq, with outposts in Lebanon and Yemen.

“It’s a map of an arc of terror that Iran has created and imposed from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean,” Netanyahu declared. “Iran’s aggression, if it’s not checked, will endanger every single country in the Middle East, and many, many countries in the rest of the world, because Iran seeks to impose its radicalism well beyond the Middle East.”

Israel has not been content to launch attacks against Iranian proxies. Back in April, Israel struck Iran’s diplomatic compound in Damascus, killing three senior Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) officials. Over the summer, in a brazen violation of Iranian sovereignty, it detonated a bomb inside a guest house in Tehran to assassinate a top Hamas leader. And in the most recent aerial attack on Beirut that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, Israel also killed a top Iranian military official, Gen. Abbas Nilforushan of the IRGC.

These last two attacks have come after elections in July elevated a reformer to the presidency in Iran. They have come after Iran has given a number of indications that it is reevaluating its unremittingly hostile policy toward Israel. They have come after the Iranian government has showed signs of willingness to restart nuclear negotiations with the United States.

If Donald Trump wins the U.S. presidential election in November, Israel will once again have an ally that is equally committed to confronting Iran, militarily if necessary.

But if Kamala Harris wins, the stage will be set for a potential return to a détente in U.S.-Iranian relations.

Certainly, the Israeli government is interested in weakening both Hamas and Hezbollah. Certainly, it wants to push back against Iran on various fronts.

But perhaps the real motivation for Netanyahu right now in attacking Hezbollah and refusing a ceasefire in the conflict in Gaza is to goad Iran into retaliating and burying all hopes of a reconciliation between Washington and Tehran. This week, with Iran lobbing missiles at Israel, everything is so far going according to plan. What’s not yet clear is whether Netanyahu will reap a side benefit of making the Biden administration look foolish, thus elevating Trump’s electoral chances in November.

Iran’s Restraint

Imagine if Russia had somehow smuggled a bomb into Volodymyr Zelensky’s hotel room in Washington, DC and managed to assassinate him on his recent visit. The United States might very well use such an attack as a casus belli to declare war on Russia. The only thing that could stay Washington’s hand would be Russia’s nuclear arsenal and the potential for planetary annihilation.

Israel’s assassination of a Hamas official inside Iran at the end of July might have triggered an all-out war—if not for Israel’s nuclear arsenal. Of course, Tehran threatened revenge. Its retaliation for the attack on the Iranian compound in Syria, which took place two weeks later in mid-April, might have looked impressive: 300 missiles and drones aimed at Israel. But only a few evaded Israeli defenses, and there were no Israeli casualties.

Israel has an advantage over Iran in terms of intelligence and technology. How on earth did it smuggle a bomb into one of the most secure buildings in Iran and then trigger it at just the right moment to kill its target? And how did it manage to turn hundreds of pagers and walky-talkies into hand-held bombs that killed and injured Hezbollah operatives along with many Lebanese civilians? These were intelligence failures on the part of Iran and its proxies, to be sure, but they also reveal the patience, planning, and technological sophistication of the Israelis.

In other words, it’s not just Israel’s nukes that serve as deterrent.

In effect, Iran is practicing a policy of “strategic patience.” It knows that it’s outmatched in any conventional (or nuclear) conflict. In response to successful Israeli operations, its feckless missile attacks on Israel have been more theater than actual military campaign. In some cases, it has been even more restrained, for instance, after the death of three U.S. soldiers in Jordan in January when it instructed its allies not to escalate their attacks against U.S. targets.

In general, the successes that Iran and its allies have had against Israel have been in guerrilla warfare. “Hezbollah and Iran are conserving military resources and waiting for Israeli ground forces to enter a trap inside Lebanon territory,” former Iranian journalist Mohammad Mazhari concludes.

In its eagerness to “teach Hezbollah a lesson” and draw Iran into a wider war, Israeli forces may just be walking into that trap once again.

Change in Iran?

While Netanyahu beat the drum of the Iran threat at the UN, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian took a different tack in his speech to the General Assembly:

I embarked on my electoral campaign with a platform focused on “reform,” “national empathy,” “constructive engagement with the world,” and “economic development,” and was honored to gain the trust of my fellow citizens at the ballot box. I aim to lay a strong foundation for my country’s entry into a new era, positioning it to play a effective and constructive role in the evolving global order.

Pezeshkian also announced his willingness to work on reviving a nuclear agreement. What he said in private meetings was perhaps even more important. For instance, he promised to accept whatever agreement that Palestinians favored to end the conflict with Israel, which presumably includes the two-state solution that Iran has traditionally opposed because it would mean acknowledging Israel as a state.

Indeed, after replacing Ebrahim Raisi, who died suddenly in a helicopter crash last May, Pezeshkian has quietly charted a different trajectory for Iranian foreign policy. One important indication is the team that he has assembled. Head of the foreign policy team is Abbas Araghchi, who played a key role in orchestrating the 2015 nuclear deal with the United States and other countries. Javad Zarif, the face of Iran’s negotiating team that year, is now vice president for strategic affairs. The cabinet contains plenty of conservatives, but the foreign policy team is both ready and experienced in the politics of détente.

Outside observers ascribe Iran’s “tepid” response to attacks on Iranian territory and against allies like Hezbollah and Hamas to Iran’s relative weakness. “The biggest explanation appears to be simply that Iran is weaker than it wants the world to believe,” writes David Leonhardt in The New York Times. “And its leaders may recognize that they would fare badly in a wider war.”

Another explanation, however, is that the consensus inside Iran is shifting, not simply within the political establishment (which has swung from reformism to conservatism and back again) but within the governing religious bodies as well. This is not a doctrinal transformation so much as a coming to terms with different geopolitical realities, particularly within the Middle East.

Contrary to Netanyahu’s ominous presentation at the UN, Iran is not experiencing a massive expansion of its influence. To be sure, it can count on support from Syria, a significant share of Iraq’s population, and the three Hs: Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. But Syria’s still a mess, Iraq is divided, and the three Hs are reeling.

Meanwhile, Sunni powers in the region like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey are ascendant. The Abrahamic Accords, pushed by Trump and embraced by Biden, rallied Sunni powers like the United Arab Emirates and Morocco to recognize Israel. Saudi Arabia was next in line when Hamas disrupted the looming rapprochement by attacking Israel on October 7. So concerned was Iran about the prospect of the Abrahamic Accords cutting it out of regional geopolitics that it concluded its own détente with Saudi Arabia in 2023 after seven years of severed relations.

World War III?

The risk of regional escalation is large. This week, Iran fired missiles at Israel, though they have done limited damage. Israel wants an excuse to strike back against Iran, particularly against its nuclear complex. The United States has expanded its military footprint in the region as a visible sign of preparedness. Although Israel has declared that its invasion into Lebanon will be limited, the government has generally pursued maximalist goals—the destruction of Hamas and Hezbollah—even in the face of doubts from the Israeli Defense Forces.

The Israeli government aside, nobody wants a regional conflict. The Israeli government aside, everyone after October 7 has practiced a degree of restraint. Iran, in particular, has absorbed the kind of punishment that rarely goes without serious retaliation in today’s world of geopolitics. To a certain degree, it has satisfied demands both internally and externally for retaliation against Israel without inflicting any serious damage—like a short fired into the air in a duel. At some point, however, Iran might feel compelled to abandon its strategic patience and take more lethal aim at Israel.

To prevent a wider war, the Biden administration had best be conducting non-stop quiet discussions with Pezeshkian’s foreign policy team. Even while expressing support for Israel, the United States has to go over Israel’s head to negotiate with Iran. Benjamin Netanyahu is a problem that must be isolated somehow within Israel and somehow within the region.

But how to pry Netanyahu out of his office and put someone in his place with at least an ounce of pragmatism? The prime minister continues to wage war because war keeps him in power. So, too, did Antaeus draw strength from the earth until an opponent lifted him into the air to defeat him. That is the essential question today: figuring out a way to separate Netanyahu from war and thus deprive him of his power.

The official Israeli army version of why it has targeted civilian areas during the intense and deadly bombardment of September 20 in south Lebanon is that the Lebanese are hiding long-range missile launchers in their own homes.

This official explanation by the Israeli military was meant to justify the killing of 492 people and the wounding of 1,645 in a single day of Israeli strikes.

This ready-to-serve explanation shall accompany us throughout the Israeli war in Lebanon, however long it takes. Israeli media is now heavily citing these claims and, by extension, U.S. and western media are following suit.

Keep this in mind as you reflect on earlier statements made by Israeli President Isaac Herzog on October 13 when he argued that there are no civilians in Gaza and “there is an entire nation out there that is responsible.”

Israel does this in every war it launches against any Palestinian or Arab nation. Instead of removing civilians and civilian infrastructures from its bank of targets, it immediately turns the civilian population into the main targets of its war.

A quick glance at the number of civilians killed in the ongoing war and genocide in Gaza should be enough to demonstrate that Israel targets ordinary people as a matter of course.

Instead of removing civilians and civilian infrastructures from its bank of targets, [Israel] immediately turns the civilian population into the main targets of its war.

According to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza, children and women constitute the largest percentage of the war’s victims at 69 percent. If we factor in the number of adult males who have been killed—a number that includes doctors, medics, civil defense workers and numerous other categories—it will become obvious that the vast majority of all of Gaza’s victims are civilians.

Only Israeli media, and their allies in the west, continue to find justifications of why Palestinian civilians, and now Lebanese, are being killed in large numbers.

Compare the following two statements, which received much attention in the media, by Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari, regarding both Gaza and Lebanon.

“Hamas systematically uses hospitals to wage war and consistently uses the people of Gaza as human shields,” Hagari said on March 25.

Imagine the outrage if the tables were turned, as in thousands of Israeli civilians were slaughtered in their own homes by Lebanese bombs.

Then, “Hezbollah’s terror headquarters was intentionally built under residential buildings in the heart of Beirut, as part of Hezbollah’s strategy of using human shields,” he said on September 27.

For those who are giving Hagari the benefit of the doubt, just review what has taken place in Gaza in the last year.

For example, Israel claimed that the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital massacre was not of its doing, and that it was a Palestinian rocket that killed the nearly 500 displaced refugees and wounded hundreds more on October 17.

All evidence, including investigations by well-respected rights groups, concluded the opposite. Still, however, the false Israeli claims received much coverage in the media.

The Baptist Hospital episode was repeated numerous times. In fact, the lies started on October 7, not October 17, when Israel made claims about decapitated babies and mass rape. Even though much of that has been conclusively proven to be wrong, some in the media, and pro-Israel officials, continue to speak of it as a proven fact.

And though no Hamas headquarters were ever found under Al-Shifa Hospital, the unsubstantiated Israeli claims continue to be repeated as if they were the full truth.

The same logic is now being applied to Lebanon, where Israel claims that it does not target civilians and, when civilians are killed, it is the Lebanese themselves who should be blamed for supposedly using civilians as human shields.

The Gaza playbook is now the Lebanon playbook. Of course, many are playing along, not because they are irrational or unable to reach proper conclusions based on the obvious evidence. They do so because they are part of the Israeli narrative, not neutral storytellers or honest reporters.

Even the likes of the BBC are part of that narrative, as they use Israeli claims as the starting point of any conversation on Palestine or Lebanon. For example, “Israel has said it carried out a wave of pre-emptive strikes across southern Lebanon to thwart a large-scale rocket and drone attack by Hezbollah,” the BBC reported on August 26.

Israel gets away with its lies pertaining to the mass killings in Gaza, and now sadly in Lebanon, because Israeli propaganda is welcomed, in fact, embraced by western officials and journalists.

Thus when US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan described the September 20 airstrikes on Lebanon as “justice served”, he was indicating to mainstream media that its coverage should remain committed to that official assessment.

Israel gets away with its lies pertaining to the mass killings in Gaza, and now sadly in Lebanon, because Israeli propaganda is welcomed, in fact, embraced by western officials and journalists.

Imagine the outrage if the tables were turned, as in thousands of Israeli civilians were slaughtered in their own homes by Lebanese bombs. There would be no need to elaborate on the reactions of the U.S. or western media as this should be obvious to anyone who is paying attention.

Lebanon is a sovereign Arab state. Gaza is an occupied territory, and its people are protected under the Fourth Geneva Conventions. Neither Lebanese nor Palestinian lives are without worth, and their mass murder should not be allowed to take place for any reason, especially based on utter lies communicated by an Israeli military spokesman.

Perpetuating Israeli lies is dangerous, not only because truth-telling is a virtue but also because words kill, and dishonest reporting can, in fact, succeed in justifying genocide.

In the wake of the recent vice presidential debate between Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Ohio Sen. JD Vance, political commentators have been abuzz with praise for Vance's performance. Many have both lauded and critiqued his ability to "sane wash" the extremist positions of his running mate, former U.S. President Donald Trump, presenting them in a more palatable, even respectable light. This phenomenon, while concerning in its own right, reveals a deeper and more insidious problem within our political discourse—one that extends far beyond the bounds of the Republican ticket.

The Illusion of Moderation

JD Vance, the bestselling author turned venture capitalist turned politician, took to the debate stage with a clear mission: to repackage the Trump agenda in a way that would appeal to a broader audience. Gone were the inflammatory rhetoric and bombastic declarations that have become Trump's hallmark. In their place, Vance offered measured tones, appeals to compassion, and a veneer of reasonableness that seemed designed to make even the most controversial policies sound sensible.

On issues ranging from gun control to abortion rights, Vance demonstrated a remarkable ability to soften hard-line positions. When pressed

on gun violence, for instance, he spoke eloquently about the pain of victims' families while offering little in the way of substantive policy changes. His approach to abortion rights was similarly evasive, distancing himself from previous statements supporting a national ban while framing the issue in terms of supporting mothers.

Vance's measured tone and appeals to shared values made it all too easy to forget the often extreme positions he was defending.

This strategy of "sane-washing"—presenting extreme positions in a more moderate light—is not new. However, Vance's skillful execution of it has drawn particular attention. Many observers have praised his debate performance as a masterclass in political communication, noting how he managed to make the Trump-Vance ticket seem more reasonable and mainstream than it has in the past.

But while Vance's ability to reframe contentious issues may be impressive from a purely tactical standpoint, it raises serious concerns about the nature of political discourse and the ease with which potentially harmful policies can be dressed up as common sense solutions.

The Centrist Playbook

What many critics of Vance's performance have failed to recognize, however, is that his approach is not unique to the political right. In fact, the strategy of "sane-washing" has long been a staple of centrist politics, employed by both liberals and conservatives to make policies that support free-market capitalism and the military-industrial complex appear "reasonable," "evidence-driven," and "moderate."

This centrist playbook has been used time and again to justify interventionist foreign policies, austerity measures, and the gradual erosion of social safety nets. By framing these positions in terms of fiscal responsibility, national security, or economic necessity, centrist politicians have long managed to present policies that often disproportionately harm the most vulnerable members of society as necessary evils or even positive goods.

The danger of this approach lies in its effectiveness. By couching controversial ideas in the language of moderation and common sense, politicians can make even the most radical departures from the status quo seem like natural, logical steps. This has the effect of shifting the entire political spectrum, making previously unthinkable positions seem reasonable by comparison.

In the case of the Walz-Vance debate, we saw this dynamic play out in real-time. Vance's measured tone and appeals to shared values made it all too easy to forget the often extreme positions he was defending. His ability to present Trump's immigration policies, for instance, as simple common sense measures to protect American workers and communities obscured the often harsh and divisive realities of these approaches.

The Dangers of False Moderation

The art of political sane-washing, as demonstrated by JD Vance and countless centrist politicians before him, is a powerful tool. It can make the unpalatable seem reasonable, the extreme seem moderate. In the end, the greatest danger may not be the openly extreme positions that shock us into action, but the quietly radical ideas presented as common sense that lull us into complacency.

This is particularly concerning in an era of increasing political polarization and economic inequality. As the gap between the wealthiest and poorest members of society continues to widen, and as issues like climate change and systemic racism demand urgent and transformative action, the last thing we need is a political discourse that makes maintaining the status quo seem like the most reasonable option.

Collective action serves as the cornerstone for replacing the illusory sanity of the current political landscape with policies that are truly sane.

As this debate fades into memory and the election season progresses, the imperative becomes clear: Progress necessitates more than merely exposing the facade of "common sense" extremism. It requires the cultivation of radical movements capable of articulating and advocating for genuinely transformative change. These movements must emerge from grassroots organizing, uniting diverse communities, labor unions, environmental activists, and social justice advocates. Together, they can forge a vision of society that transcends the narrow boundaries of current political discourse.

The mission of these movements extends beyond challenging the status quo. They must present bold, innovative solutions to pressing societal issues. Their role is to imagine and demand a world where economic justice, racial equity, environmental sustainability, and authentic democracy are not abstract ideals but tangible realities. By building power from the ground up and amplifying marginalized voices, these movements can begin to redefine the limits of political possibility.

Collective action serves as the cornerstone for replacing the illusory sanity of the current political landscape with policies that are truly sane. This means prioritizing human needs and planetary health over profit and power. It involves creating systems that promote equality, ensure sustainability, and enhance overall societal well-being. These are not utopian dreams, but necessary steps towards a more just and liveable world.

In the face of political rhetoric that makes extreme positions appear reasonable, the answer lies in building movements that make truly reasonable positions into reality. This is the challenge and the opportunity that lies ahead—to transform the political landscape not through clever repackaging of harmful ideas, but through the hard work of creating and implementing policies that actually address the root causes of societal problems. Only then can the promise of a more equitable, sustainable, and prosperous society for all be realized.

On October 1, Iran fired about 180 missiles at Israel in response to Israel’s recent assassinations of leaders of its Revolutionary Guard (IRGC), Hezbollah and Hamas. There are conflicting reports about how many of the missiles struck their targets and if there were any deaths. But Israel is now considering a counterattack that could propel it into an all-out war with Iran, with the U.S. in tow.

For years, Iran has been trying to avoid such a war. That is why it signed the 2015 JCPOA nuclear agreement with the United States, the U.K., France, Germany, Russia, China, and the European Union. Former U.S. President Donald Trump unilaterally pulled the U.S. out of the JCPOA in 2018, and despite President Joe Biden’s much-touted differences with Trump, he failed to restore U.S. compliance. Instead, he tried to use Trump’s violation of the treaty as leverage to demand further concessions from Iran. This only served to further aggravate the schism between the United States and Iran, which have had no diplomatic relations since 1980.

Now, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sees his long-awaited chance to draw the United States into war with Iran. By killing Iranian military leaders and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Iranian soil, as well as attacking Iran’s allies in Lebanon and Yemen, Netanyahu provoked a military response from Iran that has given him an excuse to widen the conflict even further. Tragically, there are warmongering U.S. officials who would welcome a war on Iran, and many more who would blindly go along with it.

Netanyahu has spent many years trying to draw the United States into a war with Iran, and has kept escalating the Gaza crisis for a year, at the cost of tens of thousands of innocent lives, with that goal clearly in mind.

Iran’s newly elected president, Masoud Pezeshkian, campaigned on a platform of reconciling with the West. When he came to New York to speak at the United Nations General Assembly on September 25, he was accompanied by three members of Iran’s JCPOA negotiating team: former foreign minister Javad Zarif; current foreign minister Abbas Araghchi; and deputy foreign minister Majid Ravanchi.

President Pezeshkian’s message in New York was conciliatory. With Zarif and Araghchi at his side at a press conference on September 23, he talked of peace, and of reviving the dormant nuclear agreement. “Vis-a-vis the JCPOA, we said 100 times we are willing to live up to our agreements,” he said. “We do hope we can sit at the table and hold discussions.”

On the crisis in the Middle East, Pezeshkian said that Iran wanted peace and had exercised restraint in the face of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, its assassinations of resistance leaders and Iranian officials, and its war on its neighbors.

“Let’s create a situation where we can coexist,” said Pezeshkian. “Let’s try to resolve tensions through dialogue… We are willing to put all of our weapons aside so long as Israel will do the same.” He added that Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, while Israel is not, and that Israel’s nuclear arsenal is a serious threat to Iran.

Pezeshkian reiterated Iran’s desire for peace in his speech at the U.N. General Assembly.

“I am the president of a country that has endured threats, war, occupation, and sanctions throughout its modern history,” he said. “Others have neither come to our assistance nor respected our declared neutrality. Global powers have even sided with aggressors. We have learned that we can only rely on our own people and our own indigenous capabilities. The Islamic Republic of Iran seeks to safeguard its own security, not to create insecurity for others. We want peace for all and seek no war or quarrel with anyone.”

The U.S. response to Iran’s restraint throughout this crisis has been to keep sending destructive weapons to Israel, with which it has devastated Gaza, killed tens of thousands of women and children, bombed neighboring capitals, and beefed up the forces it would need to attack Iran.

That includes a new order for 50 F-15EX long-range bombers, with 750 gallon fuel tanks for the long journey to Iran. That arms deal still has to pass the Senate, where Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is leading the opposition.

On the diplomatic front, the U.S. vetoed successive cease-fire resolutions in the U.N. Security Council and hijacked Qatar and Egypt’s cease-fire negotiations to provide diplomatic cover for unrestricted genocide.

Military leaders in the United States and Israel appear to be arguing against war on Iran, as they have in the past. Even George W. Bush and Dick Cheney balked at launching another catastrophic war based on lies against Iran, after the CIA publicly admitted in its 2006 National Intelligence Estimate that Iran was not developing nuclear weapons.

When Trump threatened to attack Iran, Tulsi Gabbard warned him that a U.S. war on Iran would be so catastrophic that it would finally, retroactively, make the war on Iraq look like the “cakewalk” the neocons had promised it would be.But neither U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin nor Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant can control their countries’ war policies, which are in the hands of political leaders with political agendas. Netanyahu has spent many years trying to draw the United States into a war with Iran, and has kept escalating the Gaza crisis for a year, at the cost of tens of thousands of innocent lives, with that goal clearly in mind.

Biden has been out of his depth throughout this crisis, relying on political instincts from an era when acting tough and blindly supporting Israel were politically safe positions for American politicians. Secretary of State Antony Blinken rose to power through the National Security Council and as a Senate staffer, not as a diplomat, riding Biden’s coattails into a senior position where he is as out of his depth as his boss.

Meanwhile, pro-Iran militia groups in Iraq warn that, if the U.S. joins in strikes on Iran, they will target U.S. bases in Iraq and the region.

So we are careening toward a catastrophic war with Iran, with no U.S. diplomatic leadership and only Trump and Harris waiting in the wings. As Trita Parsi wrote in Responsible Statecraft, “If U.S. service members find themselves in the line of fire in an expanding Iran-Israel conflict, it will be a direct result of this administration’s failure to use U.S. leverage to pursue America’s most core security interest here—avoiding war.”

Gerrymandering is as old as the republic. In the very first congressional election, Patrick Henry drew a map to try to keep James Madison from being elected to Congress. (That was before the word “gerrymandering” was even coined.) Today, both parties do it with gusto when they can.

And now gerrymandering may decide control of the House of Representatives.

Once, gerrymandering was an art. Phillip Burton, the legendary Democratic House member from San Francisco who served from the 1960s to the 1980s, used to draw the state’s maps on a tablecloth at a Sacramento restaurant. He proudly called one misshapen district “my contribution to modern art.” Now, however, it’s a science. Digital technology has reshaped the drawing of maps. Partisans can craft districts to quash competition in a way that lasts throughout a decade.

Gerrymandering may be as old as the republic, but so is the fight for fair maps.

Once, there was hope the courts would step in. In 2019, however, the Supreme Court ruled that federal judges were barred from policing partisan gerrymandering. And while it is still illegal to draw district lines to discriminate based on race, judges have often winked and allowed politicians to racially gerrymander so long as they shrug and say, “It’s not about race, it’s just politics.”

Rampant district rigging has blocked fair representation in many states, especially in the South. Nearly all the population growth in the United States over the past decade took place in the South and Southwest, and most of that came from communities of color—the very voters who should be represented and who are being shut out of power.

Now, we know that there are direct partisan consequences too. All the map drawing, all the lawsuits, are done for 2024. The dust has settled. And the Brennan Center’s experts have analyzed the effects of gerrymandering. Attorney Michael Li and political scientist Peter Miller have checked and rechecked the data.

Here’s what they found: Gerrymandering in 2024 will give Republicans approximately 16 additional seats in the House of Representatives compared to fairly drawn maps. That is well more than the margin of control in this Congress or in the one before it. There can be no question that this was done deliberately and with scientific precision—and comes especially at the expense of communities of color. In most of the gerrymandered states, there were hundreds or thousands of fair maps that could have been drawn.

What can be done about it?

One answer comes from Ohio. Seven times, the state supreme court there struck down unfair maps drawn by the Republicans. (The Brennan Center represented a broad coalition of Ohio voters.) Each time, partisan map drawers simply ignored the court. Then the state’s esteemed Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, a prominent Republican, retired due to term limits. Now she leads a statewide drive for a ballot measure to create a strong, independent, citizen-led redistricting commission. This conservative stalwart teamed up with the progressive grassroots Ohio Organizing Collaborative. It’s a buddy movie for the ages.

Republicans tried to change the number of votes needed to pass a measure like this, but citizens rejected that sneaky move. Then state officials rewrote the language to say that the initiative was designed to support gerrymandering. No matter. Polls look strong, and there is a good chance that in Ohio, voters will untilt the legislature and congressional maps. Ohio would join Arizona, California, Colorado, and Michigan with their independent commissions. It is a prime exhibit of why voters should be able to overrule politicians.

There’s a national solution too. The Freedom to Vote Act would ban partisan gerrymandering in congressional redistricting. The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would strengthen that vital law against racially discriminatory rules. Both bills came achingly close to passing in the last Congress.

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), at a Brennan Center event with Democracy SENTRY in Chicago this summer, announced that Democrats would make these voting rights bills the first order of business—and that they would change the filibuster rules so they could pass. The next night, Vice President Kamala Harris pledged to sign them (the only bills mentioned by name in her convention speech).

Gerrymandering may be as old as the republic, but so is the fight for fair maps. At the constitutional convention in Philadelphia in 1787, James Madison insisted on the provision used to give Congress the power to override local politicians. It used “words of great latitude,” he explained, because “it was impossible to foresee all the abuses” that might come. “Whenever the State Legislatures had a favorite measure to carry, they would take care so to mould their regulations as to favor the candidates they wished to succeed.”

Meanwhile, voters will go to the polls to choose their representatives—but too often, the representatives will choose the voters. And the Congress that would consider reform will be one disfigured by biased rules and manipulative maps.